corrente

The LATimes, reporting on Nov 19th, seems to think that for now, the thrust in Congress to get those new FCC rules Michael Powell foisted on America may be over. Not the fault of those in the House and Senate who want to stop more media mergers. Bush has threatened a veto. The Times suggest that probably the issue will be dealt with in what has now become SOP for this White House.

It appears most likely that a compromise will be hammered out behind closed doors by a handful of top lawmakers and White House officials, and then inserted into a giant omnibus spending bill. It remains unclear whether the final agreement will be subject to amendment by lawmakers unhappy with the result.

On the other hand, Eric Boehlert, writing in Salon on Nov 21st presents a much brighter picture.

What's clear from both reports, the issues surrounding those FCC rules changes as well as the changes themselves are not going away at the end of this congressional session, and that is definitely good news. (Boehlert's article requires subscription; his reporting and commentary is one of the chief reasons Salon is worth supporting). Check at Common Good, where you can sometimes find the best of Salon to be had for a click of your mouse.

When it comes to expressing just what's at stake here, does anyone do it better than Bill Moyers?

What would happen, however, if the contending giants of big government and big publishing and broadcasting ever joined hands? Ever saw eye to eye in putting the public’s need for news second to free-market economics? That’s exactly what’s happening now under the ideological banner of “deregulation.” Giant megamedia conglomerates that our founders could not possibly have envisioned are finding common cause with an imperial state in a betrothal certain to produce not the sons and daughters of liberty but the very kind of bastards that issued from the old arranged marriage of church and state.

Consider where we are today.

Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and – in defiance of the Constitution – from their representatives in Congress. Never has the so powerful a media oligopoly – the word is Barry Diller’s, not mine – been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people’s need to know. When the journalist-historian Richard Reeves was once asked by a college student to define “real news”, he answered: “The news you and I need to keep our freedoms.” When journalism throws in with power that’s the first news marched by censors to the guillotine. The greatest moments in the history of the press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but when they stood fearlessly independent of it.

Which brings me to the third powerful force – beyond governmental secrecy and megamedia conglomerates – that is shaping what Americans see, read, and hear. I am talking now about that quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political ideas today in a phenomenon unique in our history. You need not harbor the notion of a vast, right wing conspiracy to think this more collusion more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology hungers for power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to the same pot of honey. Stretching from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch’s empire to the nattering nabobs of no-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by conglomerates – the religious, partisan and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic ideals embodied in our founding documents. Authoritarianism. With no strong opposition party to challenge such triumphalist hegemony, it is left to journalism to be democracy’s best friend. That is why so many journalists joined with you in questioning Michael Powell’s bid – blessed by the White House – to permit further concentration of media ownership. If free and independent journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is suffocated, the oxygen goes out of democracy.

(edit)

So the issues bringing us here tonight are bigger and far more critical than simply “media reform.” That’s why, before I go on, I want to ask you to look around you. I’m serious: Look to your left and now to your right. You are looking at your allies in one of the great ongoing struggles of the American experience – the struggle for the soul of democracy, for government “of, by, and for the people.”

It’s a battle we can win only if we work together.

Read the whole speech, if you haven't yet; you'll find out a lot about how richly informed were American citizens in the early days of this Republic, discover a rather astonishing credo set out by Joseph Pulitzer, and more.

And there's this passionate credo, written by the great English pamphleteer, William Cobbett, in the 1790s, still as fresh and new as tomorrow.

Professions of impartiality I shall make none. They are always useless, and are besides perfect nonsense, when used by a newsmonger; for, he that does not relate news as he finds it, is something worse than partial; and . . . he that does not exercise his own judgment, either in admitting or rejecting what is sent him, is a poor passive tool, and not an editor.