> May 14 / 15, 2005
>
> Join the 14 Per Cent Club! We Won!
>
> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Yummy. An excellent article by Cockburn.
> We won! On the left we've always said that the corporate press tells
> lies and now, for a variety of reasons, at most people believe us. The
> corporate media are discredited, the same way the corporate political
> parties are. They have zero credibility. Newspapers are dying. The main
> tv networks have lost a third of their audience over the past twenty
> years. There's no need for whining that the problem consists of
> narrowing ownership. The corporate press was just as bad when there were
> five hundred different newspaper owners instead of five. And, for now at
> least, we have the web. We're infinitely better off than we were thirty
> years ago.
It's really encouraging to hear that the corporate media is widely disliked. This is an opening for alternative and radical media. We are much better off than we were thirty years ago. I suspect that with our websites we reach far more people than the underground press reached around 1970. One problem is that many in our ranks don't understand the power of our voice--they still judge the alternative media movement by the standardss of old media. No, we don't have as many radical newspapers, but Americans read newspapers less and less. The best way to talk with them is via the Internet, radio (podcasting), and other forms of new media.
Of course, just because you figure out how to do new media doesn't mean that people will flock to your media. This is where the left falls down--not enough of us contribute to this new radical media. More of us should be writing essays or researching articles. More of us should learn how to do radio, podcasting, videos, movies, and so on.
> The only trouble is, the Left hasn't got too many ideas. We should stop
> bitching about the corporate press and get with a new program. If it's
> credible, then the people who don't trust the New York Times might start
> trusting us.
I agree with Cockburn that we need to stop complaining about the corporate press. Time to send Solomon, McChesney, and the other professional critics on vacation. How much do we reinforce our own marginality by always talking about our marginality? Perhaps it is time to ditch that rhetoric and act like we are part of the mainstream. At the same time, we can initiate new campaigns against right wing and corporate media. For example, where is the campaign against the religious right's campaign to buy up FM radio stations in order to re-transmit their ignorant hateful programming?
I had a thought the other day about progressive media and local TV news. There is some evidence that last year's U.S. election hinged on the successful effort by the pro-Bush regime to focus the election on security issues. It's been pointed out that the terror alerts and the rhetoric about terrorism scared voters into voting for Bush. There is another big player when it comes to scaring the general population and that scaremonger is local TV news. The folks who bother to watch local TV news are fed a steady diet of police blotter news and visuals of violence around the world. I believe there have been studies that show that regular viewers of local TV news are more likely to have an inflated belief that crime could happen to them.
All of the talk and activism over media reform has focused on national media. How about some more activism against local media? How about supporting our local Indymedias more, such as writing for them and promoting them?
> <http://www.counterpunch.org/>
Counterpunch being one of those brilliant stars in the alternative media skies. At least on most days...
Chuck