Rich Media, Poor Democracy: An Interview with Robert McChesney

Daniel Zoll interviewed Robert McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy and one of the country's leading media historians. He teaches at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Here are excerpts from their interview.

Bay Guardian: Why is it important for people to take to the streets to fight the National Association of Broadcasters this week in San Francisco?

Bob McChesney: Well, the reason why protesting the NAB is important is that they're the primary recipients of corporate welfare. They use their power not only to maximize profit but to really distort our journalism and our elections. And they've got to be held accountable; our broadcasting system has to be made accountable; and unless it is, it's going to be very hard to change anything else for the better in this country.

Bay Guardian: You write in your book, Rich Media, Poor Democracy that the media has emerged as a major anti-democratic force in this country. Where does the NAB fit in?

Bob McChesney: Well, you know, one of the myths of our media system is that it's like God-given. Like God handed a tablet to Moses who gave it to Lincoln and the Founding Fathers and then handed it to Rupert Murdoch; that we have this natural media system, it's the only way it could possibly be; it's the only one you could have in a democracy.

In fact that's not the case at all. Our existing media system today is the direct result of government laws and subsidies that created it. When the government picked companies and gave them monopoly rights to frequencies in San Francisco and Los Angeles and New York and Chicago, it was picking the winners of the competition; it wasn't setting the terms of the competition. Basically it was handing these companies a license to print money.

So the system we have in radio and television today is the direct result of government policies that have been made in our name, in the name of the people, on our behalf, but without our informed consent. And it has produced the system where a number of very large corporations and wealthy investors have made enormous amounts of money using public property, monopoly rights to public property, and haven't had to pay a penny in return for it to the American people. They get it for free.

Bay Guardian: And specifically how has the NAB used its influence to maintain such a sweetheart deal?

Bob McChesney: If you look at the history of broadcasting, what you find is the National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association whose mission is to protect the interests of the commercial broadcasters. Those interests are, because they're capitalist companies, to maximize profits. Their job basically is to minimize anything that could hurt the profits, and maximize anything that could help the profits of these commercial broadcasters, period. And that's their whole reason for existence. Whatever else they say is pure garbage. That's it. And that's what their history is all about.

They're been around since the 1920s, and they've been a very effective trade association. The commercial broadcasters have tremendous influence in Washington, D.C., for a couple of reasons. First, they're extremely rich and they have lots of money and they have had for a long time, so they can give money to politicians, which gets their attention.

But secondly, every bit as important, they control access to the airwaves. And politicians really respect that. They don't tend to want to get on the wrong side of broadcast media. If you're running for reelection in the House of Representatives race, you know, it's very important to you that you be on fairly good terms with the local affiliates in the largest market in your area. I mean you don't want to antagonize them.

So this gives it a lot of leverage in Washington, which means they oftentimes get their way. And as a result, we have the sort of radio-television system we do have, where it's the province of a handful of companies that make lots of money that do nothing in the public interest. It's exactly what you'd expect as a scenario.

Bay Guardian: Can you more about how our "free market" media structure is actually anti-competitive?

Bob McChesney: Sure. Well, as I said, the spectrum is a limited thing. When the government allocates monopoly rights to frequency, and there are only a handful in each community, it's picking the winners in the competition. The whole competition takes place in getting that license. Once you got the license, a chimpanzee can make money running one of these stations.

So the competition isn't once you got the license, running the station; it's getting the license. The whole process of getting licenses to broadcast, which took place decades ago, was done behind closed doors by powerful lobbies, and wealthy commercial interests got all the licenses with no public input, no congressional input for that matter. I mean I've documented it.

Then once they get it, they talk about how much competition there is. My god, you've got a license to broadcast AM/FM or television in this country, if you can't make money, you're pathetic. You're pathetic. You have no right to live. You're appalling. A chimpanzee, as I say, could manage one of these stations.

So it's not like anyone can start and enter this market. There is strictly a limit on how many stations you can have. So it's a tremendous gift by the public of giving this right to these companies. What do they give in return for it? How do they pay for it?

And understand that scarce spectrum is used today for example for cell phone operators, they have to pay for the airwaves they use, for their services. Broadcasters don't have to pay. The public gets not one penny from them in return for those airwaves. And what's the rationale for that? The rationale is that commercial broadcasters, unlike cell phone operators, for example, are doing something in the public interest. Which is supposed to mean they're doing something in their broadcasting they would not do is they were simply out to maximize profit; if they were really public service institutions, not purely profit maximizing institutions.

But the fact of the matter is, that's laughable. They're doing nothing. They're doing everything to maximize profits; they're doing nothing in the public interest whatsoever; it's a total joke. Or if you want to call what they do in the public interest, then every company is working in the public interest and deserves the same sort of freebies. They're doing zippo, but they have an extraordinarily powerful lobby that's almost invincible, so you can't really attack them on that.

So it's a case of colossal corporate welfare; there's no other way to describe it.

Bay Guardian: In San Francisco, with ownership deregulation. a handful of companies now control the majority of radio stations. Can you talk about state of the radio industry around the country?

Bob McChesney: Well, I think the whole radio situation which I think we talked about yesterday is criminal. They're indefensible on this. They basically pushed and got these laws changed, you can own all these radio stations, and if you read the business press or trade press, the profits have shot up at stations. But at the same time, the quality has plummeted in direct relationship. One side, profits go up, they own more and more, but the diversity, interest, creativity and quality of the programming goes way down.

One survey that I saw that was published I think in Variety or Electronic Media within the last three weeks says that now the average hour of radio in the United States has 18 minutes of commercials...I mean they're just using this market power to just absolutely pummel us with advertising.

Bay Guardian: What to you propose as a solution to the ownership concentration problem?

A far more sensible policy in this country, in my view, this wouldn't require a political revolution. It should be simply one station per owner. Which it's our property, we should be able to do it. Because all the benefits that go from - if there was one station per owner, if that law was passed today, what would happen immediately? Well, the value of these stations would plummet. Because you'd have to find new owners. And if you could only own one station you couldn't make as much profit from it as you could if it were part of a chain. But the price would probably come down a lot closer to what the actual products costs are running a station, instead of being based on the monopoly profits you make when you own 800 stations.

Which would mean all sorts of people could start buying stations who wouldn't be in the market otherwise. Maybe if you and ten of your friends could pool your savings and borrow some money and actually buy some obscure station in Sonoma, and then take some chances and have some fun.

The costs of radio, the physical costs of putting out a good signal are ridiculously low, which is why micro-radio is so wonderful. The cost of these stations has nothing to do with the cost of production. It's like the film industry, where they can claim the cost [unintelligible] millions of dollars to make "Titanic". You can put out a damn great radio station on a very low budget.

Bay Guardian: Here in San Francisco the commercial news talk stations are basically controlled by Disney. If there was a market for all-progressive talk station, or at least a more diverse talk station, wouldn't Disney, given that it's a bottomline corporation, bring that to us?

Bob McChesney: Well, that's an interesting argument. To some extent, there might be an element of truth to it. But I think the way it works is simply this. The relationship between the media owner, their relationship isn't strictly with people and audiences. It's also with advertisers, and that's the most relationship in radio; in fact it pays the bills. And it's with certain types of people in the audience. If they're targeting people that advertisers are interested in as well.

And this sort of changes the whole logic around. So that what you tend to see is someone like a Rush Limbaugh, he's the classic case because he's the most successful, he didn't sort of like come out of his mother's womb with the highest ratings in the country. In fact he was a commercial radio DJ for I think 20 years before he hit it big. He had 20-25 years to develop his right-wing shtick, working his lines, getting his act together to become entertaining. And he was given a lot of time.

Now take Jim Hightower, who's sort of the only progressive to my knowledge that's had any chance to do radio. In fact, I don't know if you've heard Hightower, an extraordinarily funny guy. Very smart, witty. And very knowledge about politics. He got an ABC show, actually, the weekend show on their national network for a few years, the early to mid '90s. But he wasn't given anywhere near the leash that Limbaugh was given, 20 years to work up his shtick. Because Hightower's problem, among other things, is that advertisers would be a lot less interested in his show than in Limbaugh's, even if they have similar ratings, because of what Hightower is saying. I mean I don't blame them. Hightower is left scrambling to get advertisers, because they're saying, do I really want to put my orange juice ad on a show bashing corporations? I've got other choices. I can get these demographics with Rush Limbaugh, and he's telling the world how people like me are the greatest thing who ever lived; you should lower my taxes. I'd rather support that. So that's a real crucial factor.

You know, a left-winger, the barrier to success if you're on the left in commercial radio is a mile and a half higher than it is if you're on the right. Certainly the fact that our airwaves are dominated by right-wingers, far right-wingers, and the version of liberal tends to be the most mealy-mouthed Clintonite. Obviously this doesn't reflect the general population. I mean the interests and values and politics of the general population, to the extent we can generalize.

Bay Guardian: Can you talk about the current election in the context of the NAB and campaign finance?

Bob McChesney: The number one lobby that opposes campaign finance reform in the United States is the National Association of Broadcasters. For that reason alone, they are public enemy number one if you want democracy in this country, not to mention all the horse manure journalism that's served up on television and radio today. This is another subject. Local television news, on both radio and television, is so appalling. Makes print journalism look like the greatest stuff ever written.

But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating. Because what's going on now, and this applies mostly to television stations in the largest markets too, but TV stations basically are now the primary receivers of campaign spending. The cost of congressional and presidential campaigns has been leaping every two or four years. I think this year it will be 60 percent more than 1996; well over twice as much as in 1992 in the presidential and congressional races.

The majority of this money goes to pay commercial broadcasters to run these ads, these TV spots, which are now the whole basis of campaigning. George W. Bush, for example, is such an imbecile that he's in hiding with his Teddy Bear in Washington, while they spend hundreds of millions of dollars running idiotic ads, and have his PR people run around the country trying to alter the press coverage, because that's who politics is run today. The news is often just about who's ads are running, about what the ads say, not much about what the candidates say.

And this is where over half the money goes to pay for these ads; all the studies show these ads are filled with half-truths at best, if not lies. And oftentimes dealing with no issue of any great importance, but just sort of stuff that they figure they can manipulate people with.

At the same time that the broadcasters get all this money for these ads, they love it and it's a source of tremendous profits, this is using the public airwaves which they get for free, and then to basically make a pile of money selling political ads, and then the amount of press coverage of campaigns has plummeted over the last 20 years as the amount of ads has gone up.

Basically what they're saying is, if you want to be on TV, if you want to be a credible candidate, you've got to buy ads. And if you're not buying ads, you're not a credible candidate, we don't cover you. You don't have that sort of money. We're not going to cover hardly anyone, but those few we do cover are going to be people who pay a lot for ads. So if you're thinking about changing democracy, these guys stop every effort for free spending, to eliminate TV ads. Which I think is mandatory, we have to outlaw them as a condition of a license. Every effort to take these elections and have them stop being auctions they oppose; they're the leading lobby that oppose it.

Bay Guardian: So everyone complains about the media, but the movement to democratize the media hasn't really captured the imagination of Americans. Can you explain why that might be?

Bob McChesney: Well, sure. You're right and you're wrong. I mean you're right in that it's not a big issue. You can't organize around it. And there are obvious reasons for that. For one thing, it might just be so abstract that there are other pressing issues that attract people. That's one possible explanation. I think there's an element of truth there.

Also, the commercial media in a superior position, really, to any other corporate lobby, because where would people hear about commercial media or corporate media criticism, where would they hear criticism of them other than in the commercial media? They're not going to hear it there.

So they don't really have a lot of leverage over how people even perceive debates over their own existence. For the most part they black them out, and the few times they cover them, they grossly distort them, misrepresent them.

So it's a much more difficult issue to organize around, because you can't get media at all to make your case. And that's where cases tend to be made politically.

So I think it sort of feeds then a sort of defeatism that you give up. Likewise Ralph Nader, he's running for president now, although in a large portion of the country, he's getting about the same sort of press coverage than Andrei Sakharov used to get under Brezhnev. But in media reform, especially in broadcasting, it's been a central concern of Nader's for decades. He's really the leader of the whole movement to call attention to the corruption of this whole broadcasting system. But even Nader has dropped it from his top 10 or top 20 list. And I think for the same reason. There are just not a lot of people organizing around it. There are more important fish to fry, or more apparent fish to fry if not more important.

But having said that, there's also a sea change in attitude towards media. Now we're in a situation where there are a lot more people saying, yeah, we should change this thing. There are a number of reasons for this. I think part of it is, the system has gotten a lot worse in certain respects. The weaknesses are more transparent. The garbage can journalism on television for example. The bombardment of these political ads on television too. The lack of critical coverage. Those sort of things are more apparent. The commercialism of our society is more ubiquitous than ever, if that's possible.

What I've found is that there is a tremendous interest in these issues, across the political spectrum, sort of left-right terms we used to describe people don't really hold here exactly. I mean I think that once you get beneath the talking classes of conservatives and mainstream people down to the rank-and-file, even people who consider themselves moderates or conservatives don't like garbage can journalism; they don't like political ads; they don't' like their kids being carpet-bombed with advertising on television. They have very real concerns. They don't like the corruption of giving away the radio and TV spectrum for nothing, for zero. Literally hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare made in their name without their informed consent.

There's tremendous interest in these issues when you get to talk to people. We've come two inches on a hundred mile journey, but the hardest two inches. And ten years ago, no one even though we could get a half an inch.