The problem of Media, for the individual, is a deep psychological one. Anyone who has ever taken a puppy from its mother to a new home knows something about imprinting. The puppy begins to assign emotions and feelings it had previously held toward its mother, now toward its human masters, sometimes even toward inanimate objects such as a blanket or a pair of shoes.
Modern civilization is now dominated by generations who were set down in front of a TV set at a very early age. The TV was and remains a surrogate parent in most households. We were imprinted by the Screen (and quite literally so -- it is well-established that television imposes a refocus of the human optical lens on its young consumers); thus began our deep emotional relationship to Media technology and to mediated life -- a very complex psychological relationship that must be explored and better understood if a way out is to be found.
This, if true, means that all the varied emotions people normally have toward their parents, they now have toward Media (which, enjoying our labor and attention, keeps us, correspondingly, in an infantile state as a population). Madison Avenue has been aware of this "infantilization process" for decades, and has worked very successfully to keep us spectators in our own time; spectators in our own homes!
And yet, this imposed depth of relationship we have, as individuals,
with technology (and with Media as its highest manifestation)
has also led many to a simmering, Oedipal-type, rage against
techno-tyranny. The Unabomber is perhaps the most extreme example,
but popular culture is also filled with outbursts of less violent
complaint against the inhumanity of a mechanized culture. This
is a core emotion behind the environmental movement. It can also
be seen in many strains of conservative complaints against Media.
It is also a theme of much popular art, science fiction and theater.
Unless and until this rage finds its transformation in a popular
revolt of unmediated creativity, it will continue to ricochet
around society in the form of the constant humiliations that
occur when unhappy individuals encounter other unhappy individuals;
the hidden tax on Daily Life that results from mass disempowerment.
Politics has ceased to decide the issues that most impact our Daily Lives; we find the current grids of political expression inadequate to our task of reclaiming the terrain of Daily Life 15. For example, who ever voted for an urban life dominated by an overpopulation of automobiles? (We reject the fiction that the public "voted" as consumers by purchasing and using motor vehicles; when individuals are forced by economics to participate in an activity, that does not constitute free choice -- that is, in fact, an imposition, a tyranny.) The most significant changes to our lives are not voted on: they are announced as new inventions, each as a fait accompli, in an ideology of technological inevitability.
Instead of being able to formulate our own concerns into policy, the public is now presented with a menu of "issues" from which a limited set of options are forwarded: are you for or against abortion? lower taxes? the environment? Buzzwords and soundbites have replaced real democracy. "Identity politics" have shaved every social insurrection down to an unacknowledged rallying cry of "Larger Crumbs, Bigger Cages!" Thus, people over-identify with groups (based on race, gender, sexuality, religion, generation, class and category of worker or consumer), and then seek to win for their market niche greater economic and political power (usually at the expense of other groups) in ways that strengthen the very mechanisms of control that continue to oppress them as individuals.
"Campaign finance reform" is an excellent example of this kind of issue. Much ado is now made of what some of us said years ago; monied interests have too much influence over government and politics 16. Even the Media -- the primary beneficiary of our current electoral system (if measured in dollars and cents) -- acknowledges public discontent over money's prevailing influence over campaigns. It's pretty much accepted by most, now, that this is a problem. And most people 'get' the arrangement by which corporations and PACS donate to political campaigns and collect legislation and special treatment as a result.
Yet everyone inside the Media seems to be missing, or omitting from their coverage, the obvious. Where does the money go? The trail leads back to Media.
"Follow the money" is a journalistic catch-phrase, obviously of little meaning to a working press that has failed to trace the political paper trail to its conclusion. The public has thus been fed a mythology that it's the politicians who personally pocket these millions of dollars that go into their campaigns (this, too, has its deleterious effects on the body politic, in the form of cynicism bordering on scapegoating toward a whole calss of persons -- politicians). But the fact remains that, in most campaigns, more than fifty cents on the dollar goes directly to the Media for advertising: a question of "cui bono?" invites a most disturbing answer.
Who is the racket set up to benefit most? The Media. And who owns the media? The legal owners (Westinghouse, GE, Capital Cities, Disney, Murdoch and Microsoft) control the levers of power, but also, no less significantly, the advertising class to which the Media rents our daily attentions have their stake in maintaining this system. Companies that advertise their products in the Media enjoy a kind of "time-share" ownership -- those who own title to the property answer to them 17. The overlap between campaign donors and the eventual recipients of that money is a story the Media cannot tell without exposing itself and its sponsors. Is it any wonder, then, that it's so difficult to build 18 a language for true campaign reform or for any systemic changes, given the Media's endless capacity (and motive) to confound the real issues?
Author's Updated Notes About This Section:
15. In our analysis, the theft of the 2000 presidential elections in the United States of America gives greater weight to our 1997 argument that politics, at least in the United States, is an illusion. (You won't find much disagreement with that statement outside of the United States, and above all in Latin America, where the public understands it perfectly well.) This view was also formed by my years watching the U.S. political system from within, as a political reporter focused almost exclusively on politics and elections in the United States.
16. This is one of the reasons why, on Narco News, we never ask anyone to "write your congressman" or lobby for legislation. We pick no quarrels with those who, out of a sincere belief in incremental change, or of a sense of urgency to halt repressive legislation, engage in that kind of activity. But it is not anything that we consider productive for ourselves; to enter a fixed game with an unlevel playing field would be folly for us. That kind of tinkering with a corrupted system is obsolete. It is already inadvisable to approach public policy - or the commercial media - with anything less than a sledgehammer in hand.
17. A recent report in the Guardian of London (July 15, 2002) unmasked yet another catagory of "anti-journalists" who are working backroom pressures on journalism: investment fund managers! The power of money comes like vultures from all sides to pick at the carcass of journalism. We repeat: Only a the mighty sledgehammer of the people can stop this now institutionalized form of meddling from above.
18. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, authentic journalists and citizens are inventing, together, a new way to counter-act the pressures from above with a smart resistance from below wielding the arms of community TV and radio (what are called, in every other country on earth, "pirate" radio or TV, but which are now a protected right by the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999, which may be the most significant governmental free speech document since the First Amendment of 1783. Which brings us back to the immediate history that, today, breathes new life into that mighty sledgehammer of the people: The rise of Community Media, topic of this July 2002 report on Narco News.
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