http://mondediplo.com/2004/04/13medias
Le Monde diplomatique April 2004
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Corporate control over the media and governmental spin threaten democracy in the US. There is now growing opposition to media deregulation and a demand for radical reform: this has become a political issue.
by Eric Klinenberg _______________________________________________________
DO SOME media companies threaten global security? After 11 September 2001 the misreporting in the United States media of international issues has contributed much to popular support for war. According to recent surveys by the University of Maryland, 60% of Americans - and 80% of the audience for television's Fox News - believed at least one of these false statements:
1) weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq;
2) there is evidence of a link between Iraq and al- Qaida; and
3) world public opinion favoured the US going to war in Iraq.
The more viewers watched Fox, the more likely they were to believe these claims (1).
For Jeff Cohen, who directs the media watchdog organisation Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (Fair), the study shows that "If a lie is big enough, and repeated enough, it will eventually pass for truth". These false truths have consequences, notably making President George Bush's radical foreign policy legitimate to those people who could vote him out of office.
Journalist John Nichols claims: "If we had an honest, get-to-the- truth media, George Bush would not be president, and we would not be at war in Iraq." Not long ago this might have been empty rhetoric. But 2003 was a watershed in media activism, and today Nichols, a leader of the reform group Free Press, speaks as part of a vigorous movement challenging the structure and composition of US journalism.
Bernie Sanders, Representative for Vermont, says: "For the first time in US history, corporate control over the media is a political issue." His Congressional colleague Maurice Hinchey adds that media reform "is the most critical issue currently facing the American people. It's about controlling the debate, and the foundations of democracy are at stake." What could motivate real media reform in a nation where 10 enormous corporations dominate the news business? What might a movement accomplish?
Last year two events inspired millions to protest in the US: uncritical war coverage by the commercial news outlets and the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) hugely unpopular decision to further deregulate the media industry. In November 2003 Free Press held the largest ever media reform conference in Madison, Wisconsin. It drew 2,000 people, including progressive leaders such as Jesse Jackson (Democratic candidate in 1984 and 1988), Bernie Sanders, John Sweeney (leader of the AFL-CIO) and the popular historian, Studs Terkel. Just as ecologists made the environment a crucial policy issue 30 years ago, these activists are politicising the media. Already the campaign is making a difference, but you're unlikely to see it on US television or read about it in the mainstream press.
The FCC has long determined US media policy, implementing technically complicated policies that receive almost no public scrutiny, since commercial news companies prefer to keep the rules that govern them out of the news. But under the leadership of Michael Powell (son of the secretary of state, Colin Powell), the FCC went too far, endorsing legislation that allows large conglomerates to expand their share of the market.
Consumer groups had little access to the FCC; and when the Centre for Public Integrity (CPI) investigated the public records at the commission, it found that much of the information was over nine years old and useless for policy research. Yet in the eight years before the crucial 2003 policy decision, the telecommunications and broadcast industries - the companies that the FCC is supposed to regulate - spent nearly $3m on more than 2,500 all- expense paid trips for FCC members and staff to Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Rio and other places. To Charles Lewis, head of the CPI, it was clear that "the FCC had been in the grips of the industry".
While the FCC was preparing to make its decision on deregulation official, 2 million Americans - an unprecedented number - wrote letters to the commission, 99% of them opposing deregulation. Two of the five FCC commissioners, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, listened to this democratic wish and voted to preserve the existing ownership limits. But Powell, Kevin Martin (a former official in the Bush campaign) and Kathleen Abernathy (a former telecommunications executive) ignored public concerns. On 2 June 2003 the FCC released its ruling, which allowed newspapers to own television stations in the same city, and granted broadcast companies the right to buy additional local and national television stations. According to Adelstein, it was "the most sweeping and destructive rollback of consumer protection rules in the history of American broadcasting".
Democrats were not the only dissenters. Republican Congressional leaders who had always supported Powell and deregulation understood the size and significance of the response to the FCC, and many changed their position. In 1997 the conservative Mississippi Senator Trent Lott had fought to place Powell on the FCC. But in June 2003 Lott said: "With too much concentration, companies no longer have to be competitive with rates or product. There would be less incentive to produce something fresh, something different, something priced reasonably or something that caters to another point of view. Already in some markets, advertisers and customers have no choice but to use one particular media outlet . . . This already limited or nonexistent choice will be re inforced or made worse by the FCC's latest rules . . . Big national print chains already have virtual monopolies in some places Expanding concentration of media ownership may be in the best interest of huge Washington or New York-based media giants, but it would not be in the best interest of media consumers."
By September 2003 both the House and Senate, though Republican controlled, had voted to overturn the FCC decision. But the White House, threatening to veto any change, pressured Congress to accept a compromise that legalised the holdings of News Corporation (which owns Fox) and Viacom (which owns CBS and UPN), which had previously exceeded the ownership caps. The final Congressional bill preserved cross-ownership permission and allowed a company to own the largest television stations and the major newspaper in a single market (2). The will of US citizens - and even of Congress - was thwarted by a backroom deal.
But the fight at the FCC is just beginning and Congress will soon revisit the regulation question. Michael Powell's radical agenda has had the unintended consequence of making media policy a major political issue, and both congressional and presidential candidates will have to address the issue in the November 2004 elections. Jeff Cohen, who has been working on media politics for 15 years, says: "Never before has the FCC seen a more unified, coherent, and effective campaign." Senator Lott thinks Americans care deeply about television, radio and even the press, and are upset about the lack of quality and diversity in the current commercial offerings. Bernie Sanders reports that his constituents in Vermont are more likely to attend political meetings about media than about any other issue.
With good reason. Americans feel the effects of media concentration every time they turn on radio or TV. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated the radio market so thoroughly that the number of station owners decreased by 34% in seven years, and one company, Clear Channel, now operates some 1,200 stations. In some cities one company operates most local stations, and residents have a hard time finding what they want to hear. Local television is similarly endangered. Adelstein says: "Today about 14% of programming on local television stations is paid infomercials. So we may be getting tighter abs [abdominal muscles], but we're getting flabby democracy."
This is nowhere more evident than in the Iraq war coverage. Before the war the US media failed to represent the majority of Americans, who opposed attacking Iraq before weapons inspections were finished and without broad international and United Nations support. Even today the media remain unwilling to recognise the death and devastation caused by the invasion: they rarely report on civilian casualties in Iraq or Afghanistan because, as Colin Powell says, "We don't count the enemy dead." But, even more seriously, major news organisations cooperate with the Pentagon to sanitise the war: they rarely print or broadcast images of dead US soldiers and the "transfer tubes" that carry them home; and they provide few reports on the number of seriously injured troops.
Amy Goodman, host of the popular radio show Democracy Now, put out by independent outlet Pacifica, argues: "If we saw for a week in this country what the rest of the world saw - and I'm not just talking about al- Jazeera, I'm also talking about the difference between CNN and CNN International (3) - Americans would not support this war . . . But most of our reporting looks like a military hardware show. The media are beating the drums of war. And their lies take lives." John Stauber, co-author of Weapons of Mass Deception and editor of the website PRwatch.com, claims: "The war effort could not have taken place without the complicity of the media."
When the war began record numbers of viewers turned to BBC television news for more accurate coverage. At the Madison conference, US Representative Tami Baldwin complained: "As a member of US Congress, I often have to turn to the foreign press to get deep and reliable news and information not just about Iraq, but about other issues too." Jesse Jackson says the variation in national public opinion about the conflict was largely attributable to differences in reporting: "We have underestimated the impact of media control on our struggle . . . Why were there bigger demonstrations against the war in Europe? Because they have better information about the war. Fox and Clear Channel are organising war rallies. Our media was in bed with the tanks. But we cannot find the truth, and that's why we're here."
Activists are now focused on the urgent problems in Iraq and the FCC, but their project is not just to return the industry to its pre-2003 condition. John Nichols says: "Rolling back what the FCC did is not enough. It only gets us back to 2 June, when we were in an illegal war with an unjust media." Free Press director and scholar Robert McChesney argues that the US has long been in the grips of media monopolies, so the long-term goal of the movement is to transform the field to a more democratic public sphere. Breaking up conglomerate control is the first aim. Next they need to win more generous government funding for public broadcasting and larger subsidies for non-profit media.
Free Press, with national organisations such as Fair, Media Access and Media Channel, and hundreds of local activist groups now emerging, recognise many obstacles lie before them. But their leaders have been galvanised by the past year and they are ready for a long battle. _______________________________________________________
* Eric Klinenberg is a lecturer at New York University and author of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2002)
(1) See Harold Meyerson, "Fact-Free News", Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 15 October 2003. At the time 48% of Americans thought that the US had established the existence of a close link between Iraq and al-Qaida; 22% thought the US had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; 25% thought most countries in the world had supported the military action launched by Bush.
(2) See the Free Press account of this deal at http://www.freepress.net/
(3) CNN International is less centred on domestic affairs and gossip, and less nationalistic than CNN.