THE MORE YOU WATCH THE LESS YOU KNOW TEN YEARS ON
The Trials of a Progressive Media Company in Trying Times

Ten years ago, during a season like this one, I was writing my first book, The More You Watch the Less You Know (Seven Stories). I considered it a “media-ography,” distilling my experiences and analysis of media trends on a wide canvas with a focus on my complaints about the business and experiences as a media maker and critic.

Over this past decade, I have seen no reason to revise the title, which I found that just about everyone I told about the book resonated with. The reaction of listeners to right wing and left wing radio was more similar than I imagined. They agreed with the broad strokes of the critique, often for different reasons. I had the feeling that the book might have done better had I just left all the pages blank and let people fill in their own reasons for their own disenchantment with our media.

While I was writing, media bashing was just becoming more and more popular. I wrote about all the phenomenon that have since come to define the era - media concentration, the rise and decline of CNN and network news, and the birth of Fox News. (I was at their opening party!)

I was then, and still am, in a somewhat unique position - as a former network producer turned independent media maven who could, to borrow a line from my late poet-mom, “tell it like it is because I was there when it was.” I brought an insider’s experience media criticism, a role usually played by academics and outsiders.

If my book was at all distinctive at the time, it was because I told stories out of school - many of them quite humorous - stories about what it was like for someone who came out of the student and civil rights movements to join and spend years toiling in “Big Media” - in radio, local TV, cable news, TV network magazine journalism and as an independent filmmaker.

I have been making media - and media critiques - for a long time. Vanity Fair’s Michael Wolff even joked about it in his introduction to When News Lies, my 2006 book on the media coverage of the Iraq War. He noted, “Danny doing his job as long as he has been doing it, has become something like the 2000-year-old-media critic - he’s one of the few guys who can be counted on to consistently know the real score.”

If you ignore the hyperbole and hype, and if there is a kernel of truth in that (I would like to think so), then perhaps there is some value in talking about how and why I do what I do. It’s one thing to judge the product of independent media with so many readers and viewers these days only seeking out arguments they agree with, then there is also value in understanding the process and the challenges of creating media that goes against the grain…

Early in 2006, I was in Doha in the Gulf at an Al Jazeera media forum. An Arab professor was digesting a study that I assumed would add more ammunition to those who find western media wanting, but instead he expressed a profound sadness that western media consumers were often so uninformed. He took pride, he said, in noting that Arab media does a better job of offering more diverse sources of information. He was very sincere - and probably right.

That’s why we need to understand media as a system - not just a story. I would like to think that my experience in many media incarnations can help contribute to that discovery and the need to do something about it.

I would like to think my insights were unique but of course I always knew I was never alone in the way I felt. My ego seems big at times - but not that big! A massive library can now be built just to store all the books; tomes, articles, reports and documents criticizing the role our media plays that came out before and after my own. Other network defectors or “refugees”, as I called myself, have now turned a minority stance into a widely shared mainstream conviction. Surveys show as much as 70 percent of the public is dissatisfied with our media system. They want something different. And so do I. And something very different is emerging…

But what, and who is going to produce it, and how? And if it is produced, who’s going to air it? That question haunts me as much now as it did then. Our frustration with the failures of mainstream media may now be widely shared but our independent media, as a political movement or production engine is not yet the kind of powerful force it should be, and so our independent media presence is still marginalized, under resourced and not competitive with the MSM (mainstream media we deride). Even as production costs come down thanks to new technologies, distribution capacity is still limited even in the age of the Internet and broadband digital networks. That may be changing although major corporations still control access to many of the “pipes” of dissemination.

The book chronicled my media adventures, hopes and disappointments, and the story of building Globalvision as an independent progressive Media company that had to survive in an unfriendly market place. We were undercapitalized and resourced from the get go. We set out to make films, videos and do work that married money and meaning. We cared more about Mandela than Monica. We were internationalists while many in the progressive community looked inward and became immersed in domestic politics. While some were focusing on Texas, we were also interested in Tajikistan.

We set ourselves up as a company, not a cause. We had good years and bad. The More You Watch details our early work on human rights and South Africa. This essay brings part of the story, mostly my part, up to date at least through the summer of ’06.

Let me pick up where the book left off ten years ago - following up on the call it made for a Media Channel to watch all the other channels, a network through which media savvy groups could come together and showcase their concerns. When that fantasy “balloon” went up, it was conceived as a potential TV channel on the cable dial, an outlet for films, programs and criticism, themed around the role our media plays. The idea was to provide a platform for an ongoing critique and counter-narrative to the news as it was being reported.

Wouldn’t it be cool, I thought, to be able to deconstruct, comment upon and analyze media in real time, not, as so many academics do, years later after it had become forgotten or part of an unread historical record? We wanted to intervene in the ongoing media debate, deepen it and organize around it.

It was in that period that my partner Rory and I looked out of our Globalvision offices in Times Square and saw the transformation of our neighborhood into a mecca for media and a physical epicenter of media concentration with all the big networks and ancillary businesses clustered in a ten block area, or at least represented with signage, studios and other symbols of the power of their “brand.”

As if to symbolize the interdependence of finance power and media power, the NASDAQ exchange and an investment bank positioned themselves at each corner of the square. In the middle, a Toys R’ Us shopping mall opened across the street from the new MTV store, with a bevy of other brand-name outlets that market their wares through advertising, much of it on TV. The legendary “crossroads of the world”, the aptly named “Great White Way”, for all its ostentatious lighting, now has a new mission as the epicenter of media empires.

Watching this transformation in front of own eyes led to another insight: our aspirations for producing independent media about the problems of the world would be forever limited unless we could somehow tackle that “beast.”

We had to recognize that one of the big problems of the world, the Capital M Media, was right in front of us and barely acknowledged as a problem. Its legendary “gate-keepers” were there to dumb down the content, commercialize all messaging and keep our kind of progressive content off the air. It wasn’t exactly a conspiracy but similar templates, ways or working and market logics operated to sanitize news and suppress more critical fare. Most of the time, programming was not rejected explicitly on political or content grounds. It was always rather “good work, but it’s not for us.” We began to call that knew jerk response: “NFU.”

We were media people with some knowledge and insight into the way the industry works - and doesn’t work in terms of deepening our democracy. This was our issue if there ever was one.

We were just a handful of people, but we hadn’t shied away from tackling big problems. For three years, we produced weekly programs exposing apartheid in South Africa and the fight against it. Our South Africa Now series won awards and helped support the fight for democracy in that “beloved country.” Our follow-up series Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television with Charlayne Hunter Gault did the same for under covered human rights abuses worldwide. Many of our films also broke ground in raising issues that others shied away from.

Tackling the media, in the way we wanted to do it, was no small task. How do you even get a handle on a problem, which is so well financed and so deeply accepted, in our culture? What’s the “way-in” and how can you have any impact at all.

First we had to abandon the idea of a TV channel. It was far too expensive to even contemplate. Most channel start-ups back in the l990’s were in the $50-75 MILLION dollar range. And even if you somehow come up with high-quality alternative programming, who would air it? Not the media monopolies controlling the cable systems. If there’s one thing that media companies hate more than on target criticism, it’s having those criticisms turn up on their own airwaves.

Next, we had to find a model for what we could do. If we couldn’t get on-air, we could, we thought do it on-line. As an internationally oriented company, Globalvision always had an eye on what was happening overseas.

It was then we found the fledging One World network in England, which first launched in l995. Its organizer Peter Armstrong, a former TV producer like ourselves, realized that content from NGO organizations concerned with the issues of the South could be aggregated and brought together on one website, a “supersite” or portal that could bring a world of concerned people and organizations together in the same virtual space to offer news and information about shared hopes and problems.

The Omidyar Network would later describe it this way:

One World encourages people to discover their power - power to speak, connect, and make a difference - by providing access to information, and enabling connections between hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of people around the world.

The people drive the One World network and organizations it supports - people write the news, provide the video clips and the radio stories. Through this network, individuals have access to information previously unavailable to them - information that can broaden their world view and enable them to make better decisions.

I went to London, actually to Peter and his family’s farmhouse in the rolling fields outside Oxford, to see for myself. I was impressed. A new world of media was emerging in the English countryside.

A Media Channel could be built along those lines. Peter was supportive and welcomed us to become a One World Affiliate. A colleague went to Oxford in 1999 to build a prototype that we would later use for funding what became our not for profit network.

We now had a way to realize our big idea. One World’s technology was a bit clunky, but it worked. Some funders saw the potential. One gave us computers and even sent over a crack team of Chinese technicians to wire it up and help us get online.

The core of the idea was to build partnerships with like-minded organizations worldwide so that readers would find a wide range of diverse views. As we struggled with the technical challenges - that would later support more than 1300 affiliates - not always smoothly, we hammered out a mission statement and plan of action:

MediaChannel.org is a nonprofit, public interest web-based network dedicated to raising awareness and promoting citizen action around global media issues. We seek to do more than encourage structural reforms and regulations; we seek more responsibility, accountability and transparency within media organizations and seek to defend media freedom while encouraging better journalism to serve the public interest.

Media channel aspires to become a robust, internationally respected on-line media platform for an informed non-partisan and post-partisan discourse about the critical link between media and democracy, featuring solution-oriented media analysis, education, research, criticism, debate and activism.

We report on the media but also inspire citizen engagement by participating in industry conferences, speaking out on radio and television, producing books and encouraging films, while campaigning to challenge and change media practices.

What We Will Do

Media Channel is concerned with the political, cultural and social impacts of our media system, large and small. Media Channel exists to provide comprehensive news, information and diverse perspectives to inspire collaboration, action and engagement through citizen journalism and reform. Making sense of the steady stream of info-tainment requires background, context and interpretation. It demands outreach and inspiration.

Media Channel is unique in offering news, reports and analysis from our editors and an international network of contributors, media-issues organizations and publications, as well as original features from contributors and staff. Our highly visible and diverse team speaks widely at universities and events worldwide, organizes well-attended public events and appears on radio and TV.

Our slogan: “While the media watch the world. We watch the media.”

THE NEXT STEP

Once we had a prototype, we began to reach out to organizations and individuals we thought might join us. Since we saw media as a global force, we needed to involve colleagues overseas. We were not just interested in recruiting from the progressive community. As media makers, we wanted other media professionals to join us. If we were to be taken seriously as more than advocates on the fringes, we wanted to engage with as many media people and institutions as possible. From our own experience we knew that change had to take place on the inside often with pressure from the outside.

As I began to reach out for people who might be interested in helping us, I spoke with Lewis Lapham, the former editor of Harper’s, a brilliant thinker and writer. Lewis told me about an Italian publisher who was very outspoken on the issue but also very busy and hard to reach during his infrequent visits to America.

His name was Leonardo Mondadori, the scion of the famous publishing company that had been taken over by the Berlusconi media interests. Some in Leonardo’s family had connived with Berlusconi while Leonardo resisted the takeover. In the end, the company was acquired but Leonardo remained in charge at least nominally. This experience had raised his consciousness about the dangers of media consolidation as a global problem and he vowed to fight it.

I dropped the names of Lapham and an Italian supporter of ours, Marialina Marcucci, who ran our Rights & Wrongs series on the Satelllite channel Superchannel she once owned in Europe. He then agreed to see me in his penthouse apartment at the posh Hotel Carlyle on New York’s East Side. He was friendly, charming and interested and checked me out quickly by calling Marialina on her cell phone in Italy to see if she really knew me. He put her on the phone. After a few Ciaos and some personal back and forth, he was was ready to hear my pitch.

He loved the prototype and “got” the idea and its value at once. He offered to help, and eventually did with advice, active support and money. Here was another lesson in the power of positive contradictions. A wealthy Italian in the top ranks of that country’s media elite wanted to change the media as much as we did, and he had the means to help us do it.

With Leonardo’s help and a few foundation grants, we launched Media Channel on February 1, 2000. The date had a special significance for me because it was the anniversary of the first student anti-segregation sit-in at the Woolworth’s store in Greensboro North Carolina. That dramatic action sparked the civil rights movement of the 60s and inspired me to join in.

We were at the beginning of a new century and we had a new project. Our launch event drew prominent journalists and an endorsement from Walter Cronkite who couldn’t make it but sent a message on video. We were thrilled when the newscaster called the “most trusted man in America” agreed to bless our insurgent effort to try to reform an industry which was, as he noted, urgently in need of change.

He sent a message to our launch event. So there we were, activists and advocates turning to a big screen for the man who had represented the best, and often the limits of network news, for so many years. He said:

“Good evening, I’m Walter Cronkite. I really wanted to be with you in person tonight for Globalvision New Media’s launch of the new Internet site the Media Channel, but unfortunately I was called out of the country. Yet the issues that led to the creation of this unique global resource, and the crisis that’s facing all of us who work in and care about journalism and the media, are so profound that I simply felt compelled to tape this message so that you would know that I am with you in spirit at least.

As you know, I’ve been increasingly and publicly critical of the direction that journalism has taken of late, and of the impact on democratic discourse and principles. Like you, I’m deeply concerned about the merger mania that has swept our industry, diluting standards, dumbing down the news, and making the bottom line sometimes seem like the only line. It isn’t and it shouldn’t be.

At the same time, I’m impressed that so many other serious and concerned people around the world are also becoming interested in holding media companies accountable and upholding the highest standards of journalism.

The Media Channel will undoubtedly be worth watching and taking part in. I am intrigued by its potential, and its global reach….”

That was a heady endorsement. Media channel was up and running. Some funding was in place as we began our work amidst many internal debates about what we should do and how we should do it. In the years that followed, we made many mistakes but also did something right: the site survived…

(TO BE CONTINUED)

I am back from Germany on June 5th. Your comments and help are very welcome. We have always wanted the readers to become contributors assume some responsibility for the site.

Write: Dissector@mediachannel.org

PS. Sorry to those whose letters I couldn’t post today.

PPS: A special treat: MARK TWAIN’S WAR PRAYER–WATCH