Posted on 5-5-2003
Media
Monopolies Muzzel Dissent
By Ian Masters, Los Angeles Times, Thursday 1 May 2003
If information is the oxygen of democracy, the United
States has just been gassed, not by weapons of mass destruction
but by a weapon of mass distraction.
With George W. Bush basking in glorious ratings and Fox
News climbing in the ratings, we may be moving toward a coronation
instead of a reelection in 2004. It was, after all, Rupert Murdoch's
unilateral anointment of Bush as the winner in the early hours
of the morning after the undecided 2000 election that led Al
Gore to foolishly concede, because he and the other networks
believed what they saw on Fox Television.
Now the marriage between a government and its volunteer
information ministry has been consecrated by the blessed victory
of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the geopolitical equivalent
of an O.J. meets "Joe Millionaire" wrapped in the
flag.
Totalitarian regimes don't tolerate any distinction between
journalism and propaganda, but in most democracies it is unprecedented
for the free press to abandon Joseph Pulitzer for the methods
of Joseph Goebbels.
How did a born-again, family-values administration get
in bed with a purveyor of misogyny and mayhem, trash and titillation?
The common thread, for all the public piety, has to be the late
Lee Atwater, who was friend, mentor and role model to George
W., Karl Rove and Roger Ailes, the head hound in the Fox pound
of junkyard attack-dog journalism.
This undemocratic confluence of politics and propaganda
has long been in the making as corporate media have been incrementally
empowered while public influence, input and "interest"
have been eliminated.
The transformation of active citizens into passive consumers
was enabled by the Federal Communications Commission under Ronald
Reagan's Mark Fowler, who declared "the perception of broadcasters
as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters
as marketplace participants."
Welcome to America, Mr. Murdoch: You can buy the airwaves
and, who knows, some day the presidency.
TV's Fox could not get away with its shameless shilling
for the White House if the Fairness Doctrine were still in place,
and radio's Clear Channel monopoly would not be able to impose
wall-to-wall Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage, etc., on the public
if broadcasters were accountable to public opinion rather than
the dictates of plutocrats.
How could it be that in the land of the free and the home
of the brave Americans are afraid of opinions? Where are the
Tom Paines, the Mark Twains, the Menckens, the Ida Tarbells?
Dissent has not gone away; it has just been marginalized by
monopolies and relegated to the interstices of the Internet.
But the hammer is about to drop on the Internet too. The
head of the FCC, Michael Powell, wants to give away what's left
of the store to the broadband cable and satellite providers
and make them gatekeepers or tollbooths on the information highway.
It used to be that the Internet was accessed via a common
carrier, the phone company, but as technology has moved forward,
these new unregulated media monopolies have increasing control
over the information pipeline. Without regulation, they have
the ability to choose what content they provide.
Two FCC commissioners want to delay this hand-over and
encourage public debate, but the public is largely unaware of
what is at stake.
Obviously you can't expect the Limbaughs, O'Reillys and
their bosses or their president in the White House to give them
talking points on preserving diversity of opinion while there
is a tax cut to sell.
So speak up, America: It's your country, they're your
airwaves. Maybe you can pursue the American dream while you
are asleep, but it will be too late to reclaim your country's
freedom when you wake up.
Ian Masters is the host of "Background Briefing"
on KPFK-FM (90.7) in Los Angeles.
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