Sitting in the opening plenary for the National Conference for Media Reform, where Free Press Executive Director Josh Silver just gave a rousing call to action. Next up: Adrienne Maree Brown, executive director of the Ruckus Society, callling for “media that exists not to inform us, but to reform us.”
Brown says we need to move from reaction to proaction. This is the 5-year anniversary of the coining of the term “media justice,” which she says is fundamentally about who is producing media. The upcoming Allied Media Conference, says Brown, is all about bringing tools and skills back into the community: video-blogging, creating web zines, low power radio production, etc.
Policy battles are going local: The Media Action Grassroots Network serves as a hub for smaller media justice and communications rights groups. Brown called for mutual respect between the organizing and media reform communities. To the journalists, she says “ambivalance and complacency only serve injustice.”
And now (drumroll) Larry Lessig:
A bit of humor–he starts with a parable about a flaw in an Intel chip. What’s the deep connection between this flaw, and a the deep flaws in the operating system for our democracy: the Constitution?
The question: How does our OS handle “2+2=4″ questions about the government.
Lessig spent the last decade fighting one flaw in the operating system: the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. He filed a lawsuit which made it to the Supreme Court, but it was a “total bust” despite the fact that there were opponents to the bill on both the right and the left. After a decade he had a “flash of genius”–government also screws up elsewhere, as in the case of nutrition recommendations or dealing with climate change. These seem like easy answers, 2+2=4 questions, yet the government still gets them wrong. How come?
The founders of the country wanted independence from corrupt governement, notes Lessig. They sought independent representatives. But they failed. “Many who were drawn to government went for the most venal reasons,” says Lessig, “There’s no golden past here.” And while the politicians may be better now, the problem is worse for the nation, because government is more pervasive. The return from good legislation is higher than the return from good competition. The number of lobbyists has doubled because there is now more opportunity.
Nationally, he says, only 19 percent have a favorable view of Congress: “The people’s house is not. This is exactly the dependency our framers were worried about.”
The powerful using their power to capture their government is the problem, and as long as there is private funding of public elections that problem will continue: “Crony capitalism.”
So what does that have to do with media reform? He asks: When we succeed here with media, will the problems go away? Or, can we succeed with media if these problems of dependency don’t go away?
No.
Government corruption is key to media reform, says Lessig. Public funding of public elections needs to succeed alongside media reform. That’s why he has helped to launch the Change Congress project.
Dependency: Lessig says, think of an alcoholic. The alcoholism isn’t the most important problem; it’s just the first problem he needs to solve before he can solve all of the others. Our alcoholism: “a dependency on the way money has corrupted this government.”
On to Bob McChesney:
Remember the days before 2003? “No more!” says Bob. “We stand here understanding that we have won numerous victories to slow down our adversaries,” he says. Now it’s time to look to the future, to see where this media system is actually going to go.
He introduces Congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in history elected to the House of Representatives. He shows a clip of Glenn Beck asking Ellison if he is “working with our enemies”–an example of corporate media run amok.
Ellison says we can’t be an informed public if all we’ve got to listen to is “that guy.” “A strong, independent, diverse media is a key to a strong democracy,” he says. He talks about the history of the conservative movement: starting think tanks, backing scholars, creating studios to “pump out the message,” creating what the world will one day know as “hate radio.” This organizing came to fruition during the Reagan years, but as “much as he made me sick,” says Ellison, he’s nothing compared to today’s “CEO president.”
The problem isn’t just FOX, says Ellison. The problem is that there are not enough actors out there in the marketplace of ideas. He wants to support LPFM, even newspapers. “It’s not a mistake that the First Amendment contains within it the “freedom of the press”…once the people have the information, they know what to do with it.”
“I think Congress is finally getting it,” says Ellison, citing the recent Senate decision on media ownership. “Politicians tend to see the light when they feel the heat.”
Ellison is convinced that we are at a pivotal moment of change. “Welcome to the beginning of a great movement in our country that is emerging that is all about the common good…you all are the vanguard.”
“This is not the New Deal, this is not the ’60s; this is something brand spanking new,” he says. “We have to go forth together to create a new America that our forefathers could only have as an aspiration.”
