Robert McChesney Was a Lifelong Fighter for Democratic Media
Let’s honor Robert McChesney by continuing his fight for a media free from corporate control.
Dean Baker
I was saddened to hear that Robert McChesney died this week after a long bout with cancer. McChesney was not nearly as well known as he should have been. He was one of the few progressives who seriously thought about the media and its importance for our lives and politics.
To my mind, it is absolutely bizarre that the structure of the media doesn’t feature front and center in every progressive’s plans for advancing a progressive agenda, and in fact preserving democracy. We all understand the importance of campaign finance. The ability of billionaires to spend millions, or even hundreds of millions, to push their favored candidates has a huge impact on the outcome of elections.
But somehow people don’t seem to understand the idea that what people read in newspapers or see on TV or online between and even during campaigns has a huge impact on elections. The idea that voters are influenced by campaign ads, but not the material they see between the ads, is so absurd that only a highly paid political consultant could take it seriously.
Robert McChesney understood very well that the media hugely affects how people came to view the world, and it matters hugely who controls it. He spent his life challenging the corporate owned media, where the perspectives of the rich always carry outsize weight. This is not just the story of the blatantly partisan media, like Fox News, but also with outlets that maintain some journalistic standards, like the New York Times or CNN.
There are a small number of small organizations, notably Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Media Matters, and Free Press, which McChesney founded, that try to both hold the corporate media accountable and, especially in the case of Free Press, to push for democratic alternatives. While some hope for a benevolent billionaire to come to the rescue of progressive media — which has occasionally happened — McChesney sought more durable institutional changes.
I worked with him on designing a structure of government support for media that didn’t run the risk of Donald Trump coming into office and giving us Trump News 24-7. We came up with the idea of an individual tax credit, say $200 a year (I’d settle for less), that could be used to support the news outlet of a person’s choosing.
This would be comparable to the deduction for charitable contributions in the current tax code, with the difference being that everyone could get the tax credit, and it would be the same for everyone. The 90 percent of taxpayers who take the standard deduction get nothing now from the charitable contribution deduction, and for those who do itemize, the deduction is worth much more for rich people in a higher tax bracket.
As McChesney pointed out in his work, this sort of government support for promoting the news industry goes back to the beginning of the country. Newspapers were able to use the mail at subsidized rate, as the founding fathers recognized the necessity of having an informed public to maintain a democratic government.
I’ll also add that government-granted copyright monopolies are also an explicit subsidy for news organizations, as well as anyone else who produces creative work. The Constitution explicitly authorizes Congress to grant these monopolies, along with patents, to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.”
So, government subsidies to promote the news industry is hardly a new idea. The problem is that we are buried in nonsense rhetoric about a “free market” that bears no relationship to reality. Patent and copyright monopolies do not exist without the government, however much the right (and many on the left) like to pretend otherwise. And again, contrary to those who seem to fear arithmetic, these government-granted monopolies are hugely important to the economy and the distribution of income.
Anyhow, McChesney realized the need for the government to take a more direct role in supporting the news media, especially as traditional news outlets, like local newspapers and magazines, were collapsing with the explosion of the web. Needless to say, the national political environment does not look very promising for Bob’s proposal just now.
On the positive side, it is possible to implement something along these lines at the state or even local level. At this point, all our politics are overwhelmed by uncertainty as the Trump administration claims unprecedented authority based on his narrow mandate. However, if we do settle into a more normal political framework, perhaps we can begin to move forward on an agenda that promotes democratic media. That would be the best tribute possible to Bob.
This piece was also posted at CEPR.
