Journalism in Corporate America

Am I being an alarmist?
by Charlie Leck

The LA Times review of the new book by Bill Moyers, Democracy in America, is extremely positive.

"There's a Jeremiah among us and his name is Bill Moyers… Noting that right-wing polemicists have long tried to tar 'fact-based reporting that undermines their worldview' as 'liberal advocacy journalism,' of which he is among the country's prominent practitioners, he responds, 'All I can say is that if reporting what happens to ordinary people because of events beyond their control, and the indifference of government to their fate, is 'liberal,' I plead guilty.'"

A good friend from New Hampshire responded to my last blog, suggesting that I'm being a bit of an alarmist about the demise of our American democracy. I would response and argue that I am not. The democracy we have known in this country has been severely eroded and further deterioration is on the horizon. Unless, of course, we do something about it and there are possibilities – meaning the cup is half full.

In his most recent book, Moyers on Democracy, Bill Moyers has a great deal to say about Journalism and the "news industry" in America that ought to make us sit up and take notice.

"I wish I could say that journalists in general are showing the same interest in uncovering the dangerous linkages thwarting this democracy. It is not for lack of honest and courageous individuals who would risk their careers to speak truth to power -- a modest risk compared to those of some journalists in authoritarian countries who have been jailed or murdered for the identical "crime." But our journalists are not in control of the instruments they play. As conglomerates swallow up newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and networks, and profit rather than product becomes the focus of corporate effort, news organizations -- particularly in television -- are folded into entertainment divisions. The "news hole" in the print media shrinks to make room for advertisements, and stories needed by informed citizens working together are pulled in favor of the latest celebrity scandals because the media moguls have decided that uncovering the inner workings of public and private power is boring and will drive viewers and readers away to greener pastures of pabulum. Good reporters and editors confront walls of resistance in trying to place serious and informative reports over which they have long labored. Media owners who should be sounding the trumpets of alarm on the battlements of democracy instead blow popular ditties through tin horns, undercutting the basis for their existence and their First Amendment rights." (Bill Moyers: Moyers on Democracy [Doubleday, New York, 2008])

That is pretty much all that needs to be said – except to emphasize something positive in all this. As newspapers and main-line broadcast news services become more controlled by corporations, a host of alternative news outlets have developed and they are producing some rather good reporting. For a time we called it the "underground news" and now we've settled on a more compatible tag, "alternative news."

There are extraordinarily good on-line news sources, such as AlterNet, Slate and Salon. My main news source remains the NY Times, but I never finish the day without checking in on AlterNet and I always get to Slate at least once during the week.

Moyers, in a speech before the National Conference of Media Reform, pleads for more alternative broadcast news sources and he expresses his fear that "this country is going to die from too many lies." That's strong stuff. In the speech he really plugs Amy Goodman's extraordinary TV show, Democracy Now. If you don't watch this show, you're missing one of the great ones. There is probably no more important broadcast source for alternative news. Watch this video in which Amy Goodman explains how "Democracy Now" began.

The Real News is another of these important alternative news sources. If it's not broadcast in your area, go on-line to watch its archived videos or subscribe to its podcasts.

Indeed, the nature of the local newspaper in America has changed. If it weren't for the sports section and the Sunday opinion pages, I'd drop my subscription to our local paper. I check in regularly with a local alternative, on-line news source call MinnPost. The writers there are much freer to tell the "whole story." As Moyers points out in the quotation above, it is difficult for writers these days to go to the heart of the story when, at the heart, they encounter large corporate interests that also have some stake in the news reporting business.

Take a look at Bill Moyers, talking about his book, on the Daily Show or watch this You Tube video of Moyers in a WNYC Radio interview.

I'm not suggesting you abandon your regular, normal news sources, but I'm urging you to expand your horizons and get different views and more expansive coverage. Had we strong, alternative news sources 5 years ago, we probably would not have gone into the Iraq War. An informed public would not have allowed it.

Next: Moyers on government that is non-responsive.

Is Our Democracy in Danger?

Have we become a Corporate State?
by Charlie Leck

Over the last several decades, there have been a number of outstanding historians, political scientists and sociologists, whose works I have read, who have expressed warnings about our democracy. They have cautioned us that a democratic state is a fragile, delicate object and always in danger of becoming what it did not intend.

How so?

A democracy is a government of the people, controlled by them and their choices at the ballot box. What happens if they choose very unwisely?

Let me use as a very simple analogy as an actual case in point that I had premonitions about as a small boy. I became fascinated, as a child, with the polity of the church as an institution. How could a boy become obsessed with such a subject? It's simply explained. I was attending a Protestant Sunday School program in my home town Congregational Church. My sister, with whom I was very close, was a Roman Catholic. She wanted to save me and I wanted to save her. I began comparing the two systems of church jurisdiction and administration. I observed how incredibly democratic the Congregational system was (is) and began thinking about how easy it would be to take over and control a local church in such a democratic system if the local entity was not ever vigilant against such a takeover.

A local Congregational Church controls its own facility and its own religious or faith perspective. It establishes its own credo and no outside force can object to what it does. In a small church, like the one I attended as a boy, it would be very easy to take control of everything that happens there. The members of the congregation vote on every matter and establish the administrative control of the church and could also vote on questions of faith. Move 100 new members into such a situation – let's say very conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist members – and they could wrest control from the liberal members who had previously established all policy matters. Suddenly the physical and spiritual church, with all its assets and holdings, would be controlled by the new group.

In fact, as I feared as small boy, such an event actually occurred at this small Congregational Church in Chester, New Jersey. It was not an instant transformation, but it happened over a number of years. On a recent, quiet visit to the church, sitting in worship, I was struck by the fact that the wonderful church of my childhood – a liberal, intellectual, conversant and dialectical group of people – had utterly disappeared. It had been replaced by a group who spouted verses of the Bible from memory without understanding anything about their historic context or their roots in mythology. It was a bland, empty-headed sense of faith that had totally replaced the extraordinary community of thought that I remembered as a boy. The congregation, on a very democratic basis, had simply been taken over by people with other and very simple viewpoints. The grand history of an important church has disappeared.

This is the danger that a democracy must also face. An entire democratic system – an entire nation – can be transformed if its people do not remain diligent, disciplined and wise in their voting practices.

There is no one I admire more than Bill Moyers. I pay attention to him and I learn from him. I read everything by him. He has a new book, Moyers on Democracy, and it contains the warning I have expressed above.

"We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions." (Moyers, Bill: Moyers on Democracy [Doubleday, New York, 2008])

An enormous group of Americans have fallen under the spell of Corporate America and have bought into the idea that our hope for the future is intrinsically bound to the future of the corporate and wealthy class. The group listens intently to the babble of the corporate class and buys into their dream.

The following two, long sentences serve as a warning call to us about where America seems to be going – and, it is frightening.

"When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the people as a whole, it mocks the very concept of government as proclaimed in the preamble to our Constitution; mocks Lincoln's sacred belief in "government of the people, by the people, and for the people"; mocks the democratic notion of government as 'a voluntary union for the common good' embodied in the great wave of reform that produced the Progressive Era and the two Roosevelts. In contrast, the philosophy popularized in the last quarter century that 'freedom' simply means freedom to choose among competing brands of consumer goods, that taxes are an unfair theft from the pockets of the successful to reward the incompetent, and that the market will meet all human needs while government itself becomes the enabler of privilege -- the philosophy of an earlier social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism dressed in new togs -- is as subversive as Benedict Arnold's betrayal of the Revolution he had once served."

It is time to reclaim America and reestablish it as a government of, by and for the people. Corporate American may not have America. The small ultra-wealthy class may not run the show here. Their enormous incomes shall not be sheltered from the same taxes paid by the rest of the American people.

There is a ray of hope and those of you who are thinking that I am unduly pessimistic, please know that I believe Americans will understand wherein that hope lies.

Go to the library and, for my sake, your sake and the sake of our nation and its hard-working people, get Bill Moyers book into your hands and read it cover to cover. Then tell you friends to get it. America must hear this clarion call that Moyers is issuing.

We must make sure America votes wisely this November. You must do your part in that.

I will write more about Moyers' warnings in the coming days. Next: the gaping hole in contemporary America journalism.