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Got problems with the establishment media? Of course you're not alone. News, commentary and entertainment programming across the national media are slanted toward the interests of well-off white people whose politics, if any, range from "centrist" to conservative. People have found many ways to push back against the media mainstream—by responding biased or racist programming on local stations with community campaigns or boycotts; by culture-jamming vulnerable brands like Clear Channel or Fox; by creating our own alternative media institutions.
But the media's big problems—including rampant commercialism, economic and political bias and narrow access—are rooted in a powerful, wealthy and closed corporate establishment. Only the federal government, closely supervised through open public policy debates, stands a chance of holding these institutions accountable to the public interest.
For this reason, it behooves community activists concerned with media issues to develop an understanding about how government works on media policy issues. What issues affecting cable TV policy are decided locally, rather than nationally? Should I write to the FCC or my congressman to demand more Low-Power FM radio? Where should an embattled college radio program director look for guidance in writing an unintrusive indecency policy?
Equally importantly: how much do we know about what we might call the media democracy voting records of our elected officials? On Election Day, we generally decide between candidates for broader reasons or based on a whole range of issues. But this year, perhaps for the first time, media policy concerns will be part of that range for many voters. There's a growing understanding that media bias profoundly shapes the public perception of war, healthcare, economic justice, and other hot-button electoral issues.
The president doesn't often directly meddle with media policy issues, although he or she wields great influence by appointing Commissioners to the FCC. Among the five Commissioners of the FCC, a majority always belongs to the political party of the President including the powerful chairman. If Senator John Kerry wins the November election, Michael Powell will step down as chairman (and will almost certainly resign). The obvious choice for a democratic successor is Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps; his eloquent defense of media diversity won praise from the progressive community and framed the ownership issue as it began to take hold in Congress last summer.
In this year's presidential race, a look at media policy positions provides a refreshing contrast between the two major tickets. Staunch corporatists George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are much in favor of media ownership deregulation; Cheney has called the singularly ideological Fox New Network "more accurate" than other networks. Democrat’s Kerry and John Edwards, on the other hand, both opposed last summer's move at the FCC to eviscerate the media ownership rules. Immediately after the FCC announced is 3-2 vote in favor of deregulation last June, Kerry described the decision as a "dereliction of duty" showing " a dangerous indifference to the consolidation of power in the hands of a few large entities rather than promoting diversity and independence." He added that the FCC's Republican majority had "dismissed any serious discussion about the impact of media consolidation on our own democracy." Edwards also quickly criticized the rule changes as "a grievous mistake" and "a profound threat to diversity and democracy," exemplifying "everything that is wrong with this administration."
Kerry and Edwards each supported separate legislative attempts to overturn parts or all of the ruling Kerry introduced a Resolution of Disapproval to overturn the rules which easily passed in the Senate (Speaker Dennis Hastert has refused to allow a vote on a parallel resolution in the House). Edwards co-sponsored the bill, which rejected the FCC's newly-raised TV ownership caps.
Both candidates could do more. Edwards, in particular, chose the least important part of the FCC decision to take a stand against and there should be no illusions about the fact that the powerful broadcasting and telecommunications lobby has in the past held Democrats in as much of a stranglehold as Republicans. In past senatorial races, Kerry has been among the top recipients of campaign contributions from all of the following
industries: newspaper publishing, broadcasting, cable/satellite, advertising/PR, and film production. His top contributors have included Verizon, AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal and AT&T, and he is known to have strong family connections with the telecommunications lobby.
The Congress is the most important venue for tinkering with laws affecting media policy. In the next several years, many significant media policy changes are likely to be considered in Congress, including a possible 2005 rewrite of the mammoth Telecommunications Act and a continuation of the ongoing fight over media ownership limits. Plus there's copyright reform, campaign finance reform, payola, broadcast indecency, cultural industries trade policy and a host of other media-related issues.
The media democracy voting records of Senators and Representatives often confound partisan boundaries. This is the case for two reasons: (1) when the issues are debated openly, there truly is bipartisan support for media diversity; (2) Democrats and Republicans are both equally prone to being manipulated by powerful lobbyists into voting one way or another on complex legislation they haven't read or don't understand. An example of the latter is Rep. Jim McDermott's vote in favor of the 1996 Telecommunications Act that removed all radio ownership limits.
The lesson here is that knowledge is power, and that this is an important historical moment in which our elected officials on both sides of the aisle actually appear to be ready to let their constituents' view inform their positions in defiance of the nation's most powerful lobbying organizations. As we head towards this year's epochal election, keep an eye on media issues and tell our elected officials over and over to do the same.
Lots more details on the media policy positions of the Washington State
Congressional Delegation can be found at reclaimthemedia.org/congress.
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