Satellite, McChesney, and the Media

We moved recently and in doing so decided to go with The Dish Network. I held out a long time over the years and kept to an old-fashioned antenna. The networks have gotten to the point now that there's very little worth watching. Not even Saturday mornings have cartoons anymore and 7-8pm are not longer reserved for family friendly shows. I waffle back and forth on TV or no TV at all, but I must say that getting the satellite system has proved to be very enjoyable so far. The number of "family friendly" stations is nice, but the thing I'm enjoying over the cable package we had before is the number of alternative news and public access stations. As an example this morning I was watching UCTV--University of California Television. On the broadcastRobert McChesney was giving a great lecture on the state of media in the US. Since it was a university station and a lecture to boot, he was able to give a pretty in depth overview of media, policies affecting the media, history, etc.... No shouting, no 20 second sound bites. Points were developed and clarified. It's sad to say, but that kind of programing has become so rare in my experience that it does feel pretty novel at this point to see this kind of broadcast. I enjoy documentaries on a couple other stations and watch DemocracyNow each morning. All in all a nice discovery so far. BTW you can click on the University of California link and then select McChesney's lecture to view it online.

A few of the points he brought up that I thought were very thought provoking were that the first amendment should protect us from a few conglomerates controlling the media just as much as it should protect us from government control. He also pointed out that a truly free press or the lack thereof is completely determined by government policy making. Free press is not an organic entity that just springs up on its own. There have to be policies that allow that to happen. I thought of the internet, bloggers, and other forms of alternative media and how they may be restricted or supported by government policies in the future. Anyway, check out the links.