The Dangers of Media Consolidation and its Effects on Chauncey Gardner
The last twenty years have seen unprecedented corporate growth in the United States. In the midst of this growth, and perhaps even aiding it, was the rise of the modern media corporation.  While viewers were all watching Cheers and Friends, five media corporations managed to annihilate or assimilate their competitors, essentially forming an oligopoly of information.  This situation should come as a worrisome sign, as these five companies have the power to shape nearly all of what we read, watch, listen to, and (as they might tell the advertising agencies that fund them) buy.  I intend to prove that from their ability to control what we see flows the power to influence how we see it, and the media monopolists use this power not only to their own benefit but with great harm to American democracy.
Jerzy Kosinski understands this potential for harm and explores it in his book Being There.  The book follows the adventures of one Chauncey Gardner.  Having spent the first 50 years of his life virtually alone in his house, all Gardner's knowledge of the outside world - everything from elevators to etiquette - is derived from television shows.  Though his situation is implausible, it is not impossible, and thus the influence of TV on Gardner is merely hyperbole of a phenomenon described by Erik Barnouw: "Viewers fell that they understand, from television alone, what is going on in the world.  They unconsciously look to it for guidance as to what is important, good, desirable, and what is not...It has become the definer and transmitter of a society's values." The notion that TV presents absolute truth, when coupled with the recent media consolidation (which adversely affects the presentation of "truth") puts the viewing public in a treacherous position for misinformation and invalid convictions.
In actuality, no medium - however independent - can claim to present abject truth, as truth is subject to reality and reality is, by and large, indefinable.  All mediums invariably, even if unintentionally, spin reality. Take, for example, a recent New York Times article titled, "As Jury Deadlocks, Gotti Avoids Rackets Conviction" (NYT, B1, 9/21/05).  Merely by using the word 'avoids,' as opposed to the phrase, 'Gotti Not Guilty,' the Times implies that conviction was the likely path for John G. Gotti, which further implies that Gotti is guilty.  The effect is multiplied by media consolidation, in which one media company in addition to running the above headline may also run a made-for-TV movie depicting Gotti as guilty, as well as publish an issue about Gotti in its magazines, and talk about Gotti's guilt on one of its radio stations.  In this manner, the monopoly capitalizes on both what viewers see and how they see it.  A man like Chauncey Gardner, hearing nothing contrary to this Gotti-defamation, would presume Gotti guilty.  Now imagine if Gardner was a juror.
While media corporations may have little reason to bend news on John Gotti, they have more than enough in other cases.  Most media outlets in the United States are owned by subsidiaries of Time Warner, News Corporation, the Walt Disney Company, Viacom, or Bertelsmann.  Since the consolidation of the media industry to five mega-corporations, news coverage has become awkwardly imbalanced.  News is always quick to cover scandals that reveal the shortcomings of government, as the New York Times did when it reported "Ex-Schools Chief on L.I. Pleads Guilty to Stealing $2 Million" (NYT, B1, 9/27/05).  The article disparages Frank Tassone, a former superintendent of a public school, and rightly so.  However, business is exempt from similar coverage.  For example, the Times lauded the post- Katrina New Orleans developer Patrick Quinn in its article "For Hotelier, Crisis Is Another Word for Opportunity" (NYT, C1, 9/23/05).  According to the article,
	"Mr. Quinn...quickly recognized that Katrina was not just an unprecedented disaster for New Orleans; it was also an unparalleled opportunity for people like him...[He] has already made offers on more than 20 hotels in Louisiana and Mississippi to add to the 15 he owns."
The article goes on to praise Mr. Quinn for his "initiative to bounce back," and says that "immediately after the flooding began, [Quinn] was already looking ahead to business opportunities." It virtually ignores that his cut-throat business practices are made possible by the casualties of Katrina and the suffering of its survivors, many of whom Quinn hopes will sell out.  For a reader like Chauncey Gardner, it would seem that the corrupt public servant is an enemy, while the profiteering business figure is a hero.
It is this prospect which frightens politicians.  Just as non-media corporations rely on the media to reach consumers in the form of advertisements, politicians must utilize mainstream media to reach voters, whether it be through political advertisements or merely making the six o'clock news.  Their dependency works out nicely for the media corporations, who as couriers gain the advantage of censors.  A major media corporation has no reason to air politicians who speak out against their monopoly, and the ones who do could face the threat of a media backlash or worse, a complete media blackout.  The media oligopolies thus gain a degree of political clout that is unthinkable to even the heaviest campaign contributors.  This power of the media over the government was asserted with the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1997, which rolled back prior restraints on media consolidation and now allows the five companies to grow unchecked by government regulation.  If any politicians spoke out against the Act, their message certainly did not reach the public, who for the most part were kept in the dark.  Ben Bagdikian describes the shocking future that could await American politics in an age where the media has achieved such influence when he writes that "the larger the media corporation, the greater its political influence, which produces a still larger media corporation with still greater political power."
The media corporations have also been successful in blocking legislation that might weaken them.  Campaign finance reform is only recently (and scarcely) receiving television coverage, mainly because such reform would most likely include free airtime for candidates.  Though free air-time would arguably make American politics fairer by allowing equal access to the media by poorer candidates, it would also deprive the oligopolies of the millions of dollars spent by politicians on campaigns, and thus television viewers are kept uninformed about the matter.  The issue perfectly illustrates that as long as the current political arrangement benefits media corporations, viewers/voters will not see or hear in the political/media mainstream any substantial discussion of change.  This, too, is a worrisome fact, indeed, considering that the 'mainstream' is precisely where discussion of change needs to occur in order to be effective and reach the most voters/viewers.
Woe to Chauncey Gardner, who probably believes that by viewing programs like CNN's corporate-funded Crossfire he is watching substantial debate.  Gardner is by no means an intelligent man, though by knowing nothing more than what TV and gardening has taught him he secures himself a seat in powerful political circles.  The secret of this success is that Gardner may know the most important thing of all: his own ignorance.  He allows E.E. to change his name and chooses not to tell reporters that he is illiterate, saying only that he doesn't read the papers, realizing that both E.E. and the reporters are aware of something he is not.  In so doing, Gardner fits the old Socratic idiom, "Wisest is he who knows that he knows nothing."  Gardner realizes that the people he encounters live in a world that he has only watched; his statement, "I like to watch," is his admission that watching is the only life he knows, and that his very place in the world is to watch as others 'do.'    Gardner, in this capacity, is a symbol for the apathetic modern viewer of television who believes that merely by watching CNN and voting every four years (perhaps for a Democrat) the world will be changed for the better.
The omnipresent effects of media consolidation surround Americans.  These effects are more than just product placement in movies and tie-ins with everything from breakfast cereals to cell phone rings (though these, too, increase inversely with media ownership).  As media corporations exercise their corruptive force on American politics, there is danger that the entire political scene can shift to a more pro-corporate stance, which some thinkers have taken to also mean pro-right wing.  News programs that are sponsored by corporations invariably make choices in coverage and presentation that are pro-corporate and often anti-working class, which said thinkers have also equated with anti-left wing.  Journalism students are now taught to cover news not from the workers' point of view, but instead from that of the consumer.  A recent article in the Ithacan titled "Bus company workers considering strike" (Ithacan, 9/8/05) states only that the workers "have major disagreements," before it details how a bus strike would adversely affect students, presumably scuttling student support for the workers.  This from a paper that is free and financed by a so-called 'liberal' college!
Sadly, the media corporations show no sign of slowing down.  Just last week another mega-corporation, Microsoft, announced that it was contemplating a possible link with AOL (NYT, C1, 9/16/05).  One can only imagine the power and assume the politics of such an unholy union.
The most troubling part of the whole situation is the seemingly limited avenues of reform.  Most Americans are decidedly unaware of the media's politics or ownership and - unless some novel action is taken - they are likely to stay that way indefinitely.  The revolution, it seems, will not be televised after all.
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