[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 50 (Monday, April 29, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E653-E655]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       MEDIA MERGERS ATE OUR NEWS

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 29, 2002

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to your attention an 
excellent article that recently ran in Seven Days, a weekly newspaper 
in Burlington, Vermont. The article discusses the increasingly 
superficial reporting and a growing conservative agenda dominating the 
nation's televisions, radios and newspapers. The article also 
highlights a Congressional Town Meeting that I held to discuss the 
topic of corporate control of the media.

                  [From the Seven Days, Apr. 24, 2002]

                      Media Mergers Ate Our News!

                            (By Susan Green)

       The families flocking to Palmer? Here are some of the 
     things that took place last

[[Page E654]]

     Thursday: An Amtrak train derailed in Florida. Families of 
     Flight 93 passengers listened to the September 11 cockpit 
     voice recording. The Senate defeated a Bush administration 
     proposal to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And 
     four Canadian soldiers were killed by American ``friendly 
     fire'' in Afghanistan.
       But what did all three cable news channels--CNN, MSNBC and 
     Fox--spend the night broadcasting? The arrest in Los Angeles 
     of actor Robert Blake for murder. Their reports included his 
     entire uneventful 40-minute ride to the police station.
       ``We're inundated with scandal and sensationalism in the 
     media. Important topics get very little attention,'' suggests 
     U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders, who is alarmed that just a 
     few multinational corporations ``own and control the flow of 
     information in the United States.''
       This week Sanders will come home to host ``The Media and 
     Democracy,'' two back-to-back forums on what he sees as 
     increasingly superfical reporting and a growing right-wing 
     agenda dominating the nation's television, radio and 
     newspapers. The town-meeting-style discussions, on Sunday in 
     Montpelier and Monday in Burlington, will feature Robert 
     McChesney and John Nichols, co-authors of It's the Media 
     Stupid.
       Sanders and his two guests are particularly alarmed that a 
     handful of media outlets--AOL/Time-Warner, Fox, NBC and 
     Viacom--recently won a lawsuit to abolish a longstanding 
     Federal Communications Commission rule that prohibited cable 
     companies from acquiring local TV stations. In addition, any 
     one company may soon be able to provide television service to 
     more than 35 percent of the nation's households, an 
     arrangement that was previously forbidden. Smells like a 
     monopoly.
       ``I'm organizing members of Congress to justify why it's 
     important to maintain those rules,'' Sanders explains. 
     ``Radio was deregulated in 1996, and that's been a disaster. 
     Big companies, like Clear Channel, have bought up hundreds of 
     locally owned stations across the country. Talk radio is now 
     completely dominated by the Right. It's a very frightening 
     situation.'' Of the 1225 stations Texas-owned Clear Channel 
     owns nationwide 10 are in Vermont, four of those in the 
     Burlington market--WCPV, WEZF, WJVT, and WXZO. Independents 
     like Ken Squier find it challenging to compete. ``They've got 
     all the syndicated shows we might want and they go after the 
     same advertising dollars,'' says the head of Radio Vermont, a 
     family of stations that includes WKDR, WCVT and WDEV. 
     ``Vermont Public Radio is also a problem. They are 
     government-subsidized but hitting on the same sponsors we 
     do.''
       Vermont's radio wars make more noise than corresponding 
     battles in the print media. For one thing, there are fewer 
     paper soldiers. The Burlington Free Press, purchased by the 
     Virginia-based Gannett Corporation from a local publisher in 
     the 1970s, maintains a moderate political tone in a one-daily 
     town.
       But ``following the standard corporate line,'' as Sanders 
     puts it, may explain why the largest newspaper in Vermont 
     never took a stand on the civil-union controversy, while 
     David Moats at the independently owned Rutland Herald won a 
     Pulitzer Prize for his editorials advocating equal rights for 
     gay couples.
       Author John Nichols, a Washington correspondent for The 
     Nation, believes that the impending changes in FCC 
     regulations ``could have a profound effect on corporations 
     like Gannett.'' Despite owning 95 daily newspapers, 22 TV 
     stations and the flagship national publication USA Today, the 
     company is ``not a major player'' compared with an outsized 
     media mogul like Rupert Murdock, says Nichols. Sanders 
     asserts that the Australian honcho is an ``extreme right-
     winger'' who is ``pushing the other media to the right.'' The 
     U.S. holdings include The New York Post and Fox. Murdoch's 
     News Corp. is fifth on a list of media monopolists, after 
     Time Warner, Disney and Viacom. General Electric ranks 
     seventh. Nichols thinks it's probably just a matter of time 
     before News Corp. or an equivalent mega-media organization 
     grabs Gannett and turns all the little Free Press-like rags 
     into strident conservative mouthpieces.
       Of course, many Americans are getting out of the reading 
     habit altogether. Television rules. Sanders points out that 
     the three area network affiliates, WVNY, WPTZ and WCAX, are 
     cogs in the machinery of giant conglomerates: Disney's ABC, 
     GE's NBC and Viacom's CBS, respectively.
       Dianne Lynch, chair of the journalism department at St. 
     Michael's College in Colchester, suspects Sanders is ``right 
     about mainstream TV,'' but, she suggests, ``mainstream TV is 
     no longer our only choice in getting information.''
       As someone who's professionally ``wired''--she writes a 
     column about women and technology for ABC.com--Lynch sees the 
     Internet as a wellspring of diverse voices, along with cable 
     television and many small publications. ``When I was growing 
     up, we only had four television channels to choose from. 
     Today, I can get the BBC on my cable channel or read The 
     London Times online,'' she says. ``People looking for a range 
     of opinions know where to go for them.''
       Nichols and McChesney believe those diverse views should 
     come to us more easily--and claim it's not too late to make 
     sure they do. ``We are actually at a critical transition 
     point,'' Nichols observes. If the 800-pound gorillas get 
     their way, he contends, ``in places like Burlington, 
     newspapers, cable companies, TV and radio stations could all 
     be owned by the same company. That's not healthy--and I'm not 
     overstating the case. We must be vigilant. A lot can be done 
     at the grassroots level.''
       That's where Nichols, now 41, got his start. As a kid, he 
     wrote for weekly newspapers in rural Wisconsin. ``I'd take a 
     camera and ride my bike to every little town meeting,'' he 
     recalls. ``Apart from a few deviations into rock bands, 
     journalism is what I've done all my life.''
       In addition to the book he wrote with Robert McChesney, a 
     University of Illinois research professor, Nichols penned 
     last year's Jews for Buchanan, about the 2000 presidential 
     election fiasco in Florida. The duo teamed up again for Our 
     Media, Not Theirs, a sequel to It's the Media, Stupid due out 
     this fall.
       McChesney hosts ``Media Matters,'' a weekly radio AM 
     program in his home state. He's also written or edited a 
     total of eight books, including Rich Media, Poor Democracy: 
     Communication Politics in Dubious Times, which was published 
     two years ago. Like Nichols, he has rock 'n' roll roots. In 
     1979 McChesney founded a Seattle music magazine, The Rocket, 
     that helped give birth to the grunge scene.
       Not surprisingly, both men advocate self-empowerment. ``The 
     American people own the broadcast airways,'' Nichols says.
       ``We have not begun to exercise our legitimate authority. 
     But first, we have to think about what we would like. Once we 
     imagine a media we want, then we can act. We have the ability 
     to develop BBC-quality programming.''
       Nichols acknowledges that the ``unmitigated crap'' now on 
     TV should not be censored, however. ``I'm not saying that, in 
     my perfect media world, all we'd do is sit around and watch 
     PBS. It doesn't mean everything has to be of redeeming value. 
     I just want citizens to understand they have a right to 
     demand better.''
       ``Jerry Springer,'' ``Fear Factor'' and ``Judge Judy'' 
     should take note: Mindless programs can co-exist with more 
     intellectual offerings. ``But that lowest-common-denominator 
     media does affect public policy,'' Nichols says. ``Stations 
     like Fox have such jingoistic and irresponsible journalism. 
     The Florida recount coverage was woefully inept, driven by 
     the spin of the Democratic and the Republican camps. That's 
     what happens when you have bad media.''
       Nichols, who has written for the New York Times and other 
     prestigious publications also warns, ``Until we get a better 
     media, a lot of work we do on fundamental issues will go for 
     naught. Without a media that allows diverse voices, it's 
     going to be hard to get the message out on all other 
     important struggles.''
       MSNBC runs a promo that boasts it's a channel ``with so 
     many different points of view, one of them is bound to be 
     yours.'' But it's unlikely any of them is Bernie's. Sanders 
     asserts that both newspapers and cable channels fail to 
     present a true leftist or even balanced perspective. Programs 
     devoted to serious news only explore opinions ranging from 
     the center to the extreme right.
       Oliver North, the Marine colonel who masterminded much of 
     the covert and seemingly illegal Iran-Contra dealings in the 
     '80s, has been recruited by Fox News to command his own talk 
     show. Not to be outdone, MSNBC boasts Alan Keyes, an ultra-
     conservative candidate in the last presidential election, now 
     offering nightly punditry. CNN's ``Crossfire'' always manages 
     to find arch Republican cheerleaders like Robert Novak who 
     can overpower even formidable Democratic operatives like 
     James ``Ragin' Cajun'' Carville.
       Yet the tone of debate--when there is any--tends to be 
     purposely theatrical. ``Politics has become entertainment,'' 
     Sanders laments. Nobody's talking about the nuts and bolts, 
     he argues. ``Despite all the hoopla over the economy, 
     Americans are working longer hours for less wages. People 
     have two or three jobs. That doesn't sound like a boom 
     economy to me. Who's focussing on the plight of the middle 
     class? It's a good issue, right? It's never discussed. The 
     richest 1 percent owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent 
     does. Ever hear that on a TV program?''
       Ditto for unionization, health care and a plethora of other 
     themes neglected in favor of shallow examinations of movie 
     stars who murder their wives, or the personal indiscretions 
     of political figures. ``We get endless coverage of sex, 
     celebrity and crime,'' Sanders says.
       He wonders why right-leaning news outfits have become so 
     influential when ``we are really a centrist country. Al Gore 
     and Ralph Nader got a few million more votes than Bush, so 
     actually we might be a hair to the left.'' Even in left-
     leaning Vermont, Sanders laments the dearth of progressive 
     voices on the radio.
       As one of only two Independents in the House of 
     Representatives--Virgil Goode, Jr. of Virginia is the other--
     Sanders worries that the very notion of independence is being 
     erased from what Americans see, hear and read. He compares 
     the media monopoly by the Communist Party in the former 
     Soviet union to today's corporate totalitarianism here.
       The motivation is different, though. ``If the progressive 
     point of view was a marketplace seller, you would find it 
     everywhere,'' Lynch suggests. ``I do think everything's 
     market-driven. Welcome to the world.''

[[Page E655]]

       Whatever the agenda, Sanders sees diversity of viewpoints 
     itself as crucial to our way of life. In a brochure 
     announcing his ``Media and Democracy'' town meetings, he 
     writes, ``If just a few corporations are allowed to control 
     both production and distribution of the news and programming 
     across America, democracy itself is in danger.'' In a world 
     in which cable companies, TV stations and local newspapers 
     are all merged, ``Millions of Americans will be receiving 
     virtually all of their information from a single source,'' he 
     points out.
       Though she is also wary of ``media consolidation,'' Lynch 
     is more skeptical about championing the alternatives. ``We 
     have to be careful not to idealize independent ownership,'' 
     she says. ``Commercial pressures do not go away when you're 
     individually owned. You don't suddenly have total freedom of 
     expression, freedom from the marketplace. The homogeneity of 
     the message is as much about commercial pressure as it is 
     about corporate structure.''
       But Nichols hails the Green Mountain State as one of last 
     bastions of media liberty. ``Look at the Rutland Herald, a 
     Pulitzer Prize-winning small newspaper. Vermont ain't 
     perfect, but it's better than many places in the country. You 
     still have a lot of locally owned operations. Things aren't 
     so bad there.''
       Halfway around the globe, there's evidence of a movement to 
     create a people's media. Nichols has spent time in New 
     Zealand, which is ``expanding the number of radio stations in 
     the public sphere.'' He touts a station operated by the 
     island nation's indigenous Maori people, and another ``run by 
     and for those under the age of 25.''
       In this corner of New England, ``an individual state can 
     have a lot of impact,'' Nichols adds. ``You guys can really 
     be part of a solution. Why not increase public funding for 
     public radio or crate an all-news-all-the-time station? In 
     the little state of Vermont, there is a lot you can do. If 
     one place does it right, you can dramatically influence the 
     rest of America.''
       Congressman Bernie Sanders, Robert McChesney and John 
     Nichols weigh in on ``The Media and Democracy'' on Sunday, 
     April 28, 7:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier; 
     and Monday, April 29, 7:30 p.m. at the CC Theater in Billings 
     Student Center at the University of Vermont. A special free 
     media workshop for teachers, and students and community 
     members will be held on Monday at 4 p.m. in Waterman's 
     Memorial Lounge at UVM.

     

                          ____________________