Marxist-led study has close ties to Obama White House officials
May 19, 2010
NEW YORK – A George Soros-funded, Marxist-founded organization calling itself Free Press has published a study advocating the development of a “world class” government-run media system in the U.S.
A newly released book, meanwhile, documents Free Press has close ties to top Obama administration officials.
“The need has never been greater for a world-class public media system in America,” begins a 48-page document, “New Public Media: A Plan for Action,” by the far-left Free Press organization.
“Commercial media’s economic tailspin has pushed public media to the center of the debate over the future of journalism and the media, presenting the greatest opportunity yet to reinvigorate and re-envision the modern U.S. public media system,” argued the Free Press document, which was reviewed by WND.
The Free Press study urges the creation of a trust fund – largely supported by new fees and taxes on advertising and the private media – to jump start the founding of a massive government-run public media system that will ultimately become self-sufficient.
Free Press founder Robert W. McChesney
“We believe local news reporting should become one of public media’s top priorities,” said Free Press Managing Director Craig Aaron, one of the paper’s co-authors.
“We should redeploy and redouble our resources to keep a watchful eye on the powerful and to reliably examine the vital issues that most Americans can’t follow closely on their own,” Aaron stated.
Free Press is a well-known advocate of government intervention in the Internet.
Avowed Marxist
A new book, “The Manchurian President,” documents the founder of the Free Press, Robert W. McChesney, is an avowed Marxist who has recommended capitalism be dismantled.
The book, subtitled “Barack Obama’s ties to communists, socialists and other anti-American extremists,” also documents the close ties between Free Press and leading Obama administration officials. The new work was written by WND senior reporter Aaron Klein and co-author Brenda J. Elliott.
McChesney is a professor at the University of Illinois and former editor of the Marxist journal Monthly Review.
In February 2009, McChesney recommended capitalism be dismantled.
“In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick-by-brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles,’” wrote McChesney in a column.
The board of Free Press has included a slew of radicals, such as Obama’s former “green jobs” czar” Van Jones, who resigned after it was exposed he founded a communist organization.
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Free Press Summit: Changing Media — Josh Silver
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Pro-Obama Group Demands Socialist Media
May 18, 2009
A socialist-oriented “media reform” group with ties to the Obama Administration is calling for new federal programs and the spending of tens of billions of dollars to keep journalists employed at liberal media outlets and to put them to work in new “public media.”
The group, which calls itself Free Press, is urging “an alternative media infrastructure, one that is insulated from the commercial pressures that brought us to our current crisis.”
However, Free Press didn’t say one word about the well-documented liberal bias that has contributed to the decline in readers and viewers for traditional media outlets and has enabled the rise of the Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio, and the Internet. Instead, Josh Silver of the Free Press attacked the “bellowing ideologues” on the air and declared that “The entire dial is empty of local news in many communities.”
**Article written by McChesney in 2001 relating to the internet and his views with Cass Sunstein: Currently the Regulatory CZAR in Obama Administration***
Power to the Producers
Robert W. McChesney
Originally published in the Summer 2001 issue of Boston Review
Cass Sunstein has done a great service by raising the anti-democratic implications of the emerging wired world. Much of his critique is on target, and I found myself nodding my head vigorously time after time. In two fundamental areas, however, my train of thought diverges from his; one is a matter of contextualization, while the other is a basic disagreement over a core assumption. Both criticisms suggest additional reform measures to augment, though not necessarily replace, the ones that Sunstein proposes—if we are to enhance democracy in the Age of the Internet.
First, while it may be true that people will tend to look for opinions that reinforce what they already believe, I believe the desire to construct a Daily Me that threatens democracy may not be inherent to the species. Nothing in our genetic code makes the bulk of us, especially those among us who are poorer and younger, narrowly self-obsessed and depoliticized. In my view it is fairly clear that since the advent of universal adult suffrage powerful interests have worked tirelessly to promote depoliticization and social demoralization. Sometimes it is dressed in the liberal concerns of a Walter Lippmann or a Harold Lasswell, and at other times in the frankly elitist mode of an Edward Bernays, but the point is always the same: it is best for the unwashed not to have too much interest in politics or too much control over important decisions. To the liberals it will lead to outcomes offensive to the educated; to the conservatives it will lead to outcomes offensive to the wealthy. In either case—and the two groups tend to overlap on core issues—nothing good comes from too much democracy.
[snip]
When individuals are selecting from billions of websites to construct their Daily Me, they will not be exercising consumer sovereignty. More than likely, they will be selecting from a much smaller group of options directed by the largest media firms in the world. While the Internet will permit the occasional Matt Drudge to break a story, and it will change many aspects of political organizing, the journalism that receives funding and attention will do so under the same commercial auspices and terms that offline journalism operates under. In my view, that is bad news for the sort of informed, participatory democracy that both Sunstein and I advocate.
What this means is clear. To have the Internet contribute to a democratization of our society requires that we work to democratize our political economy and reform our media system. If we create a viable nonprofit, noncommercial, media sector, it can provide the basis for an Internet public forum that can contribute to an increase in political interest and activity. Left to the commercial media giants, the Internet will be far less likely to be so pliable. And unless we reinvigorate our political economy so that people actually do think they have the power to alter the course of politics for the better, even creating a viable nonprofit media sector will have only a marginal effect. •
Robert W. McChesney is professor of communication at the University of Illinois, co-editor of Monthly Review, and author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy .
Read the entire article HERE…..
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The Daily We
Is the Internet really a blessing for democracy?
Cass Sunstein
How does this bear on the Internet? An increasingly fragmented communications universe will reduce the level of shared experiences having salience to a diverse group of Americans. This is a simple matter of numbers. When there were three television networks, much of what appeared would have the quality of a genuinely common experience. The lead story on the evening news, for example, would provide a common reference point for many millions of people. To the extent that choices proliferate, it is inevitable that diverse individuals, and diverse groups, will have fewer shared experiences and fewer common reference points. It is possible, for example, that some events that are highly salient to some people will barely register on others’ viewscreens. And it is possible that some views and perspectives that seem obvious for many people will, for others, seem barely intelligible.
This is hardly a suggestion that everyone should be required to watch the same thing. A degree of plurality, with respect to both topics and points of view, is highly desirable. Moreover, talk about “requirements” misses the point. My only claim is that a common set of frameworks and experiences is valuable for a heterogeneous society, and that a system with limitless options, making for diverse choices, could compromise the underlying values.
Public (and Private) Forums
In the popular understanding, the free speech principle forbids government from “censoring” speech of which it disapproves. In the standard cases, the government attempts to impose penalties, whether civil or criminal, on political dissent, and on speech that it considers dangerous, libelous, or sexually explicit. The question is whether the government has a legitimate and sufficiently weighty basis for restricting the speech that it seeks to control.
But a central part of free speech law, with large implications for thinking about the Internet, takes a quite different form. The Supreme Court has also held that streets and parks must be kept open to the public for expressive activity.1 Governments are obliged to allow speech to occur freely on public streets and in public parks—even if many citizens would prefer to have peace and quiet, and even if it seems irritating to come across protesters and dissidents whom one would like to avoid. To be sure, the government is allowed to impose restrictions on the “time, place, and manner” of speech in public places. No one has a right to use fireworks and loudspeakers on the public streets at midnight. But time, place, and manner restrictions must be both reasonable and limited, and government is essentially obliged to allow speakers, whatever their views, to use public property to convey messages of their choosing.
I hope that I have shown enough to demonstrate that for citizens of a heterogeneous democracy, a fragmented communications market creates considerable dangers. There are dangers for each of us as individuals; constant exposure to one set of views is likely to lead to errors and confusions, or to unthinking conformity (emphasized by John Stuart Mill). And to the extent that the process makes people less able to work cooperatively on shared problems, by turning collections of people into non-communicating confessional groups, there are dangers for society as a whole.
Changing Filters
My goal here has been to understand what makes for a well-functioning system of free expression, and to show how consumer sovereignty, in a world of limitless options, could undermine that system. The point is that a well-functioning system includes a kind of public sphere, one that fosters common experiences, in which people hear messages that challenge their prior convictions, and in which citizens can present their views to a broad audience. I do not intend to offer a comprehensive set of policy reforms or any kind of blueprint for the future. In fact, this may be one domain in which a problem exists for which there is no useful cure: the genie might simply be out of the bottle. But it will be useful to offer a few ideas, if only by way of introduction to questions that are likely to engage public attention in coming years.
In thinking about reforms, it is important to have a sense of the problems we aim to address, and some possible ways of addressing them. If the discussion thus far is correct, there are three fundamental concerns from the democratic point of view. These include:
(a) the need to promote exposure to materials, topics, and positions that people would not have chosen in advance, or at least enough exposure to produce a degree of understanding and curiosity;
(b) the value of a range of common experiences;
(c) the need for exposure to substantive questions of policy and principle, combined with a range of positions on such questions.
Of course it would be ideal if citizens were demanding, and private information providers were creating, a range of initiatives designed to alleviate the underlying concerns. Perhaps they will; there is some evidence to this effect. New technology can expose people to diverse points of view and creates opportunities for shared experiences. People may, through private choices, take advantage of these possibilities. But, to the extent that they fail to do so, it is worthwhile to consider private and public initiatives designed to pick up the slack.
Disclosure: Producers of communications might disclose important information on their own, about the extent to which they are promoting democratic goals. To the extent that they do not, they might be subject to disclosure requirements (though not to regulation). In the environmental area, this strategy has produced excellent results. The mere fact that polluters have been asked to disclose toxic releases has produced voluntary, low-cost reductions. Apparently fearful of public opprobrium, companies have been spurred to reduce toxic emissions on their own. The same strategy has been used in the context of both movies and television, with ratings systems designed partly to increase parental control over what children see. On the Internet, many sites disclose that their site is inappropriate for children.
The same idea could be used far more broadly. Television broadcasters might, for example, be asked to disclose their public interest activities. On a quarterly basis, they might say whether and to what extent they have provided educational programming for children, free air time for candidates, and closed captioning for the hearing impaired. They might also be asked whether they have covered issues of concern to the local community and allowed opposing views a chance to speak. The Federal Communications Commission has already taken steps in this direction; it could do a lot more. Of course, disclosure is unlikely to be a full solution to the problems that I have discussed here. But modest steps in this direction are likely to do little harm and at least some good.
Self-Regulation: Producers of communications might engage in voluntary self-regulation. Some of the difficulties in the current speech market stem from relentless competition for viewers and listeners, competition that leads to a situation that many broadcast journalists abhor about their profession, and from which society does not benefit. The competition might be reduced via a “code” of appropriate conduct, agreed upon by various companies, and encouraged but not imposed by government.
Subsidy: The government might subsidize speech, as, for example, through publicly subsidized programming or publicly subsidized websites. This is, of course, the idea that motivates the Public Broadcasting System. But it is reasonable to ask whether the PBS model is not outmoded. Other approaches, similarly designed to promote educational, cultural, and democratic goals, might well be ventured. Perhaps government could subsidize a “Public.net” designed to promote debate on public issues among diverse citizens—and to create a right of access to speakers of various sorts.
Beyond Anti-censorship
My principal claim here has been that a well-functioning democracy depends on far more than restraints on official censorship of controversial ideas and opinions. It also depends on some kind of public sphere, in which a wide range of speakers have access to a diverse public—and also to particular institutions, and practices, against which they seek to launch objections.
Emerging technologies, including the Internet, are hardly an enemy here. They hold out far more promise than risk, especially because they allow people to widen their horizons. But to the extent that they weaken the power of general interest intermediaries and increase people’s ability to wall themselves off from topics and opinions that they would prefer to avoid, they create serious dangers.
Cass R. Sunstein is Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago. His most recent book is Republic.com.
(2001)
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NOT RACIST.
NOT VIOLENT.
JUST NO LONGER SILENT.
