Robert W. McChesney Is Working To Reclaim Our Free Press

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

Our seminal belief is that if all these issues of ownership of public broadcasting, or copyrights, and right of Internet access, are laid out in the open, we’re pretty confident we’ll get good policy. American people will, in a healthy debate, come up with good policies. ... The important point to remember is that the bad guys here are ultimately not Clear Channel Radio, or ViaCom, or Rupert Murdoch. ... The bad guys here are the policy makers who created this system. Radio’s really a very inexpensive medium, and there’s no reason why every radio station in Chicago couldn’t have a different owner. ... But the rules that allow Clear Channel to gobble up all the stations are negotiated behind closed doors. And that’s what our fight is - to make the policy makers accountable to the people of this country, not to Clear Channel, ViaCom or Sinclair Broadcasting.

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A free press is assumed to be part and parcel of American democracy. But as Robert W. McChesney makes clear, we'd better fight for it right now if we want to hold onto it and actually reclaim it from the corporate boardrooms and unseen political backrooms where decisions are currently being made. The upcoming National Conference for Media Reform, which McChesney has helped to organize, will bring together many freedom-of-the-press fighters whose ideas and activism are focused on shaping public policy on the media, encouraging independent media -- say, there's a worthy cause -- or offering up media criticism. Here's his conference preview and thoughts on what we need to be doing.