Race in the Media: The Wrong Kind of Lens

What do Disney’s debut film, The Princess and the Frog, Mattel’s new Black Barbie line, and the American tour of the historic Ethiopian fossil, “Lucy,” have in common? Their stories present an opportunity for honest and successful discussions about race in the media. But what they really do is point to the media’s failure to engage in these discussions in a way that fairly, accurately or thoughtfully addresses the subject of race.

One of the great conundrums in the media is the prevailing standard of whiteness as the default norm for beauty, intelligence and success. Studies have shown that photos of lighter-skinned folks elicit more media hits, further contributing to this racialized ideology. The National Academy of the Sciences, for example, found in a survey of voters in the 2008 presidential election that most preferred a lighter-skinned over a darker-skinned image of Barack Obama.

The research is not particularly groundbreaking. Renowned psychologist Kenneth Clark and his wife, Mamie Phipps Clark, explored the issue in the black doll tests of the 1940s. When black children were shown four dolls, identical except for skin color, the lighter ones were consistently picked as favorites.

Various researchers who write on issues of racial justice have long acknowledged that Western society’s association of light skin color as a marker of success is deep-seated and, unless specifically targeted by campaigns to address the issue, here to stay.

Media-driven moments that some claim were designed to perpetuate negative images of blackness include the menacingly digitized darkening of O.J. Simpson on the cover of Time magazine during his trial in the 1990s.

But Time’s treatment of Simpson is just one example of the media choosing to misrepresent people of color, including women, diverse religious leaders and immigrants. Media misrepresentation has a profound impact on people of color, and on the nation as a whole.

The media have failed to discuss instances of racial oppression honestly. We need media that help us combat stereotypes, and foster genuine discussions on race, to explore race in all its complexity. But our current media system doesn’t allow for this. Just a handful of corporations own nearly everything we read, watch and listen to, which means diverse viewpoints – and viewpoints that could counteract racial stereotypes – are squeezed out of the media. Additionally, a drastically small percentage of broadcast and radio stations are owned by people of color and women, further limiting media diversity.

Despite an entrenched media system, campaigns to rid the media of racist figures, such as BastaDobbs!, have been successful. Not long after the campaign – protesting CNN anchor Lou Dobbs for his comments on how blacks are criminals, immigrants a burden to the economy, and other shameful, racist remarks – went national, Dobbs “quit” CNN. But being able to locate where racism breeds in media is not always as apparent. Sometimes, the sources aren’t as obvious, and hate speech isn’t something you’ll read in headlines or hear on live broadcasts. Racist media outlets often function by proposing that we live in a “post-racial” society, that race is “in reality” a mere social construction.

However, as renowned cultural theorist Stuart Hall notes, reality is something that’s always channeled through symbolic categories made available by social mechanisms, of which the media is the most powerful. In keeping with Hall’s ideas, the view that ethnocentrism is somehow universal or a given, and not the product of particular decisions to direct hate or to exclude, neglect, or exploit, contributes to the problem. To paraphrase the equally prolific theorist Louis Althusser, ideology largely functions by making us believe that we are outside ideology. Just because a certain set of readers may not believe in, support or understand the history and effects of white privilege doesn’t mean their responses aren’t racialized. This is because media are all about framing: Media frame what is normal, which is how particular cultural values get produced and reinforced. The media disseminate subtle and subliminal messages about race in ways that are designed to evade the average reader/consumer. Without being prompted to read images, for example, we think that racism is always about instances of clear-cut hate. Not so.

Racism is systemic, institutional, and in the media, often a case of what you don’t see.

For example, racially tinged advertising decisions that erase the faces of people of color are not marketing mistakes. They are reminders that our nation’s commitment to diversity is still not a selling point. Race sells, but in most cases, representation is done cheaply and on the assumption that readers and listeners are consumers first, thinkers second.

Those of us working as writers, researchers and activists need to generate new tools for addressing racial frames in media, which in turn means that we need to locate our ethical responsibilities as journalists in the process of viewing, analyzing and evaluating our own work, as well as the work of others. The only dynamic discussions generated in media are those that consider disparities and alternatives, exploring the very frames that limit the issues at hand.

We need creative thinkers able to reveal the injustices at work in the corporate control of our daily news and information to head the movement for media reform. We also need advocates for a media system that allows communities of color to “see” themselves equitably reflected in the media for once, and to have their concerns taken into account. Finally, we need to support a generation of critical writers both to use the media as a means of disseminating messages about justice, as well as to analyze how the media is the message (to cite media prophet Marshall McLuhan).

It’s not about changing the channel or turning off the tube; it’s about channeling new ideas about diversity in ownership, programming and coverage. And this change starts with you.

Visit www.stopbigmedia.com to learn more.

This is a guest blog post from Race-Talk Cultural Editor Adebe D.A., who is a Toronto-born writer currently living in New York as a research intern at the Applied Research Center, home of ColorLines magazine. A recent MA graduate in English/Cultural Studies, she writes on issues related to race, social justice, migration, and the phenomena of culture. She currently holds the honour of Toronto’s Junior Poet Laureate and is the author of a chapbook entitled Sea Change (Burning Effigy Press, 2007). Her debut full-length poetry collection, Ex Nihilo, will be published by Frontenac House in early 2010.  Visit her blog at http://www.adebe.wordpress.com.

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What It Takes to Run a Media Empire

This is a guest blog post by Chuck Lovey of Voice for New Jersey.

The recent behavior of Fox Television poses the question: Do you have what it takes to run a media empire? Take this quiz to find out.

Imagine that you preside over a broadcast media empire. Now imagine that one of your television stations is in trouble. The station is located in an affluent and densely populated market, but you’ve been running it on the cheap. And people have noticed.

You submit a routine application for renewal of your station license to the Federal Communications Commission. But instead of the usual rubber-stamp approval, you find that you have a fight on your hands. Community residents are saying that you do not provide enough news and public affairs programming, and they’ve petitioned to have your broadcast license revoked.

In an unheard-of move, the FCC schedules a public hearing. The state’s senior senator travels in from Washington D.C., and lets you have it. Scores of others show up to testify about your substandard news coverage. Evidence is presented to show that other stations in your market broadcast an average of five times as much news programming as you do.

Now, here’s the test. Do you: (a) acknowledge the problem and improve your news programming; or (b) cut budgets, lay off staff, slash the already abysmal amount of news coverage you provide by more than half, and then submit filings to the FCC misrepresenting what you’ve done?

If you answered “a,” congratulations! You appear to have at least a modicum of integrity.

If you answered “b,” congratulations! You appear to qualify for an executive post at Fox Television.

Incredibly, this scenario isn’t fiction. In 2007, the media advocacy group Voice for New Jersey (VNJ) filed a petition with the FCC to deny the renewal of WWOR-TV’s station license. At the time, the Secaucus, N.J.-based station offered only eight hours of news and public affairs programming per week. The station provided virtually no local news coverage for some of northern New Jersey’s largest municipalities.

The VNJ petition did, in fact, lead to an unprecedented public hearing by the FCC. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) delivered the keynote address, and was joined by scores of others who urged the FCC to demand more from the station. Subsequent comments from FCC commissioners were encouraging.

And then… nothing happened.

Well, actually, something did happen (a year and a half later). WWOR’s owner, Fox Television Stations, Inc., did a little more slashing and burning. It reduced WWOR’s news broadcasts to a half-hour per day, eliminated weekend news coverage altogether, and cut public affairs programming to a half-hour per week.

Fox laid off a good portion of WWOR’s technical and programming staff. Remaining staff is for the most part “shared” with WWOR’s sister station, WNYW-TV. The station’s Secaucus headquarters now looks like a ghost town; its four studios produce a grand total of three hours of programming per week.

And then, months after all of this happened, Fox submitted filings to the FCC stating that WWOR’s prior levels of programming were still in place. It held a series of meetings with the FCC, acted like nothing had happened, and demanded that its station license be renewed without conditions.

And that, apparently, is what it takes to run a media empire in the United States . Fox behaves in ways that, even in these cynical times, shock the conscience. The proceeding on WWOR-TV’s station license is still open. Write to the FCC today, and tell them to act. For more information, go to the Voice for New Jersey Web site at www.voicenj.com.

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The End of ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ Antitrust Era

The announcement of the Comcast-NBC merger has unleashed the predictable chorus of free market ideologues (like the Progress and Freedom Foundation and the Wall Street Journal), parroting the claims of the merging parties. Without any detailed analysis of the deal, they claim that new efficiencies will benefit consumers and that there is more than enough competition to prevent abuses.

Thankfully, the era of “don’t worry, be happy” antitrust enforcement in America is over.

Ironically, the very same ideologues, who snap to attention to salute every media and telecommunications merger, accuse public interest groups of knee-jerk opposition to these mergers. In a feeble attempt to prove that public interest groups are overreacting, they have listed a number of recent mergers that, they claim, did not result in the sky falling in on consumers (AT&T-SBC, Verizon-MCI, News Corp.- DirecTV, AOL-Time Warner, XM-Sirius). But they draw the wrong conclusions from the track record of these mergers in three crucial respects.

First, these mergers were prevented from doing their worst because, in every case, antitrust authorities imposed important conditions to prevent the anticompetitive, anti-consumer harms that consolidation would have produced.

Second, the post-merger world is far from the nirvana that the conservatives make it out to be. They all did result in consumer harm, despite the conditions placed on those transactions that mitigated harm to some extent.  Particularly, the telecom mergers were consumer disasters. They eliminated the major competitors in the marketplace for wireline broadband service, reversed the outcomes of the pro-competitive breakup of AT&T and the pro-competitive 1996 Telecommunications Act, and handed us a guaranteed wireline duopoly that has resisted meaningful price competition ever since. These mergers also resulted in massive consolidation in the wireless industry (by virtue of granting huge market power to these wireline companies that also had wireless services) – pushing AT&T and Verizon into dominant positions that are quickly giving us the same problem in mobile communications. The quality of TV programming has taken a beating because the TV networks were allowed to buy movie studios, and independent production of TV programming was all but eliminated from prime time.

Third, the failure of these mergers to produce the synergies and efficiencies these companies promised reminds us that the claims of efficiency that were used to justify mergers in the past decade were vastly overblown.

The “efficient market hypothesis” that allowed companies to wave a magic efficiency wand and blind the antitrust authorities to the anticompetitive impact of the mergers was the cornerstone of the “don’t worry, be happy” era.  Now, the “efficient market hypothesis” is crumbling. It is buried, if not dead, beneath the rubble of the financial system. Regulation is a punitive price to be paid when markets fail; it’s a vital protection against market failure.  This is exactly the role that antitrust review of mergers has played for over a century. It is explicitly intended to prevent damage to competition before the fact.

Perhaps the greatest proponent and practitioner of the “don’t worry, be happy” school of antitrust thought is Alan Greenspan. Yet, a year ago, under cross-examination by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Greenspan admitted that there was a flaw in his theory. Greenspan put it as follows:

“Those of us who looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief… I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”
The public interest movement has always believed that the pursuit of profit is not synonymous with the public good, but Greenspan’s admission goes one step further. The pursuit of profit is not even synonymous with private good.  The lesson we must learn from this is that the assumption that the market will take care of everything is simply wrong.

The effort to dismiss concerns about the Comcast-NBC merger ignores the large size, prominent position and powerful incentives Comcast-NBC would have to abuse its power. Comcast is the largest cable operator in the United States., larger than the next three cable operators combined. Its holdings are concentrated in the major media markets.  It is also the largest broadband Internet service provider and has a dominant market share in the local markets it serves.

NBC is one of four major national broadcast networks, “a global brand with an iconic legacy (news, sports and Primetime,” and a particularly prominent position in national and local news.  Combining the broadcast network with the cable channels, Comcast-NBC would have ownership interests in almost a dozen of the video networks that “deliver mass-market audience with 100 percent reach of U.S. TV households.”  There are only a few dozen such networks.

This large size and crucial position provide Comcast with the muscle to pursue its private interest at the expense of the public interest. The potential impact of this merger demands that it be scrutinized carefully by both the antitrust authorities and the Federal Communications Commission. It should not be waived through based on bogus historical analogies or discredited theories of market efficiency.

Comcast-NBC poses a unique threat because it is a dagger aimed at the heart of the Internet, a direct competitor to cable for multichannel video distribution.  Allowing the largest cable and broadband service provider to buy one of the top four video programmers would create a huge incentive to lock content behind the new pay walls cable companies want to build.

If Comcast wants to become a programming giant, it should do so the old-fashioned way…  It should develop new programming and compete to win audiences.

This is a guest blog post from Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America.

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Comcast-NBCU Not Inevitable

Many analysts have identified the proposed acquisition between Comcast and NBC Universal (NBCU) as the first example of vertical integration in the communications marketplace of the Digital Age. Few have pointed out, however, that the regulatory framework that allows for such an unprecedented combination of assets is also a 21st century phenomenon. Less than a decade ago, this combination would have been against Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations – indeed, it would have been merely a business executive’s dream. What makes this acquisition attempt possible today is the drastic, systematic deregulation in media policy that has taken place over the last 20 years.

If allowed to go through, the Comcast-NBCU deal would result in unprecedented consolidation in media. For the first time, it would allow a single company to control both the cable system and a broadcast station in a dozen of the largest U.S. media markets. Folks living in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, San Francisco, and other major cities would receive their household cable hookup from the same source that runs their local NBC broadcast station. As a result, Comcast would be more tempted to discriminate against its competitors online by charging higher fees to rival cable providers for access to NBC content, or by blocking the access of other programmers to its network, as it has attempted to do in the past. Comcast customers could also be left with higher monthly cable bills.

No company in history has enjoyed such extensive powers of control over how the public shares and receives information, and how that information is produced. Why is a deal like this being considered now? Not as a result of pure coincidence. Before 2002, federal regulations prohibited exactly such business arrangements.

In 1970, the FCC put in place the Cable-Broadcast Cross-Ownership (CBCO) Rule to ensure the preservation of competition in broadcast media ownership. The Rule was intended to ensure that cable operators would not be able to leverage their market power by favoring the carriage of their own broadcast content over content owned by other broadcasters. Thus, the Rule ensured that audiences would receive a diversity of programming, to the extent possible under the existing market framework. CBCO codified pre-1970 protections against cross-ownership and served the public interest in this regard for most of the following three decades.

The 1996 passage of the Telecommunications Act, however, laid the groundwork for massive deregulation in media ownership. Among other directives, Congress mandated that the FCC review and reconfirm the efficacy of all broadcast media ownership rules on a biennial basis (later modified to take place every four years). At face value, these reviews may have seemed useful to Congressional lawmakers – but in practice, they provided broadcasters with the ability to scrutinize and attack these important public interest policies on a regular schedule.

It didn’t take long for industry lobbyists to use this convenient loophole to begin a full-on war against media ownership protections.

While the FCC continued to treat the ownership review process as a mundane, procedural reporting requirement, in 2002, Time Warner caught the FCC off-guard in court by presenting an all-out challenge against the Rule. The cable provider convinced a panel of conservative judges to reverse the FCC’s 1998 decision, which saw the CBCO Rule as essential to preserve competition and protect diversity and local programming.

With the CBCO Rule out of the way, Comcast in particular began to explore cable-broadcast mergers almost immediately. In 2004, the company attempted, but failed, to undertake a hostile takeover of ABC-owner Disney. A combination with NBCU is the first time that a cable-broadcast cross-ownership deal would be put to the test – and with it, the intentions of Comcast to protect diversity, competition, and the public interest would be tested as well.

Precedent in this regard is no cause for optimism. Not long ago, Comcast was reprimanded by the FCC for blocking BitTorrent applications in an anticompetitive manner, without informing its customers. The company recently created Xfinity, a means by which some online video can be accessed only via a Comcast cable subscription. Comcast has even intervened with the application for economic stimulus funding to develop broadband in underserved areas of its own hometown of Philadelphia. Clearly attempting to forgo any threat of competition, the company has argued that it adequately serves the entire city with broadband services, despite strong arguments to the contrary by local residents and community associations. (Comcast also tried to shut out Verizon from wiring the city for FiOS service.) These and other infringements are why Media Access Project, Free Press, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, and other public interest organizations are opposed to and concerned about this merger.

The moral of this short glance at recent telecommunications history is that Comcast-NBCU and deals like it aren’t mere inevitable next steps in the media business. Less than a decade ago, the federal government considered such transactions to be against FCC rules and threatening to the free flow of information to American citizens. But the strength of our nation’s media ownership protections is now but a shadow of its recent past.

The Obama administration and Congressional lawmakers must turn back the tidal wave of mergers and deregulation of the last 20 years. They must recognize the serious threat posed by Comcast-NBCU to consumer welfare, civic participation, and local and independent media production – and they must stand up against this acquisition.

This blog post was first published by the Media Access Project (MAP). Kamilla Kovacs is the Communications Manager for MAP.

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Comcast Merger Bad for Consumers, Free Press and Parents Television Council Say

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New Report: Comcast/NBC Merger Is Bad News for the Public

Questions abound after the announcement of the Comcast/NBC merger. This morning, Free Press and the Consumer Federation of America released a new analysis showing why the deal poses a serious threat to competition and would harm the public interest.

The report, Why the Comcast/NBC Merger Poses a Major Threat to Video Competition Antitrust Authorities Cannot Ignore, finds:

• A Comcast-NBC merger would hurt competition in traditional video markets. A merger between the nation’s No. 1 cable operator and a major television network threatens competitive rivalry and diversity in the video marketplace. The new entity could leverage its control over content to charge its rivals more — costs that will ultimately be paid by consumers.

•  A Comcast-NBC merger would hurt competition in the emerging online video market. Comcast is the largest residential broadband service provider; NBC produces top-notch content and has a substantial interest in the online video provider Hulu. A merged company would have a powerful motive to starve competing online video sources by denying them access to vital content.

•  A Comcast-NBC merger would trigger more media consolidation. Approval of this deal will undoubtedly trigger a merger wave, as the remaining players in both the distribution and content markets seek to muscle-up to match this new behemoth. As a result, competition from new entrants will be limited, consumer choice will be restricted, and prices will rise.

Read: Why the Comcast/NBC Merger Poses a Major Threat to Video Competition Antitrust Authorities Cannot Ignore

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Mega-Media Era Begins as Comcast/NBC Merger Nears

On Monday night, French media giant Vivendi and NBC parent company General Electric agreed to terms that will clear the way for US cable giant Comcast to take a controlling stake in NBC Universal. An announcement from Comcast is expected within days. The proposed merger would create a media behemoth, and clear the way for an unprecedented era of media consolidation across cable, the Internet and broadcast television.

Be afraid. Comcast is both the largest cable company and the largest residential broadband provider in the United States: a $34-billion business with 24 million subscribers, reaching nearly one out of every four homes in the country. NBCU owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Universal Studios, 27 television stations, and a host of other properties.

President Obama has promised that his administration would finally begin enforcing antitrust laws to prevent unreasonable consolidation of market power. If ever a media deal posed such a threat, this is it. The merged Comcast would be to media what Goldman Sachs is to Wall Street: “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” as Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi once described the latter.

It should come as no surprise that Wall Street and Washington are saying this is already a done deal: The media and telecommunications industry is second only to drug companies in how much it spends lobbying Washington. Its army of PR firms, lobbyists and sock-puppet think tanks is already blitzing the press corps and Capitol Hill. It’s readying Comcast CEO Brian Roberts for his close-up as a new media mogul and neglecting to mention the impact of this deal on everyday people.

Comcast has raised cable rates for years while raking in record profits nearly every quarter. It is anti-union. It cares nothing for independent, alternative programming. And if you’re a startup television channel, you can forget about getting a spot in Comcast’s lineup. Comcast will charge you far more for space on its lineup than you could possibly pay. Just ask Al Gore about his failed effort to get his Current TV a reasonable position in the cable lineup.

Let’s not forget that Comcast is the company that was caught illegally blocking peer-to-peer Internet downloads and then lying about it – earning a smack-down from the FCC for breaking Net Neutrality rules. And the company is known for blocking TV ads it didn’t like. The company’s track record of protecting the public’s interest isn’t exactly stellar.

And now, Comcast is set to control media across all distribution platforms. The company is threatened by the increasing amount of free content on the Net, and a public who is both watching entertainment on the Internet, and creating their own. NBC owns a major stake in Hulu, and Comcast likely wants to put the video service and all NBC content behind a paywall. Comcast and other cable companies are already putting the final touches on “TV Everywhere,” a paywall that requires a traditional cable subscription to watch online content owned by these companies. Comcast’s very survival depends on remaining the gatekeeper between you and the programs you want to watch, and it wants as little competition as possible.

Worse still, if the Comcast-NBC merger is allowed to go through, it will be the start of a catastrophic storm: a tidal wave of mega-deals by other content giants like News Corp. and Disney merging with distribution behemoths like Time Warner Cable and AT&T. In a nation where 98 percent of Internet users have only one or two choices of Internet service providers, we could witness a future in which a handful of phone and cable companies, merged with a handful of content companies, will put all premium content behind a paywall and make all other content hard or impossible to find.

ISPs’ content and applications — and those of their partner companies — will move at light-speed, while the rest of the Internet will seem like it’s still on dial-up. The result: homogenized corporate content, higher prices and fewer real alternatives so that distributors can prevent the “market fragmentation” that advertisers loathe. Sound familiar? The Internet will become the cable service of the 21st century — instead of the free and open arena for economic innovation, democratic participation and free speech that it’s been.

Some say that companies like Comcast are simply doing what they must to prosper. But we need to ask whether boosting Comcast’s bottom line is worth the cost to the rest of us. Such market power could destroy the promise of an open Internet and its unprecedented ability to amplify independent voices, reinvent journalism, and inspire new forms of entertainment.

The deal is expected to take at least six months to finalize, and it will possibly be more than a year for federal regulators to approve or reject the deal. The warped Washington conventional wisdom says that the deal is inevitable, but Free Press and our allies are rallying public opposition. The Obama administration has sharply criticized the previous administration’s weak antitrust record and promised vigorous oversight of anti-competitive deals — particularly those involving vertical mergers (like joining content and distribution companies) and innovation-focused industries like the Internet.

This merger is another major test of whether President Obama plans to deliver on his promises.

This blog post was first published by The Huffington Post.

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