By Jim Wittebols
Buffalo, NY – The media frequently comes under attack from Conservatives, many of whom say media outlets only portray liberal views and events. But according to commentator Jim Wittebols, recent events illustrate how the new, corporate dominated media contradicts that perception.
Two news events last month tell a lot about the nature of conglomerate owned media.
These two stories get to the essence of how news judgment ends up as a hidden form of censorship-censorship which comes not from government edict but from the everyday operations at mainstream news outlets whose editors and publishers know fully how their bread gets buttered.
The first story which got hardly any mention from news outlets that most people - who for better or worse rely on for their source of news - concerns the brutal treatment of those who went to Miami to nonviolently make their views known to the international officials who gathered to discuss the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas.
The tide of what is called free trade has been receding for years, yet the captains and generals of the global economy can't quite bring themselves to admit that those who have suffered from agreements like NAFTA and the WTO have organized to alter the terms of the debate from the illusive term free trade to a more humans rights oriented concept of fair trade.
Thus, as our photo-op president declared his love for free speech while in London, apparently the chief of police and elected officials in Miami didn't hear his message because by all reports it has been a long time since free speech and protest have been so subject to arbitrary and malicious police abuse.
Retired union members, current union members, moms, dads, students and workers of every stripe were subjected to arbitrary searches, arrests, orders to disperse and all other forms of harassment.
But it didn't stop there.
Scores were injured from rubber bullets, journalists covering the street action were arrested or had their cameras and recorders confiscated and of course police used their batons and stun guns with impunity.
This most violent suppression of free assembly was, for the most part, blacked out by the corporate owned media which has an obvious interest in trade arrangements which will benefit the transnational corporations that they are.
The second suppressed story concerns the media themselves.
Nearly 2,000 activists, scholars, legal experts and even a few members of Congress including Louise Slaughter gathered in Madison Wisconsin to kick off a long term effort to reform the laws and rules regarding media ownership.
I was proud to be part of this gathering and had my activist soul renewed by the fellowship with so many other concerned and active folks on this issue.
Inspirational speeches by such genuine journalists such as Bill Moyers, Studs Terkel and Juan Gonzalez of the excellent alternative radio news show "Democracy Now," provided a spirit of determination to do what it takes to make media stop treating us only as consumers and be more responsive to our needs as citizens.
This conference was inspired by the unprecedented two and a half million comments citizens submitted to the Federal Communications Commission as it pondered its recent loosening of ownership rules last Spring.
People from all walks of life have been aroused by this corporate hijacking of the media so necessary for a vibrant democracy.
It is clear this effort needs to be seen as a long term struggle in the tradition of the civil rights movement.
The fact that this meeting got virtually no coverage means we can never expect to see much of this discussion in mainstream media sources.
I am certain that eventually the roar of grassroots disgust with the news media's subservience to power will be difficult to ignore. In the meantime, you can learn more about this conference at www.mediareform.net
The reason for the media's lack of coverage of the brutality in Miami is the reason so many of us gathered in Madison.
What binds these two stories is that it is clear the corporate media cannot give an honest accounting when their own interests are at stake.
And that is why a corporate dominated media system cannot serve the needs of democracy and why there is so little democracy in this putative land of the free.
Against the grain, I'm Jim Wittebols.
Commentator Jim Wittebols is a professor of communications studies at Niagara University. His commentary, "Against the Grain," is a monthly feature of WBFO News.
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