The National Conference for Media Reform in St Louis concluded today. It was inspiring, overwhelming, inspiring, exhausting, and frightening.
From the rousing call to action delivered by Amy Goodman Friday morning to Bill Moyer’s powerful closing speech this afternoon, the weekend was filled with warnings, rants, history, inspiration, practical advice, pep talks, and wonkery of all kinds.
The bottom line is this: No matter what you are passionate about as a progressive – ending the war, saving the environment, economic justice, women’s issues, LGBT issues, returning the Democratic party to power, access to health care, protection of the vulnerable, the marginalized, the children, the poor, the sick, the elderly, and many more issues and causes just as urgent and important – we will be able to accomplish none of it if we do not have access to the media.
If citizens cannot communicate with each other, there can be no democracy.
If citizens cannot hear the truth, there can be no democracy.
I listened to Rep. Diane Watson describe the so-called “choice” that we have in the world of media. “You can watch Michael Jackson walk into the courtroom and Michael Jackson walk out of the courtroom. Then you can watch the re-enactment of what happened in the courtroom. Every hour. Then you can get your morning paper and find a recap of the previous day’s Michael Jackson coverage on the front page. This is choice?”
Five minutes after she said this, I sneaked off to the hotel bar for a cigarette. Fox News on a huge TV screen across the room. And there was Michael Jackson, walking out of the courtroom.
This is what they want us to see. They do not want us to see what is really happening to our country, to our planet. I returned to BooTrib tonight to find that now those who want to keep us ignorant and distracted are on the way to taking Newsweek down. Don’t look at the abuses at Gitmo – there are traitors at Newsweek!
This is a dangerous time. A few powerful corporations control what we see and hear. Control what we know and what we do not know. They use this power to buy the politicians that make the policies that ensure that they will gain even more power and money. They support dangerous ideologues who lead us into war to build an American empire and destroy our freedom, our constitution, in pursuit of their ideological ends. And those dangerous ideologues, in turn, support the media corportations because they can be used to build that “American Empire” – the empire whose foundations were to be laid in the rubble and the corpses of Iraq.
Again and again, we see that the majority of the American people do in fact support most of the goals and ideals of the progressive movement. Without a means to share this, to communicate this, each person, each small group, thinks that they are the only ones who think this way, who feel this way. They think that they are surrounded by a huge majority of Americans who are ignorant and intolerant and concerned only with satisfying their own greed. Who embrace the radical right agenda.
This belief leads them to give up, to not try. To think that it’s hopeless to try to fight the radical right juggernaut. Better to simply hunker down and try to survive the coming storm. Or try to avoid even thinking about what is happening and hope that it will all go away. Hope that what they think is happening is not really happening – hope that they are being too paranoid. And the powerful become more powerful. The ideologues become more dangerous. The rest of us become weaker.
This weekend I listened, I learned. Tonight it’s late, I’m worn out. I’m going to Chicago early tomorrow and I don’t know what kind of internet access I’ll have for the next few days. I hope to be able to post more about what I learned later.
Besides Amy Goodman, Congresswoman Diane Watson, and Bill Moyers, other people I was able to see and hear – David Brock, Rep. Bernie Sanders, Bob McChesney, Janine Jackson, Al Franken, Jim Hightower, Robert McChesney and many others. George Lakoff was there, and Phil Donohue. I stood next to Patti Smith after she sang “Power to the People,” and almost bumped into Amy Goodman – just a little bit star-struck, I can report that I have said, “Excuse me” to Amy Goodman. This morning as I was listening to Noah Winer of MoveOn give us tips about how to mobilize people with email action alerts, Danny Schechter lined up at the mic to ask a question at the Q&A.
For now, I hope you all will listen to the speech Bill Moyers gave today. The fight for truth, for access to the truth is indeed the fight of our lives, and the fight for lives.
