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.
Sounds like you had a great time and hope you’re able to give us some more first hand information. I would have loved to have been there.
It really is frightening how much people believe and depend on the media for ALL their news-and believe they are very well informed.
How to even begin to get people to realize how little actual news they are getting? No one wants to admit they are uninformed or worse that our government/media are deliberately keeping them uninformed or misinformed.
I have many pages of notes. I was surprised when I began to read over them all last night how much my perceptions had changed in three short days.
I had considered myself fairly well-informed about media issues, but I realized now that I am just an infant in this area.
One thing I learned – we are ALL dependent on “the media.” The internet is a medium. The major corps – Time Warner, Viacom, SBC, et al – are working on making sure that they are our only access point to it. Laws have been passed in about a dozen states already that SPECIFICALLY PROHIBIT cities or other local government entities from providing broadband internet access to their citizens. This in spite of the fact that several cities are already doing this and are able to provide service for $9-15/mo instead of the $30-50 most of us are now paying for high speed access.
As long as broadband is this expensive the working class, the poor, and increasingly, the middle-class are shut out of having access to this source of information. No information, no way to communicate and you cannot fully participate in a democracy. Working class and poor people unable to participate in our political system? Needless to say, the Republican party does not see this as a bad thing.
If they succeed in consolidating internet access, the next step is limiting our access or putting up stiff financial barriers to our access. Just like cable TV – there will be an infinite variety of “choices” – can you say 600 channels and there’s nothing on TV? And most people will pay and pay, because there is no alternative. Just like they pay for cable today.
Great write-up, Janet.
Hi, Janet Strange, this is very important information–please consider posting it at DailyKos, too.
By the time I got this one up, there were already several about the conference at Kos. Diary police probably would have rapped my knuckles with a ruler. I’ve been traveling and had only intermittent internet access for the past couple of days.
I’ll be back home tomorrow night (after a 12 hour drive, so I will have to rest up a bit), but if it seems like the next one would fit over there, I will.
You nailed it – that this tops all other issues because
without a free press we will not know about the other
issues.
I keep checking “MediaChannel.com” to watch those who
are watcing the media.
But there is nothing like real live presence giving us
a report, so thanks Janet.
Thank you for reporting on this important conference so quickly. You are very correct to point out how the lack of a serious media is such a threat to our democracy and to our freedom.
We have to take back the press.
Janet…what a moving peice. I have admired your writing since dkos. I look forward to hearing more of what they had to say in future diaries, especially in light of the news today. I am so diheartened right now. I want our real America back.
All of us who want our America back need to know more about what’s going on on media issues. Too much has happened behind closed doors that has led to the situation we are in today. We must not let that happen again. The egregious telecom amendment of 1996 led to the consolidation of the media. It will be reviewed and revisited in 2006, and as the Congressfolk at the conference pointed out, there is other proposed legislation coming soon that will affect our “knowledge landscape” (media) in ways that might not always be obvious, or labeled “telecom act.”
We need to stay on top of this. And as we learn more, we learn that there is work to do.
And thanks for the compliment (blush).
and deserving. I had to jump back in here one last time tonight(I promise…lol).I just watched the last half of Bill Moyers speech on Cspan that you spoke of. What a powerful speech and boy am I glad he is on our side. We need him for a spokesperson in the media. I would love to see Dean tap into Moyers eloquence and passion for the liberal point of view. Any ideas?
The ’96 Telecom Act was an attempt to deregulate the “telecom” industry following the mess created by the AT&T breakup in 1984. Twenty years and one “overhaul” later the FCC is still trying to work around the luddite-infested congress’ definitions of what constitutes “telecom”.
Realize that in the dense legislation congress did nothing to move the industry forward. Legal definitions of service still include “voice”, “video”, “audio”, and “data”. Compounding the problem is the fact that “cable”, “wireless”, and “satellite” remain discrete technologies subject to different regulations. Square pegs, round holes.
Under the current construct – physical plant – that is the “internet”, technology moves at near real-time, congress rides a horse cart. To the extent media consolidates people will migrate towards “outside sources” for accurate information. The best example is blogging. A toy that turned into a tool.
That scream you hear in the night comes from media execs realizing they no longer have control over the flow of information. I’d suggest keeping an eye on the battle going on between the newly consolidated Baby Bells and the cable industry. What happens when a “telecom” company, legally providing broadband internet services adds video to the mix? What video will we watch? CNN? Network? Movies?
Or a live feed from a one-inch camera inside a reporter’s hat – anywhere in the world? Sorry, but my take on this hasn’t changed in ten years. Brewster Kahle was right: the network is the computer. The “media” as you know it has already died. Dead tech walking.
In this world, we don’t need to “access” the media. We are the media. The fact that information from the conference is now available to a global audience begs the question. And the answer is your sig line.
Available to those of us who have a computer and internet access. This is not everyone in the world – or even in the U.S.
The problem is that if we are not vigilant, access will be even more restricted. I think you are using the word access differently from me. I think that the internet is a medium, and I am “accessing” (forgive the atrocious use of that word) it right now.
I hope that there is no way that access to the internet cannot be limited – that there is no way to put that genii back in the bottle, but I’m not sure that is guaranteed.
I hope that there is no way that access to the internet can be limited . . .
Come meet newly minted celebrity Janet Strange at the Bloggers Caucus at Demfest 2005– June 17-19 in Austin!
Hi, Sandia! Cool that you are promoting our Bloggers’ Caucus. Your link is missing a colon, though!
Was there any discussion of Meshed WiFi or WiMax?
While both are as yet non-standard (wifi is standard of course but the meshed part is not), they offer a future way to cover large metropolitan areas with non-licensed wireless content.
Both would bypass wired broadband access control.
Yes, at the Policies for Advancing Independent Media panel. Sascha Meinrath of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network talked about the MESH networks that they are setting up there. I think that eventually all of the panels will be available, although they aren’t yet. You might check the conference web site from time to time to see if this one has been posted.
Problem is, laws already on the books in a number of states (and proposed for more) prohibit such community networks. Ummm, guess who is behind such legislation (hint – commercial broadband providers).
It seems insane, but with Santorum proposing that the National Weather Service should be prohibited from giving weather forecasts because their forecasts compete with private companies like AccuWeather – well, it’s getting harder and harder to surprise us.
We’re getting to the point that someone is going to propose closing the public libraries because they compete with Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
I mean, that sounds like a joke – and it probably is, but if there is no way to get low-cost internet access, the effect is similar to what would happen if only people with enough money to buy books have access to them. It’s all about shutting people out of the system – especially the non-elite.
Sitting here in Scandinavia it is sure difficult at times to understand why huge numbers of people in the US aren’t up in arms to defend against the loss of such basic rights.
It makes me appreciate the freedoms we have here far more.
Thank you so much for being our eyes and ears at this event. I look forward to your follow-ups.
Is this the Bill Moyers speech you speak of? Make sure to sign the petition. http://www.freepress.net/news/8120
Everyone, everyone should listen to this speech. And I do mean listen – or better yet watch the video.
Go. Listen. Now.
because it is “middle of the night” here. I was up late
watching the election results for BC, Canada.
By the time I was half-way through it, I could not see the
speech for tears. This is the way to tell people off with
a wit so sharp, his enemies will have to read it twice to get the hits.
I hope Moyers’ speaking truth to power has great results
and that brave people like him can blunt the power of the
corporate media and the right wing. With our cooperation –
it is going to be a grass roots’ effort, like the “widow’s
mite” that Moyers talks about.