MEDIA: REFORM MOVEMENT MAKES PROGRESS

The U.S. Media Reform Movement
Going Forward

Robert W. McChesney

Source:http://www.monthlyreview.org/080915mcchesney.php

All social scholarship ultimately is about understanding the world to change it, even if the change we want is to preserve that which we most treasure in the status quo. This is especially and immediately true for political economy of media as a field of study, where research has a direct and important relationship with policies and structures that shape media and communication and influence the course of society. Because of this, too, the political economy of communication has had a direct relationship with policy makers and citizens outside the academy. The work, more than most other areas, cannot survive if it is “academic.” That is why the burgeoning media reform movement in the United States is so important for the field. This is a movement, astonishingly, based almost directly upon core political economic research.

The political economy of media is dedicated to understanding the role of media in societies—e.g., whether the media system on balance encourages or discourages social justice, open governance, and effective participatory democracy. The field also examines how market structures, policies and subsidies, and organizational structures shape and determine the nature of the media system and media content. The entire field is based on the explicit understanding that media systems are not natural or inevitable, but they result from crucial political decisions. These political decisions are not made on a blank slate or a level playing field; they are strongly shaped by the historical and political economic context of any given society at any point in time. We make our own media history, to paraphrase Marx, but not exactly as we please. We do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”

For much of the past century there has been a decided split in the political economy of media between U.S. scholars and those based in almost every other nation in the world. In the United States it generally has been assumed, even by critical scholars devoted to social change, that a profit-driven, advertising-supported corporate media system was the only possible system. The media system reflected the nature of the U.S. political economy, and any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist political economy. Since that was considered unrealistic, even preposterous, the structure of the media system was regarded as inviolable. The circumstances existing and transmitted from the past allowed for no alternative.

Elsewhere in the world, capitalism was seen as having a less solid grasp on any given society, and the political economy was seen as more susceptible to radical reform. Every bit as important, media systems were regarded as the results of policies, and subject to dramatic variation even within a capitalist political economy. In such a context it was more readily grasped that the nature of the media system would influence the broader political decisions about what sort of economy a society might have. In other words, the political economy not only shaped the nature of the media system, the nature of the media system shaped the broader political economy. Scholars and activists were more likely to understand that winning battles to reconstruct the media system were a necessary part of a broader process to create a more just society, even if the exact reforms being fought for were not especially revolutionary in their own right

Click here to continue reading.

MEDIA: PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY RELIES ON TRUST OF MEDIA

Participatory Democracy Relies on Trust of Media

Source: http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/7/2/8/6/pages172862/p172862-1.php

Effects of media distrust on participatory democracy: Media distrust, democratic skepticism, and campaign participations Abstract Serious decline of media trust are thought to represent wide-spread cynicism in American political culture, which results in citizens’ withdrawal from political activities as well as their political inefficacy. However, the linkages between media distrust and decreased political participation might not be self-evident. Rather, citizens’ media distrust may in some part represent healthy skepticism which is related to citizens’ active political participation through their effortful information search and exchange. These ideas are tested with a national survey data on 2004 presidential election. Findings show that media distrust was positively related to citizens’ online information seeking and offline political discussion, which, in turn, affected their diverse campaign participations. These effects of media distrust appear to be channeled through citizens’ communicative participation such as online information search and face-to-face political discussion which then facilitate citizens’ political activities.

Click here for full article.

RECAPTURING THE PROMISE OF ALTERNATIVE RADIO

The following article examines the challenges faced in the struggle to preserve community participatory radio broadcasting in the United States. Community radio in the U.S. has all but been been obliterated by corporate broadcasting effectively buying up the public airways, which are the property of the people and the commons. There are many obstacles to overcome in bringing those airways and community based broadcasting back from the brink in the U.S. The article poses Latin American community radio experiences as a model that could be followed. - Editor

Recapturing the Promise of Alternative Radio: Serving by Letting Others Speak

By Leslie López Source: http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=90

Focusing on Latin American participatory radio, Leslie Lopez highlights the promise that the commons hold for the reinvigoration of democratic values. Democracy requires not just a refraining from greed, but an ongoing, constructive effort to serve the greater good.
.
Alternative radio has, from its inception, tantalized us with its promise of the commons. Bertolt Brecht, back in 1932, fantasized about “the finest possible communications apparatus in public life…if it understood how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a network instead of isolating him.” Today, as we turn increasingly to private non-profits to preserve our dreams of democracy where the public sector has clearly failed us, we should think carefully about what helps those organizations advance toward that promise of shared space, and what pulls them, in Garrett Hardin’s terms, towards the “tragedy” of the commons.

Hardin wrote about the impossibility to legislate “temperance,” and the consequent imperative for people to impose their own restrictions on their freedom to use resources that impinge on the commons. But studying community radio has convinced me that the political economy of democracy requires not just a refraining from greed, but an ongoing, constructive effort to serve the greater good.

Radio and the tragedy of the commons

Certainly, there are plenty of community radio applications of Hardin’s model: the temptation to use public channels as one’s own personal sound machine often proves too great. In the most benign circumstances, given audio equipment in an isolated, sound-proof room, many volunteers experience a failure of imagination and an urge to express themselves at the cost of context. Yet a disturbing social isolation accompanies many radio performances, a simultaneous retreat from community along with an urge to project into it that seems to fit Renato Rosaldo’s description of “imperialist nostalgia:” “people destroy their environment, and then they worship nature.”

I witnessed an extreme example of this, a true tragedy of the commons, in Watsonville, California, where a community’s micro-radio frequency was lost to greed and vanity. About 80% of the population in Watsonville is Mexican, but there are no local broadcast media in Spanish; print options are very limited. After micro radio licenses became legal, an Anglo married couple living on the edge of town, calling themselves Ohana (“Family”) applied for the town’s only micro license, to pursue their mission: to broadcast 100% Hawaiian music. Their application was blocked in the bureaucratic queue by another group: Neltiliztli, a Mexican-American human rights group. When the 2001 amendment to micro radio law was passed, Neltiliztli’s history of unlicensed broadcasting disqualified its application but did not remove it from the queue. The groups agreed to collaborate under Ohana’s name, to build a multi-cultural station, and after Neltiliztli withdrew its application, the license came in the mail.

Six months later, the Ohana couple locked Neltiliztli out of the station under construction, announced they were the sole owners of the station, and proceeded to pursue their dream: a dream of a closed circuit consisting of their home, their own business, and their very own “community” radio station.

Community radio on the defensive

Most first-world community radio projects are a gasp of oxygen in broadcast spectra overflowing with commercialism. But at least in the US they often seem to be on the defensive—and fighting a losing battle—against the progressive retreat from common life. Here, the promise began to pale in the 1970’s, when the Corporation of Public Broadcasting obliged stations to increase their wattage, “professionalism” and operating costs. Acting “rationally,” most stations have amputated their costliest functions—ironically, those that are best served by local radio: news, and live local music. Thus they have foregone their means of knowing their communities, and of expanding local loyalties along with volunteer networks. Despite a lot of hard work, good intentions—and some bright spots—too often community programming is either bland, or smorgasbord and narrow-cast. Syndication brings us the nation’s Left and Liberal super-stars, filling a true need in parched circumstances, but subscription drives seem soul-less as well as all-consuming; and tremendous time and energy is wasted on internal organization issues that never seem to resolve, because the sense of collective mission has been lost.

There are no easy answers for a culture that has forgotten how to serve the common good. However, for ideas we might turn to the kind of radio used by communities struggling against authoritarianism: while poor service is learned behavior, so is good service. Granted, in most rural communities throughout the world, radio teams do not have to cope with the pervasive ethic of personal gain maximization that was already the norm in the US when Hardin was writing. But capitalism and individual survival modes have shaped practices everywhere, not least where poverty and danger press in from all sides. In response, these radios emphasize proactive, participatory programming to build a sense of community and a functional public sphere, diminishing the fear and isolation that have served neo-colonialism so well.

Participatory programming

Latin Americans pioneered participatory programming, inventing a variety of cheap ways to get people’s voices on the air, like neighborhood and rural production committees, and roving correspondents, with or without tape recorders. Because poor and oppressed people often cannot come to the station themselves, radio workers leave the studio, carrying recorders “like key-chains,” expanding the boundaries of journalism to include recordings of life occurring, especially wherever people are challenging the status quo.

Such is the case of Radio Teocelo, located in the central mountains of Veracruz, Mexico. As with many Latin American stations, this institution’s story shows that democratization-by-radio was not simply a matter of building a space and waiting for the people to come. After 15 years of sporadic, uncoordinated programming by volunteers, the Jesuits came to town, bearing systematized techniques to encourage democratic participation from elsewhere in the continent, the centerpiece of which was radio team training. Mario Hernández, now station director, recalled the “human formation” aspect of the training: Everything [was] about service, towards the community, no? They’d say: Remember that here we are servants…We’re not going to sell the listener the request; we’re not going to sell the saludo; we’re their servants, right? If there are two or three people, we should be the third, no?

The Jesuits left, but the service ethic, celebrated after centuries of repression by corrupt authorities, has persisted. Despite pressure from political bosses, across epic organizational splits and a bitter internal lawsuit that lasted a decade, the license has never lapsed. The population has turned out repeatedly to defend the station, and, despite regional economic crises, to support it financially (at near-bankrupt levels).

Seventy years after Brecht, the techniques now exist to be able to use radio proactively, to promote “structures of feeling” and practices that can create or restore the promises that the commons holds for democracy and healthier communities. But contemporary radio publics are at the mercy of the private groups that hold these strategic resources. Those who have elected to staff our community microphones should remind themselves that good media, like democracy, was never created just because someone up above created space for people. And as survivors of authoritarianism can tell us, the failure to serve, and to sustain a functional public, can in fact produce tragedy over time.

Further links
Community radio network
Unmediated

WASHINGTON ATTACKS DIRECT DEMOCRACY

Washington's politicians, especially those who have allowed themselves to become subservient to corporate puppetmasters and their lobbyists, are not prepared to relinquish power to the people by moving towards a more direct democracy, but the people keep organizing in order to achieve that end, in an attempt to increase the power of the popular voice in government.

Technological developments such as cell phones and, above all else, the internet have without a doubt become amazing tools in this effort, providing lines of communication for organizing, networking, and access to alternative media outlets outside of corporate control. Washington has counterattacked by introducing radical measures to monitor citizen's activities on the internet and their phone communications. This provides them with a database which can be used to spy on political opponents within the general population, and also has a chilling effect 0n people's readiness to freely express their political views, because they rightly fear that 'Big Brother' is watching.

Those in Washington have recognized the potential for a surge in popular power that these technologies have unleashed, and are attempting to squelch it as they have successfully done in the past with radio and television. We as citizens need to demand continued free and unfettered access to these new media and the type of information they provide without fear of being spied upon, and without them being regulated and restructured in order to strip them of the potential they have for increasing freedom of political expression and grassroots organizing.

The following article illustrates but one example of how the government is attempting to crack down on political expression in this manner. If those in Washington implementing these measures truly believed that our government is 'of the people, by the people, and for the people,' then they would not lessen our motivation to participate for fear of being spied upon or reprimanded, but instead would inspire us to act against the corrupt and oppressive elements within the government that have usurped power from the people, where the nation's constitution states that it is to be vested. - Editor

Maine Peace Groups Under FBI Scrutiny


(Source: http://www.agrnews.org/?section=archives&cat_id=13&article_id=257&rowx=0 )

Feb. 1- The Maine Civil Liberties Union (MCLU) announced on Feb. 1 that it has uncovered evidence of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) surveillance of the Maine Coalition for Peace and Justice. The FBI responded to a June records request from the MCLU with revelations that it has intercepted and collected past communications from members of the Maine Coalition for Peace and Justice, a statewide organization of individual citizens and Maine group representatives working collectively and nonviolently for social equality, economic justice, direct democracy and regenerative environmental policies.

"Knowing that the government is spying without probable cause on innocent Mainers sends a chilling message to all of us that our conversations are not our own," said Shenna Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union. "Spying on peace activists exercising their First Amendment rights does nothing to make this country safer, but it does make us less free."

In a related matter, the MCLU filed a federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on behalf of local peace activists, protest groups and civil libertarians whose lawful activities may have been monitored by the Pentagon. The move is part of a national ACLU effort to reveal the extent and purpose of Pentagon spying.

The MCLU filed its FOIA request on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee, Maine Program on Youth and Militarism, the Maine Coalition for Peace and Justice and the MCLU itself. The MCLU is seeking the disclosure of all documents maintained by the Department of Defense on the individuals and groups, as well as information on whether the records have been shared with other government agencies.

The national ACLU filed a similar FOIA request on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee, Veterans for Peace, United for Peace and Justice and Greenpeace. ACLU affiliates in Georgia, Rhode Island, Florida, Pennsylvania and California are seeking Pentagon files on local groups.

Activist groups across the country learned through news reports in December that they are listed in the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database. The TALON program was initiated by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in 2003 to track groups and individuals with possible links to terrorism, but the Pentagon has been collecting information on peaceful activists and monitoring anti-war and anti-military recruiting protests throughout the United States. Following public outcry over the domestic spying program, current Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England issued a memorandum on Jan. 13 directing intelligence personnel to receive "refresher training on the policies for collection, retention, dissemination and use of information related to US
persons."

Documents requested by the national ACLU under previous FOIA requests have revealed that the FBI is using its Joint Terrorism Task Forces to gather extensive information about peaceful organizations such as Greenpeace and Food Not Bombs. Earlier this month, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and attorneys against the National Security Agency for illegally intercepting vast quantities of the international telephone and internet communications of US citizens without court approval.

"The Pentagon's monitoring of anti-war protesters is yet another example of a government agency using its powers to spy on law-abiding Americans who criticize US policies," said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the national ACLU. "How can we believe that the National Security Agency is intercepting only al-Qaida phone calls when we have evidence that the government is keeping tabs on peace activists in Maine?"


DBTP Editor - Also see the following article about a new proposed plan to increase even further the governments cyberspace spying programs:


http://www.agrnews.org/?section=archives&cat_id=117&article_id=3333

Participatory Media Supplements Participatory Democracy

The article below gives a great history of media's role(s) in society and demonstrates how more people are publishing nowadays. The expansion of the current wave of popular participation in writing and disseminating information brought on by the internet is imperative both for making our individual voices heard, and for elevating the political consciousness of the general public, which an essential element to their fulfilling their role in a participatory democracy. Diversifying media and diversifying voices are key steps to implementing participatory democracy. People better clarify their arguments, work to report objectively when dealing with the broader public, and begin to get at some truth when they participate more often. Not only is participatory media beneficial to the quality and diversity of reporting, it also stimulates and prepares people to participate and interact in democratic systems. Participatory media can help us to hear dissenting views and come to conclusions only after hearing many opinions and testing our own views on a receptive audience. - Editor

This article provides the history, but we create the future:

http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794156