The Media Conglomeration
The 7th Annual Grassroots Radio Conference
The Indy Media Annual meeting
Callicoon Center,
Catskills, New York August 10, 2002
Thank you.
What a beautiful evening. Don't we pray that all the people of the world might have such peaceful evenings in peaceful places? But I don't think that is the "pax Americana" our junta in Washington has in mind --more a "pox Americana" of eternal sweatshops and other strifes. Only a well-informed American citizenry can right things, but, if we must rely upon our traditional news media, we are in trouble.
Our locally owned daily newspapers and broadcasters have been bought out from under us, and the flow of truth to us --always a problem-- has dramatically eroded. We simply can't have healthy democratic institutions without a well-informed citizenry.
On a local level, we are also losing something else: the community and cultural leadership of those grisly old bears who once ran our newspapers and stations. Though we often disagreed with them, they were us, and they nurtured great professionals to act as the conscience, the eyes and ears of our communities. But the old bears and their cub reporters are mostly gone.
The best editors and reporters are driven out when a major newspaper chain takes over a city's newspaper. Thirty inch stories, which are barely sufficient to give citizens the background they need to make intelligent decisions and to develop wise opinions, become ten inch stories or even five inch "container" stories on the front page or in bulletin-board sections inside.
Mr. Gannett, before you go further, let me warn you that, speaking as one woman, anything less than five inches really isn't enough.
Small, useless stories are only part of it. Seasoned journalists are forced out in favor of low-wage wire service rewriters.
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
Real news is the product of real journalism. It is not found by attending council and board meetings --it is the careful collection and assembly of sometimes subtle facts; it is the rising up of truth and conscience and outrage --it is the stuff that boards and councils and legislatures must then confront. Yes, little robot reporters can take down notes when shit hits the fan at a public meeting. But the real journalists are the slightly rumpled and red-eyed scribblers --solitary figures at the back of the room. They are the ones to cherish, for they, through long dedication to their beats, happen to be the ones who brought the shit into the room. And they did it for the people, and for justice. And they get no respect in the media chains that now employ them and, when they can, discard them.
Wherever the big corporate media giants go, we are losing our rumpled heroes. Increasingly, therefore, the only local news items getting to the people are the cherry-picked agenda items decided by board commissioners and mayors and woefully uninformed, marketing-oriented editors who have very little interest in the truths the people need to know.
We are talking about the rapacious exploitation of our communities. Some newspaper chains expect a twenty to forty percent operating profit from their newspapers and stations. That is colonial exploitation; it takes but does not give back to a community.
We cannot survive without high journalism. Not if we are to have any chance of being a self-governing people. Not if we are to be well balanced in our civic considerations and in our selection of leaders and in our support for domestic and foreign policies.
So what to do? We are having some success with the work of taking corporations out of our elections. Though the recent campaign finance reform law was no cure-all in that regard, it was a historic change. It chases corporate money out of our federal elections. That law, if we can get proper enforcement, was worth the battle.
We the people can still win battles, though it is exceedingly difficult. The rise of indy media came into the last year of that battle for campaign reform, and it was an important factor in our success.
Let me propose that we begin the work of passing another law, one that will prohibit individual or associated corporations from owning more than one newspaper, broadcast station or local cable provider. That is strong medicine, but our society clearly needs it. We can do it as we have done it before, by starting and keeping at it, and being ready when the moment comes to push for passage, as it always eventually does.
In the immediate term, some of you are already providing the news and information we Americans need. Your radio stations, webcasts and independent media centers are rapidly filling the vacuum created by the ever-shrinking five inch stories.
You are like the secret short wave transmissions that an occupied people can turn to for the truth and for hope. What you are doing is critically important for our national survival as a free people.
You know what you are doing, and so I can only make a few suggestions on the margin. I urge you to reach out to the good journalists in your community, some of whom are working under horrible constraints at the big newspapers and television stations, and offer them a regular guest microphone so that they can tell the deep stories that they can no longer otherwise report.
Secondly, I urge you to be even more aggressive in getting to high school-aged young people, letting them learn the reporting ropes. You have the technology and the dramatic missions they crave. They will never become the robots of the junta if you enlist them in the cause of truth at an early age. Do go out and find those special teachers, often teaching history or civics classes, and get them involved with your station so that they will bring the young people into the fold. Put them on the air; put them on the streets. Remember what your own high school life was like, and think of how an indy media center could have saved your pimpled life.
Thirdly, I think we do not do enough to outreach to new audiences who need to connect with our message of freedom and hope. If you have not already done so, I urge you to read "Nickel and Dimed," the story of working at Wal-Mart. Some community radio stations should consider a weekly call-in show for such employees. You could promote it with little bookmarks tucked into the sweaters they have to restack at the stores. Use the Norma Rae image to get people standing up for their rights. This is not a niche market. The largest employer in some states is now Wal-Mart.
Before they can join Reverend Billy's Church of No Shopping, they have to understand that they are in the same boat with sweatshop workers around the world.
Which brings me to my fourth piece of unsolicited advice.
It is not enough to tell people how messed up everything is. If that is all you do in this rising movement of independent media, the largest opportunity will be lost. The most powerful force for reform is always the positive image of the better way of living. Can you project what it is like to live in the world you propose?
Most people are realists. Even the men blowing up the mountains of Appalachia for more coal to give us more global warming know that what they are doing isn't a perfect idea. They say this to us reformers: "Please, I'm just playing by the rules I found. I need to provide for my family. Our happiness depends on money, and here's how I can get it. Change the rules if you can. I would like to be able to provide happiness for my family in ways that are not destructive. What do you propose?"
What indeed do we propose? What is our creative vision for life on earth in the 21st Century? We have to project that in realistic ways. From that image comes the passage of laws and the changing of buying habits --our two biggest levers for change. Reform is driven by dreams. Effective revolutionaries know that. Use a good part of your bandwidth for the positive.
Well, that is enough pontificating on a night that should have less preaching and more banjo playing.
My fifth and final piece of unsolicited advice:
We all have a special job to do in the weeks and months ahead. Our Bill of Rights and the other remains of our Constitution are under attack. When I walked across the U.S. for campaign finance reform, in hundreds of speeches to groups large and small, I appropriately mentioned that the rows upon rows of our war dead were men and women who loved life and did not go off to defend a corrupt system of legalized bribery, but for an American dream of fairness and freedom and individual rights. What is it if not a treason against their memory for an elected leader to purposefully destroy the Bill of Rights --the right of habeas corpus, the implied rights of privacy, the right to face your accuser, and on and on --the freedoms that so many have worked for and died for? We must steadfastly connect what is going on now with basic American values, and we must do it in our news stories and speeches and in our private conversations with our friends and neighbors. We have the patriotic high ground, and we had better use it.
Joseph McCarthy rolled on and on until Senator Margaret Chase Smith stood in the Senate and ended it by shaming him as an enemy to America's highest values. We don't have too many senators worth piss anymore, but we can do that shaming ourselves, and we must.
Not everyone will feel the same way about these things. We must invite them to come argue as friends. As an American, that is my favorite thing --the fact that we can hash it out peacefully and each come to a better understanding, which will inform the way we think and vote. We call it democracy, and, for all our worries, we've still got it.
Thank you all and goodnight.