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Let’s Stop Big Media’s (B)AD Behavior
Over the years we’ve been reporting on how power is monopolized by the powerful. How corporate lobbyists, for example, far outnumber members of Congress. And how the politicians are so eager to do the bidding of donors that they allow those lobbyists to dictate the law of the land and make a farce of democracy. What we have is much closer to plutocracy, where the massive concentration of wealth at the top is protects and perpetuates itself by controlling the ends and means of politics. This is why so many of us despair over fixing what’s wrong: we elect representatives to change things, and once in office they wind up serving the deep-pocketed donors who put up the money to keep change from happening at all.
The media companies and their local stations – including goliaths like CBS and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp – stand to pull in as much as $3 billion this year from political ads. Three billion dollars! And most of that money will pay for airing ugly, toxic negative ads that use special effects, snide jokes and flat out deception to take us to the lowest common denominator of politics. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)
Here’s the latest case in point. The airwaves belong to all of us, right? They’re part of “the commons” that in theory no private interest should be able to buy or control. Nonetheless, government long ago allowed television and radio stations to use the airwaves for commercial purposes, and the advertising revenues have made those companies fabulously rich. But part of the deal was that in return for the privilege of reaping a fortune they would respect the public interest in a variety of ways, including covering the local news important to our communities. If they didn’t, they would be denied their license to use the airwaves at all.
Alas, over the years, through one ruse or another, the public has been shafted. We heard the other day of a candidate for office in a Midwest state who complained to the general manager of a TV station that his campaign was not getting any news coverage. “You want coverage?” the broadcaster replied. “Buy some ads and then we’ll talk!”
That pretty well sums up the game. But hold your nose: it gets worse. The media companies and their local stations – including goliaths like CBS and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp – stand to pull in as much as $3 billion this year from political ads. Three billion dollars! And most of that money will pay for airing ugly, toxic negative ads that use special effects, snide jokes and flat out deception to take us to the lowest common denominator of politics.
The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, which is supposed to make sure the broadcasters don’t completely get away with highway or, rather, airwave robbery has proposed to the broadcasting cartel that stations post on the Web the names of the billionaires, and front organizations – many of them super PACs — paying for campaign ads. It’s simplicity itself: give citizens access online to find out quickly and directly who’s buying our elections. Hardly an unreasonable request, given how much cash the broadcasters make from their free use of the airwaves.
But the broadcasting industry’s response has been a simple, declarative “Not on your life!” It would cost too much money, they claim. Speaking on their behalf, Robert McDowell, currently the only Republican commissioner on the FCC – the other one left to take a job with media monolith Comcast — said the proposal is likely “to be a jobs destroyer” by distracting station employees from doing their regular work. The party line also has been sounded by Jerald Fritz, senior vice president of Allbritton Communications, who told the FCC that making the information available on the Internet “would ultimately lead to a Soviet-style standardization of the way advertising should be sold as determined by the government.” We’re not making this up.
Steven Waldman, who was lead author of the report that led to the FCC’s online proposal, quotes a letter from the deans of twelve of our best journalism schools: “Broadcast news organizations depend on, and consistently call for, robust open-record regimes for the institutions they cover; it seems hypocritical for broadcasters to oppose applying the same principles to themselves.”
Hypocritical, but consistent with a business that values the almighty dollar over public service. The industry leaves nothing to chance. Through its control of the House of Representatives, it got a piece of legislation passed this past week euphemistically titled the FCC Process Reform Act. George Orwell must be spinning in his grave – this isn’t reform, it’s evisceration.
Not only does the bill remove roadblocks to more media mergers – further reducing competition – it would subject every new rule and every FCC analysis of that rule to years of paper work and judicial review, enabling the industry’s horde of lawyers and lobbyists, “to throw sand in the works at every opportunity” as one expert puts it. There was a noble attempt by California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo to include in this bill an amendment that, like the FCC proposal, called for stations to post on-line who’s putting up the big bucks for political ads. Shocker — it was rejected. Score another one for the plutocrats.
There is some good news. The White House opposes this latest bid by the broadcasting oligarchy to further eviscerate the public interest. And the fate of the House bill in the Senate is uncertain at best. In the meantime, as far as those political ads go, we’re not totally helpless. Here’s what you can do: Under current law, local television stations still have to keep paper files of who’s paying for these political ads, and they have to make those files available to the public if requested. You can even make copies to take away with you. So just go down to your nearest station, politely ask for the records, and then send the data online to the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative or to the organization of investigative journalists called ProPublica. Both have mounted campaigns to get the information online.
Each is pulling together all the information on political ads they get from you and others — crowdsourcing — and making it available to the entire country via the Internet. If you’re a high school teacher or college professor of journalism, have your students do it and maybe give them classroom credit for collecting the data democracy needs to work.
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13 Comments so far
Show AllMore people will be affected by the toxic ad then will bother to look up who paid for it. A cute little bandaid on a festering wound.
Exactly like every other federal agency that is supposed to regulate an industry, the FCC has been completely taken over by industry, and they no longer act in the public interest. It will continue to be this way as long as money controls politics. The US has become a thoroughgoing plutocracy and is rapidly heading toward full blown fascism. Don't hold your breath for change.
Jim Shea
Effort should not to be wasted fighting over the lists of campaign donors.
This is but a symptom of the real disease.
All energy should be focused on ripping the broadcast licenses from the talons of the media megaliths who have stolen them from the public via well priced bribes with the FCC and its political party bosses.
Those broadcast licenses and the spectrum they entitle belong to the public not Disney, Comcast, Fox or Cumulus.
Occupation of the broadcast centers with the non-negotiable demand of license revocation should be of primary order.
Even in the age of the internet the public airwaves are still the only means to reach tens of millions of Americans, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.
This is the amount of exposure necessary to affect and inform the public mind.
We can either leave that awesome power in the hands of the warmongering, bank robbing, safety net destroying media corporations or we can claim it back for the public good.
-----------------
Whoever controls the media controls the country. Period.
The public interest is no longer an important consideration in serious policy decisions being made in America by its corrupt political, economic and media elite and the country is being destroyed by the massive corruption of the congress, the presidency and the supreme court and now there is open war on women, blacks, the poor ,unions and minorities led by the ignorant south which has completed its takeover of the republican party and has inspired hateful morons all over the country. They have formed a poisonous coalition with greedy wall street criminals and their servants in congress to weaken the federal government so they can return to the glory days of states rights.
The truly obscene bit about this whole thing is that by law, the airwaves belong to the public and broadcasters are granted licenses to use them. Thus whenever any on-air talent is spewing 'our air,' they are lying. Simply put, a certain amount of air time each day should be provided to all candidates for free as a price of holding said licenses. It would eliminate a major cost center for candidates, and should be considered as a cost of doing business for broadcasters. Needless to write, this is not about to happen as there are very powerful forces who would be facing the loss of influence and money.
As a case in point, media coverage of the healthcare crisis before the Supreme Court today has consistenly used the term "individual mandate" to discuss the legal issue instead of "public option," which is where the actual issue lies -- no "public option" is being offered while the public is legally constrained to buy an "individual mandate" which is, in fact, a "private option." The wealthy learned from Ivy Lee, Edward Bernays, and others that media can be used to brainwash the public into abandoning their own interests under the delusion that they are employing "reason" and "principles." As our legislators enjoy guaranteed healthcare, they debate the "principles" of offering healthcare to the public while everyone ignores the fact that to apply a principle for others but not to oneself means that one holds no principles whatsoever.
Thanks Bill and Michael, I thought these broadcasters paid a licensing fee? Wondering how much if any? Licensing does require certains standards that have been removed by the money of lobbyists?
"just go down to your nearest [TV] station, politely ask for the records, and then send the data online to the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative or to the organization of investigative journalists called ProPublica."
And while you are at it, request information on underwriters, underwriting ads and NPR salaries from your nearby "public" (NPR) radio station ( which Moyers is "curiously" silent about (after drawing a salary from CPB for all those years)
"The airwaves belong to all of us, right? "
Yes.
Remember that the next time NPR blankets the airwaves with requests for dollars and requests to flood Congress with "opinions" on NPR (knowing full well that the majority of the listeners who do bother to contact Congress will tell them to keep it on the air).
for any who think I am some sort of Republican NPR basher, I can just say that you are certainly entitled to your opinion.. but you could not be more wrong.
And NPR is certainly not what it claims to be: a "public" station.
But don't take my word for it.
read some of the first rate analysis that Matthew Murray has done on his blog "NPRCheck" (google it)
And be sure to read some of NPR's pieces on the "wonders of fracking" -- run simultaneously (and on the very same page on their website!), as it were, with underwriting ads from ANGA (America's natural gas alliance)
What you discover may surprise you (or maybe not)
Here's yet another independent confirmation of what Matthew Murrey has documented on NPRCheck.
http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7179:public-media-joins-gang-greens-in-colluding-with-frackers
Moyers may not realize it, but he is really undermining his own credibility when he continually levels criticism against "Big media" (ie, "mainstream media") but conveniently excludes so-called "public" media like NPR (which,, hilariously, even the former NPR Ombudsman (Shepard) called "mainstream":
"I've said it before, and I will reiterate it. NPR is a mainstream news outlet."
November 2, 2009
That statement just makes Moyers' exclusion of NPR from criticism look foolish at best and dishonest, at worst.
Remember rearend ronnie reagan disappearing the Fairness Doctrine? One of my senators does. I once wrote him to ask why not reinstate the fairness doctrine and he replied that it would interfere with a company's revenues(meaning the M$M was not the people's anymore). That was just the beginning of the end of requiring differing views being broadcast for people to at the least educate themselves by other's side of the story which in too many instances would actually be more correct that the tripe the NEW M$M pumps out to us. That began the commercialization of the M$M of only one voice being heard, MONEY.
Remember the FCC act slick willie signed into law? That was the grand jesture of GIVING all the public owned broadband to the M$M, $70,000,000,000.00 worth. That sealed the deal and gave total ownership to just 4 or 5 owners of the NEW M$M. Neoconservative owners who keep a well paid fine watch on what and how information is doled out to the now well fertilized M$M garden. I believe I will write BOTH my senators as to why can't the Fairness Doctrine be reinstated for all to hear differing views. Bet I already know the answer though.
So with that in mind, just how would anyone propose to take the privately owned M$M back or away from those most despicable owners and get it back into the hands of the public? Not by selling more ads, that's for sure. Nothing like two american presidents(one a rethug and the other a dimocrat) selling out the public just to enrich and place control of one of democracy's most important tools, the source of information. Not only are those irresponsible, but the whole of the 'intelligence of a culture' have given away something they don't even realize they really need.
"So just go down to your nearest station, politely ask for the records, and then send the data online to the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative or to the organization of investigative journalists called ProPublica....making it available to the entire country via the Internet. If you’re a high school teacher or college professor of journalism, have your students do it and maybe give them classroom credit..."
What?!?!?! DO something intead of just crabbing about the situation?
I do wonder, however, whether it would put teachers in a precarious position to use their students in a political cause. All is well if the parents or administration agree with the teacher's position. But the teacher is in an extremely vulnerable position if either hold a different view.
The level of corruption is going to equate to the level of fossil energy consumption. As long as you keep the petro-opiates flowing, the excuse mill will keep the shiny new excuses rolling off the line. This has been true for the great majority of Merkans, particularly those at the "supply" end of the influence chain, who are so stoned they don't know what they are doing. Only when you shut off the opiate supply, or the elites overextend themselves somehow, will the people come to their senses. The big news of the day is that the elites have apparently overextended themselves enough now, given that the people are abandoning the elites in droves, and taking a walk on the far left side, finally. This is why the elites are frantic, and cannot contain their excrement, today.