[Mb-civic] Media and the election + The Optimism of Uncertainty (Howard Zinn)

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Here are TWO important and motivating essays.  Read and pass on!

--

Dear Media Reformer, 

With the election behind us, we face four more years with an administration 
that has consistently supported major media corporations while consistently 
acting against the public interest on media policy. 

With a new Congress set to consider legislation that will reshape our entire 
media landscape for decades to come, it is important to take a reflective look 
at media and the elections as we work for meaningful media reform in the 
future. Stay tuned and don't despair. There are several exciting initiatives 
under way across the country that promise real reform. We'll be in touch 
about how you can plug into media reform efforts and build a better media 
system. 

In the meantime, here is an analysis from Free Press (www.freepress.net) 
founder Robert McChesney on the role our media played in the election and 
a preview for what lies ahead. 

Stay strong,

Josh Silver
Executive Director
Free Press 

On Media and the Election

By Robert W. McChesney

Perhaps the most important function our media serves is to provide voters 
with the information they need to make sound decisions in the voting booth. If 
people don't know what they're voting for, our democracy is in serious 
trouble. 

Unfortunately, it appears that we're in serious trouble. 

This election was marked by a staggering amount of voter ignorance. Polls 
show that voters -- especially Bush supporters -- were grossly misinformed 
about their candidate's position on a broad range of issues. Surveying 
supporters of the President, a University of Maryland PIPA/ Knowledge 
Networks poll found: 

72% still believe that there were WMD's in Iraq. 
75% believe that Iraq was providing substantial support for Al Qaeda. 
66% believe that Bush supports participation in the International Criminal 
Court. 
72% believe that he supports the treaty banning land mines. 

The catch? None of these statements are true. 

How do we know who our candidates are and what they stand for when the 
media fixates on polls, controversy and spin instead of the issues? How do 
we have meaningful elections when people don't know what they're voting 
for? Our Founders understood this; that is why they inscribed freedom of the 
press into the First Amendment of the constitution. 

Our media are responsible for giving us a balanced inspection of all claims, 
careful fact checking, and reasoned analysis. But that was all but abandoned 
in this presidential campaign. And it is exactly what we would expect. As a 
result of media consolidation and pressures to cut costs, media corporations 
have gutted investigative journalism and hard-hitting analysis. Hence we get 
hours and hours of coverage of the baseless and idiotic "swift boats for truth" 
story, and barely a look at what the actual policies of this administration are, 
and how they affect the people of the nation and the world. 

The complicity of our major media in subverting public discourse runs even 
deeper. The handful of enormous media corporations that own most of our 
major local TV stations and networks raked in $600 million from presidential 
TV ads alone, shattering previous records and subjecting voters to half-truths 
and distortions from both sides. Political ad revenues now constitute well 
over 10 percent of commercial broadcasting revenue, up from less than three 
percent in 1992. Overall, federal elections cost nearly $4 billion this year, 
representing a near 30% increase since 2000. 

An iron law in commercial broadcasting is you do not do programming that 
undermines the credibility of your sponsors. The result: more political ads 
and little-to-no critical journalism that exposes the spin and lies in these TV 
ads. A more brash insult to our intelligence can hardly be imagined. This also 
explains why the corporate media giants are as enthusiastic about campaign 
finance reform as the NRA is regarding gun control. 

Lastly, media companies have a conflict of interest; they benefit from seeing 
the re-election of George W. Bush and his industry-friendly policies. Viacom 
owner Sumner Redstone made it clear when his CBS was enmeshed in 
"Rathergate" that he was a supporter of the president -- because the 
president would allow Viacom to get much larger and face less competition. 

All in all, we face a situation that could scarcely have been imagined by our 
nation's founders. Our "fourth estate" is hardly an independent sector in 
service to the citizenry. It is a massive industry dedicated to serving the 
needs of its owners. It is a central tension in our democracy, and one that we 
must address if we are to get off this downward spiral of misleading political 
campaigns driven by massive contributions from corporations and wealthy 
individuals. Reforming the media is not the only issue that faces our nation, 
but it is an unavoidable one. 

So what are we going to do about it? Reform means giving citizens more 
outlets of independent news and analysis that isn't beholden to the bottom 
line. It involves giving citizens more access to their own airwaves to let 
Americans know what's really going on in their cities and neighborhoods. It 
involves making sure that access to information is equitable and affordable. 

For the most part, the Bush Administration is no friend to media reform, but 
there is cause for hope. Liberals and conservatives alike oppose letting big 
media corporations get bigger, and we are going to work hard together to 
prevent further consolidation of our media. Liberals and conservatives alike 
favor journalism over spin and dislike the commercial marination of our 
culture. There was a reason President Bush did not brag about his plans to 
let media companies get bigger and have less competition on the campaign 
trail -- he knows Americans from all walks of life oppose the idea. For him, 
this is an issue best kept behind closed doors. 

The mission of Free Press is to see that these crucial media policies be 
made in the light of public attention. We are committed to the principle that 
the policies and subsidies that establish our media system should be the 
result of widespread informed public participation. 

While the short-term prospects for structural reform at the federal level are 
limited, there is important defensive work to be done. Remember that three 
million Americans organized in 2003 to stop the FCC from relaxing media 
ownership rules. And we are much stronger as a movement today than we 
were 18 months ago. We can continue to make headway on a number of 
issues and plant seeds for eventual victories. Now is the time for the media 
reform movement to do the foundation work to prepare for big fights coming 
years down the road. We have to think in terms of the long haul if we are 
going to be effective. 

In addition, there is a great deal of optimism for a number of victories at the 
state and local level. If we get enough citizens to take a stand, politicians will 
be forced to act. There are promising, activist-driven efforts underway to 
challenge local cable providers so they ensure funding and channel 'set-
asides' for independent and diverse programming. Amazing noncommercial 
wireless technology has the potential to deliver more diverse TV offerings, 
and provide phone and Internet as an affordable public utility like water, 
sewers and electricity. 

The past few months remind us again that media reform is not a left-versus-
right, technocratic or obscure issue; it addresses the singular importance of 
media to a self-governing society. Never again should we allow our media 
system to send the voters to the polls without the information they need to 
make well-reasoned decisions. There is a national emergency when voters 
go to the polls ignorant of the most elementary facts about our economy, 
foreign policy, health care, and environment. It is unacceptable. 

So stay tuned. We're getting ready to send you more information on how to 
plug in and take action to create a better media system so that when the next 
big election comes along, Americans actually have a clue about what their 
candidates stand for. In the meantime, go to www.freepress.net and help 
yourself to the wide range of media reform resources and information. Pass 
this along and tell you friends to get involved. As Saul Alinsky put it, the only 
way to beat organized money is with organized people. Remember this, act 
on it, and we will prevail. 

Onward,

Robert McChesney 

-----


ZNet - Nov 6, 2004
http://www.zmag.org

The Optimism of Uncertainty

by Howard Zinn

In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in
comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I
manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?

I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we
should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The
metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any
chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of
changing the world.

There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will
continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden
crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts,
by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick
collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.

What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter
unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia, in that
most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced
imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by
train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World
War II--the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop
and Molotov shaking hands), and the German Army rolling through Russia,
apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at
the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of
Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled
in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?

And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in
advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent
Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China
renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making
overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise, perplexing
everyone.

No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so
quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created
in the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialism of
Nyerere's Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin's adjacent Uganda. Spain
became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism being overthrown
without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary
democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists,
everyone.

The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective
spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political
power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of the
world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The failure
of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to
withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most striking
evidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons does not
guarantee domination over a determined population. The United States has
faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in lndochina, conducting
the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world history, and yet
was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we see other instances
of the failure of the presumably powerful over the presumably powerless,
as in Brazil, where a grassroots movement of workers and the poor elected
a new president pledged to fight destructive corporate power.

Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the
struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent
overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem
invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power
has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable
than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization,
sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience--whether by blacks in Alabama
and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Vietnam, or
workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union itself.
No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are
persuaded that their cause is just.

I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world
(is it just my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of
all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope.
Especially young people, in whom the future rests. Wherever I go, I find
such people. And beyond the handful of activists there seem to be
hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they tend
not to know of one another's existence, and so, while they persist, they
do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing that
boulder up the mountain. I try to tell each group that it is not alone,
and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national
movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.

Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware
of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving
zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand,
heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when
multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we
don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been
involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.

An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the
dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly
romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only
of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we
choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If
we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we
remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have
behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the
possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different
direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait
for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of
presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in
defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

***



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Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
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