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