|
Point of View with Barb
Sumner Burstyn - June 9 2003
Keep the corporates under control in media
landscape
There is something a little discomforting about the media furore
over the alleged fraud at Te Mangai Paho, the Maori broadcasting
agency.
Certainly, if the full extent of the allegations has substance,
big changes are needed within the agency. But the attack on Te Mangai
Paho smacks of the old collective colonial "I told you so". Not
racism exactly, more a subtle sense that this type of white-collar
crime is somehow unique to brown skins.
What is also disturbing is Rodney Hide and others using an allegedly
dishonest employee and a faulty chain of information from the agency
to the minister as an excuse to push a political agenda - the idea
that corporate-run media would better serve New Zealand, and that
taxpayer dollars shouldn't be wasted on race-based broadcasting,
or, by association, other Government-supported cultural organisations.
So what if we did hand over all the funders and broadcasters to
the corporate world? What would our media landscape look like?
Well, probably a lot like the one in the United States. There,
corporate ownership of broadcasting is about all there is. But rather
than the ideal of the market place - a range of media companies
competing with each other across a range of products (television,
newspapers and radio) to represent the views of their various constituencies
- there is a handful of media behemoths, owning all the media and
reflecting very little but their corporate agendas.
But if it was bad before, it just got worse. Last week the supposedly
independent Federal Communications Commission, the organisation
charged with overseeing the media industry in the US, voted to remove
the barriers that blocked total deregulation of the media.
The move provoked passionate opposition from civil rights, consumer,
labour, religious, journalism, academic and community groups. Deregulation
opponents say the move represents the complete abandonment of public
concerns and effectively shuts out independents and small fry.
In effect, there is a placing of creative direction in the hands
of a few executives, with parent companies hungry for profit and
uncomfortable with risk.
Being risk-averse means diversity suffers, views are synthesised,
opinions, and that information which doesn't fit with the political,
spiritual or social beliefs of company owners are suppressed or
at best relegated to the media fringes.
But Americans have been here before. In 1996 the radio industry
was similarly deregulated. Now most stations are strictly satellite
feeds running identical programmes, chosen at company headquarters.
The only local content is when DJs pre-record their voices with
a two-second station ID, which is then mixed into the generic patter.
The radio industry has become the motif for the downsides of media
consolidation: political censorship and monopolistic practices.
Extrapolate that and you begin to understand the dearth of new music
and the abundance of Britneys.
The American public knows this. About 750,000 of them wrote to
the Federal Communications Commission opposing the rule changes.
But perhaps the commission staff were all away from their desks
when they brought the mail in, taking one of the 2500 holidays ($2.8
million worth) provided for them by the same companies that had
the most to gain from last week's decision.
In fact, commission chairman Michael Powell (a George W. Bush appointee
and, wouldn't you know it, Colin's son), the main mover behind the
rule changes, was reported to be among the chief recipients of the
first-class flights, luxury-hotel suites and other favours that
the media giants used to influence the decision-making process.
Not that anyone seemed to mind.
Perhaps it's just a case of when good markets go bad. Bob Williams,
a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, has followed
the commission for some time. His reporting reads like a phone book
of collusion and dishonesty, and reveals in detail how the major
US networks teamed up to lobby for the proposed changes.
So much for the illusion that a free market equals a competitive
one. Or the vision of a deregulated broadcasting and media arena
being free and unbiased, and representing divergent views on a wide
range of subjects.
The US is the proving ground of free-market philosophy. We should
look to it and take note. A media landscape that contains a mix
of publicly funded organisations and controls the size of private
ones is our best hope for a media environment that represents all
that we are and can be.
Although Te Mangai Paho needs to sort out its problems, we should
not make those issues the reason for closing it down. It should
continue to be funded precisely because it represents diversity.
It enables not just Maori to have a voice but for the rest of us
to have the opportunity to hear and see that voice, free from corporate
agendas.
And not just Te Mangai Paho. We should be vigorously supporting
all our funding bodies and publicly funded media, be they Maori
TV, Radio New Zealand, the Film Commission, New Zealand on Air or
the Arts Council.
These agencies ensure that New Zealand continues to have a real
identity. Without them, cultural diversity is dead and an ignorant
monoculture will flourish.
ENDS
© Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 2003
Send your comments to:
Barbara Sumner
Burstyn.
|
