[lbo-talk] "Free ice cream" rather than "eat your spinach"

[Gar Lipow]

On 1/18/06, gboozell at juno.com <gboozell at juno.com> wrote:
> McChesney's group, Free Press, also vocally supports
> many community-based alternative media initiatives including
> LPFM, cable access, community radio and community internet
> including municipally-owned WI-FI) - hardly "liberal whiners".
>
> Their web site is www.freepress.net.
>
> Greg Boozell
> gboozell at juno.com
>


I have a thought on this.  Let me set the scene by spending a
paragraph reminding us of what we already know. Complaining about
control of most of the media by corporate conservatives is just
whining. Yeah we have our share of  blogs and web sites, and web
casting, and pod casting, and alternative radio and (for the moment
anyway) public access TV, and e-mail lists , and progessive magazines 
 -- of varying quality. But those are marginal compared to the
mainstream networks and  cable stations. I remember when Liza got on
one of the mainstream shows, someone commented that showed how we can
get access if we are stylish enough. But you may have noticed just how
often  Liza gets those invitaions.  Of course she a bit a busy to
accept them right now, but the point is the offers to appear on CNN
and ABC are not just  pouring in.

One more point we already know; monoply is not the main problem;
advertiser support media is the main problem.  True when there was
more media diversity, there more occasional cracks a left viewpoint
could  slip through now and again. But ultimately an advertiser
supported media means the advertiser is the customer, the
view/reader/listener/whatever is the product, and the media itself is
nothing more than bait. That is going to affect the quality,
reliability and diversity of information regardless of ownership.

(Also monopoly is at least in part a side effect of advertising. There
are virtually no limits to economies of scale in advertiser supported
media. If your advertiser want a mass audience, then the larger the
beter; if advertiser want to narrowcast, they would rather deal with
one business entity that has a large variety of products reaching a
large variety of consumers so that they have on stop shopping for
their target audience of the week.)

So it would not be a bad thing to have a demand that confronts this
straight on. Let me suggest such a demand: a tax on advertising,
marketing, a public relations (including "enhanced sponsorship" of
public broadcasting), the revenue from that tax used to finance
vouchers divided equally among the population of the U.S. - those
vouchers good for purchase of any media that is purely subscriber
supported.

There are a number of good things about such a demand. One is that it
is educational; it helps highlight how advertising/PR helps warp and
distort media. It emphasizes on an emotional level how conventional
media makes ordinary people the product.

Another  is that it is appealing. You are proposing to tax something
that is normally hated - advertising, and then using to money to give
people access to free education or entertainment as they wish. It is
"free ice cream" rather than "eat your spinach". It is the reverse of
most "sin taxes" The "sin" being taxed (advertising) is one that is
almost entirely practiced by owners not workers. And the revenue is
specifcally earmarked for one of lifes  minor pleasures rather than
some drab duty.

Another is that is scalable. It would be productive at even the local
level. You  could pass a  law like this in a municipality - affecting
mainly local advertising (probably there is a hell of  a lot you could
not touch, but you  could at least hit something). At a state level
you could hit a great deal more - again having huge numbers of things
federal pre-emption would prevent you from touching. Still even a
little bit would a useful thing.

Another is that it would be good policy if you could win it. Yeah
given vouchers with no advertising as the only restriction, most of
the money would not go to intentionally political stuff. Much of it
would buy premium cable, or webcasts, or comic books, or  perhaps porn
or sports magazines - though even there I think the lack of need for
advertiser would produce better quality. But some of the vouchers
would go to support left media - and given what we do with essentially
nothing, I'm betting we would produce some amazing stuff with even a
tiny percent of what such a voucher system would offer.

And the fact that it has educational,  emotional and propaganda value,
that it  is useful to a media activism movement even before you win,
gives you a tiny chance of winning.