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June 20, 2004
The critics
In an Interview with Noam Chomsky by Chomsky and Timo Stollenwerk, Chomsky says, "In France there's very little [media criticism, analysis, discussion]." I wonder if he's thinking of l'Observatoire francais des medias. Rob, who reads a lot of medialens.org articles, says he went to a meeting a little while ago of a group just starting in Grenoble to research local media derapages as l'OFM calls them.
More power to them. At some level, it seems that Chomsky and Herman have shown the essential points, and this further work resembles going over theorems in statistics or classical analysis: good for the thought muscles, but perhaps not advancing the cause. L'OFM goes beyond the analysis, calling for legislative measures "destinées à modifier le fonctionnement des médias." Would any of the four measures truly move editorial boundaries out and render the media more democratic?
Posted by Mark at June 20, 2004 09:49 PM
Comments
Dear Mark,
Will the measures put forward by the OFM actually help render the media more democratic?
One thing is for sure : a new step has been taken with the creation of such organisations as the OFM, but also ACRIMED, FAIR in the US (a good few years ago!)...
Citizens have been called upon to "reclaim" the media.
The OFM recently launched an online petition against "concentraiton and the financial stranglehold on the media"... It has been translated into English, German and Spanish as the prospect of a Bouygues / Dassault merger is scary enough to frighten people abroad : another step in the wrong direction.
Chomsky is right : media criticism is still too scarce in France (and Europe in general).
We'll try and remedy this.
Yours sincerely,
Renaud Lambert
Posted by: Renaud Lambert at July 14, 2004 12:00 PM
You have some good points there, Renaud, and you're doing good work. (Thanks for the reminder to sign the petition, even if something in inc_filtres.php3 won't let me right now ;-)
We could start reclaiming the media by writing some of the stories ourselves. A lot of this blog is just froth for example.
I've been more or less warned by my employer to "think about consequences" when blogging, at a time when Sun has laid off people three times in about as many years. My bank owns my house, my company owns my Internet connection, but that shouldn't stop me.
With a bit more research under my belt, I could write about Mayor Vettier's long reign here in Barraux. The story of how Vettier recently decided against a new ecole maternelle shortly after buying himself a new Mairie building could be quite interesting, at least to people with young children here.
On the one hand, national and international problems seem less tractable. As long as an increasing share of media revenue comes from advertising, it seems like Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model will continue to hold. We can vote to keep "private" interests out, to prevent arms dealers from controlling the media, to limit concentration of ownership. But the readers are part of the product, not the people served by the product.
Posted by: Mark at July 14, 2004 11:09 PM