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TechnoratiMedia Reformers: It's the Economy!!
Last weekend's National Conference on Media Reform in Minneapolis was a freewheeling, articulate, committed gathering of activists, policy wonks and everyday citizens dedicated to the idea that there can be no real democracy without a media democracy -- independent reporting from diverse communities free of the interference and spin of government and big business. Perhaps nowhere else can you witness an FCC commissioner like Michael Copps get a rock star standing ovation worthy of Mick Jagger or hear the words, "Common carrier rules are hot!"
Some 3500 assembled to participate in panels and hear a range of speakers that included my colleague Bill Moyers, Senator Byron Dorgan, Center for Internet and Society founder Lawrence Lessig, Naomi Klein, Louise Erdrich and Dan Rather. Participants grappled with mobilizing grass roots movements around such hot button issues as continuing, big media consolidation and net neutrality -- two words perhaps more elegantly phrased as "Internet freedom" -- keeping cyberspace open and accessible to all, regardless of income. As Moyers has pointed out, neutrality sounds too much like Switzerland, and as my colleague Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild, West, says, the notion of fighting for neutrality seems oxymoronic. So, "Internet freedom" it is.
Marty Kaplan, director of the University of Southern California's Norman Lear Center, told those gathered they were a crowd that "may not color inside the lines but sure can connect the dots." Yet as perceptive and informed as attendees were, sadly absent from the weekend's energetic dialogues was any significant discussion of this country's economy, the vast gap between rich and poor, the way gross inequality in such desperate times is being largely ignored by the media, our candidates and the progressive movement.
"The economic crisis is just not that compelling or sexy to the many progressives who are stirred into action by every ugly utterance by Bill O'Reilly," media activist and journalist Danny Schechter writes. "...Cheering on political personalities or mounting one more issue oriented e-mail campaign is certainly easier than confronting the economic and power imbalances caused by the structural conflicts in our economy."
Schechter goes on to quote an executive with the Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank, who describes our current situation as, "A CRISIS OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS." The exec elaborates: "I'm not talking New Testament biblical; I'm talking Old Testament hellfire and brimstone. This is the worst credit crisis we've ever seen."
Thirty-six and a half million Americans -- one in eight Americans, one in six children -- that we KNOW of, because there are no good ways to really measure -- live below the official federal poverty level, $20,000 a year for a family of four. Half of us -- half! -- will have gone through a year or more of poverty by the time we turn. 60.
In contrast, behold the woeful case of Alan Schwartz, former CEO of the now defunct investment bank Bear Stearns. As that company nosedived last year, subprime mortgage hedge funds crashing in flames, Schwartz relinquished his usual annual bonus, which meant that his total compensation for 2007 and the prior four years was a piddling $141 million. Poor guy had to rent out his 7800 square foot house in the New York suburbs and squat at his new, $28 million Manhattan apartment; his seven-acre home in Greenwich, Connecticut; and his Colorado condo. Just a couple of weeks ago, shareholders approved Bear Stearns' merger with JP Morgan, which received $30 billion in taxpayer-funded, federal loan guarantees to take over what little was left.
John McCain says the fundamentals of the economy are strong but admits it's a subject he doesn't know a lot about. He counts among his economic advisors Carly Fiorina, fired chief executive of Hewlett Packard, where you'll recall she was accused of breathtaking mismanagement and street-bully tactics. Of her role in the McCain campaign, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management told The New York Times, "You couldn't pick a worse, non-imprisoned C.E.O. to be your standard-bearer."
Among McCain's other top advisors are John Green and Wayne Berman, who received $720,000 in lobbying fees from Ameriquest Mortgage, one of the noteworthy, predatory lenders in the country's mortgage mess. As the New York Daily News reported this past spring, Ameriquest, which has since been bought out by Citigroup, "was forced to settle suits with 49 states for $325 million. More than 13,680 New York homeowners got taken for a ride by the company, records show."
Barack Obama believes our current economic crisis is "the logical conclusion of a tired and misguided philosophy that has dominated Washington for far too long." Nonetheless, his economic policy director, Jason Furman, has been a defender of Wal-Mart and was director of former treasury secretary Robert Rubin's Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, a group of Wall Street Democrats committed to continuing Bill Clinton's economic doctrine -- i.e., growth based on deficit reduction and free trade.
Until his resignation Wednesday, Obama's team also included Jim Johnson, ex-Mondale chief of staff and former CEO of Fannie Mae, the government-sanctioned banker that buys and resells loans from other banks and lenders. According to the Wall Street Journal, Johnson, who was leading the search for Obama's running mate, was given preferential treatment when he received $2 million in personal loans from one of Fannie Mae's biggest customers, subprime lender Countrywide Financial Services.
A front page story in Wednesday's Washington Post added that Johnson also was "the beneficiary of accounting in which Fannie Mae's earnings were manipulated so that executives could earn larger bonuses. The accounting manipulation for 1998 resulted in the maximum payouts to Fannie Mae's senior executives -- $1.9 million in Johnson's case -- when the company's performance that year would have otherwise resulted in no bonuses at all, according to reports in 2004 and 2006 by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight."
Both candidates need economic advisors untainted by association with corporate interests, folks who know what it's like to have to live on macaroni instead of meat, to spend sleepless nights in subways or shelters, to let diseases like cancer and diabetes gnaw away at a person's insides because they can't afford medicine and doctors. And the media need to tell their stories, not only to make the rest of us aware and stir us to action, but also to validate and empower with Webspace, column inches and airtime the plight of those so afflicted, to bring dignity and gravitas to their predicament. Attention must be paid.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
16 Comments so far
Show Allhttp://johnmcpain.blogspot.com/
RE: The Economy....oust the Federal Reserve! They are a bunch of thieves! If you haven't checked out Ron Paul's take on these deviants, you've been asleep for too long! The FED, World Bank, an IMF are bankrupting the world with their fiat money policies! Cut up your credit cards people, they've suckered you into the debt cycle and thereby made you a slave!
"Just a couple of weeks ago, shareholders approved Bear Stearns' merger with JP Morgan, which received $30 billion in taxpayer-funded, federal loan guarantees to take over what little was left."
Congress, particularly Republicans, are very generous with tax-payer money when it comes to socializing risk for the super wealthy but cringe and try to defeat any bill that would help families whose jobs got shipped out of this country under their pro-elitist watch.
Word has it that Lehman Brothers is going to be the "next" Bear Strearns......so be prepared to watch more wealthy shareholders and CEOs walk-away unscathed while our Congressmen and Senators tell us that Lehman Brothers also falls under the "to-big-to-fail" policy and that tax-payers will be picking up the tab for them as well.
If you believe the real estate bubble crisis is over, check out this article on "Stage Two of the Mortgage Collapse":
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/stage-two-of-the-mortgage-collapse-500-billion-in-pay-option-arms-m...
We have a bunch of complicit misfits running and destroying this country!
luckylefty is absolutely correct -- hunger will do it.
How did we get to such inequality? The best book on the subject could be Robert Kuttner's The Squandering of America.
The neocons have waged a systematic and successful campaign to crush unions, dismantle pensions, cut medical and other benefits, lower wages, cut taxes for the rich and raise the payroll tax on workers.
Democrats have gone along under the guise of fiscal responsibility.
It was not always so. Read the book to get the facts and some perspective on the evil plan. How to fix the mess? Maybe a 1929-style collapse is needed.
"The economic crisis is just not that compelling or sexy to the many progressives..."
THEY AREN'T HUNGRY YET. Compelling? Sexy? Hungry people have different priorities. FUCKING INSULATED WHITE PRIVILEGE. Same fuckers watched millions and millions and millions of us thrown under the bus since 1971 - AND DID NOTHING or they SNEERED. "Well, they just have high school diplomas. Who said they deserved to have a middle class life?" I WAS THERE. I HEARD THEM. Over and over and over.
Progressives have been limp dick incrementalists since COINTELPRO. Progressives succeed by FAILING. One tiny success, 40 years of FAILURE.
THEY JUST AREN'T HUNGRY YET. That's all. Haven't seen the view from under the bus before the wheels crush them. Hungry people have different priorities. When "compelling" and "sexy" stop being the focus of attention, gimme a call. Idiots still believe they're fire proof.
There are many big stories - the economy, the empire, the war, the constitution, the non-establishment opposition, the labor movement, and more - that the media doesn't cover properly. It is interesting that the author found the economy to be such an outstanding omission from discussion. The economy is indeed especially sensitive because it gets close to the heart of what is driving media self-censorship: protecting the interests of the media barons and their cronies. Not just their interests as media owners, but their interests as members of the class that benefits from the Empire, the class whose project it is.
The central and urgent question on media reform is not which particular story is not being covered, but how to end or bypass the practice of all the major news sources colluding to kill - black out - essential news stories, about economics and everything else. That practice is key to keeping the American public passive and uninvolved despite their growing distress, alienation and anger. That is the key to the whole system of "benign repression" that is passed off as democracy.
The blocking of news stories goes across a broad range of topics, and affects the ability of a broad spectrum of people to act in ways that would compromise the ability to manage the Empire and "keep the lid on." Over the last month or so stories that I have followed up on and found to be ignored by all or all of the American networks, the major newspapers and the ISP news services (with the frequent exception of Yahoo!) include: A victory of an organization representing tomato workers in a struggle with Burger King; Ralph Nader declaring for Impeachment on the White House lawn; Ron Paul getting 26% of the vote in Oregon, his best showing yet; Barr's anti-war platform as the winner of the Libertarian nomination; Putin declaring that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons; the Army removing a judge from a major trial of a Guantanamo prisoner after he ruled against the prosecution; Obama declaring that he would scrutinize Bush's fiat laws and strike down any he thinks unconstitutional; House votes to ban pentagon propaganda; and now Kucinich submits articles of impeachment. (More outlets did cover the House voting it to committee however!).
Most of these stories were covered much better in Europe. My cousins in Germany know more about what is happening in the States than do most Americans, without having to dig for it!
The focus of media reform must be on getting the news to flow freely, getting it into the hands of the people in a timely way, beyond the power of the government and the super-rich to block it. Every study of what is happening now, what the dangers are and what can be done, what changed, must have this as its central question. Long term solutions like breaking up media ownership and reinstating FCC accountability are important, but we also need to figure out how to get the news flowing now, this year.
The heart of the problem is creating a demand by tens of millions for real news, an awareness of how seriously they aren't getting it, a belief that it doesn't have to be that way. Under present conditions they aren't very far away by internet, but how to get through? Mass marketing of this and other alternative news sources? Chain mail? Leafleting clubs? (10,000 people committed to get out 1000 leaflets on an alert could distribute 10 million leaflets - that's what they do in Russia and China!) Picketing news headquarters? What? Letters to the editor don't seem to work any more.
The matter is urgent. The Empire is rapidly squeezing off our degrees of freedom. The ability of Obama to win on the issues is in danger, and a loss of the Constitution is in progress. We need to deal with the question of how to get the news out as if our lives depend on it. They indeed may.
The economy will continue to decline until we are bought by China for pennies on the dollar. We'll soon be the cheap labor. And it's the media that is trying to dumb us down. This video is proof.
'economy' is the process of chemically altering and physically re-constructing our planet from natural and liveable to spoiled, ruined, poisoned, unusable and discarded...no one in their right mind would find themselves on a beautiful virginal planet in the midst of nothing but deep space and suggest destroying it to make crap to buy from and sell to one another, yet that is what we're doing...every day that we waste in discussing any issues other than the destruction of our world in the name of industry, consumption and 'economy', and the paramount need to stop, is another day's damage done...Welcome to Garbageworld...
It IS about the economy, which is why you see a push now to privatize the internet. Look at the printing presses in England, beginning during the English Revolution but flourishing during the workers movements in the 19th century. The presses were relatively cheap and workers run papers were everywhere. Then capital got involved, and over time it became increasingly hard to print something without money by capitalists. Once that occurs you have a situation where investors will have increasing control over what information is given to the public. So if something isn't in the investor's self interest then the money isn't handed out. Over time the workers run and controlled presses went away and here we are where capital absolutely dominates the media, and therefore what information the public gets.
We now see papers have continuously lowered readers, so investments there are drying up. So, what's next? The internet, which is the next domain that capital will try to control. If people don't fight back for an open and free democratic internet over time sites like this will be as hard to find as worker run and operated papers of the past.
ClassAct, you have no idea how good it is to hear someone talk about entropy and economics. The search for sources of low entropy, whether it be energy or food is the core of all social conflict. The usage of low sources of entropy and their waste is another, and a growing threat. Economics is so at odds with it that you'd have to say it is THE cause of all the problems. The economy does nothing but grow, while the sources of low entropy stays constant, as does the sink for waste (the environment). As the economy grows the more of the low entropy resources are consumed, the less is available for future generations beyond the sustainable level, yet economics does nothing to capture this fact in prices or national indices. This also has huge implications for social relations, as we in the developing world consume five to six times the resources of the poorer countries.
You must have read Herman Daly or Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.
Here's a little exercise that anyone can go through (well, in about a month or so) to demonstrate the idiocy of Economics.
Go to you local supermarket and purchase one of the bald, red tennis balls that they sell as a tomato. Then get a homegrown tomato, preferably of the heirloom variety, either from your own garden or from someone who grows them.
The difference in the quality of these fruits - in nutrition, aroma, taste, and texture - is almost too great to describe. The supermarket's machine-harvested fruit gives you a mouthful of mealy, flavorless pulp while the homegrown tomato is a genuine gustatory delight which encourages you to eat healthfully and well.
To an economist, however, both tomatoes are exactly the same.
jj
Well, you can tie yourself up in knots arguing about economic theory. And if we wait for it to become a hard science, well, that might never happen or take decades. Are we not supposed to talk about how we are all getting screwed in this economy in the meantime.
The biggest obsticle to any economic discussion is obvious in the details of this article. Look at who all these 'economic advisors' are and what their backgrounds and other interests are. They all represent big corporations and Wall Street.
What's missing. How about someone from ACORN as an economic advisor? Or someone else associated with the living-wage movements from across the country? How about someone who represents ordinary Americans who are trying to figure out how to make ends meet with gas and food and energy prices all skyrocketing, ARM loans resetting and jobs that either disappear or that act like they've never heard the term 'raise'?
The day I see a Democratic candidate surrounded by advisors like that and who is obviously building policies to make life better for ordinary people trying to work and survive, then maybe I'll start paying attention to the Democrats again. But when all their advisors come from Wal-Mart of Wall St. or the crooked mortgage brokers, its pretty damn obvious who's going to have a seat at the table and get the benefits of an Obama Presidency.
I will echo elmysterio about the terminology of "Network Neutrality". At the conference I also heard Byron Dorgan mention that "net neutrality" seemed too boring a phrase and he also suggested using "Internet Freedom". I couldn't disagree strongly enough. Like has been stated above, "net neutrality" has very specific meaning and serves the purpose well.
Two things:
1) The term 'Network Neutrality' has meaning. It means that all networks connected to the internet treats all traffic equally. A VERY important concept. The term 'Internet Freedom' could mean anything. Freedom to exploit even. Silly. Why is it that Americans insist on trotting out the bogus term 'freedom' time and time again when it's lost all meaning.
2) The Economy... yeah, it's in shambles... no surprise due to the hyper-capitalism that the US supports. But don't expect any relief any time soon... The only one's receiving any sort of help are the corporations and the rich... the rest of us? Well, we're expendable.
Realistic discussions of economy cannot happen while there is no recognition that "economics" is a pseudo-science. While all see that the economy is governed by production, no one then goes on to the inevitable corollary, that production is governed by thermodynamics and therefore "economics" must reflect the laws of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics prohibits the concept of surplus, the profits which are supposed to motivate economy. Profits cannot come from transactions but must come from victims. The news story of economy is therefore not the millionaire owner of a new upstart enterprise, but the victims one finds in the gutters. Since the purpose of all media is to attract an audience for advertising, reporting the true story of economy would be the equivalent of newscasters cutting off their noses live on television. There can be no discussion of the "real story" when the facts are disquised by pseudo-science. Reporters might just as well be citing the opinions of astrologers as of economic experts and business commentators – except that the opinions of astrologers would be less nebulous and more readily understood.
This issue is key and I think that the presence of Naomi Klein addressed this on some level. She has been exceptional with connecting much of what we observe (media problems included) and putting them into the greater context of a structural failure of our economic system. The Shock Doctrine is a good example, but she also discusses this in many of her speeches and articles as well.
The author makes a valid point though...it really does need to be discussed with greater frequency. I attended a panel at the conference that did discuss these economic issues. It was on Sunday and dealt with "The Big Picture". The main point were that this problem of Media Reform is simply a symptom of a greater economic disease.
We need to have a very real discussion about the nature of our capitalism and begin using terms such as "market failure". This term is not discussed at all in today's society because too often the market is held at "god-like" status and deemed infallible. Yes, the symptoms need to be treated and focused on, but we need to have these discussions in the greater context of the economic failure of this country.
Interesting article.
This article is also of critical importance to the Media reform movement. It raises the question "What are the Consequences of Foundation Funding of the Media Reform Movement?"
This article is scholarly but not academic!
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=12916