Bob McChesney's Presentation on Media Reform (11/14/03)

As part of our ongoing speaker series supported by the Ford Foundation's Division of Knowledge, Creativity & Freedom, our November 14 presentation was entitled, "The Emerging Media Reform Movement." Our distinguished speaker was Bob McChesney, one of our own professors in the Institute of Communications Research.

ABSTRACT: The National Conference on Media Reform took place in Madison, Wisconsin, November 7-9, 2003, and was attended by an overflow audience of media and community activists. Professor Bob McChesney, a keynote speaker at the conference, discussed his recent book, The Problem of the Media, in which he takes seven or eight myths, misconceptions, and lies about existing media corporations and systematically debunks them. In this presentation, McChesney focuses on the main myth in his latest work: i.e., that today's corporate commercial media system is somehow "natural." In his criticism of policies that give corporations the ability to dominate all media outlets, McChesney emphasizes the ongoing subsidization of corporate media by the U.S. government. Addressing the unquestioned practice of FCC corporate handouts, he points to the need for deconstructing propaganda terms like "deregulation," and the goals of the media reform movement in creating more competitive and decentralized policies that offer greater support for non-profit stations.

BACKGROUND READING: (1) McChesney, R. and J. Nichols (2003). Up in Flames. The Nation (November 17, 2003 issue). Available online at The Nation ("Up in Flames")

Robert W. McChesney is Research Professor in the Institute of Communications Research at UIUC and holds joint appointments in Library and Information Science and Media Studies. He is also a Senior Research Scientist in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC. Professor McChesney's primary research interests are: history of communication, political economy of communication, media policy, and international communication. In 2002 he co-founded, with Dan Schiller, the Illinois Initiative on Global Information and Communication Policy. In 2003, with John Nichols and Josh Silver, he co-founded Free Press, a national media reform organization. Professor McChesney has written or edited eight books including the award winning Telecommunications, Mass Media, and Democracy: The Battle for the Control of U.S. Broadcasting, 1928-1935 (Oxford University Press, 1993), Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy (Seven Stories Press, 1997), and, with Edward S. Herman, The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism (Cassell, 1997). McChesney's most recent books are the multiple award-winning Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times (New Press, 2000) and, with John Nichols, Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media (Seven Stories Press, 2002). Professor McChesney is presently at work on his ninth and tenth books: with John Bellamy Foster, The Big Picture: Understanding Media Through Political Economy, to be published in 2003 by Monthly Review Press; with Ben Scott, he is editing a book to be published by the New Press in 2003 titled: Journalism and U.S. Democracy: The Critical Tradition. In 2001 Adbusters Magazine named him one of the Nine Pioneers of Mental Environmentalism. McChesney co-edits, with John Nerone, the History of Communication Series for the University of Illinois Press.

For more information on media criticism and activism, visit Bob McChesney's website and the Free Press media reform website.