US media covers the middle east protests extensively but fails at home
In spite that US corporations have a very large degree of freedom and policies in their favor, I would even argue that the US is a heaven for them, they don't seem satisfied in the least. They are waging political war on collective bargaining, public education, healthcare, the minimum wage, pensions, the privatization of the penitentiary system and deregulation.
In order to achieve these goals they use two big weapons:
A) Buying political influence through campaign founding, now made unlimited thanks to resolution of the supreme court last year. Lets not forget that corporations are deemed as individuals under US law.
B) Their complete control over the media which only covers "news" favorable to corporate interests.
The protests in Wisconsin are the perfect example of the current extent of corporate power in America, and let me tell you, it is frightening.
I'll leave you with a prophetic article I found a while ago. It is from the 90s.
"Fact: The media are being increasingly monopolized by parent corporations with pro-corporate or conservative agendas."
Spoiler:
Summary
The U.S. media are rapidly being monopolized by a dwindling number of parent corporations, all of whom have conservative economic agendas. The media are also critically dependent upon corporations for advertising. As a result, the news almost completely ignores corporate crime, as well as pro-labor and pro-consumer issues. Surveys of journalists show that the majority were personally liberal in the 1980s, but today they are centrists, with more conservatives than liberals on economic issues. However, no study has proven that they give their personal bias to the news. On the other hand, the political spectrum of pundits -- who do engage in noisy editorializing -- leans heavily to the right. The most extreme example of this is talk radio, where liberals are almost nonexistent. The Fairness Doctrine was designed to prevent one-sided bias in the media by requiring broadcasters to air opposing views. It once enjoyed the broad support of both liberals and conservatives. But now that the media have become increasingly owned and controlled by corporations, conservatives defiantly oppose the Fairness Doctrine. This is probably the best proof that the media's bias is conservative, not liberal.
Argument
Conservatives often promote the myth that the U.S. media are liberal. This myth serves several purposes: it raises public skepticism about liberal news stories, hides conservative bias when it appears, and goads the media to the right. GOP strategist William Kristol also reveals another reason: "I admit it: the liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." (1)
In unguarded moments, however, even far-right figures like Pat Buchanan come clean: "The truth is, I've gotten fairer, more comprehensive coverage of my ideas than I ever imagined I would receive." He further conceded: "I've gotten balanced coverage and broad coverage -- all we could have asked… For heaven sakes, we kid about the liberal media, but every Republican on earth does that." (2)
So what's the real story? The fact is that conservatives have powerful friends in the media: the corporations that own them, and the corporations that pay for their advertising. These giant firms have been increasingly successful in bending the media's message to suit their self-interests, which include a conservative and pro-corporate agenda. Studies show that the media are eerily silent on the issues most important to workers, consumers and other citizens adversely affected by corporate behavior. Conservatives respond to these charges with (old) polls showing that most journalists are personally liberal, but these polls are outdated. New polls show the majority of journalists are centrists. And of those who are not centrists, there are more conservatives than liberals on economic issues. We'll explore more of this question below.
The Media Monopoly
Easily the most famous book on media trends in the last 15 years is Ben Bagdikian's 1983 book, The Media Monopoly. In it, he predicted that deregulation under President Reagan would allow media ownership to concentrate in fewer and fewer corporate hands. This, in turn, would result in a more pro-corporate media. Ridiculed as "alarmist" when it first came out, it has since been praised as a classic for the accuracy of its predictions. "I derive no pleasure from having been correct," writes the former dean of American journalism in his most recent edition. (3)
To be specific, the number one trend within the media today is that they are rapidly being monopolized by large corporations. Technically, the term "monopoly" is incorrect when describing today's media -- what we actually have is a shrinking media oligopoly. Most scholars use the term "media monopoly" only because that's the direction the media are headed. This essay will also use the term "media monopoly" to denote the direction, rather than the current status, of the media.
The dangers of a media monopoly
Before reviewing the statistical evidence of the media monopoly, which is undisputed even by the media themselves, we should make certain of its dangers.
The incentives for buying media organizations have long been obvious to Wall Street, which has seen vicious competition break out to capture the remaining media markets. These incentives were articulated in 1986 by Christopher Shaw, a Wall Street expert who has handled over 120 media mergers. Shaw told investors that media buy-outs would give them two things: "profitability" and "influence." (4)
There is nothing inherently wrong with either profitability or influence, of course -- it's just that in a monopoly, they would be abused. Consider the abuse of profits. All the usual market failures would be present in a media monopoly: the captive market, the rise in prices, the drop in quality, and the exploitation of consumers.
But significantly more troubling is the monopolization of influence. If one person controls all information, there are no opposing viewpoints so essential to keeping public and scientific debate honest. We profoundly condemn the monopoly of information by the state, as exemplified by Joseph Goebbels' "Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment." But this danger is no less evident if a single business takes over the control of all information in society. Then all information would come from a corporate point of view, silencing the voices of workers, consumers and other citizens who are affected by corporate behavior. Democracy is based on the assumption that opposing viewpoints can be heard. If corporations could somehow eliminate or control populist debate, then we will not have a true democracy.
The potential for abuse by corporate owners is obvious. Just one example was General Electric's earlier buyout of NBC News. General Electric is the 10th largest company in the United States. It is a major Defense contractor and an international player on the world market. It is sensitive to the needs of its clients, who come from all sectors of the economy. It is also a fact that GE has suffered many a scandal throughout its history. During the Great Depression, it cut the life of its light bulbs by one-third to drive up profits. It was convicted of an illegal agreement with a German arms company during World War II. It has been convicted of fraud, fixing bids, conspiracy and tax evasion. (5) In all these cases, control of a major media outlet would have given it undue influence, whether in the market or before Congress or the courts.
Furthermore, GE has played an active role in conservative politics. Shortly after the company acquired NBC, a GE executive announced that NBC should start a political action committee to contribute money to strengthen the company's influence in Washington. Failure to cooperate, the executive said, would raise questions about the employees' "dedication to the company." (6) Later the President of NBC News clarified that its news employees would be exempt from contributing, but this hardly removes the larger conflict of interest.
It should not be surprising that these parent companies, like most big businesses and all Defense contractors, are extremely conservative. They have agendas: they desire lower taxes, fewer lawsuits from the public, fewer environmental restraints, better public relations (a euphemism for less public exposure to scandals), higher profits and more effective lobbying power in Washington. Controlling public opinion would give them all these things. Ironically, it would not be necessary for a single winner to emerge from the take-over wars. Shaw maintains that by the year 2000, all U.S. media will be in the hands of six giant corporations. Most business analysts agree with him. (7) One can safely assume that they will all have the same business and political agenda.
The statistical evidence of a media monopoly
That said, let's review the evidence of a media monopoly. Ownership of all forms of media (newspapers, magazines, radio shows, network television, cable, journals, books, movies, videos and cassettes) are quickly being consolidated under a few corporations. In all, the number of dominant corporations who control any form of media has shrunk from 46 in 1981 to exactly half in 1992: 23. At the end of World War II, 80 percent of all newspapers were privately owned. Today, that figure is its exact opposite: 80 percent of all newspapers are owned by corporate chains. From 1960 to today, the number of corporations which own newspapers fell from 27 to 14. (Gannett Company, which publishes USA Today, is the largest, with 87 other daily newspapers.) From 1981 to 1988, the number of corporations who owned magazines fell from 20 to a mere three. Television news is dominated by four major networks, who control up to three-fourths of the audience share. (8)
One of the most obvious signs of this trend is that cities are becoming "one-newspaper towns." One of the persons most responsible for buying out competing newspapers is Rupert Murdoch, who says that his worldwide strategy is acquisition and takeovers. (9) Another is Allen Neuharth, chairman of Gannett Company, who told a group of Wall Street investors that "No Gannett newspaper has any direct competition." (10)
Since the 1992 edition of The Media Monopoly, media mergers of unprecedented scale have continued unabated -- but there's no discussion of the dangers involved, or the controversy it should represent. Disney has since bought ABC, Westinghouse has bought CBS, and Time-Warner has bought Turner Broadcasting System. Congress cleared out the remaining obstacles for still more media mergers by passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Headlines in the media blared about the bill's attempt to censor pornography on the Internet, but otherwise remained completely silent about its deregulation of anti-trust laws for the media. For this bit of censorship, the Telecom Act was voted the number one censored story of 1995 by Project Censored.
The cable industry offers a perfect snapshot of media monopolization and all its dangers. After the cable television industry was deregulated in 1984, prices soared, quality of programming plummeted, and cable systems began selling their channels in indivisible blocs that prevented subscribers from voting with their dollars. From 1986 to 1990, the cost of basic service rose 56 percent -- twice the rate of inflation. (11) The problem? Growing monopolization, at several levels. There are now 11,000 cable systems across the nation, almost all of them exercising a local monopoly over their municipal region. They in turn are controlled by a handful of national companies. By far the most dominant is the phenomenally expanding TCI, which is a gatekeeper over national programming. Its owner, John Malone, owns all or part of 25 national or regional cable channels, including Turner Broadcasting. (12) Because there is little or no competition, cable programmers search for the cheapest shows to produce. Quality of programming has sunk to network TV levels. It seems that each year, Congress passes yet another cable deregulation bill. Every single one has been touted to "open competition" and "benefit the consumer." But the concentration of power in the cable industry keeps getting worse, not better.
Another source of pro-corporate bias: advertising
Owning and monopolizing the media is only one way that corporations introduce a pro-corporate bias into the media. An equally pervasive one is advertising.
Most media depend on the sale of corporate advertisements to stay alive. Without advertisements, a medium would have to charge its customers a higher up-front price for its product. But that would kill its circulation, since competitors would offer up-front prices that were considerably lower or even free. Of course, there's no such thing as a free lunch. The consumer actually pays a higher price for the advertiser's products, which then go to the media.
Advertising has been criticized on many grounds: it is inefficient, wastes time and resources, is terribly unpleasant, stifles free market competition, helps sustains long-term advantages to giant corporations, and makes people buy products for psychological reasons instead of economic ones like cost, quality and demand. Entire essays could be written on each of these shortcomings, but what we will address is how advertising injects a pro-corporate bias into the media.
The media generally cannot run stories that offend corporations, because sponsors will threaten to pull their advertising dollars. In 1980, the liberal staff at Mother Jones debated over whether or not to publish a series of articles linking cigarettes to cancer. The editors knew that the tobacco industry would punish them by canceling their lucrative advertising contracts, which the young, struggling magazine desperately needed. Mother Jones stuck to its principles and printed the articles anyway; and, just as expected, the tobacco companies angrily pulled their ads.
And whereas a parent corporation like GE has a particular set of interests that NBC would never report against, advertisers have general interests that reporters would never tilt against either. A publisher never knows who the next advertiser might be; therefore it's good policy not to write offensive things about any corporation, or even corporate culture in general. No news organization could attract advertisers if it persistently attacked the corporate agenda.
Evidence of pro-corporate bias in the media
Obviously, parent corporations and advertising sponsors have the ability and incentive to twist journalists' arms, but do they actually? The answer is both yes and no. Media owners and advertisers are generally prevented from interfering in the editor's office because of 75 years of improving journalist ethics. Back in the 1920s, the blatant manipulation of the news by owners resulted in "Yellow Journalism" and the sort of corruption so brilliantly captured by the movie Citizen Kane. But that does not mean that owners today still do not exert influence over their editors. Ben Bagdikian writes that owners let the editors operate freely until a story arises that affects the company's interest. Then one of two forms of influence will be exerted. It may be a direct order, as when the Chairman of General Electric called the President of NBC News after the 1987 stock market crash and told him not to use words in their reporting that would adversely affect GE stock. (13) (The NBC News president claimed he did not pass on the order.)
Or it may be an unspoken agreement. Editors and writers know what their employer's interests are, and they protect them without being told. Why? Either to demonstrate their dedication to the company, thus protecting their future promotions, or simply because they fear being fired. Unfortunately, it is a frequent practice for owners to fire journalists who, knowingly or not, write against their particular interests. Just one of many examples is the owner of the Dallas Morning News, who fired Earl Golz for writing a story about an imminent bank failure that outraged the owners of the Abilene National Bank. Golz' story proved true -- the bank crashed a few weeks later -- but Golz' was not rehired. (14) To be sure, other journalists witnessing his fate would practice self-censorship whenever it came to protecting their owner's interests.
Whether owners interfere explicitly or implicitly in the newsroom, evidence of it continually surfaces. Here are just a few examples:
During the debate on health care reform, the New York Times ran stories persistently in favor of managed competition, a program which would have been profitable to major health care corporations. Other proposals for reform, like the Canadian single-payer program, were criticized or ignored. Reason: four members of the Times board of directors are also directors of major insurance companies, and two are directors of pharmaceutical companies. (15)
Victor Neufeld, the executive producer of ABC's top-rated news show 20/20, repeatedly rejected several promising stories on nuclear power hazards. Reason: His wife is a prominent spokesman for the nuclear and chemical industries. (16)
Walter Annenberg, owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, used his paper to attack a candidate who opposed action that would have benefited the stockholders of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Reason: he was the single largest stockholder. (17)
Rupert Murdoch's Post endorsed President Carter in the crucial New York Presidential primary, contributing to his victory. Reason: two days earlier, Murdoch had lunch with Carter, convincing him to lean on the Export-Import Bank of the United States to give him a taxpayer-subsidized loan of $290 million. The bank had previously rejected the loan. (18)
A four-month study by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) analyzed how the New York Times and Washington Post covered NAFTA. Of the experts quoted in their articles, pro-NAFTA outnumbered anti-NAFTA sources by three to one. Not a single labor union representative was quoted. Reason: these newspapers' boards of directors are drawn from big business. (19)
Journalist Elizabeth Whelan asked ten major women's magazines to run a series of articles on the rise of smoking-related diseases in women; all ten magazines refused. Reason: "I frequently wrote on health topics for women's magazines," says Whelan, "and have been told repeatedly by editors to stay away from the subject of tobacco." (20)
The above stories are anecdotal, but they show specifically how editors and advertisers interfere with the objectivity of the media. Now let's look at broader statistics. All feature the same theme: the power of editorial selection. Editors play a crucial role in deciding which stories get covered and which ones don't. This is an important tool for shaping and influencing the nation's debate. Due to the abuse of this power, three giant trends have grown within the media as big business continues to monopolize it:
The first is that pro-labor stories are almost completely absent, even though blue-collar workers make up the vast majority of this nation's work force, and indeed the news media's audience. The majority of stories should include the conditions they work under, the challenges they face, the wages they earn and the hazards that maim and kill them. But the media is curiously silent on nearly all these natural topics. In 1989, researcher John Tasini studied ABC, NBC and CBS for a year to see how much coverage was devoted to workers' issues, including the minimum wage, workplace safety and child care. He found it amounted to a dismal 2.3 percent of all coverage. In fact, all three networks carried only 13 minutes of coverage on workplace safety for the entire year! The worst offender was NBC Nightly News, who devoted a total of 40 seconds to worker safety. This is not surprising, since its parent corporation, GE, has an appalling work safety record. (21) Elsewhere, a Los Angeles Times poll found that 53 percent of the nation's newspaper editors were pro-management, but only 8 percent were pro-labor. (22) The pro-corporate bias of our media is one of the most important reasons for the decline of labor unions in this country.
The second trend is the increasingly conservative selection of experts to be quoted in the news. Think tanks are ideal places to find such "experts." (True academics have a low opinion of think tanks, which are simply propaganda outlets for the giant corporate foundations that pour millions of dollars into them.) Think tanks are highly partisan, and the quality of their work is mediocre at best. Why? They lack the checks and balances which keep academia honest, such as peer review, the scientific conference and independence of funding. Unfortunately, it has been a growing trend in journalism to rely on think tanks more than academia. That's because think tanks have conducted an aggressive campaign to become media friendly, packaging their findings in nice sound-bites and faxed press releases. This is in stark contrast to academics, who have little interest, expertise, funding or organization to conduct mass media relations. And this is not to mention that corporate-owned media organizations are encouraged to gather their facts from corporate-funded think tanks.
So, how many times do journalists quote conservative think tanks over liberal ones? The media watchdog FAIR conducted a Nexus search of major newspapers, radio and TV transcripts for 1995, and came up with the following answer:
Total Number of Think Tank Citations in Major Newspapers, Radio
and TV transcripts: (23)
Conservative 7792
Centrist 6361
Progressive 1152
Although there are far more conservative think tanks than liberal ones in the first place, reporters could easily balance the facts if they wanted to simply by consulting academics at universities.
The third trend is that when news organizations cover corruption in Washington, it is always politicians who get the blame, and never corporations. This is one reason why Americans hate politics, why voter anger has been rising over the last 20 years, why the people's trust in Congress has reached its lowest point in half a century. But this one-sided anger is illogical. The politicians are getting the money from somewhere. Big business, of course, need not fear being exposed as the ones donating the money and requesting the shady favors in the first place; after all, a watchdog doesn't bite its master. It is interesting to note that when President Clinton became embroiled in a campaign contribution scandal on the eve of his re-election, the corporate media made sure to choose a foreign corporate lobbyist to blame.
To be sure, if Westinghouse were to get caught laundering millions in drug money, CBS News would report the story in a straightforward fashion. But otherwise, the searchlight is directed away from business and onto politicians. Even once liberal news magazines like 60 Minutes, which proudly took on corporate criminals in the 70s, has considerably toned down its approach towards the Fortune 500 today, and concentrates on everyone else.
The personal biases of journalists
The claim that the U.S. has a "liberal media" began with a book called The Media Elite, by S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman and Linda Lichter. Their 1980 survey of journalists revealed that journalists were indeed much more liberal than the rest of America, a point which no one disputed. However, the authors then went on to make a second claim: that these liberal journalists inserted their own personal bias into the news. This second claim has not withstood academic scrutiny. (Click on the following link to see why.)
However, that debate is archaic today, because new studies show that today's journalists are more centrist than anything else. However, those who are not centrists identify themselves more frequently as conservatives on economic issues, and more frequently as liberals on social issues.
The following study was conducted by David Croteau of Virginia Commonwealth University. (24) He targeted Washington bureau chiefs and Washington-based journalists who cover national politics and/or economic policy. His questionnaires went to 78 national news organizations, with an emphasis on the following 14:
1. ABC News /ABC Radio
2. Associated Press /AP Broadcast News
3. Bloomberg News
4. CNN
5. Knight-Ridder Newspapers/Tribune Information Services
6. Los Angeles Times
7. NBC News
8. New York Times
9. Reuters America, Inc.
10. Time
11. USA Today/USA Weekend
12. Wall Street Journal
13. Washington Post
14. Washington Times
The 141 journalists and bureau chiefs who responded were an excellent cross-section of the target group as a whole. When their positions on political issues were tallied up, this was the result:
Q#22. On social issues, how would you characterize your political orientation? Q#23. On economic issues, how would you characterize your political orientation?
Left 30% Left 11%
Center 57% Center 64%
Right 9% Right 19%
Other 5% Other 5%
What caused journalists to shift over the last 15 years from liberal attitudes to centrist ones, even conservative ones on economic issues?
One answer, of course, is that the media's parent corporations began hiring less liberal journalists. But another answer has to be the exploding salaries of celebrity journalists. It is a common observation in political science that receiving a higher income tends to make a person more economically conservative.
Between 1980 and 1995, the salaries of celebrity journalists sky-rocketed. In 1995, Diane Sawyer made $8 million; Ted Koppel, $5 million; David Brinkley, $1 million; George Will, $1.5 million; Cokie Roberts, $700,000. (25) These salaries place them in America's richest 1 percent (actually, the top one-twentieth of the top 1 percent). Keep in mind that the top 1 percent saw their wealth explode during the 80s, eventually coming to own 40 percent of America's wealth. These celebrity journalists live and work in centers of power like Washington D.C and New York City, where they rub elbows with the nation's political and business elite.
Says PBS producer Stephen Talbot:
"There's an Our Town quality to official Washington -- a very small, incestuous world of politicians and press who are now almost interchangeable. The press was once known as ink-stained wretches. But in their tuxedos and evening gowns at an event like the White House Correspondents Dinner, they resemble nothing more than the politicians they cover." (26)
Newsweek columnist Jonathon Alter concedes:
"I'm a part of this so-called overclass -- and so are my bosses and many of my colleagues at Newsweek and elsewhere in the national media. There's no point in denying it." (27)
And all evidence shows that celebrity journalists identify with the various elites they cover. Recently, ABC weathered a scandal (due to lack of coverage, naturally) in which its journalists were criticized for accepting huge speaking fees before big business groups. It turns out that corporate lobbyists cultivate "friendships" not only with politicians, but TV journalists as well. They were paying Cokie Roberts, David Brinkley and Sam Donaldson between $20,000 and $35,000 per 40-minute speech. David Gergen collected over $700,000 from speaker fees in one 16-month period alone. In general, the speeches have been very friendly to big business, and that is why lobbyists were willing to pay such huge honoraria. In a 1992 speech, for example, David Brinkley described Bill Clinton's tax increase on the rich as a "sick, stupid joke." (This was even before he called Clinton "boring" on the eve of his 1996 reelection.) In July, 1994, ABC finally advised its journalists to stop accepting speaker fees from corporations and lobbying groups. The decision was immediately protested by Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, David Brinkley, Brit Hume and others. (28)
The ironic thing is that Cokie Roberts is a Democrat, as are many of her colleagues. Again, this underscores the fact that inside the Beltway, a "liberal" is often no more than a moderate conservative.
Does personal bias result in media bias?
Granted, journalists have their own personal viewpoints, ranging from liberal to conservative. But what does that really mean? Very little, it turns out.
The idea that the media's message can be boiled down to the personal biases of individual journalists is profoundly and absurdly reductionist. The media is composed of individuals, yes, but it is also composed of institutions, organizational structures, traditions, rules, social and economic forces, and interest groups applying pressure. And all these things affect the media's message in profound ways.
For example, consider the rule of balanced sources. Under normal circumstances, journalists get both sides of the story. This is a basic rule of thumb that every journalist knows, and is taught in every Journalism 101 class. It doesn't matter if you're liberal or conservative; it is widely considered unethical to present only one side of the story. The only time that this ethic seems to break down is when a conflict of interest arises between journalists and the corporations that pay their paychecks.
But this ethic doesn't stop corporations from "legitimately" biasing the media towards conservatism. All they have to do is hire pundits who are mostly conservatives themselves. Pundits enjoy a unique role in the media, in that they are expected to be biased. In fact, the more outrageous their opinions, the better. Whereas a reporter must stick to the facts and report both sides, pundits are free to interpret them any way they want. What this means is that criticism of reporters for their alleged liberal bias is actually misplaced. It is really the political spectrum of pundits that we should worry about.
Unfortunately, there are far more conservative pundits than progressive ones:
Conservative pundits: Pat Buchanan, Fred Barnes, John McLaughlin, David Gergen, Robert Novak, William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will, William Safire, Cal Thomas, Jonathon Alter, Joe Klein, Robert J. Samuelson, James Kilpatrick, Rush Limbaugh, and hundreds of other conservative radio talk-show hosts.
Centrists (self-described): Sam Donaldson, Mark Shields, Michael Kinsley, Morton Kondrake, Al Hunt, Jack Germond, Hodding Carter.
Progressive pundits: Jim Hightower (cancelled), Barbara Eirenreich, Molly Ivins.
Conservatives freely admit to this bias themselves. Here's Adam Myerson, editor of the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review:
"[Pundit] journalism today is very different from what it was 10 to 20 years ago. Today, op-ed pages are dominated by conservatives… We have a tremendous amount of conservative opinion, but this creates a problem for those who are interested in a career in journalism after college… If Bill Buckley were to come out of Yale today, nobody would pay much attention to him. He would not be that unusual… because there are probably hundreds of people with those ideas [and] they have already got syndicated columns." (29)
In fact, no one can deny the extreme right-wing bias of the pundit spectrum after listening to talk radio. Conservatives have captured an entire media arm and devoted it almost exclusively to corporate and conservative propaganda. Liberal talk-show hosts are almost non-existent. Conservatives blame this on the low ratings of liberal talk show hosts, but this is a curious argument, since liberals form the largest political school of thought in America. The fact is that corporate owners simply do not promote liberal talk show hosts. When ABC first hired Rush Limbaugh, they spent millions promoting him, ghost-writing his books and arranging appearances on Nightline, The McNeil/Lehrer News Hour and even Phil Donahue. No liberal talk show host has received anything even remotely resembling this kind of promotion. It's just another way that corporations ensure the conservative slant of the media.
The Fairness Doctrine
The United States once had a law which attempted to balance viewpoints in radio and television: the Fairness Doctrine. Created by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, this law required broadcasters to cover controversial issues with some opposing views. It required neither the internal balancing of programs, nor for equal time, nor for all opinions to be heard. It merely prevented broadcasters from airing relentless, one-sided propaganda.
An example of the Fairness Doctrine in action was the ABC movie The Day After. This anti-nuclear war movie angered many conservatives like Henry Kissinger, who believe that the willingness to use nuclear weapons is actually a deterrence to war. However, Kissinger got a chance to respond to the movie on national television, for Nightline followed the movie with a group discussion that included Kissinger and other conservative pundits. The reason why ABC was so even-handed, presenting both a liberal and conservative viewpoint on nuclear war, was because the Fairness Doctrine required them to.
Another example was controversial state ballot measures. The Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to air both viewpoints of any initiative. It is interesting to note that since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987, studies show that the media's treatment of many initiatives has been heavily one-sided. (30)
Why the Fairness Doctrine? Why not just let the market produce what it wants? The market works fine in the case of print media, because almost anyone can afford to print something, even if it's just a flyer. However, this is not the case for radio and television. In the 1920s, the airwaves were unregulated, and became so overcrowded with signals that they jammed each other. The Federal Communication Commission therefore started issueing licenses for broadcasters to use certain radio frequencies. Because the spectrum is so limited, however, there can only be a limited number of broadcasters. Diversity of opinion cannot be achieved by adding more stations, but only by creating it within stations. This is the rationale for the Fairness Doctrine.
Up until the late 1980s, the Fairness Doctrine enjoyed broad popular support, ranging from the left-wing ACLU to the right-wing National Rifle Association and Accuracy In Media. In 1987, Congress considered a bill that would inscribe the Fairness Doctrine in federal law. It passed with overwhelming support in the House (3 to 1) and the Senate (nearly 2 to 1). Even such far-right legislators as Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms voted in favor of it. (31)
Unfortunately, Reagan vetoed the law, and then went a step further: his FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine completely. Reagan had staffed the FCC with corporate media types who were bent on deregulating the media at all costs, and were thus hostile to the Fairness Doctrine. It was the equivalent of letting the fox guard the chicken coop. Shortly afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives were free to take over AM talk radio, without fear of giving equal time to liberals.
Interestingly, media corporations have fought all subsequent attempts by Congress to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine -- a sure sign that they have an incentive to avoid balanced coverage. Rush Limbaugh has gone so far as to slander it the "Hush Rush Law." (In fact, Rush would not be silenced, nor even forced to internally balance his program.) Today, conservatives have done a complete 180 on the Fairness Doctrine: their one-time support has turned into angry opposition.
This speaks volumes about the true bias of the media. It also shows conservative media criticism to be highly incoherent. If the media were truly as liberal as they claim, they would jump at the chance to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, for it would give them a voice they didn't have before. The fact that they oppose it so vigorously proves that they know when they have a good thing, and don't want to give it up.
A solution: public media
The manipulation of the media by the interests that control it proves the need for major reform. There are a number of good suggestions, but by far the best is expanding public media. This is media supported neither by advertisements nor parent corporations, but by the taxpayers themselves. With only the American people to answer to, public journalists are free to investigate businesses as aggressively as they do government. In fact, journalists in public media should be elected, just as politicians are elected. The media prides itself on being the "Fourth Estate" or "fourth branch of government." We should recognize this fact by making it true.
Of course, the private media would be free to continue operating as before. The creation of a truly public media would be just one more player on the block -- but a player that has no secret agenda and is more responsible to the people.
Europe has a much stronger tradition of public media than the U.S., and it has worked superbly for them. In the U.S., our experiment with public media is limited to National Public Radio and National Public Television -- both underfunded, both under severe attack by the Republican party. With the GOP threatening to cut off its funding, NPR has recently backed off its criticism of corporations. It should also be noted that our "public" media depends rather heavily on corporate donations. This is a mistake. Progressives argue that the U.S. should strengthen its public media, and institute reforms that insulate it from all political and economic influence. And only then will we have a media that truly operates "without fear or favor."
While in my car, I tend to listen more and more to progressive talk radio. Those on "conservative" side may label these as "liberal" radio. The link above, I hear it on my home. And this, despite being a member of a Christian church. As much as the conservatives run around siding with politicians opposed to social issues like gay marriage, abortion, and others of that nature -- these issues tend to keep the public blind to what's really going on in this country:
"Class warfare in America"
If you look around, there isn't much talk about this. For the most part, discussion on this topic boils down to.
Is there really class warfare in America?
No, that's not possible. This is America. Anyone can move up and down the social classes. Etc.
But in reality, y'have the members of the uppermost classes in America looking to use their wealth - dumb down the population - and - manipulate the government and information in the media in order to achieve one goal: gain wealth and keep it. Of course, this pattern isn't unique to America. It happens everywhere. And it has happened numerous times in history.
Bottom line: Class warfare IS happening in America. When you hear things like, the upper 5% of America owning at least 50% of the country's wealth, you know that there's something wrong about that. At the same time, CEO's in America nowadays earn roughly 400 times more than a middle class worker. This is unlike the 1980's where CEOs earned a good 20-40 times more than a middle class worker.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ithekro
Mind you that the rolling cycle that is civilization will adjust and correct, and evolve over time. It always has.
On this note, America is on its way down. It is up to its leaders AND its people to prevent that.
I get my news from the Internet, mostly--and mostly from foreign news outlets and blogs. It's as accurate as I can hope for in a world where current events are routinely warped in the name of profit.
One suggestion would be to expand outward (or perhaps downward into the Oceans). You cannot control what you cannot reach.
That was sort of the thinking of various prosecuted groups in Europe in the 1600s and early 1700s. If we can get away from the government so that it takes them months to reach us for anything, we will be "free" of them. Didn't entirely work, and Ocean colonies won't be that far way, but space colonies...those can be months to years away from Earth...even just within our solar system (communications isn't that far away since even radio will make it to the outer planets after a delay. However physical enforcement is difficult on extremely long supply lines.)
One suggestion would be to expand outward (or perhaps downward into the Oceans). You cannot control what you cannot reach.
That's the whole thing about space development. These currently existing models of government all depend upon one thing--the people being stuck in one place.
Develop easy space travel and current models of government will cease to exist; they can't exist, after all, if they can't prevent people from "opting out."
Shame all of this is hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the future.
That's the whole thing about space development. These currently existing models of government all depend upon one thing--the people being stuck in one place.
Develop easy space travel and current models of government will cease to exist; they can't exist, after all, if they can't prevent people from "opting out."
Shame all of this is hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the future.
Expansion won't help. It only delays the problem. Not that I'm against space travel, but I'd rather it be done in the name of exploration, science, and human progress, not conquest and resource plundering controlled by militaristic/corporate governments. We have enough of that problem here on Earth. Space travel with our current system structure would basically be the Gundam story sans giant robots (or maybe with them ).
Humans are like any other species on the planet, we grow in population in proportion to the available resources and land that can sustain that growth. With no real natural predators to cull the population, our biggest enemy is our own destructive impulses. Honestly it's probably a good thing we aren't ready for space yet.
It's not always so maliciously conspiratorial you know. A lot of the people working in the journalism field are just as human and capable of thought and decency as the rest of us. The problem is that we humans are not very good at the big picture thing, and good-intentioned individuals regularly fall into the trap of using the dominant jargon of the day -- which is often shaped by the most skilled and unscrupulous of the spin doctors. Those who set the tone of debate, set the topic of debate, gets to talk about what they want to talk...and often not talk about what they don't want to talk.
"Why are you against fiscal responsibility?"
Instead of, oh,
"Why aren't we cutting down on our military-industrial complex?"
(Cue hysterical laughter from the audience)
So, in effect, in an America where there's a center-right, a right, and a far right so fucking off the charts they might as well call themselves Spartans[1], people of "decent disposition" who prefers to compromise in the "middle ground" compromise somewhere in the right wing of things and congratulate themselves on their balanced perspective and gentility.
One such example would be New York Times columnist David Brooks, who regularly take a "balanced" and "mild" perspective in his editorials. Unlike many of the NYTimes readers who consider him a corporate hack (and they never forgave him for his uncritical support of the Iraq War either), I imagine he is a decent, relatively honest journalist...who probably falsely believes himself a balanced moderate as he allows himself to be repeatedly led by bolder trend-setters of the political fashion of the day who goes, these days, further and further dangerously to the right. He talks of things mildly, decently, reasonably, and utterly misses out regularly on the hypocrisies inherent in the assumptions of the day which he accepts as his own.
There are times when honest souls have to stand against everything their mainstream society consider good. When the Great Compromise of 1850 was reached on the topic of slavery in the United States, it was probably one of the greatest triumphs of the art of moderation and political compromise in American political history [the Great Compromiser Henry Clay himself roused from his deathbed to achieve it], preserving the Union for another decade, and...send thousands of freed blacks back into cruel, horrid slavery, people who had tasted sweet freedom and thought themselves rescued, and set the North on fire with sheer outrage.
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
As I like to say, the political conversation in the US is so far right-shifted you need special goggles to see half of it. I speak as someone who has *WATCHED* it shift right since the 1960s and shake my head to think that Eisenhower, Goldwater, Nixon, and even Reagan would be raving liberals to the "conservative wing" today.
Corporate news has shifted this way since the late 80s when the decision was made that news is "entertainment and a profit center" rather than "a community service required to keep my broadcasting license and it can be reviewed/revoked by the PEOPLE of the community".
I have to check foreign news outlets to get a picture of what is going on in the US anymore. I do have the various PBS news, analysis, documentaries - but the far right is dedicated to stripping the people's funding of a community information channel (despite the fact there's plenty of corporate funding punching holes in what PBS will cover anyway - always watch the funding of any documentary, news, analysis and consider what questions were NOT posed)
I'm sitting here just wondering what options we actually have to stem the tide of this nonsense. Can we do anything? Can we balance the distribution of power somehow?
When a few people have all the power they're going to inevitably be corrupted by it, but it's worse--the few with the power now were corrupt to begin with, and adding more power just makes them more corrupt and more power-hungry...
We proposed once in Political Science to use the then up an coming Internet to form a Fourth Check to the balance system. The People. With the Internet it is possible for everyone to be involved in government. Problem is that people can't spend all that much time on government, their families, and their jobs at the same time. Thus the People via Internet balance on the other three branches of government is tricky or even foolhardy at best. Thiis would have been intended to be a nationwide check on the written laws, budgets, and other things to keep both the politicians, and beauracts in check between elections. It wasn't thought out very well, and was mostly an exercise in a way to change the republic into more of a democracy that so far has not been possible outside of City-States or countries that only consider free, males of a certain age can vote, or perhaps even require military service to be considered a citizen to vote.
I remember reading one of those books about how CBS and the mainstream media was over liberal, it was just an attack on Dan Rather.
Also, while thought provoking, I don't recommend RT as a great foriegn news source. They go out of their way to focus on stories that damn US and US interests and largely ignore stuff that Papa Putin does with real scrutinity. It's not CCTV World but it certainly isn't Al Jazeera or France 24 either.
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Anyways, this is old news.
For corporate US news services, I use the New York Times and Washington Post and CNN's international version (domestic is appauling)
Main sources in order of trust/frequency of usage
BBC
PBS/NPR
France 24
Al Jazeera
Washington Post
New York Times
CNNi
Dude, the Corporation for Pubic Broadcasting is going to get raped to some degree, doesn't matter how many greenwich villagers and San Fransiscans write in (I like PBS and LOVE NPR news but people think that it's for pinkos or rich people). It's going to get cut because, unfortunetly news aside, it's rather out moded and doesn't do anything that cable doesnt do. Not to mention the fact that no one watches it.
Although I believe the pro-corporate and likely pro conservative agenda arguement, I don't pay enough attention to really test it. I stopped commercial media because it treats viewers like idiots, especially cable news and generally does a poor job of covering stories in substansative detail.
Location: 42° 10' N (Latitude) 87° 33' W (Longitude)
Age: 45
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ithekro
We proposed once in Political Science to use the then up an coming Internet to form a Fourth Check to the balance system. The People.
The People, in conjunction with Legis., Exec, and Jud. branches?
I tend to see a balance system on a larger scale consisting of: People, Government, and Business. The common denominator for each of these three branches fall on the flow of money.
However, what is more likely to happen is cable news magnified....or it'll turn into the more traditional Newspaper scene.
Europeans will know what I am talking about, each daily (or news source in general) is the voice of a certain politcal viewpoint or party and coverage will reflect that. That is likely going to continue on the internet as audiences continue to fragment.
Problem is though, I worry about journalistic standards becoming even MORE lax and new sources eventually becoming no better than the PRC's People's Daily only for profit.
That's the blessing and curse of user generated content, ANYONE can post ANYTHING.
@TS: I'm tuned more often to BBC and Al-Jazeera (although the latter has a bit of an activist slant); RT and Fox (and maybe others) are too blatantly biased as they serve the vested interest of influential groups and governments.
However, what is more likely to happen is cable news magnified....or it'll turn into the more traditional Newspaper scene.
Europeans will know what I am talking about, each daily (or news source in general) is the voice of a certain politcal viewpoint or party and coverage will reflect that. That is likely going to continue on the internet as audiences continue to fragment.
Problem is though, I worry about journalistic standards becoming even MORE lax and new sources eventually becoming no better than the PRC's People's Daily only for profit.
That's the blessing and curse of user generated content, ANYONE can post ANYTHING.
Really worried what about the integrity of Journalism, seems like our country doesn't care at all about ethics.
@TS: I'm tuned more often to BBC and Al-Jazeera (although the latter has a bit of an activist slant); RT and Fox (and maybe others) are too blatantly biased as they serve the vested interest of influential groups and governments.
*shakes head*
I wonder why you're an American.
RT, BBC, AL-Jazeera and John Pilger are my main sources for news. I don't see how you can compare RT to fox news in any way; it is a network that usually reports news that most of the world media simply ignores.
Now, I realized myself how the american media is down playing the protests at home. I just did a google search to confirm what I suspected. RT isn't the only source reporting on this issue but I did find the video to be quite good.
As everyone else has been mentioning in this thread, it is old news that the media is owned by corporations and that they influence it. However, I consider that it is important to attempt to determine where this is heading. Is the world going to become completely dominated by CEOs who rule the world as monarchs because they are not elected? Are they going to deregulate and manipulate all of the world's communications, including the internet, in order to brainwash people that government is a problem to then eliminate all forms of regulation?
2011-03-04, 04:00
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