AMERICAN
REVIEW
A double-take on media and democracy
Edited by Jane Wardlow Prettyman, formerly at Esquire Magazine
Special Edition: Media Ownership
ACTION ALERT 9-14-02
FCC Reviewing Rules
Governing Media Ownership
Federal Communications Commission wants to "relax" restrictions
on media ownership allowing unfettered mergers and acquisitions.
What do you think?
SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS
* Action Alert
* Consumers Union Warning on Rampant Media Mergers
* FCC Commissioner Copps' Warning about Dangers of
Media Ownership Rule Changes.
* The End of Openness on the Internet.
* Basics of Media Reform
* Jane Prettyman: Letter to Congress and FCC
* Articles & Links
* Here's the Drill: Where to Write Now!
* The End of Openness on the Internet.
* Basics of Media Reform
* Jane Prettyman: Letter to Congress and FCC
* Articles & Links
* Here's the Drill: Where to Write Now!
AMERICAN REVIEW
Activism ||| Media Reform ||| The News Examiner ||| Readings
Special Editions ||| Media Addresses ||| Links
Where's the Real News?
American Review critiques the media, promotes media activism, reviews under-reported stories, and calls for media reform. We come from a progressive point of view.
To our friends in print and broadcasting, you know who you are who do a great job, but you know we've got a problem with commercial media's effects on politics and society. This is a major focus of American Review.
We aim to raise awareness of the commercial newsmedia's sometimes destructive effects on democracy in the fast-moving technological information age. Our favorite thinkers on the subject are, among others, Ben Bagdikian, Jeffrey Scheuer, James Fallows, Noam Chomsky, Neil Postman, Robert McChesney and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. See the Readings section as well as The Heart of the Matter of Media.
American Review is not a "news outlet." Having said that, we do try to shed light. For example, our Viewer's Guide to Talk News was featured on PBS in October 1998 and numerous reporters have checked in to this site for ideas and information. American Review aims to be a reservoir of critical reflection. For example, the media's ethical role in Grand Jury leaks was questioned in depth during the impeachment debate.
The late Edwin Diamond, a veteran reporter and professor at NYU School of Journalism, said, "TV news has become too money-making to be left to news people. More and more, Wall Street sits in the executive producer's chair." News has always been a business, often family-owned, but when news went public and had to answer to stockholders with higher profits, the picture changed.
We call for corporate media reform along the lines suggested by Ben Bagdikian, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley. His classic work "The Media Monopoly" (now in its fifth edition -- get it and read it) reminds us there are fewer than ten major corporations who own or influence most of everything we see, hear or read. This has created centralized control of the news and limited public access to essential facts upon which voting citizens depend. Dissent is marginalized to the point of invisibility -- and we don't mean the artificial "dissent" foisted upon us by talk news cross-talk.
Obversely, although we do not agree with Noam Chomsky's diatribes on Israel, his analysis of media is brilliant, with his focus on a process of what is less and less a democracy and more a matter of "manufacturing consent."
We should remember that the notion of "objective and fair journalism," while important as a principle to guide individual reporting, actually evolved from a rationalization for advertising demographics. To reach the broadest numbers of readers/viewers/listeners, news outlets cannot rock the boat with deep or partisan politics. Having said that, the problem is that, because of conglomeration, we now have too few outlets. In the era of the nation's founding, when the Federalist Papers appeared in the politically BIASED newspapers and our newsmedia carried the great debates surrounding the adoption of the Constitution, there were four or five major papers in each major city in which the logic and argumentation on all sides could be expressed clearly and fully. On the other hand, we are today served up "fair, objective and unbiased" thin soup from essentially one or two huge, globular news corporations that satisfies no one (except, presumably, advertisers).
We therefore strongly advocate media reform as a political issue, so that freedom of the press can operate to protect public citizens and not just media stockholders, so that we can have news we can use to keep ourselves free and safe.
American Review is currently in archive status.
American Review
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American Review, previously known as The Real News Page, first appeared on the Web on Jan 15, 2000. There was at that time no other website with this formal title. Titles "American Review," "The Real News Page," "Where's the Real News?," logo-graphic "Tonya Bites Dog," "The News Examiner," and other original content
1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Jane Wardlow Prettyman. No commercial distribution of anything on this site is allowed. Because some material appears here by special permission from others, please request advance permission before distributing any material from American Review.
This is an independent non-commercial effort to advance awareness of the effects of commercial media on politics and society, to promote activism and media reform. American Review is not affiliated with any foundations, media entities or interest groups.
Special thanks to Greg Black of the RAIN Internet Network for his patience and superb technical assistance and to our many readers who have joined in discussion of this complex subject.
