Media Policy Assignment

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EncyclopediaofActivismandSocialJustice-MediaReformMovement.pdf

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Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice

Media Reform Movement

Contributors: Thomas N. Gardner

Edited by: Gary L. Anderson & Kathryn G. Herr

Book Title: Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice

Chapter Title: "Media Reform Movement"

Pub. Date: 2007

Access Date: February 26, 2019

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks

Print ISBN: 9781412918121

Online ISBN: 9781412956215

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412956215.n547

Print pages: 933-934

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online

version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412956215.n547

The modern media reform movement in the United States seeks primarily to counter a growing trend toward the concentration of corporate ownership of mass media outlets. Until 2003, the efforts to stem the tide of media concentration could barely have been called a movement. The policy drift toward removing limits on monopolistic media ownership had been proceeding apace from the 1980s through the 1996 Telecommu- nications Act and into the 2000s largely under the radar of public attention. The public was unaware of the dramatic changes taking place in their media landscape, because those very same media industries had kept the proposed changes out of the news, except for minor treatment in the business press. In 2003, however, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) went too far in seeking to grant major media conglomerates greater freedom to consolidate ownership across the industry. Its proposed rule changes set off a large-scale, grassroots response, organized in large part through the Internet. The campaign to oppose the FCC changes generated more than 2 million cards, e-mails, phone calls, and telegrams to Congress and the FCC. The un- expected popular response, cutting across the political spectrum, forced Congress to roll back some of the FCC's rule changes and put the industry and the FCC on notice that public opinion would have to be taken into account when considering further changes in the structure and regulation of the media industry.

The structure of the broadcast industry is a matter of vital importance to the health of a democratic system. An active citizenry has to be informed and have access to a diversity of opinion in order to make wise decisions about its own governance. By late spring 2003, many Americans were beginning to feel that the mass media had not served them well in the run-up to the Iraq war. Media critics documented how those who opposed the invasion of Iraq were virtually blacklisted from major network and cable talk shows, while the war's supporters dominated the airwaves. It was in this context that the FCC proposed rule changes that would have reduced diversity of views and further centralized media control in the hands of media executives.

Concern over bias in news media and the content of entertainment media as well cut across the political spec- trum. Organizations as diverse as http://MoveOn.org and the National Rifle Association, NOW and the Eagle Forum, organizations from left, right, and center, coalesced on the question of media ownership regulations and the need to avoid monopolistic concentration. These and other groups used their extensive memberships and e-mail lists to mobilize opposition to the new FCC rules. Congressional staffers reported media owner- ship to be the issue ranking second in public communications in 2003, just after the Iraq war.

Not only was the public activism on media ownership rules bipartisan, but its explosive newness got the at- tention of Congress and the FCC. For years, the only parties paying attention to these seemingly arcane rules about the structure of the media industry had been the lobbyists for the media and communication industries and public interest groups such as Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, the Media Access Project, the Center for Media Education, the newer Center for Digital Democracy, and a few media scholars such as Ben Bagdikian, Robert McChesney, Mark Crispin Miller, George Gerbner, Sut Jhally, Susan Douglas, Brian Wilson, Nina Huntemann, and media watchdog groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and Rocky Mountain Media Watch. Ad hoc national formations that came together during the mid- to late 1990s also addressed media ownership concerns. A small working group at the founding convention of the Cultural Environment Movement, founded by the late George Gerbner, proposed a resolution adopted by the confer- ence that anti-trust laws be used to break up media oligopolies. During the same period, two national con- ferences on media and democracy were held, one on each coast, and addressed, in part, growing concerns over media concentration. It wasn't until the regulatory battles of 2003 that the issue gained a national and broad-based momentum.

Robert McChesney, a media scholar who had, with Bagdikian, been a lone voice warning about media con- solidation, joined with journalist John Nichols in calling for a new organization to focus primarily on the issue of media reform. When they began to plan for their first National Conference on Media Reform in Madison, Wis- consin, McChesney said they expected some 200 people. But they had tapped a much deeper well of concern over the media than they had realized. The Independent Media Centers or Indymedia groups, formed to pro- vide their own coverage of the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization and globalization in 1999, had proliferated. Armed with light, digital video cameras, these Indymedia operations could provide firsthand coverage of such events as the massive anti-war protests that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

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Page 2 of 4 Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice

http://moveon.org/

With almost instant digital Web streaming, they gave activists a way to break through the mainstream media's tendency to ignore such protests. Also, the low-power FM radio movement had grown up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Using what was sometimes known as microradio or pirate radio, individuals and groups were setting up their own unlicensed, low-wattage transmitters to provide community-based radio, which they ar- gued was being abandoned by growing national radio behemoths like Clear Channel Communications. There were also many activists who had worked to stop the Iraq war and had been frustrated by the lack of media coverage of their efforts and the major media outlets' tilt toward the George W. Bush administration's drum- beat for war. Organized labor, feeling greatly underrepresented in the corporate media, had also joined the effort to curtail media concentration.

When the National Conference on Media Reform convened in November 2003, John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, participated, along with close to 2,000 people, eight members of Congress, two members of the FCC, Studs Terkel, Al Franken, and, giving a memorable keynote address, Bill Moyers. Organizers knew they had emerged from small workshops at progressive media conferences to the leadership of a real move- ment for media reform. FreePress worked with Consumers Union, Common Cause, http://MoveOn.org, and labor—including Communication Workers and the Newspaper Guild—to keep the pressure on Congress and the FCC, and some of the rule changes were turned back.

When Congress passed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, with virtually no public debate, it changed the en- tire landscape of radio. What had been a very accessible, locally based industry changed over rapidly to one in which a few companies, the largest being Clear Channel with close to 1,300 stations, would dominate the major markets and nationalize homogeneous play lists and programming. Low-power FM operators who tried to fill some of the local void were shut down under pressure from commercial broadcasters, though some were licensed in the last few years of the Clinton-appointed FCC.

After the 2003 media reform revolt, McChesney argues, media companies will never again get away with writ- ing their own regulations behind closed doors beyond the eyes of a watchful and active citizenry. Democracies are known in part by the diversity of their media. Situations in which most of the media are concentrated in the hands of a few owners are most frequently associated with authoritarian regimes. That is why the Allied com- mand sought to break up media monopolies in Germany after World War II. The 1934 Communications Act, which established the Federal Communications Commission, provided that broadcasters serve the “public in- terest, convenience and necessity.” There is now a movement and organizations such as FreePress, which will closely monitor whether that principle is being followed by the FCC and Congress. Media reform groups will press their demands for diversity in ownership, promotion of a stronger and independent public broadcast- ing system, allowance for local and independent media such as low-power FM, cable access, and other forms of more democratic media. All these will continue to drive the media reform movement as new technologies pose new challenges to the need for a media system that serves the country's democratic processes.

Thomas N. Gardner http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412956215.n547 See also

• Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) • Indymedia • Media Activism • Media Literacy • http://MoveOn.org