Introduction: Teaching About and With Alternative Media

Figure 1.

Pete Yahnke

"It happened. A few minutes ago, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and his two fellow GOP commissioners approved new rules that will unleash a flood of media consolidation across America. The rules will further consolidate local media markets—taking away independent voices in cities already woefully short on local news and investigative journalism. We need 100,000 people to get Congress to reverse the FCC's rules right now."

– Robert McChesney, Free Press Action Alert(12/18/07)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)¹ in the United States has been working vigilantly to pass legislation that makes way for a handful of massive conglomerates to further monopolize the use of public airwaves and other public resources. Gaining momentum during the Clinton administration's support for the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and propelled forward by more recent Republican efforts, this wave of power consolidation has reached such an extreme state that it now will allow a single corporate body of the likes of Rupert Murdoch—one of the richest men on the planet— to own and operate an unprecedented combination of newspaper companies and radio and television stations within a single media market.

This new policy initiative makes it virtually impossible for anyone, except elite private powers, to obtain a federal license and compete financially. Thus, the rhetoric about the virtues of deregulation—informed by the neoliberal philosophy that ending government-imposed market restraints will free the world through open competition—is really a concerted effort to regulate the media in the interests of big business.

As research has shown, media consolidation drowns out any diversity of news and programming. What's particularly frightening in this respect is that the United States, a country that prides itself as the apogee of democracy, with a Constitution that protects freedom of speech and a free press, continues to move towards the Orwellian dystopia of a single organization controlling the circulation of information in society. 

Given the FCC's influence on public policy and commerce, it should come as no surprise that the organization has long been under the influence of media moguls and lawyers from the telecommunications industry that work to maximize profits and control the flow of information, rather than in the public's best interest.² The agency has recently been scrutinized for trying to disappear research that clearly shows it has neglected to enforce the contract stipulation that federal license holders are obliged to serve the needs of the general populace by providing adequate news and educational programming. It has also been under heavy criticism for not adequately serving the needs of women and racially and ethnically diverse communities.

The FCC currently finds itself at the center of controversy for refusing to participate when beckoned by members of Congress to investigate how the Bush administration has been working with AT&T, BellSouth, and Verizon to collect information on customers and illegally wiretap their phones. Commissioner Martin, appointed by President Bush, excused himself from intervening, saying that this is a classified program of the National Security Agency. Meanwhile, Republicans have been working overtime to get a bill on the house floor to grant immunity for these phone companies that have illegally aided in spying on Americans.

What should be clear from all this is that elite private powers and corporate bodies do not fool around when it comes to understanding and using media to shape public consciousness and political agency. They understand, as imperial powers have always understood, that controlling the flow of information in society is critical to maintaining hegemony by effectively circulating a vision of the world that suits their needs.

Take television, for example, when considering the awesome power that is wielded by a handful of organizations. In the United States, this medium is largely controlled by five massive transnationals: Time Warner (which among its many assets, owns and operates CNN, Turner Classic Movies, HBO, Court TV, TNT, TBS, and the Cartoon Network), Disney (owns ABC, ESPN, the Disney Channel, The History Channel, A&E, Biography, Military History, Lifetime, E, The Style Network, and Soapnet), News Corporation (owns...