AMERICAN MEDIA DODGING U.N. SURVEILLANCE STORY

By Norman Solomon

Three days after a British newspaper revealed a memo about U.S. spying on U.N. Security Council delegations, I asked Daniel Ellsberg to assess the importance of the story. "This leak," he replied, "is more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers."

The key word is "timely." Publication of the secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, made possible by Ellsberg's heroic decision to leak those documents, came after the Vietnam War had already been underway for many years. But with all-out war on Iraq still in the future, the leak about spying at the United Nations could erode the Bush administration's already slim chances of getting a war resolution through the Security Council.

"As part of its battle to win votes in favor of war against Iraq," the London-based Observer reported on March 2, the U.S. government developed an "aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the e-mails of U.N. delegates." The smoking gun was "a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency -- the U.S. body which intercepts communications around the world -- and circulated to both senior agents in his organization and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency."

The Observer added: "The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the U.N. headquarters in New York -- the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the U.S. and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for U.N. inspections, led by France, China and Russia."

The NSA memo, dated Jan. 31, outlines the wide scope of the surveillance activities, seeking any information useful to push a war resolution through the Security Council -- "the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises."

Three days after the memo came to light, the Times of London printed an article noting that the Bush administration "finds itself isolated" in its zeal for war on Iraq. "In the most recent setback," the newspaper reported, "a memorandum by the U.S. National Security Agency, leaked to the Observer, revealed that American spies were ordered to eavesdrop on the conversations of the six undecided countries on the United Nations Security Council."

The London Times article called it an "embarrassing disclosure." And the embarrassment was nearly worldwide. From Russia to France to Chile to Japan to Australia, the story was big mainstream news. But not in the United States.

Several days after the "embarrassing disclosure," not a word about it had appeared in America's supposed paper of record. The New York Times -- the single most influential media outlet in the United States -- still had not printed anything about the story. How could that be?

"Well, it's not that we haven't been interested," New York Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale said on the evening of March 5, nearly 96 hours after the Observer broke the story. "We could get no confirmation or comment" on the memo from U.S. officials.

The Times opted not to relay the Observer's account, Smale told me. "We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting." She added: "We are still definitely looking into it. It's not that we're not."

Belated coverage would be better than none at all. But readers should be suspicious of the failure of the New York Times to cover this story during the crucial first days after it broke. At some moments in history, when war and peace hang in the balance, journalism delayed is journalism denied.

Overall, the sparse U.S. coverage that did take place seemed eager to downplay the significance of the Observer's revelations. On March 4, the Washington Post ran a back-page 514-word article headlined "Spying Report No Shock to U.N.," while the Los Angeles Times published a longer piece that began by emphasizing that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are "long-standing."

The U.S. media treatment has contrasted sharply with coverage on other continents. "While some have taken a ho-hum attitude in the U.S., many around the world are furious," says Ed Vulliamy, one of the Observer reporters who wrote the March 2 article. "Still, almost all governments are extremely reluctant to speak up against the espionage. This further illustrates their vulnerability to the U.S. government."

To Daniel Ellsberg, the leaking of the NSA memo was a hopeful sign. "Truth-telling like this can stop a war," he said. Time is short for insiders at intelligence agencies "to tell the truth and save many many lives." But major news outlets must stop dodging the information that emerges.

....A Z-Net update by Norman Solomon is co-author of the new book "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You," published by Context Books ( www.contextbooks.com/newF.html ). 

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The supposedly liberal American press has become a dog that never bites, hardly barks but really loves rolling over and having its tummy tickled

With war looming it is no good the American public looking to its newspapers for an independent voice. For, says Matthew Engel, the press have now become the president's men.

It is more than 30 years ago now, though it seems like yesterday. A Republican president, much derided by liberals, was in the White House and his opponents were being lashed by the rightwing attack dogs, led then by the vice-president, Spiro Agnew. 
The elite East Coast press, exemplified by the New York Times and the Washington Post, were the special targets of his scorn: "pointy-headed liberals," he called them, and "the nattering nabobs of negativism". 

 http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,873395,00.html 

Now there is a new Republican president, elected even more controversially and pursuing a far more divisive agenda. Where are the pointy-head liberals now? The change can be summed up in Woodward's own career. As the Watergate investigator, he not merely protected his sources, he glamorized them. Now, still on the Post staff, he functions as a semi-official court stenographer to the Bush White House. And it is notable that those who talk to him - such as the president himself - always play the heroic role in his stories. 

The worldwide turmoil caused by President Bush's policies goes not exactly unreported, but entirely de-emphasized. Guardian writers are inundated by emails from Americans asking plaintively why their own papers never print what is in these columns (in my experience, these go hand-in-hand with an equal number insulting us for the same reason). In the American press, day after day, the White House controls the agenda. The supposedly liberal American press has become a dog that never bites, hardly barks but really loves rolling over and having its tummy tickled. 

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What's Wrong With This Picture? by Mark Crispin Miller

For all their economic clout and cultural sway, the ten great multinationals profiled in our latest chart--AOL Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann, AT&T and Liberty Media--rule the cosmos only at the moment. The media cartel that keeps us fully entertained and permanently half-informed is always growing here and shriveling there, with certain of its members bulking up while others slowly fall apart or get digested whole. But while the players tend to come and go--always with a few exceptions--the overall Leviathan itself keeps getting bigger, louder, brighter, forever taking up more time and space, in every street, in countless homes, in every other head.

The rise of the cartel has been a long time coming (and it still has some way to go). It represents the grand convergence of the previously disparate US culture industries--many of them vertically monopolized already--into one global superindustry providing most of our imaginary "content." The movie business had been largely dominated by the major studios in Hollywood; TV, like radio before it, by the triune axis of the networks headquartered in New York; magazines, primarily by Henry Luce (with many independent others on the scene); and music, from the 1960s, mostly by the major record labels. Now all those separate fields are one, the whole terrain divided up among the giants--which, in league with Barnes & Noble, Borders and the big distributors, also control the book business. (Even with its leading houses, book publishing was once a cottage industry at both the editorial and retail levels.) For all the democratic promise of the Internet, moreover, much of cyberspace has now been occupied, its erstwhile wildernesses swiftly paved and lighted over by the same colossi. The only industry not yet absorbed into this new world order is the newsprint sector of the Fourth Estate--a business that was heavily shadowed to begin with by the likes of Hearst and other, regional grandees, flush with the ill-gotten gains of oil, mining and utilities--and such absorption is, as we shall see, about to happen.

Thus what we have today is not a problem wholly new in kind but rather the disastrous upshot of an evolutionary process whereby that old problem has become considerably larger--and that great quantitative change, with just a few huge players now co-directing all the nation's media, has brought about enormous qualitative changes. For one thing, the cartel's rise has made extremely rare the sort of marvelous exception that has always popped up, unexpectedly, to startle and revivify the culture--the genuine independents among record labels, radio stations, movie theaters, newspapers, book publishers and so on. Those that don't fail nowadays are so remarkable that they inspire not emulation but amazement. Otherwise, the monoculture, endlessly and noisily triumphant, offers, by and large, a lot of nothing, whether packaged as "the news" or "entertainment."

Of all the cartel's dangerous consequences for American society and culture, the worst is its corrosive influence on journalism. Under AOL Time Warner, GE, Viacom et al., the news is, with a few exceptions, yet another version of the entertainment that the cartel also vends nonstop. This is also nothing new--consider the newsreels of yesteryear--but the gigantic scale and thoroughness of the corporate concentration has made a world of difference, and so has made this world a very different place.

Let us start to grasp the situation by comparing this new centerfold with our first outline of the National Entertainment State, published in the spring of 1996. Back then, the national TV news appeared to be a tidy tetrarchy: two network news divisions owned by large appliance makers/weapons manufacturers (CBS by Westinghouse, NBC by General Electric), and the other two bought lately by the nation's top purveyors of Big Fun (ABC by Disney, CNN by Time Warner). Cable was still relatively immature, so that, of its many enterprises, only CNN competed with the broadcast networks' short-staffed newsrooms; and its buccaneering founder, Ted Turner, still seemed to call the shots from his new aerie at Time Warner headquarters.

Today the telejournalistic firmament includes the meteoric Fox News Channel, as well as twenty-six television stations owned outright by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (which holds majority ownership in a further seven). Although ultimately thwarted in his bid to buy DirecTV and thereby dominate the US satellite television market, Murdoch wields a pervasive influence on the news--and not just in New York, where he has two TV stations, a major daily (the faltering New York Post) and the Fox News Channel, whose inexhaustible platoons of shouting heads attracts a fierce plurality of cable-viewers. Meanwhile, Time Warner has now merged with AOL--so as to own the cyberworks through which to market its floodtide of movies, ball games, TV shows, rock videos, cartoons, standup routines and (not least) bits from CNN, CNN Headline News, CNNfn (devised to counter GE's CNBC) and CNN/Sports Illustrated (a would-be rival to Disney's ESPN franchise). While busily cloning CNN, the parent company has also taken quiet steps to make it more like Fox, with Walter Isaacson, the new head honcho, even visiting the Capitol to seek advice from certain rightist pols on how, presumably, to make the network even shallower and more obnoxious. (He also courted Rush Himself.) All this has occurred since the abrupt defenestration of Ted Turner, who now belatedly laments the overconcentration of the cable business: "It's sad we're losing so much diversity of thought," he confesses, sounding vaguely like a writer for this magazine.

Whereas five years ago the clueless Westinghouse owned CBS, today the network is a property of the voracious Viacom--matchless cable occupier (UPN, MTV, MTV2, VH1, Nickelodeon, the Movie Channel, TNN, CMT, BET, 50 percent of Comedy Central, etc.), radio colossus (its Infinity Broadcasting--home to Howard Stern and Don Imus--owns 184 stations), movie titan (Paramount Pictures), copious publisher (Simon & Schuster, Free Press, Scribner), a big deal on the web and one of the largest US outdoor advertising firms. Under Viacom, CBS News has been obliged to help sell Viacom's product--in 2000, for example, devoting epic stretches of The Early Show to what lately happened on Survivor (CBS). Of course, such synergistic bilge is commonplace, as is the tendency to dummy up on any topic that the parent company (or any of its advertisers) might want stifled. These journalistic sins have been as frequent under "longtime" owners Disney and GE as under Viacom and Fox [see Janine Jaquet, "The Sins of Synergy," page 20]. They may also abound beneath Vivendi, whose recent purchase of the film and TV units of USA Networks and new stake in the satellite TV giant EchoStar--moves too recent for inclusion in our chart--could soon mean lots of oblique self-promotion on USAM News, in L'Express and L'Expansion, and through whatever other news-machines the parent buys.

Such is the telejournalistic landscape at the moment--and soon it will mutate again, if Bush's FCC delivers for its giant clients. On September 13, when the minds of the American people were on something else, the commission's GOP majority voted to "review" the last few rules preventing perfect oligopoly. They thus prepared the ground for allowing a single outfit to own both a daily paper and a TV station in the same market--an advantage that was outlawed in 1975. (Even then, pre-existing cases of such ownership were grandfathered in, and any would-be owner could get that rule waived.) That furtive FCC "review" also portended the elimination of the cap on the percentage of US households that a single owner might reach through its TV stations. Since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the limit had been 35 percent. Although that most indulgent bill was dictated by the media giants themselves, its restrictions are too heavy for this FCC, whose chairman, Michael Powell, has called regulation per se "the oppressor."

And so, unless there's some effective opposition, the several-headed vendor that now sells us nearly all our movies, TV, radio, magazines, books, music and web services will soon be selling us our daily papers, too--for the major dailies have, collectively, been lobbying energetically for that big waiver, which stands to make their owners even richer (an expectation that has no doubt had a sweetening effect on coverage of the Bush Administration). Thus the largest US newspaper conglomerates--the New York Times, the Washington Post, Gannett, Knight-Ridder and the Tribune Co.--will soon be formal partners with, say, GE, Murdoch, Disney and/or AT&T; and then the lesser nationwide chains (and the last few independents) will be ingested, too, going the way of most US radio stations. America's cities could turn into informational "company towns," with one behemoth owning all the local print organs--daily paper(s), alternative weekly, city magazine--as well as the TV and radio stations, the multiplexes and the cable system. (Recently a federal appeals court told the FCC to drop its rule preventing any one company from serving more than 30 percent of US cable subscribers; and in December, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.) While such a setup may make economic sense, as anticompetitive arrangements tend to do, it has no place in a democracy, where the people have to know more than their masters want to tell them.

That imperative demands reaffirmation at this risky moment, when much of what the media cartel purveys to us is propaganda, commercial or political, while no one in authority makes mention of "the public interest"--except to laugh it off. "I have no idea," Powell cheerily replied at his first press conference as chairman, when asked for his own definition of that crucial concept. "It's an empty vessel in which people pour in whatever their preconceived views or biases are." Such blithe obtuseness has marked all his public musings on the subject. In a speech before the American Bar Association in April 1998, Powell offered an ironic little riff about how thoroughly he doesn't get it: "The night after I was sworn in [as a commissioner], I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest. I waited all night, but she did not come." On the other hand, Powell has never sounded glib about his sacred obligation to the corporate interest. Of his decision to move forward with the FCC vote just two days after 9/11, Powell spoke as if that sneaky move had been a gesture in the spirit of Patrick Henry: "The flame of the American ideal may flicker, but it will never be extinguished. We will do our small part and press on with our business, solemnly, but resolutely."

Certainly the FCC has never been a democratic force, whichever party has been dominant. Bill Clinton championed the disastrous Telecom Act of 1996 and otherwise did almost nothing to impede the drift toward oligopoly. (As Newsweek reported in 2000, Al Gore was Rupert Murdoch's personal choice for President. The mogul apparently sensed that Gore would happily play ball with him, and also thought--correctly--that the Democrat would win.)

What is unique to Michael Powell, however, is the showy superciliousness with which he treats his civic obligation to address the needs of people other than the very rich. That spirit has shone forth many times--as when the chairman genially compared the "digital divide" between the information haves and have-nots to a "Mercedes divide" between the lucky few who can afford great cars and those (like him) who can't. In the intensity of his pro-business bias, Powell recalls Mark Fowler, head of Reagan's FCC, who famously denied his social obligations by asserting that TV is merely "an appliance," "a toaster with pictures." And yet such Reaganite bons mots, fraught with the anti-Communist fanaticism of the late cold war, evinced a deadly earnestness that's less apparent in General Powell's son. He is a blithe, postmodern sort of ideologue, attuned to the complacent smirk of Bush the Younger--and, of course, just perfect for the cool and snickering culture of TV.

Although such flippancies are hard to take, they're also easy to refute, for there is no rationale for such an attitude. Take "the public interest"--an ideal that really isn't hard to understand. A media system that enlightens us, that tells us everything we need to know pertaining to our lives and liberty and happiness, would be a system dedicated to the public interest. Such a system would not be controlled by a cartel of giant corporations, because those entities are ultimately hostile to the welfare of the people. Whereas we need to know the truth about such corporations, they often have an interest in suppressing it (as do their advertisers). And while it takes much time and money to find out the truth, the parent companies prefer to cut the necessary costs of journalism, much preferring the sort of lurid fare that can drive endless hours of agitated jabbering. (Prior to 9/11, it was Monica, then Survivor and Chandra Levy, whereas, since the fatal day, we have had mostly anthrax, plus much heroic footage from the Pentagon.) The cartel's favored audience, moreover, is that stratum of the population most desirable to advertisers--which has meant the media's complete abandonment of working people and the poor. And while the press must help protect us against those who would abuse the powers of government, the oligopoly is far too cozy with the White House and the Pentagon, whose faults, and crimes, it is unwilling to expose. The media's big bosses want big favors from the state, while the reporters are afraid to risk annoying their best sources. Because of such politeness (and, of course, the current panic in the air), the US coverage of this government is just a bit more edifying than the local newscasts in Riyadh.

Against the daily combination of those corporate tendencies--conflict of interest, endless cutbacks, endless trivial pursuits, class bias, deference to the king and all his men--the public interest doesn't stand a chance. Despite the stubborn fiction of their "liberal" prejudice, the corporate media have helped deliver a stupendous one-two punch to this democracy. (That double whammy followed their uncritical participation in the long, irrelevant jihad against those moderate Republicans, the Clintons.) Last year, they helped subvert the presidential race, first by prematurely calling it for Bush, regardless of the vote--a move begun by Fox, then seconded by NBC, at the personal insistence of Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric. Since the coup, the corporate media have hidden or misrepresented the true story of the theft of that election.

And having justified Bush/Cheney's coup, the media continue to betray American democracy. Media devoted to the public interest would investigate the poor performance by the CIA, the FBI, the FAA and the CDC, so that those agencies might be improved for our protection--but the news teams (just like Congress) haven't bothered to look into it. So, too, in the public interest, should the media report on all the current threats to our security--including those far-rightists targeting abortion clinics and, apparently, conducting bioterrorism; but the telejournalists are unconcerned (just like John Ashcroft). So should the media highlight, not play down, this government's attack on civil liberties--the mass detentions, secret evidence, increased surveillance, suspension of attorney-client privilege, the encouragements to spy, the warnings not to disagree, the censored images, sequestered public papers, unexpected visits from the Secret Service and so on. And so should the media not parrot what the Pentagon says about the current war, because such prettified accounts make us complacent and preserve us in our fatal ignorance of what people really think of us--and why--beyond our borders. And there's much more--about the stunning exploitation of the tragedy, especially by the Republicans; about the links between the Bush and the bin Laden families; about the ongoing shenanigans in Florida--that the media would let the people know, if they were not (like Michael Powell) indifferent to the public interest.

In short, the news divisions of the media cartel appear to work against the public interest--and for their parent companies, their advertisers and the Bush Administration. The situation is completely un-American. It is the purpose of the press to help us run the state, and not the other way around. As citizens of a democracy, we have the right and obligation to be well aware of what is happening, both in "the homeland" and the wider world. Without such knowledge we cannot be both secure and free. We therefore must take steps to liberate the media from oligopoly, so as to make the government our own.


This article can be found on the web at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020107&s=miller

If you like this article, please consider subscribing to The Nation at special discounted rates. You can order online https://ssl.thenation.com  or call our toll-free number at 1-800-333-8536.
....posted by AO, 1/5/03

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FCC needs caution

(This Scripps editorial could stand a critical analysis.  Compare it to the article below Media Concentration)

Democracy is doomed, democracy is doomed, says the crowd that preaches apocalyptic outcomes whenever there's a chance the free market might become freer. The object of their present hysteria is the possibility the Federal Communications Commission will redo or drop some old media regulations to reflect new realities. The citizenry will thus be cheated of news diversity, the critics say.

Diversity? On what planet are these critics living? It is possible there has never been a time in human history when more people have had an opportunity to present their views and news to vast audiences than exists today. Ever heard of the Internet, dear critics? Virtually anyone can have a Web site that can be accessed by literally millions around the globe. And haven't we moved from just three TV networks to scads of them?

Issues related to some of the rules are complicated, and the critics are certainly right that the FCC should exercise care in making its decisions. But that care should extend to assessing whether harm is actually caused by some of the old rules in a volatile, vastly altered media world. And the FCC also should be careful not to be swept away by the exaggerations of some of the critics, especially when those exaggerations contradict what all can see by simply opening their eyes and looking around.

Wednesday, December 25, 2002, Scripps Howard News Service - Guest Editorial

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MEDIA CONCENTRATION

CONTENTS:

1. Introduction
2. "Freedom to be Heard" by Normon Solomon
3. One Link
4. Who Owns the Media?
5. A Decline in Media Quality
6. Deregulation Speeds Concentration
7. Media Reform
8. About the MoveOn bulletin and MoveOn.org

 

INTRODUCTION
Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask; by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

FREEDOM TO BE HEARD
By Norman Solomon

MoveOn strives to "help create a culture of civic engagement." Such goals are crucial. But the big obstacles include the major news media of the United States.

These days, in theory, just about everyone in the country has freedom to speak. But freedom to be heard is another matter.

Varied sources of information and genuine diversity of viewpoints should reach the public on an ongoing basis. But they don’t.

The planned war on Iraq is a case in point. All kinds of claims take hold in U.S. mass media while rarely undergoing direct challenge. Newsrooms and studios, filled with hot-air balloons, are apt to harmonize with the pronouncements of official Washington as long as sharp pins don’t get through the door.

The huge gap between freedom of speech and freedom to be heard also helps to explain how fervent belief in Uncle Sam’s intended benevolence remains so widespread among Americans. Laid on thick by the dominant voices of mass communication, the latest conventional wisdom swiftly hardens and calcifies.

Along with heavy doses of Pentagon Correctness, the mainstream media are saturated with corporate sensibilities. The effects are so routine that we usually don’t give them a second thought.

At networks owned by multibillion-dollar conglomerates like General Electric, Viacom and Disney, the news divisions solemnly report every uptick or downturn of the markets. In contrast, when was the last time you heard Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather or Peter Jennings report the latest rates of on-the-job injuries or the average wait times at hospital emergency rooms?

While many viewers assume that coverage reflects the considered judgment of journalistic pros, those journalists are enmeshed in a media industry dominated by corporate institutions with enough financial sway to redefine the meaning of functional professionalism.

In theory, noncommercial TV and radio outlets are insulated from the inordinate power of money. But across the country, each year, "public broadcasting" relies on hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations that are pleased to provide underwriting to burnish their images among upscale viewers and listeners. Whatever other benefits accrue, those firms buy some valuable PR with their de facto commercials, known euphemistically in the trade as "enhanced underwriter credits."

Along with the politically appointed board of the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting, corporate donors exert hefty influence on programs by "underwriting" -- and, in some cases, literally making possible -- specific shows. Private money is a big determinant of what’s on "public" broadcasting.

Without corporate funding for specific programs, many current shows would not exist. Public television airs the "Nightly Business Report," but viewers can search in vain for a regular show devoted to assessing the fortunes of working people. At PBS, no less than at avowedly commercial networks, the operative assumption seems to be that wealth creates all labor, not the other way around. Back in the 1770s, Adam Smith articulated a more progressive outlook, writing: "It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased."

Years ago, National Public Radio initiated "NPR business updates" to supplement newscasts many times each day on stations nationwide. Listeners will be disappointed if they wait for an "NPR labor update." Various public radio stations feature the daily national program "Marketplace" and the weekly "Sound Money" show, but there is no comparable broadcast such as "Workplace" or "Sound Labor."

At the same time, big money tilts reporting and punditry. On major networks, we rarely hear a strong voice speaking against the outsized power of large corporations.

Overall, the main problems with media are profoundly structural. The airwaves are supposed to belong to the public, but they’ve been hijacked by huge companies. With the government assisting the monopolization process, all the major forms of media -- such as broadcasting, cable, newspapers, magazines, books, movies, the music industry and, increasingly, the Web -- are now dominated by the interests of capital, devoted to maximizing private profit. Some investors benefit; the public gets shafted.

Any successful movement for basic progressive change will need to push big money off the windpipe of the First Amendment. For democratic discourse to thrive, freedom to speak must be accompanied by freedom to be heard.

Norman Solomon’s weekly syndicated column -- posted and archived at   www.fair.org/media-beat  -- focuses on media and politics. He is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (http://www.accuracy.org).

ONE LINK
This is a wide-ranging and valuable invective against the current state of the mainstream US media. Some issues that are highlighted include the decline of foreign news bureaus, the focus of news programs on entertainment issues such as movie profits, and the outright subservience of the media to the interests of corporations and the US government. Several organizations that are working to explain and fight media concentration are also specifically mentioned. http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen0425.html/

WHO OWNS THE MEDIA?
Media concentration, also known as media convergence or media consolidation, basically comes down to the fact that fewer and fewer companies own the media.

Mediachannel.org has created a comprehensive chart of exactly who owns what.
http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml

Colombia Journalism Review provides a clickable list of the major media companies and their holdings. This web guide demonstrates the exceedingly far reach of these companies.
http://www.cjr.org/owners/

This is a clickable chart of the ten largest media companies in the world, current as of Dec. 20, 2001 (it is important to note that media concentration is not only an American problem). It includes US companies such as the Walt Disney Company and AOL Time Warner, as well as international giants Bertelsmann and Vivendi Universal.
http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html

A graph of media ownership shows the number of corporations in control of US media plunging from 50 in 1983 to only six now. It is followed by a really useful list of links, which includes the major media reform advocacy groups.
http://www.corporations.org/media/

As FAIR explains, "Almost all media that reach a large audience in the United States are owned by for-profit corporations--institutions that by law are obligated to put the profits of their investors ahead of all other considerations. The goal of maximizing profits is often in conflict with the practice of responsible journalism."
This brief introduction to corporate ownership of the media is followed by a number of links to resources on the topic, including Normon Solomon's columns.
http://www.fair.org/media-woes/corporate.html

EXAMPLES OF A DECLINE IN MEDIA QUALITY
Michael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review evaluates the press coverage immediately after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011015&s=massing

Print and broadcast media in the US have severely cut back foreign news coverage, leading to a poorly educated American public. This may be one of the reasons that Americans were so shocked by the events of Sept. 11--they have little to no knowledge of politics, ideology, and religion in the rest of the world. Meanwhile, coverage of crime, violence, sex and scandals has greatly increased.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0927-03.htm

FAIR answers the question "What's Wrong With the News?" with a clickable list of very short introductions to the following issues:
- corporate ownership
- advertiser influence
- official agendas
- telecommunications policy
- the narrow range of debate
- the PR industry
- pressure groups
- censorship
- sensationalism
http://www.fair.org/media-woes/media-woes.html

DEREGULATION SPEEDS CONCENTRATION
This is an excellent and brief summary of the new push for deregulation of the media industry by the FCC. Generally, a source like this might be expected to take a sympathetic view toward any efforts to deregulate, but this article is surprisingly skeptical. It is particularly useful in briefly critiquing the almost utopian hopes of web advocates. Websites may be relatively cheap, but good (or at least flashy) content costs money, and the big media companies have used this fact to insert themselves as the dominant presence on the web.
http://www.moveon.org/r?11

This article discusses the FCC's move towards deregulation in more detail. Deregulation is based on the perspective that the media is a product only, a "toaster with pictures." There seems to be little or no recognition of any need for policies that maintain a diversity of opinion, thus serving the interests of the public as citizens; rather, the public is regarded only as a group of consumers. The results of this deregulation will most likely be an even more acute concentration of the media into the hands of a few big corporations. However, there is still time to fight it, and the article includes information on writing to the FCC.
http://www.democraticmedia.org/issues/mediaownership

FCC Chairman Michael Powell is currently the driving force behind the continuing trend of media concentration. Nor does he seem very concerned about the creation of media monopolies. According to Powell, "Monopoly is not illegal by itself in the United States. People tend to forget this. There is something healthy about letting innovators try to capture markets." And what about diversity? Well, Powell believes that "[d]iversity and all that stuff is very important, but it's hard to get a consensus on what it is, other than that the goals are worthy."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.03/mergers.html

MEDIA REFORM
This excellent article makes the case for media reform and gives some examples of what must be done to institute such reform. According to the author:
"For democrats, this concentration of media power and attendant commercialization of public discourse are a disaster. An informed, participating citizenry depends on media that play a public service function. As James Madison once put it, 'A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.' But these democratic functions lie beyond the reach of the current American media system. If we are serious about democracy, then, we need to work aggressively for reform."
So what kind of reform is needed? Some suggestions from the article:
- reduce the current degree of media concentration
- create special incentives for nonprofits
- maintain and enforce broadcast regulation
- make public broadcasting public
- enforce antitrust laws
http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR23.3/mcchesney.html

This excellent article outlines a "12-Step Program for Media Democracy."
http://www.moveon.org/r?12

Granny D, an activist, gives some practical suggestions for media activism in this earthy speech, in which she says that alternative media sources "are like the secret short wave transmissions that an occupied people can turn to for the truth and for hope." She also critiques the current state of journalism very effectively. According to Granny, "The news is not something that comes into a city like a parade and can be reported by simple observation and description. Oh, traffic wrecks, house fires, bankruptcies and murders are lovely distractions and can fill some pages. But such items, compared to the more highly evolved stories of real journalism, are like the stooped-over half-man, half-ape precursors on the evolution scale. A self-governing people require the more highly evolved arts of journalism."
http://www.grannyd.com/speech20020810.htm

MoveOn Bulletin
Wednesday, November 6, 2002
Editor: Susan Thompson, susan.thompson@moveon.org
Editorial Assistant: Leah Appet, leah@moveon.org
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Top

The Information Squeeze 

Openness in government is under assault throughout the United States--at every level. Can the news media, reluctant combatants thus far, mount a successful counterattack?
Ronald Reagan moved into the White House in 1981. The American hostages came home from Iran that year. And IBM introduced its first personal computer, with a $6,000 price tag and an operating system by a company most people had never heard of: Microsoft.- 
That was also the year Seth Rosenfeld mailed off a request to the FBI for records under the Freedom of Information Act. Rosenfeld was a journalism major at the University of California at Berkeley and a writer for the campus paper, the Daily Californian. He wanted to find out about the FBI's history of political skulduggery at Berkeley and hoped the records he requested would shed new light on it. - 
"So," Rosenfeld remembers, "I thought, I'll just submit this FOIA request and I'll get these records and I'll write a story. And I'll be done in a year or so." - 
It took a good deal longer--more than 17 years--during which time the FBI did everything possible to keep the records secret: stalling, evading, appealing court rulings. Only after orders from five different federal judges did the FBI begin to surrender information in earnest. 
... http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=2617 

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CNN Refuses To Run Connie Chung's Skull & Bones Broadcast 

CNN spiked Connie Chung's widely-publicized "expose" on Yale University's Order of Skull & Bones, chapter 322, which counts among its membership President George W. Bush and his father and grandfather before him, and influential aide and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Brent Scowcroft, and Connie Chung ain't talking. The program--billed at CNN's Web site to air 8:00pm ET, September 4, did not materialize; in its place was a story of a murder trial in Florida. Contacted repeatedly at CNN studios, representatives of Ms. Chung and producers of Connie Chung Tonight were either "unavailable" or had "no comment."

The Order of Skull & Bones forms the nucleus of the private Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Trilateral Commission--which are, themselves--the guiding forces behind the drive toward an United Nations-run World Government. Each year at Yale, since 1832, 15 sophomores are "tapped" for consideration into this secret society, whose headquarters, called "the Tomb," lie underground, beneath Yale's campus; contained within the Tomb are computer facilities which are said to rival NORAD in sophistication. And although initiates are sworn to secrecy, a complete membership roster, initiation rites and Bones history was furnished to the late Dr. Antony Sutton in 1981.

Dr. Sutton, who died this year at the age of 84, was at the time a Research Fellow at the prestigious Hoover Institution of Stanford University. His ardent anti-communist/anti-globalist views and reputation for impeccable research doubtless attracted the attention of the disgruntled Bonesman, and with the records, Sutton eventually produced America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order or Skull & Bones, the definitive expose on that which lies at the core of a conspiracy to enact Global Government, via the destruction of America's Constitutional republican political system.

Ms. Chung's TV program would probably have been a puff piece anyway, but the 11th-hour spiking of her Skull & Bones broadcast is a glaring example of the Pravda-like protection of the Establishment that is the so-called "mainstream media."

• The September 4: Announcement from CNN:
  Connie Chung Tonight: A secret society -- and President Bush is a member! Connie exposes what's hidden behind the walls of Yale University. (8 p.m. ET)

... By Todd Brendan Fahey, at Rense.com,   http://rense.com/general28/ssb.htm , posted by jkeel,9/8/02

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The Making of a Media Reform Movement

"When the government grants free monopoly rights to TV spectrum, for example, it is not setting the terms of competition; it is picking the winner of the competition. Such policies amount to an annual grant of corporate welfare that economist Dean Baker values in the tens of billions of dollars. These decisions have been made in the public's name, but without the public's informed consent. We must not accept such massive subsidies for wealthy corporations, nor should we content ourselves with the 'freedom' to forge an alternative that occupies the margins. Our task is to return 'informed consent' to media policy-making and to generate a diverse media system that serves our democratic needs. In our view, what's needed to begin the job is now crystal clear--a national media reform coalition that can play quarterback for the media reform movement." So write Robert Mcchesney and John Nichols in The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020107&s=mcchesney

Miami Herald Changes Its Story Again, Now Blaming the Ballot Design

For a year, the Miami Herald has been blaming voting machines - primarily punchcard systems - for most of Florida's 175,000 uncounted votes. Suddenly, a year later, the Herald has changed its story, and now blames "poorly designed ballots." "Those troublesome ballots, used in 18 counties, had presidential candidates broken into two columns or spread over two pages." Well, duh! The whole world knew about Teresa LePore's "Butterfly Ballot" on November 8, 2000. This and the other confusing ballot designs were ILLEGAL and should have been vetoed by Secretary of Katherine Harris, but she was too busy taking first class trips around the globe to enforce Florida's election laws. Just one more reason why Harris should be indicted, not elected! http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/local/florida/

Contact Information for Vanessa Leggett

Federal Detention Center

PO Box 526245

1200 Texas Ave.

Houston, TX 77052-6245

Attn: Vanessa Leggett

ID # 1337-179

"My Turn: My Principles Have Landed Me in Jail"

http://www.msnbc.com/news/619488.asp?0dm=C15RO

From "First Amendment Zones" to keep protestors away from the Great Usurper, to Dick Cheney refusing to let Americans know who participated in his "open" energy deliberations, to the subpoena of phone records of an AP reporter, to administration support for a bill that would make it a criminal act to reveal government secrets, to Vanessa Leggett who sits in a Houston jail because she won't turn over privileged reporters' notes. Well, you are getting a clear picture that the regime in the White House is driving this country a lot closer toward the Bolshevik model of governmental control over information, journalism and protests than toward the Jeffersonian model.

We should all be grateful to the Vanessa Leggett's of the world, who shows courage in the face of a multi-pronged assault on our First Amendment rights. 

Send her note.

Let her know that you appreciate her courage in the face of a Bush regime attack on the basic foundation of our democracy: the First Amendment.
..... Buzzflash comment