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By Danny Schechter
MediaChannel.org
ST. LOUIS, MO., May
15 — Outside the window was the great Arch of Exploration, St. Louis's national
monument honoring Thomas Jefferson and his patronage of the Lewis and Clark expedition
that mapped out our continent for major change back in the early days of the
18th century.
In these early days of the 21st century, alongside the banks of the same
Mississippi River, two modern day Lewis and Clarks — one a scholar named Robert
McChesney, the other a journalist called John Nichols — invoked the unfinished
promise of Jeffersonian democracy to convene a second National Conference on
Media Reform to energize an emerging
citizens' movement to explore how to take back our media.
The goal: To redirect the most powerful
arsenal of communication technology humanity has ever known away from serving
corporate interests and into the hands of our citizens and public needs.
The organizers had to close the registration early because the aptly named
Millennium Hotel could not accommodate more than the 2,500 people who crammed
into the 50 or more panels and plenaries to hear calls for action and plan
campaigns for media change.
They came from 50 states and 10 countries. They were old and young, white and
black, straight and gay, media consumers and media makers, researchers and
academics, lawyers and activists. In
the words of an earlier exhortation to media combat in the movie Network, they
were "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore." They didn't just
open their windows to shout, but came to the conference to exchange ideas.
There were angry hip-hop activists demanding "media justice" and
senior citizens alarmed about the current
threats
to PBS. There were internet
savvy advocates of municipally owned wireless systems and senior level
"lions of litigation" who believe that the laws and the courts can be
used to safeguard our rights.
There were unknown community media producers and some of the best-known voices
of liberal left media, like radio revolutionaries Al Franken and Amy Goodman;
concerned celebrities like Jim Hightower and Patti Smith; distinguished
broadcasters including Bill Moyers and Phil Donahue; two outspoken FCC
commissioners; several members of Congress; one CPB board member, and probably
even a partridge in a pear tree.
At times, it had the feeling of a revival meeting, not just a rally. It was a
million-word march to end media concentration and open the airwaves to more
diversity of expression. And sure, there were tensions, with younger grassroots
activists feeling frozen out by the grey heads and media movement vets who
dominated the proceedings.
Hundreds of groups that care about media change took part — national groups
from MoveOn to Media Channel, from FAIR to Common Cause, and local groups from
Chicago Media Action to Seattle's Reclaim
the Media and Philadelphia's Media Tank. All gathered under the auspices of Free Press, a
relatively new organization that now claims l83,000 people on its e-mail list.
The small but robust indy TV channels LinkTV and
Free Speech TV, and the emerging news-oriented
International World Television network were also there in a conclave of shared
consciousness. Ditto for the Newspaper Guild, the National Writers Union, AFTRA
and the Screen Actor's Guild. Earlier, organizations that claim to represent 20
million Americans had endorsed a citizens' Bill of Media Rights to lay out principles to guide the kind
of media system that's needed.
Pacifica Radio aired Saturday night's session
nationally, while C-SPAN sent its cameras to record a Sunday morning sermon by
Bill Moyers (mp3 download) on the need for real
journalism on PBS and a real PBS. (He glossed over its many flaws but upheld
the need for a publicly owned and responsible broadcaster in a time of so much
commercialism and corporate media.) Moyers demolished the claims of new
Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson that his on-air
work needed to be "balanced" with new right-wing fare. "I simply
never imagined that any CPB chairman, Democrat or Republican, would cross the
line from resisting White House pressure to carrying it out for the White
House," he said to continuing applause.
As one would expect, the major media downplayed the event when they played it
at all. One of the speakers was so surprised by the intensity of the event that
he blurted out: "I HAD NO IDEA" (that the issue was catching on).
Most of those in the room were progressive activists, even though Bob McChesney
made it clear that he believes that media is everyone's issue and not just a
left or partisan concern. While conservatives were conspicuous by their absence,
one has the sense that an effort will be made soon to reach out to other
constituencies across the partisan divide, even as there was definite
uncertainty on how to do that.
One incident illustrated the tension:
When McChesney asked if the goal was to replace the likes of rightist
cheerleader Rush Limbaugh with liberal funnyman Al Franken of Air America, the
audience cheered loudly to affirm the proposition. It was then left to
McChesney to explain why that was the wrong answer and that media reform will
not prevail unless more constituencies can be reached. The crowd listened
quietly and then cheered this new perspective.
Who was there may be less important than what was discussed in workshops where
there were a great deal of detail and analyses offered – on how to challenge TV
and radio license renewals, promote media literacy, advocate for community
based wireless, use the internet for media work, petition the FCC, critique
media coverage that serves the War in Iraq, and unify media reform concerns
with campaigns for social justice. It was also clear that those assembled
supported indy media-makers. Many films were screened, and there was a packed
room for my "WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception)."
Still missing: an effective follow-up plan to turn all the energy in the rooms
into a more coherent and effective national effort. The focus on grassroots
community-based work has many strengths but also leads to a decentralized
do-your-own-thingism that robs reform efforts of a national focus. Many of the
attendees left St. Louis excited but not totally clear on what comes next.
My own suggestion is to take a clear and marketable umbrella approach akin to
the way the right gathered all of its issues and warring factions under the
banner of the Contract for America (which many progressives called a Contract on
America). We need a post-partisan "Media and Democracy Act of 2005"
to give us a platform to unify around. I ran this idea by FCC Commissioner
Jonathan S. Adelstein, who thought it had promise. I will flesh out in a
subsequent column.
If there is an urgency to turn this million-word march into a movement of
millions of voices, there was one timely local event that drove that home.
The National Conference on Media Reform opened on Thursday with organizer John
Nichols's tribute to St. Louis as the home of journalism role model Joseph
Pulitzer's flagship Post Dispatch, which has served the city for more
than l00 years. The next day, it was
announced that the paper was being sold to a midwestern chain with a dubious
reputation. (The paper had already declined, as a story on a neighborhood
dispute over paving a driveway had more prominence than a story on the
casualties in Iraq.)
While we are meeting, the media monolith is marching itself towards more
concentration and dumbed-down media outlets.
The clock is ticking on Tom Jefferson's democratic vision, which belongs in the
streets, not just in an arch and a
museum.
For more on the conference, visit Freepress.net and
Be the Media, where you can watch some of the sessions.
—
"News Dissector" Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org. His latest film,
"WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception)," on the
media coverage of the Iraq War, was seen at the conference.
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