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
