Columnist Michael Winship writes for the Messenger Post Newspapers and attended the National Conference for Media Reform, which is the subject of his column this week:

MEMPHIS, TENN. — Asked his opinion of western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi famously replied he thought it would be a good idea.

You could say the same of media reform. A good idea, far more easily said than done.

But hang on. There’s a growing populist movement out there, working to achieve the goal of a more responsive, independent and accessible media. Over the weekend, 3500 advocates, an empowered array of women and men of all ages from across the country, came to Memphis, Tennessee, to attend the third National Conference for Media Reform. They made for a committed and impressive, ruly mob.

(The event was sponsored and organized by Free Press, the national organization promoting “diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications.”)

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[photopress:adelstein.jpg,full,pp_image]Jonathan Adelstein is a Clinton appointee to the FCC and, along with Michael Copps, has been a strong voice of caution on the Commission, warning against the dangers of fewer and fewer companies controlling more and more of the media.

One thing that I found interesting in talking to Adelstein is that he sees his duty to enforce communications law–but beyond that seems to have a genuine interest in the quality of programming on the air. I interviewed him at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis. You can listen here.

[photopress:fox.jpg,full,pp_image]If you’ve flipped on a TV newscast–especially a cable newscast–over the last few days you were treated to a ripe example of one of the real failings of contemporary broadcast media. For the last few days, the networks have been pouring resources into covering every angle of the “Miracle in Missiouri.” It is a compelling story to be sure: two boys kidnapped, one of them four years ago, turn up living in the apartment of their alleged kidnapper, who managed a pizza shop across the street from the police station. But compelling doesn’t mean it’s important or significant or, for that matter, that is has any bearing on our own lives. Yet the networks devote entire programs to rehashing and speculation, repeating the same skinny set of facts over and over again until they are burned into our memory.

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President Bush braved the lions’ den of progressives (as the President put it, the “oppositioners”) to make an appearance at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis.
Watch the video here.

This is a flash video of the first part of Bill Moyers’ speech at the National Conference of Media Reform in Memphis.

Here is a flash video of the second part of Moyers’ speech.

[photopress:david.jpg,full,pp_image]David Brancaccio is the host of Now on PBS and came to the National Conference on Media Reform to talk about the state of public broadcasting. When I caught up with him we talked, instead, about the state of TV news–especially the language reporters and anchors choose to communicate with us.

I happened to know Brancaccio is tired of hearing everyone in TV being compared to Jon Stewart so I didn’t mention Stewart’s name. But Brancaccio did.

You can listen to our conversation here.

[photopress:chelli.jpg,full,pp_image]Writing in the current issue of Washington Monthly, Zachary Roth argues that it’s fine to put restrictions on lobbyists and crack down on earmarks, but if you really want to “break the connection between money and elections” the only solution is meaningful campaign finance reform. Without that, the rest is window dressing.
The tricky part is getting it through Congress and the key, Roth says, is to make it makes sense to those already in office.

Leave aside the fact that, without public financing, you can’t begin to reform Washington’s pay-to-play legislative system. Leave aside the fact that major progressive policy goals—from universal health care to a fairer tax code—probably can’t be achieved without public financing. Leave aside, even, the fact that the current system, which winds up giving outsized political influence to those who can afford to fund campaigns, is a grievous affront to the ideals of the founding fathers. Focus instead on what is, to elected officials, the most important consideration of all: crass political advantage.

This was exactly what my conservation turned to when I sat down with Chellie Pinegree, President of Common Cause. We talked about media reform, of course, but she agrees with Roth and says the real goal has to be meaningful campaign fianance reform.

Here’s my interview with Chellie:

[photopress:guinness.jpg,full,pp_image]Ann Toback is the assitant executive director of the Writers Guild of America (East) and she tells the story of a Guild member–a TV producer–who was given a package of material and told to put together a story about a study extolling the health benefits of ale. After a little digging, it turned out that the package was a video news release put together by—wait for it—-Guinness.

Between mergers, takeovers and a growing obsession with the bottom line, staffs at newsrooms all over the country are shrinking, making it more and more likely that a story on the health benefits of ale makes it on the air (in that case, thanks to the producer’s work, it was killed.) Here at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, I sat down with Toback today to talk about what she’s hearing from her members.

This is the full audio version of Bill Moyer’s speech here at the National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis.

According to a new survey released here in Memphis, two-thirds of Americans say that the providers of broadband internet shouldn’t get involved in determining which web sites we can and cannot visit and the majority of the people surveyed say Congress should guarantee that freedom by passing a Net Neutrality bill.

The big companies, for their part, say we consumers have nothing to worry about. We don’t need any regulation, they say. We wouldn’t dream of restricting the way you use your internet connection. Right.

[photopress:copps.jpg,full,pp_image]According to PC World, some broadband providers have already been caught limiting access to Vonage, which competes with their own VoIP products. Router manufactures, meanwhile, brag about their new designs that examine the packets of data they are passing to determine which web sites are being accessed–keeping the traffic to the favored sites of “partners” on a high speed connection and shunting others to a slow lane.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps spoke at the press conference where the new survey was released. I caught up with him yesterday to chat about Net Neutrality and media consolidation. You can listen to my conversation with Commissioner Copps here:

[photopress:crazybernie.jpg,full,pp_image]Senator Bernie Sanders was in fine form this morning and if you wondered “why does the media need reforming?” Sanders answered it.

From health care to global warming to what constitutes “morality” Sanders described how the media defines the debate–and often in a way that seems to miss the forest and the trees. And as Sanders and others have pointed out, the media has a unique role and unique obligations.

You can listen to some of Sander’s speech here:

[photopress:gonzalez_1.jpg,full,pp_image]Central to the debate over several critical issues of media reform is the question of whether the public has ownership of various means of communication. When it comes to the airwaves that radio and TV use there is little question–legally we own those frequencies in the same way we own public streets and national parks. (Cellular phones are a little different because cell companies have paid the federal government for frequencies.)

But what about the internet? What about the frequencies that communities might use to provide open, high speed WIFI to everyone? That’s where it gets sticky.

I chatted about these topics with columnist and radio host Juan Gonzalez, who pointed out that from the telegraph to the Internet, the federal government has done the heavy lifting when it comes to building the infrastructure that has enabled these forms of media to grow and survive.

You can listen to the interview here:

Writing at beyondchron.com Randy Shaw described the roundtable of commentators Wolf Blitzer lined up to talk about the President’s speech the other night as “as white as major league baseball teams before Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers.” Where, he asked, were black and Latino voices?

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[photopress:billwilly.jpg,full,pp_image]I had a chance to sit down with Bill Moyers in his hotel room to talk about the media, the environment and CommonDreams.org. You can listen to my interview here:

Bill Moyers talked about one of my favorite topics this morning: the incredible secrecy of the Bush Administration (”worse than Watergate” according to John Dean.) But Moyers took it further–to say that in the case of the war, the government didn’t really need to try to keep information from the media since the media acted like “solicitous hand puppets.”

Click below to listen.

Bill Moyers is an ordained Baptist minister and at this morning he was in Full Preacher Mode, bringing a crowd of 2,500 to its feet.

The media, he said, is eating away at the foundations of our society by devaluing the meaning of language.

Click below to listen.

Along with Net Neutrality (see below) the other “big” issue here in Memphis is going to be media consolidation.  There was a time, not too long ago, when the rules didn’t allow one company to control big chunks of the media, especially at the local level.  Mostly under Republican influence, that has changed.  We’ll be talking here about the real danger and damage that comes from this sea change in policy, and what we all can do to turn the tide.  It’s not going to be easy, though.
[photopress:channel.jpg,full,pp_image]

The opportunity to for you and me—the people who not only use the airwaves but leaglly own them— to set the ground rules for media ownership is really quite limited.  With a  majority of its commissioners appointed by the Bush Administration, the FCC gets to make the rules.  They’re supposed to do this with the input from everyone—not just the big corporations, but all of us.  It doesn’t seem to work out that way.

Even if the FCC  has forgotten about the public interest, Congress is supposed to be able to act as a check.  But not under this Administration.  President Bush has threatened to veto any bill Congress passes that reverses an FCC decision.  And given the rules-don’t-apply-to-us attitude of this Administration, even if a veto is overridden, they’d probably refuse to enforce any ownership limits.

But there is hope.  The last time the FCC tried to very quietly slip through a major change in those limits the outcry from the public was amazing.  The Commission received millions of comments and, perhaps more importantly, so did members of Congress.  The rule changes were stopped dead in their tracks.  For the moment.

[photopress:innovation.jpg,full,pp_image]Do you know who the biggest opponent of the introduction of FM radio was back in the 40s?

The National Association of Broadcasters.

Do you know who the biggest opponent of satellite radio is today? (Wait for it.)

The National Association of Broadcasters.

The big media companies of the NAB are not the only ones who want to squash innovation. Big telephone companies opposed the development of new forms of telephone communication that worked over cable. Big cable companies oppose the development of community wi-fi that would make access to the internet a public service.

I think this is one of the reasons I’m glad to be out of old media and now doing my work on the Internet–it is a venue that really does allow freedom of expression and rewards innovation and creativity. But Big Media wants to reign that in as well–by putting an end to the Net Neutrality that has allowed everyone equal access to the Internet.

The recent agreement between the government and ATT preserves Net Neutrality for thirty months…but not permanantly. That’s why it is so important for us all to get behind the Net Neutrality bill that is now in Congress. I’ll be talking a lot about this critical issue over the next few days–it’s going to be a big part of this conference.

[photopress:jungleroom.jpg,full,pp_image]We couldn’t pass through Memphis without a pilgrimage down Elivs Presley Blvd to Graceland. It was a very interesting, sequin-filled experience and I was left with two impressions: Elvis was a kind and generous man with truly horrendous taste.

There are nine gift shops in the complex (I couldn’t resist the circa 1970 Elvis sunglasses) and Elvis is as much of a marketing machine now as he was at the height of his career. (Even the inscriptions on his gravestone are copyrighted.) Wandering through the gift shops, I had to wonder what the standard for including an Elvis-themed product is. I would really like to see the items that someone at Graceland judged “too tacky.”[photopress:glasses_1.jpg,full,alignright]

But we’re not here to be tourists. We’re here to talk about Media reform. Even before the conference has officially begun I’ve had some eye-opening conversations about the real, measurable and serious effect that big-media consolidation is having on the quantity and quality of the news we see on TV. The news is not good.

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