Sanders: Fight for Media Reform Lives On

[Armstead]

Release on website of Cong. Bernie Sanders (I-Vr.)
http://bernie.house.gov/documents/releases/20031209181646.asp


The Fight For Media Reform Lives On


According to a study by the American Journalism Review, for the first five months of this year, leading up to June 2, when the FCC formally voted to relax the ownership rules, there was virtually no coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox and CNN. The story states that, "While some newspapers produced some stories in the weeks prior to the FCC's action, the major networks--where most people get their news--acknowledged the issue only after protests in Washington had grown impossible to ignore. Nevertheless, millions of people came together to tell the FCC that they do not want fewer and fewer corporations owning more and more of what they hear, see and read.

Clearly, it is not difficult to understand that the large, multinational corporations that own much of our media are not 'fair' in terms of their political or economic coverage. Why should that be otherwise? As large multinational conglomerates, owned by some of the wealthiest people in the country, they are sympathetic to tax breaks for the rich and corporate welfare from taxpayers. They are anti-union and support trade policies which allow them to throw American workers out on the street so that they can move to China and other low-wage countries. They are pro-war because viewing audiences in war-time substantially increase. Large media corporations help create the 'consumer culture' because, in fact, their main function is to sell the products their advertisers produce.

We will not be successful in creating social justice in this country, environmental sanity, and foreign policies which lead us to peace and not war, unless we make fundamental changes in the media. Media is intricately related to all of these issues. One would be very naïve, indeed, to believe that we can have a substantial impact on any of those issues without changing how the American people receive information or, in fact, the very kind of culture that our media system helps to create. In the next year we will work even harder to make sure there is real media reform and not more giveaways to the big media companies.

For article from American Journalism Review see http://bernie.house.gov/documents/articles/20031209094511.asp