[rohrpost] Sunday: an informal talk with Robert W. McChesney

[David Hudson <dwh@snafu.de>]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> mikro laedt ein <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
> Sunday, 12.11. 18.00 h
> mikro/lab, Ziegelstr. 23, 10117

an informal talk with


           Robert W. McChesney


introduced by

           David Hudson, freelance writer


with ad hoc analysis of the US election campaign, media monopolies
and the role of the internet in a re-democratisation of e-media,
incl. an overlook of possible 'green' net-politics...

>>>

Robert Mc Chesney, is Research professor at the Institute of
Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and
Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He
is the author of Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The
Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-35, co-editor of It's the
Media Stupid!, and most recently, Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication
Politics in Dubious Times.

>>>

In "It's the Media, Stupid!" McChesney and co-editor
Nichols begin by detailing how the media system has come to be
dominated by a handful of transnational conglomerates that use their
immense political and economic power to carpet bomb the population
with commercial messages They reveal how journalism, electoral
politics, entertainment, art and culture have all suffered as a
result. Nichols and McChesney also explain how that the Internet,
which many once argued would open up the media system to a cornucopia
of new voices and creativity, has been lost for the most part to the
corporate communication system.

http://www.sevenstories.com/free.htm


"Ultimately, we need to press for the overhaul of the media system, so
that it serves democratic values rather than the interests of capital.
The U.S. media system is not "natural," it has nothing to do with the
wishes of the Founding Fathers, and it has even less to do with the
workings of some alleged free market. To the contrary, the media
system is the result of laws, government subsidies, and regulations
made in the public's name, but made corruptly behind closed doors
without the public's informed consent. The largest media firms are all
built on top of the profits generated by government gifts of monopoly
rights to valuable broadcasting spectrum or monopoly cable franchises.
The value of this corporate welfare, over the past seventy-five years,
can only be estimated, but it probably runs into the hundreds of
billions of dollars."

http://www.monthlyreview.org/1100rwm.htm


"Here it is, the comprehensive story by Robert W. McChesney of how
giant corporations are taking control of the mass media on a global
scale, even though the American people legally own the public
airwaves. This corporatist grasping for ever more profit, power and
content determination stifles the people's reach of their First
Amendment rights and debilitates a weakening democracy with trivia,
cheap entertainment, and low grade sensuality at eye-blinking
velocities. Rich Media, Poor Democracy is more than a prolonged
wake-up call; it shames those who do nothing and motivates those who
are trying to build a more democratic media that reflects the
all-important non-commercial values which forge a just society." --
Ralph Nader

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f99/excerpts/mcchesney/chap3.html



Corporate Watch: How does the Internet fit into the history of other mass media?

RM: The Internet is not a new phenomenon. It's a different technology from
earlier communications media technologies, but there is a history throughout
the 20th century, and probably earlier, of how revolutionary new communication
technologies have been developed and eventually deployed.  History points to
the fact that technologies, while they have tremendous influence and all sorts
of effects upon society that are unintended and unanticipated, their
fundamental course is determined by how they're owned and operated. It's almost
an iron law of US communication media, going back to AM radio in the 1920s,
that new technologies don't seem commercially viable at first, so they're
developed by the nonprofit, noncommercial sector, by amateurs. When they
develop [the technology] so you can make money off it, the corporate sector
comes in, and through a variety of mechanisms, usually its dominance of
politicians, it muscles all these other people out of the way and takes it
over.  That's exactly what happened with AM radio. Much like the Internet in
the early to mid-1990s, AM radio was the province largely of the nonprofit,
noncommercial [sector]. It didn't become commercially viable until the late
1920s, eight or nine years into the radio explosion. And then the successful
big networks, NBC and CBS, were able to use their influence basically to hog
all the good frequencies in the late '20s and early '30s. By 1934, nonprofit
broadcasters accounted [for] sometimes one percent or one half of one percent
of all broadcasting in the US, whereas they had been at 40-50% in 1924. There'd
been a total elimination of that sector. That's what's happened with FM radio,
with UHF television, to some extent with satellite and cable (although the
profit potential was seen there fairly quickly), and definitely with the
Internet. There you see the historical example perfectly.

http://www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/199805/msg00049.html

<<<

"Rich Media, Poor Democracy: An Interview with Robert McChesney."
San Francisco Bay Guardian, September 2000.
http://www.sfbg.com/media/mcchesney.html

"Rocket Science. Robert McChesney on private power, public broadcasting
and how corporate media subvert democracy." Interview with David
Barsamian, March 15, 2000.
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/interviews/mcchesney.shtml

"The Titanic Sails On. Why the Internet won't sink the media giants."
Extra! March/April 2000.
<http://www.fair.org/extra/0003/aol-mcchesney.html

"The New Global Media: It's a Small World of Big Conglomerates."  The
Nation, 29 November, 1999, pp. 11-15.
<http://past.thenation.com/issue/991129/1129mcchesney.shtml

The U.S. Left and Media Politics, Monthly Review, 50, 2, February 1999.
<http://www.monthlyreview.org/299mcches.htm

"The Internet and U.S. Communication Policy-making in Historical and
Critical Perspective," Journal of Communication, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Winter)
1996: pp. 98 124. Also published in Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication, Vol. 1, No. 4.
http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue4/mcchesney.html


And, of course...
http://www.robertmchchesney.com


<<<

location:
http://www.stadtplandienst.de/query;ORT=b;LL=13.394753x52.525096;GR=2

questions:
pit@klubradio.de

----------------------------------------------------------
# rohrpost -- deutschsprachige Mailingliste fuer Medien- und Netzkultur
# Info: majordomo@mikrolisten.de; msg: info rohrpost
# kommerzielle Verwertung nur mit Erlaubnis der AutorInnen
# Entsubskribieren: majordomo@mikrolisten.de, msg: unsubscribe rohrpost
# Kontakt: owner-rohrpost@mikrolisten.de -- http://www.mikro.org/rohrpost