ALTERNET– “It’s time to move away from thinking of broadcasters as trustees and time to treat them the way that everyone else in this society does, that is, as a business. Television is just another appliance. It’s a toaster with pictures.”

Those were the memorable droppings of a man named Mark Fowler. Ronald Reagan picked him to run the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the U.S.’s poor excuse for a media regulatory body. Echoing a historic Republican theme that “the business of America is business,” he summed up how corporate think had insinuated itself into the work of an agency set up to protect the public interest from corporate self-interest.

Fowler’s candor was expressed back in that watershed year of 1984, an irony that George Orwell, the author of the book that made that year infamous, would have found delicious. Perhaps it is fitting that in a sizzling summer in which folks in our nation’s capital say they feel like they live in a toaster, Mark Fowler has reemerged.

Only this time his name is Michael Powell. And its toaster time again.

Michael is an “SOG,” a 38-year-old Son of a General — Gulf War leader and current Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell the Younger is the current chair of the FCC; according to Brendan Kerner’s informative story in New York’s venerable Village Voice, “If he plays his cards right, he could well become the first African-American president.” Among Powell Jr.’s claims to fame, Kerner writes, is that he is a “younger and brighter version of George W. Bush,” as if that is saying much.

A typical Powellism does to logic what Bush does to language. When asked about the Digital Divide, he quipped: “I think there’s a Mercedes divide. I’d like to have one; I can’t afford one.” His salary is $133,700 a year.

Brace yourself, America. You have been warned.

A Nation Asleep

Most of America is sleeping when it comes to understanding how what we see and hear on TV and radio every day is affected by what a bunch of lawyers decide in a boardroom in Washington. And it is certainly true that arcane talk of the “deployment of the infrastructure” and complicated, Byzantine standards are hard to fathom, much less keep you from dozing.

The media industries understand just how essential control over regulatory bodies is in their bid to aggregate more power. That’s why they spend so much money on political contributions to congressional representatives and senators who sit on regulatory committees, and why, while media jobs are disappearing in outlets worldwide, media lobbyists are building extensions on their patios because of all the work that’s being tossed their way.

These lobbyists are like bagmen spreading manna from media heaven. Media companies gave the Bush campaign over a million dollars, but there is more to it than campaign contributions. They regularly dispense favors, such as a fully paid Paris junket costing $18,910 that recently went to Powell’s patron, Republican Representative Billy Tauzin, a good old boy from Louisiana and chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

But this is chump change compared to how media companies benefit when FCC decisions go their way. A recent example was the gift bestowed by the FCC on Republican Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News practically got Dubya elected (while G.W.B.’s first cousin John Ellis ran some of the right-wing network’s campaign coverage). Murdoch was just given a waiver of cross-ownership rules permitting him to buy two local TV stations in New York, el numero uno media market. This despite his already owning The New York Post, a political pulpit posing as a newspaper. (Rupert’s son Lachlan recently engineered the firing of that paper’s best-known — well, only — liberal columnist, Jack Newfield, replacing him with Victoria Gotti, daughter of jailed Mafia don John Gotti. Is it possible that children, in this case Michael and Lachlan, are even more rabid than their fathers?)

Media-policy monitor Jeff Chester of the Center for Media Education was apoplectic about the FCC’s latest groveling to Murdoch, noting: “What was not said by Chairman Powell in approving this media merger decision was more important than what he said. Powell ignored the merger’s narrowing impact on local voices, the threats to local TV journalism, the giveaway of additional digital beachfront spectrum, and Murdoch’s vital hold in Gemstar and its electronic program guide. Nor was Murdoch’s attempt to further expand his media empire through the acquisition of Direct-TV included in Powell’s analysis.”

In an editorial on the subject, The New York Times (which does not disclose its own ownership of TV stations) deferentially calls for a Congressional “airing” of the issues. It opines gently: “Congress may now wish to explore new ways of ensuring diversity and competition in an industry of fundamental importance to free expression.” Guess they consider it too radical to call for an investigation, which is what is needed, not a mere “airing.” And phrases like “Congress may now wish” and “explore” brings mealy-mouthed liberalism to a new level. Don’t we have enough hot air already?

Today Murdoch, Tomorrow …?

Today, Murdoch is the beneficiary of the FCC’s largesse. According to Chester, in the near future other public interest safeguards may be on the chopping block: “Likely to be either eliminated or fundamentally weakened are the national ownership cap, the local television multiple ownership rule, and the television/newspaper cross-ownership rule. These and other critical public interest rules have come under fierce legal and regulatory attack by such media giants as Viacom, News Corp., Disney, GE/NBC, and AOL-Time Warner.”

Meanwhile, where are the forces with the political will to challenge these giveaways? On Capitol Hill, we have Senator Joe Lieberman, a vice presidential candidate now back to wagging his finger about vice, taking the industry to task for salacious content but avoiding key institutional issues. When so chastised, media moguls typically nod their heads with contrition and “concern,” promise to tighten voluntary standards (the only kind they favor), and then continue to do whatever they want. It’s been like that for years.

This is very tricky ground because it can easily slide into censorship and worse, as hip hop guru Russell Simmons told Lieberman and co. at a Senate hearing dealing with a system for rating entertainment for sex, violence and foul language. (Even though he wasn’t invited to testify, he showed up anyway and was given a hearing.) “I want to make it clear: Most of the people you’re indicting here today are black and are hip hop,” Simmons said. “Some of the songs you may find offensive — protest songs and other songs — are actually a reflection of the reality that needs to be expressed.”

Conservative groups like Brent Bozell’s Parents Television Council rave about the sex and violence polluting our children, but they want the industry to fix it, not the government, calling for more voluntary standards. In testimony to Congress, Bozell said: “No one likes government interference. Parents are outraged over the marketing and availability to children of violent, sexually graphic and vulgar entertainment. Hollywood wants parents to be the gatekeepers of what children watch and listen to. Calls for individual and corporate responsibility continue to increase as our nation looks for reasonable solutions to the cultural crisis at hand.” His solution: more voluntarism.

The industry and its boosters have another mantra: “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it.” Some years back, as part of the disastrous telecommunications “reform” bill of 1996, they went along with a techno-fix, a congressionally mandated “V-chip” added to new TV sets that would allow parents to block objectionable content. What’s happened? According to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation, though 40 percent of American parents now own a TV equipped with a V-chip, only 17 percent of them — or seven percent of all parents — use it. That’s a joke, not a reform. The study adds that more than half of all parents have consulted TV ratings to decide which shows their kids can watch.

I wonder if they would like traffic lights to be voluntary. Sure, the government shouldn’t regulate lyrics, but faith in so-called free markets has ushered in a free market in filth, too. Could music companies and TV networks produce programming that promoted social values like encouraging customers to be citizens as well as consumers and get more involved in trying to improve society and better the world? Of course, they could. Are they? No way. Why? Because they believe that the cruder the content, the higher the return. It’s not true, but why let facts get in the way of their single-minded obsession with profit-making.

So where does this leave us? We can either keep clucking away at how awful it all is or get engaged in bringing other voices to the table and building a constituency for media reform. There are still three years to go before they may be playing “Hail to the Chief” to FCC wunderkind Michael Powell. That’s not a lot of time.

Danny Schechter is the executive editor of MediaChannel.org. His latest book is “News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics, 1960-2000,” from Akashic Books.

© ALTERNET 2001

MEDIA MOUSE– With greater awareness about the role that corporate media plays in the public’s understanding of issues like war, the economy and other public policy matters, it is important to investigate the role that former President Bill Clinton played in shaping the media landscape. Clinton, who will be speaking in West Michigan at the Economics Club of Grand Rapids annual dinner on June 18, signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a major change in media regulations.

According to Jeff Chester in his book Digital Destiny deregulation of the media was part of the plan early on with Clinton, who stated “we will support removal of judicial and legislative restrictions on all types of telecommunications companies: cable, telephone, utilities, television and satellite. Market forces replace regulations and judicial models that are no longer appropriate.” This was not just rhetoric for Clinton, but a mandate that was embodied with the passing of the 1996 Tele-Communications Act. Media Scholar Bob McChesney calls the 1996 Tele-Com Act one of the most anti-democratic pieces of legislation passed in the 20th century. Here is a summary of what the 1996 Tele-Com Act changed:

• Lifted the limit on how many radio stations one company could own. The cap had been set at 40 stations. It made possible the creation of radio giants like Clear Channel, with more than 1,200 stations, and led to a substantial drop in the number of minority station owners, homogenization of play lists, and less local news.

• Lifted from 12 the number of local TV stations any one corporation could own, and expanded the limit on audience reach. One company had been allowed to own stations that reached up to a quarter of U.S. TV households. The Act raised that national cap to 35 percent. These changes spurred huge media mergers and greatly increased media concentration. Together, just five companies – Viacom, the parent of CBS, Disney, owner of ABC, News Corp, NBC and AOL, owner of Time Warner, now control 75 percent of all prime-time viewing.

• The Act deregulated cable rates. Between 1996 and 2003, those rates have skyrocketed, increasing by nearly 50 percent.

• The Act permitted the FCC to ease cable-broadcast cross-ownership rules. As cable systems increased the number of channels, the broadcast networks aggressively expanded their ownership of cable networks with the largest audiences. Ninety percent of the top 50 cable stations are owned by the same parent companies that own the broadcast networks, challenging the notion that cable is any real source of competition.

• The Act gave broadcasters, for free, valuable digital TV licenses that could have brought in up to $70 billion to the federal treasury if they had been auctioned off. Broadcasters, who claimed they deserved these free licenses because they serve the public, have largely ignored their public interest obligations, failing to provide substantive local news and public affairs reporting and coverage of congressional, local and state elections.

• The Act reduced broadcasters’ accountability to the public by extending the term of a broadcast license from five to eight years, and made it more difficult for citizens to challenge those license renewals.

The consequences from the 1996 Tele-Com Act have been far reaching and continue to impact the American public, as is documented well in a Common Cause report entitled “The Fallout from the 1996 Telecommunication Act.” One of the consequences of the 1996 Tele-Com Act has been the reduction in female and minority ownership of media, which has also resulted in a decrease in women’s and minority voices in news coverage.

One more important outcome of the Clinton administration’s passage of the 1996 Tele-Com Act has been the ongoing relationship between the telecom industry and the Democrats. According to the Center for Public Integrity, from 1998-2004 the Democrats received over $82 million from the telecom industry and the Republicans just over $63 million. In the same way that Clinton’s support of NAFTA, the war in Iraq, and welfare reform have been a detriment to working people, media deregulation under Clinton has only benefited big business.

© MEDIA MOUSE 2007