Are your core issues held hostage by the corporate media?

• Author: Doyle, Nancy
• Position: Election 2004: Green Analyses

White House press releases and consumer trivia--these are the tools we're given to make some of the most important decisions governing the world today. Not vigorous debate, not minority viewpoints, but: which is the best barbeque grill? What are rock stars' four favorite hotels? Which basketball celebrity injured his knee? This is the problem with the media.

The media is important because we are making decisions in this country that matter a lot, not only to us, but to people all around the world--people who don't want to get killed, for whom the policies of the United States of America mean very literally life and death.

This came into clear focus in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. We watched every day as the administration tested its latest pitch for war and reporters dutifully wrote them down. No questions asked.

We have all heard the statistics since: that 72% still believe that there were WMDs in Iraq that 75% believe Iraq was providing substantial support for Al Qaeda. In this election season, we've seen the powerful impact of self-censorship, withholding information or refraining from engaging in issues deemed too "political."

More and more, Americans sense there's something not right. In a 2003 survey, almost a third of respondents called news organizations immoral, up from 13% in 1985. Seven in ten people said news outlets were often influenced by powerful people and organizations.

People sense that our media system is failing in its job of supporting a functioning democracy. What they don't know is how this happened. They assume that the media, like gravity, simply exists. There's nothing that's been done to create our media system that can't be undone. It's only and purely a matter of organized people dismantling a system built secretly by media corporations wanting to get bigger.

How we got here

Our policy approach to media in this country was put on paper in the late 1920s when people were trying to figure out what to with this new medium called radio. Commercial broadcasters wanted it, but many warned that freedom of the press was impossible as long as broadcasting was under what intellectual John Dewey called "concentrated capitalistic control."

In a nod to citizens' ownership of the airwaves, Congress created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate them according to the "public interest." Policy was heavily influenced by commercial broadcasters who made sure that radio policy primarily supported a...