When the National Conference for Media Reform met here last month, it was the largest gathering of responsible adults ever to address the democracy-destroying impact big media has on America. Some media pundits, including Bill O’Reilly and Fox News, denigrate NCMR for serving an ultra liberal agenda. If one looks only at the speakers list at this year’s gathering, Fox News’ claims might seem justified — for none of the main speakers, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps (above), PBS commentator Bill Moyers, HDnet reporter Dan Rather, Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein, have visible conservative connections.
The conference promoters, an organization known as FreePress, says they are nonpartisan. Given the importance of the issues they’re addressing, being apolitical might be too much to hope for — so nonpartisan will have to do for now. That said, Fox News’ liberal claims don’t pass the smell test. For one thing, both conservatives and liberals are directly involved in big media ownership and management. The issue is politicized, nevertheless, especially among political appointees on the Federal Communications Commission where, inexplicably, the Republican appointees seem Hell bent on furthering the concentration of liberal media while the Democrat appointees press every harder to keep that from happening. One suspects that this contradiction of interests might well be the result of political drunkenness.
Media Is The Message
No matter the big names, the convention and its speakers were largely ignored by big media. And why not? The concentrated media world that envelopes America today sets the public agenda, distorts traditional culture(s), and upstages educational policy while upstaging locally defined pedagogy. Had NCMR speakers been covered on television, America would have learned about the consequences of media concentration and its defacto-control over what America knows and believes. Perhaps some might have heard Bill Moyers explain,
“Democracy without honest information creates the illusion of popular consent while enhancing the power of the state and the privileged interests protected by it.
Democracy without accountability creates the illusion of popular control while offering ordinary Americans cheap tickets to the balcony, too far away to see that the public stage is just a reality TV set.
Nothing more characterizes corporate media today – mainstream and partisan – than disdain towards the fragile nature of modern life and indifference toward the complex social debate required of a free and self-governing people.
This leaves you with a heavy burden – it’s up to you to fight for the freedom that makes all other freedoms possible.”
Or, Adrienne Marlee Brown, who told an enthusiastic crowd,
“Fundamentally, a revolutionary mindset has the ability to see beyond what currently exists, and beyond tweaking what currently exists, to something altogether new – new relationships, new power dynamics, new media, media which exist not only to inform us but to transform us, so that when we hear it, when we see it, we’re not just taking in that information, but we actually change the way we behave, change the way we interact with the world.”
Or Dan Rather who admonished those at hand,
“The Framers of our Constitution enshrined freedom of the press in the very first Amendment, up at the top of the Bill of Rights, not because they were great fans of journalists — like many politicians, then and now, they were not — but rather because they knew, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free… it expects what never was and never will be.
And it is because of this Constitutionally protected role that I still prefer to use the word “press” over the word “media.” If nothing else, it serves as a subtle reminder that — along with newspapers — radio, television, and, now, the Internet, carry the same Constitutional rights, mandates, and responsibilities that the founders guaranteed for those who plied their trade solely in print.”
Record Attendance
3500 People came here to discuss the concentration of media ownership in this nation. Big media, the speakers agreed, have all but ended responsible broadcast news, Today media concentration threatens some of this nation’s most influential and once-profitable newspapers. Given the level of attendance and the big names who spoke about the plight of American media today, it’s clear that a growing number of Americans are mad as hell about the suborning of media that has resulted from ownership concentration and mindless devotion to profitability above all other considerations.
Not everyone agrees as was evidenced by Fox News Channel coverage. The placard seen here is likely only an opening round in the battle over whether America’s broadcast spectrum belongs to the people, or Wall Street interests.
In a world where entertainment and profitability have subsumed essentially all broadcast journalism, just who is it that seeks to right the wrongs? Is it some crackpot liberal think tank — out to reverse the wrongs of the Reagan era? Maybe not, for the National Conference on Media Reform is promoted by the Free Press Action Fund — a group that claims to be non partisan — that has taken the leadership position in restoring public interest in broadcast media. Based on their non-partisan claims, and congruence with journalistic values and standards promoted by this publication, Newsroom Magazine chose to openly support Free Press Action Fund activities by affixing their logo-link on our front page.
Main Street America
Keynote speaker Bill Moyers described the event as “the most significant citizens’ movement to emerge in this new century.” He may be right for the movement to restore sanity to American media is clearly gaining momentum. Widening interest in media matters was clear last month when Newsroom contributor Richard Evans came across a June 12th story about this year’s conference in the Arkansas Times [1]. The Times said, in part,
"The American media have always sought to make money, of course — and some of them made plenty in the old days — but as one of the speakers here noted, there was also a fairly widespread notion in the old days that newspapers and other media were supposed to do more than just make money, that the best of them would comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, that reporters and editors were in something of a partnership, even if uneasy, with the owners, and that journalists possessed skills that were often, if not always, used to inform the citizenry on important matters. It is not so now. A handful of big corporations own virtually all the media outlets, and they’re not interested in truth and justice, only revenue. They value only reporters and editors who share their goal. (The Minneapolis Star Tribune, once an estimable publication owned by a high-minded journalistic family, is now owned by what is described as a “private equity firm.” The newspaper didn’t cover the media-reform conference in its living room, though the event included big-name speakers such as Moyers and Dan Rather.)
We were encouraged to see that some print media (typically papers not part of giant organizations ) are taking a stand on the evisceration of broadcast journalism at all levels. We are even more encouraged that rank and file Americans are joining the battle — increasingly aware that Big Media’s plundering of broadcast journalism has come at immense cost to American civilization, culture, knowledge and self-confidence.
Richard Evans contributed to this article.