Earlier this month, more than 3,500 people gathered in Memphis for the National Conference for Media Reform, and thousands more participated online.
Among their critical concerns, media concentration in a print, broadcast and electronic eco-system where political and economic capital are ever more closely interrelated.
The threat to pluralism, editorial independence and diversity of voices — addressed by an impressive roll call of journalists and content makers at the conference — is being felt throughout Europe, the Middle East, the US and beyond.
Just last year the EU monitoring and Advocacy Program warned that the role of television in supporting democracies is under threat” “Public service broadcasters are compromising quality to compete with commercial channels and many of them depend on Governments or political parties. Meanwhile ever-larger concentrations are developing in the commercial sector, often with clear political affiliations.” This has become a global problem.
A quick summary of the American experience illustrates how media concentration evolves. If US interests are represented diagrammatically, as few as six major stakeholders: News Corporation, General Electric, Disney, Time Warner, Viacom and CBS News Corporation have major holdings in a diverse array of media. These include television production and programming, magazines, periodicals, books, radio, film, Internet, parks and resorts — and their reach is broad. Service providers, including Google (who recently snapped up YouTube) are on the rise but have not yet entered the television market — Americans’ number one source of news for mass consumption. What is alarming is that these major stakeholders infiltrate so many different information sources.
Perhaps the most powerful forms of media censorship is not to be found in what you read, hear and see, but what you don’t. As journalist and long time media commentator John Pilger, argues, “the global model for censorship by omission is the United States, which constitutionally has the freest press in the world”.
This sentiment is reiterated by many other independent voices, including Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, a key speaker at the Media Reform conference.
“Independent media has a crucial responsibility to go where the silence is, to represent the diverse voices of people engaged in dissent,” says Goodman, whose program now airs on over 500 radio and television stations, is a good example of current interest independent media is generating in the US.
As Goodman told Newsweek back in 2004, “media is mainly there as a megaphone for those in power” and “largely reflects the views of their owners’”. She has attracted some controversy for her bold views, which her critics argue are an attention grabbing tactic. She regularly illustrates unequivocal bias and censorship by quoting FAIR’s (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, New York) study of four major news broadcasts – CNN, NBC, ABC & PBS, in the week leading up to and the week following General Colin Powell’s February 2003 address to the UN, pushing for war in Iraq. And “of the 393 interviews done about the war three were anti-war representatives,” she reports.
So how does media concentration impact media output? Take Rupert Murdoch, arguably the most powerful global media executive. Murdoch’s News Corporation owns the Fox broadcasting network, part of DirectTV – the biggest US satellite television provider, the Twentieth Century Fox film studio, major book publisher HarperCollins, the Post, the Weekly Standard and the rapidly growing MySpace internet hub. News Corporation also owns five British newspapers, more than 110 Australian newspapers and controls satellite television providers in Britain, Italy and Asia.
In Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, documentary producer/director Robert Greenwald sets out to reveals the tricks-of the trade implemented to manipulate and influence the viewing public of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel. It is not merely a matter of dictatorial policies and skewing what might be an acceptable story, skewing representation of, say, Republicans versus Democrats in special reports, deliberately ‘muddying the issue’, partisan reporters, bombarding with graphics and sensationalist music…all of which is documented through interviews with former Fox staff and credible media commentators. As Peter Hart media analyst, FAIR says it “blurs the line between news and commentary…inserting political opinion when you know it’s not called for.”
From the Arabic world comes one ‘independent’ media source which launched globally last year to much buzz. Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and originally funded by an endowment from the Emir of Qatar, has emerged as a powerhouse in waiting, aiming to deliver world news, 24 hours a day, to the planet, from a uniquely Arab perspective.
Al Jazeera sent shockwaves through the Arab world – as The Nation describes, “it has angered almost every Arab government at one time or another and been sanctioned or kicked out by many Arab countries. It holds the rare distinction of being shut down by both Saddam Hussein and the new US-based government”. In the West some mainstream critics have branded it a “mouthpiece” for Osama bin Laden and al-Quaeda, others have accused it of harboring an inherent anti-Western bias.
It is perhaps, no surprise then that Al Jazeera has directly felt the impact of the “War on Terrorism”. In 2001 the station’s Kabul office was hit by US bombs and in 2003 Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US strike on its Baghdad office. Reuters reported at the time that “the United States has denied deliberately targeting the station.” This has become contentious since, as The Independent later reported, “last year, it emerged that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had been forced to talk US president George W. Bush out of bombing the firm’s Doha Headquarters, during a meeting between the two leaders in April 2004.”
The new, globally tuned and English-speaking Al Jazeera broadcasts from network hubs in Qatar, London, Washington and Kuala Lumpur, offering news, talks and documentaries from Asia to the US.
“We want to be a channel that tells the untold stories,” says Managing Director Nigel Parsons. “We will carry on the tradition of showing the ugly side of conflict”.
The broadcaster has poached several prominent journalists, including highly regarded commentator Sir David Frost, award-winning BBC correspondent Rageh Omar and CNN anchor Riz Khan.
Long delays to the launch have brought rumours of friction between new recruits in London and executives in Qatar wanting, according to The Independent, “to preserve the station’s original brand of Arabic values” – topped off by last minute ‘cultural awareness training’ of British launch staff who upset Muslim locals by going on ‘drinking binges’.
And herein lies an important rub. The very definition of ‘independent media’ is elusive, because it seems that almost all media has a barrow to push.
At this point Al Jazeera is not being broadcast on US television or cable. Amy Goodman is making inroads in North America and internationally, thanks to podasting and the web, but still her overall audience reach is limited.
Whether independent reporting can cross cultural divides and achieve a true ‘global view’ remains to be seen, but voices like Goodman’s, and the international rise of Al Jazeera speak to headlines yet unwritten.
For more on the conference, including transcripts, audio and video, visit: www.freepress.net/conference