New Movement Challenges U.S. Journalism

http://mondediplo.com/2004/04/13medias

Le Monde diplomatique April 2004

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.