This Communication Revolution Is Brought To You
By U.S. Media at the Dawn of the 21st Century
by Robert W. McChesney
excerpted from
1998 Censored News Stories
Project Censored
Over 40 years have passed since the publication of C. Wright
Mills's The Power Elite, arguably one of the most insightful and
prescient critiques of U.S. political culture written this century.
In that book Mills discusses the paradox of the postwar United
States. On the one hand, it is a nation abuzz with technology,
celebrity, and commercialism, a radical society in which tradition
is torn asunder and all that is solid melts into air. On the other
hand, it is a highly depoliticized society-only formally democratic
in key respects- where most important political decisions are
made by the few for the few, with public relations to massage
the rabble should they question their status. The commercial media
system plays a major role in maintaining the social order. The
final third or so of the book reveals the United States is a fundamentally
conservative society and a deeply troubled one at that. In my
mind, when one looks at the core argument, it could well have
been written in 1998.
Mills also provides us with a useful schemata to make sense
of what seem like revolutionary changes in our media system on
the verge of the 21st century. The Internet and the broader developments
in digital and satellite communication present us with a picture
of staggering, almost incomprehensible, change in media and communication-indeed,
in our entire social fabric- in the coming decade. Writers from
Nicholas Negroponte and Douglas Rushkoff to George Gilder and
even Newt Gingrich inform us that we are entering a period of
fundamental social change the likes of which may occur once in
a millennium, with the very essence of human social life and cognition
undergoing qualitative change. It will be a future where individuals
will have vastly greater power over their own lives. Yet, when
one cuts through the rhetoric, the promises, and the projections,
the digital revolution seems less a process about empowering the
less powerful than it is a process that will further the corporate
and commercial domination of life in the United States. Following
Mills's analysis, the logical trajectory of the current patterns
is to assist in the continued depoliticization, polarization,
and demoralization of social life, unless the citizenry arises
to demand that these technologies be employed in a different manner.
THE CORPORATE MEDIA CARTEL
There are three striking features of the U.S. media system
in the 1990s: concentration, conglomeration, and hyper-commercialism.
Each of these is, in fact, a long-term phenomenon that has accelerated
in the 1990s and each looks to continue for the visible future,
well into the digital age. To some extent the astonishing degree
of concentrated corporate control over the media is a response
to the rapid increase in channels wrought by cable and satellite
television. In this sense, the corporate media giants are having
a trial run for how they might dominate the Internet when it converges
with digital television.
The U.S. mass-media industries have been operated along non-competitive
oligopolistic lines for much of the 20th century. In the 1940s,
for example, broadcasting, film production, motion picture theaters,
book publishing, newspaper publishing, magazine publishing, and
recorded music were all distinct national oligopolistic markets,
with each of them dominated by anywhere from a few to a dozen
or more firms. In general, these were different firms dominating
each of these industries, with a few exceptions. Throughout the
20th century there have been pressing concerns that these concentrated
markets would inhibit the flow and range of ideas necessary for
a meaningful democracy. Rarely, however, did these concerns spill
over into public debate, for any number of reasons. In particular,
the rise of the notion of professional journalism in the early
20th century attempted to disconnect the editorial process from
the explicit supervision of the owners and advertisers of the
mass media, hence making the editorial product more credible as
a public service. To the extent this process was seen as successful,
the corporate commercial domination of the media was a less pressing,
perhaps even insignificant, matter.
In the final decades of the 20th century, the conglomeration
of media ownership began. This was the process whereby media firms
began to have major holdings in two or more distinct media sectors,
such as book publishing, recorded music, and broadcasting. To
some extent this was fueled by a desire to build the extremely
lucrative vertical integration, meaning that media firms would
not only produce content but also own distribution channels to
guarantee having places to display their wares. In the current
era, the classic form of vertical integration is the combining
of film and television show production with the ownership of cable
channels, broadcast networks and stations, and motion picture
theaters. But it was also stimulated by something more profound
in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s: the desire to increase
market power by cross-promoting and cross-selling media properties
or "brands" across numerous different media sectors
that were not linked in the manner suggested by vertical integration.
Hence, if a media conglomerate had a successful motion picture,
it could promote the film on its broadcast properties and then
use the film to spin off television programs, music CDs, books,
merchandise, and much else. In the new world order of conglomerated
media, the profit whole can be vastly greater than the sum of
the profit parts. This process is often called synergy. And, ironically,
the conversion of all media to digital format has the effect of
not putting an "iceberg" before the corporate media
giants but, rather, making it easier and more profitable for them
to work in several media sectors at once.
A look at Disney's recent operations shows how a media conglomerate
attempts to employ synergy. Its Home Improvement show is a big
hit on its ABC television network. So Disney then has Home Improvement
star Tim Allen take roles in Disney movies and write books for
Disney's book publishing firms. The other giant media conglomerates
are increasingly emulating this pattern. In an another example,
Disney takes it lucrative ESPN cable channel and uses the name
to generate other properties. In 1998, Disney launched ESPN Magazine
to compete directly with Time Warner's Sports Illustrated Likewise,
Disney is launching a chain of ESPN Grill restaurants to appeal
to those who wish to combine sports with a meal.
The degree and pace of market concentration and conglomeration
over the past 20 years is little short of breathtaking. In 1983,
the first edition of Ben Bagdikian's seminal The Media Monopoly
was published. In that book, Bagdikian chronicled how some 50
firms dominated the entirety of U.S. mass media, ranging from
newspapers, books, and magazines to film, radio, television, cable,
and recorded music. In each of the subsequent four editions, mergers
and acquisitions reduced the number of dominant firms, until the
most recent edition in 1997 put the figure at around 10, with
another dozen or so firms rounding out the system. Though few
thought it possible, the 1990s has seen an acceleration of this
process.
The largest U.S. (and global, for that matter) media firms
like Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation
have all doubled or tripled in size, due to major acquisitions
of other media firms as well as internal growth of existing assets.
This is due to relaxed regulatory standards in this era of "free
market" capitalism, new technologies that make consolidation
more feasible, and, especially, the immense profit potential that
comes with size. Indeed, there is no longer the option of being
a small- or middle-sized media firm anymore: a firm either gets
larger through mergers and acquisitions or it gets swallowed by
a more aggressive competitor.
If the early and middle 1990s were marked by huge media mergers,
like Time Warner's purchase of Turner Broadcasting or Disney's
purchase of ABC, the late 1990s has seen a more surgical addition
of assets, and occasional prunings, all to improve market power.
The overall trajectory, nonetheless, remains that of increasing
concentration both within distinct media sectors, and in the number
and size of the largest media conglomerates. In the newspaper
industry, for example, the emerging trend is that of "clustering,"
whereby metropolitan monopoly daily newspapers purchase or otherwise
link up with all the smaller dailies in the suburbs and surrounding
region.
In cable television, six firms, divvying up the nation, have
effective monopolistic control over more than 80 percent of the
nation, and seven firms control nearly three-quarters of cable
channels and programming. As Time Warner's Ted Turner puts it,
"We do have just a few people controlling all the cable companies
in this country." Variety notes that "mergers and consolidations
have transformed the cable-network marketplace into a walled-off
community controlled by a handful of media monoliths." At
the retail end, concentration proceeds apace. In motion picture
theaters, for example, the era of the independent or even small-chain
theater company has gone the way of the Dodo Bird. Several colossal
deals in 1997 left the industry dominated by a few huge multiplex
chains, many of which connected to larger media conglomerates.
But concentrating upon specific media sectors fails to convey
the extent of concentrated corporate control. This only comes
when one addresses the holdings of the largest media corporations.
For nearly all of the dominant firms in each of the major media
sectors are owned outright or in part by the 20 largest U.S. media
firms, and, among those firms the largest half-dozen rule the
roost. Hence Time Warner, the world's largest media firm with
1997 sales of around $25 billion, has holdings that rank it among
the top few firms in: film production, TV show production, cable
systems, cable TV stations, broadcast TV networks, magazine publishing,
book publishing, recorded music, amusement parks, and movie theaters.
The other corporate media giants like Disney, Viacom, News Corporation,
General Electric's NBC, TCI, Seagram's Universal Studios, CBS,
and Sony all have or are in the process of building similar arsenals.
NBC, for example, is known to be eager to acquire a film studio
while even giant Time Warner is rumored to be in the market for
a major television network. As one media analyst puts it, "consolidation
among distribution and content players rages on" (Mermigas,
Diane, "TCI Headed in the Right Direction," Electronic
Media, September 1, 1997: 20).
Moreover, the smart money is betting on a further thinning
in the ranks of the giant media corporations. Gordon Crawford,
who manages the Capital Research mutual fund that has significant
stakes in nearly all of the media giants forecasts that the eventual
outcome will be a global media oligopoly dominated by six firms:
Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation, Sony, and Seagram.
Crawford is more than a silent investor; he works quietly but
persistently to coordinate deals among the media giants to increase
all of their profitability.
But this barely begins to indicate how noncompetitive the
media market is becoming. In addition to an oligopolistic market
structure and overlapping ownership, the media giants each employ
equity joint ventures with their "competitors" to an
extraordinary extent. These are media projects where two or more
media giants share the ownership between them. They are ideal
because they spread the risk of a venture and eliminate the threat
of competition by teaming up with potential adversaries. Each
of the eight largest U.S. media firms averages having joint ventures
(often more than one) with five of the other seven media giants.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has at least one joint venture with
every single one of them. Viewed this way, the U.S. media market
has cartel-like tendencies. While competition can be and is ferocious
in specific markets, the overall thrust is to reduce competition
and carve up the media pie to the benefit of the handful of giants.
By any known theory of market performance, this degree of collaboration
can only have negative effects for consumers.
If synergy is the principle that makes becoming a media conglomerate
more profitable and, indeed, mandatory, the other side of the
coin is branding. All media firms are racing to give their media
properties distinct brand identities. Although the media system
has fewer and fewer owners, it nonetheless has a plethora of channels
competing for attention and branding is the primary means of attracting
and keeping audiences while also offering new commercial possibilities.
Cable channels and even broadcast networks each strive to be regarded
as brands especially desirable to specific demographic groups
desired by advertisers. Hence Viacom's Nickelodeon cable network
battles its new competition from News Corp.'s Fox Kids Network
and the Disney Channel by hammering home the Nickelodeon brand
name incessantly on Nickelodeon, and in its other film, television,
and publishing holdings. Branding also opens up for the media
giants the entire world of selling retail products based on their
branded properties to the media giants, and it is a course they
have been pursuing with a vengeance. Disney now has 590 retail
stores to sell its branded products while Time Warner has 160
stores. Viacom has entered the market too and some of the other
media giants are moving in this direction as well.
FAREWELL TO PUBLIC SERVICE
The other side of the coin of commercialization is the decline
and effective elimination of any public service values from the
media, placing the status of non-market public service in jeopardy
across society. It is often assumed that the United States has
always been a business society where commercial values have reigned
supreme, and there is a strong element of truth to this. But this
assertion must be qualified: there is an enormous, difference
between the degree and nature of commercialism in the United States
in, say, 1830 or 1880 or 1950 and what is emerging today. Those
were commercial societies, but nonprofit and non-commercial institutions
and values also played notable roles. Today's hyper-commercialized
society is such a sharp, quantitative change that it is also producing
a qualitative change. In this environment, the commercial values
of profit maximization and sales have overwhelmed the main vestiges
of public service in media. The areas in marked retreat to the
point of extinction are public service broadcasting, the regulations
that require commercial broadcasting to serve some public service
values, and journalism. I will concentrate here upon journalism,
because that is clearly the most important vestige of public service
in U.S. media.
Indeed, journalism has been regarded as a public service by
all of the commercial media throughout this century. It is something
that newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, and journalism schools
regarded as an activity directed to non-commercial aims fundamental
to a democracy that could not be bought and sold by powerful interests.
Professional journalism was predicated on the notion that its
content should not be shaped by the dictates of owners and advertisers,
or by the biases of the editors and reporters, but rather by core
public service values. For much of the 20th century the media
corporations have brandished their commitment to journalism as
their main explanation for why they deserve First Amendment protection
and a special place in the political economy. Professional journalism
has never enjoyed the independence from corporate or commercial
pressure suggested by its rhetoric, and indeed in some respects
has been a mixed blessing if not detrimental to democracy, but
whatever autonomy journalism has enjoyed is presently under sustained
attack by the corporate media giants and commercial values. Whatever
the limitations of professional journalism, it shines in comparison
to much of what is called "news" today.
The decline, even collapse, of journalism as a public service
is apparent all across the media. For network and national cable
television, news has gone from being a loss-leader to enhance
prestige to being a major producer of profit. NBC at present enjoys
what is regarded as "the most profitable broadcast news division
in the history of television," with annual advertising revenues
topping $100 million. NBC is renowned not for the quality of its
news as much as for the extraordinary manner it squeezes profit
from it. NBC uses QNBC, a high-tech statistical service, to analyze
its news reports to see exactly how its desired target audience
is reacting to the different news stories and to the ads. Its
goal is to have a "boundaryless" flow across the program
so as to satisfy those paying the bills. In 1996, the news story
that NBC gave the most time to was the Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
That story did not even rank on the top 10 list of most covered
stories for CBS, ABC, or CNN. What explains NBC's devotion to
this story? NBC had the television rights to the Olympics and
it used its nightly news to pump up the ratings for its primetime
coverage.
Beside using the news to promote corporate fare, the main
way to make journalism profitable is to have fewer reporters,
therefore concentrating upon inexpensive and easy stories to cover,
like celebrity lifestyle pieces, court cases, and visually compelling
stories like crashes and shoot-outs. It is also good business.
This caliber of journalism rarely offends people in power- since
serious investigative work is far too expensive to be conducted-and
therefore does not get the parent corporation enmeshed in controversy.
Examples of these trends abound. The annual number of crime
stories on network TV news programs tripled from 1990-92 to 1993-1996.
In the summer of 1997, CNN addressed a decline in ratings by broadcasting
a much publicized interview with O.J. Simpson. One almost had
to feel sympathy for the CNN correspondent who was reprimanded
after he did a television commercial as a spokesperson for Visa
USA; his role in the commercial had been originally cleared by
CNN and it certainly seemed in keeping with the commercial thrust
of television journalism. His crime, it would appear, was being
caught. As bad as this seems, local television news is considerably
worse. One recent detailed content analysis of local TV news in
55 markets in 35 states concludes that the news tended to feature
crime and violence, triviality, and celebrity, and that some programs
aired more commercials than news (Kite, Paul, Robert A. Bardwell,
and Jason Salzman, Baaad News: Local TV News in America, February
26,1997 [Denver: Rocky Mountain Media Watch, 1997]; see also Bannon,
Lisa, "In TV Chopper War, News Is Sometimes A Trivial Pursuit,"
The Wall Street Journal, June 4, 1997: A1, A10).
The attack on journalism is every bit as pronounced in the
nation's newspapers. The concentration of ownership into local
monopolies that are part of large national chains gives the media
corporations considerable power to reduce the resource commitment
to journalism so as to fatten the bottom line. Gannett showed
the genius of this approach as it built its empire over the past
35 years. Since purchasing the once highly acclaimed Des Moines
Register in the 1980s, for example, it has slashed that paper's
once extraordinary coverage of state affairs down to the bone.
These corporate giants are also increasingly using temporary labor
to fill reporters' and photographers' jobs. In addition, there
is implicit pressure on editors and reporters to accept marketing
principles and be "more reader friendly." This means
an emphasis upon lifestyle and consumption issues that strongly
appeal to desired readers and advertisers alike. "Marketing,"
one reporter stated in 1997, "these days means spending more
time focusing on the things that concern the people who have all
the money and who live in the suburbs." In a bold new measure,
the Los Angeles Times in 1997 appointed a business manager to
be "general manager for news," and directly oversee
the editorial product to see that it conform to the best commercial
interests of the newspaper.
What is happening at the prestigious Los Angeles Times in
fact only makes explicit what had been increasingly implicit in
journalism over recent years: to serve commercial needs first
and foremost. Magazine journalism has had less concern on balance
with keeping a formal separation between advertising and editorial
content for years; in 1997 The Wall Street Journal reported that
some major national advertisers demanded to know the contents
of specific issues of magazines before they would agree to place
ads in them. This caused a public outcry, with magazine editors
and publishers formally denouncing the practice. But even if advertisers
are not officially vetoing magazine contents, the message has
been underlined and boldfaced, again, for publishers and editors,
that what they do will affect their commercial fortunes directly.
There are some who argue that this shift to trivia and fluff
masquerading as news is going to ultimately harm the media corporation's
profitability, as people realize they no longer have any particular
need to read or watch news, and news is competing with the entire
world of entertainment for attention. Whether that is true or
false is impossible to say, but the media corporations by their
actions have made it clear that they prefer to take their profits
now rather than spend and make a lot less money now for the chance
at pie-in-the-sky profits far down the road. "Our big corporate
owners, infected with the greed that marks the end of the 20th
century, stretch constantly for ever-increasing profit, condemning
quality to take the hindmost," Walter Cronkite observes.
They are "compromising journalistic integrity in the mad
scramble for ratings and circulation."
Few defend the new journalism, except to say half-heartedly
that the media are now "giving the people what they want,"
as if the people have had any particular choice or as if what
generates the best market for advertisers was ever a satisfactory
determinant for journalism. This defense stinks of apologia. And
there are still many dedicated journalists working under existing
conditions to produce as high quality fare as possible; but the
trajectory is unmistakable. A recent examination of TV news concludes
that consumption of this "distorted diet of information has
profound side effects, contributing to public cynicism, desensitization,
alienation, ignorance, and the American culture of violence"
(Klite, Paul, Robert A. Bardwell, and Jason Salzman, "Local
TV News: Getting Away with Murder," Harvard Journal of Press/Politics
2(2): 102-112). What is clear is that this is a journalism that
makes perfect sense for media corporation shareholders and for
advertisers- and it makes perfect sense for those who prefer a
depoliticized and quiescent public-but it is absurd and indefensible
for citizens in a democracy.
The decline of journalism as a public service independent
of commercial values also has clear implications for preserving
and extending social inequality. As the notion of journalistic
autonomy from owners and advertisers weakens, the journalistic
product will increasingly reflect the interests of the wealthy
few that own and advertise in the news media. This is the main
reason why U.S. conservatives are so obsessed with taming the
"liberal" news media; what they desire is for journalism
to more closely reflect the political agenda of the business class.
As Newt Gingrich informed a meeting of the Georgia Chamber of
Commerce in 1997, business and advertisers need to take more direct
command of the newsroom. Some of the corporate media owners maintain
their journalism holdings not merely to make profit, but to promote
their pro-business, anti-labor view of the world. Rupert Murdoch,
for example, is an outspoken proponent of the view that the main
problems with the world are the prevalence of taxation on business
and the wealthy; regulation of business; government bureaucrats;
and labor unions. As TCI CEO John Malone stated, Murdoch would
be willing to keep his Fox News Channel on the air even if it
was not profitable because Murdoch wants "the political leverage
he can get out of being a major network." "It is curious,"
the famous graphic designer Milton Glaser wrote in 1997, "that
after the triumph of capitalism, American business is embracing
the politburo practice of censoring ideas it deems unacceptable."
THE SQUASHING OF PUBLIC DEBATE
Even among those who acknowledge corporate concentration,
conglomeration, and hyper-commercialism as main trends in U.S.
media today, and who regard the social and political implications
of these trends as extremely negative, there is a fatalistic sense
that this is the way it must be, because the United States is
a business-run society. In fact, the nature of the U.S. media
system is the result of a series of political decisions, not natural
law or holy mandate. Even when media are regulated preponderantly
by markets, it is in the end a political decision to turn them
over to a relative handful of individuals and corporations to
maximize profit. The U.S. media system of the late 20th century
looks substantially different from the media system of the late
19th century and is diametrically opposed to the press system
of the Republic's first two generations. All modern U.S. media
as well as advertising are affected directly and indirectly by
government policies, regulation, and subsidies. Specifically,
the development of radio and television broadcasting has been
and is the direct province of the political system. If at any
time the U.S. people had elected to establish a fully nonprofit
and non-commercial radio and television system, for example, it
has been within their constitutional rights to do so. The seminal
law for U.S. broadcasting was the Communications Act of 1934;
it was only superseded recently with the passage of the Telecommunications
Act of 1996.
What is most notable about media policy making in the United
States is not that it is important and that it exists, but, rather,
that virtually the entire American population has no idea that
it exists and that they have a right to participate in it. The
Telecommunications Act of 1996 had virtually no public participation
or general news media coverage, despite the fact that it will
probably set the terms for the development of the media for the
coming generations. It is a stunning testament to how undemocratic
U.S. society is on basic issues of resource allocation.
The effects of the Telecommunications Act on media were evident
in the discussion of the contemporary media market earlier in
the chapter. The one media sector most thoroughly overturned by
the Telecommunications Act has been radio broadcasting. The Telecommunications
Act relaxed ownership restrictions so that a single firm can own
up to eight stations in a single market. In the 20 months following
the law's passage there has been the equivalent of an Oklahoma
land rush as small chains have been acquired by middle-sized chains,
and middle-sized chains have been gobbled up by the few massive
giants who have come to dominate the national industry. In that
time 4,000 of the nation's 11,000 radio stations changed hands
and there were over 1,000 radio firm mergers. The deregulation
now made it possible for giant radio firms to control enough of
a market to compete with television and newspapers for advertisers.
This sort of consolidation also permits the giant chains to reduce
labor costs as redundant editorial and sales staffs can be "downsized,"
and programming can be coordinated from national headquarters.
According to Advertising Age, by September 1997 in each of the
50 largest markets, three firms controlled over 50 percent of
the radio ad revenues. And in 23 of the top 50, three companies
controlled more than 80 percent of the ad revenues. CBS, formerly
Westinghouse, ranks as the national leader with 175 stations,
predominately in the 15 largest markets, where it has "maxed
out" to the new legal limit. As The Wall Street Journal puts
it, these deals "have given a handful of companies a lock
on the airwaves in the nation's big cities."
When one ponders these developments in radio, the implications
of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 for media become more stark.
Relative to television and other media technologies, radio is
inexpensive for both broadcasters and consumers. It is ideally
suited for local community service and control. Yet it has been
transformed into a profit engine for a handful of firms, so that
they can convert radio broadcasting into the most efficient conduit
possible for advertising. Across the nation these giant chains
use their market power to slash costs, providing the same handful
of formats with only a token nod to the actual localities in which
the stations broadcast. On Wall Street, the corporate consolidation
of radio is praised as a smash success, but by any other standard
this "brave new world" is an abject failure.
The ultimate importance of the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
however, was to establish that the private sector would determine
the future of U.S. electronic media and digital communication.
Since the market is presumed infallible and competitive, there
are minimal or nonexistent public service requirements. What the
law established, therefore, was that Congress, and, by extension,
the public, had formally passed the matter along to the corporate
community, and to the FCC, which is in charge of coordinating
the "deregulation." And so it is that from the World
Wide Web to digital television, the corporate sector has taken
the lead in the United States, with little discussion or opposition.
MEDIA REFORM
Following the vision of Mills, the U.S. media at the dawn
of the 21st century present an apparent paradox. On the one hand,
there is a mind-boggling technological explosion, seemingly scripted
in the pages of science fiction novels, that promises unprecedented
consumer choice. On the other hand, the clear tendencies of our
media and communication world are those of corporate concentration,
media conglomeration, and hyper-commercialism. Notions of public
service that there should be some motives for media other than
profit-are in rapid retreat if not total collapse. The implications
for democracy are entirely negative. Moreover, public debate over
the future of media and communication has been effectively eliminated
by the corporate media sector, which metaphorically flosses its
teeth with politicians' underpants in both major parties. But
as Mills understood, this is no paradox at all: the illusion of
consumer choice and individual freedom provide the ideological
oxygen necessary to cement a media (and broader social) system
that serves the few, making it appear accountable and democratic.
But that could change. Indeed, the missing character throughout
this chapter has been the public, relegated to its proverbial
couch and commanded to shut up and shop. Yet public enthusiasm
for commercial media, arguably never as great as the PR industry
proclaimed, may be beginning to fray under the hyper-commercialism
and semi-monopolistic corporate rule that typifies the l990s.
Some municipalities are beginning to provide city-owned cable
services, reminiscent of the great public ownership movement of
the Progressive Era. Other activists have taken new developments
in radio technology to begin providing unlicensed microradio channels
on the parts of the dial unused by the commercial broadcasters.
Moreover, local media watch organizations have sprouted across
the nation in the l990s, determined to improve the quality of
news and entertainment in their communities, and to oppose the
commercialization of public broadcasting, schools, and neighborhoods.
At the national level, too, media reform organizations like Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting and the Cultural Environment Movement
have blossomed, with clear mandates not merely to get the best
of what is currently possible, but to extend the range of what
can be possible in the way of media reform. In all of these activities,
reformers find significant public support in addition to apathy
and disinterest, but very little public hostility on the grounds
that the current media system is a success. There is seemingly
the climate for the building of a viable public media reform movement
for the first time in generations.
Although in certain respects the media system and the handful
of firms that sit atop it appear politically and ideologically
all-powerful, the system is simultaneously producing considerable
disenchantment across society. Should citizens become active in
media reform-a prospect the corporate media are doing everything
in their power to prevent-all bets would be off concerning the
future of U.S. media and society writ large. In the end, the nature
of our media system will be determined by people and social activity,
not technology.
ROBERT McCHESNEY is an Associate Professor of Journalism at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author, with Edward
S. Herman, of The Global Media: The New Missionaries Of Corporate
Capitalism (Cassell, 1997) and Corporate Media And The Threat
To Democracy (Seven Stories Press, 1997).
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