Corporate Media

February 8, 2001

"Outwit, Outplay, Outlast" is the motto of Survivor 2 - The Australian Outback the latest "reality" show featuring a bunch of white people with names like Kimmi (Reality? Lose the prize money, cameras, chance to go home, and be forced to start working 13 hours a day at some unbearable sweatshop for pennies a day and no benefits and it's probably a bit closer to reality for most of the world's people).

But while Kimmi is running through the jungle and viewers are watching her in droves, cogs slowly merge in the ever solidifying media machine. Predictably, the massive protest at the annual radio convention of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) last September didn't register in corporate news reporting. (The NAB has spent more than $16.9 million since 1996 lobbying against low power radio and for other forms of corporate control of the airways.) And the bloodbath at Pacifica this Christmas, with the firing of several long-term WBAI staff and the lockout of others, such as "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman, sends the same chilling message - kiss that First Amendment goodbye: big business is in and free speech is out.

Witness the transition of the information superhighway into e-commerce parking lot wasteland. And now that the FCC has rolled over and played dead in approving the AOL Time Warner merger (prompting Case & Levin's recent gushing statement about becoming "the world's first fully integrated, Internet-powered media and communications company") it paves the path for centralized economic power to promote even further mergers, decimated competition, and an increased weakening of the courts and regulatory agencies.

So our children watch Teletubbies with little TV screens on their stomachs, and Newsweek's recent choices for "Women of the New Century" laud Yahoo and MTV executives. Women line up to marry a millionaire, and media convergence advances enable viewers to simultaneously order the winning contestant's gown over the internet as they watch her parade on stage.

So how about Survivor 3 - The Corporate Media : "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast" the threat to democracy, and the dumbing down/commercialization of our information flow. And hey Kimmi, better keep running. Looks like we're prey in the fight of our lives.

Heather Wokusch is a freelance writer. She can be contacted at womanrant@hotmail.com