[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Robert McChessney on Media Reform

[Al Kagan]

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>Subject: Robert McChessney on Media Reform
>Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 10:46:27 -0500
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>by U.of IL's own....
>
>Published in the January 7, 2002 issue of 
><http://www.thenation.com/>The Nation
>The Making of a Movement
>Getting Serious About Media Reform
>
>by Robert W. McChesney & John Nichols
>   No one should be surprised by the polls showing that close to 90 
>percent of Americans are satisfied with the performance of their 
>selected President, or that close to 80 percent of the citizenry 
>applaud his Administration's seat-of-the-pants management of an 
>undeclared war. After all, most Americans get their information from 
>media that have pledged to give the American people only the 
>President's side of the story. CNN chief Walter Isaacson distributed 
>a memo effectively instructing the network's domestic newscasts to 
>be sugarcoated in order to maintain popular support for the 
>President and his war. Fox News anchors got into a surreal 
>competition to see who could wear the largest American flag lapel 
>pin. Dan Rather, the man who occupies the seat Walter Cronkite once 
>used to tell Lyndon Johnson the Vietnam War was unwinnable, now 
>says, "George Bush is the President.... he wants me to line up, just 
>tell me where."
>
>No, we should not be surprised that a "just tell me where" press has 
>managed to undermine debate at precisely the time America needs it 
>most--but we should be angry. The role that US newsmedia have played 
>in narrowing and warping the public discourse since September 11 
>provides dramatic evidence of the severe limitations of contemporary 
>American journalism, and this nation's media system, when it comes 
>to nurturing a viable democratic and humane society. It is now time 
>to act upon that anger to forge a broader, bolder and more 
>politically engaged movement to reform American media.
>
>The base from which such a movement could spring has already been 
>built. Indeed, the current crisis comes at a critical moment for 
>media reform politics. Since the middle 1980s, when inept and 
>disingenuous reporting on US interventions in Central America 
>provoked tens of thousands of Americans to question the role media 
>were playing in manufacturing consent, media activism has had a 
>small but respectable place on the progressive agenda. The critique 
>has gone well beyond complaints about shoddy journalism to broad 
>expressions of concern about hypercommercial, corporate-directed 
>culture and the corruption of communications policy-making by 
>special-interest lobbies and pliable legislators.
>
>Crucial organizations such as Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting 
>(FAIR), the Institute for Public Accuracy, the MediaChannel, Media 
>Alliance and the Media Education Foundation have emerged over the 
>past two decades. Acting as mainstream media watchdogs while 
>pointing engaged Americans toward valuable alternative fare, these 
>groups have raised awareness that any democratic reform in the 
>United States must include media reform. Although it is hardly 
>universal even among progressives, there is increasing recognition 
>that media reform can no longer be dismissed as a "dependent 
>variable" that will fall into place once the more important 
>struggles have been won. People are beginning to understand that 
>unless we make headway with the media, the more important struggles 
>will never be won.
>
>On the advocacy front, Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting 
>and People for Better TV are pushing to improve public broadcasting 
>and to tighten regulation of commercial broadcasting. Commercial 
>Alert organizes campaigns against the commercialization of culture, 
>from sports and museums to literature and media. The Center for 
>Digital Democracy and the Media Access Project both work the 
>corridors of power in Washington to win recognition of 
>public-interest values under extremely difficult circumstances. 
>These groups have won some important battles, particularly on 
>Internet privacy issues.
>
>In addition, local media watch groups have surfaced across the 
>nation. Citizens' organizations do battle to limit billboards in 
>public places and to combat the rise of advertising in 
>schools--fighting often successfully to keep Channel One ads, 
>corporate-sponsored texts and fast-food promotions out of classrooms 
>and cafeterias. Innovative lawsuits challenging the worst excesses 
>of media monopoly are being developed by regional groups such as 
>Rocky Mountain Media Watch and a national consortium of civic 
>organizations, lawyers and academics that has drawn support from 
>Unitarian Universalist organizations. Media activists in Honolulu 
>and San Francisco have joined with unions and community groups to 
>prevent the closure of daily newspapers that provided a measure of 
>competition and debate in those cities.
>
>Despite all these achievements, however, the media reform movement 
>remains at something of a standstill. The sheer corruption of US 
>politics is itself a daunting obstacle. The Center for Public 
>Integrity in 2000 issued "Off the Record: What Media Corporations 
>Don't Tell You About Their Legislative Agendas"--an alarming exposé 
>of the huge lobbying machines employed by the largest communications 
>corporations and their trade associations, as well as the 
>considerable campaign contributions they make. According to the 
>center, the fifty largest media companies and four of their trade 
>associations spent $111.3 million between 1996 and mid-2000 to lobby 
>Congress and the executive branch. Between 1993 and mid-2000, the 
>center determined, media corporations and their employees have given 
>$75 million in campaign contributions to candidates for federal 
>office and to the two major political parties. Regulators and 
>politicians tend therefore to be in the pockets of big-spending 
>corporate communications lobbies, and--surprise, surprise--the 
>corporate newsmedia rarely cover media policy debates. 
>Notwithstanding all the good work by media activists, the "range" of 
>communications policy debate in Washington still tends to run all 
>the way from GE to GM, to borrow a line from FAIR's Jeff Cohen.
>
>At this very moment, for example, the FCC is considering the 
>elimination of the remaining restrictions on media consolidation, 
>including bans on cross-ownership by a single firm of TV stations 
>and newspapers in the same community, and limits on the number of TV 
>stations and cable TV systems a single corporation may own 
>nationwide. The corporate media lobbying superstars are putting a 
>full-court press on the FCC--which, with George W. Bush's imprint 
>now firmly on its membership, is now even more pro-corporate than 
>during the Clinton years. The proposed scrapping of these 
>regulations will increase the shareholder value of numerous media 
>firms dramatically, and will undoubtedly inspire a massive wave of 
>mergers and acquisitions. If the lessons of past ownership 
>deregulation--particularly the 1996 relaxation of radio ownership 
>rules--are any guide, we can expect even less funding for journalism 
>and more commercialism. All of this takes place without scrutiny 
>from major media, and therefore is unknown to all but a handful of 
>Americans.
>
>The immensity of the economic and political barriers to democratic 
>action has contributed to demoralization about the prospects for 
>structural media reform and an understandable turn to that which 
>progressives can hope to control: their own media. So it has been 
>that much energy has gone into the struggle over the future of the 
>Pacifica radio chain, which looks at long last to be heading toward 
>a viable resolution. The Independent Press Association has grown 
>dramatically to nurture scores of usually small, struggling 
>nonprofit periodicals, which are mostly progressive in orientation. 
>And dozens of local Independent Media Centers have mushroomed on the 
>Internet over the past two years. These Indy Media Centers take 
>advantage of new technology to provide dissident and alternative 
>news stories and commentary; some, by focusing on local issues, have 
>become a genuine alternative to established media at a level where 
>that alternative can and does shift the dialogue. We have seen the 
>positive impact of the IMC movement firsthand--in Seattle, in 
>Washington, at the 2000 Democratic and Republican national 
>conventions, at the three lamentable presidential debates later that 
>year, during the Florida recount and in the aftermath of September 
>11 in New York and other cities. It is vital that this and other 
>alternative media movements grow in scope and professionalism.
>
>Yet, as important as this work is, there are inherent limits to what 
>can be done with independent media, even with access to the 
>Internet. Too often, the alternative media remain on the margins, 
>seeming to confirm that the dominant structures are the natural 
>domain of the massive media conglomerates that supposedly "give the 
>people what they want."
>
>The trouble with this disconnect between an engaged and vital 
>alternative media and a disengaged and stenographic dominant media 
>is that it suggests a natural order in which corporate media have 
>mastered the marketplace on the basis of their wit and wisdom. In 
>fact, our media system is not predominantly the result of 
>free-market competition. Huge promotional budgets and continual 
>rehashing of tried and true formulas play their role in drawing 
>viewers, listeners and readers to dominant print and broadcast 
>media. But their dominance is still made possible, in large part, by 
>explicit government policies and subsidies that permit the creation 
>of large and profitable conglomerates. When the government grants 
>free monopoly rights to TV spectrum, for example, it is not setting 
>the terms of competition; it is picking the winner of the 
>competition. Such policies amount to an annual grant of corporate 
>welfare that economist Dean Baker values in the tens of billions of 
>dollars. These decisions have been made in the public's name, but 
>without the public's informed consent. We must not accept such 
>massive subsidies for wealthy corporations, nor should we content 
>ourselves with the "freedom" to forge an alternative that occupies 
>the margins. Our task is to return "informed consent" to media 
>policy-making and to generate a diverse media system that serves our 
>democratic needs.
>
>In our view, what's needed to begin the job is now crystal clear--a 
>national media reform coalition that can play quarterback for the 
>media reform movement. The necessity argument takes two forms.
>
>First, the immense job of organizing media reform requires that our 
>scarce resources be used efficiently, and that the various 
>components of a media reform movement cooperate strategically. The 
>problem is that the whole of the current media reform movement is 
>significantly less than the sum of its parts. Isolated and 
>impoverished, groups are forced to defend against new corporate 
>initiatives rather than advance positive reform proposals. When they 
>do get around to proposing reforms, activists have occasionally 
>worked on competing agendas; such schisms dissipate energy, squander 
>resources and guarantee defeat. More important, they are avoidable. 
>Organizers of this new coalition could begin by convening a 
>gathering of all the groups now struggling for reform, as well as 
>the foundations and nonprofits willing to support their work. "All 
>the issues we talk about are interlinked. We are fighting against a 
>lot of the same corporations. The corporations, while they 
>supposedly compete with one another, actually work together very 
>well when it comes to lobbying," explains Jeffrey Chester of the 
>Center for Digital Democracy. "We need to link up the activists and 
>start to work together as well as the corporations do for the other 
>side." Will every possible member organization get on the same media 
>reform page? No. But after years of working with these groups in 
>various settings, we have no doubt that most will.
>
>Second, a coherent, focused and well-coordinated movement will be 
>needed to launch a massive outreach effort to popularize the issue. 
>That outreach can, and should, be guided by Saul Alinsky's maxim 
>that the only way to beat organized money is with organized people. 
>If the media reform movement stays within the Beltway, we know that 
>we will always lose. Yet, so far, outreach beyond the core community 
>of media activists has been done on a piecemeal basis by various 
>reform groups and critics with very limited budgets. The results 
>have, by and large, been predictably disappointing. As a result, 
>says Representative Jesse Jackson Jr., "the case for media reform is 
>not being heard in Washington now. It is not easy to make the case 
>heard for any reform these days. That's why we need to do more. I 
>hear people everywhere around the country complaining about the 
>media, but we have yet to figure out how to translate those 
>complaints into some kind of activist agenda that can begin to move 
>Congress. There has to be more pressure from outside Washington for 
>specific reforms. Members have to start hearing in their home 
>districts that people want specific reforms of the media."
>
>That will only happen if a concerted campaign organized around core 
>democratic values takes the message of media reform to every college 
>and university, every union hall, every convention and every church, 
>synagogue and mosque in the land. To build a mass movement, the new 
>coalition must link up with organized groups that currently engage 
>in little activity in the way of media reform but that are seriously 
>hampered by the current media system. Organized labor, educators, 
>progressive religious groups, journalists, artists, feminists, 
>environmental organizations and civil rights groups are obvious 
>candidates.
>
>These groups will not simply fall into place as coalition partners, 
>however. Media corporations do not just lobby Congress; they lobby a 
>lot of the groups that suffer under the current system. Some of 
>those groups have been bought off by contributions from foundations 
>associated with AOL, Verizon and other communications conglomerates; 
>others--particularly large sections of organized labor--have been 
>convinced that they have a vested interest in maintaining a status 
>quo that consistently kicks them in the teeth. Building a broad 
>coalition will require a tremendous amount of education and 
>old-fashioned organizing that will inevitably involve pressure from 
>the grassroots on major institutions and unions in order to get the 
>national leadership of those organizations to engage. 
>Movement-building will require that able organizers like Chester, 
>Cohen, FAIR's Janine Jackson and Media Alliance executive director 
>Jeff Perlstein--who have already been engaged in the struggle--be 
>provided with the resources to travel, organize and educate.
>
>All the organizing in the world won't amount to a hill of beans, 
>however, unless there is something tangible to fight for, and to 
>win. That's why we need reform proposals that can be advocated, 
>promoted and discussed. Media reform needs its equivalent of the 
>Voting Rights Act or the Equal Rights Amendment--simple, basic 
>reforms that grassroots activists can understand, embrace and 
>advocate in union halls, church basements and school assemblies. And 
>there has to be legislation to give the activism a sense of focus 
>and possibility.
>
>Fortunately, there are several members of Congress who are already 
>engaged on these issues: Senator Fritz Hollings has emerged as a 
>thoughtful critic of many of the excesses of media monopolies; 
>Senator John McCain has questioned the giveaway of public airwaves 
>to communications conglomerates; Representative John Conyers Jr., 
>the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has been 
>outspoken in criticizing the loss of diversity in media ownership 
>and the failure of the FCC to battle monopolization and 
>homogenization; Representative Louise Slaughter has introduced 
>legislation mandating free airtime for political candidates; Senator 
>Paul Wellstone has expressed an interest in legislation that would 
>reassert standards for children's programming and perhaps adopt the 
>approaches of other countries that regulate advertising directed at 
>young children; and Jesse Jackson Jr. has expressed a willingness to 
>introduce legislation aimed at broadening access to diverse media, 
>along with a wide range of other media reform proposals. If an 
>organized movement demands it, there are people in Congress with the 
>courage and the awareness to provide it with a legislative focus.
>
>Ultimately, we believe, the movement's legislative agenda must 
>include proposals to:
>
>§ Apply existing antimonopoly laws to the media and, where 
>necessary, expand the reach of those laws to restrict ownership of 
>radio stations to one or two per owner. Legislators should also 
>consider steps to address monopolization of TV-station ownership and 
>move to break the lock of newspaper chains on entire regions.
>
>§ Initiate a formal, federally funded study and hearings to identify 
>reasonable media ownership regulations across all sectors.
>
>§ Establish a full tier of low-power, noncommercial radio and 
>television stations across the nation.
>
>§ Revamp and invest in public broadcasting to eliminate commercial 
>pressures, reduce immediate political pressures and serve 
>communities without significant disposable incomes.
>
>§ Allow every taxpayer a $200 tax credit to apply to any nonprofit 
>medium, as long as it meets IRS criteria.
>
>§ Lower mailing costs for nonprofit and significantly noncommercial 
>publications.
>
>§ Eliminate political candidate advertising as a condition of a 
>broadcast license, or require that if a station runs a paid 
>political ad by a candidate it must run free ads of similar length 
>from all the other candidates on the ballot immediately afterward.
>
>§ Reduce or eliminate TV advertising directed at children under 12.
>
>§ Decommercialize local TV news with regulations that require 
>stations to grant journalists an hour daily of commercial-free news 
>time, and set budget guidelines for those newscasts based on a 
>percentage of the station's revenues.
>
>We know from experience that many of these ideas are popular with 
>Americans--when they get a chance to hear about them. Moreover, the 
>enthusiasm tends to cross the political spectrum. Much of our 
>optimism regarding a media reform movement is based on our research 
>that shows how assiduously the corporate media lobbies work to keep 
>their operations in Washington out of public view. They suspect the 
>same thing we do: When people hear about the corruption of 
>communications policy-making, they will be appalled. When people 
>understand that it is their democratic right to reform this system, 
>millions of them will be inclined to exercise that right.
>
>What media policy-making needs is to be bathed in democracy. The 
>coalition we envision will have its similarities to the civil rights 
>movement or the women's movement--as it should, since access to 
>information ought to be seen as a fundamental human right. It will 
>stand outside political parties and encourage all of them to take up 
>the mantle of democratic media reform, much as Britain's impressive 
>Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom has done. Although its 
>initial funding may well come from large grants, this reform 
>coalition ultimately must be broad-based and member-funded, like 
>Greenpeace or, dare we say it, the National Rifle Association. 
>Activists must feel a sense of ownership and attachment to a citizen 
>lobby if it is to have real impact. We understand that success will 
>depend, over the long term, upon a rejuvenation of popular politics 
>and, accordingly, a decrease in corporate political and economic 
>power. At the same time, we are certain that a movement that expands 
>the range of legitimate debate will ultimately change not just the 
>debate but the current system. "I am convinced that when people 
>start talking about these big issues, these fundamental issues, when 
>they start to understand that they have the power as citizens in a 
>democracy to take on the powers that be and change how things are 
>done, then change becomes inevitable," says Jackson. "The challenge, 
>of course, is to get people to recognize that they have that power."
>
>Even before it gets down to the serious business of reforming 
>existing media systems, the coalition we propose can lead an 
>organized resistance to corporate welfare schemes like the proposed 
>FCC deregulation. And it might even be able to prevent the complete 
>corporatization of the Internet [see Jeffrey Chester and Gary O. 
>Larson, "Something Old, Something New," in this issue]. The key is 
>to have a network of informed organizations and individuals who are 
>already up to speed on media issues and can swing into action on 
>short notice. Currently that network does not exist. The heroic 
>public-interest groups that now lead the fight to oppose corporate 
>domination of FCC policies find themselves without sufficient 
>popular awareness or support, and therefore without the leverage 
>they need to prevail. The movement we propose will be all about 
>increasing leverage over the FCC and Congress in the near term, with 
>an eye toward structural reform down the road.
>
>But is it really possible that such a coalition can take shape in 
>the months and years to come and begin to shift the debate? History 
>tells us that the possibility is real. At times of popular political 
>resurgence throughout the twentieth century, media activism surfaced 
>as a significant force. It was most intense in the Progressive Era, 
>when the rise of the modern capitalist media system was met with 
>sustained Progressive and radical criticism from the likes of Upton 
>Sinclair, Eugene Victor Debs and Robert La Follette. In the 1930s a 
>heterogeneous movement arose to battle commercial broadcasting, and 
>a feisty consumer movement organized to limit advertising in our 
>society. In the postwar years, the Congress of Industrial 
>Organizations attempted to establish a national FM radio network, 
>one of the first casualties of the war on independent labor and the 
>left that marked that period. In the 1960s and '70s the underground 
>press provided vital underpinning for the civil rights, antiwar and 
>feminist movements.
>
>In short, we are building on a long tradition. And there is 
>considerable momentum at present to coalesce. In November some 
>thirty-five media activists from all over the nation met for a day 
>in New York to begin coordinating some of their activities on a 
>range of issues, from local and national policy matters to creating 
>alternative media. Leading media scholars and educators are forming 
>a new national progressive media literacy organization, one that 
>will remain independent of the media conglomerates that bankroll 
>existing groups. We are excited by speculation that Bill Moyers, who 
>has done so much to drum up funding for reform initiatives, will in 
>2002 use his considerable influence to convince progressive 
>foundations to make a genuine commitment to this fundamental 
>democratic initiative.
>
>The bottom line is clear. Until reformers come together, until we 
>create a formal campaign to democratize our communications 
>policy-making and to blast open our media system, we will continue 
>to see special issues of The Nation like this one lamenting our 
>situation. We need no more proof than the current moment to tell us 
>that the time to build a broad coalition for media reform has 
>arrived.
>
>Robert W. McChesney, who teaches at the University of Illinois, is 
>the author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy (New Press) and, with John 
>Nichols, of It's the Media, Stupid (Seven Stories). John Nichols, 
>The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive 
>politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than 
>a decade. He is the author, with Bob McChesney, of It's the Media, 
>Stupid (Seven Stories), which features introductions by Ralph Nader, 
>Barbara Ehrenreich and Paul Wellstone, and Jews for Buchanan, on the 
>2000 presidential election, published in November

-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
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