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TechnoratiThe press is missing a chance to examine where the remaining presidential candidates stand on media policy, especially issues before the Federal Communications Commission.
So far, the press corps has whiffed on a media-policy softball served up by The New York Times last week.
Instead, the smell of a sex scandal was too irresistible for the cable-news networks. And the printed press was obsessed with the question - albeit a legitimate one - of The Times' execution of the story, which alleged that John McCain had an improper relationship with a telecommunications lobbyist while heading the Senate Commerce Committee - the committee with oversight of the FCC.
The story's merits deserve a good and worthy discussion. Unfortunately, the heated debate has squeezed out any legitimate issues raised by The Times. The article gave readers a glimpse of how the FCC might look and work in a McCain presidency.
What emerges from the piece, once the distractions of unnamed sources and suggestions of an affair are thatched back, is disturbing. McCain used his considerable power as chairman of the Commerce Committee to force the FCC into approving the sale of a Pittsburgh television station to a major contributor in his 2000 presidential campaign.
McCain's actions while Commerce Committee chairman were not new revelations. The Boston Globe reported in 2000 how McCain received significant donations from companies with business before the FCC after he wrote letters urging the commission to act.
Lobbyists and donors snuggling up to politicians is not new, rare or shocking. McCain has further to fall, though. He has branded himself as a fighter against the influence of special interests in politics.
McCain's close relations with the corporations that had business before the regulatory agency he oversaw is troublesome. It raises questions as to who will head the agency in a McCain administration, and what will be tolerated.
The next president has a chance to reshape the FCC. For too long the agency has chipped away - or gutted - rules essential to democracy. A good example is what happened to the cross-ownership rules, which forbade a company from owning a newspaper, broadcast outlet and an Internet service provider in the same market. The ban has been under heavy fire from the past two FCC chairmen. The FCC changed the rules late last year, allowing for massive media consolidation. The rule change is a serious threat to what is left of the United States' independent press.
The commission's failures do not stop with media-ownership issues. The FCC has allowed telecommunication and cable companies to swallow the competition, and abuse consumers.
The FCC is a partisan body pegged to the White House. Three seats for the party that holds the presidency, two for second place. Many of the issues dealt with by the commission are nonpartisan, or should be.
It cannot be assumed that because McCain is a Republican that he will do worse by the FCC than a Democrat.
Hillary Rodham Clinton has rarely brought up media policy during the campaign, and has been unimpressive when the topic does arise. According to The New York Times, a voter in Iowa asked her about media consolidation and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
She gave a classic non-answer: "I'm not saying anything against any company in particular. I just want to see more competition, especially in the same markets."
So far, Barack Obama has inspired the most confidence. He favors network neutrality and is for a dispersed press. He has sponsored a bill to try and force the FCC to step away from its lifting of the cross-ownership ban. Obama also said he will appoint commissioners who are in line with his views.
This is an important election for the FCC. The public deserves a commission filled with people who can grasp the rapidly-changing media, yet understand the historical and structural importance of the press and media to our democratic system.
It is time the press divert its attention from speculation over an affair and focus on the candidates' vision for one of America's most important regulatory agencies.
Ryan Blethen's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
14 Comments so far
Show AllAnother excellent suggestion, this time from kokuaguy, though free candidate time would come about much less through the FCC than through legislation, as likewise would a complete overhaul of PBS. To be clear, they are not mutually exclusive solutions either. We can and must demand both.
The odds are greater at this juncture that commercial broadcasters could be made to adequately fund non-partisan candidate free time vs. "liberal" (read: informational) public media. (Later, we will also be able to require corporate media to fund part of public media.)
An informed democracy is clearly necessary to advance any progressive agenda. When the next administration comes out of the starting gate, after a withdrawal schedule from Iraq, habeas corpus and such, must follow election reforms (free time, paper trail) and structural media reforms, including public media reforms, and, god forbid if it still hasn't been codified by then, internet freedom.
If we've learned nothing else in recent years it's that we require a democracy that is non-discriminatory, informed, and engaged. Or we will have none of these things. And little else.
Those first few months of 2009 will be the best time to agitate most heavily for such changes. Let's hope people don't instead slip back into their mediated hazes.
The last time I heard anyone mention the most important FCC action that could possibly be taken was during the Clinton. Requiring all media to give free airtime to the candidates was being taken seriously back then, and it is the best and most easily accomplished reform I've heard of. Let's ask Clinton, Obama, and McCain about that.
mike in honolulu
loose ends:
I wish I had seen the station that is the real subject of the article - WQEX-TV - in its heyday. Clarification - it was noncommercial for fifty years, but was dereserved - made commercial - in 2004 by the FCC at the request of parent pubcaster WQED which claimed extreme financial hardship. WQEX now broadcasts home shopping on a leased basis:
http://www.current.org/cm/cm0406wqed.shtml
More about the demise of public station WQEX is available in the book "Air wars: the fight to reclaim public broadcasting".
As for what the public can do to fix public media, we will find out best via the leadership of Common Cause, whose founder John Gardner also had a great deal to do with the creation of PBS. CC seems to understand best the severity of PBS's flaws and what to do to fix it.
Beyond ensuring an open internet, we must rebuild expansive, common, trusted spaces, like those historically provided by public broadcasting, for the digital age. What we have now on the web is democratizing to a degree, but with precious little exception, it is a bunch of distinctly segmented, mostly small forums composed of like minded people preaching to their respective choirs. Contrary to the somewhat overused phrase "democratizing effects of the internet", THAT is NOT what democracy looks like.
Put another way, we've got lots of internet now. How come we don't have lots of democracy yet?
Public referenda of sorts (town halls on public broadcasting and the digital age) are indeed part of the cure. The deadline is however fast approaching: Feb. 18th, 2009 to be exact. If we do nothing to permanently fund a massively restuctured U.S. public media system by that date, the multi billions in auction revenue from the returned analog channels will slip through our hands - for debt reduction - in the largest single public interest theft in the history of telecommunications. Assuming, that is, that we have codified internet freedom (net neutrality) by then.
again, my essay on the need for new funding and governance structure for pbs:
http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/15637
Oh. And good point about Imus and Stern. And FCC Commissioner Copps, most likely the next next FCC chairman, is the real thing, a progressive.
Howard Stern is a foul pig and doesn't belong on the public airwaves when any small child might hear him. If people want to pay for crap like his show on a subscribed channel fine. Rush, Hannity, O'Reily and many others are allowed to present lies as fact on the public airwaves, without correction or responsible opposing viewpoints. Many broadcasters have advocated violence and personally insulted people in an irresponsible manner, but only Imus was blasted and punished for what he said.
It seems as if your political viewpoint can be a shelter for rude and irresponsible broadcasting. Imus and Stern are also loose cannons politically. That sure looks like why they were singled out.
rtdrury said:
"This is a public that doesn't feel entitled to the airwaves, and if it did, wouldn't know how to recapture them."
We can recapture the airwaves by having a binding public referendum on this issue. The politicians won't do it because it makes them obsolete. Maybe a well known organization could start one. Any suggestions?
This is a public that doesn't feel entitled to the airwaves, and if it did, wouldn't know how to recapture them. The public might have a clue if its academic and entertainment media presented compelling stories more often that illustrated the issue, and promoted less of the lowest denominator noise and propaganda.
And the corporate news media never bothers to relay high quality information on the issue to the audience. Just take a look at the article above. Positions of various power players are enthusiastically reported. But the hard core information on the hows and whys of policies are nowhere to be found. The reader learns almost nothing on the issue from the typical corporate media article. A small paragraph could be very helpful.
How is NBC running a channel owned by a PBS station legal, even in these times?
Oh my God, is that what happened to WQEX. I grew up in Pittsburgh; I loved WQEX. 10 or so years ago my parents told me it went off the air. I didn't know it became a shopping channel. They had a treasury of older English and even Australian Sit-Coms and Dramas. Some stuff that hasn't even made it to DVD yet. They showed old PBS Documentaries, even the occasional independent documentary. They had local news talk shows, rare old films, even subtitled foreign films all without commercials or interruptions. They also had a legendary going off the air video with a WQEX employee going home from work, almost getting mugged, and then the muggers see his ID tag and say, "You're from QEX? Love Eastenders dude,", then they walk off into the night with JUST LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE playing in the background; later they changed the sign off and filled it with local celebrities. This was the best TV channel ever. If it had just gone off the air it would have been sad, but this is Criminal. I feel like a part of me has died. I have a lot to say about the conglomeration of media, the commercialization of PBS, and the corruption of the FCC, but right now I feel this need to pay homage to the great WQEX, and it was GREAT.
The worst part of this story is rarely emphasized: the Pittsburgh station in question - WQEX-TV - has been reserved by the FCC as a non-commercial educational frequency for some 50 years. But take a look now - here is the channel's page at "noncommercial" "public" parent station WQED-TV:
http://www.wqed.org/wqex/index.shtml
WQEX has been a home shopping channel for the last few years. The real story therefore is the arrogance shown by McCain, all his telecom lobbyist pals, Pittsburgh's public broadcasters, and most of our government over the years in attempting to control and strangle public TV, and in this case almost totally eliminate a so-called "public" station.
This is all so because if we are ever to hold a real public discussion about public broadcasting in the digital age, we will have to address things like creating a large permanent public media trust with auction revenue from the many billions of dollars worth of analog TV channels being returned to the public coffers next February. (That's when we switch completely to the new digital broadcasting channels.) That public conversation will also have to address the fact that the public, when apprised of the option, will likely choose to have public TV boards publicly elected, just as a great many library, school, and sewer district boards are chosen.
Essay: http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/15637
Paddy Chafesky was more than prescient when he opined about the power of television and mass media in his masterwork, "Network." As long as it is o.k. for news models and such to spout such phrases as "our air," and for the FCC to act as corporate proxy whom occasionally made a show of enforcement by fining Howard Stern, then the current rotten state of affairs will continue. Until the public demand that the actual legal concept of the law that established the FCC, which stated that the airwaves belong to the public and the FCC grants commercial broadcasters the right to use them "in the public trust," then all that happens is impotent sturm und drang.
So what are you saying, it isn't only teacher who will get fired for telling the truth? Yeah, yeah I know ....what can we the people do about it? Get in line and do as we're told....be good little consumers and don't worry cause 'Big Brother' knows what is best for you. aaahhh to sleep per chance to dream
Amen willo . . . .
"The press is missing a chance to examine where the remaining presidential candidates stand on media policy"
If they cover a story like this in an objective manner the know they soon wouldn't have job's. Would you do something at work that would destroy your career? Most of them won't go near it. It's a bad situation. I wish we had true freedom of the press where a reporter could say what they want without being fired.