Corporate Media Power -- A Solution?

[DaveT]

We need to disempower the corporate media but only a tiny minority within our ranks even yet grasps either the dimensions of the problem or has any conception of a solution. I get this queasy feeling every time I hear or read some eloquent progressive advocate's forlorn disdain for "our" media that won't "do its job."

I'm sorry, but that formulation is preposterous and the sooner we face that fact, the sooner we can make some progress on addressing the problem of corporate logic defining the news as a "product." The "job" of reporters working for the handful of predominant news platforms is to do what they are told by their editors -- whose job is to do what they are told by their publishers --whose job is to do what they are told by the CEOs of the conglommerate corporations who own ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, Time, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal.

Throughout American history, there has never been a Golden Age of "truthful" journalism -- the great muckrakers of the Gilded Age, for example, were marginalized just as Greg Palast is today, or I.F. Stone was a few decades ago.

I think the current self-serving media myth of the courageous Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman nailing Tricky Dick with dogged determination, an exotic secret source and the courageous backing of a crusty but courageous editor has a lot to do with the incessant pining for an honorable big time journalism. Even within the text of this ludicrous received story, shouldn't it make you wonder why they needed so much courage to just "do their jobs?"

In 1973, there was ample evidence available to show that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were murderous liars and that the Vietnam "peace" agreement was a sham that made a mockery of the twenty thousand dead bodies that they had cynically added to the list that eventually adorned that black wall in Washington. But even as Woodward and Bernstein were digging up the hard news that eventually led to Nixon's forced march back to San Clemente, the Mainstream Media of the day was celebrating "Peace With Honor" while the bulk of the "political" press corps was laughing its collective ass off at the notion that Nixon could ever have any real trouble over Watergate.

I read a lot of the Watergate and impeachment books written at the time -- my favorites were from Jimmy Breslin and Frank Mankiewicz (sp? -- McGovern's campaign manager in 1972.) What got Nixon were legal proceedings by Judge Rodino, the Special Prosecutor's office and the House Judiciary Committee that produced hard evidence of criminal misconduct. You can make an argument that without Woodward and Bernstein putting the issue "in play" that none of those legal proceedings would have ever been initiated -- but that is hardly vindication of the idea that the "media" as a whole in those days "did its job" to inform the public about high crimes and misdemeanors.

The Woodstein Myth can't have it both ways -- if everybody in the media of the early 70s really were "doing their jobs" of speaking truth to power, what was so damned courageous about printing their Watergate stories?


The power of money is never going to go away. Major corporations can help themselves make money by adding TV networks and nationally distributed news platforms to their holdings. It is a nice dream to imagine a revived FCC enforcing tough diversity and fairness regulations while antitrust legislation forces divestiture of media monopolies in local markets. I certainly support these legalistic political goals and I honestly believe that we will see at least some of that kind of reform in our lifetimes -- but do you really believe that GE will ever cease to be powerful or that NBC will cease to augment that power?

No, you cannot really reform anything from the top, down.

But this website and thousands like it are inexorably eating at corporate media power from the bottom, up. Even as we post our messages here, though, I think the majority of us do not understand what is going on. People denigrate themselves and their own voices by assuming that unless an idea is espoused on Television it doesn't mean anything.

I get this same queasy feeling when I see people getting SO excited about Keith Olberman. I appreciate his work, too, but he is not saying anything that tens of thousands of internet bloggers and random posters on sites like this one haven't been saying for years. Yet I have had exchanges with lefties who really believe in their hearts that seeing that same message about Bush come out of the idiot box somehow validates the message.

You will never find a more pristine case of disempowering yourself -- your ideas don't count unless you see them on TV.


I submit that the message we should share with each other is to laugh at the patent absurdity of the mainstream media. Within the idiot box, Stewart and Colbert are doing exactly that.

I am 53 years old and I remember the atmosphere on college campuses during the Vietnam War. There was no reverence for Walter Cronkite -- nothing like the comfy myth that when Walter turned on the war after TET in 1968 that the American people therefore turned on the war. Nope. Underground radio and the underground press sprung up as a community based antidote to the obvious lies coming from CBS and the rest of the corporate media.

In the former Soviet Union, an underground movement circulated a similar antidote to the governing lies using the technology of the mimeograph machine.


The current low poll numbers that the Bush Regime is suffering through is all the validation we need. Obviously tens of millions of Americans who were at least receptive to the media created image of Bush The Churchillian Leader have changed their minds in the last few years. It sure as hell was not the Main Stream Media's reportage that created this reaction.

No, unofficial information has been percolating throught the culture, under the radar of TV and the national news magazines. Bush's performance as President has been SO horrible that the TV crapola has lost its credibility and the underground information coming through the internet and word of mouth has filled the void. We should take heart in this process and never pine for a return of media "credibility."

That would be an unmitigated disaster, in my opinion.



However Bush leaves the scene, corporate control of the Mainstream Media is going to continue for the forseeable future. Unless we want them to create a kinder, gentler and less stupid version of the same War Profits Forever paradigm, it behooves us to come to a consensus about network TV news.

The consensus should not be -- "Hey, guys, would you please be honest?"

The message should be -- "Turn it off."

[rock]

1. Nicely stated

n/t

[drm604]

2. But now they're coming after the internet.

How do we stop that?

[DaveT]

3. A reasonable question

I sincerely believe that the technology of the internet is fundamentally different from TV and nationally distributed hard copy print journalism.

Instead of the heirarchical distribution systems of the mainstream media, the internet is inherently decentralized. So long as the corporations want to use it to make money off their products, there will be some kind of access available to almost everybody. Thus even if they shut down platforms like DU, people can still distribute contraband truth.

Although I think it highly unlikely that this could happen, but if "they" do come up with some kind of censorship damper on the internet to prevent netroots organizing, we will just have to come up with another underground network of communication.

Not only can it be done, it has been done in the former Soviet Empire.

It will never get us anywhere to ask the corporate media to be good citizens.

[magellan]

4. For me, the thing about Keith Olbermann

...is that he's reaching people who may not have internet access and feel secluded in their opinion of this administration. That is certainly the desire of BushCo: to divide and disempower us, by making us feel with their propoganda and censorship that progressives/liberals are lone voices in a wilderness of ravenous right wingnuts.

I agree with everything else you wrote. The media has never been what we think it was. It's been driven by ratings and subscriptions first and the news second for a long, long time.

The likes of I. F. Stone and George Seldes were the exceptions. They wrote, edited and published their own political newsletters, never accepted advertisements (the subscriber only paid postage), and investigated what no one else would. The best political bloggers of today are following in their footsteps.

[Berry Cool]

5. That is PRECISELY it, magellan.

The media have never been and never will be perfect. They have always been controlled by people with money. That is why it is so heartening to see anyone who works for any of them use the reach his position has bought him to speak truth to power. It is not that his speaking it "validates" it. It is that his speaking it gets that message to that many more people.

Bloggers are all well and good, but so long as they are bloggers, they will probably never have the platforms people in the mainstream media do.

[DaveT]

8. Agreed

I sure don't want to come off as anti-Keith.

But I have had exchanges with people who really do regard his work as being a confirmation that our opinions aren't just fringe craziness.

That perspective, rather than KO, is what I have a problem with.

I hope KO reaches an even wider audience and his TV driven notariety makes that more likely. It does not make the point of view that KO and most of us here share any more or less "legitimate."

[DaveT]

7. That is an excellent point

about KO reaching a different audience -- another good reason to be happy about his outstanding work these last few months.

But it is important to remember that even after his huge recent ratings boost, his total audience still remains well below a million people. I have nothing at all bad to say about Keith or his work -- my point was about some (not all) of his fans who do not have a good sense of perspective about him.

[glitch]

15. Excellent OP, K & R. FWIW I don't get MSNBC but I do get Crooks and Liars.

And I send the transcripts to others who don't get MSNBC. And who knows how many they pass them along to? I wonder what KO's underground distribution is?

Thoughtful analysis nicely written, thanks for posting and belated welcome!

[annabanana]

6. I agree.. and when discussing issues we should always

include the phrase: "Consider the Source"
k&r

[KharmaTrain]

9. Lots Of Food For Thought...Chew On This One

While the campaign rages, the corporate media is drowning in red ink and changes are about to happen. Check this out:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2496906

There are big changes in the wind...especially if the Democrats take control of Congress and put a kabosh on the pending DeReg bill.

The media isn't a monolith and a new form is emerging...you're looking at it. Those who see the potentials in working on several levels will survive, the rest are destined to be the blacksmiths on the "internets".

[DaveT]

10. Thanks for the link

I haven't dealt with Clear Channel in more than two years, but I used to be a union representive of their on-air talent in Los Angeles and I did a ton of research on the company.

The Mays family built this "juggernaut" which took advantage of the criminal misfeasance of the Clinton Administration in signing the Communications Act of 1996 into law. Although I agree with the poster above who attributed right wing politics to these people, that really is not a complete picture of them. They are greedy first, and political second.

To my genuine surprise, Clear Channel decided to host Air America in the LA market, and I believe they have several other "progressive" stations around the country. This of course is a spit in the ocean compared to their partnership with Rush Limbaugh in their Premier syndication division -- and it is a part of a major corporate image makeover that they undertook in 2004.

A mere 11 years ago, the Mays family owned a handful of radio stations. If they sell out now, even at stock prices lower than their lofty peaks, they will make hundreds of millions, and probably billions of dollars of capital gains.

Furthermore, as of two years ago, the real player behind the scenes of CC was Tom Hicks, the famous Dallas wheeler dealer who bought the Texas Rangers from Shrub. The last time I checked in 2004, he owned or controlled more CC stock than all the Mays family members combined.

I sincerely believe that we have passed the high water mark for Bushism, and the big money boys will be hedging their bets as the next era dawns. Nine Eleven sure was profitable for a lot of these sumbitches.

You know they're sorry to see it go. . . .

[KharmaTrain]

14. Thanks For Your Insight

Clear Channel is a combination of several booosh pioneers. As you state, the Mayes family...Lowery and Mark from San Antonio and Tom Hicks of Hicks, Tate & Muse...the former owners of Chancellor Media...both companies worked in tandum and then merged in 2000. And as you properly state, they used the '96 Telcom Law (Clinton's biggest mistake) to amass all these stations and a mountain of debt.

The Mayes make their big killing around 2000 when the CC stock was hovering around $70 and they were buying and selling like drunken sailors. Add to that the dot com advertising boom that poured millions in revenues that swelled profits for several years...these guys couldn't cram enough commercial minutes in an hour to fill the demand. Then the bubble burst...for a while dot coms were replaced by Oreck Vaccuums and Penis enhancement...but even that went limp (rimshot). Since then they've played a game of downsizing, outsourcing, voice tracking and consolidating to fend off the bill collector and losing both talent and listeners. It's been a slippery slope that also saw radio's "status" as a major advertising medium diminish behind cable and the internet. Now we're starting to see the bills coming due.

No need to throw a tag day for these robber barons. They'll bail and never have to suffer for all the careers they ruined, benefits and pensions they pilfered and stockholders they manipulated.

The saving grace is there are new and emerging forms of radio that is creating new opportunities and from the ashes something new and different will arise. Just look at your cellphone or IPOD or PDA and you're looking at radio's future.

Cheers...

[Jawja]

11. Great post.

Kicked and recommended. :thumbsup:

[BlueEyedSon]

12. more memes: Class Warfare. Corporate Personhood.

[Gregorian]

13. When the people want the truth, they'll get the truth.

It was a long process to get to our present state of media. And I recall that it was some tiny article on page 19 of the New York Times that broke Nixon's back. And it barely happened.

And it's multifaceted. Keep the kids dumb and they won't even think about the truth.

I think it's a combination of repealing the Fairness Doctrine, and occupying the time of the people with things like drug wars and other wastes of energy.

We have the power. And throughout history the people have not understood that. And it boggles my mind. It's simple. Ask Demand and you shall receive.

We aren't asking because we aren't even aware. Is Bush someone you'd want to have a beer with? What the hell is that kind of a question. All Americans should have been asking why Ritter and Blix weren't good enough for Bush, just as one quick example.

I think you've nailed it. We're asking for help. We're asking for convenience. After all, we're a republic. And we vote for those people to do the job for us. And usually they can be trusted. But we have to tell them what job we want them to do. And we aren't. Both media and politics. Same thing goes.

It has to start at the bottom. Education. The people have to know what is at stake. How it all works. That they are behind the wheel. But through the corporatization of this world, we've lost touch. We don't milk the cows every morning. We don't collect the eggs any more. We don't make our own soap. And it has metastisized over into politics. It's a "feed me" society. And it's going to take something huge to flip it around. I can see it's going to take something much worse than Bush. And that is sad. If more people weren't so lacking in vigilance, I would be less pessimistic.

Pay the teachers the way we pay Halliburton contractors. That is where this all has to start.

[nebenaube]

16. here's my solution .....

let the Carlyle Group buy it all up and then revoke the charters, cancel the licenses, nationalize the assets and then turn it all over to public television (after purging the resident neocons)....

[conscious evolution]

17. My solution

War crimes tribunal.
There is plenty of precedent.