| Matthew Rothschild on An Urgent Call for Media Reform |  |
| Matthew Rothschild on An Urgent Call for Media Reform | |
Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, reminisced about how well things were going last September 10th; it seemed that progressives were in the ascendancy. Movements for a living wage and against sweatshops and the death penalty were making headway and the Bush administration wasn’t doing well.
Then came September 11th and the unjust Afghan war. We didn’t exhaust all peaceful means; the Afghans wanted to negotiate the surrender of Bin Laden but President Bush wanted to bomb. The military budget was set at $400 billion and our civil liberties such as right to counsel and privacy are being abridged.
Bush was disengaged from the problems in the MidEast though the barbarism of Sharon and his sadistic treatment of Palestinians are underwritten by the United States to the tune of $3 billion annually. Rothschild lamented the Passover suicide bombing and said those must end as must the Israeli settlements. The rhetoric on both sides must be lowered.
Rothschild described how news has come to be dominated by nine entities including Fox (Rupert Murdoch), Disney (ABC), GE (NBC), Viacom (CBS) and AOL Times Warner (CNN) which means fewer voices and those remaining voices having a strong corporate bias toward defense spending and nuclear power, for instance. Actual news is diminished because, for one thing, the numbers of foreign correspondents have been curtailed to reduce expenses. He recommends dailies like the New York Times or the Washington Post; Time and Newsweek tend to feature culture over news. As for the charge of liberal bias in the news, the most popular syndicated columnists are Cal Thomas, George Will and Ellen Goodman
A couple of examples of stories that weren’t aired because of corporate pressure: lax Disney personnel policies led to hiring pedophiles at their theme parks and a runaway atomic waste train in a documentary was renamed “toxic waste” because of GE’s energy interests.
We all have to be involved in the daily work of citizenship. Rothschild recommended developing contacts in newsrooms and issuing press releases on upcoming protests with phone and email follow-up to make reporters’ jobs as easy as possible. Submit letters to the editor and Op-Ed pieces. And work to re-regulate broadcast licensing. For granting licenses, we should demand free time for political issues, higher quality children’s programs without commercials, allow more access and support public broadcasting so they don’t have to depend on corporate sponsors like ADM.
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