Be The Media

Panel 3:

After an impassioned plea by Len Hill for “content neutral” regulation to preserve the capitalist media system that hews to the ideals proclaimed by the Supreme Court as expressed in precedent, we hear from Mr. Swanson, head of broadcast stations from Viacom, who tells us all his company’s properties and assures us that the license renewal process is not a “rubber stamp” and that he takes it very seriously. Previous speaker, Len Hill, advocated for a 3 year renewal cycle in order to make stations more accountable.

Mr. Swanson is reading rather dryly from a prepared speech telling us how much Viacom has invested in satellite and microwave systems for news gathering, in addition to all of the company’s weather facility. He touts the “wall-to-wall” coverage of weather events in Florida last year.

In essence, Mr. Swanson is telling us how great his company’s broadcast facilities are, and how competitive they are.

He believes the media’s role post-9/11 in NYC was important in bringing calm. My esteemed colleague, Phlegm, just asked, didn’t Viacom attempt to bilk insurance for millions of dollars after 9/11?

He tells us that Viacom owns 2.5% of the TV stations in the US, and that all the big owners only have 7.5% of the stations. However, what this statistic leaves out is their reach to actual persons, which makes up a significantly larger percentage of the US population, given that Viacom

and their ilk have most of their stations in the biggest markets in the US.

Mr. Swanson is working the “500 channels” argument, proclaiming how many cable and internet channels there are. He takes Washington DC as an example. In 1960 you would have seen 4 full power broadcast TV stations, now there are 15 full power and countless cable channels. Or Burlington, VT (he owns property in that area). In 1960 there were 2 full-power stations, now there are 10 full-power, 6 low-power, there were 5, now 15 radio. And, again, all those cable and “internet channels.”

Isn’t interactive on the internet great? He says it empowers “media consumers.” He says that the FCC fails to account for the impact of entertainment programming on viewpoint diversity, because it primarily counts news and public affairs programming.

He believes that diversity should be measured by counting all channels on internet, cable, newspaper, etc. Wow, I can barely keep up he’s reading his prepared statement so fast.

I wonder if the statement we just heard isn’t the same one delivered to a House or Senate subcommittee to bash the FCC and defend the so-called “free market.” He delivered it, however, with considerably less zeal, perhaps knowing that he may soon be a lamb to the slaughter.

Len Hill, Canadian news producer, comparing contemporary politics to pro wrestling, where the players know they have to be in character, and there are strict rules to how things actually go down. In the code of journalism, like the code of wrestling, there are questions you can’t ask of, say, Condi Rice, like you can’t ask her about the oil tanker that was named after her. Tim Russert can’t be too hard on Rice, or else she might not come back, and only give access to competitors.

The news operation has been made just one part of the corporate body, with pressure to be a profit center. In 1992 Bin laden had agreed to be interviewed, but CBS decided it was too expensive and nobody cared. Just 7 months prior to 9/11 CBS decided not to cover what was going on in Afghanistan, again because they said nobody cared, even though George Tenet had told Bush that Afghanistan was one of the biggest threats to national security.

It’s a combination of bottom line considerations and political/geopolitical interests. Not going to go too much into the problem. The president of Viacom just before the last election said publicly that he supports George Bush, because Bush’s policies are good for Bush. How can that not affect things? He doesn’t claim it causes direct censorship, but ultimately everyone reports to the president of the company.

There are three fronts that we need to fight. One is media reform. Two is criticizing existing media. Three is creating independent media. He is talking about building something that allies what exists and creates a platform to build on. He is talking about World Independent Television.

If we can harness the economic power of the 20 million people worldwide who protested the war in Iraq, then we can create an ad-free independent public TV station.

Here’s where they are. On the advisory committee are people like Amy Goodman, Bob McChesney and Naomi Klein. They have seed founding from Canadian autoworkers, Ford and MacArthur foundation. They want to start in all the big English speaking countries. The essence is a marriage between Internet and TV, and citizen and professional journalists with programming that will not bow to pressure. The heart will be an independent news operation, a media new criticism show, the best of citizen journalism vetted by pros, the best of what exists in print, internet and radio.

The thing that is critically wrong with our news is not that everything is missed, what’s reported never has a sense of urgency, as if it’s something disconnected from our lives. Reported so that you can hear the story then go watch a sitcom. No sense that the story impacts us in a way such that we can act. We want to cover things so that you feel that you can and should do something.

They want fair and broad debate, but not a phony debate. Not “is there an environmental problem?” but “what are we going to do about it?”

He has one final thing to say. We need to have a sense of urgency but act strategically. We have to act today, but build institutions that will last for years. He decided to do this because he was writing a film script about a journalist that stumbles on a conspiracy in the room 2020. He was trying to imagine what the world would be like in 2020, and it didn’t look good. What if we had a TV network that was independent and stood up to power. Well, you can’t just start building that in 2019.

Remember what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says, “Don’t Panic.” Let’s build Independent World TV.

Roberta Baskin, new executive director for the center for public integrity. She started out as an investigative reporter in Chicago where Dennis Swanson was her general manager. She thinks that freedom of the press can survive consolidation. Things are so bad now, that it creates an incentive to do better. She’s watched the firewall between news and business values crumble.

As an investigative reporter she could cover things that could make a difference, health, safety and corruption. People would call and comment, say “you think that’s bad, let me tell you my story.” Community groups would come to the story every three years and threaten the station management over challenging the license. That doesn’t happen anymore.

She asked Michael Powell about this, and in a flippant response he said that in 1996 with the Telecom Act Congress gave TV stations an “easy pass” in license renewal.

It’s time for a new paradigm now. We can celebrate that now. There is a wall that has been built between what journalists do, and the community. When she was a journalist she got phone calls, she testified to Congress on drug testing and radon testing. You could focus on a problem and get something done about it.

At the networks she didn’t hear from people much, and she could follow up on her stories. She could do a story about a Dow Chemical pesticide, but they wouldn’t let her follow up since Dow was supplying huge binders of information complaining about the story.

At CBS she was able to do a international story once a year, as the networks were closing down their foreign bureaus saying nobody cares about what goes on outside America. She wanted to do a story on how soccer balls are made by child and bonded labor in Pakistan, and her superiors were worried how anyone would understand what was spoken in Urdu. She found a factory where children were making surgical instruments for UNICEF, but UNICEF said they hadn’t seen it. Reebok was very upset about being implicated and the executive producer wanted to pull the Reebok section, and the president of CBS was in on the screening. She Baskin argued that the Reebok section was the heart of the story, as a company that has an anti-child-labor stance which employs child labor. The president decided to run it and not buckle under, so it relies on the personalities involved, and it keeps getting harder.

She did a story about Nike’s labor in Vietnam, where women workers there were abused. It resonated on college campuses and was used in demonstrations against the company. It was scheduled to reair that Summer, which is standard practice, with new information. But the president pulled it, and it turns out that CBS struck a deal with Nike over the Nagano Olympics. The next night she saw her colleagues on 48 Hours on air wearing prominent Nike logo clothing. She confronted the president of CBS, and then told that she had breached professional etiquette and was demoted to the morning news, and was able to get out of her contract.

She took a paycut to go behind the scenes at 20/20 on ABC hoping she could do some good work in selecting stories, but was only able to do so much. She got an email one day from the CEO of Disney, ABC owner, that said “Dear Cast Member.” She sat in and watched how 20/20 stories are selected. She has minute-by-minute ratings that executives worry about. The ratings go up for an interview with MacAuley Culkin but go down for a story about counting presidential election votes. A whole show on porn kept people tuned in. So it’s become “how do we keep people entertained?” not “how do we keep them informed?”

She moved to NOW with Bill Moyers and did a long investigation of influence peddling in Washington.

The Center for Public Integrity is fifteen years old, and is made up of investigative reporters doing independent, hard-hitting journalism. They supply investigations to NY Times and other mainstream press. They have stories on media consolidation – you can go to the website and punch in your zip code to find out who owns your local media. They have a project called Lobby Watch, keeping an eye on what they call the fourth branch of government. 14 billion dollars has been spent on lobbying in the last 6 years. 21,000 companies are involved, and 49 of the top lobbying firms don’t even file required disclosure forms.

Her last words are that she is not discouraged. The bad news is that it’s so bad that it’s good news – we can build something better and take journalism back to local accountability.

Questions

Phlegm asks: For Dennis Swanson, he respects the fact that he’s come to sit at this table and would like to think that the reason is because people are engaged and want to hear what he has to say. Leads to his comment: please don’t regurgitate the same factoids that were trotted out during the 2003 media rules revision, such as they own only 2% of stations, even though they reach 36% of the national audience. The second comment, is dealing with his radio brethren in Chicago. He used to dream of working for
WMAQ , in irreverent radio station that got bought by Infinity/Viacom and taken off the air. That was part of the reason why he left the radio business.

Viacom reaches 39% of the national audience, and he talks about getting rid of the years old rules, but still advocates keeping on the difference between UHF and VHF stations and how their counted.

Did Viacom ever file the business interruption insurance claim due to the lapse in advertiser revenue post-9/11?

A: Swanson can’t answer for Viacom since he didn’t work for them at the time. He worked for NBC and he believed that GE did file such a claim. Then.

Question: Amy Goodman asks if Dennis Swanson can respond to Robert Baskin’s experience on the Nike story at CBS?

A: Swanson says he respects Baskin and has no reason to doubt it, he has nothing to do with CBS news, and didn’t work for them then. The guy in charge isn’t here to respond, so it’s hard for him to give an answer – says he’s trying not to duck the question.

Q: Amy says, what about the reporters wearing Nike gear?

A: He says that CBS recently broke a story about auto recalls, and it ran throughout Viacom broadcast and Ford wasn’t thrilled and it cost them advertising. The reason he came back here today – he has two degrees from U of I – he was taught community service and believes in it.

He would not support the newscasters wearing the Nike logo, he finds the decision regrettable.

Q: Amy asks, does Roberta have a question?

Roberta responds: That Nike situation was the final sad turn of events after 8 years. She became a lightning rod for having written the memo. Producers would writer her to tell her that they want to do stories but can’t even suggest it because of CBS’ corporate relationships. What’s not talked about is all the self-censorship.

Having been her boss back in the Chicago days when investigative reporting was taken seriously, would Dennis reflect on what he’s seen.

Dennis says: he thinks they’re still doing investigative reporting. Reminds that CBS broke Abu Gharaib. He points out that Macauley Culkin was even news today, because he testified at the Michael Jackson trial.

Roberta points out that ABC has made it policy now to do more celebrity and entertainment reporting.

Dennis says: the fact of the matter is that the media platforms have so exploded. One of the problems of prime time television is how can they continue to crank out 40 –50 sitcoms a year. Maybe it’s the same problem with journalists – can we continue to train enough qualified journalists. The standards have changed.

Any asks: Was Roberta right to write the Nike memo?

Dennis: it’s hard for me to comment on that incident without talking to all the players.

Roberta: There was a memo from the president of CBS that said it was a breach of professional etiquette.

Dennis: if you wanted comments on CBS news, then you should have invited someone from CBS news. Commenting on these incidents is awkward since I’m hearing of them first time here.

Question for Mr. Hill, on the putrid process of Capitalism. Keep believing in Capitalism until they privatize your air. So how can you believe in spectrum regulation?

Answer: Mr. Hill believes that the airwaves belong to the people, and original spectrum allocation are still in place and been effectively been loosened of the regulatory restraints that existed as a tax on the resource. They have all the beef and none of the bill. The sad fact is that we have allowed our representatives to be purchased by big media – they don’t debate these issues in public. The Telecomm Act of 1996 was an abomination and needs to be done over.

Roberta: one of the things you need in a democracy is for light to be shone upon what goes on. When media rules were being debated at a Senate subcommittee there were 70 station managers there, but no camera to cover it.

Mitchell asks: In Chicago the main media monopoly is the Tribune company. One of the rules at play was the Cross-Ownership rule, the Tribune company in NYC, LA, Florida and Connecticut, it has cross-ownership in contravention of the law. Last month a judge in Connecticut ordered Tribune to divest one station,.

There is a paradox. On one hand there are all these media interests that tout their public service. On the other, you have a company blatantly breaking the law. How do make sense of that.

Dennis Swanson: You picked our competitor in Chicago, which would appear to have a clear violation of the ownership rules. He was at ABC when Cap Cities bought it, and it divested itself of stations in Buffalo and Detroit. Part of Viacom’s arrangement for buying the TV station in Sacramento was to divest a radio station. You’re right about Tribune in Connecticut, though they’ll probably appeal it. You’ll find examples of Fox in NY. Reality is that violations exist and some have grandfathers.

Len Hill says, read the Tribune corporate report, and you can be sure they’re assuring their stockholders that they’ll appeal and keep anything from happening for at least 5 years.