The State of the Media Environment:
What Might Rachel Carson Have to Say?

In "Silent Spring" Rachel Carson warned about the killing dangers of chemicals released indiscriminately into an environment kept in tenuous biotic balance by the interlacing of complex and interdependent ecosystems. It was a eureka moment during which we realized that the patient on the table was indeed the planet itself. In fact, all the righteous hoopla generated by a burgeoning pesticide industry about the eradication of pests and the feeding of the masses had largely silenced the public. Progress is always good, right? And when new developments and technologies are presented in the glowing rhetoric of human improvement and the inexorable march forward, questioning the outcome of said progress is treated as nothing short of sedition. Nonetheless, Carson's seminal work blew away the curtain, exposing the little wizard at the public relations controls.

An analogy can be made to the current and future state of our media environment. Are we all being radically poisoned by contaminated airwaves? Yes, we are. Not necessarily by the technologies themselves, but rather by the social constructs that are propelling their use and content: transnational economic monopolization, profiteering, and corporate greed. In addition, we are in the process of relinquishing all access to the public commons of the airwaves. This is happening at a time when the need to communicate in order to solve pressing and complex global problems is at an all time high. Lulled once again by the ballyhoo of progress and the saving graces of communication technologies in an information age, we are scrambling to climb on board the tired metaphor of the info superhighway, ignoring, with the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the government giveaway of public airwaves to profit hungry corporations.

What happens when you fence off the commons? The little people starve. Like the rats that died of malnutrition after a steady diet of Captain Crunch, we are in danger of losing our public mind to the glossy electronic fare of corporate owned and market driven media. We are subject to, in the words of Herbert Schiller (from his book Information Inequality), "a largely free wheeling corporate enterprise system, exerting its will locally and globally, in tandem with an unprecedentedly influential and privately-owned information apparatus, largely devoted to money-making and the avoidance of social criticism."

This puts an additional patient on the table: grassroots democracy. For many today democracy has been conflated with the consumer ethos, namely the right to choose between a bewildering array of products. In his essay, "Deride and Conquer" (from Watching Television, ed. Todd Gitlin, 1986) Mark Crispin Miller presents a sampling of the slogans touting consumer choice: "AT&T offers us 'The Right Choice,' electricity, we are told, grants us 'The Power of Choice,' Wendy's reminds us that 'There Is No Better Choice,' McDonald's is 'America's Choice,' Coke is 'The Real Choice,' 'In copiers, the choice is Canon,' Taster's Choice is 'The Choice for Taste…" and so on. The irony is we have substituted this sleek illusion of "choice" for the grittier necessity of social criticism and democratic dialogue that crosses boundaries of race, gender, and class.

And this is happening in synergy with a downsized, worker-hostile economy, forcing everyone to share the American late millennium disease of busyness and time starvation. Referring to the delicate balance that evolved between developing life and its surroundings, Rachel Carson writes, "Given time -- time not in years but in millennia -- life adjusts, and a balance has been reached. For time is the essential ingredient; but in the modern world there is no time. The rapidity of change and the speed with which new situations are created follow the impetuous and heedless pace of man rather than the deliberate pace of nature" (page 17). And indeed the globalization of the economy, the monopolization of media conduits and the development of powerful new communication technologies in this post-modern age are all happening at breakneck speed. It makes it all the more urgent for us to strenuously question and critique what these developments mean to us now and in the future. We need to become media literate, agitate to take back the public commons of the airwaves, and challenge the primacy of profit.

No mean feat and we're gonna have to love the process, because it's going to be a long haul. The second Media and Democracy Congress, sponsored by the Institute for Alternative Journalism and held in New York City, October 16-19 1997 offered an unusually fertile opportunity to formulate action plans for accomplishing these goals. More than 1,200 people attended, traveling from 38 states and 7 countries. Sessions were packed with information, debate was lively, often contentious, and the sense of urgency was pervasive. The stated goals of the Congress were to hold the media system accountable and to make better independent media.

Media literacy is a critical place to begin. We are awash in media images and messages. An individ-ual's average bombardment of advertising messages per day ranges from 3,600 ( according to Sut Jhally, Prof. of Communication at U. of Massachusetts) to 18,000 (according to Herb Chao Gunther of the Public Media Center). Jean Kilbourne, author/narrator of the films Killing Us Softly and Slim Hopes, argues that advertising is the single most powerful social influence at work today. Countering that influence means learning how to analyze, evaluate, interpret, and critique those thousands of messages received each day though TV, radio, the Internet, print media, billboards, bumper stickers, and fashion logos. Becoming media literate means asking, "Who creates those messages? How? To what ends? Who benefits from them?" It means learning how to control and use the media for truly democratic dialogue, not allowing the media to control and use you.

In a dynamic presentation, Bob McCannon of the New Mexico Literacy Project argued that "compulsion is media's noose around our democracy: media literacy defeats the hangman." Indeed, Victor Strassberger, a pediatrician who studies media and teenagers in Albuquerque, reminds us that children's formative stories are now being told to them by corporations and not their parents and families. And these stories are intricately entwined with messages urging them to consume. McCannon reported that the median time parents spend in quality conversation with their children is now 38 minutes per week. In fact, there is increasing pediatric research into the effects of steady TV viewing on a child's mind. Jane Healy's book, Endangered Minds examines this issue.

And doesn't it make sense? Why wouldn't we need to examine the effects of this type of barrage and challenge the supremacy of messages that manipulate and bend every imaginable human need and emotion to the yoke of marketing and consumption? But when I first ask my freshman composition students whether they take advertising seriously, they shrug, look bemused, and finally say, no they don't. And little kids can't really tell the difference between fantasy and reality. So, as we have had to learn how to investigate and avoid the chemical contaminants that have invaded our environment, our food supply, and our bodies, we need to make media texts and media institutions the focus of critical analysis.

Sut Jhally argues that if we are to challenge the primacy of profit and the rampant consumerism that is ravaging the natural resources of the planet, we have to challenge the primacy of the messages that tell us happiness is through consumption of objects. The selling of commodities has taken over more and more spaces of our culture. He claims the story myth that economic growth will create happiness is the major motivating force for social change on the planet right now. When your reality is hunger and despair, the goal becomes the abundant marketplace.

However, we rarely ask the complex question whether objects do bring happiness. He argues that social values lie outside the capability of the marketplace. In fact, quality of life surveys reveal that social values outrank the material in terms of what people say they want out of their lives. So, we are subject to a cruel illusion: the drive for profit in the form of advertising links up real desires to a place that can't satisfy them. Objects don't bring love, sexuality, security. However, ads very skillfully reflect the dream life of the culture. Further, they create our dream life by translating and reconceptualizing our desires and colonizing our vision of what the future could be.

Jhally concludes with two imperatives:

1. We have to break the monopolization of the means of communication and gain access to commercial media;

2. As agents of progressive change, we have to find new ways of talking to an audience along lines that are important to them, glamorizing the possibility of public space, and clearly articulating paths towards the ideals we all seem to share.

Media monopolization is serious business. The centerfold on pages 10-11 (not reproduced for the web), "The Entertainment State" reproduced with permission from The Nation magazine, gives you a graphic map, illustrating the long reach of the media conglomerates' tentacles. The picture isn't pretty and the cultural impact of media monopolies gets uglier still. Robert McChesney, Professor of Communications at the U. of Wisconsin, Madison, argues that there is no range of ideological diversity in network news. The range of debate reflects the narrow range of debate amongst the political and business elite. The market system does an invisible and powerful job of narrowing what should be an open dialogue. This is unacceptable in a democracy.

Nancy Snow, author of Propaganda, Inc., reminds us that it is important to familiarize oneself with the media that cover the business world (Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, ?) in order to understand how this cultural homogenization is taking place. She argues that we need to link the negative effects of media monopoly to so many other pressing social problems; the narrowing of meaningful public debate about critical issues like poverty, human rights, environmental decline for example. All organizations need media coverage and access for voice; the issue of access needs to be on the national agenda. Ben Bagdikian, author of The Media Monoply, states that the current strategy of the 10 media behemoths is to obtain control of all media creations and content as well as the national means of distribution of this content and delivery into individuals' homes. The result will be a closed circuit and an entirely pay-per-view media world.

What role did the 1996 Telecommunications Act have to play in the furthering of this monopolization and the loss of public access to the commons of the airwaves? One result was a 70 billion dollar giveaway of broadcasting spectrum for the exclusive use of corporate broadcasters. That's akin to giving away the air you breathe every day and then asking you to pay for it as it's doled out at designated intervals. Did you read, see, hear about this aspect of the Telecommunications Act in your local media? No, you didn't. Consequently, it didn't register in terms of public discourse. James Boyle, a professor of law at the American University, remarks in his book Shamans, Software, and Sleens: Law and the Constitution of the Information Society, that this giveaway and its repercussions will make the robber barons look like child's play.

What do these sages suggest that we do to counter this strangulation of democratic vocal chords? Find ways to work for the following: formulate and strategize the passing of significant anti-trust laws; limit the power of advertising through taxation and withdrawal from programming; free journalists from corporate pressure in the newsroom; agitate for serious and comprehensive public access and public interest independent media; build community coalitions, watch when broadcast licenses come up for renewal and buy them for community use; become involved in the telecommunications policy process in Washington, D.C. and work to repeal the Telecommunications Act; bring back the Fairness Doctrine (if you are maligned on TV you get equal broadcast time to reply--the TV industry got it repealed in the 1980's); agitate to ban paid political TV ads, demand unlimited public access to political debate and a ban on advertising in children's programming; develop your own community media watch group.

And if all that sounds overwhelming, begin by mapping public space in your own community. Where can you walk with and speak to others without having to ask for and obtain special permission? How can you create greater public space? Think about news that is of particular importance to your community and ask yourself, What types of public access media exist in my community? How can I create content and put my voice on those airwaves ? Become selective in your media consumption, and critique the messages you encounter. Turn off your screen machines and meditate; stop buying stuff and join or create a new rabble-rousing group in your town. Tell stories to your children, memorize poems for your friends, be vocal and extend the discussion to those around you.

A great deal is at stake: our complex relationship to the diverse life communities of our bioregions, the souls of our children, our ability to shape a future that is just and sustainable. In our millennial passage, Carson's "silent spring" could become the irony of Edvard Munch's silent scream transposed to a crowded room; all the channels are on, the airwaves are humming, and no one can hear you.

Return to the Index of Synapse 42, Winter 1997/98