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from: Black Agenda Report

Mass media are the circulatory systems of modern human societies. The second amendment guarantees freedom of the press so media can act as a check on abuses by government and the powerful, not a mouthpiece for the wealthy and powerful. More than 3,500 activists from around the country met in Memphis last weekend to teach, learn, discuss and discover how to bring about a more democratic media regime in this country. But what does the media reform movement mean for African Americans?

The Black Stake In Media Reform
by Bruce Dixon

Fifty years ago the Southern Christian Leadership Council adopted as its motto "to save the soul of America". The concept of black America as the conscience and soul of the nation is a resonant and powerful one that pre-dates Dr. King and has long outlived him. As the third national conference for media reform drew to a close in Memphis the day before we celebrated Dr. King's unfinished business, it is clear that on top of the charge laid upon us as a people, is another.

Black America must save itself. For us, the fight for media justice is a fight for the right to use the media to speak with and to hear our own voices as individuals, as families, and as communities. Modern media determine the content of public consciousness. But for giant media corporations African Americans are not a community, we are consumers. For them, we are not a polity, we are a market. For the producers of corporate entertainment we are not the wellspring of countless cultural treasures. We are the raw material for its video minstrel shows.

"Do you know what the hot news story on urban radio, the day North Korea fired off those missiles was?" asked Lisa Fager of Industry Ears at last weekend's media conference. "It was 'Little Kim' being released from jail... You know Aaron Patterson, one of two people released from death row in Illinois by Governor Ryan? We couldn't get him on ANY urban radio show to talk about his experience --- 'would OUR audience be interested?' they'd ask. Are you kidding? This is all we do, is glamorize prison culture and violence. It's surreal."

Ms. Fager was one of 3,500 activists from around the country who came to Memphis lst weekend to conduct and attend workshops, to exchange information on what's wrong with the media, how to empower communities to fight it, how to resist and change corporate and public media policies, and how to be your own media. Most of the weekend's programmed content, in the form of downloadable MP3 audio files of more than a hundred conference workshops and a score of plenary speeches are available free of charge. We strongly urge our readers to download the conference guide with its detailed descriptions of workshop presentations and sample its wealth of useful offerings.

When we asked brother James Early, a member of the board at both TransAfrica and Free Press , what the ideas of media reform and media justice had to do with African Americans, this is some of what he told us.

"We (blacks) are the basic index for where democracy has got to go... we must keep in mind that this whole system...rationalized the exploitation of black people in order to make profit to construct this nation. There is no one else, no other group, no other people that figure in the racist philosophy and imagination of this country in the way that the descendants of enslaved Africans (do)... So anywhere there are people talking about freedom then we belong there...

"Tragically the struggle to break American apartheid was... a struggle to be as virtuous or more virtuous than white people or as corrupt or more corrupt than white people. It was not a revolutionary struggle in terms of systemic change. It was a radical struggle to be part of the system. So on the one hand we got a Condoleezza Rice and a Colin Powell, and on the other we got a Danny Glover.

"With regard to black radio, the tragedy is that we've got some black ownership that's done to us the same things that others did to us. They've removed all the news programs. That was the first thing they did because if you want truth, that's where you have to invest. If you want to finger pop, that's easy but if you want somebody to go out and do some investigation and analyze stuff, they need to be paid, they need to travel, they need to think and study.

"It's not just getting in and spinning a CD, it's a whole different thing. We are now seeing a whole lot of black radio ownership that is limiting our ability to have knowlegde, limiting our ability to be informed, and we have to challenge that just as we would challenge any other person whatever his or her color may be who does not allow us access."

"black radio does find time to endlessly promotes its pet studio gangstas, to make commodities of women's bodies, and to glamorize the culture of prison, degradation and violence. The only thing it does not find time for is news we can use. "

We think brother Early is onto something. The choking off of resources and air time devoted to news and public affairs on black commercial radio -- with black-owned stations leading the way, has all but shut down black America's own internal civic dialog, the conversation among and about us. The fact of nearly universal black opposition to America's imperial wars in the Middle East is practically invisible on commercial black radio. The ongoing saga of the uprooting, dispossession and displacement of black New Orleans, a city of hundreds of thousands is nearly as invisible on black radio as it is on mainstream white media. And although America's unspoken public policy of racially selective mass incarceration has left almost no black families untouched by the shadow of prison, commercial black radio can find no room for discussions of mass incarceration as a public policy issue.

But at the same time, black radio does find time to endlessly promotes its pet studio gangstas, to make commodities of women's bodies, and to glamorize the culture of prison, degradation and violence. The only thing it does not find time for is news we can use. Black radio reaches more black homes, cars, workplaces and ears than any other black media. Black radio is the people's media, but these are not people's priorities. They are corporate priorities. For us, media reform will have to start close to home.

To be sure, we need every kind of justice, including media justice. In the 21st century, cheap or free universally available fast broadband will be as vital a precondition for community economic development as paved streets and roads. We need more community radio stations and public access TV channels, we need to break the rule of corporate payola that determines the music and videos we hear, and we must strictly regulate and break up corporate media monopolies, including black ones. These are the boilerplate fundamentals that every community in America must fight for in the 21st century.

Egregious governmental actions over the last few years such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996, court decisions allowing telecom monopolies to turn the internet into a toll road, and FCC actions invalidating community agreements with cable providers and allowing further concentration of monoploy power show that decision makers are thoroughly insulated from public needs and public opinion. So while we must continue to carefully monitor and keep our fingers in the faces of public officials, while we have to insist our representatives in Congress and state legislatures resist big media's attempts to end network neutrality, and ban community wireless, or evade responsibilities to serve poor and minority community by means of statewide cable rather than locally accountable franchising agreements, it's time for movements to start acting like movements.

It's time to go back to the people. It's time for grassroots organizers to spark a new wave of direct outrage and direct action against big media itself --- nationally, locally and directly. The Civil Rights Bills of the 1960s did not come from above without massive pressure from below. We will never see a just, accountable and democratic media that serves the needs of black people or anyone else without a vigorous mass movement from below.

For black America, that means starting with the media that reaches the greatest number of our people, the largest portion of the time --- we must target black commercial radio In point of law, the broadcast airwaves are public property, licensed to broadcasters on the basis of their pledges to serve the public interest. Privatizing, commercializing, militarizing all our media space does not serve the public interest.

We need public spaces for black dialog, spaces in which we can bring our individual, family and community problems for collective examination, in which we may search for common solutions. Web 2.0 would be nice. But right now many of our communities don't have broadband 1.0. Community wireless too, will soon be indispensable to black economic development, although our relentlessly self-promoting black business class seems not to have grasped this yet. But black radio is right here, right now.

The first target of mobilized black communities seeking to control our media destiny must be those who have usurped and misused the existing media space that black ears are tuned into right now. Black radio. It's time to reclaim that space. It's time to demand the return of locally gathered news on black radio.