Arianna Huffington watches the Golf Channel.
OK, maybe not. But the self-described “former conservative who saw the light” was only half-joking this week when she said she was about ready to give up on cable news.
That FOX News Channel is in the pocket of the Republican Party is not a revelation. But when news junkies like Huffington find themselves switching the channel to avoid FOX's Laci-Scott-Kobe theater of the bizarre -- not to mention its fraudulent version of "fair and balanced" reporting -- it's clear there's something wrong with the way news is delivered in America.
Huffington was part of a five-person panel held at New School University in Manhattan Tuesday to discuss “Big Media, The ‘FOX Effect,' and Journalism Today.” In other words, how big a threat are media monopolies to democracy? And is FOX pulling other networks and forms of media to the right?
Sponsored by the World Policy Institute, the Center for American Progress, and The American Prospect, the discussion was based on a series of pieces on media concentration in the July issue of The American Prospect. “What we know,” wrote media scholar Robert W. McChesney in the package's lead article, “is that it is impossible to have a viable democracy with the current media system, and that we are capable of changing this system.”
The panel discussion, which can be heard on New School's Web site, drew an audience that included Air America Radio host Al Franken and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a former aide to President John F. Kennedy. But most of the buzz surrounded the event that followed: The premiere of Robert Greenwald's film Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.
A wounding condemnation of Rupert Murdoch's FOX News Channel's absurd claim to be unbiased, the film makes its point through rigorous statistical analysis of FOX guests' political leanings, dozens of interviews with former FOX staffers, and internal memos that reminded reporters and producers to favor a conservative point of view. Here's all you need to know about FOX News Channel: In 2000, the wife of the network's lead political analyst spent the summer campaigning for Bush. Finding itself in a similar position, any other news organization would've pulled the reporter off the Bush beat. As Greenwald's film demonstrates by way of hilarious, never-before-broadcast footage, FOX allowed the reporter to file his softball coverage of Bush for the remainder of the campaign.
MoveOn.org says it will screen the film at 2,750 house parties across the country on Sunday. FOX has not said it will sue to stop the film, but it is closely monitoring it. The network, which previously tried to prevent Franken from using the words “Fair and Balanced” in the title of a book, demonstrated again this week that its skin is as thin as its bluster is big, issuing a typically shrill battle cry. “Any news organization that thinks this story is legitimate,” read a FOX News statement, “is opening itself to having its copyrighted material taken out of context for partisan reasons.”
Which is all rather silly, but hey, what did you expect them to say? As Paul Starr, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, reminded the audience, Murdoch is not the first conservative media baron to try to intimidate his foes. In the 1930s, progressive Americans were worried about the right-wing power of William Randolph Hearst and his newspapers. (This also inspired a film: Orson Welles' “Citizen Kane.”) Then, as now, most of the financial resources were held by the right -- which has also shown a zeal for the sort of no-holds-barred battles that many on the left have historically shied away from. In recent years, though, the left has taken the gloves off, panelists agreed.
John Nichols, co-author of It's the Media, Stupid, noted that more than 700,000 citizens contacted Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell last year to protest FCC rule changes that place more power in the hands of media conglomerates. Congress heard from two million people on the issue. Perhaps more than ever, Nichols said, people feel disconnected from news gathering organizations: “They have shoved the doors open and said, ‘We want to be part of this.'”
If citizens are more astute than ever with regard to media concentration, journalists should follow their lead, argued Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. But, he cautioned, don't assume that deconsolidating big media outfits will lead to a more progressive press. In fact, he said, local monopolies --in a mid-sized city, for example, one media outlet can own all TV and radio stations and newspapers -- pose as great a threat as do international behemoths like Murdoch's News Corporation. It's an issue to which every lawmaker is sensitive, Lemann said, and would-be media activists would do well to let elected officials know they're paying attention.
With so many progressive blogs, a national liberal radio network, films like Outfoxed and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and -- most importantly -- a newfound willingness to engage in rhetorical brawls, those on the left should feel emboldened to combat media consolidation, panelists said. Rupert Murdoch took the lion's share of the blows on this night, but media concentration, not FOX, is the real problem, Nichols said; Murdoch “is simply the embodiment of a crisis that we all need to get involved with.”
Kevin Canfield is a writer in New York.
