Media

In 1968, a businessman named Ted Turner purchased WJRJ, a small UHF station in Atlanta, Ga., that was still broadcasting in black and white. It didn't take long after that for Turner to develop grandiose ambitions for the conquest of television, a master plan founded on the idea of the cable network. "Television," announced Turner with prophetic zeal, "has led us, in the last 25 years, down the path of destruction. I intend to turn it around before it is too late."

In a typical photo, Steve Ross wore a tuxedo with a large bow tie as he stood, silver hair shining, with a celebrity or one of his cronies. Ross, the man who built Time Warner Inc., was the first of a new archetype: the media conglomerator.

Adolph Zukor, the longtime president of Paramount Pictures and the true founding mogul of Hollywood, once said that his greatest fascination was "understanding audiences." Yet his true talent lay elsewhere, in his mastery of industrial structure. It was Zukor who created the model for the integrated film studios that defined early Hollywood and that still form the blueprint for the way the film industry works.

At a market stall in southern Sudan, Darfuri trader Omer Saleh, 45, turned up the volume on his small battery-operated radio. Radio Dabanga, he said - the Dutch-based service that transmits Darfur news by local journalists through shortwave frequencies into Sudan - "is the only way I can know what is happening at home."

Half a world away in New York, Ahmat Nour, president of the Darfur People's Association of New York, said he listens to the Radio Dabanga broadcasts every day: "I download the two episodes and listen to them through the Net as soon as I finish work."

As the for-profit higher-education industry fights efforts by the Obama administration and Congress to increase federal oversight of its schools, the industry's lobbyists have a powerful weapon: the world-renowned Washington Post.

Especially in recent weeks—when the purpose and tone of the media has been a topic of heated discussion (and rallying)—there has been chatter about the need to reevaluate public media in the U.S. In this vein, there has been a fair amount of reaction in the blogosphere to New America Foundation President Steve Coll’s piece in the The Columbia Journalism Review, which MPI discussed in the last Week in Review. Here are some comments on two responses from MPI collaborators:

Though we focus on media policy here at the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative (MPI), such policy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It must address the needs of the day. As the FCC explores policies in its “Future of Media” inquiry, understanding the changes in technology and designing the policies to address these changes is crucial to successful media policy.

Steven Waldman
Future of Media Project
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554

Dear Steve,

The past week has been an eventful one for those working in media policy and the media more generally in Washington. Those of us who were looking ahead to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on Saturday couldn’t help but find ourselves wondering about the role of the media today, especially after Jon Stewart declared, “The press is our immune system.” How blurred the lines between news, politics, and entertainment continue to be.

National Public Radio's decision to fire news analyst Juan Williams after he made controversial comments on Fox News about Muslims has become — for some Republican lawmakers, at least — a teachable moment. NPR, House speaker-in-waiting John Boehner (R-Ohio) said recently, is a "left-wing radio network" and should be stripped of federal funding. Eric Cantor, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly and other conservative voices have issued similar calls.