Challenging the Corporate Media Blockade!

Robert McChesney and John Nichols: The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers [to be broadcast 2/8 & 15, 8-9pm PST]

[complete video]

This talk, taped last month on Martin Luther King Day at Kane Hall will be broadcast in two parts.  This week we hear from Nation Magazine Political Correspondent John Nichols, with opening remarks by Professor Lance Bennett Dir., UW Center for Communication and Civic Engagement.  Next week will be University of Illinois Professor Robert McChesney and their answers to questions from the audience.

Two years ago when the Bush administration’s FCC was forced by the two Democrats on the Commission to hold a series of public hearings on their scheme to consolidate the media even further into ever fewer and larger corporate media monopolies, I did my part along with millions of other outraged citizens and sent in a letter expressing my opposition.   I’ve long since forgotten what the letter I got back said.   It was boilerplate anyway, but I never forgot how it was addressed: “Dear Consumer”.  The computer program that cranks out these form letters must have gotten stuck and mistakenly used the same title they use to address some people other than media activists.  I wonder if there is one that says “Dear Zombie”:

“Dear Zombie,

We were shocked and angered to hear that your local broadcast of “Lost” was interrupted by a public service announcement concerning a chlorine gas cloud from a train derailment in your area.  Rest assured that under our administration this will never happen again.  Our Republican commissioners are ever vigilant in our commitment to make sure that media consumers get their money’s worth.

Sincerely,

Kevin J. Martin

Chairman, FCC.”

But seriously, the public groundswell that forced Congress to overrule the Bush Administration’s brazen attempt at further media consolidation must have caught them by surprise.  As McChesney and Nichols point out, the public is scared that the disintegration of the news media in the US is moving us toward a “propaganda state”.  And for good reason:  The century long privatization/consolidation process has finally played itself out.  Newspapers and other “old media”, which are the source of over 90% of real news, are rapidly dying out.  Last year 142 daily and weekly newspapers closed down and 90,000 lost their jobs in the newspaper, magazine, and book publishing industries.

You may think that you can get your information from the internet but somebody has to do the investigative journalism and write the copy.  Only a handful of journalists are able to make a living publishing on the internet.  At this time, 86% of news content is actually produced by Public Relations firms which are where two thirds of journalism students now end up working.  So what to do about it? 

The founders of this republic knew that the first responsibility of the state was to assure the existence of a “vibrant, independent, and uncensored 4^th estate” without which “democracy and the rule of law” could not exist.  For this reason they went far beyond the language of the First Amendment and took actions to subsidize the creation of an independent free press.  This was the main purpose for the creation of the Post Office.  But this is not the only thing they did.  McChesney and Nichols say that the forgotten history of government subsidy of the press has been stolen from us.  They argue that it is time to get back to our historic roots and join the rest of the civilized world by returning to a recognition of news media as a public good with the subsidizing of public and community media as well as the study of journalism.

Robert McChesney and John Nichols are the founders of Free Press.  The title of their new book is: “The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again”.  

Web Exclusives: Recent events have got me thinking a lot about what I learned from these two talks, so I have gone back into the vast Pirate TV archives and posted these videos from 2002 so as to share them with you.

Thom Hartmann: Unequal Protection

With last weeks' Supreme Court ruling opening the floodgates for unlimited corporate money influencing our elections, the corporate takeover or our democracy is now complete.  This ruling by the very same 5 fascist Supreme Court justices who overturned the 2000 election ushering in 8 years of ‘W’, not only overrules a hundred years of legal precedent but also destroys “strong state constitutional provisions prohibiting corporate influence”.  Commentators have been comparing this ruling to the awful Dred Scott decision which declared people to be property and have asserted that this ruling now makes it clear that property is persons.  Better informed people trace the root of the problem back to the Santa Clara Co. v Southern Pacific Railroad decision of 1886 whereby corporations first asserted their certificate of personhood.

In this video, Thom Hartmann lays it all out:  How this Supreme Court decision in fact never found any such thing and how corporate usurpation of human rights was stolen.   And why the time has never been better to get moving on the process of revoking the legal fiction of Corporate Personhood once and for all.  I hear rumors that Thom will be coming out with an updated edition of Unequal Protection in the near future.  We look forward to seeing him back here in Seattle to address this subject again.  This talk was recorded at Elliott Bay Books October 5^th 2002.

John Stauber: Poisoning the Grassroots

Giant Corporations not only use their unlimited resources to subvert the public will by buying our elected officials, but to corrupt and subvert activist movements and nongovernmental organizations as well.  PR Watch founder John Stauber gave this talk to the Twentieth National Pesticide Forum on April 27^th 2002 at Bastyr University in Kenmore Washington.

There exist Public Relations firms whose sole purpose is to “mine” activists.  They infiltrate and spy on activists and activist organizations compiling dossiers and using the information to advise their clients how to undermine their efforts.  Stauber illuminates by example how corporations use this information to devise divide and conquer strategies to effectively derail reform movements.  With this information, they divide the actors into 3 categories:

“Radicals” are the ones who usually have a personal or principled stake in the issues at hand and most generally are the instigators of the movement.  This designation does not necessarily connote a political orientation.  They are “radical” in the sense that they are attacking the root of the problem.  The “radical” in question may be a Republican grandmother living in a trailer out in the countryside who is suffering the effects of aerial bombardment from 2-4D, now dying of cancer and whose children and grandchildren are all sick.  They want an absolute end to the spraying of toxic chemicals and a genuine redress of their grievances.  These people are unlikely to accept compromises that amount to non solution solutions.

“Idealists” are the ones who come to the support of the people who have been victimized.  They may include rank and file members of large non governmental or other organizations committed to social progress as opposed to personal gain for themselves or their organizations.

“Rationalists” are the ones, usually leaders of large nongovernmental organizations whose main interest is organization building, PR, and or fundraising.  They are most willing to sell out their principles by negotiating “win, win” compromises that make their organizations and the corporations in question look good.  They gain lots of corporate funding in exchange for “solutions” that don’t threaten the corporate bottom line or make fundamental changes that may actually get to the root of the problems at hand.

This is essential knowledge for anyone attempting any kind of reform which in our day would necessarily involve challenging some sort of corporate privilege.  For instance, a direct analogy could be applied to what would likely happen if a grassroots attempt were made to take over from corporate control of the Democratic Party.  John Stauber outlines how most large main stream environmental organizations have been compromised in this way and calls for a return to grassroots organizing.

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