July-August 1999

Media Mania

What's Gone Wrong? How Can We Fix It?

Like an addiction we can't shake, we Americans both love and loathe the media. We claim not to believe most of what we hear in the news but speak of little else. We're disgusted by the media's obsession with the tawdry, the terrorizing, and the trivial, yet we avidly consume what they feed us. Many in the news media themselves decry the precipitous decline in journalistic standards, but even they seem powerless to change trends that endanger our democracy and degrade our most cherished values. If the media is just a mirror, are we really so ugly and mean-spirited? Who or what's to blame for what's gone wrong?

Just 10 corporations dominate the U.S. (and global) media, controlling newspapers and magazines, television, radio, books, films, music, and even amusement parks. These vertically integrated corporations have unprecedented power to control what images we see and what information we receive. While they manufacture violent movies and video games and promote junk food to our children, they command our attention with graphic news coverage of riots and school shootings.

Yet at the same time, a proliferation of media channels offers new opportunities for democratic dialogue: local-access cable programming, Internet 'zines, public and low-power radio stations. And a growing number of media professionals -- and even corporate owners -- are finally waking up to the need for a change in mainstream media.

The Mainstream Media Project offered interviews with the nation's leading critics of today's media as well as those helping to fulfill its immense positive potential. MMP asked its guests to address how we can assure that everyone receives equal access to the benefits and equal protection from the threats posed by a media-driven society, and how we can learn to use the media instead of letting it use us. We scheduled 344 interviews, 62 of them nationally or globally syndicated. More than two-thirds were on commercial radio. Some 47 nationally known authorities on media issues representing dozens of organizations participated in the campaign.

Guest Speakers by Topic

Mergers: Can Democracy Survive Monopoly?

Ben Bagdikian, Former Dean, UC Berkeley Journalism School; Award-Winning Journalist

Janine Jaquet, Research Director, Project on Media Ownership (PROMO); Independent TV Producer and Director

Robert McChesney, Author, Rich Media, Poor Democracy

Mark Crispin Miller, Director, Project on Media Ownership (PROMO)

Media Myopia: A Narrowing Range of Voices and Views

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor, The Nation magazine

Janine Jackson, Program Director, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR); Host of Counterspin, Nationally Syndicated Radio Program

Norman Solomon, Founder, Institute for Public Accuracy

Mark Sommer, Director, Mainstream Media Project

News As Entertainment: Triumph of the Tawdry, Terrorizing, and Trivial

Jeff Cohen, Founder, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)

Martha Honey, Former Foreign Correspondent for BBC and other major news organizations; Director, Security Program, Institute for Policy Studies

Carl Gottlieb, Deputy Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism

Tom Rosenstiel, Director, Project for Excellence in Journalism

Commercialization of Content: Everything For Sale

John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Director and Associate Director, Center for Media and Democracy; Co-Authors, Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry

Ads Infinitim: Peddling the Consumption Addiction

Jean Kilbourne, Producer of Prize-Winning Film, "Killing Us Softly"; Author, Deadly Persuasion

Kalle Lasn, Founder, Adbusters magazine, The Media Foundation; originator, "Buy Nothing Day"

Allan McDonald, Communications Director, Adbusters magazine

Media Violence: Monkey See, Monkey Do?

Vivia Boe, Co-Producer of PBS special, "Affluenza"

John DeGraaf, Co-Producer of PBS special, "Affluenza"

George Gerbner, Founder, Cultural Environment Movement; Former Dean, Annenberg School of Communications

Laurie Trotta, Director, Mediascope

Racial and Gender Depictions: Trapped in the Type

David Honig, Director, Minority Media Telecommunications Council

Sut Jhally, Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Public Broadcasting: What Ever Happened to the Public Interest?

Jeffrey Chester, Co-Founder, Center for Media Education

William Hoynes, Associate Professor, Vassar College

Swallowing Tongues: Stories Not Told, Voices Not Heard

John Moyers, Director, Florence Fund; Publisher, TomPaine.com

Peter Phillips, Director, Project Censored

Book Publishing: The Shrinking Marketplace of Ideas

Andre Schiffrin, Director, The New Press

A New, More Independent Public Broadcasting System?

Jerry Starr, Organizer, Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting; Author, Public Broadcasting in the Public Interest

More Innovative Programming and Reporting

David Barsamian, Producer, Alternative Radio

David Hoffman, President, Internews

Peggy Law, Co-Founder and Executive Director, International Radio Project, producing weekly "Making Contact"

Mark Lloyd, Representative, People for Better TV; Director, Civil Rights Forum

Danny Schechter, Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker; Director, Globalvision; Author, The More You Watch, The Less You Know

Rick Shenkman, Editor, TomPaine.com; Author, Presidential Power

Phil Sparks, Coordinator, People for Better TV

Solution-Centered Media: What's Going Right

Sarah van Gelder, Editor,YES! magazine (published by Positive Futures Network)

Frances Moore Lappe, Co-Founder/Editor, American News Service; Author, Diet for a Small Planet

Davis "Buzz" Merritt, Pioneering advocate of "public journalism"

Broadening Access and Participation

Nancy Kranich, President-Elect, American Library Association; Associate Dean of Libraries, New York University

The Internet and New Media: Miracles or Mirages?

Jim Ledbetter, New York Bureau Chief, The Industry Standard; Author, Brought to You By: The Decline of Public Broadcasting.

Kwn Li, Staff Writer, The Industry Standard

Eileen Quigley, Director of WebActive and RealImpact, divisions of RealNetworks

Media Literacy

Frank Baker, Chair, 1999 National Media Education Conference

Elizabeth Thoman, Founder and President, Center for Media Literacy

Radio Renaissance: An Old Medium Finds a New Voice

Susan Douglas, Author, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination

Greg Ruggiero, Co-Founder, Microradio Empowerment Coalition; Author, Microradio and Democracy: Power to the People

Limiting First Amendment Protection of Commercial Speech

Josh Rosenkranz, Director, Brennan Center for Justice, New York University Law School

Additional Participants (local contacts)

Nicholas Alexander, 15-year news volunteer, KPFA

Aileen Alfandary, News Director and Anchor, KPFA

Pete Bramson, Pacifica Foundation Board Member

George Durnell, Assistant Director of Public Services, St. Louis County Library

J. Imani, Advisory Board Member, KPFA

Van Jones, Executive Director, Ella Baker Center; KPFA rally organizer

Cindy Lombardo, Director, Orville Public Library, Ohio

Matt Martin, News reporter, KPFA