Second, is an evaluation of elements that shape the media, journalism, "occupational sociology," news and entertainment content - market structures, advertising, labor relations, profit issues, technologies and government policies.
Together, these two components give the field its "distinction and dynamism." That was missing during the 1960s and 1970s critical juncture period. It made its position precarious in the 1980s when leftist voices lost out and official culture "dynamism" veered right. Progressive social change prospects couldn't be bleaker at the time, and neoliberal change made things worse from then to the new millennium. Margaret Thatcher's dictum applied and still does - "There is no alternative (TINA)" with bureaucratic governments the enemies of progress. It was "the end of history" the way those on the right called it and wrote about in bestselling books.
McChesney notes that people on the left and right agreed that "the media system was inexorably attached to corporate capitalism (and that) leftward change (was) unthinkable" for the great majority who went along to get along. Earlier political economy dynamism "lost its mojo", and university administrators disparaged it. It went against the dominant grain and threatened to undermine funding ties to industry. The result was a weak curriculum, fewer jobs, and a poor career choice option in the academy for ambitious young graduate students. By the 1990s, "the political economy of communication was a nonstarter in American communications departments." McChesney called this a "grand irony - in the Information Age" at a time communication as a discipline needed the emergence of political economy as a cornerstone of the field.
Nonetheless, with precious little support and a hostile political environment, a surprising amount of top research was produced from scholars like Smythe, Schiller, Chomsky, Herman and others. They believed it was vital to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. Particularly striking was the critique of journalism at the time as a key to understanding the relationship between the media and politics. Two landmark books stood out - Ben Bagdikian's Media Monopoly in 1983 and Herman and Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent in 1988 (already mentioned). Their importance was that both "fundamentally changed the way the news media were regarded" among activists and the greater public. Bagdikian quantified the extent of media concentration but also foretold how journalism would be downsized and fundamentally corrupted.
Manufacturing Consent showed how elite interests control content and use it as a propaganda and anti-democratic tool. It demolished the notion that journalism is neutral and highlighted how controlled it is. The result today is stunning. Journalism has been co-opted, corrupted, and gutted; investigative reporting is practically extinct; political and international reporting has deteriorated; and localism has collapsed. Seventeen years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer had 46 city reporters. Today it has 24. The Washington Post wrote how state of international coverage keeps being cut back - fewer foreign bureaus and correspondents. In an atmosphere of despair, however, political economic criticism is attracting a resurgence of dynamism in what McChesney calls "media policy studies" at a time of an emerging new critical juncture.
The Historical Turn, Critical Junctures, and "Five Truths"
McChesney chose historical research as his entry to the political economy of communication field. It gave him a chance to be "less abstract and more concrete." It was also a better way to be taken seriously because sound evidence supported him, but when he began his doctoral studies, he wasn't sure how to proceed. He then read Bagdikian's book cited above. It was his "epiphany" as it showed how the "system is responsible, so (it) has to be changed." But that kind of thinking was radically against the grain that believes press freedom means the right to "make as much money as possible in the media business" and the public interest be damned.
Bagdikian showed how corrupted this kind of journalism is to a free and open society. He also made the case that the media system isn't natural or based on a "free market" model. It's only "free" for owners, as journalist AJ Liebling once observed, and politicians corrupt it for their big media allies.
McChesney was struck (maybe horrified) that other nations debated who should control their media, but none of this went on here. So he searched for a historical record and found it "throughout US history." In every case, media issues went unexamined, underexamined or studied with little sense of purpose.
In commercial radio broadcasting (emergent in the 1920s and 1930s), he found loads of evidence of organized opposition to commercial broadcasting at a time many believed this new medium should be public, open and commercial-free. Sharing that view were educators, labor, religious groups, farmers, civil libertarians and journalists. McChesney called it "scintillating" as he build a "mountain(ous)" historical record on what no one had ever written. He said he "found (his) dissertation" topic and "intellectual calling."
In the early 1930s, there was serious (unreported) debate about whether a commercial broadcasting system should be adopted because few people at the time (the onset of The Great Depression) thought a corporate-owned, advertising-supported one was natural and best for the country. Republicans and Democrats were among them, and compelling arguments at the time were that this type system was inimical to democracy that should be uncorrupted by commercial interests. That view lost out because of "the corruption of the process (dominated by big money), not because the American people opted for commercial broadcasting." They never had a say.
The struggle over radio broadcasting was "the last great battle over media in the" country up to the present. Thereafter, until now, it was assumed all of it was fair game for commercialism and profits. The public interest wasn't even a consideration except for a brief period in the 1960s. But McChesney was awakened at the time to the notion of "critical junctures" because he had "stumbled across the one important (one) in American communication history." He wondered if there were others and "began to see everything in a new light."
It directed his attention to earlier periods and battles on structuring the telephone system that ended as an AT&T regulated monopoly. He mentioned the Jacksonian era that produced some of the greatest journalism in our history. He cited Richard DuBoff's work on the telegraph industry's emergence in the 19th century and Richard Kielbowicz's research on the post office and the role it played early on to establish our press system through public subsidies. Later came the struggle for controlling and structuring satellite communication and cable TV from the 1950s to the 1970s. This drew him to the current era, he was encouraged to address it, and he discovered he liked the challenge.
It got him to co-author a book on the global media with Edward Herman and continue writing powerfully important books in the field because media after the mid-1990s was a hot political topic, especially on the left. These type ideas were being popularly received, and new organizations sprung up to address them like the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) in print and on weekly radio. McChesney put it this way: "Something was happening here." There was newfound interest, but at first only on the fringes. When the 1996 Telecommunications (giveaway) Act passed, there was no public participation and never any coverage in the media so most people hardly knew what was at stake.
Something had to change, and it had to come from the grassroots to put heat on Congress and the FCC. The need was for "aggressive outreach" to organized groups - "labor, civil rights, feminist, environmental, educators, peace activists, health care" - all of which "were getting screwed over by the media" but had no idea media was the problem. McChesney believed that a "radical change in strategy and tactics, and a drastic increase in resources (to do it) were necessary" to whip up public concern for the cutting edge issue of our times.
Then in the 1990s, another world transforming major development occurred - the emergence of the Internet that reflects the "entirety of the digital communication revolution." These were unchartered waters in the first critical media juncture since the 1960s. The Internet "open(s) up space for discussions about fundamental questions of media institutional structures, about technology, about the relationship of media to politics, and about communication history" in ways unseen for decades.
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
