<nettime> Robert McChesney: Dark Trends in World Media - "Copyright is a government enforced monopoly."

["George(s) Lessard" <media@web.net>]

Robert McChesney: Dark Trends in World Media
http://www.wacc.org.uk/publications/action/245/mcchesney.html

[Excerpt]

"... Media critic Robert McChesney is the author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy:
Communication Politics in Dubious Times, and most recently, It's the Media,
Stupid!. He is a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research
at the University of Illinois. The following are extracts of a talk he gave at
WACC's office in London on June 13th 2002.

In the media, especially US journalism in the past six month's or a year, I
see some very dark trends, I think all of you work in global political issues,
this is not a discussion that ends at the borders of the United States, this is
about the US role in the world, how the world's going to be governed in the
next generation, how we're going to resolve the daunting social problems that
face us, and the role the United States is going to play in the continuation or
resolution of the those problems. 

Copyright is a government enforced monopoly.

I think that noone here needs to be convinced that media and communication
issues are central to social justice issues, to issues of fairness and equity,
to self-governance, those points are probably self-evident. And I suspect that
I don't need to give a long critique of the neo-liberal approach to media and
other matters, although it is still the dominant ideological rhetorical
position of the world, though the rhetorical position may have nothing to do
with the reality, the rhetorical position of course is that a corporate-
dominated, commercially driven media system is the natural order of things, and
that this automatically proves to be the best possible outcome for the human
race.

Now, those are both lies, they're both extraordinary lies. We used to call the
Big Lies with capital letter.

There's nothing natural about a commercial media system, it doesn't fall from
the sky, it doesn't come flying out of “the wealth of nations” when you open
it to chapter eight. A commercial media system is the explicit result of
government policies, aggressive regulation to create the system that wouldn't
exist without extraordinary government intervention.

The US media system, the much-heralded free-market system, is the result of
extraordinary government intervention that created it, in the public's name
but without the public's informed consent. The largest media companies,
without exception, are built on the back of government-sanctioned monopolies
for broadcast frequency or cable systems, and they then use the super-profits
from those monopolies to acquire film studies and all the accoutrements of
being a super-power. But those are government created and enforce monopolies.
Even those industries that are considered to be less regulated, the internet
now, film, music, publishing…all depend upon copyright for the basis of their
commercial success...."

"...Links

Robert McChesney's own site contains many articles, interviews, lectures 
reports and information on his books:
www.robertmcchesney.com/

The political economy of global media, article in Media Development
www.wacc.org.uk/publications/md/md1998-4/mcchesney.html

Rocket Science: Robert McChesney on private power, public broadcasting and how 
corporate media subvert democracy.
www.mediachannel.org/views/interviews/mcchesney.shtml


The full transcript of Robert MCChesney's talk will soon be placed on this 
page...."-- 
:-) :-) Message Ends; Signature File Begins (-: (-: 
                 George Lessard
               Communication Arts, 
        Management, Training & Mentoring
       http://members.tripod.com/media002
                      -O-
          ICANN @Large Member # 375469
                      -O-
           Professional Memberships: 
       Canadian Association of Journalists
          http://www.eagle.ca/caj/
        Canadian Artists' Representation /
        le Front des artistes canadiens
             http://www.carfac.ca/
         Canadian Artists Representation 
           Copyright Collective Inc.
        http://www.carfac.ca/collective/
                      -O-
           Nunavut Employees Union
              http://neu.ca/
                      -O-
             E-mail when at home:
         media@_no_spam_web.net
             or when on the road, 
mediamentor@_no_spam_canada.com
                    - 30 -

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