Bruce Dixon of the Black Agenda Report brings up some really good points Here. I continue to have some questions and concerns about the veracity and usefulness of the term ‘media justice.’ However, his critique here about the shortcomings of the ‘media reform movement’, as well as the glaring contradictions between the notion of the rights of private ownership and the duties of public obligation are spot on. Journalism holds a special place and responsibility in civic society, as elucidated by it’s specifically noted Constitutional protections and the clearly outlined purpose delegated to it by our nation’s Founders. Dixon’s call to action on behalf of new laws to ensure media diversity, particularly his specific support for public access in his clear point-by-point prescription to improve our media system, is quite heartening and seconded by those here at USTV Media.

The law lays out in a precious few provisions, that the broadcast spectrum is scarce public property upon which licensees are allowed to operate their monopoly businesses on the condition that they serve the public interest. At the same time the vast majority of all the statutes, the judicial precedents, and the administrative law implicitly and explicitly recognize and make “legitimate” what amount to the private property rights over chunks of the spectrum on the part of broadcast license holders. You can’t get more fundamental, or more contradictory that that.

Since the conflict between private media ownership and public obligation is almost never discussed where the public can access it, it’s easy to see which side of the contradiction is winning. The very notion, in the US at least, that media can be operated any other way than as the private property of wealthy corporations is utterly off the table. In any rational world, we are told, it’s the unquestioned rule. It’s the rule in the courts, it’s the rule at the FCC and in Congress, where Big Media employs hundreds of lobbyists.

Most tellingly, the political imaginations of many in the media reform movement are often limited to the horizons of what judges, regulators, lobbyists, legislators and political consultants think is possible or reasonable in the next year or two. That can’t be good. Judges, regulators, lobbyists and legislators, even the best ones, don’t start or lead mass movements. At best, their roles are to consolidate the victories of mass movements. At worst, they block, betray or bargain away the political advantages, the moments which significant changes in public opinion make possible.

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