La Presidenza USA sta facendo due mosse strategiche del massimo rilievo.
Mossa uno: chiede al Senato e al Congresso di autorizzare, e quindi
finanziare, la ricerca sulle armi atomiche tattiche (quelle da usare sul
campo di battaglia).
Come spiegano i due articoli che riporto più sotto (un reportage sulla
votazione al Senato, e un'intervista all'ex capo ispettore agli armamenti
dell'ONU) lo sviluppo delle atomiche tattiche rappresenta una svolta
decisiva sul piano della dottrina militare, e quindi della pratica politica,
degli Stati Uniti d'America.
Mossa due: sta cercando di eliminare le regolamentazioni che limitano la
concentrazione monopolistica dei mass media.
(Come, lo argomenta esaurientemente l'articolo che riporto qui sotto).
Queste due iniziative sono passi decisivi. La prima serve alla piena
applicazione della nuova dottrina militare americana: la dottrina della
guerra preventiva richiede che gli Stati Uniti siano in grado di sostenere
contemporaneamente due guerre, una maggiore (con uno Stato delle dimensioni
dell'India, per intenderci) e una minore (come quella con l'Iraq, per
intenderci). Per essere sicuro di farcela, l'esercito USA deve poter contare
sulla possibilità di usare anche le atomiche, sul campo di battaglia, e di
usarle efficacemente. Non essendoci precedenti storici, la ricerca
(scientifica e per così dire filosofica) ha un'importanza che non si può
sottovalutare.
L'altra (non c'è bisogno di spiegare, direi) serve a compattare il fronte
interno. Se cadono le regolamentazioni antimonopolistiche nel settore dei
media, le grandi catene acquisteranno anche tutte le emittenti televisive, e
tutti i giornali locali. (Alle radio, come spiega l'articolo, è già
successo).
Il Senato USA ha appena dato il suo assenso alla ricerca sulle armi
nucleari
tattiche richiesta dalla Casa Bianca (riporto l'articolo del Boston Globe)
Il significato strategico di questa scelta, che è del massimo rilievo
politico e militare, viene illustrato da una intervista che la radio
australiana ha chiesto, pochi giorni fa, all'ex capo Ispettore agli
Armamenti dell'ONU, Richard Butler (il predecessore di Hans Blix). Testo a
seguire.
Senate OK's repeal of 'mininuke' ban
White House sought green light for study, development of arms
By Robert Schlesinger, Globe Staff, 5/21/2003
WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted last night to repeal a decade-old ban
on
developing low-yield nuclear weapons, affirming a Bush administration
push
to study new uses for nuclear arms.
Debate is expected to continue today on the issue, as well as on
continued
study of nuclear weapons capable of shattering hardened, deeply buried
bunkers.
The issue had been building since the Bush administration released a
''Nuclear Posture Review'' in January 2002 that called for researching
new
types of nuclear weapons. The Senate debate illustrated competing
visions
for the makeup and size of the US nuclear arsenal -- one envisioning a
diminishing reliance on nuclear weapons in a world with overwhelming
US
conventional superiority and the other bringing nuclear deterrence
capabilities out of the Cold War and into a post-Sept. 11 world.
Critics
said the United States cannot simultaneously try to prevent the
proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world and consider
augmenting
its own arsenal.
''Traditionally, Democrats have viewed nuclear weapons as nearly
unusable,
a deterrent of last resort,'' said Loren Thompson, chief operating
officer
of the libertarian Lexington Institute and an opponent of such new
nuclear
research. ''Republicans, on the other hand, particularly since the
Reagan
years, have sought to integrate nuclear weapons into the broader
arsenal
of war-fighting tools, to treat them simply as a more powerful version
of
conventional weapons.''
At the Bush administration's request, the Senate Armed Services
Committee
voted this month to repeal a 1993 ban on developing small atomic
weapons
-- ''mininukes'' -- and authorize more research into nuclear-tipped
''bunker-buster'' weapons, which the United States has been studying
for
the past two years. Advocates of studying such weapons argued that it
is
necessary to deal with new threats, while opponents said it
dangerously
blurred the differences between conventional and nuclear conflicts.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who sponsored
an
amendment last night removing the repeal, argued: ''The issue is as
clear
as any issue ever gets. You're either for nuclear war or you're not.''
The Senate voted 51 to 43 to put aside Kennedy's amendment, but is
expected to consider a compromise amendment by Senator Carl Levin of
Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, that
would
allow research but not development of low-yield weapons.
Bush administration officials, careful to say that they are not
currently
advocating construction or deployment of the weapons, argue that such
research is justified by the dangers the nation can expect to face in
coming years. Smaller-yield nuclear weapons could be needed, they
said,
because traditional US deterrent capabilities are ineffective against
enemies who place less value on protecting their citizens.
''We don't need to stick our head in the sand, we don't need to assume
other countries aren't out there studying nuclear weapons,'' said
Senator
Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who sits on the Armed Services
Committee.
Opponents argued that even research at a time when the United States
is
trying to stem nuclear proliferation abroad would send a mixed message
and
lower the threshold for nuclear use. ''The idea is to make a nuclear
weapon less horrible so we wouldn't be afraid to use it,'' said John
Holdren of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the chairman of the
Committee on International Security at the National Academy of
Sciences.
The ''bunker-buster'' may be required, officials said, because
potential
enemies are burrowing farther underground.
''To the extent the United States is prohibited from studying the use
of
such weapons -- for example, for a deep earth penetrator -- it tells
the
world that they're wise to invest in going underground,'' Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said.
Critics argued that no nuclear weapon could burrow deep enough in the
earth to avoid sending a radioactive plume into the sky.
''We have to keep in mind that using such a weapon not only busts the
bunker, but it busts the city or it busts the province where the thing
is
being detonated,'' said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the
nonpartisan Arms Control Association.
But advocates say that such a weapon could still have a place in a
21st-century arsenal.
''We need to be able to counter and we need to look at the array of
capacities necessary to do it,'' said Jack Spencer, senior defense
analyst
with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. ''If we can
do it
with a conventional capacity, that's fine. But we shouldn't take
nuclear
off the table just because nuclear has a bad reputation.''
Robert Schlesinger can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This story ran on page A2 of the Boston Globe on 5/21/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
Search CounterPunch
May 17, 2003
America's Shocking Hypocrisy on WMD
An Interview with Richard Butler
By MARK DAVIS
Transcript of an interview on Australia's Dateline on SBC.
A few days ago, the US Senate Armed Services Committee voted to repeal
a
long-standing ban on the development of small nuclear bombs---so
called
mini nukes. For 10 years the US has abided by an international
moratorium
on the testing of nuclear weapons---another international convention
now
likely to go up in smoke. Tonight's guest, Richard Butler, has had a
long
involvement in nuclear disarmament issues. Perhaps better known as the
former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, most of his career was spent
in
helping to forge the international anti-nuclear
conventions---including a
spell as Australia's Ambassador for Disarmament.
MARK DAVIS: Richard Butler, the US Armed Services Committee has just
passed a motion supporting the development of what they're calling
mini
nukes. Does this signal the beginning of another arms race? How
serious
should we take it?
RICHARD BUTLER, FORMER UN CHIEF ARMS INSPECTOR: I can't overstate the
seriousness of it. It is absolutely shocking. If this becomes the
policy
of the United States Government, if it passes through the Congress and
the
Bush Administration, which wants it to be the policy, if it implements
it,
it will involve the United States walking away from, tearing up,
solemn
obligations that it's made for 30 years now under international law,
and
on which the world relies---an obligation to progressively reduce the
number of nuclear weapons in the world so that they don't spread to
other
countries. Instead of honouring that obligation, this would involve
tearing it up, walking away from it and, in fact, making new nuclear
weapons, going in exactly the opposite direction.
MARK DAVIS: Well, it's pretty dramatic departure from---I think we all
thought that nuclear proliferation was behind it. Who's pushing for
this?
RICHARD BUTLER: The Bush Administration. It's been clear now for about
two
years that George W. Bush and the people around him want to have
nuclear
weapons in the regular battlefield arsenal of the United States armed
forces. No more a question of nuclear weapons simply being there to
deter
what was the Soviet Union, the big scale intercontinental stuff. The
question of whether that really worked or not is something we probably
haven't got time to talk about. But for the whole of the period of
nuclear
weapons since the end of the Second World War, their stated purpose
was
for deterrence, mutual assured destruction, the outcome of which was
supposed to be that therefore they would never be used. They would
just
deter each other. Now, the Bush Administration wants to have nuclear
weapons in the regular battlefield arsenal of its armed forces in
order to
use them in the same way that they'd use a conventional artillery
piece, a
conventional missile, an ordinary cannon. That's what they want to do
and
they're the ones pushing for it.
MARK DAVIS: Well, they have an argument for that, of course, is that
this
now has a strategic use with limited fallout, for use against
terrorist
groups or rogue states where otherwise a lot of troops would be lost
in
taking that position. There is a certain logic...
RICHARD BUTLER: There's none. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it's
just
profound nonsense. Look, even Colin Powell, who's now Secretary of
State,
when he was in charge of the United States armed forces wrote in his
main
book about his experiences as a military commander that when he was in
charge in Europe, he dreaded, he dreaded that the order would come
from
Washington to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield, tactical rather
than
strategic nuclear weapons. He said there in his book---and everyone
knows
this, Mark---they are useless and dangerous. All they do is escalate.
There is nothing that you can't achieve with today's high precision
conventional weapons that would require you to go, to take that step,
to
cross what is called the nuclear threshold and use nuclear weapons. If
you
cross that threshold, you enter into weapons of mass destruction, you
transform the battlefield into a place where the other side can do the
same and, look, the fundamental irony of the situation we're dealing
with
here is that we have just witnessed the United States go to Iraq to
remove
Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and it is now itself proposing
to
acquire new weapons of mass destruction. It makes no sense in logic,
in
politics, in proliferation terms and it makes no sense on the
battlefield.
There is nothing that needs to be achieved on the battlefield today
that
can't be achieved with conventional non-nuclear, non-mass destruction
weapons.
MARK DAVIS: Well, at the moment, it's passed a committee stage which
is
significant in itself, but from your discussions with US officials and
your contacts in the States, how far up the food chain is this likely
to
progress? Are we being overly dramatic in even talking about it now?
RICHARD BUTLER: No, I find it pretty astonishing that people haven't
been
talking about it already, that's why I welcome being with you here
tonight
and congratulate you for doing it. Because you see, Mark, we are
witnessing a profound change in the way in which the world has been
run
since the Second World War. A cornerstone of that world has been the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a bit of a mouthful, but that's the
treaty that states---that those who have nuclear weapons will
progressively get rid of them and those who do not have them, will
never
get them. So that we'll come one day to a point where no-one will have
nuclear weapons. The United States and the other four official nuclear
weapons powers, the five of them, are obligated under that treaty to
progressively reduce. Now, if the United States goes ahead and does
what
is being planned, and walks away from that obligation and, in fact,
starts
to make new nuclear weapons, I promise you, Mark, it will be the end
of
the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty that we extended a few years ago
to
be indefinite in the life of humankind---after 30 years of operation,
it
was extended in 1995 to be indefinite---and the elemental bargain
there is
that those who don't have them won't get them, and those who do have
them
will get rid of them. And if the United States does this, people will
walk
away from that treaty, we'll see---you saw what India and Pakistan
did, we
know what Israel has done, we know what Iran is looking for, North
Korea,
it will spread, because you cannot say to another country "It's OK for
me
to have nuclear weapons because my security is so important..."
MARK DAVIS: But that's the point, isn't it?
RICHARD BUTLER: "..but you can't."
MARK DAVIS: That's exactly what America is doing now. What does it do
for
the authority of the American voice to talk to North Korea, to talk to
Iran about nuclear weapons?
RICHARD BUTLER: It trashes it. It trashes it. This administration in
Washington is honestly asking other human beings to believe that
American
security is so precious, that it can have in its possession whatever
weapons of mass destruction it might want, but others can't. You know,
I
heard that argument for years. I've worked on this subject for over a
quarter of a century. I heard it for years, in particular in India.
I've
written a book about it. And the Indians were quite compelling, saying
"We
can't accept that somehow American security is more important than
ours.
We've got China on our border with nuclear weapons, they've attacked
us
several times. We can't accept the basic inequity that is involved in
that
position." The United States is about to bring that inequity to a
height
and it will have nothing to say, nothing that it can credibly say to
any
other country---"You may not have these weapons"---or indeed to a
terrorist group, if it itself walks away from what it has solemnly
promised under international law. I welcome your calling attention to
this. People must debate this. This is a very serious move.
MARK DAVIS: Under the various treaties, nuclear non-proliferation and
the
test ban treaties, what are the consequences for a country that either
walks away from or breaks the terms of that treaty?
RICHARD BUTLER: What is supposed to be the consequence is that the
International Atomic Energy Agency will report to the Security Council
that a country---in this case North Korea recently did it---has walked
away from its obligation and asked the Security Council, who has the
political and military muscle, allegedly, to deal with it, to go to
that
country and say "You're breaking the law, this has to stop or else."
Now...
MARK DAVIS: So is that going to happen to America?
RICHARD BUTLER: It's not going to happen at all! It won't happen
because
the way in which the Security Council was trashed on trying to get it
support for the invasion of Iraq, this wasn't obtained, and under
international law that invasion therefore is outside the law, some
would
say plainly illegal. But in very practical terms I ask you, what
capacity
has the United States now to go to the Security Council and say "Let's
all
collectively deal with this threat to security, the country X is about
to
acquire nuclear weapons." It's got no capacity, because of its own
double
standard on nuclear weapons and because of the way in which the
Security
Council was abused on the way into Iraq. The Security Council, in this
sense, is lying somewhat in ruins, at precisely the time that we need
it.
MARK DAVIS: Well, I guess you'd have to say clearly the Americans
don't
care what the consequences of a treaty...
RICHARD BUTLER: You're dead right.
MARK DAVIS: But what do you do now?
RICHARD BUTLER: Well, I've talked to senior members of the Bush
Administration and if the viewing public are asking "Well, why are
they
behaving this way?" Well, one can say they're just plainly selfish or
this
is the consequence of September 11 and so on. Not really. It's
this---this
administration has a view of the special character of the United
States,
the singular and exclusive character that is new. I've talked to them
about it and they make this plain. They say "We are the sole super
power,
we're therefore the exceptional country, we're outside of
international
law. Others have to obey the law and obey the rules, but we don't." I
mean, I'm not making that up. If they were sitting here tonight, Mark,
the
people I've talked with would readily agree. They'd say "Yeah, that's
right, that's who we are. We are the exceptional country and we don't
have
to obey the law because we're different." Now, that's where this is
proceeding from. And I ask you to recognise what happens when the most
powerful country, the same as the most powerful people within a
domestic
society, consider themselves to be above the law. What happens?
Citizens,
or countries, decide that the law itself is no good and that's what
will
happen in the nuclear area.
MARK DAVIS: Well, while I have you here I'll get you to put your Iraq
hat
on for a moment. Are you surprised that the Americans haven't found
any
weapons of mass destruction so far?
RICHARD BUTLER: No, I'm not, Mark. There's no doubt that unaccounted
for
weapons existed when Saddam threw me and my team out in 1998 and,
indeed,
when Hans Blix, my successor, made his last reports. But I think what
we
are seeing now is the very strong possibility that towards the end,
just
before the war began, Iraq either began to destroy those weapons or
moved
them out possibly to Syria. Destroyed them in the way that it started,
you'll remember, to destroy the al-Samoud missile, in the belief that
the
weapons wouldn't be of any further use to them and it would be better
for
their case if they could say---if no weapons were able to be
discovered.
MARK DAVIS: I mean, this is the incredible point, I suppose. We've
just
invaded a country, we've killed thousands of people and, despicable as
Saddam Hussein may have been, he was probably telling the truth.
RICHARD BUTLER: We need to know that, that's what I'm saying. It could
well be that at that point, immediately prior to the war when they
lodged
their 12,000 page document, that we may discover they were telling the
truth in the sense that at that time they did destroy those extant
weapons. We need to know what the facts are to know whether the
weapons of
mass destruction justification for the invasion was real or not. It's
very, very important. We have four people---the US has four key people
in
custody now---General Saddi, General Rashid, Tariq Aziz and Dr Germ,
Rihab
Taha. They know exactly what the facts are. We need to know what
they're
saying. We need to know on what basis they're being interrogated. We
need
the truth about those weapons, Iraq's programs, did they give them to
terrorists, for example, as has sometimes been claimed. We need the
truth
behind an invasion and occupation by the United States, and its
friends,
of Iraq.
Richard Butler, we'll have to leave it there but thanks for joining
Dateline.
by Robert W. McChesney
May 15, 2003
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MAINSTREAM MEDIA
As I write this, the Federal Communications Commission is poised to
vote
on June 2 to relax several longstanding media ownership rules. By
nearly
all accounts it will lead to a wave of media mergers and market
consolidation that is unprecedented in U.S. history. In my view,
such
moves would be a disaster for our society. If you know about this
and
want to register your opposition, go to www.mediareform.net, where
there
are links to all the major campaigns to stop the FCC, along with
links
to news articles and considerable background information on the
topic.
Public pressure can stop the FCC. The www.mediareform.net site also
has
a comprehensive index to all of the groups working on media reform
issues in the United States, as well as a complete list of the
issues
these groups are working on.
If you want an overview of the current situation, stay here and read
on.
In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Reform Act, which
amended the Communications Act of 1934. The 1996 Telecom Act was a
corrupt piece of work, being the product of the largest corporate
lobbies all salivating at the prospect of rewriting the law to
provide
them a larger slice of the action. The best way to grasp how the
communications law was passed is to imagine the classic scene from
The
Godfather II, when Hyman Roth, Michael Corleone and several other
American gangsters meet on a rooftop in Havana to divide up the
island
between them in pre-Castro Cuba. They do so by ceremoniously each
taking
a slice of a cake with the outline of Cuba on it, and while they are
doing this, Hyman Roth intones, "Isn't it great to be in a country
with
a government that believes in a partnership with private
enterprise."
The 1996 Telecom Act was drafted on that proverbial rooftop, only
instead of mob families there were trade associations like the
National
Association of Broadcasters and corporations like News Corporation
and
Viacom. The public played no role in the Telecom Act, and it
received
virtually no news media coverage, except in the business and trade
press
where it was covered as an issue of importance to owners and
investors,
not citizens in a democracy. The powerful lobbies - much like Roth
and
Corleone - were duking it out with each other for the largest slice
of
the cake, but they all agreed that the public had no right to
participate in the process. It was their cake.
One of the major aims of the corporate communication lobbies in the
1996
law was to scrap longstanding ownership laws that prevented them
from
getting larger. These ownership restrictions had been historically
about
the only meaningful regulations on large media firms. They
prevented,
among other things, firms from owning multiple TV stations in the
same
community, TV stations in every community in the nation, or TV
stations
and radio stations and newspapers and cable TV systems in the same
community. The theory behind these ownership restrictions was that
when
the government granted firms monopoly rights to scarce TV or radio
channels, it needed to place restrictions on what media the firms
could
own, so that the firms would not use their monopoly profits (owning
a TV
or radio station has historically been the closest thing to having
the
right to print money in our economy, except, perhaps, for the right
to
own a monopoly newspaper) to corner the market on all media. That
would
be a very bad thing for democracy.
One might logically ask how these media ownership restrictions could
have ever come into existence, if the system was so corrupt that the
Havana rooftop analogy captures the policy making process. To some
extent it was because there was (and is) such a deep seated
hostility to
concentrated media ownership in the American population. It simply
violates every core tenet of a free society to have a small number
of
powerful media owners. To the extent there has been popular
involvement
in media policy making, it has been to push for more competitive
media
markets. Even more important, there were powerful commercial
interests
that wanted restrictions on media ownership. Companies that owned a
small number of radio or TV stations, for example, understood that
if
ownership limits were lifted, huge firms would be able to muscle
them
out of the market. And while firms wanted to see ownership limits
removed in some markets, they were very happy to have them in other
markets, where, for example, they were selling their products.
By 1996, however, the largest media firms had grown so large they
thought their power could tip the balance and remove the ownership
limits. They miscalculated. The powerful lobbies could not reach a
consensus on which ownership laws to scrap and which ones to relax.
Accordingly, the 1996 law called for the five-member FCC to merely
review the ownership rules every two years with an eye to eliminate
them
when conditions permitted. The theory was that eventually, when the
Internet and digital TV worked their multi-channel magic, the media
system would be so awash in media voices that there would be no
reason
to be concerned about media monopoly. So at that time it would be
absurd, not to mention unfair, so saddle some media firms, those
that
worked in radio, TV and cable, with ownership limits, while other
media
firms were not so encumbered. The FCC's job was to determine when
the
time of technological plenty had arrived and then dump the media
ownership rules.
This process is often referred to as "deregulation," but it is
nothing
of the kind. The framing of the issue as one of "regulation" versus
"deregulation" or "free markets" is ideologically loaded propaganda
that
obscures what is happening in toto. When media ownership rules are
eliminated, there is still plenty of regulation. If you or I persist
in
trying to broadcast on a frequency licensed to Clear Channel, we
will be
arrested and sent to prison. That is serious regulation. Regulation
is
going to exist no matter what. Even a so-called free market media
system
requires massive regulation. The real framing is whether there will
be
regulation that makes some effort to serve the public interest or
broad
publicly determined values, or whether regulation will be done
exclusively to the benefit of corporate interests without any public
involvement. It is the latter that has been misnamed "deregulation."
There was only one media industry in 1996 where a consensus could be
reached to relax media ownership rules, and that was radio. In radio
broadcasting the small station owning firms lost their resolve or
their
ability to fight the big station owning groups and the 1996 act
lifted
the national limit on the number of stations a single company could
own.
It also let a single company own up to eight stations in a single
market. The results have been catastrophic for everyone except the
owners of the handful of massive companies like Clear Channel (which
now
owns over 1,200 stations) and Viacom that have come to rule the
roost in
radio. In the past seven years, U.S. radio has become vastly more
commercial and has lost much of its localism and any commitment to
covering the news. Ironically, what by all rights should be our most
decentralized and democratic medium -- because it is so inexpensive
to
produce a good signal -- has become our most regimented and
standardized. You could be airdropped into any city in the United
States
and hear the same oldies song or the same right wing blather. And
this
has nothing to do with the natural workings of any "free market;" it
is
the direct result of corrupt policy making.
What has happened in radio is about to be visited on the balance of
the
media system. We know what many of you are thinking -- "hey, the
media
system sucks, it can't get any worse." But one look at radio should
tell
you otherwise. It can get worse, much worse. And it will, unless we
stop
the FCC. Moreover, the political power these ever larger media firms
will accrue, will make any prospective media reform down the road
that
much more difficult.
The FCC conducted biennial reviews of the ownership rules in 1998
and
2000, and determined the rules should remain in place. At this point
the
biennial review was regarded as a benign and unreviewable process.
The
industry lobby went through the court system to get the rules thrown
out. In 2002 a right wing federal appeals court demanded that the
FCC
provide a justification for keeping the ownership rules, or else
they
would have to be thrown out. Be clear that it was the appeals court,
acting as the advocate of corporations that put the new aggressive
pro-industry spin on the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The appeals
court interpreted the law to mean that unless the FCC could provide
compelling, even overwhelming, evidence to justify keeping media
ownership rules, they should be scrapped. The Court construed the
statute as a one-way street, with a strong presumption in favor of
deregulation. This put Michael Powell, the Chair of the FCC in an
unusual position. He was supposed to go before the courts and make
the
case on behalf of keeping media ownership rules in the public
interest.
Powell was famous for his pro-industry rah-rah sentiments, and his
hostility to regulation in the public interest. Having him be
responsible for defending media ownership rules was along the lines
of
putting Katherine Harris in charge of Al Gore's Florida recount team
in
2000. Powell responded by authorizing a formal FCC review of the six
main media ownership rules.
At this point, the spring and summer of 2002, the odds that the FCC
would dump the rules without much of a fight were very high.
Traditionally the FCC has been a corrupt body, not in the sense that
its
members are explicitly bribed to make specific decisions, but in the
broader ethical sense of the term. The five FCC members are unknown
to
the general public and have virtually no contact with them. They are
surrounded instead by corporate CEOs, lawyers and lobbyists. As one
FCC
Chairman put it, "the job of the FCC is to regulate fights between
the
super wealthy and the super super wealthy. The public has nothing to
do
with it." Over time, logically, the FCC has come to see its mission
as
being an advocate for the very firms it is regulating; the more
profitable they are, the better the job the FCC is doing. This
worldview
has been encouraged by the tradition that members of the FCC tend to
move on to extremely lucrative careers working for the very firms
they
once regulated. As it is often put, when a firm comes before the
FCC,
FCC members do not know whether to regard it as an entity to be
regulated or as a prospective future employer. This applies across
the
board, to Republicans and Democrats alike. The FCC Chair who
preceded
Michael Powell, Democrat William Kennard, has gone on to making big
bucks working on telecommunication deals for the Carlyle Group.
In theory, and in law, the FCC merely implements the will of
Congress.
It should be the job of Congress to force the FCC to act in the
public
interest, and prevent cronyism and corruption. In practice, Congress
has
done almost the opposite. The powerful communication corporations
traditionally have the relevant committee chairs in the House and
Senate
wrapped around their fingers, thanks, in part, to massive campaign
contributions. Media firms also have a very powerful weapon at their
disposal: control over the news media. This means that debates over
media policy rarely get covered in a manner that might question the
legitimacy of the corporate system, and that politicians are
especially
sensitive to staying on good terms with the corporate media lobby.
In this context, it certainly looked like the fix was in when FCC
Chair
Michael Powell announced the formal review of the media ownership
rules
in 2002. But history has taken an unpredicted turn. Two of the five
members of the FCC have shown themselves to be remarkable public
servants, of a caliber found on the FCC perhaps only three or four
other
times in its 69 year history. This was a fluke. The two members,
Michael
Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, were patronage appointments to fill
the
two Democratic slots on the five member FCC. It just so happened
that
they had a degree of backbone rarely found in that far from august
body.
Copps, especially, insisted that it would be inappropriate for there
to
be any change in the media ownership rules without extensive public
input. He pressed Powell to hold public hearings around the nation
on
the matter. Powell attended a portion of the first unofficial
hearing in
New York in January and convened one official public hearing in
Richmond
in February. But otherwise he has refused to attend any of the ten
public hearings on the media ownership rules that have been held
subsequently all across the nation. None of the three Republicans
has
attended any of these ten hearings. Copps, on the other hand, has
attended all of them, and Adelstein some of them. These hearings are
historically unprecedented and mark a turning point in media
activism in
the United States. Many of them have been jam packed with people.
After
seeing hundreds of people hanging from the rafters in Vermont for an
April hearing, one congressional aide remarked that there is more
interest concerning media policy than on almost any other issue.
There is a very good reason why Powell and the Republicans on the
FCC
have boycotted the public hearings: the sentiment there, from
thousands
and thousands of citizens from all walks of life, has been almost
unanimously opposed to relaxing or eliminating the ownership rules.
Indeed, much of the sentiment has been in favor of strengthening the
ownership rules, especially in radio. Likewise, as of May 8, 2003, a
comprehensive analysis of the 9,065 statements on media ownership
submitted to the FCC by citizens unaffiliated with a self-interested
corporation or trade organization found that only 11 of these
submissions supported changing the rules. Eleven! That means
something
like 99.8 percent of the statements opposed what Powell and the
Republicans on the FCC are proposing to do! One could argue that
there
is as much support for putting Osama bin Laden's bust on Mount
Rushmore
as there is for letting fewer and fewer massive corporations own
more
and more media. Even conservative groups, like the National Rifle
Association and Brent Bozell's Media Research Center, oppose gutting
the
media ownership rules.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this has nothing to do with
free
markets or a free press, but that it is all about cronyism and
corruption. The massive media firms that have bankrolled and
supported
the Bush administration want their payback and the administration is
determined to give it to them, the public be damned. Commerce
Secretary
Donald Evans wrote to Powell telling him to move full speed ahead
with
the rules changes regardless of Congressional or public opposition.
Powell has explained his absence from the ten media ownership
hearings
on the grounds that he is too busy too attend them and that he knows
enough about what the public thinks. At the same time, Powell finds
time
to address the corporate media trade association meetings and he has
an
open door policy for corporate media CEOs like Rupert Murdoch. The
research that the FCC has developed to justify relaxing the media
rules
has been kept top secret; members of Congress and leading media
scholars
have asked to see it and been turned down. Copps and Adelstein have
raised their concerns about the lack of research and debate over the
proposed changes to Powell but they have been ignored and
marginalized.
Powell and the Republican members of the FCC repeatedly make one
claim,
and only one claim, to justify relaxing the media ownership rules:
That
the massive increase in media channels through multi-channel
television
and the Internet has eliminated the need for ownership regulation of
broadcast media, because the scarcity of the airwaves is no longer a
relevant issue. The reality of media today, the argument goes, is
that
the media system is no longer oligopolistic, but, instead, it is
hyper-competitive. The granting of monopoly rights to broadcast
channels
no longer confers monopolistic market power in the marketplace.
Media
ownership regulation is justified on the grounds that spectrum
scarcity
meant the government had a duty to regulate the amount of ownership
to
protect the public interest. In this era of abundance, owning
multitudes
of broadcast stations is no longer monopolistic or a threat to
diversity
and should not be prohibited. The market will be a better regulator
than
the government.
Or, to put it another way, Powell and his colleagues argue that
corporations are no longer getting scarce and valuable beachfront
property when they receive a monopoly license form the FCC; rather,
they
are merely getting one grain of sand on the media beach.
If the claim is wrong, however, then the movement to eliminate these
rules can be seen as little more than an opportunistic effort by
powerful special interests to alter regulations to suit their naked
self-interest.
The problem with this claim is that it is not true. The Internet has
changed much about our world, but it has not undermined the
tremendous
market power granted by federal license to use scarce broadcast
spectrum. In ten years of the commercialized Internet, despite
hundreds
of millions of dollars in investment, arguably not a single original
commercially viable media content site has been launched. Not one.
More
important, the value of radio and TV stations continues to grow at a
much faster rate than the rate of inflation.
If the Internet and digital technologies were indeed undermining the
value of scarce radio and TV channels, we would expect TV channels
to be
approaching the point where they would have much less value in the
market because of all the new competition. It would be irrational to
spend, say, $100 million for a mere TV station when the same money
could
create scores of incredible websites. But this mythological era of
media
abundance does not exist in any meaningful sense. These licenses to
TV
and radio channels still confer considerable, even extraordinary,
market
power. That is why their value continues to shoot up. Hence the
legal
justification for the media ownership rules is fully intact.
Congress understood that it was only when the new communication
technologies generated an increase in bona fide commercial
competition
that the FCC should eliminate or relax the ownership rules. That is
why
the 1996 Telecommunications Act did not eliminate those rules and
Congress advised the FCC to do so down the road when the market
conditions had changed. It is clear, as of now, they have not
changed in
such a way to justify the elimination of media ownership rules. That
day
remains off in the future, as far as anyone can tell. And if the FCC
lets the giant firms get even larger, it will go a very long way
toward
letting these firms have the market power to ward off any threat of
new
competition.
Powell has called for a June 2 vote on his proposed media ownership
rules changes. Until then all attention is focused on getting
Congress
to force the FCC to desist from this plan. Here, too, we are
beginning
to see considerable movement to oppose the FCC, though we have a
very
long way to go. A large coalition of journalists, labor, musicians,
civic organizations, peace groups, consumer groups, and
organizations
representing women and minority groups has begun organizing in
earnest
around this issue. The crucial ingredient now is to generate as much
popular comment as possible. Emails, letters and phone calls need to
be
sent to members of Congress and the FCC. As I note at the top of
this
piece, the website www.mediareform.net provides an easy-to-use index
of
all the leading campaigns, including those of MoveOn, Common Cause
and
Consumers Union. It is imperative that everyone who reads this piece
circulate it, or at least the website, to everyone that they know.
Even
if we lose on June 2, this is not the final battle in the war.
Instead,
it is the first battle in what is emerging as a broad democratic
movement to popularize media policy-making with the aim of
generating a
more diverse and competitive media system with a strong and
independent
nonprofit and noncommercial sector.
Robert W. McChesney is the co-author, with John Nichols, of Our
Media,
Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media (Seven
Stories).
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