Join the Boston Rally to Make Fox History, 8/4, 12 Noon

First things first. Open Media Boston encourages all of our viewers to turn out to an important protest this Thursday, August 4th at 12 noon in front of the Massachusetts State House - the Boston Rally to Make Fox History. The event is being called by the new Boston Media Reform Network that your faithful Editor/Publisher has been working rather hard on since its launch in May. The aim of the event is to do our part to pressure Congress to hold hearings on the various criminal activities that media giant News Corp. has been engaged in for years. If the hearings went really well, it would be nice to see Congress do something big - like enjoining the FCC to pull all the broadcast licenses held by News Corp. in the United States. Which would mean bye bye Fox News. Tall order, we know. But worth working towards. Here’s a link to the rally’s Facebook page. Let us know if you can make it and either way be sure to invite all your friends.

Now, let me address the question of why we’re telling you all to go to this rally.

Although we are very open about our progressive editorial stance, Open Media Boston does not generally engage in direct advocacy work. Because we take our journalism very seriously. And we know that even if we do our best to keep our news pieces fair and accurate that we’ll inevitably come off as too connected to some of the organizations and institutions we cover week-to-week to truly be called independent.

But a significant exception to this rough and ready rule is media reform advocacy. Open Media Boston exists in large part as a pilot project that is meant to be a regional stepping stone towards the kind of majoritarian left-wing media that we have long believed is badly needed in the United States. Virtually all large democracies on the planet - and some countries that are too authoritarian to be described as democracies at all - have major media outlets with editorial stances across the political spectrum. So, for example, despite the “Americanization” of media in many European countries, there are still recognizable right, center and left publications of record. Everyone knows their editorial stances. Everyone knows that most of these publications practice what is commonly understood as professional journalism in their news coverage. And so everyone that reads, views or listens to these now mostly multimedia outlets knows where to go for a wide-range of views in their country.

But in the United States that has not been the case for over 100 years in most localities. The American model of “objectivity” ruled the roost of journalism for most of that period in this country, and successfully pushed the conceit that a good journalists should have virtually no opinion at all on matters of the day. And that even editorial writers should be so even-handed as to be above reproach. This was, of course, never the case. Reporters and their editors very much did (and do) have biases, and these biases have mostly worked in favor of the rich and powerful - unsurprising since such forces were known entities to the news industry (and, in fact, owned many news outlets), while their always underfunded grassroots opposition (which was usually a progressive opposition) were not. At times, many publications and broadcast outlets basically allowed themselves to be the mouthpieces of politicians and CEOs. Especially during wars. “Objectivity” then quickly became synonymous with the status quo. And that status quo was generally non-threatening to corporations and the rich and was thus a great way to ensure steady ad sales.

For all the problems of what we could now call traditional corporate journalism in America, there was still room for a whole lot of great reporting. The best journalists found ways to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” - and many a corrupt politician and greedy corporate officer was brought to justice because of good honest journalism. Many great social movements also found support and ultimately society-wide acceptance thanks to the exposure they got in the traditional advertising-backed press. For example, it’s hard to imagine how the Civil Rights Movement could have succeeded without the pathbreaking work of many major print and broadcast journalists who put the screaming contradictions of the American Jim Crow system before the nation and the world for judgment. And there are many similar examples.

All that said, the situation is now far worse than it was under the old media order from the perspective of any publication that champions social justice, democracy and human rights as we do at Open Media Boston. The takeover of often family owned news media corporations by larger multinational corporations over the last four decades has resulted in the consolidation of the ownership of most significant media on the planet under the banner of a handful of giant companies. The attempts of these new owners to extract ever more wealth from their media holdings resulted in the destruction of expensive news operations in favor of cheaper entertainment programming. The rise of the internet and the idea that anyone with a computer could become a reporter further eroded the old system - for good and bad, in fairness. And all this happened as the regulatory framework that had held traditional news operations to certain standards was dismantled at the behest of these same multinational media conglomerates.

The result of all these changes has been an America were much of the programming across all media is entertainment programming, and much of the programming that calls itself news is also a form of entertainment programming.

Increasingly, getting any kind of accurate picture of national and international news requires reading the elite business press and select international press - and getting any kind of accurate picture of regional and local news is harder and harder since there are fewer and fewer media outlets fielding major news operations on the metropolitan level. Unfortunately, most people in this country do not make the time to pursue this news consumption strategy (where applicable), and many simply do not have the education to make use of the information they could find thereby.

So if Open Media Boston believes in good popular journalism, and believes that there will have to be major structural changes enacted to make such journalism possible once again - including changes which will make it possible for this country to field major media with editorial policies across the political spectrum … which will in turn make it possible for Americans to make informed political and economic choices based on a full array of news and views - then we will have to help organize the reform movement that can lead us to a better media future.

Put more succinctly, the new wave of community media outlets like Open Media Boston won’t succeed - at least those outlets interested to enter the political fray in the interest of democracy - unless we are willing to put aside our journalistic reserve and engage directly in media reform work.

Which is why we’re spearheading a protest against Fox News’ parent company News Corp. this week.

In a sense, it might strike some viewers as odd that we’d protest News Corp. since they’ve done more than any single entity in history to destroy the old system of American journalism. News Corp.’s Fox News has done its level best to obliterate objectivity since its launch 15 years ago.

This would all be well and good from the perspective of this publication were it not for two important problems. The first is that Fox News doesn’t believe in media democracy. They’re interested in owning as much media as possible - especially news media. They’re not interested in helping any competition - least of all any left-wing equivalent to their vast array of media properties - to survive and thrive. They’re perfectly happy to throw around their money and lobbying muscle to allow them to absorb all the media they can, and drive whatever is left out of business.

The second problem is that they have repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t believe in practicing professional journalism as it’s commonly understood. That is, even their news reporters are rarely allowed to act like news reporters. All of their news operations - like our Fox 25 News here in Boston - are run in the most top-down fashion imaginable. Every day - according to the documentary filmOutfoxed and other sources - memos come down from Fox HQ in New York that dictate what issues must be focused on, and pity the reporter or producer that fails to follow an edict from corporate on any given day. These memos are written by close confidants of News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch - and virtually all top News Corp. brass are directly connected to the leadership of the right-wing political parties of every country they do business in. So in this country, it’s the Republican Party that calls their political tune - and also vice versa. Which makes the News Corp. version of journalism little more than fig leaf over their larger political agenda. Even the worst of the leadership of other corporate media don't run their news operations in that consistently ham-fisted a fashion. Although, sadly, as Fox News continues to win the ratings battle in key demographics, other corporate news brass are trying to follow their flag-waving jingoistic path to success.

Nevertheless, Open Media Boston has not gotten involved in organizing Thursday’s protest to discuss those kinds of problems. Rather we’re working on the rally because we think it’s critical to discuss News Corp.’s getting caught hacking phones and bribing cops in the United Kingdom. Andpossibly here as well. We want to shine some local light on the way broadcast licenses are given out to buyers like News Corp. by the Federal Communications Commission, and how the conditions of being allowed to hold a license involve being an entity that is perceived to have “good character.” Because it seems pretty clear to us that a company that is engaged in criminal activity at its highest levels does not possess good character. And so, it stands to reason that Congress should hold hearings to determine what, if any criminal activities that News Corp. has engaged in here in the US, add that information to the knowledge of their criminal activities in the UK and elsewhere, and then order the FCC to pull News Corp.’s broadcast licenses if they find good cause to do so.

That’s the kind of structural media reform we can get behind at Open Media Boston, and that’s why we’re asking you all to turn out and join us on Thursday at 12 noon in front of the Mass. State House.

So if you have some time at lunch that day, come on down. After all, we’re never going to get solid news and views on major crises like the artificial debt crisis roiling the federal government, unless we get our nation’s news media house in order. And we genuinely fear for our democracy if situations like that continue to break in favor of the multinationals and the wealthy.

If you'd like to get involved with the Boston Media Reform Network, sign up for our announce-only email list at http://groups.google.com/group/bosmediareform-announce/ .

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Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston. He is also an organizer of the new Boston Media Reform Network.