FCC Commissioner Tells BBC: “American Media Has A Bad Case Of Substance Abuse”

Mediaite.com ^ | 12/01/2010 | Mark Joyella

[OldDeckHand]

In an interview to air tonight on BBC World News America, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps describes American journalism as having reached “its hour of grave peril.”

-snip-

It’s a pretty serious situation that we’re in. I think American media has a bad case of substance abuse right now. We are not producing the body of news and information that democracy needs to conduct its civic dialogue, we’re not producing as much news as we did five years, 10 years, 15 years ago and we have to reverse that trend or I think we are going to be pretty close to denying our citizens the essential news and information that they need to have in order to make intelligent decisions about the future direction of their country.

[Texas Fossil]

Remember, November 2nd came and January 3, 2011 is near. We shall see if they learned from what we did in November, when the 112th Congress is sworn in.

[JerseyHighlander]

Original link to the above post with graphics and hotlinks:

http://www.nostalgiaandideology.com/chap3.html

[JerseyHighlander]

http://www.nostalgiaandideology.com/chap4.html

 

Communist Nostalgia, “State Promotion” through nostalgia and “Ostalgie”.

Lawrence Gipe; “Warsaw,1962”; 2009; oil on paper

That Mikhail Gorbachev is less popular in polls than Stalin or Lenin indicates a cultural mood swing in the former- U.S.S.R. The fall of the Berlin Wall awakened many of the ghosts kept silent during the decades after WW2 - anti-Semitism, among other issues. The unhappiness and disappointment that arose after Perestroika and Glasnost has produced a collective nostalgic longing for the stability of the Soviet system. Although it seems absurd, these feelings extend to Stalin – a fact that hasn’t escaped the current power structure.

“Fifty-two years after his death, Soviet leader Josef Stalin still has a special place in the heart of many Russians. Russian pensioners, whose living standards have been plummeting since the collapse of the Soviet Union, are looking back to the Stalin years with growing nostalgia.”(NYT,2008)

Putin likes his image as a rough and ready type. “Much of his overwhelming popularity stems from his ability to reinvigorate Russia's patriotic pride. He has gained support by confronting the West with Cold War zeal and has paid little price for clamping down on dissent with similar intensity.”(Bloomberg.com, Nov.2008)

Aleksandr Cherkasov, a leading expert at the Memorial human rights group, says Putin in his own way is tapping into Stalin nostalgia in hopes of consolidating his own power. "In the 1990s, nostalgia for Soviet times arose as a way to reject post-Soviet reality," Cherkasov said. "Nowadays, it is the authorities who are in charge of history. In the past, Putin declared that the future of Russia is its great past. He is rationalizing this nostalgia for the past and trying to place it at the base of his political program."

VDNKh and “Stalin World”

Images: Grutas Park poster / G Park Gift Shop
Caption: The gift shop featuring Soviet-era knick-knacks. “The park also contains playgrounds, a mini-zoo and cafes, all containing relics of the Soviet era. On special occasions actors stage re-enactments of various Soviet-sponsored festivals. (Wikipedia)”

On the northwest outskirts of Moscow, a 578-acre park is home to collection of monuments and pavilions celebrating the achievements of the USSR. Called VDNKh, it used to be a destination Soviet showcase – the stuff of decades of school class visits and tour bus stops. Now, it’s a mecca for shoppers – an ad-hoc outlet mall.

It’s more than just a cynical re-brand; VDNKh also functions as a mecca for nostalgics. If VDNKh wasn’t enough, those struck with Communist nostalgia can satisfy their yearnings in Stalin World. Although it seems like an article in the satirical Onion, this leisure park begun by a millionaire really exists just a few hours car ride from Vilnius, Lithuania in Grutas Park.

The exposition section of Grutas Park’s Stalin World consists of 86 statues of totalitarian leaders by 46 different sculptors. Other features include re-creations of Soviet Gulag prison camps: wooden paths, guard towers, and barbed-wire fences. It boggles the mind to imagine a culture rewarding the misdeeds of a totalitarian dictator - with an extermination record exceeding Hitler’s - in a leisure park. The German government would never allow “Hitler World”…although a mild strain of nostalgia ripples through the unified Germany for the old days when the Berlin Wall kept the country segregated.

Images: DDR T-shirts/”Ostalgie”
A revival of DDR imagery is evident in many souvenir stands.

“Ostalgie” – East Germans nostalgic for the GDR revival

"We really need to be careful that the GDR does not achieve cult status," said Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit as he attended an event commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall.

For many in Eastern Germany (as well as former-Eastern Bloc countries like Poland), the reality of re-unification after 1989 replaced old problems with new ones. Members of the population that benefited from the socialist system were disenfranchised, of course; but, culturally the Eastern Germans often felt unaccepted by the West Germans. The term Ostalgie refers to nostalgia for the socialist system. Another term, “Soviet chic” is sometimes used and many businesses in Germany have taken advantage of the rising interest in all thing DDR. Now available are formerly defunct brands of East German foodstuffs, old state television programs on video and DVD, and the previously widespread Wartburg and Trabant cars.

Mao Nostalgia

Image: marriage photo.
Posing like Cultural revolution-era portraits is a new trend in current-day marriage photos.

In May of 2009 the China Times breathlessly reported: “A new wave of nostalgia for the late chairman is sweeping the nation ahead of the 60th birthday of People's Republic of China (PRC) and amid the global financial crisis…Although Chinese people may generally live a better life today, they feel much less secure and safe than under Mao's rule”. The most characteristic of this manifestation is Cultural Revolution nostalgia – a fashion that takes the uniforms and Red Star insignias as a retro 60’s look. The uniform of the Red Guard might disturb someone old enough to remember the Revolution itself – an era in Chinese history (1966-76) that amounted to a factional purge of anti-socialists in universities and communities – some sources estimate upwards of a million deaths on the hands of the Red Guard brigades that enforced Mao’s brutal policies.

 

A popular re-issue of a Cultural Revolution figurine portraying a teacher being berated by “revolutionaries”.

Another Marriage Photo option.

Nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution in China started popping up in TV ads around 2002. As Leslie Chang in the China Times writes:

“Some companies are launching ad campaigns that invest with or tinge with nostalgia the turbulent decade of the Cultural Revolution.” The wave for all-things-Red Guard is now a trend in younger Chinese with couples choosing to dress up like Red Guard soldiers during the Cultural Revolution for their wedding portraits (full photo shoots are available in costume and on-board a vintage Cultural Revolution-era train). Chinese twenty-somethings are heating up the marketing of this area and the entertainment business has officially caught on; current TV series offerings include many “red-themed” programs.

Another interesting indicator on the high-end of finance is the art auction market. 60’s and 70’s era propaganda paintings are through the roof: In 2007, the painting "Eulogy of the Yellow River" by Chen Yifei was auctioned for over 40 million yuan (close to 6 million US Dollars). It was reportedly a record in the “mainland oil painting auction market.” It’s hard to imagine more expensive nostalgic kitsch by the inch.

"Eulogy" by Chen Yifei

[tubebender]

On the local level the press will only be right when the revenue (advertising) department shows the editorial (marxist) department what their drivel does to business...

[sergeantdave]

“all staffed by union members.”

Gawd, I hope that’s not the case. Last time fat-butt SEIU thugs came through our community we chased them into a building and they bawled for the cops to come save them. It took us an hour to find any cops interested in rescuing them.

[M-cubed]

U beat me to it...produce the News or Report it...What a dilemma

[OldDeckHand]

'I can understand the need to keep people from interfering with each others bandwidths, but this is not a Federal issues, its a State issue, and only a Federal issues when transmissions interfere with other transmissions in other states."

Yes, but you have to think about all the mobile radio devices - cell phones, radios, GPS, etc, etc. - these are located in trains, planes, automobiles and even ships that constantly pass through state boundaries.

The technological management is the only aspect of communication that the FCC should be involved in. Content or even ownership should be well-beyond their reach.

[Mr_Moonlight]

The FCC Commissioner is right .. the media isn't producing as much 'news' as it was 10, 15, 20 years ago ... it's producing much more propaganda now, from both the left and right. Of course, way back when the media was only left leaning then all that propaganda was supposedly OK, but now that the 'right' has got a voice (via Talk Radio, Internet, etc) all of a sudden it ain't so OK anymore ....

Otherwise, the FCC Commissioner is way out of line in this complaint ... it isn't the FCC's job to regulate speech.

Or, as Rush Limbog always said: "I don't need Equal Time --- I *AM* Equal Time"

Too bad that Rush's pithy comment is totally lost on those who would be arbiters of Free Speech ...

-- MM

[OldDeckHand]

"The FCC Commissioner is right .. the media isn't producing as much 'news' as it was 10, 15, 20 years ago ... "

I don't know if I'd even agree with that. Yes, you're right with respect to the level of partisan propaganda - left & right - that's now disseminated. It's out of control (not that is any of his business, though) But, 30-years ago, there were just four 1/2-hour evening broadcasts. Now, there is literally round-the-clock news. Even accounting for all the BS propaganda/commentary, there is still an incredible increase in the numbers of different stories told every day, at least compared to the number of daily stories told 30-years ago.

This guy thinks there isn't enough "news" getting out, because people are making poor decisions. I just don't buy it.

[jmacusa]

In today’s world Goebbels would be the student not the master.

[Danae]

I have to agree with your assessment! LOL

[Brad from Tennessee]

[Gawd, I hope that’s not the case. ]

Everything this administration does is aimed at strengthening unions. The Stimulus Act funneled money to the states to prevent layoffs of unionized public sector workers. ObamaCare was expected to increase the number of public and private health workers (SEIU) and create a vast new bureaucracy that will be unionized. Ditto the new regulatory apparatus under the “financial reform” law. If Obama hears a union leader say, “Sh*t!” he drops his drawers, squats and asks,”What color?”

[Bernard Marx]

We have to shut them [Fox] down and make sure only "real" news gets reported to the great unwashed masses."

Yep, that's exactly what he's saying. I've observed a clearly coordinated attack on Fox over a long period, and it's currently rising to fever pitch. It's taken on very worrisome overtones of outright government control of broadcast content. Howard Dean joined the party in his rant earlier in the week. When the FCC itself starts saying this stuff it's very serious indeed.