Toward a Democratic Media
from the book
Triumph of the Market
by Edward S. Herman
published by South End Press, 1995
A democratic media is a primary condition of popular rule,
hence of a genuine political democracy. Where the media are controlled
by a powerful and privileged elite, whether of government leaders
and bureaucrats or those from the private sector, democratic political
forms and some kind of limited political democracy may exist,
but not genuine democracy. The public will not be participants
in the media, and therefore in public life, they will be consumers
of facts and opinions distributed to them from above. The media
will, of structural necessity, select news and organize debate
supportive of agendas and programs of the privileged. They will
not provide the unbiased information and opinion that would permit
the public to make choices in accord with its own best interests.
Their job will be to show that what's good for the elites is good
for everybody, and that other options are either bad or do not
exist.
Media Sovereignty and Freedom of Choice
Economists have long distinguished between "consumer
sovereignty" and "freedom of consumer choice."
The former requires that consumers participate in deciding what
is to be offered in the first place; the latter is satisfied if
consumers are free to select among the options chosen for them
by producers. Freedom of choice is better than no freedom of choice,
and the market may provide a substantial array of options. But
it may not. Before the foreign-car invasion in the 1960s, U.S.
car manufacturers chose not to offer small cars because the profit
margin on small cars is small. It was better to have choices among
four or five manufacturers than one, but the options were constrained
by producer interest. Only the entry of foreign competition made
small cars available to U.S. buyers. Freedom of choice prevailed
in both cases, but consumer sovereignty did not. The cost of producer
sovereignty was also manifest in the policy of General Motors
Corporation, in cahoots with rubber and oil interests, of buying
up public transit lines and converting them to GM buses or liquidating
them. ~ The consumers of transportation services, if fully informed,
might well have chosen to preserve and subsidize the electric
transit option, but this sovereign decision was not open to them.
This distinction between sovereignty and free choice has important
applications in both national politics and the mass media. In
each case, the general population has some kind of free choice,
but lacks sovereignty. The public goes to the polls every few
years to pull a lever for slates of candidates chosen for them
by political parties heavily dependent on funding by powerful
elite interests. The public has "freedom of choice"
only among a very restricted set of what we might call "effective"
candidates, effectiveness being defined by their ability to attract
the funding necessary to make a credible showing.
At the level of mass communication as well, the dominant media
with large audiences are owned by an overlapping set of powerful
elite interests. There is a fringe media with very limited outreach
that might support "ineffective" candidates, but because
of their marginal status they and the candidates they support
can be easily ignored. As with the candidates, the populace has
"freedom of choice" among the dominant set of mainstream
media, but it lacks sovereignty except in a legalistic and formal
sense (we are each legally free to start our own newspaper or
buy our own paper or TV network). The elite-dominated mass media,
not surprisingly, find the political system admirable, and while
sometimes expressing regret at the quality of candidates, never
seriously question the absence of citizen sovereignty regarding
decisions about the effective options.
Naturally, also, the mass media hardly mention the undemocratic
underpinnings of the political process in the media itself. In
fact, one of the most disquieting features of the propaganda systems
of advanced capitalism's constrained democracies is that the consolidation
of mass media power has closed down discussion of the need for
radical restructuring of the media. It has also pushed such changes
off the political agenda. As the "gatekeepers," the
mass media have been in the enviable position of being able to
protect themselves from debate or political acts that threaten
their interests, which illustrates the deeply undemocratic character
of their role.
Occasionally, issues like TV violence have aroused public
opinion and caused Congress to hold hearings and assail the TV
networks, but the whole business has always been settled by appeals
to corporate responsibility and self-regulation, and the assurance
by the media barons of their deepest concern and commitment to
rectifying the situation. In 1977, however, an unusually aggressive
and naive House subcommittee actually drafted a report calling
for investigation of the structure of the television industry
as a necessary step to attacking the violence problem at its source.
As George Gerbner described the sequel:
When the draft mentioning industry structure was leaked to
the networks, all hell broke loose. Members of the subcommittee
told me that they had never before been subject to such relentless
lobbying and pressure. campaign contributors were contacted. The
report was delayed for months. The subcommittee staffer who wrote
the draft was summarily fired. The day before the final vote was
to be taken, a new version drafted by a broadcast lobbyist was
substituted. It ignored the evidence of the hearings and gutted
the report, shifting the source of the problem from network structure
to the parents of America. When the network-dictated draft came
to a vote, members of the full committee (including those who
had never attended hearings) were mobilized, and the watered down
version won by one vote.
In short, the power of the "actual existing" highly
undemocratic mass media is enormous.
What Would A Democratic Media Look Like?
A democratic media can be identified by its structure and
functions. In terms of structure, it would be organized and controlled
by ordinary citizens or their grassroots organizations. This could
involve individuals or bodies serving local or larger political,
minority, or other groups in the social and political arena. Media
fitting these structural conditions would be bound to articulate
demands of the general population because they are either part
of it or instruments created to serve its needs.
In the mainstream system, the mass media are large organizations
owned by other large organizations or shareholders and controlled
by members of a privileged business elite. The ownership structure
puts them at a distance from ordinary people. They are funded
by advertising, and advertisers have to be convinced that the
programs meet their needs. Thus in terms of fundamental structure
the mainstream media are not agents serving the general public:
the first responsibility of their managers is by law to stockholders
seeking profits; and as advertisers are the principal source of
revenue, their needs come second. There is no legal responsibility
to audiences at all; these must be persuaded to watch or buy,
but by any means the gatekeeper chooses, within the limits of
law and conventional standards of morality.
As regards function, a democratic media will aim first and
foremost at serving the informational, cultural, and other communications
needs of the members of the public which the media institutions
comprise or represent. The users would determine their own needs
and fix the menu of choices either directly or through their closely
controlled agents, and debate would not be limited to select voices
chosen by corporate or governmental gatekeepers. The sovereign
listeners would not only participate in choosing programs and
issues to be addressed they would be the voices heard, and they
would be involved in continuous interchanges with other listeners.
There would be a horizontal flow of communication, in both directions,
instead of a vertical and downward flow from officials and experts
to the passive population of consumers. A democratic media would
encourage people to know and understand their neighbors and to
participate in social and political life. This is likely to occur
where media structures are democratic, as such media will be open
to neighbors who want to communicate views on problems and their
possible communal resolution.
At the same time, a democratic media would recognize and encourage
diversity. It would allow and encourage minorities to express
their views and build their own communities' solidarity within
the larger community. This would follow from the democratic idea
of recognizing and encouraging individual differences and letting
all such flowers bloom irrespective of financial capability and
institutional power. This is also consistent with the ideal of
pluralism, part of mainstream orthodox doctrine but poorly realized
in mainstream practice. The commercial media serve minority constituencies
badly, tending toward the repetition of homogenizing mainstream
cultural market themes and ignoring the group entirely when it
is really poor. In Hungary, for example, the new commercial media,
"have a radio program for tourists from German-speaking countries,
but none for hundreds of thousands of gypsies living in Hungary
(7 percent of the population)." The same criticism often
applies to state-controlled media.
Talk Shows: Phoney Populism, Phoney Democracy
The talk show radio and TV "revolution" in the United
States offers the facade of something democratic, but not the
substance. The interaction of talk-show hosts with the public
is usually carefully controlled by screening out undesired questions,
and there are very limited exchanges between hosts and a "statistically
insignificant" proportion of the listening audience. Rush
Limbaugh, for example, has a sizable audience of proudly self-styled
"ditto heads," but they are entertained in pseudo-post
modern monologues with a minimum of genuine interaction. There
is a kind of quasi-community built among the followers, who listen,
meet together, buy and discuss the master's (and other recommended)
books, but the community has a cultish quality, and the master's
discourse is no more democratic than was Father Charles Coughlin's
radio talk show back in the 1930s. The community is led by a leader
who possesses, and guides the followers to, the truth.
As is well known, many of the talk-show hosts are right-wing
populists, who claim concern over the distress of ordinary citizens,
but never succeed in finding the sources of that distress in the
workings of corporate capital and its impact on politics, unemployment,
wage levels, and economic insecurity. They focus on symptoms and
scapegoats, like crime, Black welfare mothers, environmental extremists
and "family values" issues. Their service is comparable
to that of the Nazi movement during the Weimar Republic years
in Germany in the 1920s, diverting attention from real causes
of distress and weakening any threat of meaningful organization
and protest from below by obfuscating issues and stirring up the
forces of irrationality.
Routes to Democratizing the Media
There are two main routes to democratizing the media. One
is to try to influence the mainstream media to give more room
to now excluded ideas and groups. This could be done by persuasion,
pressure or by legislation compelling greater access. The second
route is to create and support an alternative structure of media
closer to ordinary people and grassroots organizations that would
replace, or at least offer an important alternative to, the mainstream
media. This could be done in principle, by private and popular
initiative, by legislative action, or by a combination of the
two.
The first route is of limited value as a long-run solution
to the problem, precisely because it fails to attack the structural
roots of the media's lack of democracy. If function follows from
structure, the gains from pursuit of the first route are likely
to be modest and transitory. These small gains may also lead both
activists and ordinary citizens to conclude that the mainstream
media are really open to dissent, when in fact dissent is securely
kept in a non-threatening position. And it may divert energy from
building an alternative media. On the other hand the limited access
obtained by pursuit of the first route may have disproportionate
and catalyzing effects on elite opinion. This route may also be
the only one that appeals to many media activists, and there is
no assurance that the long-run strategy of pursuing structural
change will work.
The second route to democratization of the media is the only
one that can yield a truly democratic media, and it is this route
that I will discuss in greater detail. Without a democratic structure,
the media will serve a democratic function inadequately at best,
and very possibly even perversely, working as agents of the real
(dominant corporate) "special interests" to confuse
and divert the public. The struggle for a democratic media structure
is also of increasing urgency, because the media have become less
democratic in recent decades with the decline in relative importance
of the public and nonprofit broadcasting spheres, increased commercialization
and integration of the mass media into the market, conglomeration,
and internationalization. In important respects the main ongoing
struggle has been to prevent further attrition of democratic elements
in the media.
This has been very evident in Western Europe where powerful
systems of public broadcasting, as well as nonprofit local radio
stations, have been under relentless attack by commercial and
conservative political interests increasingly influential in state
policy. These changes have threatened diversity, quality, and
relatively democratic organizational arrangements. In the former
Soviet bloc, where state-controlled media institutions are being
rapidly dismantled, there is a dire threat that an undemocratic
system of government control will be replaced by an equally undemocratic
system of commercial domination. The same is true of the Third
World which, while presenting a mixed picture of government, private/commercial,
and a sometimes important civic sector, has been increasingly
brought within the orbit of a globalizing commercial media.
It is obvious that a thoroughgoing democratization of the
media can only occur in connection with a drastic alteration in
the structure of power and political revolution. Democratizing
a national media would be very difficult in a large and complex
society like the United States even with unlimited structural
options, just as organizing a democratic polity here would be
a bit more tricky than in a tiny Greek city-state or autonomous
New England town. An important step toward a democratic media
would be a move back to the Articles of Confederation, and beyond-to
really small units where people can interact on a personal level.
For larger political units personal interaction is more difficult;
efficiency and market considerations make for a centralization
of national and international news gathering, processing, and
distribution, and of cultural-entertainment productions as well.
Funding would have to be insulated from business and government,
but it could not be completely insulated from democratic decision
processes. Maintaining involvement and control by ordinary citizens,
while allowing a necessary degree of specialization and centralization,
and permitting artistic autonomy as well, would present a serious
challenge to democratic organization. As this is not on the immediate
agenda, however, I am not going to try to spell out here the machinery
and arrangements whereby these conflicting ends can be accomplished.
Some partial guidelines for the pursuit of democratic structural
change in the media here can be derived from the current debates
and struggles in Europe, where the democratic forces are trying
to hold the line (in Western Europe) and prevent wholesale commercialization
(in the East). The democrats have stressed the deadly effects
of privatization and commercialization on a democratic polity
and culture, and have urged the importance of preserving and enlarging
the public and civic spheres of the media. The public sphere is
the government-sponsored sector, which is far more important in
Western Europe than in this country. It is funded by direct governmental
grants, license fees and to an increasing but controlled extent,
advertising. This sphere is designed and responsible for serving
the public interest in news, public affairs, educational, children's,
and much cultural programming. It is assumed in Europe that the
commercial sphere will pursue large audiences with entertainment
(movies, sitcoms, cowboy-crime stories) and that its long-term
trend toward abandonment of non-entertainment values will continue.
The civic sector comprises all the media that are non-commercial
but not government sponsored, and which arise by individual or
grassroots initiatives. This would include some mainly local newspapers
and journals, independent movie and TV producers, and radio broadcasters.
The civic sector has virtually no TV presence in Europe, but radio
broadcasting by nonprofit organizations is still fairly important,
sufficiently so to have produced a European Federation of Community
Radios (FERL) to exchange ideas and coordinate educational and
lobbying efforts to advance their ideals and protect their interests.
FERL has been lobbying throughout Europe for explicit recognition
of the important role of the non-commercial-and especially the
civic-sector in governmental and inter-governmental policy decisions.
It has urged the preservation and enlargement of this sector by
policy choice. In France, the civic sector actually gets some
funding from the state via a tax on commercial advertising revenues.
This is a model that could be emulated elsewhere. It should be
noted, however, that in the conservative political environment
of the past half dozen years, the policies of the French regulatory
authority, the Higher Broadcasting Council, has reduced the number
of nonprofit radio stations from 1,000 to under 300, and discriminated
heavily in favor of religious and right-wing broadcasters as well.
Democratizing the U.S. Media
Democratizing the U.S. media is an even more formidable task
than that faced by Europeans. In Western Europe, public broadcasting
is important, even if under siege, and community radio is a more
important force than in the United States. In Eastern Europe the
old government-dominated systems are crumbling, so that there
are options and an ongoing struggle for control. In the United
States, commercial systems are more powerfully entrenched, the
public sector is weak and has been subject to steady right-wing
attack for years, and the civic sphere, while alive and bustling,
is small, mainly local, and undernourished. The question is, what
is to be done?
Funding An extremely important problem for democratization
is that the commercial sector is self-financing, with large resources
from advertising, whereas the public and civic sectors are chronically
starved. This gives the commercial media an overwhelming advantage
in technical quality and polish, price, publicity, and distribution.
An important part of a democratic media strategy must consist
of figuring out how to obtain sizable and more stable resources
for the public and civic sectors. The two promising sources are
taxes on commercial media revenues and direct government grants.
Commercial radio and television are getting the free use of the
spectrum and satellite paths-which are a public resource-to turn
a private profit, and there is an important record of commercial
broadcasting and FCC commitments to public service made in 1934
and 1946 that have been quietly sloughed off. These considerations
make a franchise or spectrum use tax, with the revenues turned
over to the public and civic sectors that have taken on those
abandoned responsibilities, completely justifiable. We could also
properly extend a tax on spectrum-use to cellular and other telephone
transmission, which also use public airwaves, possibly placing
the tax revenue into a fund to help extend telephone service as
well as other communications infrastructure to Third World areas
at home and abroad.
The funding of the public and civic sectors from general tax
revenues and/or license fees on receiving sets is also easily
defended, given the great importance of these sectors in educational,
children's, minority group and public affairs programming. These
services are important for democratic citizenship, among other
aims.
In sum, local, regional, and national groups interested in
democratizing the media should give high priority to organization,
education, and lobbying designed to sharply increase and stabilize
the funding of the financially strapped public and civic sectors.
Success in these endeavors is going to depend in large measure
on the general political climate.
The Commercial Sector
The commercial sector of the media does provide some small
degree of diversity, insofar as individual proprietors may allow
it and advertisers can be mobilized in niche markets of liberal
and progressive bent (The New Yorker, Village Voice, urban alternative
press). But this diversity is within narrow bounds, and rarely
if ever extends to support for policies involving fundamental
change. Furthermore, the main drift of commercial markets is absolutely
antithetical to democratic media service, and while we may welcome
the offbeat and progressive commercial media institutions, we
should recognize the inherent tendencies of the commercial media.
It will still be desirable to oppose further consolidation,
conglomeration, cross-ownership of the mainstream media, and discriminatory
exclusions of outsiders, not only because they make the media
less democratic, but also because they help further centralize
power and make progressive change in the media and elsewhere more
difficult. I also favor "fairness doctrine" and quantitative
requirements for local public affairs, and children's programs
for commercial radio and TV broadcasters. Part of the reason for
this is straightforward: it is an outrage that they have abandoned
public service in their quest for profit. A more devious reason
is this: pressing the commercial broadcasters, and describing
in detail how they have abandoned children and public service
for "light fare," will help make the case for taxing
them and funding the public and civic sectors.
In Europe, commercial broadcasters are sometimes obligated
by law, or by contract arrangements made when spectrum rights
were given, to provide a certain amount of time to quality children's
programs at prime hours, or to give blocks of broadcasting time
to various groups like labor organizations, church groups, and
political parties in proportion to their membership size (not
their money). In Europe and elsewhere as well, broadcasters are
obligated to give significant blocks of free time to political
parties and candidates in election periods. These are all desirable,
and should be on the agenda here. They are not being considered
because the media would suffer economic costs, so that the public
isn't even allowed to know about and debate these options.
Various groups have been formed in this country to lobby and
threaten the media, the most important and effective regrettably
being those of the Right. Notable among those representing a broader
public interest was Action For Children's Television (ACT), organized
in 1968 to fight the commercial media's degradation of children's
programming. Also worthy of special mention is Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting (FAIR), a media monitoring group that has published
numerous special studies of media bias as well as an ongoing monitoring
review, EXTRA! FAIR also produces a weekly half-hour radio program,
"Counterspin," heard on over 80 (mostly public, community
and college) stations, which provides media criticism and alternative
news analysis.
The Public Sector
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was brought into existence
in 1967, with the acquiescence of the commercial broadcasters,
who were pleased to transfer public-interest responsibilities
elsewhere as long as these were funded by the taxpayer. Over the
years, public radio and television have been more open to dissent
and minority voices than the commercial broadcasting media, partly
as a result of original design, but also because, despite their
ties to government, they have proven to be somewhat more independent
of government and tolerant of controversy than the commercial
broadcasters (which shows how awful the latter have been).
The independence and quality of the public sector depends
heavily on the political environment. As long as it is kept on
a short financial leash, underfunded, and worried mainly about
attacks from the Right, it will feature a William Buckley and
McLaughlin, with McNeil-Lehrer on "the Left," and offer
mainly bland and cautious news and commentary plus uncontroversial
and cultural events. Not surprisingly, it went into serious decline
in the Reagan-Bush years. It needs a lot more money, longer funding
periods, more autonomy, and less threatening pressure from the
right wing to perform well. There is an important role for the
public sector in a system of democratic media, and its rehabilitation
should definitely be on the democratic media agenda.
The Civic Sector
For real progress in democratizing the media, a much larger
place must be carved out for the civic sector. This is the nonprofit
sector organized by individuals or grassroots organizations to
serve the communications interests and needs of the general population
(as opposed to the corporate community and government). The building
of a media civic sector is important as part of community building
and the democratic process itself. Democratic media analysts stress
that ordinary citizens must participate in the media, which is
part of the public sphere in which public opinion is formed, to
be genuine members of a political community.
Alternative press. There is an alternative local press in
many cities in the United States, usually distributed without
charge and funded by advertising, but catering to a somewhat offbeat
audience and providing an opening for dissent and debate, within
limits. This alternative press has a national Association of Alternative
News Weeklies with 95 members and claims a readership of some
5.5 million. Its performance is spotty and often unimpressive,
but it is a small force for diversity.
It is possible to depend on advertising and to maintain alternative
press substance. The costs of serious dissent may be heavy, however,
and compromises are endemic. The Village Voice has provided significant
dissent in the huge market of New York City. Even more interesting
is the Anderson Valley Advertiser of Boonville, California, a
local paper which has survived in a small town despite the radical
perspectives of its editor. It has been subjected to advertising
boycotts and is avoided regularly by some advertisers on political
grounds, but its advertising penalties are partially offset by
a wider readership generated by its exciting quality and vigor.
AVA covers local news well and its exceptional openness to letters
and petitions, and the continuous and sometimes furious debates
among readers and between readers and editors constitute a kind
of town meeting in print. The paper addresses a host of local
issues, and the columns and letters debate national and global
issues, though no attempt is made to provide national or international
news coverage. A thousand papers like AVA would make this a more
democratic country.
With the demise of the New York Guardian in 1992, the only
national alternative newspaper is the bi-weekly In These Times,
with a circulation of only 25,000, despite its high quality and
avoidance of the doctrinaire. Even this one publication struggles
each year for greater circulation and other funding to keep afloat.
It deserves support; helping it continue to exist and grow, and
supplementing its coverage with other national papers, is important
in a democratic media project.
Alternative journals. There are a fair number of liberal and
left alternative journals in the United States, including The
Nation, Z Magazine, The Progressive, Mother Jones, Dollars &
Sense, Monthly Review, Ms. Magazine, The Texas Observer, Covert
Action Quarterly, EXTRA.', and others. Apart from Mother Jones,
which has sometimes crossed the quarter-million mark in circulation,
based on large promotional campaigns, The Nation has the largest
readership, with about 100,000. Most of the alternative journals
have circulations between 2,000 and 30,000, and experience chronic
financial problems. By contrast, Time has a circulation of 5.6
million (4.4 million in North America) and Reader's Digest 29.6
million (16.7 in North America). Some of the alternative journals
could expand circulation with aggressive and large-scale publicity
and higher quality copy, but this would cost a lot of money. Not
many of the 78 U.S. billionaires are inclined to set up trust
funds to help enlarge the circulation of alternative journals.
Advertisers are also not bending over backwards to throw business
their way.
Alternative Radio. Radio may promise more for the growth and
greater outreach of alternative media than does print media. More
people are prone to listen to the radio and watch television than
read journals, or even newspapers, which are also harder to get
into the hands of audiences. And radio broadcasting facilities
are not expensive. Community radio made a large growth spurt in
the early 1970s, then tapered off, in part as a result of the
shortage of additional frequencies in the larger markets. Of the
roughly 1,500 non-commercial radio licenses outstanding, half
are held by religious broadcasters. Many of the remaining 750
are college- and university-linked, and perhaps 250 are licensed
to community organizations.
Many of the community stations have languished for want of
continuity of programming and spotty quality. Discrete and sporadic
programs do not command large audiences; building substantial
audiences requires that many people know that particular types
of programs are going to be there, day after day, at a certain
time period. (This is why stations become "all news,"
or have talk shows all morning and rock music all afternoon.)
There are also the usual problems of funding, as well as threats
to licenses by more powerful commercial interests seeking to enlarge
their domains. Nonetheless, these stations are precious for their
pluralism in programming and diversity among staff and volunteers,
and they meet the democratic standard of community involvement
and serious public debate. Noam Chomsky "has observed that
when he speaks in a town or city that has an alternative radio
station, people tend to be more informed and aware of what is
going on.
Pacifica's five-station network and News Service have done
yeoman work in providing alternative and high-quality radio programming
and in developing a sizable and loyal listenership. Under constant
right-wing attack and threat, it deserves strong support and emulation.
Radio Zinzine in Forcalquier, a small town of Upper Provence in
France, also provides an important model of constructive radio
use. Organized by the members of the progressive cooperative Longo
Mai, Radio Zinzine has given the local farmers and townspeople
a more vigorous and action oriented form of local news (as well
as broader news coverage and entertainment), but also an avenue
for communication among formerly isolated and consequently somewhat
apathetic people. It has energized the local population, encouraged
its participation, and made it more of a genuine community.
In a dramatic example of how democratic media come into existence
out of the needs of ordinary people who want to speak and encourage
others to communicate, M'Banna Kantako, a 31-year-old Black, blind,
unemployed public-housing resident in Springfield, Illinois organized
Black Liberation Radio in 1986 out of frustration with the failure
of the major media to provide news and entertainment of interest
to the Black community. Operating illegally on a one-watt transmitter
with a range of one mile, Kantako provides a genuine alternative
to the Black community. Kantako was ignored by the FCC and dominant
media until he broadcast a series of interviews with Blacks who
had been brutalized by the local police. Soon thereafter the FCC
tried to get him off the air, and a court order was issued to
close him down, but it remains unenforced. Undefended by the local
media, Kantako has gotten considerable national publicity and
support. Grassroots organizers and student groups from practically
every state and a number of foreign countries have contacted him,
and numerous other similar "micro-radio" stations have
gone on the air. This is genuinely democratic media: may it spread
widely.
David Barsamian's Alternative Radio is another important model;
it has produced and distributed a weekly one-hour public affairs
program since 1986, using rented space on a satellite channel
to provide U.S. stations solid alternative programming. Alternative
Radio, using both taped speeches and a one-on-one interview format,
has focused on "the media, U.S. foreign policy, racism, the
environment NAFTA/GATT and economic issues and other topics,"
with guests like Elaine Bernard (Canadian labor activist, on Creating
a New Party),Juliet Schor (Overworked American), Ali Mazrui (Afrocentricity
and Multiculturalism), Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent), and
Herbert Chao Gunther (GATT). These are quality offerings of unusual
depth and commentators of high merit rarely encountered in the
mainstream media. Some 400 stations are able to receive Alternative
Radio's offerings; foreign stations in Canada, Australia, and
elsewhere can send for the show on tape.
Alternative TV: In the 1980s, the mainstreaming and commercialization
of public television led to the emergence of several new public
television stations designed to serve the public-interest function
abandoned by the dominant PBS stations. In an embarrassing episode
for PBS, an internal PBS research study found that the new entrants
would not compete much with the older stations, as the latter
had moved to serve an upscale audience. Meanwhile, the older stations
have lobbied aggressively to prevent the new ones from sharing
in government funding slotted for public television stations.
It goes without saying that the new stations deserve support as
a democratizing force, although the older ones should not be written
off-rather, they need reorganization and regeneration to allow
them to throw off the Reagan-Bush era incubus and better serve
a public function.
The growth of cable opened up democratic options, partly in
the greater numbers of channels and potentially enlarged diversity
of commercial cable, but more importantly in the frequent obligation
of cable systems to provide public-access channels and facilities.
First imposed as a requirement by the FCC in 1972, partly as an
impediment to cable growth by an FCC still serving the commercial
broadcasters' interests, the move was eventually institutionalized
as part of negotiated agreements between cable companies seeking
franchises and community negotiators. In many cases the contracts
require cable companies to provide facilities and training to
access users, and in some instances require that a percentage
of cable revenues (1 to 5 percent) be set aside to fund the access
operations.
This important development offers a resource and opportunity
that demands far more attention from media activists than it has
gotten. Spokespersons for the public-access movement call attention
to the fact that there are some 1,000 sites where public-access
TV production takes place and over 2,000 public-access facilities,
and that more than 15,000 hours of original material are transmitted
over public-access channels per week to an unknown but probably
fairly sizable audience. The problems here, as with community
radio, lie in the spotty quality of original programming, the
frequent absence of the continuity that makes for regular watching,
and the lack of promotional resources. The existing levels of
participation are worthy, but public-access remains marginal and
has been under increasing attack from cable owners who no longer
need public-access supporters as allies and have been trying hard
to throw off any responsibility to their host communities. Along
with community radio, this is democratic media, but public access
is under threat; the relevant cable contracts are up for renewal
over the next few years and cable access needs to be protected
from attrition as well as used and enlarged.
A strenuous effort has been made by some media democrats to
fill the TV programming gap with centrally assembled or produced
materials, made available through network pools of videotapes
and by transmission of fresh materials through satellites. Paper
Tiger TV has been providing weekly programs on Manhattan Cable
for years, and making these programs available to public-access
stations and movement groups wanting to use them in meetings.
An affiliated organization, Deep Dish Network, has tried to provide
something like a mainstream TV network equivalent for public-access
stations, assembling and producing quality programs that are publicized
in advance
and transmitted via satellite to alerted individual dish owners,
groups, and university and public-access stations able to downlink
the programs. There are some 3 million home satellite dish owners
in North America who can receive Deep Dish offerings, and it is
programmed on more than 300 cable systems as well as by many individual
TV stations.
In addition to a notable 10-part Gulf Project series, which
provided an alternative to mainstream TV's promotional coverage
of the Gulf War, Deep Dish has had a six-part program on Latino
issues (immigration, work exploitation and struggles, history,
etc.), a major series on the Reagan-Bush era attacks on civil
liberties, and during 1992, counter-celebratory programs on Columbus'
conquest of the a New World." On December 1, 1991, it transmitted
an hour-long live program by Kitchen Center professional artists
in conjunction with Visual AIDS, entitled "Day Without Art,"
as part of a day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS
crisis. Performed in New York City there were live audiences receiving
the program in eight cities, and a much wider audience call-in
operation organized as part of the program. Group viewings and
cable showings were encouraged in advance. More recently Deep
Dish had a program on "Staking a Claim in Cyberspace,"
and a 12-part series on the U.S. health-care system in 1994 entitled
"Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired."
Deep Dish has tried to use its productions as an organizing
tool working with community groups to help them tell their stories
and getting them to mobilize their constituencies to become aware
of access and other media issues. This is extremely valuable,
but Deep Dish suffers from the sporadic nature of its offerings,
which harks back to the basic problem of funding. An excellent
case can be made for funding Deep Dish and similar services to
the civic sector out of franchise taxes on the commercial stations
or general tax revenues.
Internet. The Internet affords a new mode of communication
that opens some possibilities for democratizing communications.
It allows very rapid communication locally, nationally, and internationally,
it is relatively cheap to send messages to a potentially wide
audience, and up to this point it has not fallen under the control
of advertisers, governments, or any other establishment institutions.
This was important in the Chiapas revolt in Mexico and its aftermath,
allowing the Zapatista rebels to get out their messages at home
and abroad quickly and interfering with government attempts to
crush the rebellion quietly, in the traditional manner. This caused
Rand Corporation analyst David Ronfeldt to speak of "netwar"
and a prospective problem of "ungovernability" in Mexico
flowing in part from an uncontrollable media. This recalls Samuel
Huntington's and the Trilateral Commission's fears of ungovernability
in the United States and other Western countries based on the
loss of apathy of the unimportant people in the 1960s. In short,
the new media-based "threat" of ungovernability is establishment
code language for an inability of government to manipulate and
repress at will, or an increase in democracy.
However, it is important to recognize the limitations of Internet
as a form of democratic media, currently and in the more uncertain
future. As noted in Chapter One, access to the Internet is not
free, it requires a powerful computer, programs, the price of
access, and some moderate degree of technical know-how. Business
interests are also making rapid advances into the Internet, so
that problems of more difficult and expensive access, and domination
and saturation by an advertising-linked system is a real possibility.
Furthermore, the Internet ~s an individualized system, with connections
between individuals requiring prior knowledge of common interests,
direct and indirect routes to interchanges and shared information,
and the buildup of information pools. It is well-geared to efficient
communication among knowledgeable and sophisticated elites and
elite groups, but its potential for reaching mass audiences seems
unpromising. This is extremely important, as producing ungovernability
is not likely to have positive consequences unless supported by
a mass movement, some rational understanding of social forces,
and a coherent vision of an alternative set of institutions and
policies. Otherwise, those in command of access to mass audiences
(and military forces) will eventually restore "law and order"
in a more repressive environment, with business institutions and
priorities intact.
Technological Change. More generally, the sharp reductions
in price and increased availability of VCRs, camcorders, fax machines,
computers, modems, E-mail, Internet, and desktop computer-publishing
have made possible easier communication among individuals, lower
cost production of journals and books, and new possibilities for
TV production and programming. Of course, the telephone, mimeograph,
offset printing and Xerox machines had the same potential earlier
and were put to good use, but they never put the establishment
up against the wall. Those with money and power tend to guide
innovation and put technologies to use first, and frequently have
moved on to something better by the time citizens gain access
to these things. Camcorders do not solve the problem of producing
really attractive TV programs, let alone getting them widely distributed
and shown. While books may be produced more cheaply with new desktop
facilities, changes in commercial distribution-blockbusters, saturation
advertising, deals with the increasingly concentrated distribution
networks-may easily keep dissident books as marginalized as ever.
It remains to be seen whether the Internet will prove an exception
to this tradition of commercial domination.
In perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the problem of
catch-up, the new communications technologies in the possession
of the Pentagon and mainstream media during the Persian Gulf War-video,
satellite, and computer-conferred a new and enormous power to
mold images, block out history and context, and make instant history.
John M. Phelan entitles his analysis of the new, centrally controlled
communications technology, "Image Industry Erodes Political
Space." And George Gerbner points out that "past, present,
and future can now be packaged, witnessed, and frozen into memorable
moving imagery of instant history-scripted, directed, and produced
by the winners."
The point is that it is important for democratic media advancement
that democratic participants be alert to and take advantage of
every technological innovation. The growth of common dissident
carriers like EcoNet, LBBS, and PeaceNet has been important in
providing tools for education, research, and a means of communication
among activists. But the problems of reaching large audiences,
as opposed to democratic activists being able to communicate more
efficiently within and between small groups, remain challenging
and severe.
Concluding Note
The trend of media evolution is paradoxical: On the one hand
there is an ongoing main drift in the West toward increasing media
centralization and commercialization and a corresponding weakening
of the public sector. On the other hand, the civic sphere of nongovernmental
and non-commercial media and computer networks linked to grassroots
organizations and minority groups has displayed considerable vitality;
and even though it has been pressed to defend its relative position
overall, it has a greater potential than ever for coordinating
actions and keeping activists at home and abroad informed.
It has been argued in this chapter that the civic sector is
the locus of the truly democratic media and that genuine democratization
in Western societies is going to be contingent on its great enlargement.
Those actively seeking the democratization of the media should
seek first to enlarge the civic sphere by every possible avenue,
to strengthen the public sector by increasing its autonomy and
funding, and lastly to contain or shrink the commercial sector
and try to tap it for revenue for the civic sector. Funding this
sector properly is going to require government intervention. Media
democrats should be preparing the moral and political environment
for such financial support, while doing their utmost to advance
the cause of existing democratic media.
Z Papers, January 1992
Triumph
of the Market