NBC Rejects Chics: What's Up With That?

ROOTS OF REJECTION: THE FIRST SNUBBING OF THE CHICKS

In March of 2003, singer Natalie Maines expressed her disagreement with the start of the war in Iraq and her disgust with President Bush in public at a Dixie Chicks’ concert in London. Shortly thereafter, chaos ensued as radio stations refused to play the band’s songs and conservative political commentators skewered them verbally on shows. Fans also boycotted their concerts and their music. Three years later, the Chicks are releasing Shut Up & Sing, a film documenting the 2003 controversy and its aftermath.

But NBC is refusing to run an ad for the documentary. The network says that the documentary denigrates President Bush too much. (Check out the story on NPR). That’s an interesting perspective for a network to take and it leads to bigger questions. Who owns NBC and what links does the government have to NBC? And, further, are those relationships influencing this particular decision? I wanted to know, so I started digging through the virtual files.

WHO OWNS THE AIRWAVES HERE: A BRIEF LOOK AT NBC

A quick look at Stop Big Media’s website reveals that General Electric (GE) owns NBC and, interestingly enough, GE also has business interests in military production, including building engines for

• F-16 fighter jets
• Abrams tanks
• Abrams tanks
• Apache helicopters
• U2 Bombers
• Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAV)
• A-10 aircraft
• Other planes, helicopters and tanks

A deeper excavation shows that GE’s board of directors includes members who also sit on the boards of Bechtel and the Chevron Corporation. (See Project Censored’s report on media interlocks with corporations).

Bechtel is an American-owned engineering, construction, and project management company. Strange, that, because they just finished three years of work in Iraq to rebuild what the war has destroyed.

The Chevron Corporation is one of the largest oil and natural gas companies in the world. With headquarters in California and operations in 180 countries, they supply a large segment of the world with oil, gas, and other forms of energy. With oil supplies dwindling as they never have before, it's a good time for an energy and oil company to control as much of the manufacturing process as possible.

SO WHAT? EVERY COMPANY NEEDS TO MAKE A PROFIT TO STAY ALIVE

Surely it’s true that every company has to make money. If they don’t, they have to close shop and move on. Why does it matter that these companies have relationships with each other? Everyone networks these days.

It’s not the networking itself that presents a problem. It’s questions regarding media ethics and public trust. Do we believe that the media is providing accurate, fair and complete information about issues related to the corporations that own them? Or do we wonder if their interest in their own bottom lines prevents them from actually serving the public interest? Using that frame, NBC’s current rejection of the Dixie Chicks’ ad paints a more ominous picture:

• We have a president (Bush) who constantly promotes war in Iraq.
• We have a major corporation (Bechtel) that rebuilds that country.
• We have an oil corporation (Chevron Corporation) that stands to gain from increased American control (of oil resources) in the Middle East.
• We have a company (GE) that builds military equipment and also owns one of the top television networks (NBC) in the country.
• And this network won’t run ads for a Dixie Chicks’ documentary that criticizes both the president and the war.

IS THIS A CONSPIRACY THEORY? A LOOK AT UNDERLYING RELATIONSHIPS

Does this seem like a giant leap from the censoring of a Dixie Chicks’ ad? It does until you start exploring the landscape of media ownership today. It’s as if we have wound back time and are now sitting at the turn of the last century – are we living amongst new robber barons who maximize profits at the expense of the public, government officials who have covert deals with big corporations, and business interests that run the media to the detriment of the people they purportedly serve? Again? Has it always been this way? Sure. Media are businesses and they do have to make money. But that still doesn’t make it right for them to censor information that the public needs to make informed decisions. A look at our own media history (ie, McCarthyism which Edward R. Murrow addressed on the air when he could or the great robber barons of the past and the answer of the Muckrakers)illustrates vividly how powerful the media really are and the impact of propaganda on the public. It also demonstrates how concerned citizens can address these issues. My hope is that we can improve our media system and improve our society at least in some small way by sharing important information.

WHAT MATTERS IN THE END: MONITORING THE MEDIA

I don’t know the exact reason why NBC is choosing not to run ads for that documentary. They have run controversial materials in the past, such as ads for Fahrenheit 911. Exploring the underlying relationships does, however, yield a wealth of information and perhaps an inquiry into reasons why we aren’t seeing certain stories, issues, or ideas presented in the dominant media in America.