Media Reform as a Means of Social Change

Many of us have laundry lists of complaints against the media. This has mainly come from the mainstream media’s, lack there of and false, reporting on the issues that directly affect our work in the social movements. But what of media reform as a means of social change? In this piece, I hope to show that we can use media reform as a means of bettering the media environment and therefore grow the power of our own message and build our social movements.

Last month, over 3,500 people attended the National Media Reform Conference in the United States. It showed the growth in the dissenting voices willing to stand up to the mainstream media, the Bush administration and their corporate buddies in the States.

The movement has opened a space for debate, not just about how media is run but also more generally about how society is run as a whole. Many journalists are re-examining the control of the media and the values we hold for humanity. This has opened up a space for the social movements to influence the debate to not just aim for liberal reforms, but to see it as a part of a broader structural change that we need in society.

What is media reform?
The key areas being addressed by the media reform movement at present are:
- Legislating to end media consolidation and monopolistic tendencies
- Demanding that the broader public interest be served by media outlets
- More support for localized services representing diverse community voices
- fund public media properly
- fight for net neutrality and save the internet from corporate takeover
- expose corporate media and fake news

What can Media Reform achieve?

Opening up the media environment will allow the possibility for more messages to pass in to the public domain. The above demands will help bring alternative media into the everyday consciousness. This will show up the contradictions in corporate media and ultimately it can help promote further demands of community ownership of media and a changing in the role of journalists and media organisations from controllers of the news to enablers of public discussion. This has flow on effect, in getting people to think about how life in a capitalist state does not fulfill the needs of the people. This is important to Australians because we have one of the most consolidated media landscapes in the world.

Media reform is a huge issue that affects the entire community. It affects the community’s right to know as well as the right to become a part of the debate in society. However, this mass support has been held back by the current capitalist conception of journalism. Far from a “free market of ideas”, mainstream journalism today is a controlled entity. This allows for easier manipulation by the corporates that pay the journalists their wages. This has resulted in a media landscape obsessed with celebrity, crime and sex, and this is just in their coverage of parliamentary politics!

It is important that we do not look on this issue as simply a liberal demand. As Trotsky tells us in the Transitional Program, these issues can not only be pushed to create change in our media, but to take steps towards a truely democratic world.

Venezuela

The media reform debate directly affects the debate surrounding the current advances of the revolution in Venezuela. Contrary to what is printed in the mainstream press, many reformers are becoming convinced by the actions of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. When the Venezuelan government decided to not renew the licence of a coup plotting corporate TV station (that restarted on cable!), a debate broke out in the alternative media sphere.

For example, In Adbusters an article appeared condemning the decision. In the subsequent issues many letters were published by the magazine criticizing the hypocrisy of such a decision by a magazine that calls for an end to lowest common denominator journalism that is being dished up by the corporate press. Adbusters allowed the debate to happen in a way which wouldn’t have happened in the corporate media. Two issues later, this resulted in a positive article on Venezuela being printed. Put simply not everyone in the media is ready to simply accept the right wing mainstream reporting backed up by the National Endowment for Democracy aligned organisations like Reporters without Borders and Human Rights Watch. Radical Canadian writer Naomi Klein echoed this sentiment at length in her latest book- The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. This is also shown in the work of U.S. based media advocacy organisation FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) and their popular magazine: Extra.

It is important we realise the money Venezuela has put into community media as a means of building a real sense of community throughout Venezuela. Our own government, on the other hand, continued to cut funding to public and community media. This has resulted in community TV stations not being able to make the switch to Digital TV and condemning them to certain death (as we have already started to see with Access31 in Perth shutting down and Briz31 in Brisbane on its last legs). These decisions have been a conscious decision by the powers that be in order to stifle debate. Why does the government need a propaganda ministry, when the corporate media can already do a good enough job of keeping people quiet?

The Present Juncture
This issue is especially important now because we are at an important juncture in time. Digital TV is just kicking off. Politicians are weighing up whether they can get away with enforcing attacks on net neutrality. A scary vision at a time when the internet is increasingly being used in more diverse and interesting ways to provide alternative news to the mainstream. An alternative vision to this exists. It’s all about giving the media back to the people to serve the interest of the community. It has to reinvigorate community which is all about intensifying real community debate. It is all about changing the nature of journalism and journalists.

The Here and Now of Media Reform

So what role do we have here and now? There are a bunch of possibilities of how we can help build the media reform movement in Australia. It’s all about supporting radical writers, creating more space for critiques of the media and encouraging media related demands at rallies. We should also continue trying to get more people involved in telling their own stories through the many forms of alternative media. Also, we want to try and grow the links between alt. media outlets. In doing this we also want to aim to build and extend the links between other alt media and the social movements while democratising their processes to allow maximum participation.

These are all small steps in growing awareness in the wider community that the media is in fact an area that we, as concerned citizens, can take action on. Not can we use it as a way of bettering our media environment, but as a transitional measure to fight for the better world we all crave.