Date published: 7/28/2002

PERHAPS IT WAS appropri- ate for a congressional sym- posium on corporate control of the media to be held in the basement of the Capitol.

After all, most members of Congress--loyal minions of Big Money that they are--would prefer that the topic never see the light of day. That's because if people became better informed about our media system, they might begin formulating tough questions. Questions such as ones posed at the July 11 symposium by communications scholar Robert McChesney, who wondered aloud: "Why do we let one company [Clear Channel] own 1,400 radio stations? In whose interests is that?"

It's probably not in your interests; in fact, the extreme concentration of media outlets in a few corporate hands is hardly in anyone's interests. Hence a deafening silence in the corporate media that has made media reform "one of the least visible issues" even though it may be one of the most important, said Rep. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who joined Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, in organizing the symposium.

Media ownership--especially broadcast-media ownership--is clearly a political issue. The current broadcast-media landscape is the product not of the "invisible hand" of the marketplace, but of regulations, subsidies, and government-sanctioned monopolies.

In an article written earlier this year for The Nation magazine, McChesney and co-author John Nichols, another symposium participant, dispel the myth of "a natural order" in which media conglomerates "have mastered the marketplace on the basis of their wit and wisdom."

McChesney and Nichols argue that, in addition to the "huge promotional budgets and continual rehashing of tried and true formulas," corporate dominance of the media is made possible "by explicit government policies and subsidies that permit the creation of large and profitable conglomerates." The two media critics contend that when the FCC grants free monopoly rights to a small group of broadcasters, "it is not setting the terms of competition; it is picking the winners of the competition." These giveaways, they continue, amount to an annual sum of corporate welfare worth tens of billions of dollars.

What's especially galling--not to mention fundamentally anti-democratic--is that the government's decisions about who controls the airwaves are made in our name, but not with our informed consent.

Date published: 7/28/2002