Comcast Distracts with Corporate ‘Goodwill’

Posted August 2nd, 2010 by Jim Rhyne

As large media conglomerates grow bigger, individual voices are increasingly left out of any meaningful dialogue — even at a “public” hearing.  You might think it’s a great opportunity to speak truth to power, but you’d be mistaken. The same money and power that allow corporations to control the public airwaves is also painfully evident in their ability to control the tone at a public hearing.

Based on the majority of testimony at the July 9 FCC hearing at Northwestern University Law School about the pending Comcast/NBC merger, there is no doubt that Comcast is a generous corporate partner to many Chicago area nonprofits. And that’s fantastic. Who could begrudge these nonprofits for forging strategic partnerships that yield valuable dollars—especially in this economic environment?

However, to be distracted by Comcast’s corporate goodwill is to miss the point about the merger. Interestingly, distraction is the same tactic employed by most of corporate media when it comes to news and information. The more you know about celebrities and worry about crime, the less you’ll care that you know absolutely nothing about who is running for office and what topics are being debated from city hall to state and national government.

So the FCC hearing was a dispiriting distraction about Comcast’s selfless commitment to nonprofits. The sad reality is, that in the end, we all lose—even the nonprofits represented that night that are benefitting in the short term from Comcast’s largesse—except for Comcast and big media.

What was missing from the hearing? This merger is not a referendum on Comcast’s community sponsorship. Being a good corporate citizen doesn’t mean this merger is good for our democracy, which demands a free exchange of ideas.

The strength and health of our democracy is completely dependent on a vibrant, independent press. If big companies are allowed to continue their march toward even bigger media companies, the result can only mean fewer reporters, fewer voices and more news sharing than what we have now which is abysmal. In a constant search for profit, these large media companies will continue to abandon their basic duty to our democracy to hold those in power accountable.

If this merger is approved, we risk losing this invaluable part of our democracy.

Since most of the testimony was irrelevant to the debate and the main point of the hearing virtually lost on all but a handful of those who showed up to oppose the merger, it’s clear that we need a new strategy: better media literacy.

Perhaps some of these nonprofits, who normally would support a more open, democratic media, may not be aware that if we had better media coverage and investigative journalism about poverty, hunger, homelessness, workers’ rights and other issues—we wouldn’t need donations and PSAs from big media companies just to get our stories heard. And then maybe, just maybe, we could all be working to foster the real change we want in our communities.

Ultimately what’s at stake is news becoming even more obsolete (think more celebrity and crime) and thereby reducing our ability to make sense of what’s really happening at city hall, in state capitals and in Washington, DC.

At some point we have to recognize the irreversible erosion of a valuable public asset like the airwaves and vow to stop allowing big companies to grow bigger and more profitable at the expense of the public good and the strength of our democracy. With better media literacy, maybe we can.

Otherwise we will always be overpowered, outmuscled and our voices stifled. That’s not a democracy I want. How about you?

Jim Rhyne is a media reform activist and volunteer with Free Press. In 2006 he spearheaded a local Los Angeles TV news-monitoring project and co-authored its report. Then in 2008, he organized the first and now annual media reform summit in Los Angeles. A graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, he now lives in Chicago where he works as a freelance advertising writer.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 9:49 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.