Consider "deregulation" as an example that's used along with "free market" mumbo jumbo propaganda. It implies a competitive marketplace when, in fact, it reduces competition by increasing monopoly control in telephony, broadcasting, cable and satellite communication. McChesney cites the key anti-competitive 1996 Telecommunications Act as Exhibit A. Supporters claimed it would increase competition, lower prices, improve service, and Vice-President Al Gore called it an "early Christmas present for the consumer." Hooey.
This was a major piece of anti-consumer legislation. It raised limits on TV station ownership so broadcast giants could own twice as many local stations as before. It was even sweeter for radio with all national limits on station ownership removed, and on the local level one company could now own up to eight stations in a major market. In smaller ones, two companies could own them all. The bill also consigned new digital television broadcast spectrum space to current TV station owners only and let cable companies increase their local monopoly positions. The clear winners were the media and telecom giants. As always, consumers lost out without ever knowing what went on behind their backs.
In the new millennium, however, a historic opportunity for change emerged in the form of another critical juncture spawned this time by the digital revolution. "The Internet, cell phones, and digital technology (are) revolutionizing all forms of communication" that are already threatening some long-established media industries with extinction or requiring they reinvent themselves to survive - all print publications, for example. This is unfolding in 2007, but the future remains uncertain and has yet to be written. It can go either way or maybe both.
One of the great unanswered questions of our times is: does the Internet "qualify as the fourth great communication 'transformation' in human history." Consider McChesney's first three:
-- the emergence of speech and language 50,000 to 60,000 years ago;
-- writing around 5000 years ago that came many thousands of years after agriculture; writing made scientific, philosophical and artistic achievements possible;
-- the printing press that radically reconstructed all major institutions and made possible scientific advances, political democracy, an industrial economy and religion.
It hardly needs saying these changes were enormous in human development, and for McChesney to believe the Internet may one day rank among them (even if not their equal) is mind-boggling to imagine. He makes his case more compelling by broadening the digital revolution to include biotechnology and related scientific developments because their advances depend on information technology.
When someone of McChesney's stature posits these views, we need take note and consider a future not long ago unimaginable, but what will emerge can't be known until it begins unfolding over time. Of equal importance is whether change of this magnitude will be democratic, and that possibility is "very much in our control," McChesney believes. That's because the legitimacy of major journalism is being questioned, and growing millions around the country are doing it. Today, there's more media criticism and activism here than anywhere in the world - an astonishing condition given how absent it was a bare decade ago.
"No one expected (its) first stirrings (would) come over the unlikely issue of low-power FM broadcasting (LPFM)." It spawned hundreds of unlicensed "pirate" operators in the 1990s. The FCC tried to shut them down but couldn't even though pressured by commercial interests. The result was the legalization of 1000 new LPFM non-profit stations in 2000. Commercial broadcasters declared war to stop them and got the House to reduce the allowable number to a fraction of what FCC authorized.
Something then remarkable happened when scores of outraged people demanded Congress allow this vital initiative in citizen broadcasting. They foiled the National Association of Broadcasting (NAB), but only briefly. In the end, NAB won by getting an anti-LPFM provision added to a budget bill in the dead of night before Christmas - much the way other anti-consumer legislation gets passed by hiding it in other bills passed in off-hours and unreported in the mainstream.
Despite defeats and powerful opposition, however, there was "growing popular momentum (on) media issues" in 2002 in spite of a "real disconnect with these developments among communication scholars." That would soon change, but there was no way to know it then. At the time, McChesney knew his efforts were best directed off-campus because that's "where the action was." He had no way to know "all hell was about to break loose," and the possibilities from it are exhilarating.
Moment of Truth
McChesney relates how he, Josh Silver and John Nichols co-founded Free Press in 2002 with a vision he called simple but a bold plan to achieve it. They wanted to reach other organized groups with a stake in reforming the media - labor, feminists, civil rights groups, environmentalists, educators, journalists, artists and private citizens who feel the same as they do but need direction and leadership. Communication scholars weren't at first included, but that would change later on.
The three co-founders thought it would take years to gain momentum and begin having an effect, but they caught a break when the FCC announced it would review media ownership rules in the fall of 2002. Free Press felt certain they'd be relaxed, but "then something wonderful and magical happened." A massive grassroots action arose with three million people energized in opposition. They flooded Congress with letters, e-mails, phone calls and petitions protesting what FCC proposed. Free Press got involved and so did other consumer activist organizations like Consumers Union, the Center for Digital Democracy, the Media Action Project (MAP) and the Consumer Federation of America. Other groups outside Washington joined as well, including the Prometheus Radio Project.
Along with MAP, it won a Third Circuit Court June, 2004 decision in the Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC case that ruled for diversity and democracy over greater media consolidation and ordered the FCC to reconsider its ill-advised ownership rules. They included the kinds of policy changes now resurrected by the current FCC under a new chairman, so the struggle goes on and continued vigilance is needed to prevail.
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.
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