Review: Rich Media, Poor Democracy

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Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times
by Robert W. McChesney

Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1565846346

Robert McChesney is the preeminent media critic of our time. He's written several books and articles chronicling the commercialization and corporate control of media around the world, providing example after example of how the corporatization of mass media leads to less access and service to the public.

In Rich Media, Poor Democracy, McChesney turns his focus almost exclusively on the state of American media, and the picture he paints is a troubling one. Starting out with a 'state of the media' overview, McChesney lays out tons of examples of how media conglomerates are getting bigger and bigger. This growth has stifled needed discussion of the popular politics of our times. And with growth comes power: media companies have singlehandedly been able to turn Washington, D.C. in to a playground for big business interests at the expense of the people.

The politics of commercializing the media focus around one central tenet - instead of using the media as a vehicle to inform, it's better to look at the media as a vehicle to sell advertising. In this vein, successful advertising equates to popular support - and therefore, if media companies provide content and programming that 'sells well,' then it's obviously 'giving the public what it wants.'

However, McChesney shines much-needed light on why this is not true; the entire theory ends up feeding on itself, leading to a homogenization of what's considered 'acceptable' and 'proper' in print and on the airwaves and, in the process, restricts the level of discourse Americans can have on topics important to the country.

Closing out his discussion on media politics, McChesney turns to a critique of the Internet and the widely held belief that it will provide the last bastion of democratic communication in the 21st century. Rich Media, Poor Democracy goes a long way to debunk that theory: the same commercial interests who've dominated print, radio, television and cinema have also made irreparable inroads into the Internet, marginalizing dissident voices and, in the process, almost creating two Internets - the one that sells things and is widely accessible, and the one for everyone else which is left in the clutter.

The only saving grace, according to McChesney, is that most media companies are still looking for a way to make a buck online. Most of the work they've been up to is 'positioning' - that is, staking their claims on the World Wide Web with the belief that eventually, the same profit motives that drive other forms of mass media will eventually play out on the Internet as well.

Rich Media, Poor Democracy's second section is devoted to the history of the commercialization of the media in America. He uses public broadcasting as an example of how the process began to go out of control. Many startling facts come to life here.

For example, did you know that it wasn't the commercial interests who almost singlehandedly killed off educational radio in the early days of the medium? Rather, the blame properly lied with two factions of educators in the non-commercial camp that weakened the movement and allowed nascent broadcast networks to manipulate Congress into the spectrum giveaway that culminated with the Communications Act of 1934.

This, in turn, spelled the beginning of a long line of policies that have weakened public broadcasting in America to the deplorable state that it's in today. And the future of public broadcasting looks worse, not better: forced into competing in the same mindset as their commercial counterparts, public broadcasters are now trying to justify their existence by capturing 'audience share,' which in turn forces them to program public broadcast outlets much like commercial stations.

McChesney also devotes a chapter to the evolving meaning of the First Amendment in regards to media issues: he reserves special criticism for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who've all but abandoned the drive to keep commercial speech separate from sacred political speech rights. This 'all-or-none' philosophy, McChesney asserts, will eventually do more harm than good by providing the same level of First Amendment protection to advertising.