Blame That Messenger
“...the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.” ~ SCOTUS, 1945, Associated Press v the US

The other day, a friend of mine emailed me his thoughts on the headlines which make for American daily priorities. "So I'm looking at my handy snapshot of the news on Netscape's homepage," he says. "There's a murder-suicide mom, there's a woman crushed by an obese guy on a plane, there's a sniper update...lots of entertainment news... there's nothing about Saddam." My friend goes on to tell me that he then got curious. He began thinking about a story he'd recently read, so he clicked on over to Information Please, a website he figures "as good a source as any." My friend, a Phd who has made his living in the entertainment industry, has in recent years developed an avocation for helping teenagers cope with the problems life inevitably throws. He's good at it, and everyone around him knows that it's his "calling." So, it wasn't much of a surprise to discover the topic he'd been curious about. "Here's what I learned," he said, "Since 1981, 20% of American children live below the poverty level. That's one child out of every five! That's 21 years - ever since the beginning of the Reagan Revolution!"

My friend had stumbled upon a stunning statistic which we don't hear much about on the evening news. One might then wonder, as do I, and as does he, "Why can't we, as a nation, keep our eyes on this bit of information? Shouldn't we consider this every day? We're starving our own future to fund the present," he says, and it's not even a "present" in which all of us can share and participate in...it's a present which offers benefit to the very few. "Is it too depressing [for us to examine]?" he asks, "too inconvenient?"

His words got me thinking - first about the high rate of child poverty in this, the world's richest nation - a nation which has no trouble spending billions on armament destined for another people's destruction, and which lays out more in corporate subsidies annually than we do on Aid to Dependent Children. He got me to thinking about our apathy as people and how it is that we so cavalierly permit this injustice to continue. Call me an idealist, but I do believe in the inherent goodness of man, and I believe that when the people of this country are given the facts, you can bank on our making the right decision - decisions in this case, which would lead to a reordering of priorities. But you know, all the best of intentions have nowhere to go, if they've no beginning. The American media has the power to suppress or highlight issues in the public interest. The American media needs to take some responsibility for our disordered sense of priority, and by extension...for those one in five kids living in poverty.

Have you ever heard the expression, "don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger?" Oh, it's classic line, and one heard alot among people who carve out a living in journalism. For a long time, in a different America, I bought into the mantra, too. But nowadays, I've changed my tune. When the messenger neglects to pass on the important messages, I think we've got every right to assign blame. We in America are not hearing the important stories from our corporate press. For the most part, we are being fed a pabulum of consumeristic drivel, sensationist spin and conservative rant. And you know...just like I told my friend - if we don't focus on this issue, it's likely to get worse before it gets better.

You might look at all this as some kind of real radical think. You might then ask, "if it's not news they're giving us...what the hell is it?" Well, I and a lot of folks - people who are inveterate media watchers - have come to believe that what the big players in American media call "news" is for the most part, little more than "filler" for advertising. Bottom line: our beloved media is reneging on its responsibility to provide us with more than a passing program in the "public interest." Stories like the one my friend brings up - those 20% of American children, who live in poverty - those stories don't see much of the light of day - they're not sexy enough - they don't sell enough widgets and laundry soap - they run counter to the corporate ideology. But make no mistake about it, these are the important stories.

The folks who control American media number only a handful and they are the most powerful lobby in Washington. That's right, we're talking about a small conference table of voices which determines the informational content of our airwaves and our print. In a nutshell, these are the same characters who are limiting American public debate by virtue of their monopoly of the media microphone. As the New York Times admitted in an editorial on media reform they ran earlier this year, it is a mighty difficult thing for this industry to frame a debate about itself. But debate this issue we must.

What's to debate? Well, think about this...think about the power of the press and consider for a moment the simple practice of political endorsements. When all of the market, owned by one company endorses one candidate...one candidate who likely carries their water - is this an example of democracy in action? Of course not, but that's what's to come if Michael Powell, head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has his way.

The FCC has been lobbied hard by the media conglomerates who want to break up anti-trust law which now prevents them from consuming local markets. If you want to see what the future for print and television looks like under their media wet dream, just turn on the radio. Since radio was deregulated at the beck and call of corporate America, you have to do some serious hunting to find yourself one of those rare birds: a progressively slanted AM talk program. And I'm not talking about radical leftism...I'm talking about mainstream liberal talk radio. You think I'm kidding? Ponder this: in the last presidential election, far more than half of the voting population opted for left-of-center candidates in Gore and Nader. Yet, when you turn on AM talk radio, you'd think the entire country were praying to the gods of conservatism. Diversity of view is absent in radio broadcasting. Corporate radio equals conservative radio. THIS is the end result of media deregulation and this is what Powell and the megamedia corps are shooting for. Some democracy, eh? The problem is daunting but it's one which can be solved.

Get familiar with the growing movement of media reform and with people, like Robert McChesney who have made a career out of bringing this issue to light. With media reform, issues like Social Security, education, campaign finance, enforceable accounting reform, affordable health care/prescription drugs, etc. would stand a chance of being really hashed out, not merely skimmed over. Without reform, we're talking about one in five kids who reside in the richest nation on the face of the planet living in poverty - all because the messenger chose not to deliver that message. For additional info, visit the Media Reform Information Center by clicking here.