Arguably the single most important issue in America right now is
the role of the media in determining what we see, what we hear and
thus in shaping an American consciousness.
Arguably the single most important issue in America right now is the role of the media in determining what we see, what we hear and thus in shaping an American consciousness.
What you hear may not be local. Most stations utilize computerized programming generated from remote sites. At times, it is not even possible to break into those programs to sound an emergency alert. Such an event happened when a tank car filled with anhydrous ammonia derailed and ruptured in Minot, N.D., on Jan.18, 2002. One man died and more than 1,000 were injured. The alert was not sounded until more than two hours after the event.
The consolidation of media ownership most observable in radio. In a recent segment of his weekly program NOW on PBS, Bill Moyers reported that “The big daddy of all is Clear Channel Communications 1,200 stations altogether. You folks in Mansfield, Ohio, Clear Channel owns 11 of the 17 radio stations in your town. If you live in Corvallis, Oregon, over half of what you hear is decided by Clear Channel seven of 13 radio stations.”
What Moyers did not say was that most of the programming in Mansfield was identical to that which was heard in Corvallis, and every other community with a Clear Channel monopoly.
The new PBS series “Flashpoints USA” with Glen Ifil and Bryant Gumble focused on this issue for its second program in mid-September. According to their polling, a majority of U.S. residents do not trust the media to be truthful about what they hear.
Talk radio has become the meeting ground for the ultra conservative. It has almost a single voice, either Rush Limbaugh or his less humble imitators like Michael Savage. Those with dissenting views are dismissed rather than listened to.
In the most recent election, television news very early decided that the “story” was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Could another actor win the governorship? Was Arnold up to the task? His celebrity status almost guaranteed that he would have more minutes of media coverage than any other candidate. As the election drew near, the media, and I mean all of them, began to define the race as Arnold vs. Gov. Davis. Bustamante, McClintock and Camejo almost disappeared from the standard news coverage except for the debates and a few spots designed to give each candidate a chance to talk for themselves.
There is an apparent solution to a single viewpoint corporate media. The Internet has given visibility to a wide range of “independent media” who purport to tell you the truth that the corporate media is hiding. Unfortunately, much of the “independent media” has just as much of a political agenda as they claim that corporate media has. The result is that they also are too willing to broadcast stories that are not properly vetted and we get only an opposing un-truth.
Cable television, for all of the early success of CNN, is still trying to find it’s place in the news universe. On the Flashpoints segment, Tom Brokaw opined that “… we created a whole new universe and so the Walter Cronkite planet, the Chet and David planet and the ABC planet suddenly found itself competing with all these new stars and meteors and other things and for people to look into that crowded sky and say, ‘that one works for me, that one’s my lodestar’ means you have to be a little more aggressive as a news consumer.”
Governmental policy has recently turned to allowing further concentration of media. The regulations that are already in place are being ignored by the FCC anyway. A majority of Senators have passed a resolution of opposition to such concentration. The House version is not being allowed to come to a vote. In the opinion of Moyers, “Now the most powerful Republican in Congress Tom Delay, the House Majority Leader won’t allow a vote to happen. The effort to reverse the FCC is dead in the water taking democracy with it. “
What should we, as media consumers, be doing? How can we become “more aggressive as a news consumer” as Brokaw said?
We must continue to read and support local print media such as the Morgan Hill Times. If local newspapers can continue to provide opinion from such diverse viewpoints as Ben Gilmore and myself, you are ensured that there will be someone pointing you to information that you don’t get elsewhere.
We should also turn off corporate media for some period every week just to make sure that we are hearing all sides to a question. PBS provides in depth coverage of a limited number of stories in NOW with Bill Moyers. Morgan Hill Access TV provides an alternative in Free Speech TV most nights on Channel 19. On the Internet, the Common Dreams News Center provides an alternative view of the news that is selected from other sources and is more carefully confirmed than other independent news sources.
Finally, we should let our congressman, Richard Pombo, know that we do not want a monopoly media conglomerate controlling who, when and what we get to know about our world.
“I find I have a great lot to learn – or unlearn. I seem to know far too much and this knowledge obscures the really significant facts, but I am getting on.” – Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Wes Rolley is an artist and concerned citizen. The Board of Contributors is comprised of local writers whose views appear on Tuesdays and Fridays.
