Critical Media: The Fight to Regain Control of Our Media
While media conglomerates are becoming ever more bloated by the excess of corporate ownership, critics of media consolidation are hardly twiddling their thumbs. Increasingly, more people are not only coming forward and complaining, but they are also doing something about it. Everyone, from academics to youth groups to microwave radio broadcasters, have become a disparate group of warriors in a movement to reform the media and make it more accountable to the people and not just to corporate shareholders and advertisers. Their message is simple: the commercialization and the control within a few hands of our public airwaves is eroding democracy. Even a cursory look at U.S. broadcasting will show that their argument is dead-on target. Where debate on such important issues as poverty, the lack of affordable health care, racism, the criminalization of young people, particularly youths of color, and others, are often shoved into the background for meaningless coverage on celebrity profiles, crime, and corporate and government propaganda, is it any wonder that Americans are cynical about the democratic process? As the saying goes, the media has become a weapon of mass distraction, and the American populace has become its primary target.
To understand how, in a nation that prides its First Amendment rights, we have come to this pass, it is important to look at the history of media in this country, starting with the advent of radio and the affect consolidation and overcommercialization has had on the media and our democratic ideals. And while this information can be ultimately depressing, media reformists are still continuing to find ways to combat what amounts to an attack on democracy.
The history of electronic media in this country, of course, began with the radio. Invented in 1895 by Guglielmo Marconi, the radio, along with the motion picture, became a new source of mass entertainment and information to the general public twelve years following its invention. By 1912, hundreds of broadcasters were on the airwaves. Congress responded to this new medium by passing the Radio Act of 1912, which required that these early radio innovators become broadcast licensees. After the Act was passed, radio broadcasting skyrocketed. Thousands of people took to the air broadcasting their own and often unique programming, some of which ranged from public affairs to religious programs. What was also unique about the early radio pioneers was that the large majority of them were noncommercial. In fact, during the 1920s, noncommercial radio stations outnumbered commercial stations by a two-to-one ratio (Ruggiero 16). Clearly, noncommercial programming was popular with the public. The number of stations which broadcast such fare had mushroomed by the 1920s, so much so that the narrow and limited bandwidth was cluttering and interfering with radio signals. In 1927, Congress passed another act, the Radio Act of 1927, to address the problem by regulating the airwaves. The Act also helped create the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), a precursor to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
While the FRC’s purpose was to regulate the airwaves “in the public interest, convenience, and necessity” (ibid), it wasn’t long before the federal government began redefining the term “public interest” almost by exclusively pro-business terms. Believing that the public’s interest was better served by commercial stations, the government began limiting the number of licenses to noncommercial stations. The impact was immediate and devastating. Between 1927 and 1934, noncommercial radio all but vanished. In 1934, only 2 percent of air time was devoted to noncommercial programming (17).
The Federal Communications Act of 1934 further carried the language and ideals of the Radio Act of 1927 (It was at this time that the FCC was founded). The Act was designed to fulfill the mandate of serving the “public interest,” through one: The Fairness Doctrine, which ensured that radio be open to opposing opinions; two: Public Affairs Programming (which required that 8 and 6 percent of air time on AM and FM stations, respectively, be devoted to noncommercial, nonentertainment-oriented programming); and three: Micropower Broadcasting. Yet the act did little to serve its primary goal. By the Carter and Reagan Administrations, every single one of the mandates were either banned or eliminated (17-18).
Here, the doctrines of laissez faire capitalism run counter to reality. The free hand of capitalism, so say neoliberal enthusiasts, can do just fine on its own, even better, without unfettered government intervention. And yet, clearly, throughout history, media conglomerates profited unfairly over the public’s vested interests precisely because of federal intervention. When it comes to pro-business interests, our government can be generous indeed, and its generosity continues. The 1996 Telecommunications Act eliminated restrictions on the number of stations and signal reach a company can own locally and nationally. And last few remaining FCC rules restricting further media ownership – particularly cross-ownership rules banning a single company from owning newspapers, radio and television stations in the same market – are currently under review after recent pro-business court decisions forced the agency to justify its rules. These changes are the end result of heavy lobbying and politicking on the part of the National Broadcaster’s Association (NAB), one of the most powerful lobbies for the industry in Washington, their political allies, such as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, President Bush, and former FCC chairman Michael Powell, and the appointment of conservative judges on the benches during the Reagan and first Bust Administrations.
According to microradio scholar Larry Soley, 4,000 or 40 percent of commercial radio stations have been bought or sold by large media conglomerates to the tune of $32 billion. The top ten mega-conglomerates own 1,134 commercial radio stations, up from 652 before the passage of the telecommunications act. Only 15 percent of FM and AM noncommercial radio stations exist and most of these are affiliated with NPR, who, in recent years, have become as commercial-oriented as corporate-owned stations (Ruggiero p 18-20). And that is just for starters. AOL and Netscape were involved in a $4.2 billion merger in 1998. In 1999, Viacom and CBS merged for $35 billion, making it one of the biggest media mergers in history at the time. Also in 1999, AT&T bought out MediaOne for $58 billion, making it the largest cable company in the United States, with Microsoft investing $5 billion in interactive content. Yet, the year 2000 was a boondoggle for mega-corporate mergers and acquisitions. The Tribune Company bought the Times Mirror for $8 billion, placing both the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times under the same corporate umbrella. But the mother of all media mergers was the AOL Time Warner deal, costing a cool $106 billion – beating the Viacom/CBS deal as the largest media merger in history to date. Coming two weeks later on the heels of the AOL Time Warner deal, Time Warner and EMI announced the merging of their music divisions (www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june00/tribune-3-21.html). Viacom, which also owns MTV and VH-1, bought out Black Entertainment Television (BET) in 2001 for $3 billion (Covington par. 3). CNN and ABC News are also currently rumored to merge their news resources.
Some argue that media consolidation is healthy and even provides more choices to consumers. Market forces and consumer choices, they argue, demand that media executives provide a diverse array of programming in order to stay profitable. Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, and deregulation champion, concurs. “Common ownership can lead to more diversity,” he said in a recent New York Times article. “What does the owner get for having duplicative products? I don’t know why you’d want to have two newspapers that say the same thing. I would say, “Let’s make one Democratic, let’s make one Republican.” Of course, Mr. Powell ignores the fact that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are themselves nearly duplicative products. Deregulation proponents also ignore that quantity isn’t the same as quality. Consolidating media properties create homogeneity, not diversity. The enormous debts companies incur through buyouts and mergers demand tightened budgets and strict bottom-line values. One perfect example of this is AOL Time Warner.
In the two years since their merger, AOL Time Warner’s stock has seen a 6 percent decline in twelve months and are $28 billion in debt (Shook, par 2-3). Their financial problems show in their programming, particularly on CNN. Since the merger, the cable network has become a pale version of its earlier incarnation, when former owner Ted Turner’s motto “news is king” was its modus operandi. Now, not only is CNN losing to FOX News in the ratings battle, it is also mimicking the latter station’s “talk radio with pictures” format. Media consolidation isn’t providing more choices to American viewers. It is simply giving them the same-old same-old, offering programming that is increasingly becoming less distinguishable from the pack. But, as media reform activists insist, it is doing something much more troubling: it is eroding our democratic values.
In order for a genuine, vibrant democracy to exist, so say media reform activists, by which it is meant that the people have a direct say in the affairs of their government and country, it is necessary to have a well-informed and well-engaged citizenry. Therefore, a media less defined by its responsibility to serve the “public interest,” i.e., providing information vital to common republic, and more characterized by its self-interest to make a personal, profitable gain, damages the true intent of democracy.
Media deregulation proponents counter argue that technology has changed the vast media landscape, making it even more possible for people to seek out a diverse source of information, particularly through the Internet. While this is true in many regards, it is also true that such issues regarding broadband ownership will also change the nature of the Internet, making it highly susceptible to the pitfalls under which traditional media has now fallen. Already, companies who have cross-ownership deals use synergistic methods to promote their own products. A good example of that was the minor controversy a few years back involving a dot-com mascot. The spokes-sock puppet for the now defunct web company Pets.com made several appearances on ABC News programs, such as Good Morning America and Nightline, that amounted to little more than promotional shots for the company. It was later revealed that ABC’s parent company, the Disney Corp., also owned shares in Pets.com, a fact of which even anchors Diane Sawyer and Ted Koppel were sheepishly unaware. Synergy has become a popular means in which companies can promote and advertise their products through their media engines, so it should be expected that companies, like AT&T, which are interested in controlling broadband, will do the same with Internet content. Alternative voices on the Web, unable to compete with the frills of MP3 and streaming video, will be pushed further to the margins.
Media consolidation also makes it less likely for news organizations to do critical reports on their parent companies, or cover political issues, such as the heavy lobbying efforts in Washington by the NAB to rewrite media ownership rules, that contradicts their corporate parents” interests. As Mark Crispin Miller writes, “As it is, the cartel’s journalists must observe a complex code of omerta that shields the advertisers and the parent companies alike” (Phillips 238). But what media reform activists implicitly state is that consolidation has rendered the public mute in all issues concerning their personal welfare.
Diversity has become the major casualty in the battle over the airwaves. While there has always been a battle to include dissident voices in the daily dialogue on our national airwaves, the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s has made it harder to see or hear voices that cut through the fog of conventional wisdom.
A recent survey conducted by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) showed just how uniformly indistinguishable many of the voices and opinions that appear regularly on the evening news are. Analyzing news reports from all three broadcast networks during the cycle year of 2001, they discovered that elite (corporate or political) white male Republicans tended to be the dominant source of opinions on all issues, ranging from government policy to even gender and racial issues. They also made up a majority of partisan and professional or expert opinions. When nongovernmental organizations were covered as sources, they usually represented groups such as the Christian Coalition and the National Rifle Association (Howard 255-263). Women and minorities not only do not have a say in issues that directly affect their welfare, but their opinions, as judged by the three networks, are either dismissed or trivialized. The same assessment includes even National Public Radio (NPR). FAIR conducted a similar study on NPR and discovered that an average of 90 percent of hosts on their syndicated programs were also white males. The recent addition of the Tavis Smiley Show to their programming makes it the first and only predominantly black-oriented program on NPR (Rendell, par. 24, demographics bar).
Minority-owned radio and television stations have historically addressed the concerns and musical tastes of their respective communities. For instance, after World II and throughout the 1960s, black-owned radio stations greatly contributed to the civil rights movement, often providing vital information to their listeners concerning boycotts or upcoming political meetings.
While public affairs programs suffered during the 1970s due to standardized programming formats, black-owned radio stations increased from sixteen to eighty-eight, somewhat closing the gap between black-owned stations and black-oriented programming (Burchett, par. 8). But since 1996, stations owned by African Americans have seen a steady decline. In 2001, minorities owned less than 4 percent of television stations, the lowest level of ownership in a decade, with a slight increase in radio stations. The impact of media consolidation and limited access to investment capital had taken its toll on ownership diversity. At the time, BET founder Robert Johnson stated: “Consolidation killed the onward march of minority ownership” (St Clair, www.counterpunch.org/pipermail/counterpunch-list/2001-January/005527.html) (Johnson would later sell BET to Viacom that same year). Public affairs programming addressing the specific needs of the African American community have also seen a direct hit with the cancellation of popular BET programs “BET Tonight with Ed Gordon,” “Lead Story” and “Teen Summit” (Covington, par. 1).
But people of color are not the only ones who are being marginalized in the mainstream media. Progressive issues and opinions are also locked out of local and national debate. Talk-radio and the op-ed and editorial pages of daily newspapers tend to reflect a rightward tilt. Supposedly nonpartisan news outlets lend gravitas to right-wing opinion-makers. Such shrill Republican mouthpieces as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh warm the seats on CNN or Fox News with far more regularity than progressive voices as Molly Ivins or Noam Chomsky. And when progressive voices do have access to the airwaves, their views and opinions are often censured or censored outright.
Shortly after the September 11th attacks, local radio programmer and host of Local Flava Hour, on KMEL 106.1 FM, David “Davey D” Cook interviewed Boots Riley of the local rap group the Coup and Rep. Barbara Lee on his KPFA-FM program Hard Knock Radio, about the recent events. Lee, who was the only representative to vote against President Bush’s USA Patriot Act, giving him unlimited power to declare war, and Riley, whose record company replaced the original cover on their just released CD featuring the group blowing up the World Trade Center, had very critical opinions about the direction the country was headed in the wake of the terrorist attacks. One week after the interviews aired, KMEL fired Davey D. The station claimed Cook’s firing was due to “budget cuts” (Arnold, par 1-2). But KMEL’s parent company, Clear Channel Communications, had distributed a list of 250 songs to all its stations suggesting, in effect, that they be banned from the airwaves for their unintentional dissidence. They then launched a series of billboard displays depicting “Old Glory” (ibid). Clear Channel, one of the major beneficiaries of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, owns up to 1,170 radio stations in all 50 states (Kennedy, sidebar), and has a reputation for its strong-arm tactics against artists and competitors in the radio and concert promotion arena. Davey D’s firing had little to do with “budget cuts,” but was a clear case of corporate censorship.
The First Amendment, it seems, would protect people like Davey D. Yet, the First Amendment only guarantees freedom from government censorship, not corporate. “Congress shall make no law…” it states, “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” There are no laws protecting citizens in or out of the media from corporate censorship. And yet, corporate censorship poses an even greater threat to free speech. Not only do corporations have the power to narrow free speech, but they are also unaccountable to the public. Once more, they profit off the First Amendment through political ads.
During recent mid-term elections, according to a study released by the University of Wisconsin, political parties and interest groups spent a record $996 million dollars in upwards of 1.5 million TV ads (Harper, par 1-2). Politicians and interest groups, who, as the FAIR study on diversity show, have an equally difficult time getting their voices heard on the air, and, therefore turn to expensive paid ads. The ads spend more time cynically attacking opponents than addressing the issues. And with the broadcast news networks devoting less time to political coverage and the media conglomerates stifling any legislation demanding free airtime to candidates (with avid support of politicians, who, like corporations, cannot abide by real competition), corporations are stamping out what few democratic means, outside of protests, we have to have a voice in determining the course of our nation and our government.
Yet, media reform activists are not taking this fight lying down. While there has always been a movement to reform the media going back as far as the 1930s when Congress passed the 1934 Communications Act, there has been a ground swell for media reform, particularly in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The groups around the country calling for a halt to further deregulation of the airwaves are disparate enough that calling them a movement should be loosely applied. Yet, they are all devoted and passionate advocates of free speech and open access to the airwaves. The various groups involved range from national organization like the aforementioned Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Media Alliance, Project on Media Ownership, the National Association of Women (NOW), Global Exchange, Cascadia Media Alliance, Paper Tiger Television, and MediaChannel to local groups like Chicago Media Watch and the Bay Area’s Youth Media Council. They include such critics as David Barsamian, Greg Ruggiero, Norman Solomon, Edward Herman and Robert McChesney, who are prolific in the number of books and articles they’ve published on media criticism.
These groups and others have been acting to voice their complaints or to create alternative media that reflects the community. Last month, Chicago Media Watch held a press conference at Columbia College in downtown Chicago, which then turned into a march through downtown, bringing attention to the FCC’s challenge to its own ownership rules. Attendees made stops at the local affiliates of the major cable and network stations, singing protest songs and carrying signs which read: “Big Media: Weapons of Mass Distraction” and “We Own the Airwaves.” A few also wore costumes, with even fewer dressing as angels of the public interest (this was a take on then FCC chairman Powell’s quote: “The night after I was sworn in, I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest. I waited all night, but she did not come.” (“Media Democracy Day Protest,” par. 2-5). Individuals have acted, often on their own, to hold news organizations more accountable when covering dissident voices or events. When the New York Times undercounted the number of people who attended a peace rally last month in Washington, D.C., irate readers sent in letters and e-mails complaining about their “shoddy journalism,Ã?® prompting the paper of record to publish a second article, including a more accurate head count of the rally’s attendees.
During the 1990s, a movement sprang up around micropower broadcasting. This was a grassroots movement of low power (100 watts or less) micropower broadcasters who took to the airwaves, broadcasting on the narrow spectrum bandwidth their own unique local programming. Since the FCC had banned any broadcast signal lower than 100 watts during the late 70s, many of these broadcasts were illegal, or “pirate” broadcasts. They’ve face constant opposition from the FCC, as well as the National Association of Broadcaster’s and NPR, who claim low power signals interfere with commercial programming. Yet, the microradio movement was simply addressing the programming needs of local communities whose voices were being shut out of commercial radio. In an article on the Youth Outlook website, a teen-oriented Bay Area magazine, Bay Area rapper Askari X, explains why he joined 103.3 FM Bay View Hunters Point Radio, an underground station in San Francisco’s black community. “Guerilla radio (another term for microradio or “pirate” broadcasting) is important based on the fact that we (the community) are mastering the waves of communication” (Valrey par. 2). Askari X featured on his program such groups as Ansar El Muhammad’s, a spirtitual organization, and The Native Youth Movement, a youth organizing group for native Americans, and other voices that are never heard on commercial radio. Other Bay Area guerrilla radio groups like Black Liberation Radio, Radio Libre, and national groups like Steal This Radio, 88.7 FM address social, cultural, and political issues that often go under the radar by commercial radio and allow space for dissident voices.
The absence of dissident voices, particularly that of people of color, was the focus of a recent community assessment of 106.1 KMEL by the Youth Media Council. The Youth Media Council, a coalition representing ten youth organizations in the Bay Area, studied KMEL, along with other radio and television news broadcasts between September 10-30, 2002 to determine its coverage of issues important to the community. Their assessment isn’t surprising. Researchers, many of whom were made up of the young people most likely to listen to KMEL, found that the station “routinely excludes the voices of youth organizers and local artists…neglects discussion of policy debates affecting youth and people of color…focuses disproportionally on crime and violence…” (source: Is KMEL the People’s Station? A Community Assessment of 106.1 KMEL). They also examined local news broadcasts, such as KTVU Channel 2’s “10 o’clock News” and found similar results regarding their coverage of crime and youths of color.
The report suggest a number of recommendations for KMEL to build a bridge with the community. They are as follows: promote the voices of local youth organizers and support Bay Area youth organizations; address issues concerning the exclusion of local artists on the airwaves; build and sustain relationships with local youth organizations and artists; and create an advisory board and a hotline to address listener concerns and complaints (ibid). The survey also suggested that KMEL meet with members of the Youth Media Council to address the concerns brought up in the report. According to Youth Media Council Director, Malkia Cyrus, KMEL has agreed to meet with the coalition in January, but they have not yet “responded to details in the report.” In an interview with Michael Martin, Northern California VP of Regional Programming at Clear Channel, he claims to not have seen the Youth Media Council report but imagines its conclusion: “To make everyone happy we would need to stop being a source of entertainment and become a nonprofit organization” (Scott, e-mail interview). Ironically, KMEL no longer identifies itself as the “People’s Station.” “Actually we haven’t used the term ‘The People’s Station’ in over three years,” says Mr. Martin. “But we did such a job of promoting it, it stuck” (ibid). He could also add that the expectations from a station that promotes itself as community-based stuck, as well.
Martin’s rather dismissive attitude toward community concerns and his opinion that KMEL’s commitment to reflect the diversity of its listenership was little more than a promotional campaign reveals the struggle ahead for the Youth Media Council. Yet they are still optimistic. The response in the community to the report has been, according to Cyril, “overwhelming.” And the Council intends move forward in its effort “to take back the airwaves” and make KMEL and other local news outlets “more accountable to youth.” In the near future, they intend to hold public campaign meetings, create a base of young people to serve the public interest, continue to monitor KMEL and other news outlets, and train young spokespeople to address media and community-oriented issues.
The actions of these media reform groups have largely been local in scale. Yet, while their efforts are laudable, they are often uncoordinated and connected only tangentially to a national movement. Since media deregulators have been able to win many of the battles politically through heavy lobbying efforts, the media reform movement cannot succeed if it does not make consolidation a political issue, as well. While politicians such as Senators Fritz Hollings, Edward Markey, and John McCain and Representatives Jesse Jackson, Jr. and John Conyers Jr., have all expressed concern, skepticism, or outright criticism about media deregulation, most of the politicians in Washington, D.C, Democrats as well as Republicans, tend to ape the free-market mantra of deregulation cheerleaders, and with good reason. According to a 2000 report issued by The Center for Public Integrity, “the fifty largest media companies and four of their trade associations spent $113.3 million between 1996 to 2000 to lobby Congress and the executive branch” (McChesney, par. 7). With that kind of firepower at their disposal, media executives can and have literally shaped regulatory rules that directly affect them, often with little public scrutiny or debate on their own media outlets.
In order to be an effective voice, the media reform movement will have to organize itself into a national movement, coordinating its message and goals and addressing them forcefully in Washington. This might include forming a lobby that will specifically address deregulation concerns to Congress, form think tanks, similar to the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, to train spokespersons who will deliver their message and provide counter arguments in mainstream news outlets, to coordinate local and national protests, and offer real reforms to make the media more accountable to the public and not to advertisers, shareholders, or executives. But more than anything, a media reform movement should be, as Robert McChesney correctly writes, “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” (“The Making of a Movement,” par. 30). Most Americans instinctively know that something is not right with our media. Whether it is youths who complain about how the news represents them (such as the Goth teens after the Columbine shooting), journalists and columnists who struggle to do good work in the face of corporate and advertising pressure, or average individuals sick of the media’s over-reliance on sensationalism and celebrity profiles, Americans are complaining. Yet coalescing these disgruntled media producers and consumers into a national movement will be an uphill struggle for media reform activists, especially since the medium in which these concerns ought to be addressed has shut its door on any meaningful and constructive dialogue on the issue.
Yet the struggle to regain control of the media, particularly the airwaves, is a struggle all Americans should be concerned with. Thomas Jefferson would seem an unlikely mentor for a progressive movement like the media reform movement, what with his history regarding slavery. Yet, his opinions on a free press is one that goes to the heart of what a true democracy looks like. “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.” Reforming our media, so that it best reflects the rich and strong diversity of the United States, could very well be the most patriotic thing we citizens can ever invest ourselves in.
