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/* Written  4:41 pm  Oct  5, 1992 by bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu in cdp:alt.activism */
/* ---------- "The Media Monopoly (part 13)" ---------- */

The Media Monopoly

by Ben H. Bagdikian

"The Media Monopoly" is published by Beacon Press in Boston.
Help support the work of Ben H. Bagdikian by purchasing this book.


Part 13 -- To Undo Excess



"So distribution should undo excess,
 and each man have enough."
        -- King Lear, 4.2

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[Note: The structure of this chapter is partitioned. Each section 
does not readily flow into the next section. Therefore, I have 
not attempted to simulate a continuity in this synopsis. Each 
partition will be divided by a string of ":::::::::::::". B.R.]

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"The deadening effect of cross-media ownership is clear in the 
sad loss of the original dream of cable. The great promise of 
cable... was copious channels for each city, organized as a 
public utility."

"Cable would become a common carrier... guaranteed a reasonable 
profit in return for an agreed-upon level of public service. The 
cable operator would be in the business of renting cable time 
with an almost unlimited supply of channels available."

"Under these conditions, there would be the possibility of 
'narrowcasting,' devoting numerous low-cost channels to smaller 
audiences... It would not be necessary to attract a maximum, 
generalized audience, profitable for mass advertising, which is 
the dynamic that now produces the bland and imitative programming 
of through-the-air broadcasting. This new direction was the 
promise of modern cable..."

"The original dream for cable is all but lost... [For] most 
communities the original idea has been reversed, thanks to the 
lobbying that produced changes in congressional law and policies 
of the [FCC]. When these changes were being considered, most 
newspaper and broadcast news was silent on the profound 
consequences of the changes. It is not coincidental that most 
cable systems are owned by companies who already are owners of 
other media..."

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"The 1988 presidential elections revealed how sterile the 
national political dialogue has become. A major cause is the mass 
media's treatment of politics, specifically the failure of their 
reporting to reflect the full range of ideas and programs that 
exist in American thinking and expertise."

The narrowness and "paucity of ideas in national politics" can be 
traced at least in part to the limited time allowed for issues in 
television reporting and advertising. "Television is the main 
medium of national and regional electioneering, mostly ten-second 
to thirty-second campaign commercials that are devoid of 
content."

"In politics and where socially important information is at 
stake, the public should become more aware of the lively 
alternative press that exists regionally and locally, and support 
those publications that speak to their needs. The alternative 
papers often pursue subjects and air opinions squeezed out of the 
mainstream local press. Some of their investigative reporting 
regularly stimulates the first public awareness of flaws in the 
institutions the mainstream media tend to protect..."

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"To give citizens a choice in ideas and information is to give 
them a choice in politics: if a nation has narrowly controlled 
information, it will soon have narrowly controlled politics."

"Today the integrity of news and other public ideas depends on 
corporate self-control, on the hope that the large corporations 
that now control most of the media will never use that power as 
an instrument to shape society to their liking. The history of 
those who hold great power inhibited solely by self-control is 
not reassuring."

Our "news" is a narrowly focussed aspect of reality. We are by no 
means getting the full picture. No small group, "...certainly no 
group with as much uniformity of outlook and as concentrated in 
power as the current media corporations, can be sufficiently open 
and flexible to reflect the full richness and variety of 
society's values and needs."

"The answer is not elimination of private enterprise in the 
media, but the opposite. It is the restoration of *genuine* 
competition and diversity." [my emphasis]

"If the concentration is too great it ought to be diluted; it 
would seem to be common sense that if one corporation has too 
many outlets for the country's economic and social health, the 
corporation ought to divest itself of the excess." However for 
this to occur "...the public requires adequate information." Yet 
the sad thing is that the public has not gotten this information 
because "...the media have never permitted news and commentary to 
make their corporate power a subject of common knowledge, let 
alone of public debate."

There is a chance to reverse the power of the mass media. The 
chance "...lies in public awareness of the danger. But because 
the media are not going to make an issue of their own power, the 
initiative must come from others."

"Concentrated control of the media is not the most urgent danger 
facing society...But the ability to cope with larger problems is 
related to the peculiar industries we call the media, to their 
ownership and the nature of their operation... In a world of 
multiple problems, where diversity of ideas is essential for 
decent solutions, controlled information inhibited by uniform 
self-interest is the first and fatal enemy."

"The object of reform is not to silence voices but to multiply 
them, not to foreclose ideas but to awaken them. For it is in 
diversity and openness that the genius of the United States can 
flower."


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Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End part 13