Conclusion
The US left and media politics
excerpted from the book
Rich Media, Poor Democracy
by Robert McChesney
The New Press, 1999
p281
... U.S. democracy is in a decrepit state - exemplified by a depoliticization
that would make a tyrant envious, and the corporate commercial
media system is an important factor though not the only or even
the most important factor, in understanding how this sorry state
came to be. The corporate media cement a system whereby the wealthy
and powerful few make the most important decisions with virtually
no informed public participation. Crucial political issues are
barely covered by the corporate media, or else are warped to fit
the confines of elite debate, stripping ordinary citizens of the
tools they need to be informed, active participants in a democracy.
Moreover, the media system is not only closely linked to the ideological
dictates of the business-run society, it is also an integral element
of the economy. Hence, for those who regard inequality and untrammeled
commercialism as undermining the requirements of a democratic
society, media reform must be on the political agenda.
At present, however, and for generations, the control and
structure of the media industries has been decidedly off-limits
as a subject in U.S. political debate. So long as that holds true,
it is difficult to imagine any permanent qualitative change for
the better in the U.S. media system. And without media reform,
the prospects for making the United States a more egalitarian,
self-governing, and humane society seem dim to the point of nonexistence.
p282
... the only hope for significant media reform in the United
States and elsewhere will be the emergence of a strong left political
movement that puts media reform on the political agenda... this
is an argument aimed at those concerned with the antidemocratic
tendencies of the U.S. media system, urging them to see media
reform as part of a broader political project. And it is an argument
aimed at those on the political left, stressing that it is imperative
that the left incorporate media reform into its platform. This
has been, and remains, a weak spot in much US. left organizing...
the left needs to do this because the vast, unbridled power of
the media is central to the antidemocratic nature of U.S. society
and to the dominant role of corporations and combinations of wealth.
In addition ... there exists considerable dissatisfaction with
the U.S. media system, and that this could become an organizing
tool for an aggressive left. ... this dissatisfaction cuts across
many of the left constituencies that are sometimes at odds with
each other and reaches many people who would not regard themselves
as being anywhere near the political left. In short, media reform
is an issue with the potential to help galvanize a movement to
democratize U.S. society.
p283
To some it may not seem politically astute to connect the
movement for democratic media to the fortunes of the political
left. In the United States, the term "left" is now largely
in disrepute, deemed the failed ideology of inefficient and arrogant
state bureaucracies, even political dictatorships. For many who
propose democratic reform, the wisest move is to seek new terminology,
avoiding terms like "the left" with its undesirable
baggage altogether. In my view, the only course that makes sense
in the long run is to reclaim "left" and recharge it
with its historic meaning. "If 'left' means anything anymore,"
Joel Rogers writes, "it means 'democracy.' As applied to
organizing our lives together, it means greater popular control
over the terms and conditions of that life, and greater social
justice inscribed in those terms." The purpose of the left,
then, is to struggle for conditions that make genuine democracy,
genuine self-government, possible. Because democracy works best
with as much political equality as possible, it works best when
there is as little social inequality as possible. The political
left has been and is the primary social agency against social
inequality, and it has acted thus through popular mobilization
that gives meaning to the term democracy. The left's "singular
contribution" to history, Frances Fox Piven and Richard A.
Cloward observe, "has been to bring working-class people
fully into history, not simply as victims but as actors."
Being on the left does not necessarily make one a proponent
of socialism as much as it makes one a proponent of the principle
that it is proper that a society determine the type of economy
it prefers through informed debate in which everyone has a legitimate
opportunity to participate. The core principle is that the economy
should be subservient to democracy, to the will of the people.
In this sense, the "left" position is the organic product
of the best elements of the liberal democratic tradition. The
point of the left, then, is to struggle to establish the conditions
under which such democratic debate can take place, and then the
organization of the economy should result from that debate. In
my view, the evidence points strongly to the conclusion that when
the conditions of democracy are fruitful, there will be considerable
pressure to reduce economic inequality and insecurity and to rein
in the market, if not necessarily to establish a flat-out socialist
economy where private investment and the profit motive are drastically
curtailed... Wealthy interests in the United States ... work resolutely
to limit the capacity for informed self-government, through, among
other things, maintaining corrupt campaign finance and lobbying
systems, elite-dominated economic policy making, distorted electoral
systems, weakened educational systems, and commercial media.
This tension between the democratic interests of the many
and antidemocratic interests of the wealthy few has existed since
the dawn of civilization. There has always been conflict between
class societies and democracy. Prior to the late eighteenth century,
in Europe and North America, democracy often was considered synonymous
with classless or one-class societies, because it was assumed
that if there were universal adult suffrage, no people would agree
to their continued economic subjugation. James Madison wrote that
if British elections "were open to all classes of people,
the property of landed proprietors would be insecure." Even
in ancient Greece this was a central concern. In his Politics,
Aristotle not only characterized democracy as "rule of the
poor" but also added that would always be democracy's nature
and raison d'etre even if the poor comprised a minority of the
citizenry. It was also widely accepted that if a person had to
work for another person, that person could never be a political
equal. This was a primary justification for limiting suffrage
to property owners and the middle and upper classes prior to the
nineteenth century. Liberal democracy, as C. B. Macpherson so
eloquently put it, is the modern and unprecedented marriage of
the most sophisticated form of class society-capitalism-with some
semblance of formal democracy; it is the combination of egalitarian
politics with inegalitarian economics. This idea that democratic
polities would invariably dispense with class societies persisted
into the twentieth century. When Edgar Snow traveled with the
Chinese communists in the 1930s, he recounted the Chinese peasants'
shock that much of the United States had universal adult suffrage
yet somehow the nation was not socialist. We know well now that
universal suffrage does not guarantee the rule of the many in
capitalist societies; control over the economy is a significant,
often the dominant, source of power generally outside of parliamentary
or direct popular control.
So capitalism and democracy are not synonymous, nor have they
ever been. Capitalism requires that commercial activities be granted
considerable freedom, and this has at times opened the door to
broader civil liberties; but even under the best of circumstances,
capitalism is innately in conflict with the core tenets of democracy.
The core reason is that capitalism is invariably a class society
where a very small percentage of the population has most of the
society's wealth and a disproportionate share of its income. This
permits the wealthy few a distinct advantage in pursuing their
own political interests, and it also permits them to undermine
the efforts of the many to strive for a more egalitarian society.
Hence, the logical type of democracy that accords to a capitalist
society is one where the poorer one is, the less possible it is
to influence political outcomes and the more rational it is to
become apathetic and depoliticized. Accordingly, for those who
believe in democracy, it is imperative to reduce social and economic
inequality. Democracy also works best when there exists a democratic
spirit, a notion that an individual's welfare is directly and
closely attached to the welfare of the community, however broadly
community may be defined. Capitalism, with its incessant pressure
to think only of Number One regardless of the implications for
the balance of the community, is hardly conducive to building
a caring, democratic culture.
This does not mean that capitalism cannot coexist with some
version of democracy, merely that the two are in unavoidable tension.
One need not be a socialist to be a democrat, but I think it fair
to say that to be a democrat one must possess an awareness of
the problems of class inequality and a strong skepticism toward
the unfettered market. "A moral condemnation of great wealth
must inform any defense of the free market" in a democracy,
Christopher Lasch observed, "and that moral condemnation
must be backed up by effective political action." In these
neoliberal times, this critical notion of the market-once not
uncommon among a certain breed of liberal and conservative-has
become heretical. It is worth noting that capitalist societies
have been made vastly more democratic and humane when left movements
and parties have been able to organize significant economic and
political power. Democracy has never been handed down from elites
to those beneath them in the social pecking order. Democracy must
be proclaimed, organized around, fought for, and won.'...
In the era of universal adult suffrage, however, the cold
fist of class arrogance, hubris, and power was replaced by many
new ideological developments, not the least of which was the art
and science of "public relations." Public relations,
Alex Carey observed, is all about protecting the wealthy and their
corporations from the wrath of universal suffrage. It was and
is about using surreptitious ideological warfare to discredit
antibusiness ideas, to disrupt the possibility of informed public
debate, and to glorify the market and the status quo. As Carey
so aptly put it, PR is about helping to "tak[e] the risk
out of democracy" for the wealthy few in societies with universal
adult suffrage. "Our society has grossly overbuilt its expectations
of what can be achieved and provided," Philip Lesly, a leading
U.S. PR figure wrote in I 974. "This is a consequence of
the extremism of 'democracy'-never foreseen by the most visionary
founders of our democratic society-that seeks to give a voice
and power to everyone on every issue, regardless of his merit
in serving society or ability.'' As PR historian Stuart Ewen observed,
Lesly argued "the task of public relations must be to curtail
Americans' democratic expectations." In fact, the idea of
using disinformation techniques to undermine the ability of the
great mass of people to effectively govern their lives first occurred
to upper-class French thinkers in I793, the very year that France
became the first nation in history to grant -albeit briefly-universal
adult male suffrage. As the notorious conservative Tosenh de Maistre
put it then. "Man's cradle must be surrounded by dogmas,
and when his reason awakens, he must find all his opinions already
made, at least those concerning his social behavior."
Unlike their predecessors, contemporary upper classes and
business loudly swear their allegiance to democracy-even to the
idea of popular sovereignty-but in private do whatever they can
to limit its actual viability. As Noam Chomsky has noted with
considerable irony, when the mass of people became politically
active in the I960s in the United States and worldwide, some among
the governing elite solemnly characterized this as posing a "crisis
of democracy."
So where do media fit into this struggle over what constitutes
democracy, and to the relationship of social inequality to self-government?
Smack dab in the middle. If democracy is genuinely committed to
letting citizens have equal influence over political affairs,
it is crucial that all citizens have access to a wide range of
well-formulated political positions on the core issues of the
day, as well as a rigorous accounting of the activities of the
political and economic powers that be and the powers that want
to be. Unless communication and information are biased toward
equality, they tend to enhance social inequality, whether the
society happens to be democratic or otherwise. In densely populated
and complex societies, this means-if the governing process is
predicated upon having an informed citizenry-that the media perform
a crucial function. While growing from the merest of existences
in democratic Athens to a vital role in the era of democratic
revolutions in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it
is only in the twentieth century that media have assumed an absolutely
central role in the political and cultural realms. Whereas the
media were rightly understood as a "dependent" variable
in classical political theory and analysis in the past, today
the media seem a force to be reckoned with in their own right.
Moreover, if the emergence of universal adult suffrage has demanded
more subtle forms of public opinion management, the media are
also the central institutions in that regard. In sum, the media
have become an increasingly important battleground for political
debate and culture.
p291
The Left and Media Heretofore
Historically, labor and the left have understood the importance
of having their own media to communicate with members and potential
members. There was not a great deal written on the role of media,
nor were there major debates on the matter; it was generally taken
for granted as a key area of development for labor and the left.
Indeed, one can almost date the origins of any specific organized
left party or labor organization to when it developed the wherewithal
to produce its own media. Some of the more successful and aggressive
unions and political parties had extensive media outlets. In the
early I900s, Socialist party members and supporters published
some 325 English and foreign language daily, weekly, and monthly
newspapers and magazines. Most of these were privately owned or
were the publications of one or another of the five thousand Socialist
party locals. They reached a total of more than two million subscribers.
Similarly, from the late nineteenth century on, just about every
labor union had its own newspaper. (Even as recently as the I
940S, there were eight hundred U.S. labor newspapers reaching
twenty to thirty million people per week.) It was the aim of many
of these movements to provide a near complete working-class civil
society, replete with media, a political platform, and cultural
and educational services. This sentiment continued into the twentieth
century, to varying degrees around the world, but of late it has
diminished as a result of an increasingly powerful, pervasive,
and commercialized media and culture.
Today, working-class people get the lion's share of their
news and entertainment from the commercial media, and labor and
left media are generally at the margins.
So it was in the twentieth century that issues of media control
and ownership became truly political matters in the fullest sense.
The response from labor and the left to the commercialization
of media and the marginalization of labor or pro-working-class
media has taken many forms. In the first two decades of this century,
progressives and socialists worked to establish municipally owned
newspapers and telephone systems. In Hollywood, there was a strong
socialist and pro-working-class component prior to the I920s that
only fell after a drawn-out fight with the emerging studio system.
Labor and the left were also active in the unsuccessful campaign
in the I930s to establish a public service broadcasting system,
and to keep radio and television from falling into unaccountable
corporate hands with support generated through advertising. And
aside from organized political activism, at an intellectual level,
left critics have tended to regard the rise of the corporate media
system as quite detrimental to the interests of the dispossessed
and the prospects for participatory democracy. But with the demise
of organized reform campaigns, this criticism has declined.
Some of the most aggressive left and labor movements have
had aggressive media platforms, especially in the first half of
the twentieth century. The Congress of Industrial Organizations
(CIO) highlighted an explicit hostility to capitalist media in
the I930s and I940s. It made the creation of labor and public
service media a high priority, explaining that the labor movement
could not thrive if the press remained in the hands of capital.
Even the more conservative American Federation of Labor's (AFL)
Chicago chapter established a radio station explicitly to have
a radical pro-working-class broadcasting network. In a broader
sense, media organizing was part and parcel of establishing a
viable popular "cultural front," as Michael Denning
terms the surge in pro-working-class and democratic culture in
the I930s and I940s. What is crucial to understand is that labor
and the left did not abandon organizing around structural media
issues because they became newly satisfied with the status quo
and came to regard the matter as unimportant. To the contrary,
labor and the left media activities were crushed in the I930s
by corporate interests, making the notion of challenging them
any further seem in the I940s, organized labor's interest in battling
commercial and corporate media interests collapsed altogether,
and the corporate media power became ever more entrenched. The
"cultural front" was crushed as well, together with
a left alternative vision for democratizing the United States.
In sum, the decline of labor's interest in media activism
in the postwar years can be traced to the following: the conservatism
of labor; the decline of the left with a broad social democratic
notion of democracy; and the sheer economic, political, and ideological
power of the corporate media, which made their dominance seemingly
unchallengeable and acceptance of the commercial media system
seem politically neutral, relatively benign, and not a necessary
hindrance to labor. (The latter is predicated on the idea that
"professionalism" would protect the public from the
class bias of owners and advertisers.) Finally, labor has dismissed
the media as unimportant in any meaningful sense-meaning that
the "real action" for labor and social change in general
lay elsewhere. By this reasoning, if labor got its act together
elsewhere, media would fall in line; if it did not, that would
be no big deal. As a result, in the United States at least, media
reform became the province of do-gooder middle-class liberals
who lacked any popular support and had no ambition to generate
it. Accordingly, it has gone nowhere and accomplished next to
nothing...
p294
There remains considerable disinterest in (or opposition to)
the idea of organizing for structural media reform across the
democratic left in the United States. Two of the three new left
electoral parties- the Labor Party, and the New Party-avoid any
mention of media in their core platforms. Some chapters of the
Green Party have made an issue of media ownership and control,
perhaps influenced by Ralph Nader's persistent call for stricter
control over the publicly owned airwaves; but these are token
gestures at best. The Progressive caucus of the U.S. Congress
has shown slight interest in the matter; its most outspoken advocate
seems to be Representative Bernie Sanders (Ind., Vt.). "This
is an issue that is absolutely vital to democracy, and that only
the left can address. The New Party, the Green Party, the Labor
Party, progressive Democrats should be all over this issue,"
says Sanders. "But, for most of the left, it's not even on
the agenda." Sanders, arguably the U.S. socialist with the
greatest success at winning statewide elections in fifty years,
is unequivocal about the importance of media reform: "The
challenge of our time is to make media relevant for a vibrant
democracy. This issue is absolutely vital to rebuilding democracy
in America and to reasserting the voice of democracy on a global
scale."
p297
...when one sees how labor and progressive social movements
have fared in the U.S. media over the past fifty years, the importance
of media reform becomes less abstract. In the 1930s and I940s,
for example, nearly every medium-to-large circulation daily newspaper
had at least one full-time labor editor or beat reporter. When
the Flint sitdown strikes established the UAW as a major trade
union in the late I 930s, it was a front-page story across the
nation. The coverage often was unsympathetic, but at least it
was there. At the outer limits of what mainstream journalism could
produce, consider the New York I 940s daily newspaper PM, which
ran extensive coverage of strike activities (and civil rights
activities) with careful presentations of the workers' positions.
But then, PM did not accept advertising, which explains its content
and, regrettably, perhaps its demise. In the I990s there are fewer
than ten labor reporters on daily newspapers in the entire nation.
(Conversely, there are seemingly thousands and thousands of business
writers who daily fill the nation's papers with their stories.)
In I989, when the largest sitdown strike since Flint took place
in Pittston, Virginia, the episode went virtually unreported in
the U.S. media. When several leading U.S. trade unions formed
a new Labor political party in I996, that, too, was likewise almost
completely unreported in the commercial media. Labor coverage
has been reduced to rare coverage of strikes-usually in the context
of how the strikers are threatening violence or creating a burden
for the people in their communities. If one read only the commercial
media, it would be difficult to determine what on earth good was
served by having labor unions at all.
... The corporate media system has a strong internal bias
toward reflecting elite opinion; hence the so-called dominant
"liberal" voices in the United States- the New York
Times and the Washington Post-are stridently procapitalist and
were among the leading media to favor passage of GATT and NAFTA.
When, in I997, labor led the fight to defeat the law before Congress
that would permit the "fast-tracking" of trade deliberation,
the Times and the Post-along with virtually the entirety of the
corporate media-barely concealed their contempt for labor's intrusion
into the policy-making process. And these are the media that,
in mainstream mythology, are supposed to be the most sympathetic
to the interests of working people.
p199
... the left needs to accept the necessity of media reform and
move forward.
Moreover, making media reform a component of the left agenda
has many positive benefits. It is an area that can generate much
popular support, and from people who are not necessarily identified
with the left. Social conservatives are concerned about the commerical
carpetbombing of our culture, and some free market conservatives
may see media as an area where the market is producing disastrous
"externalities." Although the issue receives scant attention
in the media, there is evidence of growing public dissatisfaction
with the hypercommercialized media system. In few areas are the
conflicts between corporate rule and the needs of a democracy
more apparent. The left can use media as an educational tool to
explain the flaws in the existing social order and to present
its vision of what a more democratic society would look like.
And labor and the left can use media reform as an issue that can
unite elements of the citizenry, like labor, environmentalists,
feminists, civil rights activists, journalists, artists, educators,
librarians, parents, and many others who would benefit from major
media reform. Nor is this really much of an option. If labor and
the left do not step forward with a vision and program for media
reform, the dissident critique of media will be provided solely
by the far right with its bogus analysis and censorial solutions.
Under no circumstances is that an acceptable situation.
Struggle for Democratic Media
So what should the left do to address the commercial media
system? First and foremost, it has to put media reform on its
agenda, devote resources to the matter, and work to get media
reform on the broader political agenda. The core principle is
that control over communication has to be taken away from Wall
Street and Madison Avenue and put in the hands of citizens, journalists,
and others whose concerns are not limited to the bottom line...
p304
Structural Media Reform
... the most important area of political activity ultimately
is to organize to change government media policies. The core problem
with the U.S. media system relates to how it is owned, its profit
motivation, and its reliance upon advertising. Moreover, the media
system is the direct result of explicit government subsidies and
policies, though that point is rarely acknowledged. Any attempt
to affect U.S. media that does not address structural issues directly
through government policies will prove inconsequential in the
long run. Corporate media power must be confronted directly, and
reduced.
... But providing real solutions is no simple matter. There
are many ways to reach the objective of a more diverse and competitive
commercial system with a significant-preferably a dominant-nonprofit
and noncommercial sector. Many left media critics present superb
analyses of the weaknesses of the status quo but are reticent
about providing concrete solutions; these will develop, they argue,
over the course of political struggle and debate. But by the end
of the I990s we have reached the point where, in order to proceed,
media reformers have to provide concrete examples of an alternative;
otherwise, many people will not have any idea of what, exactly,
they are fighting for. I therefore offer forthwith four general
proposals for media reform. These are by no means explicit blueprints;
they are meant to open discussion in a fruitful manner, not close
it off. If and when a significant element of U.S. society began
to engage with the idea of recasting the media system, these ideas
probably would be readily improved upon.
I. Building nonprofit and noncommercial media.
The starting point for media reform is to build up a viable nonprofit,
noncommercial media sector. Such a sector currently exists in
the United States, and produces much of value, but it is woefully
small and underfunded... it can be developed independent of changes
in laws and regulations. For example, foundations and organized
labor could and should contribute far more to nonprofit media.
Sympathetic government policies could also help foster a nonprofit
media sector, and media reform must work to this end. Government
subsidies and policies have played a key role in establishing
lucrative commercial media. Since the nineteenth century, for
example, the United States has permitted publications to have
quality, high-speed mailing at relatively low rates. We could
extend this principle to lower mailing costs for a wider range
of nonprofit media, and/or for media that have little or no advertising.
Likewise we could permit all sorts of tax deductions or write-offs
for contributions to nonprofit media. Dean Baker of the Economic
Policy Institute has developed a plan for permitting taxpayers
to take up to $150 off of their federal tax bill, if they donate
the money to a nonprofit news medium. This would permit almost
all Americans to contribute to nonprofit media-not just those
with significant disposable incomes-and help create an alternative
to the dominant Wall Street/Madison Avenue system.
2. Public broadcasting.
Establishing a strong nonprofit sector to complement the commercial
giants is not enough. The costs of creating a more democratic
media system simply are too high. Therefore, it is important to
establish and maintain a noncommercial, nonproft, public radio
and television system. The system should include national networks,
local stations, public access television, and independent community
radio stations. Every community should also have a stratum of
low-power television and micropower radio stations.
... the marked limitations of U.S. public broadcasting, historically
and to this day. It is really a system of nonprofit commercial
broadcasting, serving a sliver of the population. What we need
is a system of real public broadcasting, with no advertising,
that accepts no grants from corporations or private bodies and
that serves the entire population, not merely those who are disaffected
from the dominant commercial system and have disposable income
to contribute during pledge drives. Two hurdles stand in the way
of such a system. The first is organizational: How can public
broadcasting be structured to make the system accountable and
prevent a bureaucracy impervious to popular tastes and wishes,
but to give the public broadcasters enough institutional strength
to prevent implicit and explicit attempts at censorship by political
authorities? The second is fiscal: Where will the funds come from
to pay for a viable public broadcasting service? At present, the
federal government provides $260 million annually. The public
system I envision-which would put per capita U.S. spending in
a league with, for example, Britain and Japan-may well cost $5-I0
billion annually.
There is no one way to resolve the organizational problem,
and perhaps an ideal solution can never be found. But there are
better ways, as any comparative survey indicates. One key element
in preventing bureaucratic ossification or government meddling
will be to establish a pluralistic system, with national networks,
local stations, community and public access stations, all controlled
independently. In some cases direct election of officers by the
public and also by public broadcasting employees may be appropriate,
whereas in other cases appointment by elected political bodies
may be preferable.
As for funding, I have no qualms about drawing the funds for
fully public radio and television from general revenues. We subsidize
education, but the government now subsidizes media only on behalf
of owners. Bona fide nonprofit and noncommercial broadcasting
should be a cornerstone of a modern democracy. This is a crucial
point: all current discussion of U.S. public broadcasting is premised
on the notion that any proposal must come up with the explicit
source of any additional public funds that go to the public system.
Such a demand is politically loaded to derail the possibility
of real public broadcasting; why is this demand never made when
federal moneys go to military spending, corporate bailouts, or
to the IMF? We should seek to have a stable source of funding
that cannot be subject to political manipulation by politicians
with little direct interest in the integrity of the system.
A powerful public radio and television system could have a
profound effect on our entire media culture. It could lead the
way in providing the type of public service journalism that commercialism
is now killing off. This might in turn give commercial journalists
the impetus they need to pursue the hard stories they now avoid.
It could have a similar effect upon our entertainment culture.
A viable public TV system could support a legion of small independent
filmmakers. It could do wonders for reducing the reliance of our
political campaigns upon expensive commercial advertising. It
is essential to ensuring the diversity and deliberation that lie
at the heart of a democratic public sphere.
3. Regulation.
A third main plank is to increase regulation of commercial broadcasting
in the public interest. Media reformers have long been active
in this arena, if only because the public ownership of the airwaves
gives the public, through the FCC, a clear legal right to negotiate
terms with the chosen few who get broadcast licenses. Still, even
this form of media activism has been negligible, and broadcast
regulation has been largely toothless, with the desires of powerful
corporations and advertisers rarely challenged.
Experience in the United States and abroad indicates that
if commercial broadcasters are not held to high public service
standards, they will generate the easiest profits by resorting
to the crassest commercialism and overwhelm the balance of the
media culture. Moreover, standard-setting will not work if commercial
broadcasters are permitted to "buy" their way out of
public service obligations; the record shows that they will eventually
find a way to reduce or eliminate these payments. (It is worth
noting that most current proposals to maintain federal funding
for public broadcasting-usually not much above the current ridiculously
low amounts-include provisions to let the commercial broadcasters
buy their way out of public service programming, passing these
duties on to the public broadcasters.) Hence the most successful
mixed system of commercial and public broadcasting in the world
was found in Britain from the I950s to the I 980s. It was successful
because the commercial broadcasters were held to public service
standards comparable to those employed by the BBC; some scholars
even argue that the commercial system sometimes outperformed the
BBC as a public service broadcaster. The British scheme worked
because commercial broadcasters were threatened with loss of their
licenses if they did not meet public service standards. (Regrettably,
Thatcherism, with its mantra that the market can do no wrong,
has undermined the integrity of the British broadcasting system.)
The U.S. experience also makes clear one other point: the
commercial broadcasters will do everything in their power to avoid
public interest obligations if they in any way detract from the
bottom line; that is, if they in any way might be effective. To
make the commercial broadcasters comply with public service obligations
would require little short of a permanent war with one of the
strongest lobbies in Washington, D.C., hardly a desirable proposition.
The solution is clear: commercial broadcasters should receive
their licenses for only eighteen to twenty hours per day. The
remaining four to six hours should be taken out of their control
and dedicated to public service. Some might complain that it would
be unfair to reduce the time of the commercial broadcasters in
such a manner, as they have purchased these stations thinking
that they would get access to the full day. In my view, that reasoning
is wrong. This is public property, and the public has the right
to set the terms of its use. Firms that purchased TV and radio
stations were assuming that the broadcast lobby would be able
to continue to run roughshod over Congress and the FCC. That was
the risk they were taking when they made these investments; there
was never any formal agreement that these broadcast licenses were
to be theirs permanently on terms of their choosing.
The four to six hours of "liberated" time on the
broadcast stations should be applied to two specific areas: children's
programming and news/public affairs shows. In each case, we must
devise systems so that control over these time blocks is in the
hands of artists and educators for children's programs, and in
the hands of journalists for news and public affairs. This will
not be an easy task, but if we study the matter we can certainly
devise adequate systems. At any rate, the result would have to
be far superior to the commercial carpetbombing of children and
the junk news that currently dominates the airwaves. A core problem
with this recommendation is that it only applies to over-the-air
broadcasters and not to cable channels. Insofar as cable television
increasingly provides much of what is aimed at children and an
increasing portion of the national news, regulating commercial
broadcasting in these areas might not have the full effect desired.
We will need to think creatively about ways to get public service
commitments from the cable channels. But short of that, there
will still be value in having a solid block of ad-free children's
and news programming in the heart of the schedule. In particular,
local TV news remains almost entirely on over-the-air channels,
so putting this on noncommercial terms would definitely improve
news coverage in local communities. In view of the pathetic state
of local commercial television news at present, that, alone, makes
this a worthwhile proposition.
As for funding this public service programming, I subscribe
to the principle that it should be subsidized by the beneficiaries
of commercialized communication. This principle might be applied
in several ways. We could charge commercial broadcasters rent
on the electromagnetic spectrum they use to broadcast. Or we could
charge them a tax whenever they sell the stations for a profit.
In combination these mechanisms could generate well over a billion
dollars annually. Or we could tax advertising. Some $212 billion
will be spent to advertise in the United States in I999. A very
small sales tax on this or even only on that portion that goes
to radio and television could generate several billion dollars.
It might also have the salutary effect of slowing down the commercial
onslaught on American social life. And it does not seem like too
much to ask of advertisers who are permitted otherwise to marinate
most of the publicly owned spectrum in commercialism.
In November I998 the FCC provided a creative idea for solving
this problem fairly, albeit unwittingly. It decided to levy a
5 percent fee on all commercial revenues broadcasters generate
from the use of their licensed frequencies aside from traditional
broadcasting. (In the digital era, broadcasters have located many
new revenue-generating uses of their spectrum.) Such charges are
justified by the FCC because these are purely commercial activities,
unlike traditional broadcasting, and therefore the public has
a right to expect cash compensation. ... the thinking goes that
broadcasters do not have to pay for the spectrum they use for
broadcasting because they compensate the public by doing all sorts
of public interest broadcasting, that is, broadcasting material
that would make no sense if they were strictly out to maximize
profit. The absurdity of this rationale for broadcasters getting
the spectrum for free is self-evident. In view of complete and
utter lack of any semblance of public interest programming on
commercial stations, it seems logical to extend this fee to all
commercial broadcasting revenues. If we were to raise it to the
I0 percent level recommended by the public advocacy group the
Media Access Project, this would provide billions of dollars to
subsidize noncommercial children's and news programming.
What would be fair compensation for commercial broadcasters
to pay for their use of the public spectrum? At a I998 Gore Commission
meeting, the National Association of Broadcasters asserted that
commercial broadcasters provided $6.85 billion in public service
annually... the NAB claimed that this amount was sufficient to
satisfy the broadcasters' public service obligations. Being conciliatory
by nature, I am willing to accept the NAB's benchmark for public
service. I think it is clear, however, that the NAB, if its figures
are to be trusted, is not getting much bang for its public service
dollar, based on the state of U.S. broadcasting in I999. (Let's
hope they use their money with greater effect in their other ventures.)
Henceforth, let us set a fee structure on commercial broadcasters
(through any of the ideas mentioned above) that will generate
$6.85 billion annually in revenues in I998 dollars. Then, in addition
to four to six hours daily of ad-free time set aside for children's
and news programming, this amount of money would provide, without
question, resources to have the most extraordinary children's
and news programming imaginable. This would be real public service,
the likes of which Americans have never seen. And with this public
interest program in place, the commercial broadcasters could cut
out any pretense of caring about the public interest and use the
other eighteen to twenty hours every day to do what they do best:
make money.
Even if these changes cannot be made in U.S. broadcasting,
there are two other measures that could be taken that would provide
immediate value: require free time set aside for all candidates
to discuss issues and prohibit all paid television political advertising...
the exorbitant cost of these ads (not to mention their lame content)
has virtually destroyed the integrity of electoral democracy here.
Short of banning them, then perhaps a provision should be made
that if a candidate purchases a TV ad, his or her opponents will
all be entitled to free ads of the same length on the same station
immediately following the paid ad. This would prevent rich candidates
from buying elections. I suspect it would pretty much eliminate
the practice altogether.
4. Antitrust
The fourth strategy for creating a more democratic media system
is to break up the largest firms and establish more competitive
markets, thus shifting some control from corporate suppliers to
citizen consumers. Antitrust action was once applied with some
frequency by the government, even enjoying a "golden age"
of sorts from I945 to the early I970s. But the Reagan-Bush era
targeted antitrust as something to be reduced, as part of its
campaign to "get government off our backs." As a result,
one expert observed in I998 that "antitrust is sick and has
been in retreat for over two decades." Antitrust has enjoyed
a very minor resurgence in the late I 990S, but even the best
that antitrust enforcement can hope for today is to make monopolies
into duopolies, or make duopolies into oligopolies of three or
four firms. And that is quite rare indeed. And, it is important
to note, antitrust has yet to be employed to stop a major media
deal. Indeed, the government has basically stood by as radio has
concentrated almost overnight ... To some extent, intervention
on specific deals at this point would be impossible, even unfair.
Why prevent current dealmakers from doing that which their competitors
have already done?
It is ironic that applying antitrust effectively to media
and communications would not require that we abandon the spirit
and principles that led to its rise a century ago. On the contrary,
it would mean that we return to them. Antitrust, as Eben Moglen
has brilliantly written, grew out of a Jacksonian concern that
concentrated wealth would lead to private power destroying democratic
government. "The connection between antitrust and the defense
of democracy is intimate and long-standing, but largely ignored.
Our failure to remember the history has been convenient for magnates
and multinationals," Moglen writes. "Contemporary academic
writing about antitrust tends to ignore this aspect of our history,
pretending that 'consumer welfare'-defined almost exclusively
in terms of product price and quality-is the primary goal competition
serves. The effect is to make antitrust law an administrative
system for dealing with minor market failures, by preventing supermarket
chains, toy megastores or office-supply retailers from gaining
local leverage over prices. Thus reined in, antitrust is a subject
for technicians. The public loses interest" in antitrust
as a policy, quite unlike earlier years when it was a populist
rallying issue. Moglen observes that the newfangled, technocratic
notion of antitrust leads clearly to the conclusion that "antitrust
has no appropriate application to the question of who owns our
media of broadcast communication." In fact, as Moglen concludes,
the corporate media system richly deserves antitrust attention
if we hold to the spirit in which antitrust statutes were drafted
and passed into law in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. The political power implied in the consolidation of
media into a handful of corporate behemoths rivals that of the
great trusts of the Gilded Age.
What is needed, then, is a new media antitrust statute, similar
in tone to the seminal Clayton and Sherman Acts, that lays out
the general values to be enforced by the Justice Department and
the Federal Trade Commission. It would put an emphasis on valuing
the importance of ideological diversity and noncommercial editorial
content. The objective should be to break up such media conglomerates
as Time Warner, News Corporation, and Disney, so that their book
publishing, magazine publishing, TV show production, movie production,
TV stations, TV networks, amusement parks, retail store chains,
cable TV channels, cable TV systems, and so on all become independent
firms. With reduced barriers to entry in these specific markets,
new firms could join in. It could lead to the radical reconfiguration,
for example, of radio broadcasting, to the point where stations
might be locally owned and not part of massive chains.
The media giants claim that their market power and conglomeration
make them more efficient and therefore able to provide a better
product at lower prices to the consumer. There is not much evidence
for these claims, though it is clear that market power and conglomeration
make these firms vastly more profitable. Moreover, even if one
accepts that antitrust would lead to a less efficient economic
model, perhaps we should pay that price to establish a more open
and competitive marketplace. In view of media's importance for
democratic politics and culture, they should not be judged by
purely commercial criteria.
Antitrust is the wild card in the media reform platform. It
has tremendous appeal across the population and is usually the
first idea citizens suggest when they are confronted with the
current media scene. But it is unclear how antitrust legislation
could be effectively implemented. What is necessary are genuine
congressional hearings on the matter, fueled by the democratic
impulse that spawned antitrust one hundred years ago. But even
if antitrust can be made to work, the system would remain commercial,
albeit more competitive. Such legislation would not, in other
words, reduce the need for the first three proposals.
So how does the rise of the Internet alter my proposals for
structural media reform? Very little. There are, of course, some
specific policy reforms we should seek for the Internet: for example,
guaranteeing universal public access at low rates, perhaps for
free. But in general terms, we might do better to regard the Internet
as the corporate media giants regard it: as part of the emerging
media landscape, not its entirety. So when we create more and
smaller media firms, when we create public and community radio
and television networks and stations, when we create a strong
public service component to commercial news and children's programming,
when we use government policies to spawn a nonprofit media sector,
all these efforts will have a tremendous effect on the Internet's
development as a mass medium. Why? Because websites will not be
worth much if they do not have the resources to provide a quality
product. And all the new media that result from media reform will
have websites as a mandatory aspect of their operations, much
like the commercial media. By creating a vibrant and more democratic
"traditional" media culture, we will go a long way toward
creating a democratic cyberspace.
In addition, media activists and the left need to press for
the repeal of the Telecommunications Act of I996 and its replacement
with a law that reflects not just the interests of Washington's
corporate lobbying superstars but the informed consent of the
bulk of the citizenry. We need to press for full and open public
hearings on the future of electronic communication and the Internet.
Digital communication presents many new and complex issues of
unimaginable magnitude; society is best off if these decisions
are made by as many people as possible in the light of day, not
by commercial interests "self-regulating" themselves
in near complete secrecy with a wink and a nod from the politicians
they bankroll.
The aim of these combined measures is not to produce a media
system that propagandizes for the left in the manner that the
corporate media is biased toward capital and commercialism. The
aim is to produce a media system that is fair and accurate, that
scrupulously examines the activities of the powerful-including
the left and the labor movement-and that provides a legitimate
accounting of the diverse views and interests of society. It will
be a system that will limit the capacity of the wealthy and powerful
few to have high-quality information so they may rule the world
while the bulk of the population is fed a diet of schlock. It
will provide a culture based on artists' interactions with people
and ideas, not based on their obeying orders from Madison Avenue.
The only stated bias is a fervent commitment to democracy. There
is no evidence that a corporate commercial system, even at its
best, is capable of such a journalism and culture. And, it is
worth noting, that even if all four of these proposals were enacted,
the vast majority of media and entertainment would be provided
by private firms in pursuit of profit with no more regulation
of their editorial activities than they currently experience.
Lessons from Abroad
Some sense of how an emerging democratic left can employ media
reform can be seen by looking abroad.(As mentioned in chapter
z) many of the world's nations have seen their media systems reconfigured
in the past decade, with the pronounced tendency toward integration
into the global commercial media market. In many such nations,
as in the United States, there are nascent grassroots media activist
organizations struggling to promote noncommercial and nonprofit
media. These are usually movements self-identified as being on
the democratic left. Media workers, too, are organizing for media
reform. A strike of BBC workers in I998, for example, listed "no
privatization of resources" and "public service instead
of commercialism" as two of its six demands. But, most important,
democratic left electoral parties are increasingly making the
breakup of the corporate commercial media system and the establishment
of a viable nonprofit media sector a main part of their platforms
The key is to present media reform as part of a broader package
of democratic reforms addressing electoral systems, taxation,
employment, education, health care, civil rights, and the environment.
As important as media reform may seem, it is not a strong enough
issue to build a mass movement around. But it has a necessary
and fruitful role as part of a broad left agenda. And without
a broad base of support, media reform cannot succeed.
In Canada, for example, labor has drawn together consumers
and other citizens groups to oppose the plans of the corporate
telecommunication giants. Perhaps more striking, the New Democratic
party more than doubled its number of parliamentary seats in that
country's May I 997, elections. The NDP platform included calls
for breaking up the Canadian corporate media chains and for expanding
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada's public service
broadcaster. NDP managers considered the message so vital to the
party's efforts to distinguish itself from other parties that,
on the eve of a key debate, party leader Alexa McDonough took
time from her preparations to participate in a demonstration protesting
cutbacks at the CBC. In the words of NDP member of parliament
Svend Robinson, who has made media issues a prime focus in his
campaigns, "This is an issue that's emerging all over the
world. It's a huge concern. People are genuinely alarmed that
at the same time we're witnessing growing concentration of ownership
of media we're also seeing massive cuts in publicly owned media.
It's a double whammy," Robinson stated in a I997 interview.
"This neoliberal, right-wing takeover of the media is something
that people are aware of, and they don't like it. But the old-line
parties aren't willing to address the issue. This is what is going
to distinguish new-line parties all over the world-a willingness
to talk frankly about issues of media control and to propose an
alternative to what's happening. It's inevitable. After you've
had somebody say to you for the thousandth time, 'How come we
never hear about these issues in the media,' you start to realize
that the media itself is an issue."
In Sweden, the national labor federation has led a national
boycott of a TV station that refused to honor Swedish law and
not air commercials to children. In Sweden, also, the Left party,
a socialist grouping that has filled the void created by the Swedish
Social Democrats' move to the right, is sounding even more radical
themes. The platform on which the Left party has emerged as one
of Scandinavia's fastest growing political movements calls for
abolishing all advertising on radio and television and for an
aggressive program of subsidies to maintain a diverse range of
viewpoints in the print media. Media reform is at the heart of
the party's program, characterized in its preamble as being necessary
to "strengthen and intensify democracy." In Sweden's
I998 national elections, the Left party doubled its vote from
the preceding election, to I2 percent of the total.
In New Zealand, Pam Corkery left her job as one of that nation's
top broadcast journalists and won election to the parliament in
I 996 on the ticket of the Alliance, a newly formed left-wing
grouping that surprised observers with the strength of its showing.
Corkery's issue, and a central theme in the Alliance's platform,
was a call to roll back corporate control of the media and to
beef up nonprofit, noncommercial broadcasting. After her election,
she declared that the battle to reassert popular control over
the media is, "at the very least, a human rights issue."
The Alliance party has focused national attention on the demise
of journalistic competition that followed the sale in I 99 5 of
a publicly owned network of commercial radio stations to Tony
O'Reilly, a former Heinz soup company executive who is rapidly
building an international media conglomerate. O'Reilly already
owns the largest newspaper in New Zealand, the Auckland Herald,
and after he purchased the privatized stations he quickly moved
to buy up the remaining major radio stations in key New Zealand
markets. That move was followed by decisions to lay off staff,
weaken competition between media outlets, and give notice that
the O'Reilly stations were unlikely to continue purchasing news
from Radio New Zealand. The Alliance has used its parliamentary
position to spark a national debate about O'Reilly's actions in
particular and about the wisdom of privatization in general. Working
inside of parliament, the Alliance has raised fundamental questions
about the danger of one man's controlling so much of a nation's
media, and it has dogged O'Reilly's every move with calls for
hearings, debates, and investigations. Outside parliament, the
coalition has turned anger at O'Reilly's actions and at cuts in
public broadcasting expenditures into an organizing tool, working
with labor unions, native groups, environmentalists, and community
activists to build a broad coalition of media-conscious activists.
In so doing, the coalition has raised profound questions about
the wisdom of privatization of Television New Zealand, which remains
publicly owned. So successful has the Alliance's campaign been,
in fact, that the New Zealand Labour party, which for years had
supported privatization, has indicated that it will oppose any
further media privatization. But the Alliance is not satisfied;
according to John Pagani, its media director, the Labour party
"appears very reluctant to move on regulation of media organizations-particularly
the issue of limiting foreign ownership or imposing cross-media
ownership restrictions." The Alliance has no such reluctance.
And, Pagani expects, the willingness of the coalition to raise
issues of media monopoly and battle for a reversal of privatizations
will continue to distinguish it from more cautious players-a distinction
that, some political observers in New Zealand say, could eventually
win it a defining role in the governance of the nation. As Pagani
says, "Media issues, privatization issues, this is where
you start to see real distinctions between the Alliance and other
parties, and that distinction is what people are looking for."
These are not isolated developments. Although the new parties
of the left are not reading off the same page as regards issues
of media control and direction, there are remarkable parallels
from country to country. In general, the key issues most everywhere
for the left are similar to the proposals made above. They include:
* To protect and expand traditional public-service broadcasting,
making it fully noncommercial and democratically accountable;
* To develop a distinct community and public access radio
and television system that is thoroughly decentralized;
* To strengthen journalists' and media workers' trade unions,
giving the members of these trade unions a greater role in determining
editorial content;
* To hold commercial broadcasters to strict standards, such
as prohibiting advertising directed at children;
* To limit the concentration of media ownership as much as
possible;
* To reduce the sheer amount of advertising, through regulation
and taxation;
* To subsidize film and cultural production eschewed by the
market;
* To subsidize the existence of multiple newspapers and magazines
to provide a diversity of opinion.
The focus varies from nation to nation. The Australian Democratic
party has worked closely with media unions in that country in
mounting a massive grass-roots campaign against cuts in government
funding for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; the Brazilian
Workers party has organized mass protests outside the headquarters
of broadcast companies that fail to devote serious attention to
the political process; the Canadian NDP is developing legislation
that would limit the percentage of newspapers in any region that
can be controlled by a single company.
When put together in this manner, these global activities
give the appearance of a stunning movement with tremendous momentum.
In fact, this is misleading. Were one to visit any of these nations
the overall mood on the democratic left is mostly one of despair;
neoliberalism remains in the driver's seat. What is important-and
unprecedented-is that media reform has emerged as a core political
issue in so many places, and that these parties are thinking along
similar lines. What is missing at present, and may be critical
for ultimate success, is for these parties to work together across
national lines. This is especially true with regard to media policy.
In the end, the goal should be not merely to have a series of
national media systems with dominant public service components
but to have a global public sphere as well, where people can communicate
with each other without having the communication filtered and
censored by corporate and commercial interests.
Conclusion
Media reform will not, cannot, be won in isolation from broader
democratic reform. The only way to wrestle some control over media
and communication from the giant firms that presently dominate
the held will be to mobilize some semblance of a popular movement.
As Saul Alinsky noted, the only way to beat organized money is
with organized people. And while media reform is a necessary component-even
a cornerstone-for any democratic movement, it is not enough. Although
it can attract the enthusiastic support of many people-including
many people not formerly politically active -it is insufficient
on its own to capture the imagination of enough people to establish
a mass movement. But when combined with electoral reform, workers'
rights, civil rights, environmental protection, health care, tax
reform, and education, it can be part of a movement that can reshape
our society, putting power in the hands of the many.
Put another way, the crisis in communication facing the United
States and, to varying degrees, the entire world, is one aspect
of the broader crisis emanating from the tension of combining
a highly concentrated corporate-driven economy that generates
significant social inequality and insecurity with an ostensibly
free and democratic society. Regrettably our existing institutions-governmental,
educational, and commercial-are ill-equipped to address these
crises with solutions that point toward democracy. They are either
dominated by powerful interests that oppose reform or they are
weighed down by dubious ideologies that assume the beneficence
and dominance of the market. In short, we are handcuffed by these
myths as we attempt to reform our institutions to resolve the
problems before us. And we are blindfolded by a media system that
suits, first and foremost, those who benefit not by reform but
by the preservation of the status quo.
The truth is, media reform will not be an easy area in which
to gain victories. The media giants are unusually canny and powerful
political adversaries; few mainstream politicians wish to tangle
with them. But it is also an area with unusual promise for the
left as it can draw together people who might otherwise work independently
of each other. And there is little evidence that people are captivated
by commercial media fare to the extent the media giants' PR declares.
Unless the left does something significant concerning media, it
is difficult to imagine the labor movement and the left in general
escaping their long-term downward trajectory. The fate of media
reform and the U.S. left are inexorably intertwined, and in their
fortunes reside perhaps the last, best hope of the United States
to become a democracy ruled by the many rather than the few.
Rich
Media, Poor Democracy
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