Freedom of Suppression

July 16, 2001

Truth hurts, or at least that's the way it seems in today's commercialized news media. With advertisers dictating content, and control concentrated into fewer, more powerful hands, censorship and lies have come to seem normal.

We've come to expect mediocrity from corporate-sponsored news: think Elian Gonzalez, Tonya Harding and the fact that most sources quoted in major newspapers are government officials. It's just easier to fill pages with cheap syndicated material, press releases and sensational 90-second stories than to pay editors and reporters for good solid journalism (which goes a long way in explaining why there are 20,000 more PR agents than journalists in the US today).

This leaves consumers with little choice: Accept the narrowed range of debate, centralized control, advertiser influence and sensationalism that come with for-profit news media, or turn to non-commercial outlets which should operate independently of artificial controls and corporate biases.

That word "should" is important. The reality, of course, is that much of non-profit media is under the same corporate-based political rollback as private media. For example, we've witnessed the "public" slowly drained from the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR). With government funding cut back to a fraction of the revenue necessary to run them, these "public" stations have basically become commercial enterprises, relying on corporate donations, foundation grants, and listener/viewer contributions from the more upscale clientele they now try to attract. The euphemisms used to couch this transition (for example, advertisements referred to as "underwriter announcements") don't hide the encroaching commercial bias.

And then, of course, there's the knock-down drag-out that has raged over the Pacifica Foundation (which manages five non-commercial radio stations throughout the U.S.). In early 1999, the Pacifica National Board centralized its authority by unilaterally expelling local board members. It then carried out a series of high-level job terminations, without consulting the public it supposedly represented, basically firing anyone who had the audacity to disagree with the new order. After lock outs and further firings, not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars burned up for expenses such as private PR firms, the Pacifica National Board is at it again. Vice-Chair Ken Ford recently threatened to bring in the FBI to investigate activists who register complaints about the board or its policies, and has considered legal action against a web site through which listeners have sent protest emails and faxes (www.pacificacampaign.org/pcupdate703.asp ).

What's all the fuss about? Two decades of bad government policy have allowed corporations to dominate bandwidths, which in turn has decimated access to non-commercial airspace. If the Pacifica National Board sells, as it has considered, even one of its five radio station licenses to a commercial interest, the profit would be exorbitant - the KPFA frequency alone is estimated to be worth $70 million. So with huge sums of money at stake, not to mention a leadership which sides with corporate interests, the last big independent airspace in the States is clearly at risk.

Things abroad don't look much better. The world's only major newspaper operated by a non-commercial organization, Britain's Guardian, is currently under siege with legal cases brought by George Bush senior's former boss, Peter Munk of Barrick Gold Mining of Canada. It seems an article entitled "Bush Family Finances: Best Democracy Money Can Buy" (www.gregpalast.com) posted in the paper's Sunday edition, The Observer, angered Munk by revealing how he was able to purchase the rights to a $10 billion gold mine in Nevada for only $10,000 - thanks to the elder Bush's help while in office. The official charges brought against reporter Greg Palast and The Observer, however, revolve around an antiquated element of British libel law which does not acknowledge the "repetition" of statements to be an adequate defense in court. Specifically, Palast's article quoted an Amnesty International report alleging that 50 miners "might have been buried alive in Tanzania by a company now owned by Barrick", and for the sin of quoting Amnesty International, the grand dame of non-commercial newspapers, The Guardian, is now cracking under the weight of legal bills.

What's wrong here? How can corporate interests so easily be given control over what is defined as truth? When reporters fear being sued or losing their jobs by questioning the social order, and when they are given a maximum 90-second slot to tell a story which, with proper context, would require 20 minutes then something is wrong. What can be done to guarantee that a dominant segment of the communications system is both noncommercial and accountable to the public? One option would be to levy a minimal tax (less than 1%) on advertising, with the profits used to subsidize the nonprofit sector. Another income-generating move would be to rent/lease spectrum space for commercial use, with the profits similarly reverting back to the public sector. And it's mandatory to structure public media with local representation and accountability to the communities they serve. Reviewing the Telecommunications Act, which essentially allows a handful of conglomerates to own every radio station in the country, would be a next step.

As for The Observer and Guardian, we can hope the dubious libel law is repealed so that the vanguard of noncommercial print media can continue in peace. It's interesting to note that Greg Palast, who broke the Bush financing story is the same reporter who first disclosed the wrongful elimination of 50,000 voters in Florida, a story that later formed the basis for the US Civil Rights Commission's finding of massive disenfranchisement targeted against African Americans. We can ask ourselves why it takes a reporter working for British outlets to reveal the truth about what's happening in the States. As James Squire, former editor of The Chicago Tribune noted, the corporate takeover of media may have led to "the death of journalism."

Heather Wokusch is a freelance writer. She can be contacted at