Latest / The Real News Podcast / Introducing: Scene on Radio

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Introducing: Scene on Radio · The Real News Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, folks, this is Michael Fox, the host of the
0:02
Speaker 1: podcast The Battle for Free Speech. We released the last
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Speaker 1: episode of this series a few weeks ago, but we
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Speaker 1: have a real treat for you today. I've been binging
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Speaker 1: on the eighth season of a podcast called Scene on Radio.
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Speaker 1: It's hosted by John Bwen and Chenderi Kumanika, and it's
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Speaker 1: brought to you by the Keenan Institute for Ethics at
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Speaker 1: Duke University. This season is all about the news. It
0:27
Speaker 1: looks at the challenges facing American journalism today and everything
0:32
Speaker 1: in between. And here's the thing, there are some uncanny
0:36
Speaker 1: similarities between this season in particular of Scene on Radio
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Speaker 1: and The Battle for Free Speech, both in style and content.
0:44
Speaker 1: These two podcasts really walk side by side, often complimenting
0:48
Speaker 1: each other. That is all to say that I loved
0:52
Speaker 1: this season of Seen on Radio. It's highly produced, I
0:55
Speaker 1: learned so much. And today we're bringing you episode six
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Speaker 1: of season eight of Seen on Radio. In its entirety,
1:03
Speaker 1: it's called What Could Have Been? It walks through the
1:06
Speaker 1: history of America's largely corporate, for profit news system and
1:11
Speaker 1: ask the questions how we got here, is it working?
1:14
Speaker 1: And could it have been different? That's all I'm going
1:17
Speaker 1: to say. We've added a link in the show notes
1:20
Speaker 1: to scene on radio in case you want to find
1:22
Speaker 1: out more. Please consider listening and subscribing. You will not
1:26
Speaker 1: be disappointed. I hope you like what you're here.
1:31
Speaker 2: Good morning, I am an appointment with Terman Lowry. I'm
1:34
Speaker 2: back in southeastern North Carolina, the town of Pembrooke. I've
1:39
Speaker 2: come for an interview at the headquarters of the Lumbee Tribe.
1:43
Speaker 2: The Lumbee are the largest indigenous community east of the
1:46
Speaker 2: Mississippi River. They make up about forty percent of the
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Speaker 2: population of Robison County in the border belt.
1:53
Speaker 3: President Trulp floating the possibility of regime change, and Fox
1:56
Speaker 3: and New senior correspondent Steve.
1:57
Speaker 2: Harrigan in the waiting room at the tribe's head quarters.
2:00
Speaker 2: The TV mounted on the wall is set on Fox News.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you're right to single out the Iraian
2:06
Speaker 4: people as the key factor.
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Speaker 5: In all this.
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Speaker 6: I think you know man.
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Speaker 5: Hello, Chairman John Lowry.
2:14
Speaker 2: John Lowry is in his mid forties. He's got a
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Speaker 2: shaved head, a goatee, and a politician's friendly open expression.
2:22
Speaker 2: He became tribal chairman in twenty twenty two since we spoke,
2:27
Speaker 2: he was appointed to a second office as a Republican
2:30
Speaker 2: member of the North Carolina General Assembly in the legislature.
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Speaker 2: He replaced his brother, Jared Lowry, who resigned to take
2:38
Speaker 2: a job with the Trump administration. We sit down in
2:41
Speaker 2: a conference room and talk some about Lowry's goals in
2:45
Speaker 2: leading his tribe.
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Speaker 5: One of my priorities has been a home ownership.
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Speaker 2: He mentions housing support for Lumbee farmers and ranchers, research
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Speaker 2: on substance abuse, and a long standing priority for the Lumbee,
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Speaker 2: a campaign to receive full federal recognition, which would bring
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Speaker 2: a range of government benefits and services the Lumbee have
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Speaker 2: never received. This is Lowry testifying before a US Senate
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Speaker 2: committee in November twenty twenty five.
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Speaker 5: Suirwoman mccowski, Bish Sherman Shots Sironamulin, thank you for this convenient,
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Speaker 5: this hereing today and for the opportunity to speak and
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Speaker 5: support of Lumbe Furnish Act.
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Speaker 2: Congress passed the Act just weeks later as part of
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Speaker 2: its Defense funding bill. The Lumbee have spent generations fighting
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Speaker 2: to be seen and heard by the wider society, and
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Speaker 2: as chairman of the tribe, John Lowery has watched local
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Speaker 2: journalism steadily disappear from his community.
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Speaker 5: I remember when I first sarved him with Trobey Council
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Speaker 5: from two thousand and six and two thousand and nine.
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Speaker 5: I mean, every time the council meant we had a
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Speaker 5: Robinsonian reporter here in Nfilville Observer reporter.
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Speaker 2: Fayetteville is a bigger city an hour north of Pembroke.
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Speaker 5: And I can'tinue the last time I've seen Alville Observer
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Speaker 5: report anywhere around. I mean, I just can't so now
4:04
Speaker 5: granted too, yeah, yes, sir, yes sir. Now they do
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Speaker 5: call us, you know, say hey, you know, we've heard
4:11
Speaker 5: something going on in DC or whatever, and they're called
4:14
Speaker 5: me and ask me for quotes and stuff like that.
4:16
Speaker 5: But yees, sir, it's definitely the local traditional media is,
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Speaker 5: in my opinion, nowhere near as engaged as they once.
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Speaker 2: Were as in some other nearby counties. The main newspaper
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Speaker 2: in Robison County, the Robinsonian, is now owned by a
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Speaker 2: chain and its staff has shrunk over the years. Robison
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Speaker 2: County is a news desert according to the University of
4:39
Speaker 2: North Carolina Journalism Schools criteria. These days, Lowry says most
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Speaker 2: people in his tribe get their news from cable TV,
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Speaker 2: from radio mostly coming out of Fayetteville gospel country or
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Speaker 2: hip hop stations.
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Speaker 5: Whatever they play in between songs and stuff like that,
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Speaker 5: whatever top of news update and online. I do feel
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Speaker 5: like our people use social media to get a lot
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Speaker 5: of news. And that's scary to me, it really is.
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Speaker 2: I was about to wrap up the interview.
5:10
Speaker 3: I think I'm just about running out of.
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Speaker 2: Questions, but then I decided before leaving to lob a
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Speaker 2: big picture question at Lowry is that in the United
5:19
Speaker 2: States we have I point out that the US news
5:22
Speaker 2: media system is built overwhelmingly on a free market, for
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Speaker 2: profit model, and I asked the chairman, in thinking especially
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Speaker 2: about his local community, is that system working.
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Speaker 5: You know that that's a that's a good question. You know,
5:43
Speaker 5: when you do turn on the TV, you know you
5:46
Speaker 5: always you know, breaking news, breaking news, breaking news. Right,
5:49
Speaker 5: it's it's all, it's all breaking news. And and I
5:53
Speaker 5: do understand that that in the free market system, news
5:59
Speaker 5: is a business, and you drive viewership to you by
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Speaker 5: breaking news or trying to be loud or trying to
6:08
Speaker 5: be trying to create a reason for people to watch
6:11
Speaker 5: you and you know, the more viewers, the more advertisers,
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Speaker 5: and and so you do. I think it's you're always
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Speaker 5: talking about how how can how can it be funded?
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Speaker 7: Right?
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Speaker 5: And take the the need to have the breaking news
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Speaker 5: all the time right to help drive drive viewers. Mm hmm.
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Speaker 5: I don't know, John, that's a good that's a good
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Speaker 5: that's a good question oneer, of course, I haven't thought
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Speaker 5: about like that. But but you're right now.
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Speaker 8: I mean, John, I think you stumped them.
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Speaker 2: Kind of seemed like it didn't it. I got to say,
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Speaker 2: I appreciate his honesty about the way he wrestled with
7:05
Speaker 2: that question.
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Speaker 8: Right, He's really just thinking through it in real time.
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Speaker 8: And I kind of sympathize with him because I guess
7:11
Speaker 8: most people haven't thought much about that question. Because the
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Speaker 8: status quo of our media system, news is a for
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Speaker 8: profit business like any other. It's been so completely normalized.
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Speaker 8: It seems like it's just the way things are, and
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Speaker 8: I think a lot of folks just can't imagine it
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Speaker 8: could be any different, at least in the United States.
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Speaker 2: And don't you think a big part of that is
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Speaker 2: that the alternative, at least what I think a lot
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Speaker 2: of people imagine is the alternative is just kind of unthinkable.
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Speaker 8: Well, there is no alternative.
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Speaker 2: John, That's what Margaret Thatcher.
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Speaker 8: Said, unless you mean government media, yes, which, like in
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Speaker 8: the way I'm saying it, you know, could mean state media,
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Speaker 8: right right, news that's owned and controlled by the government,
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Speaker 8: and that runs deeply counter to everything we believe as
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Speaker 8: Americans about a free, independent media.
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Speaker 2: And it's a question that this episode brings up, which
8:05
Speaker 2: is that binary necessarily that simple? Even in the US.
8:12
Speaker 2: In the last episode, we heard Victor Picard, the media scholar,
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Speaker 2: say that government subsidies for the news media are as
8:19
Speaker 2: American as apple pie, going back to the late seventeen hundreds,
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Speaker 2: And of course we have had really a hybrid in
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Speaker 2: the US public media that was mostly not funded by
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Speaker 2: the government or editorially controlled by the government. But all
8:37
Speaker 2: that said, yes, if somebody is not a media scholar
8:40
Speaker 2: like you, Chene or a media maker or nerd, as
8:44
Speaker 2: we both are, chances are you've never heard anyone question
8:49
Speaker 2: whether capitalism is the best way to do a news
8:52
Speaker 2: and information system in a democracy.
8:55
Speaker 8: And here's a related question, who chose all this? Like,
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Speaker 8: did we people have any real say in the construction
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Speaker 8: of America's news and information system. I don't remember being
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Speaker 8: asked to participate that in that through a democratic process
9:10
Speaker 8: like I did. I never voted on that.
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Speaker 2: But we're a representative democracy, and so are representatives, right.
9:17
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm a political junkie. I follow politics somewhat obsessively,
9:22
Speaker 2: and you know, and I have to say, I've really
9:25
Speaker 2: enjoyed and appreciated in the last couple election cycles all
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Speaker 2: the rigorous discussion of media policy. You know, when the
9:36
Speaker 2: candidates and the parties lay out their competing plans and
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Speaker 2: platforms for ensuring that we have a strong, free, independent,
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Speaker 2: and accessible news and information system in America.
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Speaker 8: You had me for a minute there, man.
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Speaker 2: Excuse the sarcasm.
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Speaker 8: Yeah, you gotta be joking, because absolutely, if you're not,
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Speaker 8: I need to know what debates you were watching, because
9:58
Speaker 8: we don't really have that debate. I mean, we've seen
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Speaker 8: fights in Washington about government funding for public broadcasting over
10:05
Speaker 8: the years, and of course Congress and the second Trump
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Speaker 8: administration eliminated that funding in twenty twenty five, which is
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Speaker 8: I'm still grieving. Those debates did bring up some of
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Speaker 8: these questions in a marginal way about public policy and
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Speaker 8: its relationship to providing news to an informed citizenry, but
10:25
Speaker 8: most of the time those sorts of questions don't get headlines,
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Speaker 8: to say the least.
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Speaker 2: Considering where the American news media started, with the nation's
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Speaker 2: leaders strongly subsidizing the distribution of newspapers, how did we
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Speaker 2: wind up here in the twenty twenties? From the Keenan
10:48
Speaker 2: Institute for Ethics at Duke University. This is seen on
10:51
Speaker 2: Radio Season eight The News Episode six. I'm John Beewen.
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Speaker 2: That was Chenderi Kumanika, co host and conversation partner for
11:02
Speaker 2: this season. Chene is a journalism professor at New York University,
11:07
Speaker 2: a podcast creator and activist. He'll be back later to
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Speaker 2: talk more in this episode. A struggle did take place
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Speaker 2: during the last century over the structure and mission of
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Speaker 2: the news media in America and over whom the news
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Speaker 2: would serve. In March nineteen ten, The Atlantic Monthly magazine
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Speaker 2: published a long article by a sociologist and public intellectual
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Speaker 2: named Edward Allsworth Ross. The piece was titled the Suppression
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Speaker 2: of Important News. In the article, Ross made a case
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Speaker 2: that the big popular newspapers in US cities at the
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Speaker 2: time were deliberately quashing and distorting the information their readers
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Speaker 2: most wanted and needed. There is just one deadly damning
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Speaker 2: count against the daydaily newspaper as it is coming to be, namely,
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Speaker 2: it does not give the news. Before we get into
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Speaker 2: what Ross meant exactly, let's consider the newspapers of the
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Speaker 2: time and how they've been changing along with the wider society.
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Speaker 2: As we heard in the last episode, during the Gilded Age,
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Speaker 2: some publishers had started to see newspapers as not just
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Speaker 2: a modest mission driven vocation, but as a way to
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Speaker 2: make big money. By the turn of the twentieth century,
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Speaker 2: the US economy had industrialized and the country was gripped
12:37
Speaker 2: by social and economic conflict, says Dan Schiller. He's a
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Speaker 2: communications historian and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois.
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Speaker 9: And so on one side, you've got really big business, which
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Speaker 9: includes the newspaper. Biggerman newspapers by this time are among
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Speaker 9: the biggest businesses in the country. On the other hand,
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Speaker 9: you got industrial working class, and the conflict between these
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Speaker 9: two groups is increasingly pitched at a fever level, and
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Speaker 9: the working class is increasingly downright hostile to the accounts
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Speaker 9: that are circulating in the mainstream press.
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Speaker 2: Edward Ross's critique in the Atlantic in nineteen ten was
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Speaker 2: in line with that gripe that the major newspapers represented
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Speaker 2: big business, not working people. Ross pointed out that over
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Speaker 2: several decades the sort of people who owned newspapers had
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Speaker 2: fundamentally changed. The editor is no longer the owner, for
13:45
Speaker 2: he has not and cannot command the capital needed to
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Speaker 2: start it or buy it. All through the eighteenth and
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Speaker 2: nineteenth centuries, the editor usually was the owner. Ross mentions
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Speaker 2: Horace Greeley, the crusading owned owner and editor of the
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Speaker 2: New York Tribune, among other nineteenth century publishers. He draws
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Speaker 2: a contrast between people like Greeley and the new breed
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Speaker 2: of owners, saying, of course, those old time editors wanted
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Speaker 2: to make money within the limits of their principles. But
14:18
Speaker 2: now that the provider of the newspaper capital hires the
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Speaker 2: editor instead of the editor hiring the newspaper capital, the
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Speaker 2: paper is likelier to be run as a money maker,
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Speaker 2: pure and simple, a factory where ink and brains are
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Speaker 2: so applied to white paper as to turn out the
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Speaker 2: largest possible marketable product. Ross called this shift the commercialization
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Speaker 2: of the press, and for him, the main driver of
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Speaker 2: that commercialization was advertising. Thirty years ago, advertising yielded less
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Speaker 2: than half of the earnings of the daily newspapers. Today
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Speaker 2: it yields at least two thirds, in some cases constituting
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Speaker 2: ninety percent of the total revenues. A key effect of
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Speaker 2: this change was a shift in who the newspaper's primary
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Speaker 2: customer was. Advertisers not readers. Now made the business go.
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Speaker 2: This is ross again. The readers are there to read,
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Speaker 2: not to provide funds. He who pays the piper calls
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Speaker 2: the tune. Dan Schiller, the historian, explains that it wasn't
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Speaker 2: just the volume of advertising that changed at the end
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Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century, but also the nature of it.
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Speaker 2: Newspapers came to depend on corporate advertisers like department stores,
15:39
Speaker 2: buying space day after day, year after year.
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Speaker 9: These advertisers, with their long term contracts, saying you know,
15:47
Speaker 9: we're going to run an ad every day for the
15:50
Speaker 9: next year, would say, well, if you don't tow the
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Speaker 9: line editorially, we're going to withdraw our advertising.
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Speaker 2: Edwards, in his Atlantic article, rattled off examples of newspapers
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Speaker 2: suppressing stories that put their advertisers in a bad light,
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Speaker 2: from poor working conditions to strike breaking efforts, including an
16:13
Speaker 2: alleged murder. During a strike of the elevator men in
16:16
Speaker 2: the large stores, the business agent of the elevator Starters
16:20
Speaker 2: Union was beaten to death in an alley behind a
16:24
Speaker 2: certain emporium by a strong armed man hired by that firm.
16:29
Speaker 2: The story, supported by affidavits, was given by a responsible
16:33
Speaker 2: lawyer to three newspaper men, each of whom accepted it
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Speaker 2: as true and promised to print it. The account never appeared.
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Speaker 2: In his book Objectivity in the News, Dan Schiller shows
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Speaker 2: how the mainstream press in the early twentieth century favored
16:51
Speaker 2: big business and often bashed the labor movement. The San
16:55
Speaker 2: Diego Tribune in nineteen twelve called for the death of
16:59
Speaker 2: militant labor activists in that city. Hanging is none too
17:04
Speaker 2: good for them, and they would be much better dead.
17:07
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventeen, The Boston Transcript wrote approvingly about the
17:11
Speaker 2: lynching of Frank Little, an Industrial Workers of the World
17:15
Speaker 2: activist in Montana. The newspaper imagined there were millions of
17:20
Speaker 2: people who, while sternly reprehending such proceedings, will nevertheless be
17:25
Speaker 2: glad in their hearts that Montana did it. In the
17:28
Speaker 2: case of little. We define journalism in America as the
17:38
Speaker 2: business and practice of presenting the news of the day
17:42
Speaker 2: in the interest of economic privilege. That's the muckraking journalist
17:46
Speaker 2: Upton Sinclair writing in nineteen nineteen.
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Speaker 5: This was the.
17:51
Speaker 2: Progressive era, a time of reform across society. People like
17:56
Speaker 2: Sinclair and Edward Ross were part of a reaction against
18:00
Speaker 2: the commercialized and often sensationalized press. This was also the
18:05
Speaker 2: heyday of yellow journalism. Here's media scholar Victor Picard of
18:09
Speaker 2: the University of Pennsylvania.
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Speaker 10: Increasing numbers of people realized that they were being you know,
18:16
Speaker 10: fed trivialized fair, sensationalistic fair, in some cases, stuff that
18:20
Speaker 10: wasn't even true, and there was a backlash. And this
18:24
Speaker 10: this was in many ways the high water mark of
18:26
Speaker 10: American press criticism, with people like upt In Sinclair writing
18:30
Speaker 10: the brass Check. I mean, these these leading often you know,
18:33
Speaker 10: left leaning intellectuals were writing these polemics, these tones on
18:39
Speaker 10: all the failures of the press, and they were very
18:43
Speaker 10: clear in situating these failures within the capitalistic system.
18:48
Speaker 11: Right.
18:48
Speaker 10: They saw it as an outgrowth of the capitalistic imperatives
18:52
Speaker 10: that were driving so much of the press system.
18:55
Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty, the prominent columnist and author Walter Lippmann
18:59
Speaker 2: public his book Liberty and the News. Lippmann wrote, the
19:04
Speaker 2: present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.
19:09
Speaker 2: People needed information, facts to understand the intricate questions of
19:14
Speaker 2: the day, but he wrote, people were baffled to find
19:18
Speaker 2: those facts unavailable, and they are wondering whether government by
19:22
Speaker 2: consent can survive in a time when the manufacture of
19:26
Speaker 2: consent is an unregulated private enterprise. In response to this
19:32
Speaker 2: widespread perception that the press was off the rails, the
19:36
Speaker 2: industry began reforming and professionalizing itself. An early sign was
19:42
Speaker 2: the founding of the first journalism schools University of Missouri
19:46
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh eight. The Columbia Jay School, established by
19:50
Speaker 2: the newspaper tycoon Joseph Pulitzer, opened in nineteen twelve. Media
19:56
Speaker 2: bosses embraced the idea, says Victor Picard, that they had
20:00
Speaker 2: to move past sensationalism and yellow journalism.
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Speaker 10: That we need to abide by these professional norms like
20:07
Speaker 10: adherence to balance and objectivity is really a cornerstone that
20:12
Speaker 10: objectivity news norm.
20:13
Speaker 2: Picard says these moves helped the press to improve its
20:17
Speaker 2: reputation and weather the storm of criticism. The industry staved
20:22
Speaker 2: off any major regulations that might have been imposed by
20:25
Speaker 2: the government, and newspaper owners kept their lucrative business model
20:30
Speaker 2: based on advertising intact.
20:33
Speaker 10: This was a way where publishers could still be tremendously
20:37
Speaker 10: profitable and increasingly monopolistic. You know, earlier in the eighteen
20:42
Speaker 10: hundreds you might have a dozen competing dailies in a
20:45
Speaker 10: metropolitan area. By the early nineteen hundreds, and throughout the
20:50
Speaker 10: nineteen hundreds, increasingly you had the rise of one newspaper talents. Right,
20:54
Speaker 10: so these were not competitive markets, but so for them
20:57
Speaker 10: to still maintain their tremendous profit making potential but not
21:02
Speaker 10: have this backlash. To try to stave off this backlash,
21:06
Speaker 10: they discovered professionalism and social responsibility, and so we were
21:10
Speaker 10: meant to sleep tight at night because we knew that
21:14
Speaker 10: our local journalists were being socially responsible.
21:17
Speaker 2: Some historians have shown that newspaper publishers came to see
21:21
Speaker 2: political and ideological neutrality a posture of objectivity, as the
21:28
Speaker 2: best business strategy, the best way to avoid turning off
21:32
Speaker 2: large groups of readers or advertisers. Some media theorists have
21:38
Speaker 2: argued that in the twentieth century, the American press shifted
21:42
Speaker 2: from a libertarian model in which news organizations, as private businesses,
21:47
Speaker 2: owe nothing to the public, to a new paradigm. Under
21:51
Speaker 2: this social responsibility model, the freedom of the press comes
21:55
Speaker 2: with an obligation to serve the public good. Dripicard isn't
22:01
Speaker 2: convinced that shift ever really happened.
22:04
Speaker 10: Certainly, I think improvements were made, but they didn't really
22:07
Speaker 10: change a whole lot. And I would argue we never
22:11
Speaker 10: left the libertarian model. We just changed the window dressing
22:15
Speaker 10: a little bit.
22:29
Speaker 2: In nineteen nineteen, the same year Upton Sinclair published his
22:33
Speaker 2: expose on American journalism, The brass Check, General Electric founded
22:38
Speaker 2: the Radio Corporation of America, later known as RCA. The
22:44
Speaker 2: US Navy helped with the creation of RCA because it
22:48
Speaker 2: wanted an American company to own the infrastructure for transatlantic
22:52
Speaker 2: communications for military purposes. Just a few years later, in
22:57
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty six, RCA the National Broadcasting Company NBC.
23:03
Speaker 4: Well, for most of American history, communications was determined by
23:14
Speaker 4: the prerogatives of corporations. That includes not only telecommunications like
23:22
Speaker 4: the telephone and telegraph, but also includes broadcasting. It obviously
23:27
Speaker 4: didn't have to be that way. Other countries did it differently.
23:31
Speaker 2: That's Mark Lloyd. He teaches communications policy at McGill University
23:36
Speaker 2: in Montreal. He's a lawyer who served as Associate General
23:40
Speaker 2: Counsel for the FCC the Federal Communications Commission during the
23:45
Speaker 2: Obama administration. On one hand, Lloyd says, it makes no
23:51
Speaker 2: sense to talk about a broadcasting system apart from government involvement.
23:56
Speaker 2: The federal government owns the radio and TV spectrum and
24:00
Speaker 2: grants licenses to stations.
24:03
Speaker 4: Every corporation sits on a platform that is managed and
24:08
Speaker 4: controlled by the government. The notion that somehow government is
24:12
Speaker 4: not involved in what it is that Fox News does,
24:16
Speaker 4: or any of these other operators. Of course governments involved.
24:18
Speaker 4: They could not operate without government.
24:20
Speaker 2: Regulators can take action to promote competition. In the early
24:25
Speaker 2: nineteen forties, the government forced NBC, which held a dominant
24:29
Speaker 2: share of the radio market, to sell off one of
24:32
Speaker 2: its two networks, creating ABC. As early as the nineteen twenties,
24:37
Speaker 2: a federal agency said stations should give free and fair
24:41
Speaker 2: competition of opposing views. That guideline was updated in nineteen
24:46
Speaker 2: forty nine in what was called the Fairness doctrine. So
24:50
Speaker 2: the idea that the media has an obligation to the
24:53
Speaker 2: public is as old as broadcasting.
24:56
Speaker 4: But ad meant nothing because because the public by large
25:00
Speaker 4: had no say about whether their interests are being served.
25:04
Speaker 2: Mark says from the dawn of commercial radio broadcasting in
25:07
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties up to the nineteen sixties, the US
25:12
Speaker 2: government did almost nothing to ensure that broadcasters serve society
25:17
Speaker 2: until what Lloyd calls the public interest moment.
25:21
Speaker 4: I think and began to occur with Newton Minnow, who
25:26
Speaker 4: was President Kennedy's chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
25:30
Speaker 11: As you know, this is my first public address since
25:33
Speaker 11: I took over.
25:34
Speaker 2: My new job. Newton Mino gave a speech in May
25:37
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty one to the National Association of Broadcasters
25:41
Speaker 2: that would go down in media history.
25:44
Speaker 11: I invite each of you to sit down in front
25:46
Speaker 11: of your own television set when your station goes on
25:48
Speaker 11: the air, and stay there.
25:51
Speaker 6: For a day.
25:52
Speaker 2: Minnow's remarks are mostly remembered for a two word phrase.
25:57
Speaker 11: I can assure you that what you will observe is
25:59
Speaker 11: a asked wasteland.
26:02
Speaker 2: That vast wasteland, he said, was a procession of game shows,
26:07
Speaker 2: formulae at comedies, violence, say it is.
26:10
Speaker 11: A murder, Western bad Men, Western good Men, Private Eyes, Gangsters,
26:15
Speaker 11: more violence, and cartoons. Is there one person in this
26:19
Speaker 11: room who claims that broadcasting can't do better?
26:23
Speaker 2: Mino didn't say much about the TV news, but his
26:26
Speaker 2: message to the broadcasters about their public responsibility was clear.
26:31
Speaker 11: Your license lets you use the public's air waves. As
26:35
Speaker 11: trustees for one hundred and eighty million Americans, the public
26:40
Speaker 11: is your beneficiary. If you want to stay on as trustees,
26:45
Speaker 11: you must deliver a decent return to the public, not
26:49
Speaker 11: only to your stockholders.
26:53
Speaker 2: This idea that broadcasting should serve the general public was
26:58
Speaker 2: gaining new strength in the United lace States in the
27:00
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, but the fact that it even had to
27:04
Speaker 2: be said highlights that the US was out of step
27:08
Speaker 2: with its peers.
27:09
Speaker 10: The US was a global outlier against one of these
27:12
Speaker 10: critical junctures where we could have gone down one path,
27:15
Speaker 10: and we chose another one, and arguably the wrong one.
27:18
Speaker 2: Victor Picard points to the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation
27:23
Speaker 2: founded in nineteen twenty two, and its Australian and Canadian
27:27
Speaker 2: equivalents ABC and the CBC. Born in the nineteen thirties.
27:32
Speaker 10: Most countries took it for granted that you broadcasting was
27:35
Speaker 10: too precious. It made sense for it to be primarily
27:39
Speaker 10: a public system. Later on, you know, commercial systems would
27:43
Speaker 10: also emerge in these countries, but in most cases it
27:45
Speaker 10: was the public model that remained the dominant sector.
27:49
Speaker 2: Picard says the US always had advocates for a similar system.
27:54
Speaker 2: The FCC back in nineteen thirty eight, set aside part
27:57
Speaker 2: of the radio spectrum for non commercial and educational channels,
28:02
Speaker 2: But unlike most rich countries, the US government dedicated virtually
28:07
Speaker 2: no funding to public broadcasting until.
28:11
Speaker 6: What hath Man wrought and how will Man use his invention?
28:18
Speaker 6: The law that I will sign shortly offers one answer
28:23
Speaker 6: to that question.
28:25
Speaker 2: President Lyndon Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act in November
28:29
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven, creating the private, nonprofit Corporation for Public
28:34
Speaker 2: Broadcasting and funding it with a modest annual appropriation from
28:39
Speaker 2: the Congress. The initiative was in keeping with Johnson's vision
28:43
Speaker 2: of a great society.
28:45
Speaker 3: So today we rededicate a part of the airwaves which
28:51
Speaker 3: belong to all the people, and we dedicate them for
28:55
Speaker 3: the enlightenment.
28:57
Speaker 8: Of all the people.
29:00
Speaker 2: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting launched PBS in nineteen sixty
29:04
Speaker 2: nine and NPR in nineteen seventy.
29:07
Speaker 11: Ait anything, some three thousand Democratic delegates open their national
29:11
Speaker 11: convention here in New York tonight.
29:13
Speaker 2: That's PBS's Robert McNeil report from the nineteen seventies. And
29:20
Speaker 2: this is from NPR's first broadcast in May nineteen seventy one.
29:25
Speaker 10: The line of young people is just come across the highway.
29:30
Speaker 8: Here come the police.
29:31
Speaker 2: A report about an anti Vietnam War protest in Washington,
29:35
Speaker 2: DC and the police response.
29:37
Speaker 8: Sergeant, excuse me, Jeff came a National Public radio.
29:40
Speaker 12: Is that a technique where they men actually try to
29:42
Speaker 12: drive the bikes into the demonstrators?
29:43
Speaker 7: Nah, it's no technique. We're trying to go down the
29:45
Speaker 7: road and the people get in front of What are
29:47
Speaker 7: you going to do? You don't stop on a dime.
29:53
Speaker 2: There's no denying that public TV and radio became important
29:57
Speaker 2: institutions beloved by millillions of Americans. But the system is
30:02
Speaker 2: nowhere near what it could have been. Picard says. The
30:06
Speaker 2: panel that laid out recommendations for the Public Broadcasting Act
30:10
Speaker 2: back in the nineteen sixties, the Carnegie Commission wanted Congress
30:15
Speaker 2: to impose an excise tax on television sets to provide consistent,
30:20
Speaker 2: guaranteed funding for public media. The BBC is funded by
30:24
Speaker 2: an annual license fee for anyone who watches TV, but.
30:29
Speaker 10: This was one key detail that was left out, so
30:31
Speaker 10: they've always been dependent on these annual appropriations to get
30:36
Speaker 10: this kind of pittance.
30:37
Speaker 2: As of twenty twenty five, before Congress and President Trump
30:41
Speaker 2: defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, annual taxpayer spending for
30:46
Speaker 2: public media came to about a dollar and sixty cents
30:50
Speaker 2: per person, according to PBS.
30:52
Speaker 10: Compare that to the Brits, who spend about one hundred
30:55
Speaker 10: dollars per person per year for the BBC, and other
30:58
Speaker 10: countries spend far more than that, especially in places like
31:02
Speaker 10: Germany and in the Nordic countries, and it shows they
31:06
Speaker 10: have very strong, robust public broadcasting systems. OURS was set
31:12
Speaker 10: up always to be economically and politically weak and vulnerable.
31:18
Speaker 2: In fact, Victor argues the money from federal coffers, now
31:22
Speaker 2: gone entirely, was so meager that it's misleading to say
31:27
Speaker 2: the US has ever had a public broadcasting system.
31:31
Speaker 10: It's at best a public private hybrid, but by far
31:34
Speaker 10: most of their money is coming from private sources, coming
31:37
Speaker 10: from individual listeners of viewers like US foundations and increasingly corporations.
31:43
Speaker 10: Over a third of NPR's budget comes from corporate sponsorships.
31:48
Speaker 2: Support for NPR comes from this station and from UMA,
31:53
Speaker 2: a cloud based phone service for any size business. The
31:59
Speaker 2: founding of America's sort of public broadcasting system was one
32:03
Speaker 2: expression of the public interest moment in the nineteen sixties
32:07
Speaker 2: and seventies that media expert Mark Lloyd talks about, But
32:12
Speaker 2: that moment brought change to the country's vastly bigger commercial
32:16
Speaker 2: broadcasting system too. One milestone came during the height of
32:21
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement in the mid nineteen sixties when
32:24
Speaker 2: the United Church of Christ sued the FCC.
32:28
Speaker 4: Reverend Everett Parker and the United Church of Christ took
32:31
Speaker 4: the Federal Communications Commissioned to court and said, these stations
32:35
Speaker 4: in Jackson, Mississippi are not serving the public interest and
32:39
Speaker 4: we members of the public should have us say about that.
32:42
Speaker 2: Civil rights leaders in Mississippi had long complained about the
32:45
Speaker 2: NBCTV affiliate in Jackson WLBT. Some forty five percent of
32:52
Speaker 2: people in the community were black, but the station had
32:55
Speaker 2: an all white staff, and it blocked reports from the
32:59
Speaker 2: network about civil rights issues, instead putting up a slide
33:03
Speaker 2: that said sorry, cable trouble from New York. The Church,
33:08
Speaker 2: in its lawsuit, said the FCC should not have renewed
33:12
Speaker 2: the station's license.
33:13
Speaker 4: What the United Church Christ did was to use the
33:18
Speaker 4: fairness doctrine and make the argument that there was a pledge,
33:23
Speaker 4: both by broadcasters and by the federal government that the
33:27
Speaker 4: entire community was to be served.
33:29
Speaker 2: The FCC heard these complaints and renewed the station's license anyway,
33:35
Speaker 2: but an appeals court led by the future Supreme Court
33:38
Speaker 2: Justice Warren Berger, ruled against WLBT, making it the first
33:43
Speaker 2: TV station ever to lose its FCC license. Interim management
33:48
Speaker 2: hired the nation's first black general manager, and a majority
33:53
Speaker 2: black ownership group ultimately took charge of the station, and.
33:57
Speaker 4: The Federal Communications Commission at least four time learned its lesson,
34:01
Speaker 4: and they determined that they were now in a buying
34:04
Speaker 4: so how were they supposed to determine whether or not
34:08
Speaker 4: the local interest was being served.
34:10
Speaker 2: One result was a process starting in nineteen seventy one
34:14
Speaker 2: called ascertainment. If stations wanted to keep their license, they
34:19
Speaker 2: had to ask diverse local leaders what they considered to
34:22
Speaker 2: be the most important issues facing the region. The stations
34:27
Speaker 2: then had to offer programming to address those issues.
34:30
Speaker 4: As a result of that, we had an explosion of news,
34:35
Speaker 4: an explosion of news and public affairs programs and public
34:40
Speaker 4: service announcements, again matching all those issues that different leaders
34:46
Speaker 4: in different parts of the community said were important. It
34:50
Speaker 4: was a way for the community to have real democratic
34:56
Speaker 4: power over what many people would are argue were the
35:00
Speaker 4: most important and powerful communication media of that day. And
35:07
Speaker 4: that had other effects. So the newspapers began to operate
35:11
Speaker 4: differently because now they were competing with the radio stations
35:15
Speaker 4: and television stations.
35:17
Speaker 12: It is midnight at the Clarion Ledger. The next morning,
35:20
Speaker 12: the words in these papers will criticize and be criticized.
35:24
Speaker 12: The radio and television stations will go through much the
35:26
Speaker 12: same thing.
35:27
Speaker 2: This is a nineteen seventy nine broadcast from that Jackson,
35:31
Speaker 2: Mississippi station WLBT that had been accused of blatant racism
35:37
Speaker 2: a decade earlier. It's an episode of a weekly documentary
35:41
Speaker 2: program called Probe that the station's new biracial management launched
35:46
Speaker 2: after the court ruling in the nineteen seventies. This particular
35:50
Speaker 2: program was about, of all things, the news media.
35:54
Speaker 12: And I will examine some of the questions about press
35:57
Speaker 12: coverage in the city and whether the press is doing
36:00
Speaker 12: what it's supposed to do. It's next on pro.
36:03
Speaker 2: The broadcast featured a range of perspectives on media coverage
36:07
Speaker 2: of Jackson's communities. This was the publisher of the black
36:11
Speaker 2: owned Jackson Advocate.
36:13
Speaker 7: Well, the press is generally and not covered the positive
36:16
Speaker 7: aspects of the black community. It was covered the crime,
36:19
Speaker 7: rapes and murders rather than the real essence of what
36:22
Speaker 7: is about in less economic development.
36:25
Speaker 2: The Probe series won a Peabody Award in nineteen seventy
36:28
Speaker 2: six for a report on corruption in Mississippi politics. Mark
36:33
Speaker 2: Lloyd says, news outlets across the country, having been pushed
36:37
Speaker 2: by federal policy, created similar news and public affairs programs.
36:43
Speaker 4: This is not done because somehow they woke up and figured, well,
36:46
Speaker 4: maybe we shouldn't do fifteen minutes worth of news, Maybe
36:50
Speaker 4: we should do news for a half hour, and then
36:52
Speaker 4: an hour, and in some markets two hours, and then
36:55
Speaker 4: three hours of they did. All this came about because
36:58
Speaker 4: people figured out, actually we can actually make money doing news.
37:02
Speaker 9: Here's the Minister Lewis Shurakhan and his second visit to
37:06
Speaker 9: our program.
37:07
Speaker 2: Lloyd argues the public interest moment created the climate for
37:11
Speaker 2: programs like Donahue with host Phil Donahue. It started as
37:16
Speaker 2: a local broadcast in Dayton, Ohio, before becoming a national
37:20
Speaker 2: hit from the early seventies into the nineties.
37:23
Speaker 9: We should say this that we do you no favors,
37:26
Speaker 9: Minister Farakhan.
37:27
Speaker 3: You're entitled these air waves.
37:28
Speaker 6: They belong to the people.
37:30
Speaker 2: A key feature of the Donahue program was live audience participation,
37:35
Speaker 2: with Donahue himself moving around the studio to share the microphone.
37:39
Speaker 5: I would just like to say that I am terrified
37:41
Speaker 5: that even you, someone who's obviously educated, has given up
37:44
Speaker 5: hope completely.
37:46
Speaker 2: Like when you call upon.
37:48
Speaker 1: Us, you say white folk, you say black people, Jewish people,
37:50
Speaker 1: Why can't we come together?
37:51
Speaker 10: We obviously can come.
37:52
Speaker 7: Well, why is it when a black man stands up
37:54
Speaker 7: to speak for his people you feel so threatened?
37:56
Speaker 8: Everybody's paranoid, and.
37:58
Speaker 7: You talk about it's not segregation in hallm We live
38:01
Speaker 7: in watts we live in Bedford, Syvesant.
38:03
Speaker 4: That's a form of segregation.
38:04
Speaker 6: We walked through benson Hurst.
38:05
Speaker 7: We get killed.
38:06
Speaker 9: So what are you talking about?
38:22
Speaker 2: Change?
38:23
Speaker 8: Come on in here, hey, John.
38:25
Speaker 2: So the public interest moment in American media.
38:30
Speaker 8: Yeah, in those developments in the nineteen sixties and seventies,
38:34
Speaker 8: the creation finally of a public broadcasting system, even though
38:38
Speaker 8: it was limited, and the moves to make for profit
38:42
Speaker 8: media companies more accountable to the public. It's no accident
38:46
Speaker 8: those things happened in the decades after the New Deal
38:48
Speaker 8: in World War Two, because in those years you had
38:51
Speaker 8: a lot of policies aimed at greater social equality in
38:54
Speaker 8: providing a decent life for more people.
38:57
Speaker 2: In our last season on Capitalism, we talked about that
39:00
Speaker 2: stretch as the thirty Glorious years. The country built a
39:04
Speaker 2: stronger safety net to lift people out of poverty and
39:08
Speaker 2: gave labor unions more leverage, which led to less income
39:12
Speaker 2: inequality than we saw either before or after that period.
39:17
Speaker 2: We got major civil rights and voting rights laws, the
39:20
Speaker 2: women's movement, gay rights movement, a lot going on in.
39:24
Speaker 8: That era, and we still even have some of those things,
39:27
Speaker 8: some of them. But that concern for the public good
39:30
Speaker 8: extended to a somewhat more democratic media policy, at least
39:34
Speaker 8: for a while.
39:35
Speaker 2: And you know, most of us know more or less
39:37
Speaker 2: what happened next, but helped me summarize this change. And
39:43
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of an analogy here for when
39:47
Speaker 2: cultural shifts happened.
39:49
Speaker 8: I don't yeah. I mean you could say the pendulum swung, yes,
39:53
Speaker 8: the pendulum, and then it swung some more and more.
39:57
Speaker 8: But then again, maybe pendulum is wrong because only swung
40:00
Speaker 8: in one direction, you know, I mean, I'm not a physicist, right.
40:06
Speaker 2: The country swung to the right and then to the
40:10
Speaker 2: rights and more, but especially with the election of Ronald
40:13
Speaker 2: Reagan in nineteen eighty famously and.
40:15
Speaker 8: Reagan declared the government is the problem, and the corporate
40:19
Speaker 8: class really kind of started to have his way again.
40:23
Speaker 8: As far as the media, a lot of those obligations
40:26
Speaker 8: and limits that have been placed on media companies got
40:28
Speaker 8: stripped away. The Reagan administration ended the Fairness Doctrine in
40:33
Speaker 8: nineteen eighty seven, and that was the rule that required
40:36
Speaker 8: stations to air opposing views on issues. But this totally
40:40
Speaker 8: opened the way for one sided news and talk shows
40:43
Speaker 8: that proliferated on TV and especially on radio. I mean,
40:48
Speaker 8: think about Rush Limbaugh. Even though I don't want to
40:50
Speaker 8: think about Rush Limbo. Yeah, that's the example.
40:53
Speaker 2: Another important policy shift was the removal of limits on
40:58
Speaker 2: corporate consolidation in the media.
41:01
Speaker 6: Right.
41:01
Speaker 2: For decades, the FCC had prohibited any one person or
41:05
Speaker 2: company from owning more than seven TV stations nationally or
41:10
Speaker 2: the same number of AM or FM radio stations under Reagan.
41:15
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty four, that limit was raised to twelve stations.
41:19
Speaker 8: Yeah, if I was a billionaire, I'd be like, good,
41:22
Speaker 8: you know, they have loosened things up.
41:24
Speaker 2: I can own twelve stations now, Yeah, that's pretty good.
41:27
Speaker 8: You might think that would have been enough for the corporations, right, right,
41:31
Speaker 8: But then Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of nineteen
41:35
Speaker 8: ninety six, which removed any national limit on TV station
41:38
Speaker 8: ownership as long as one company didn't own enough stations
41:42
Speaker 8: to reach more than about a third of the US population.
41:45
Speaker 2: And that's wild one third of the population. And certainly
41:51
Speaker 2: that was enough, Right, That was as far as they
41:54
Speaker 2: needed to go in allowing the concentration of ownership.
41:57
Speaker 8: Uh Nope.
42:00
Speaker 2: A decade later, as the march of neoliberal policies continued,
42:05
Speaker 2: folks in Washington loosened that national reach limit. Now one
42:11
Speaker 2: company can legally control enough TV stations to reach thirty
42:15
Speaker 2: nine percent of the country.
42:19
Speaker 8: And it was in that free for all that we
42:21
Speaker 8: got the emergence of cable TV and the Internet, which
42:24
Speaker 8: brought an explosion of online news and information sites and
42:28
Speaker 8: eventually social media.
42:31
Speaker 2: So, as we all know, the number of media sources multiplied.
42:35
Speaker 2: But these emerging companies went around buying each other up,
42:39
Speaker 2: turning into conglomerates, and then the conglomerates bought each other,
42:44
Speaker 2: so the number of owners just kept shrinking and shrinking.
42:49
Speaker 2: Back in nineteen eighty three, the legendary author Ben Bagdikian
42:53
Speaker 2: estimated that fifty companies owned more than half of all
42:57
Speaker 2: US media sources.
42:59
Speaker 8: Fifty companies owned half the media, and Bagdickian thought that
43:03
Speaker 8: was a crisis. Before decades later, the concentration in media
43:07
Speaker 8: ownership is only intensified.
43:09
Speaker 2: For example, one recent study found that seven chains own
43:14
Speaker 2: more than half the country's newspapers, and three corporations own
43:18
Speaker 2: more than forty percent of news producing TV stations. We've
43:23
Speaker 2: talked about the fact that most people get their news
43:26
Speaker 2: on social media and video platforms now, but those platforms,
43:31
Speaker 2: for the most part, are not the producers. A lot
43:33
Speaker 2: of the news and talk that folks are finding on
43:36
Speaker 2: those platforms comes from elsewhere, from companies that produce content, and.
43:41
Speaker 8: Media conglomerates like Comcast, Disney, Warner Brothers, Discovery, Paramount, and
43:47
Speaker 8: News Corp. Own a huge share of the content producers
43:50
Speaker 8: that most Americans turn to for entertainment and for news.
43:54
Speaker 2: If you think about all this, the history we've covered,
43:57
Speaker 2: and these more recent trends, well, let's listen to Victor Picard,
44:03
Speaker 2: your fellow media scholar, chand your eye. Here's what he
44:06
Speaker 2: told me.
44:07
Speaker 10: When we look at the American media system, it's exceptional
44:11
Speaker 10: in a number of ways, and I sometimes refer to
44:14
Speaker 10: this as American media exceptionalism, and not exceptional in a
44:18
Speaker 10: positive way.
44:19
Speaker 2: Picard talks about three main ways that America's national media
44:24
Speaker 2: policy is unfortunately unusual, and it's all stuff we've been
44:29
Speaker 2: talking about here. The degree of corporate concentration, the minimal
44:34
Speaker 2: requirements we place on media institutions to serve the public interest,
44:39
Speaker 2: and what Victor calls the most significant distinction, America's weak,
44:45
Speaker 2: impoverished public media system.
44:47
Speaker 10: So taken together, I mean many democracies might grapple with
44:51
Speaker 10: one or two of these problems, but very rarely do
44:53
Speaker 10: you have this perfect trifecta that I think is the
44:57
Speaker 10: structural basis for there were many of the pathologies that
45:02
Speaker 10: we are grappling with.
45:03
Speaker 8: Today, pathologies We should talk about what that means. You know,
45:08
Speaker 8: I don't want to put words in Victor Piccard's mouth,
45:11
Speaker 8: even though he's my friend. I studied his work and
45:14
Speaker 8: I think he would pretty much agree with the stuff
45:15
Speaker 8: we're about to say.
45:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, but let's speak for ourselves. Based on the picture
45:20
Speaker 2: we've drawn here in this season.
45:22
Speaker 8: I think what these pathologies add up to is we
45:25
Speaker 8: don't have the news media we need. A society that's
45:29
Speaker 8: trying to function as a democracy needs a robust system
45:32
Speaker 8: of news organizations that exist for the purpose of informing
45:36
Speaker 8: citizens about the issues that affect our lives so we
45:39
Speaker 8: can make choices and govern ourselves in a representative democracy.
45:43
Speaker 8: And that is not what we have now.
45:46
Speaker 2: I know that you and I would agree that a
45:49
Speaker 2: lot of excellent journalism gets done by great reporters working
45:54
Speaker 2: for for profit news companies, definitely, and alternative and nonprofit
45:59
Speaker 2: news organization do lots of valuable reporting to though fewer
46:03
Speaker 2: people see that work on the whole. But the companies
46:07
Speaker 2: that dominate the space that deliver most of the information
46:11
Speaker 2: that most Americans consume exist first and foremost to make
46:16
Speaker 2: money for their owners and investors, and that matters.
46:21
Speaker 8: I mean, look at the crises we've laid out the
46:23
Speaker 8: ways that a for profit media system is failing us.
46:26
Speaker 8: You could start with a dramatic collapse in the journalism
46:29
Speaker 8: economy because the business model built on advertising crashed and
46:33
Speaker 8: burned a couple decades ago.
46:35
Speaker 2: That's episode two if you missed it.
46:37
Speaker 8: The country lost several thousand newspapers and the majority of
46:41
Speaker 8: its professional journalists, a complete market failure with no market
46:45
Speaker 8: based solution in sight.
46:47
Speaker 2: Next, there's the problem mentioned by John Lowry, the Lumbee
46:50
Speaker 2: Tribal chairman, at the top of this episode. He made
46:54
Speaker 2: a familiar observation news organizations that depend on attracting eyeballs
46:59
Speaker 2: and advertis heisers will focus on shiny objects that they
47:03
Speaker 2: can tout as breaking news breaking news, and not so
47:08
Speaker 2: much on the responsible treatment of issues that really matter
47:11
Speaker 2: to people. So the climate crisis is rarely the lead story,
47:17
Speaker 2: no matter how central that problem is to our future
47:20
Speaker 2: as a species, because there's always something more clickworthy to
47:25
Speaker 2: put in that spot.
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Speaker 8: We also talked about the limited range of ideas that
47:29
Speaker 8: are given print space and airtime thanks to the influence
47:33
Speaker 8: of corporate media owners whose interests are tied to the
47:36
Speaker 8: economic status quo.
47:37
Speaker 2: That was episode three, and now here we are in
47:41
Speaker 2: the first part of twenty twenty six as we record this,
47:44
Speaker 2: and we have some media companies caving to want to
47:47
Speaker 2: be authoritarian president who tosses around threats to take away
47:52
Speaker 2: the broadcast licenses of TV networks that report on him
47:57
Speaker 2: in ways he doesn't like.
47:58
Speaker 8: For EXAMPLEBS and ABC settled lawsuits with Donald Trump after
48:03
Speaker 8: he made dubious claims that they showed bias against him,
48:07
Speaker 8: and after a Trump supporting billionaire bought the company that
48:10
Speaker 8: owned CBS and appointed a new editor in chief at
48:13
Speaker 8: that network, the editor postponed the broadcast of a sixty
48:17
Speaker 8: minutes report about the abuse of Venezuelan migrants who the
48:20
Speaker 8: Trump administration captured and sent to a notorious prison in
48:24
Speaker 8: El Salvador.
48:25
Speaker 2: An edited version of that piece did eventually air. Six
48:30
Speaker 2: months later, CBS editor in chief Barry Weiss ordered a
48:34
Speaker 2: major shakeup of sixty Minutes, bringing in a new executive
48:38
Speaker 2: producer and firing several senior editors, producers, and reporters. This
48:44
Speaker 2: is interesting. A lot of people worry about government supported
48:48
Speaker 2: news organizations being subject to political influence, but for profit
48:53
Speaker 2: media companies may have just as much incentive to go
48:57
Speaker 2: where the political wins blow.
49:00
Speaker 8: So for me, the question is, how can we justify
49:03
Speaker 8: running a news and information system this way in a
49:07
Speaker 8: so called democracy, to leave your most important journalistic institutions
49:12
Speaker 8: in the hands of business people in oligarchs and just
49:15
Speaker 8: hope for the best.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, how is that working out for us? Let's go
49:24
Speaker 2: out on one more piece of tape. This is from
49:27
Speaker 2: Dan Schiller, the scholar who's been studying and writing about
49:31
Speaker 2: the history of media for more than forty years. Here's
49:34
Speaker 2: how Dan sums up the state of our union media
49:38
Speaker 2: wise in the twenty first century.
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Speaker 9: I've known people over in the decades. Oh, use the
49:44
Speaker 9: word total. It's a total calamity. It's the totally worst.
49:50
Speaker 9: But it's gotten worse and worse and worse. It's never
49:53
Speaker 9: the end, It's always getting worse. Remember the old Tom
49:57
Speaker 9: Leir song I'm sliding down.
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Speaker 3: The blade of life.
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Speaker 9: That sort of expresses it.
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Speaker 7: Soon we'll be sliding down the raison blade of life.
50:14
Speaker 2: Next time.
50:15
Speaker 3: I wrote a piece before the elections, saying if Trump
50:18
Speaker 3: wins blamed the New York Times, and I meant it.
50:21
Speaker 2: In episode seven, We're gonna look at the last decade, yes,
50:26
Speaker 2: the Trump years, and we'll ask how much blame does
50:30
Speaker 2: the news media deserve for this? The News was created
50:40
Speaker 2: and produced by me John Beewen, with chender Ei Kumanika
50:43
Speaker 2: and story editor Diane Hotson. Assistant producer Arlene Arabelo. Production
50:49
Speaker 2: helped this time from Jen Kinney. Fact checking by Anna
50:53
Speaker 2: Pujoel Mazzini. Music by Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band,
50:58
Speaker 2: Michelle Osis, Lily Hayden, Alex Weston, James Nathan Jones, good
51:03
Speaker 2: Night Lucas and Jason Hill. Music consulting by Joe Augustine
51:08
Speaker 2: of Narrative Music. You can find transcripts and more about
51:12
Speaker 2: the show at our website. Scene on Radio dot org.
51:17
Speaker 2: The show is distributed by p RX. Scene on Radio
51:20
Speaker 2: comes to you from the Keenan Institute for Ethics at
51:24
Speaker 2: Duke University