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I always have mixed feelings about efforts like this, because although everyone agrees that commercial media "news" has become something frightening--hysterically exploiting everything in its path, with no morality or concern for anyone's rights or the consequences for society, then dumping it like used toilet paper, and moving on to the next "mining job"--whenever I read these petitions to change things, the "solutions" they propose, or their recommendations for what "should" be covered, I usually find that I don't agree with any of them any more than I agreed with the way things are now. When they start telling me what stories "we" will consider important, and why "we" do not consider the current media-covered stories important, and their reasons, they lose me completely, and for the same reasons as the current corporate media. You can start with the snide phrase used to describe the abuse and murder of the child JonBenet Ramsey, "Sure, it's an interesting mystery..." Fuck you too, frigid prick!
Of course, the rich males who generally run groups like this inform "us" that we must discard "trivial white women and girls," and must pay attention to Iraq. This is Richie Boy's biggest interest, and nowhere near the top of my list of concerns. When they start off with this premise that the "white women and girls" are the "trivia," and big, important stories are about males, then they lose me. I hate them. How is substituting one rich male group's list of interests for another, an improvement? The dreary predictability of the list of "things we must like" always puts me off--it never has any more to do with me than the original corporate-exploitation list, and always exists with a contemptuous attitude of "superiority" toward my group, ("Sheeple" who must be educated; "Voted for Bush," even when they didn't; "I think they're finally waking up," although of course, they will never be as smart as you; "Johnny Beer-Gut," or whatever the hell you refer to my group as; stupidly refer to all Christians as "fundies," etc.). Above all, this attitude that anything relating to white women and girls is "sexy but trivial," and that "real news stories" are about serious, grown-up males, only makes me hate the group.
This calls to mind the problem I have with a lot of groups of this kind--that their concerns are just as Richie Rich as the corporate media's, and just as disconnected. Where the "rich group"-reformers want stories on stem cell research, alternative energy technologies, and of course, Iraq ("..But people are dying there!"), the middle class and poor need stories on whether or not there are free health fairs within walking distance (so they can get real health care), whether or not anybody is going to raise the minimum wage, lower gas prices, the price of insurance for everything, and all other now-unaffordable price-gouges. There is still a total gap.
I also agree with yurbud, reply #3, that things are so structurally changed, destroyed, all the principles of independant journalism replaced by a corporate PR/ mouthpiece system, that nothing at all will change until the original FCC regulations (from the '30s) and Fairness Doctrine, etc., can be returned, to restore it to its true purpose of public information, education and service, and remove it completely from this one-sided, corporate stream of "politicized" propaganda and thought-control. The previous journalism of the press is now unrecognizable, not even the point anymore, and all has been corrupted by edicts from corporate management to remake the whole society to itself. There is no possibility that they themselves will change, or they would have, since it is so clear that we hate them, they are losing their audience, etc. The whole owned-commercial-department that the media has become, will have to be dismantled, and returned to the free-standing broadcasters, newspapers, book publishers, radio stations, and all the rest, of yesteryear.
Further, even the content is not necessarily the total problem. I remember Truman Capote's claim about being able to take any subject, no matter how trivial or mundane, and by great research and writing, turn it to a great work of journalism. I remember when O.J. Simpson murdered Nicole Brown, many feminists had great hope that all the coverage would bring attention to the suffering of battered women, and the lack of help for them. Of course, the male media had no intention of doing anything but cheering the male on, and they did. There was no education on the topic, but it wasn't because it was "trivial"; it was because there were no women there, controlling content, so it was "sensationalized," "trivial," "fun and sexy," and all-male. There have been many really profound and important discussions on the "Pornification" (book title) of American "culture" by corporate media, including here on DU, so the topic can be a revelation, if intelligently and honestly handled. The problem is the leering/always selling/always vulgar attitude of its treatment. Why was the JonBenet Ramsey case not focused on the abuse of children, the way rich males buy and orchestrate their way out of the consequences of their crimes, and even the repulsive, hyping attitude of the media, which they never cover but always arrogantly pretend to?
If you somehow force them to cover other topics, but still being what they are, there will be no improvement. Maybe they will cover labor strikes, but only to mention whether or not "the strikers were violent"; maybe cover pharmaceutical corporations, but only to "introduce you to the popular new drug..."; maybe they will cover Bush's slide in the polls, but only to "wonder whether Democrats are now suddenly posturing themselves the Party of change and competance, rather dishonestly, I might add," etc. After all, this is the media that constantly wrings its hands about how "celebrity-obsessed" "we" all are, yet I have never known even one single person who was--so much for their "education" of us. When they are more concerned about the quick-cut shots of post-production than they are about whether or not anybody actually understands anything, then you realize that things are much further gone than just topic content. You have to get the whole corporation itself out of the coverage; and then start investigating corporate criminal behavior.
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