Media Politics: Making Media the Issue

Under Michael Powell’s current term as chair, the FCC has ridden two simultaneously rising squalls: an unprecedented acceleration in corporate media consolidation, and an accompanying rise in community-based activism opposing corporate power. Powell didn’t create either storm, though his policies have certainly stirred up the torrents of both.

The rapid, survival-of-the-richest consolidation of the TV, radio and cable industries which followed the 1996 Telecommunications Act has been pushed into hyperdrive by Powell’s deregulatory frenzy. Placed in charge of a government agency whose original mandate was to regulate the broadcast industry in the public interest, Powell has taken a mocking attitude towards both regulation and the public interest. “The night after I was sworn in,” Powell declared, “I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest. I waited all night, but she did not come.”

Last March 20—the first aniversary of Michael Powell’s installation as FCC chair—activists donned homemade wings and flocked to the FCC’s doorstep as the Angels of Public Interest. This creative protest, the specacle of which attracted news cameras and focused the attention of activists across the country, was part of a weekend of panels and workshops concerned with the public interest, the importance of press freedom in a democratic society, and a wealth of more specific media issues.

The event was significant in that it drew media activists working on quite distinct struggles, all mobilized by Powell’s steroidal corporatism. Previous highly visible media protests, such as the 2000 San Francisco protests against the National Association of Broadcasters’ opposition to Low Power FM, or the national campaign to save Pacifica Radio, have focused on specific problems or media. This year, independent media producers and activists have called for the development of a national movement capable of directing broad, grassroots energy specifically towards media issues. “We fought around sweatshops and the WTO, we fought around war and militarism,” longtime media activist DeeDee Halleck recently reflected in Seattle, “but it’s time to take media itself as an issue, because it affects all the other issues.”

This September, Seattle’s Convention Center will host to the NAB’s annual “Radio Show” conference—the same conference that was the focus of activist attention in San Francisco. As in San Francisco, the NAB’s arrival is anticipated by local media activists who are planning to literally surround the industry conference with several days of workshops, lectures, demonstrations, street theater and broadcasts. While the NAB conference is nominally focused on radio industry matters, the organization is a powerful corporate lobby, and a major force driving industrywide consolidation. Drawing support and participation from regional independent journalists and national media watchdog organizations, but also from local communities and organizations for whom media access or coverage may not be a primary issue—but still a significant secondary issue, local organizers hope their counter-conference will help spotlight media issues themselves—not as a distraction from other concerns, but as a crucial support.