'I 1'. 'I lj II

~ebeliori""g J.1 a diffe •·ent kind nf np•·isi n~

Founder and Publisher Robert Brian Hall

Production and Design Director Celina Moser

Senior Editor Maury L. Cohen

Editors Steve Grinstead Lori D. Kranz Mark Lehoczky

Contributing Writers Ted Andersen Robert Argyle Michelle Barnes Richard Castaldo Jim Craig Lori Filipek Howard Griffith Brian Klocke Mark Lehoczky Fran Pado Alec Tsoucatos Kenneth Ursay Nancy Wadsworth Edith Weiss

Graphics Phil Jacques Ce lina Moser Tony Norris Paul Sayyas

Photos Troy Dauenbaugh Mark Manger Andy Marquez Mark Sink Barb Vogel Rosalie Winard

Illustration Michelle Barnes Tami Grindle Greg McGuan

Rebelion Magazine Online Todd Baginski · Jam ie Luetjen Ce lina McGuan

Rebelion Magazine 2529 West Main Street Upper Littleton, CO 80120 (?20) 283·1868 www. rebelionmag.com

Printed by Publication Printers Corp. Denver, CO

Copyright 2001, Rebelion Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without per­mission is encouraged.

CHANGE

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse

of the Soviet Union, our modern-day psyches have become more

willing to accept and believe in the possibility of massive, funda­

mental change. And while dramatic sudden change can be unset­

tling, there is something about it that stirs our souls to believe, if

even for a moment, that anything is possible. When a young

Chinese protestor stood in front of a tank column in Tiananmen

Square and effectively demonstrated to the world the power of one,

the collective heart of all those who love freedom pumped a little

stronger. We subconsciously understood that his risk and his

courage sent a message to the world that said the fight for freedom

is not over, and is, in fact, still fought with the same passion and

unselfish intensity that marked the earliest days of the United

States.

So how do we instigate peaceful, dramatic change in a world run­

ning so fast it can't seem to slow down to save itself? How do we

create a series of social epidemics that come to critical mass and

tip the world in a healthier direction, and who or what decides what

"healthier" is? Is it possible to have a handgun-free society, or a

society that doesn't profit from war? Is it possible for communities

to organize in a way that would make the modern insurance indus­

try obsolete? How do we find the courage to dislodge ourselves

from our comfort zones long enough to realize that the fight for

change is indeed worth the potentially enormous price?

These are the questions rebelion will try to answer.

So if you are among the millions who believe society is curable from

the corrupt, needlessly complex, disrespectful, and denial-ridden

policies and institutions that are so much a part of the current real­

ity, come on out of the closet, office, church, home, or theater and

give a yell-that is, if you haven't already.

by Brian Klocke

Consolidation of Media In 1982, when Ben Bagdikian wrote his book The Media Monopoly, so corporations controlled the majority of

the media industry. By the time of his second edition in 1986, the so had shrunk to 29. By 1993, the number

was down to 20; and now it is down to just five giant transnational media conglomerates. Not only are these

large corporations structurally intertwined through overlapping boards of directors, but they are culturally inter·

twined as well. The corporate consolidation of media has resulted in a common vision of the "American way of

life" - predicated on social stratification, corporate domination and keeping citizens distracted from social con·

cerns-and a common goal of protecting the status quo. This consolidation has also led to a significantly dis·

• • • torted framing of our society in almost all facets of media, and most particularly in news and entertainment

Whitewashed A study of the newspaper industry conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors reveals that the per·

centage of newsrooms with no minority employees increased this year to 44%. While minorities make up 30.9%

of the U.S. population according to the 2001 Census, only 11.6% of workers at daily newspapers are minorities.

Latinos are the most underrepresented in newsrooms. Minorities represent only 9°/o of the total number of super·

visors in newsrooms. And if you are a woman of color, you are even less likely to have a say in the news, no

matter what your ethnicity. Even more rare is minority ownership of media broadcast facilities. The white ceiling

remains. Substantively, little seems to have changed since the 1968 Kerner Commission report, which claimed

that the press " ... has been basking in a white world, looking out of it, if at all, with a white man's eyes and

Studies conducted by sociologists Bill Haynes and David Croteau for the non-profit group Fairness & Accuracy

In Reporting reveal that government and military officials are often used as on-air news experts while minorities

and labor and community activists rarely receive airtime. On two popular news shows, Nightline and The

MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (now The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer), 92% and 90%, respectively, of their U.S. guests

are white (and mostly male).

Corporate media institutions, which monopolize public discourse, have a powerful effect on how we think about

issues of social inequality and personal identity. Media corporations most often attempt to portray themselves

as objective, unbiased, non-racist and fair. A closer examination of this ideology of the "center" finds its verac-

.. . .. "' . . . . . ... . ity belied by the structural and "economic• functioning of the media industry, as well as the content of its pro­gramming.

The Bottom Line

The common notion that media corporations, in their quest for profit, simply give consumers what they want is

based on faulty assumptions of free-market ideology. The goal of much of the entertainment media is adl.lally to

give the advertisers what they want The main product of corporate media is not the programming per se, but

the audience. The function of commercialized media is to deliver consumers to its advertisers. Ad-financed media

tly to slla~te tffeir pro~mmirfk C819tent II? ldeli~,e~~~·s-P'I'odill!ed to content, an avoidance of extremism and an attraction to the lowest common denominator of comfort and

political passivity for the masses.

Audience size alone does not explain product appeal, for some audiences are more attractive to advertisers than

others. Advertisers look for audiences with significant disposable income, the ability to spend it and the will­

ingness to spend it. The advertisers then encourage the media to deliver an audience with the desired mix of

gender, race, class and economic indicators. This most often means that minorities and the poor, and thus news

and programming that would interest them, are generally avoided, and the broadly defined interests of young,

white, affluent viewers are catered to. In fact, there are many examples of TV shows with higher ratings losing

out to shows-like Melrose Place -that deliver a more desirable spending demographic, i.e., young, white,

Perhaps the most important characteristic to advertisers is having pliant audiences-viewers whose mood makes

them receptive to advertising. Thus, programming that develops thought critical of consumption and social and

economic inequality, such as racial inequality, is undesirable. Advertisers attempt to control the environment in

which their ads rest in order to serve their own economic and social interests. These interests are viewed pri­

marily from a middle-aged, wealthy, white male perspective, because that is the profile of the vast majority of

the CEOs and upper-level managers of the advertisers and of media executives.

Distorted Frames 1: Programming Wealth and Whiteness African Americans and other minorities are three to four times more likely to be poor than whites. The lives of

Children are the most susceptible to the distortions of media images, and they seem to be served the least

diverse media fare. People of color are represented in a miniscule 3% of children's programming and just u% of

total prime-time TV characters, where-unlike in real life-they fill mostly middle-class roles. Research from the

Cultural Indicators Project reports that while minorities and the poor are underrepresented among main charac­

ters on TV, they are over represented among villains and victims. What messages about race are children learn­

ing from the media as they grow into adulthood? What messages are being programmed and reinforced for the rest of us?

o CP o o ~ ~Q o o Oo o o Distorted Frames n: 'Colori~g Crime Rocky Mountain Media Watch analyzed local TV newscasts nationwide in the fall of 1995 and found that crime stories dominate the majority of newscasts, that murder stories are out of proportion to reality and that people

of color are stereotyped as perpetrators.

African Americans make news as criminals at least twice as often as other groups do, despite the fact that 62% of all criminals are white. And despite this fact, the majority of images of violent crime in TV news, prime-time

shows, made-for-TV movies, box office films and newspaper and magazine accounts portray young black and Latino males as the perpetrators.

0

mitted by urban youth of color. And although deaths caused by corporations each year far outnumber all vio·

lent street crimes combined (Reiman, 1998), how many of us picture a white CEO in a business suit when we

hear the word "crime"?

Programmed media images invade our cultural spaces and help frame our ideas about crime, drugs and race.

Several studies show that people of color are more likely to be stopped and frisked by police, to be arrested,

to be convicted, to be sentenced to prison longer and to be executed than their white counterparts. The major·

lty of crack users, and aU other drug users, are white (66.6o/o), yet defendants convicted of possession, accord­

ing to Amnesty International, are 84.5% African American. Is media portrayal of race and crime merely coinci­

dental to these astonishing statistics?

Most white adults believe that minorities have reached racial parity in this country. A recent public-opinion poll

reported that only 6% of whites believe that racism is a serious problem. In contrast, 6o% of blacks and the

majority of Latinos Cs4%) are dissatisfied with the way people of their own race are treated by society. The media

images of middle-class success of blacks on a variety of sitcoms and entertainment and sports specials feed

into the mainstream white belief that racism is no longer widely present in our society.

Media critic Herman Gray explains that in television, the ideological representation of black middle-class success

in sitcoms, coupled with representations of the supposed black underclass menace (urban crime, gang violence,

drug use, teen pregnancy, riots, homelessness) in news reporting, serves to further the belief in middle-class

racial pluralism and the conviction that inequality is due to the character flaws of minorities rather than institu-

Corporate media's framing of social issues has powerful effects on how we think about the causes of, and solu­

tions to, racism. The importance of framing cannot be overestimated. For example, 70% of adults favor "affir·

mative action" to remedy workplace discrimination, but the support drops to only 46% 0/lle the Media) when

the term "racial preference programs" is used. It is easy to see how an ideological twist-even a subtle one­can have powerful consequences. If audiences believe that race is no longer an issue, then it follows that efforts

at fighting racial discrimination are unnecessary and disadvantageous to whites. This mistaken belief also helps

maintain the status quo of racial stratification and white privilege in this country.

People of color are being "framed" by the stories produced through a media system controlled by white corpo·

rate elites, and many of us-whites in particular-seem to have bought their racial production hook, line and

sinker.

As long as white America believes, says (white) former Senator Bill Bradley, that the race problem is a minority

"problem of meeting white standards to gain admittance to white society," we will never confront the whiteness

of our mediated culture.