by Robert McChesney and John Nichols; October 25, 2002

(1) Can you tell ZNet, please, what your new book, Our Media Not Theirs? What is it trying to communicate?

Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media is about the crisis of media in the United States and the growing movement to reform the media system. John Nichols and I make the case that the media system is the result of explicit public policies, the system produces terrible outcomes for democracy, and it therefore is crucial for the public to organize to change the policies that produce the media system. We argue that media reform is part and parcel of the broader democratic movements against neoliberalism, and, ultimately, will only succeed as part of those movements. One of the three chapters shows how rapidly media activism has emerged around the world as part of the anti-neoliberal political movement. We argue that it can and must happen in the United States as well.


(2) Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the content come from? What went into making the book what it is?

John and I wrote the book together, and it was a revision of our 2000 book It's the Media, Stupid! When that book sold out the publisher (Greg Ruggiero at Seven Stories press) asked us if we were interested in revising it. After tinkering a bit John and I realized that so much has happened in the past two years that a few revisions would not suffice. So we ended up pretty much writing a brand new book, and one that is quite a bit longer. Much of the book's argument came from a long piece on media reform that John and I wrote that was published in The Nation in January 2002. John and I are very close friends so we like writing books together because it gives us a chance to spend time together. I have collected a lot of material from my teaching and other research projects that we could draw upon. John has done a zillion interviews in his capacity as a political writer for The Nation. We had a lot to work with.


(3) What are your hopes for Our Media Not Theirs? What do you hope it will contribute or achieve, politically? Given the effort and aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to be a success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking? What would leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and effort?

Our hope is that the book will contribute to the media reform movement, and progressive politics in general. It will convince progressives of the importance of the matter and it will convince media activists to think in larger terms about their political project. The book is written for a popular readership.

I already consider the book a success; just writing it forced me to think about the issue very closely and it helps me in my writing, teaching and political work every day. The book will be a huge success if it can help jump start media activism in the United States. To that end, we have introductions by Ralph Nader, Barbara Ehrenreich and an especially wonderful one from Noam Chomsky.


Robert W. McChesney
Your Man in Urbana
Institute of Communications Research
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
www.robertmcchesney.com

Previously posted on http://www.ligali.org/

Our Media, Not Theirs! contains proposals for making our media system more responsive to the needs of the citizenry and less dominated by corporate greed. The authors look at how political parties, grassroots movements and popular performers in other democratic nations increasingly have made media reform a political priority. The authors provide an analysis of the burgeoning media reform activities in the United States, and outline ways we can structurally change the media system through coalition work and movement-building.

Their starting points for mobilizing a media-reform agenda include:


• Creating hundreds of new non-commercial community radio stations

• Applying existing antimonopoly laws to the media and, where necessary, expand their reach to restrict ownership of radio stations to one or two per owner. Consider similar steps for television stations and moves to break the lock of newspaper chains on entire regions.

• Establishing a formal study and hearings to determine fair media ownership regulations across all sectors.

• Revamping and supercharge public broadcasting to eliminate commercial pressures, reduce immediate political pressures, and serve communities without significant disposable incomes.

•Providing for a $200 tax credit that every taxpayer can use to apply their tax dollars to any nonprofit medium, as long as it meets Internal Revenue Service criteria. This tool would allow new low-power radio and television stations, as well as existing community broadcasters, labor union newspapers, and other publications to have the resources to provide serious news coverage and cultural programming.

• Lowering mailing coats for nonprofit and significantly noncommercial publications.

• Eliminating political candidate advertising as a condition of a broadcast license; or require that a station must run for free ads of similar length from all the other candidates on the ballot immediately after a paid political ad by a candidate.

• Reducing or eliminate TV advertising to children under twelve.

•Decommercializing local TV news. In return for the grant of access to the airwaves, which makes media companies rich, require that those companies set aside an hour each day of commercial-free time for news programming, with a budget based on a percentage of the station's revenues. This would free journalists to do the job of informing citizens, and allow stations to compete on the basis of quality newsgathering as opposed to sensationalism.

• Revamping copyright laws to their intended goal: to protect the ability of creative producers to earn a living, and to protect the public's right to a healthy and viable public domain.

In Our Media, Not Theirs! McChesney and Nichols provide readers with the tools to battle for a better media. They offer an invaluable analysis, and clear ways to fight back against corporate domination of democracy.

REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED-Gill scot heron

I think The future lies on the net as TV is rotten with lies &spin..and PR stunts of course..ask your self who wants to watch the FARM?

_________

Many Third World countries owe more in debt repayments and interest than they earn a year from exports.That makes it impossible for them to repay their debts. Such countries have no option but to borrow more money to survive

Coltrane wrote:

I think The future lies on the net as TV is rotten with lies &spin..and PR stunts of course..ask your self who wants to watch the FARM?


I think there are just as much lies, if not so much spin on the internet.

So you don't hold out much hope that the media can be reclaimed?

BTW What's the FARM?

its areality TV thing on ch5 with vanilla ice and stan collymore