Who'll Unplug Big Media? Stay Tuned

On a Thursday in mid-May, the Senate did something that would have been unimaginable
a decade ago. Led by Democrat Byron Dorgan, the senators-Democrats and Republicans,
liberals and conservatives-gave Rupert Murdoch and his fellow media moguls
the sort of slap that masters of the universe don't expect from mere mortals
on Capitol Hill. With a voice vote that confirmed the near-unanimous sentiment
of senators who had heard from hundreds of thousands of Americans demanding
that they act, the legislators moved to nullify an FCC attempt to permit a radical
form of media consolidation: a rule change designed to permit one corporation
to own daily and weekly newspapers as well as television and radio stations
in the same local market. The removal of the historic bar to newspaper-broadcast
cross-ownership has long been a top priority of Big Media. They want to dramatically
increase revenues by buying up major media properties in American cities, shutting
down competing newsrooms and creating a one-size-fits-all local discourse that's
great for the bottom line but lousy for the communities they are supposed to
serve and a nightmare for democracy.

That's just some of the good news at a time when the media policy debate has
been redefined by the emergence of a muscular grassroots reform movement. Bush
Administration schemes to use federal dollars to subsidize friendly journalists
and illegally push its propaganda as legitimate news have been exposed and halted,
with the House approving a defense appropriations amendment that outlaws any
"concerted effort to propagandize" by the Pentagon. Public broadcasting,
community broadcasting and cable access channels have withstood assault from
corporate interlopers, fundamentalist censors and the GOP Congressional allies
they share in common. And against a full-frontal attack from two industries,
telephone and cable-whose entire business model is based on lobbying Congress
and regulators to get monopoly privileges-a grassroots movement has preserved
network neutrality, the first amendment of the digital epoch, which holds that
Internet service providers shall not censor or discriminate against particular
websites or services. So successful has this challenge to the telecom lobbies
been that the House may soon endorse the Internet Freedom Preservation Act.

But while the picture has improved, especially compared with just a few years
ago, the news is not nearly good enough. The Senate's resolution of disapproval
did not reverse the FCC's cross-ownership rule change. It merely began a pushback
that still requires a House vote-and even if it passes Congress, it will then
encounter a veto by George W. Bush. Likewise, while public and community media
have been spared from the executioner, they still face deep-seated funding and
competitive disadvantages that require structural reforms, not Band-Aids.

The media reform movement must prepare now to promote a wide range of structural
reforms-to talk of changing media for the better rather than merely preventing
it from getting worse. "Media reform" has become a catch-all phrase
to describe the broad goals of a movement that says consolidated ownership of
broadcast and cable media, chain ownership of newspapers, and telephone and
cable-company colonization of the Internet pose a threat not just to the culture
of the Republic but to democracy itself. The movement that became a force to
be reckoned with during the Bush years had to fight defensive actions with the
purpose of preventing more consolidation, more homogenization and more manipulation
of information by elites. Now, however, we must require corporations that reap
immense profits from the people's airwaves to meet high public-service standards,
dust off rusty but still functional antitrust laws to break up TV and radio
conglomerates, address over-the-top commercialization of our culture and establish
a heterogeneous and accountable noncommercial media sector. In sum, we need
to establish rules and structures designed to create a cultural environment
that will enlighten, empower and energize citizens so they can realize the full
promise of an American experiment that has, since its founding, relied on freedom
of the press to rest authority in the people.

Despite all the revelations exposing government assaults on a free press, too
many media outlets continue to tell the politically and economically powerful,
"Lie to me!" Five years into a war made possible by the persistent
refusal of the major media to distinguish fact from Bush Administration spin,
we learned this spring about the Pentagon's PR machine's multimillion-dollar
propaganda campaign that seeded willing broadcast and cable news programs with
"expert" generals who parroted the White House line right up to the
point at which the fraud was exposed. Even after the New York Times broke the
story, the networks still chose to cover their shame rather than expose a war
that has gone far worse than most Americans know.

Recently we have seen an acceleration of the collapse of journalistic standards.
Veteran reporters like Walter Cronkite are appalled by the mergermania that
has swept the industry, diluting standards, dumbing down the news and gutting
newsrooms. Rapid consolidation, evidenced most recently by the breakup of the
once-venerable Knight-Ridder newspapers, the sale of the Tribune Company and
its media properties and the swallowing of the Wall Street Journal by Murdoch's
News Corp continues the steady replacement of civic and democratic values by
commercial and entertainment priorities. But responsible journalists have less
and less to say about newsroom agendas these days. The calls are being made
by consultants and bean counters, who increasingly rely on official sources
and talking-head pundits rather than newsgathering or serious debate.

The crisis is widespread, and it affects not just our policies but the politics
that might improve them. There are two critical issues on which a free press
must be skeptical of official statements, challenging to the powerful and rigorous
in the search for truth. One of them is war-and in the case of the post-9/11
wars, our media have failed us miserably. (Even former White House press secretary
Scott McClellan now acknowledges that the media were "complicit enablers"
in the run-up to the Iraq invasion). The other issue is elections, when voters
rely on media to provide them with what candidates, parties and interest groups
often will not: a serious focus on issues that matter and on the responses of
candidates to those issues. Instead, when the Democratic race was reaching its
penultimate stage, the dominant story was a ridiculously overplayed discussion
about Barack Obama's former minister. Before the critical Pennsylvania primary,
studies show, the provocative Rev. Jeremiah Wright got more coverage tha Obama's
rival for the nomination, Hillary Clinton. And forget about issues-the most
covered policy debate of the period, a ginned-up argument about whether to slash
gas taxes for the summer, garnered only one-sixth as much attention as Wright.

Viable democracy cannot survive, let alone flourish, with such debased journalistic
standards. Despite some remarkable recent victories by grassroots activists,
our media still fail the most critical tests of a free press. This is an impasse
that cannot last for long, and in all likelihood the outcome of the 2008 presidential
election will go a long way toward determining which side, the corporate owners
or the public, will win the battle for the media. The stakes could not be higher.

The next President will make two important decisions. The first will be whether
to accept media reform legislation or veto it. There is little doubt that Congress
has shifted dramatically as a result of popular pressure. Corporate lobbyists
who used to worry only about battling one another for the largest slice of the
pie know the game has changed. The 2008 elections will almost certainly increase
support in both houses and from both parties for media reform.

Second, the next President will appoint a new FCC chair who will command a
majority of the commission's five members. This is a critical choice. The right
majority would embrace the values and ideals of the thousands of media critics,
independent media producers and democracy activists who will gather June 6-8
in Minneapolis for the fourth National Conference for Media Reform. Dissident
commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, who have battled the FCC's
pro-Big Media majority on issues ranging from media ownership to net neutrality
and corporate manipulation of the news over the past four years, will both address
the conference. If Copps, the senior of the two, is named chair, this savvy
Washington veteran is prepared to turn the agency into what it was intended
to be by Copps's hero, Franklin Roosevelt: a muscular defender of the public
interest with the research capacity and the authority to assure that the airwaves
and broadband spectrum, which are owned by the people, actually respond to popuar
demand for diversity, competition and local control. After years of battling
to block rule changes pushed by corporate lobbyists, Copps has called for a
New American Media Contract, saying, "I'm sick of playing defense."
In these pages on April 7, he urged that we "reinvigorate the license-renewal
process" by returning to standards set during Roosevelt's presidency, when
"renewals were required every three years, and a station's public-interest
record was subject to FCC judgment."

Don't look for a President John McCain to hand Copps the chairmanship. There
is a clear difference between McCain and Obama when it comes to what the candidates
say about media issues, and an even clearer difference in their records. Although
many GOP voters, and some back-benchers in Congress, are supportive of media
reform, the commanding heights of the party are a wholly owned subsidiary of
the media giants. On the surface McCain may appear to be a complex figure who
straddles the fence. In the increasingly distant past he occasionally tossed
out a soundbite recognizing citizen concerns. But in recent years he has invariably
championed the corporate lobbies. McCain's free-market rhetoric about government-created
and indirectly subsidized media monopolies is increasingly recognized for what
it is: propaganda to advance the policy objectives of massive corporations.

More than a decade ago McCain voted against the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
which gave the green light to media consolidation. He also loudly opposed the
efforts of commercial broadcasters to quash low-power noncommercial FM broadcasting
in 2000. Progressives applauded in both cases. But as chair of the all-important
Senate Commerce Committee, which was responsible for implementation of the Telecom
Act, the Arizona senator resisted numerous opportunities to mitigate its worst
excesses. The hallmarks of McCain's "leadership" have been: (1) a
failure to promote the public interest; (2) hypocritical pro-consumer rhetoric
that hides pro-business action; (3) a fundamental misunderstanding of technology
and economics; and (4) troubling, at times scandalous, loyalty to particular
special interests.

While most of the attention to February's New York Times investigation of McCain's
relationship with Vicki Iseman focused on speculation about romantic entanglement,
shockingly little attention was paid to the revelation that in 1999 McCain had,
as Commerce Committee chair, pressured the FCC to issue a critical TV station
license to Paxson Communications, for whom Iseman was lobbying. McCain's approach
was so aggressive and so out of bounds even for corporate-cozy Washington that
then-FCC chair William Kennard complained about the senator's attempted intervention.
Paxson's executives and lobbyists contributed more than $20,000 to McCain's
2000 presidential campaign, and its CEO lent McCain the company's jet at least
four times for campaign travel. The senator's symbiotic relationship with Paxson
and telecom giants like AT&T is rarely mentioned on the Straight Talk Express.

Also unmentioned is the crucial role McCain played in shaping the Bush-era
FCC. It was McCain who personally and aggressively promoted Michael Powell to
serve as FCC chair, and who defended Powell's attempts in 2003 to rewrite media
ownership rules according to a script written by industry lobbyists. While other
senators objected to those rule changes after more than 2 million Americans
communicated their opposition, McCain sought to preserve them. And he remains
joined at the hip with Powell, who unabashedly thinks the job of government
is to promote the interests of the largest communication firms. In May Powell
represented the McCain campaign on a panel discussion at the annual conference
of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

It is unlikely that McCain would reappoint the disgraced Powell as chair. But
it is reasonably certain he would appoint someone who shares Powell's deafness
to the pleadings of public interest. The senator's 2006 vote against maintaining
net neutrality suggests that his commitment to the business objectives of AT&T
outweigh any commitment to the public interest. Straight-talk soundbites notwithstanding,
McCain will be a reactionary force on media issues across the board.

Barack Obama is different. Obama's campaign has produced the most comprehensive,
public-interest-oriented media agenda ever advanced by a major presidential
candidate. Like Hillary Clinton, the Illinois senator has been an outspoken
defender of net neutrality. The Obama camp's position paper on media issues
echoes Copps when it says that as President, he "would encourage diversity
in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets
for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations
of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum." In a recent speech Obama
called for strengthened antitrust enforcement, specifically warning against
media consolidation. An Obama presidency would, he and his supporters say, use
all the tools of government to promote greater coverage of local issues and
better responsiveness by broadcasters to the communities they serve. Like Copps,
Obama favors investment to connect remote and disenfranchised communities to
the Interet and to make public broadcasting a more robust voice in the national
discourse.

While a President Obama would almost certainly be different from a President
McCain on media issues, the extent of the difference remains open to debate.
Would Obama actually make Copps or someone like him FCC chair? Would Obama move
immediately and effectively to break the stranglehold of media lobbyists? That
is by no means certain. While his stated policies are encouraging, competing
forces are struggling to influence the candidate. Industry money is going to
Obama in anticipation of his victory. He is a self-styled party centrist, and
in recent Democratic Party history, "centrism" has usually meant putting
the demands of moneyed interests ahead of those of rank-and-file citizens. The
good news is that many of Obama's younger advisers are products of the media
reform movement or have been influenced by it. The bad news is that others,
like Clinton-era FCC chair Kennard, have records of compromising with the telecom
industry. So while some Big Media will be betting on McCain, they won't give
up easily on bama.

What Obama's candidacy offers, then, is an opening and-if we dare employ an
overused word from this campaign season-a measure of hope. The proper response
to that opening is not celebration but vigilance and determination. Obama's
positions, while sometimes vague, do allow us to imagine securing increased
funding for public and community broadcasting, a broadband build-out that allows
all Americans to realize the promise of the Internet, and a new approach to
the licensing and regulation of the people's airwaves that respects the public
interest more than Rupert Murdoch's bottom line. We can anticipate the development
of creative policies to promote and protect viable independent journalism and
local media. The right President will make achieving all these ends easier.
The right Congress will make the task easier still. But above all, we will need
the right media reform movement-one that is aggressive in its demands regardless
of who sits in the White House, savvy in its approach to the FCC and Congressinal
committees, bipartisan and determined to build broad coalitions, and focused
not just on playing defense but on shaping popular media for the twenty-first
century.

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Robert McChesney is research professor in the Institute of Communications
Robert McChesney is research professor in the Institute of Communications Research
and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University
of Illinois. He and John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, are
the founders of Free Press, the media reform network, and the authors of Tragedy
and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy
(New Press).

John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written The Beat since 1999.
His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and
mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.

Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent.
He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate
editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His
articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of
other newspapers.