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A primer on the Koch industries plans to buy the Tribune's newspapers
| April 22, 2013 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 703 |
 The New York Times reported on Sunday, April 20th, that Koch Industries, run by the infamous Koch brothers -- they of oil and global warming infamy -- is considered the frontrunner in the race to buy the Tribune corporation's newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
Understandably, revulsion is widespread over the very prospect, but many folks apparently need to be updated on a few things.
For one, the very fact that the Tribune is being broken up, and that this sale is even happening, is the consequence of grassroots political activism going back at least a decade. The Tribune corporation, in 2002 and 2003, sought to become a first-tier media corporation, like Time Warner, or NewsCorp, or Viacom, and the plan was for the Tribune to expand via expanding its suite of profitable and influential cross-media ownership holdings -- like owning TV stations and newspapers in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago. But instead of owning them in a handful of cities, the vision was to own them in _every_ city in America. The FCC, then led by the infamous Michael Powell (who's now America's chief cable TV lobbyist), was only too happy to oblige. But grassroots activists rallied Americans to what was happening just in time, and the resulting outcry galvanized a court challenge which overturned the FCC's attempt to overwrite those media ownership rules. (A second attempt in 2007 to rewrite those rules failed a second time in court.)
The Tribune corporation, whiny over its loss, moaned about the turn of events on its editorial pages, and filed appeals to overturn the ruling. Those appeals failed, and when Tribune shareholders saw that the Tribune had no Plan B for carrying out this planned expansion, staged a revolt to demand an ownership change. They got it, in the form of Chicago-area real estate billionaire mogul Sam Zell, who then proceeded to make a bad situation far worse. Instead of charting a trajectory of growth, Zell led the Tribune into bankruptcy for four years, fending off well-heeled creditors who made hell for Zell.
In early 2013 the Tribune emerged out from bankruptcy, but all reports say that the commutation is actually a death sentence, as Tribune plans to sell off most if not all of its media properties. (It has already sold off the Chicago Cubs baseball team, which it owned since the 1980s.) First on the chopping block: the newspaper holdings.
It's an irony that grassroots political activism played a key role in what could be a buyout of a major American newspaper chain by two of America's most reviled billionaires. If the opposition were smart they would exploit this fact to discredit America's media reform and justice movements. Nevertheless, the efforts to block the immediate media ownership rules at the FCC, while successful, haven't (yet) addressed deeper concerns regarding undue political influence, and corporate involvement in media and politics. I've been working on this myself; no doubt others will as well. But suffice it to say that the Koch buyout of the Tribune newspapers isn't a foregone conclusion for a number of reasons.
For one, the Kochs will now get the full-throated response of the environmental movement in addition to the media reform and media justice communities in its attempted buyout. That's not insignificant; the environmental movement has increasingly been flexing its muscle on the climate crisis. Suddenly, once they hear that the Kochs may look to widen their influence by buying out a number of prominent newspapers, they will add their voices to the resistance. And it's been the growth of voices of resistance which proved critical in blocking previous attempts at widening media concentration.
For another, the FCC (the government agency which would have to approve a transfer) is in a state of flux. They are short of their full complement of five commissioners, with Republican Robert McDowell departing and chair Julius Genachowski about to depart. The FCC might be leery to proceed on this without a full complement of commissioners, though its unclear how long it would be before it got back to full strength. Remember, the last two times the FCC tried to proceed on increasing media ownership concentration, the FCC got their rewrites smacked down in court. It might not bode well to go down that rabbit hole again for a third consecutive time. Even so, the FCC might still grant a one-time waiver or waivers for a transfer without having to enact a full and thorny media ownership rewrite. But even that might not work: the FCC actually granted an exception to the Tribune itself in 2007, and that action did nothing to prevent its current travails.
What's more, the Tribune could choose a less-notorious (or less-well-known) company to buy out its newspapers. Sure, the Kochs are currently the leading candidate, but it might not stay the leading candidate. A deal could get scuttled in ways we can't yet foresee, but which grassroots political activism could foment. What's more, investors might be less than enthused to see Koch get into an industry that's seen in many corners as moribund and steadily decreasing as a source of news and journalism, but which remains a prominent source of local community information.
Meanwhile, the effects of global warming will escalate, the conservative media establishment will continue to look like a bunch of headless chickens, and to quote one friend: "a new, right wing maneuver to capture the corporate media will make its biases even less implicit." The endgame is far from assured.
Stay tuned...
UPDATE: The Kochs are coy about the report. See also this tweet. The new 'professionalized' Al Jazeera will not solve democratic deficits in US public media - We need a revolution.
by Scott Sanders
This article was first published by the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net).
Thousands of jubilant news professionals are tossing their hats into the air and their resumes into Al Jazeera's inbox because Al Jazeera America, a new international cable news channel, is launching this summer. But while they celebrate, Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and Amy Goodman call for a democratic revolution to transform public media.
The new channel is the result of the $500 million sale of Current TV and its 40 million U.S. cable households to the Emir of Qatar, a fossil-fuel monarch who also controls a $100 billion "sovereign wealth fund". Current TV co-founder Al Gore engineered the deal, and has been its main cheerleader in media interviews {39:30 - 42:30} lately. But Tony Burman, the previous head of Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera America's model, cautions us to understand that the elite who fund the network also control it to their benefit: "My sense of Al Jazeera today is that it is becoming a more 'top-down', centrally driven news operation than ever before. All news programs and most editorial decisions now come out of Qatar."
That's funny. Not too long ago, Tavis Smiley voiced something similar about another award-winning, public service news outlet -- WBEZ Chicago Public Media: "Something is wrong when even public media has become the playground of the 1%, when public media has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the 1% rather than speaking to the trouble and travail and tribulation of the 99." Smiley was speaking at a media and democracy forum entitled "Poverty, Power, and the Public Airwaves: Post-election analysis and commentary from Tavis Smiley, Cornel West & Amy Goodman in Chicago". The event came about as a result of public opposition to WBEZ's decision to cease airings of "Smiley & West", perhaps the only program consistently advocating for the poor and marginalized on over 70 public radio stations. A few scattered stations had dropped the show previously. The controversy mushroomed when Smiley responded to WBEZ and CEO Torey Malatia in turn called the show "crap".
WBEZ's decisions forced "Smiley & West" onto two local commercial niche stations with a combined average audience one third smaller than WBEZ's. How should this be interpreted by marginalized groups the station is supposed to serve? Smiley declared, "(I)t is easier for an African American to be president of the United States than it is to host a primetime radio program on Chicago Public Radio." In classic Orwellian newspeak, WBEZ claimed it was acting in the interest of "inclusiveness". (See also Steve Rendall, Feb. 2013 FAIR "Extra!", [subscription required].) This type of thing is old news to WBEZ; Malatia was also in charge back in 2003 when Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting cited WBEZ for having no daytime weekday programs with non-white hosts. Similarly, how ought WBEZ's purchase of WRTE-FM, the only low power Latino radio station in the Chicago area, be understood?
In fact, Congress founded both PBS and NPR via legislative acts in response to a famous 1967 Carnegie Commission report that called for broadcasting service to "provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard" and "help us see America whole in all its diversity." Current TV spokespersons recently claimed that Al Jazeera would also follow that path, "Al Jazeera shares Current TV's mission to give voice to those who are not typically heard, to speak truth to power, to provide independent and diverse points of view."
Al Jazeera and WBEZ are guided by lofty ideals, but only sometimes. What can be done to hold them to account to those ideals? I took a closer look at both WBEZ Chicago Public Media and Al Jazeera America and what I found confirms the need for an in-depth examination of the governance of U.S. public media -- and the need for a wide distribution of the findings. 
How is Al Jazeera funded and controlled? Qatar is the host of immense natural gas reserves, much U.S. investment, and key forward U.S. military bases. It is best not to view Qatar as a country with a government, but instead as a royal family's business interests and a massive guest worker program; the "sovereign wealth fund"
includes the Treasury. Qatar provides very little public data on the finances and governance of the privately held corporate parent Al Jazeera Media Network and its 20 or so channels. Al Jazeera's news channels air very few ads and that is a BIG problem for the U.S. cable distributors and Al Jazeera America -- even though these same cable companies pass domestic public tv through their wires without feeling the need to interrupt programming. Al Jazeera says "the plan is to work quickly toward a self-sustaining business model." In a little-reported 2011 decree, the Emir said Al Jazeera Network, a public institution, would become Al Jazeera Media Network, "a private institution of public utility". That year, its advisory "International Board of Visitors" consisted of a range of professional journalists and a few financial and political elites with media ties, but no representatives of working or low-income persons or other marginalized groups. The network's current director-general is a member of the country's royal family and has no background in journalism.
What do those knowledgeable about news and propaganda think about the new Al Jazeera? Adel Iskandar, Georgetown University lecturer and co-author of the book "Al-jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism" said, "The Al Jazeera of 2010 is not the Al Jazeera of 2013. . . We've seen the departure of various people at the network who claim that it no longer practices independent journalism." Former BBC reporter Ali Hashem resigned his post at Al Jazeera Arabic saying, "The Qataris. . . are forcing Al Jazeera to commit suicide." Tellingly, Iraq invasion co-architect and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told David Frost on Al Jazeera English in September of 2011 that he was "delighted" by the new Al Jazeera.
Today's Al Jazeera English is basically like some previous version of the mediocre and flawed CNN but with more emphasis on the global south. U.S embassy cables released by Wikileaks say the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar and officials from Washington have been using a variety of direct and indirect methods to increase Al Jazeera's compliance. Perhaps surprising to advocates of impartial professional journalism, the primary tool to restrain critical reporting on the Qatar network is repeated monitoring and training.
In Maximilian C. Fortes' in-depth article "Al Jazeera and U.S. Foreign Policy: What WikiLeaks' U.S. Embassy Cables Reveal about U.S. Pressure and Propaganda", Fortes explains how journalism's professional norms are used to block and obfuscate the truth: "When it comes to the substance of U.S. relations with Al Jazeera, the questions that should come to mind are: What does responsible mean? Responsible for what? Responsible to whom? What is balance, and how is the truth balanced when the idea itself implies that something else must be a lie? Why is balance important, when airing long-suppressed & regularly marginalized voices? What is objectivity, when one is subject to pressure and made to fear for his/her career? What is professionalism and why does it always seemingly resolve to a default position of not upsetting the status quo?" (For more concerning these questions, see also James E. Owens, master's dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2008.)
Closer to home, WBEZ Chicago Public Media, like Al Jazeera, also relies on claims of professionalism to discipline journalists and police the politics it broadcasts.
In late September of 2012, deep in the election season, WBEZ cancelled "Smiley & West" without bothering to call Smiley to talk about it first. Station officials cited ratings as a cause but argued, "more importantly, the show had developed much more of an 'advocacy' identity" and on this point, station CEO Malatia compared "Smiley & West" to the Pacifica radio program "Democracy Now!" -- a daily independent broadcast news and discussion show hosted by Amy Goodman that airs on over a thousand public and community stations. Malatia then also compared "Democracy Now!" to "The Rush Limbaugh Show", a choice that lead to a sharp public response by the democratically-elected Pacifica radio governing board.
When WBEZ first announced the cancellation, I created the Facebook page, "Smiley & West dumped by WBEZ Chicago Public Media: Take Action." That page contributed to public pressure and discussion of the events. Smiley publicly addressed that discussion in his uncompromising open letter to Malatia. Smiley's letter charged that there are systemic problems at U.S. public media's core, particularly regarding problems with race and class exclusions on station governing boards. In the face of this growing public criticism, Malatia called Smiley and West's show "crap." The growing public debate won mainstream and independent news coverage, adding to interest in the November 8th forum at Northwestern University Law School's Thorne Auditorium. Over "a thooouusand" (as Amy Goodman might intone) attended. Including this writer.
In the lead up to the Chicago event, mainstream media provided space rarely accorded to question the politics shaping public media. For example, the Tribune Company-owned WGN-TV and WGN-AM interviewed Smiley. On WGN-AM, he stated: "There's an orthodoxy even inside public radio. . . I've had to fight an uphill battle in public radio trying to. . . create a democratic space for some ideological diversity and some ethnic diversity." Similarly, in Current, the magazine for public media professionals, Smiley asked: "How can people organize to ensure that public media outlets like WBEZ are responsible, representative, and responsive?. . . How do we ensure that the public media treats our airwaves as the vital resource that they are?"
At the public forum, Smiley called Chicago "ground zero" in the fight for democratic accountability over public media. He also joined West and Goodman to call for grassroots action to democratically transform public media right now.  "We ain't got but a couple of years. . . to let our voices be heard and I don't want us to wait too long to figure that out. . . Public media is going to have to be pushed. . . [Y]ou can get a conversation started about how we democratize and bring some diversity to public media."
Goodman made it clear that the role of an active public is necessary to win programming that challenges corporate and political power. "These are your public airwaves and you have a right to determine how they're used. . . What are you going to do about it?" Goodman also pointed out that corporate employed or funded professional stations depend on and enable their corporate backers. Later that same night on PBS Goodman stated, "I can't think of a greater group of advocacy journalists than those in the corporate media."
"John Dewey [said] Show me a democracy that has a impoverished public life and I'll show you one that is dominated by oligarchs and plutocrats driven by profit maximization," said Cornel West as he connected the problem of elite control of media to the crippling of democracy, "There's no way. . . we'll ever be able to reinvigorate and rejuvenate our public life unless we have (as Socrates told us) Parrhesia. Parrhesia is fearless speech, plain speech, frank speech, unintimidated speech. . . There's too much mendacity and lyin' going on in the corporate, truncated, multiplex." West made it clear
that the fight over media is not merely over truth but over a fundamental recognition of the right of people outside of elite circles to shape media to defend their legitimacy as democratic actors and their material interests in social life: "We need a revolutionary change that shifts from the power of oligarchs to the power of everyday people. And you do that democratically, step by step."
The citation of John Dewey is strikingly appropriate. His scholarship recognized that participation in communication and education are necessary to create and keep a vibrant democratic commons. In Chicago, as elsewhere, the commons of public media and public education are besieged as never before by an epidemic of corporate engineered privatization. Part of that attack is to de-legitimize any role of regular people in shaping the media and education systems that they rely on. West and Goodman gave shout-outs to the Chicago Teachers Union and its President Karen Lewis, who was in attendance. The CTU is organized using direct democratic practices and pursues the return to public election of the Trustees of the Chicago Board of Education, a franchise lost over fifteen years ago.
In my observation, journalists at WBEZ rarely initiated discussion of public school governance. WBEZ coverage seemed to find the notion that regular people could participate in shaping  public policies unthinkable (or insulting). In fact, the public also has no direct say in the selection of WBEZ Chicago Public Media's Trustees.
The late comedian and social critic George Carlin argued that the singular reason that education and journalism suffers is that an educated critical populace is what the rich corporate elites simply do not want: "The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. . . they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. . . They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests."
The "Smiley & West" incident in Chicago created a ruckus in corporate and independent media and new public discussions emerged outside traditional media that put the public media establishment on notice. But the incident failed to create some kind of member or publicly elected WBEZ governing Board. Nor did we see the birth of a mass movement to create such a body or win the right to participate in shaping the media we need to defend other public treasures, like our schools. The fact that Smiley, West, and Goodman called for such a revolution was hardly noticed by the broader debate in alternative or mainstream media. But such a revolution is what is needed to create the public commons.
Almost every other model to "save journalism" fails to interrogate professional claims of impartiality and winds up reproducing the old chain of command that separates disadvantaged communities -- people of color, the poor and working classes, political dissidents, LGBT communities, and other groups -- from decisionmaking. Synergizing community and other public media producers into a new, publicly controlled, radically reorganized, public media system could enable social justice movements to change social conditions for the better.
At the November 8th event, I asked a certain famous Chicago advocate for community controlled public education, reparations, the late Mayor Harold Washington, and fancy hats, if she thought most average people believe that the Trustees on the boards of large public media outlets are all friendly and nice -- like Big Bird. She said she wasn't sure. Had I asked her if she thinks the average person knows the rules by which these Trustees make decisions, she might have offered the same response. We need to expose those rules so that people understand the means by which the rich corporate class controls the development and content of public broadcast systems and in-progress digital public online networks. The shape, and politics, of those networks will be powerfully affected by the National Broadband Plan (NBP).
The force of federal law, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), mandates the NBP to provide for the transformation of the 20th-century U.S. public broadcasting system into a digital public media network, ubiquitous in access, promoting innovation, competition, and free expression, and supporting the growth of accountability journalism. Subsidies for a variety of anchor institutions and other community-based entities are actually crucial for reaching these NBP goals. But, with scarce exception (i.e. stations controlled by local tribal governments and the five Pacifica radio stations), the recipients of these Corporation for Public Broadcasting subsidies charged with the creation of those networks are not grassroots community anchor institutions and they are not led by the principles of direct democracy. The governing boards of the CPB stations will make the decisions and set the conditions under which community organizations get to participate in creating those necessary networks.
Increasing public knowledge of the political forces controlling development of publicly funded digital networks could offer advocates a pro-active opportunity to shift public and policy debate from a narrow focus on station budgets to a larger question: Should federal policy enable the same corporate and affluent sectors culpable for the recent economic crisis to also shape development of new public communication resources needed by communities disproportionately hurt by that crisis? Important research on public media policy is already out there (New America Foundation, Center for Social Media, Victor Pickard et al, Ellen P. Goodman and Anne Chen). But the fact is we also need research into the political relationships enabled by the new networks: will corporate connected elites again manage the money and make the decisions? Above all we need a social movement to raise hell and win the right to shape public media to meet the needs of regular people.
As our very good friend Tavis Smiley said in The Chicago Defender: "Now is the time to ask and answer the hard questions on how the public media space can better serve fellow citizens who have traditionally been politically, economically, socially, and culturally disenfranchised." The clock is ticking. We cannot -- we must not -- rely on the largesse of royalty and the "corporate, truncated multiplex" for the connections, communications, and news needed for a public commons and a living democracy.
_____
James Owens made invaluable contributions to this article.
Link here to view the 11/8/12 event, or here to listen.
Scott Sanders, a 2011 winner of the Nelson Algren Committee award, has co-founded a number of media activist organizations, including Chicago Media Action, and led efforts to constitute public community media centers with member-elected boards and to increase diversity on non-elected public media boards. He also led campaigns resulting in the only FCC fine of a major public TV station concerning commercialism. He has a number of years of experience working as a video documentarian and as a periodicals and technology librarian. Scott has produced social science research for MMTC, MAP, and, for the last four years, for the University of Chicago. He is responsible for the Trustee research in the CMA study "Chicago Tonight: Elites, Affluence, and Advertising" starting on p.18 here. He is the author or co-author of articles for Truthout, Extra!, Counterpunch, Z magazine, and a number of daily newspapers.
In memory of Jan and Robert Sanders.
"Broken Deal" forgot one thing: WE killed the Tribune
| March 2, 2013 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 700 |
In January 2013, the Chicago Tribune did the closest equivalent to self-reflection journalism that it probably ever has done, and likely will ever do, in its mammoth four-part business story about the Tribune itself, entitled "Broken Deal". The story by Steve Mills and Michael Oneal documented the saga from when the Tribune changed ownership hands in 2007 to the Tribune's departure from bankruptcy in early 2013. The report chronicled the change of ownership to that of Chicago-area billionaire tyrant Sam Zell, the red flags over the deal both before and after the changeover completed, the ensuing complications in the boardroom and the newsroom while Zell and Tribune CEO Randy Michaels were in charge, and the roller coaster in bankruptcy court over the control of the Tribune Corporation.
The report, unlike the haughty reporting usually found in the business pages, has a rare air of fatalism to it, not only because it's talking about a topic close to home -- the travails of its corporate parent -- but because it's widely believed that the Tribune Corporation will soon be no more in its current form, as most if not all of its properties are expected to be sold off by the end of 2013. The patient has survived surgery and emerged from its years-long coma, only to be ready to have its limbs and head chopped off and all the pieces thrown to hungry cannibals waiting outside. (Indeed, the week this post was being written, word has broken that the Tribune has hired an investment bank to help weigh the sale of its top newspapers.)
The Tribune report deserves credit for summarizing in one place the years-long mess that ensued from meager beginnings. But the report, like the Tribune's reporting across its history, has grave shortcomings (pun very intended), not the least of which is that it glossed over the circumstances which led to the Tribune going into different ownership and into bankruptcy in the first place.
The Tribune discussed a small bit of history in the first part of the report, when it reports on "the legacy of a frustrating $8 billion deal in 2000 to merge with Los Angeles Times parent Times Mirror Co. The merger produced a bitter culture clash between the two companies that resulted in [Tribune CEO Dennis] FitzSimons and his team being demonized in Los Angeles as zealous cost cutters despite the need to rein in spending at the Times Mirror properties."
That deal put the Tribune in the mildly awkward position of breaking the law -- the FCC's cross-ownership rule which forbade (and still forbids) the ownership of a newspaper and television station in the same city, because concentrated media are inimical to democracy and free speech. In response, the Tribune bribed convinced the FCC to grant it waivers to allow it to keep those newspapers in face of the law, thinking (as did everyone) that they could get the FCC to abolish that law, at which point it could then buy and profit from waves of cross-ownership holdings across the country and grow to become a top-tier media company. And they would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for meddling media activists like those with Chicago Media Action. We had our Seattle moment with the media ownership uprising in 2003, raising such an outcry over media concentration that even the corporate media sat up and took notice, as did the Third Circuit Court of Appeals which heard the outcry and blocked the FCC's attempt to abolish cross ownership and a number of other key media ownership rules.
It's no exaggeration to say that the Tribune gambled their future on that FCC ruling taking hold and sticking. Consider what happened when it didn't: The Tribune unleashed its fury against media activists and the public on its editorial pages, and tried to appeal away the ruling in the subsequent years, but all the appeals failed. Finally, in 2006, Tribune stockholders staged a revolt, distressed that the explosive growth they were promised was stymied (since those pesky media ownership rules were still in place). Here's what Broken Deal had to say about that:
"[The fallout from the Times Mirror purchase] was distracting, but the more significant threat to [Tribune CEO Dennis] FitzSimons' security was the growing unrest among the extended clan of legendary former Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler. The Chandlers had controlled Times Mirror until the merger and held the second-largest block of Tribune Co. stock, after the McCormick Foundation. They were furious that the family fortune had been diminished under FitzSimons' watch and frustrated that exiting their position required cooperating with Tribune Co. to dismantle two partnerships the family had put together to limit taxes. Then in June 2006, the Chandlers brought matters to a head by launching a public campaign for FitzSimons' ouster. The CEO and supporters on the board pushed back. But what became clear in the following months was that even some longtime shareholders had had enough of the status quo."
Ultimately, the shareholder revolt succeeded in ousting FitzSimons and demanding new ownership. That's when Chicago-area billionaire tyrant Sam Zell became the Tribune's new owner and, as Broken Deal reports, ran the company into the ground.
The tenor of much of Broken Deal is marked by a sense that the Tribune was a victim of circumstances it couldn't control -- the banking collapse of 2008, the subsequent drying up of money in media markets, the incessant demands by banks, shareholders, and creditors. It's possible that these circumstances in combination could still have driven the Tribune into its present predicament, even if you take away our victory over the FCC in 2003. But suppose that the FCC hadn't been blocked, and the media ownership rules went on as proceeded. Billions of dollars of media ownership deals would have transacted in the fall of 2003, and the Tribune, in all likelihood, would have grown to become one of the largest media properties in America, with cross-ownership setups in dozens of cities nationwide. Fast forward five years to 2008 when the economy goes in the toilet; the Tribune would be a much larger company with a greater war chest, so that when the Great Recession hits, it can weather the storms more easily. It might even have to sell off some of its properties in order to stay afloat, just like what Clear Channel did. But at least the Tribune would have properties to sell; what's more, it wouldn't be in bankruptcy, it wouldn't be forced to choose between bad moves and worse moves, and it wouldn't spend four years fending off armies of ravenous creditors.
Plus, it's not like there was a huge media-fomented clamor over media ownership. Yes, there was a huge outcry, but that was generated as the result of grassroots actions, and not as the result of the media artificially ginning up awareness. Quite the contrary: the major corporate media clammed up about the media ownership proceedings in 2003 precisely because they didn't want to take the chance that the public would get in the way of the proceedings. The source of the victory on this score is clear. And it's not that much of hyperbole to say that WE (as in Chicago Media Action) killed the Tribune.
Fear us. "Democracy Now!" finally on full power Chicago radio -
but it's WCPT, not WBEZ.
| January 1, 2013 |
 I stood right next to Amy Goodman as she talked to the head of WCPT at the Smiley & West event 11/8 about how only CAN TV is airing Democracy Now! here, and sure enough, according to media writer Robert Feder, the show will now finally, sort of be broadcast by a full power Chicago radio station. CMA's efforts re: DN! are noted by Feder. It is scheduled for 8-9PM weekdays, so most WCPT listeners will usually have to catch the show via daytime-only broadcaster 820 AM's stream. WCPT's average audience is only around a third of WBEZ's according to Radio Survivor Paul Riismandel, and there are going to be full fledged commercials before and after the show, but that should not affect the content, as this is surely one of the only broadcasts of the program on a fully commercial station anywhere. It's about time and congratulations to everyone who agitated for something resembling this over the last, what, ten years? Happy New Year! Smiley & West w/Amy Goodman in Chicago 11/8: Poverty, Power and the Public Airwaves
| November 3, 2012 |
 Smiley & West w/Amy Goodman in Chicago: Poverty, Power and the Public Airwaves
Public Event
Thursday, November 8, 2012
7:00pm until 9:00pm
Poverty, Power, and the Public Airwaves:
Post-election analysis and commentary from
Tavis Smiley, Cornel West & Amy Goodman in Chicago
Thorne Auditorium
Northwestern Law School Downtown Campus
375 E. Chicago Ave.
FREE and open to the public
Doors open at 6pm
Event page.
event registration
Facebook page -- WBEZhatesSmileyandWest.
While the winner of the 2012 race for the White House might not be known by Thursday, Nov 8th, one thing will know is that this first post-Citizens United presidential election created a new normal in U.S. electoral politics, with unprecedented amounts of corporate cash flooding the process, creating a tsunami of SuperPAC-funded negative ads that only served to distort and disinform the public, diminishing our democracy and deterring participation.
While trading barbs on the narrow range of issues on which they differ, Pres. Obama and Mitt Romney were united in ignoring issues of critical importance to a vast majority of people, for poverty, to war and climate change.
Broadcast networks made billions during this election season, while ignoring their obligation to serve the public interest. What role does the media play in furthering this erosion of our democracy, and how can people organize to ensure that they have a responsible, representative, and responsive media, a true public media that treats our airwaves as the vital national resource that they are?
Join is for an evening of engaged discussion.
Presented by
Democracy Now!
Smiley & West
Haymarket Books
An incomplete list of articles and posts stemming from Chicago Public Media's decision to drop "Smiley & West"
| November 3, 2012 |
Smiley & West are back on Chicago Radio! Sundays at 3pm on WCPT 820AM - Chicago's Progressive Talk - starting November 4, and Saturdays at 11am on WVON 1690AM - The Talk of Chicago - starting November 10. WCPT will also carry The Tavis Smiley Show Sundays at 2pm.
The following is an incomplete list of articles and posts stemming from Chicago Public Media's decision to drop "Smiley & West":
Facebook -- WBEZhatesSmileyandWest.
Related event 11/8/12.
* On balance, WBEZ removes "Smiley & West" from lineup - Robert Feder
TimeOut Chicago
* Chicago's WBEZ is the 4th station to drop Smiley and West - Paul Riismandel Radio Survivor
* Read Tavis Smiley's letter to the autocratic, elite-appointed, & divinely inspired WBEZ CEO Malatia
here.
* Tavis Smiley is out at WBEZ - and he's not smiling - Laura Washington Chicago Sun-Times
* Tavis Smiley responds to Chicago Public Media CEO Torey Malatia - Paul Riismandel Radio Survivor
* Smiley to WBEZ: "Demeaning, derogatory and dead wrong" - Robert Feder TimeOut Chicago
* Poynter
* Tavis Smiley Responds To Cancellation Of "Smiley & West" In Open Letter To Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ
Sacramento Bee
* Smiley & West: What do you think? - Matt Martin
KALW-FM
* Huffington Post
* Tavis Smiley Fires Back At WBEZ's Malatia Over Smiley & West Cancellation
Chicagoist
* Smiley Blasts WBEZ After Being Canceled
Radio Ink
* Tavis Smiley Publicly Blasts WBEZ-FM Over Cancellation Of 'Smiley & West' - Larz
Chicagoland Radio and Media
* Smiley fires back at WBEZ's cancellation of Smiley & West - Dru Sefton
Current
* "Smiley & West" Off WBEZ Andrew Huff
Gapers Block
* Free Republic
* Tavis Smiley, WBEZ drop the gloves
T Dog Media
* Protests against censorship and blacklists at WTTW and WBEZ to grow after 'public' radio in Chicago dumps popular Tavis Smiley show - George N. Schmidt -
Substance News
* Tavis Smiley Responds To Cancellation Of "Smiley & West" In Open Letter To Chicago Public Radio, WBEZ -
The Street
* Media Alliance
* Tavis Smiley To WBEZ: Stop Lying Politics, Race And Our Narrowing Discourse
Beachwood Reporter
* Talkers
* African/Black America - Tavis Smiley Blasts Chicago Public Media CEO Over Show's Cancellation -
african-america.net
* Tavis Smiley Responds to Cancellation of "Smiley & West" in Chicago Black Agenda Report
* Richard Prince's Journal-isms - Smiley Irate at Cancellation by Chicago Public Radio -
Richard Prince
* Punditry, audience declines cost "Smiley & West" stations - Mike Janssen Current
* Activists, National Black Wall Street Organization Leader, Father Pfleger join activist and "Urban Translator" Wallace "Gator" Bradley and others in challenging WBEZ to reinstate the Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West show - Mark S Allen Chicago Now
* Pacifica Foundation - Pacifica Foundation Rejects Chicago's WBEZ-FM's Negative Characterization of "Advocacy Identity" in American Media Blackbird Press News
* Pacifica Foundation Condemns "Smiley & West" Cancellation
Radio World
* Pacifica Foundation rejects Chicago's WBEZ-FM's negative characterization of "Advocacy Identity" in American media
North Dallas Gazette
* Tavis Smiley Fires Back At WBEZ's Malatia Over Smiley & West Cancellation Progressive Democrats of Illinois
* Smiley & West Radio Show Being Dropped by Media Outlets Around the Country
Your Black World
* Radio Discussions
* Progressive Democrats of Illinois
* Dr. Safiya Hoskins
* Tavis Smiley returning to Chicago after WBEZ cancellation
Chicago Tribune
* Current
* Newstips
* Smiley & West radio program returns to the Chicago market with two new affiliates
* Copy Line Magazine
* North Star News
* BlackLegalIssues
* BradleyReport
* TimeoutChicago
Pacifica Foundation Rejects Chicago's WBEZ-FM's Negative Characterization of "Advocacy Identity" in American Media
| November 3, 2012 |
For Immediate Release:
October 21, 2012
Contact: Summer Reese
Chair and Interim Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation
summer@pacifica.org
www.pacifica.org
Pacifica Foundation Rejects Chicago's WBEZ-FM's Negative Characterization of "Advocacy Identity" in American Media
The Loss of Smiley & West in the Chicago Metropolitan Area is symptomatic of censorship of independent voices
BERKELEY...Pacifica Foundation, the founder of listener-sponsored radio in the United States with the birth of KPFA-FM in Northern California in 1949, joins with Chicagoans and people across the country to express its concern about the removal of the broadcast collaboration Smiley & West from Chicago public radio station WBEZ-FM. But the Foundation also "rejects" WBEZ-FM's maligning of advocacy journalism, which is the heart of community radio in America and provides opportunities for groups and individuals to speak for themselves.
Tavis Smiley and Professor Cornel West are African Americans. This action in Chicago is especially worrisome, therefore, when groups from Rainbow PUSH to Free Press to Color of Change have pointed out repeatedly that Blacks own less than one percent of full power commercial television stations and less than three percent of commercial radio stations, yet make up nearly 14 percent of the total U.S. population. As a consequence, there is a severe lack of Black voices in American media and there needs to be more not fewer voices of independence along with challenging thought provoking analysis.
WBEZ President Torey Malatia ascribed the decision at least in part to Chicago Public Radio uneasiness with the "advocacy identity" of the Smiley & West Show, comparing it to Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now!
The Pacifica Foundation would like to state in no uncertain terms its tremendous pride in Democracy Now! and its uncompromising determination to go to where the silence is and report on what isn't being heard anywhere else. Democracy Now! as with other leading lights in public media could not be more central to American democracy at a time when legacy commercial media are financially struggling and falling into irrelevance.
"It is disappointing when the term advocacy is used as a smear to trivialize the presentation of intelligent and passionate discussion that is sometimes critical of the American status quo," said Summer Reese, Chair and Interim Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation.
The Pacifica Foundation urges WBEZ to reflect on the importance of robust dialogue that includes all reasoned and intellectual points of view and the paucity of African-American discourse throughout the media system, especially with regard to serving the City of Chicago with a 32.9% Black population.
Democracy Now! began in 1996 at Pacifica radio station WBAI-FM and spun off as an independent production in 2002. It is broadcast on all 5 Pacifica stations, more than 180 Pacifica affiliates, and many independent radio and television stations nationwide and internationally.
The Pacifica Foundation, founded in 1949, pioneered the idea of listener-sponsored broadcasting in the United States and holds the licenses for 5 major non-commercial US broadcasters, WBAI-FM in New York, KPFK-FM in Los Angeles/Santa Barbara, WPFW-FM in Washington D.C, KPFT-FM in Houston, Texas and KPFA-FM in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Today marks the 10th Anniversary of Chicago Media Action
| November 2, 2012 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 695 |
 I don't want this to go unremarked: The date of this blog post marks what can arguably be construed as the tenth anniversary of Chicago Media Action.
Folks who have followed Chicago Media Action over the years may recall that Chicago Media Action came as the result of a controversy that took place exactly ten years ago today. Suffice it to say, we've come a long way since then.
We'd remark on this some more, and hopefully will soon, but to be fair we've been a bit busy lately, including:
* Setting up a rapid-response form for a Chicago activist and scholar whose legal case could set a frightening precedent in Illinois law.
* Raising hell over WBEZ's decision to drop "Smiley & West". Good news: Two other Chicago-area radio stations are picking up the show and a Chicago event with Mr. Smiley (and a certain Ms. Goodman) will take place next week.
There's more in the works of course. Hopefully we can find some time to exhale and celebrate. It's been an extraordinary ride, some of which we've chronicled on this website. We invite you to explore and help out. Here's to another ten years of fighting the good media fight. DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed on this
website are those of the individual members of Chicago Media
Action who authored them, and not necessarily those of the entire
membership of Chicago Media Action, nor of Chicago Media Action
as an organization. Newsfeed software courtesy CaRP |
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