We get no TV here in the hills and I catch up with the cable world when I visit my folks. I get caught up on what people reference here and also get a zietgeist check. The internet is a great way to get the range of opinion coming out of the corporate media. The latest outrage or insight gets talked about online and posted on Youtube. But the overall gestalt of the corporate cable drumbeat is hard to replicate online. I really need a couple hours of zoning to the tube to fall into what corporate opinion makers want us paying attention to. So the obvious stuff is so obvious that even the news heads talk about how overdone it is. The Anna Nicole Smith trial is obviously burying the Scooter Libby trial.
But then there are stories like Paula Zahn's Hip hop: Art or Poison? that give a sense of how insidiously corporate media regulate race and gender. Below is more corporate cable analysis plus a review of Bernie Sander's Mardi Gras media reform conference
This CNN "special programming" asserts that "Hip-hop has been accused of glorifying violence, objectifying women and promoting homophobia, and at the same time has been praised for reflecting the realities of urban life. we bring the controversy out in the open."
Now mind you, I did not see this programming as it hasn't aired yet; I only saw the teaser ads for it. And those teasers do tease with images from the most lurid rap videos: voluptuous black booty shakin to the sounds of Paula Zahn's moral opprobrium. In these promotions, CNN is titilating its audience with hypersexualized negritude, while at the same time castigating the moral looseness of race music. In 2007. The story gets to have its cake and eat it too-- CNN blends the puritan and the pornographer in a great American tradition running from Salem to Kenneth Starr. And note that Zahn the white woman frames her moral superiority from a lens of PC concerns: violence, objectification, and homophobia.
Her media criticism is limited to race music though. There is no examination of how cable news itself promotes violence, objectification, and homophobia. No these sins are placed firmly on the black man. All this while cashing in on black ass shakin for middle aged middle Americans. Now we all know that in February, news organizations do "black" stories. CNN is also doing a feature on civil rights that has become standard February media fare. The slew of "Is Obama Black?" stories is another great example of corporate media doing "black" stories this month. But Paula, she really wanted to go deep and flash stereotyped fantasy images of race and gender to celebrate the resilience of the African Amercian community. thanks Paula.
SO yeah I think corporate culture regulates race and gender in a highly ideological way. Call me nuts. That's my segue into the Senator Bernie Sanders Town Meeting on Media Ownership and Why it Matters of February 20, 2007. FCC commissioner Johnathan Adelstein made it clear that Congress does not as a rule take away property and that the goal of decentraliziing media concentration would have to contend with that reality. Congress is not going to liquidate the vast media empires (5: Viacom, News Corp, GE, Disney, Time/Warner) amassed under the lax regulatory ennvironment. Adelstein brought up anti-trust laws but seemed to be saying that anti-trust arguments won't work because these media conglomerates are not true monopolies.
During the Q&A, A woman said that she tracked the ABC and CBS News and found them to be virtually indistinguishable in content. The only difference was the order they presented their stories. So her insight begs the question: If these 5 media outlets function like a monopoly, then doesn't anti-trust apply? These are not coal or steel or oil industries; this is our culture industry and it is constantly promoting the same stilted categories for thinking about human differences like gender and ethnicity. Yes Virgnia there is a strikingly uniform ideology of competitive individualism permeating our corporate culture.
Bernie Sanders stated that he will be introducing media reform legislation and he did not divulge details but he did make it sound as though the legislation's main purpose would be to educate the American people on the fact that the broadcast airwaves are public. I will keep us posted as he crafts and introduces his legislation.
Meanwhile you can take CNN's poll Do you think Hiphop is art or poison? Right now the score (1254 voters)is 36% Art to 64% poison.