Last week the 4th annual National Conference for Media Reform was held. The movement to reform the media is growing and has moved from so-called mainstream media to encompass cyber media. All are in danger. Danger from corporate take-overs. Danger from conspiracy with malevolent politicians. Danger from citizen apathy. The infamous and incomparable Bill Moyers delivered a rousing speech at the Conference. Though it is 40 minutes in length, I highly suggest you take the time to watch.
 
Moyers message concentrates on one thing: Without a free and open press, our democracy won't make it. Media owners and their investors care nothing for a representative government. They care only for profits. And making profits, huge profits, can only come by manipulating the government. But to manipulate the government they have to manipulate the people who still, regardless of what you may think, can influence government. However, the people must know there are problems. They must know what's truly going on. They have to have the facts in order to become fully-informed partners in the running of this great experiment called self-government. And therein lies the strategy. Keep us dumb. Keep us ill-informed. And, worse, keep us informed with lies to get us to support the self-destructive policies that will destroy us so that a handful of people can make a great deal of money.
 
Dan Rather also spoke at the Conference. His message was similar. As a self-governing people, we cannot remain ignorant AND free. One or the other must go. He, too, emphasized the money-making goals of the mainstream press. Twisting the infamous saying, "The buck stops here," he said, "The news stops with the making of bucks." In other words, good journalism doesn't increase corporate profits and, therefore, it's unwanted.
 
I need to remind you of the efforts currently underway to control the last bastion of a free press -- the Internet. Several attempts have been made in Congress for a Net Neutrality bill. Such bills pit Internet giants like Google, Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon, all of whom support the legislation, against telecommunication behemoths like Verizon, AT&T, and large cable companies like Comcast. Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR) said, "If [broadband providers] get their way, not only will you have to pay more for faster speeds, you’ll have to pay more for something you get for free today: unfettered access to every site on the World Wide Web. To me, that's discrimination, pure and simple." (Computerworld)  
 
Why hasn't Congress been able to pass such a bill? When a bill that's supported by such diverse organizations as MoveOn.org and The Christian Coalition, why wouldn't it pass? Only because the lobbyists are too strong. Matt Stoller attended the vote on one of the pieces of legislation. Blogging on MyDD he said: "The scene in the room was surreal, with Senators debating in front of a room full of Blackberry-armed lobbyists. There were aides behind the Senators who would pass their bosses arguments and information, with the lobbyists passing arguments and information to the aides based on the arguments Senators were making. There were over 50 Bell lobbyists alone, including 12 employees of Verizon. Some Senators were simply proxies for lobbyists to argue through. . . The irony of the moment was almost too much to bear. In the audience at the mark-up were around 200 people. I counted 8 from Internet companies. The total of telephone company lobbyists was more like 50 or 75. And of course, they are spending $15 million a week on advertising to push the bill and kill network neutrality. The Internet companies have bought almost no advertising, and they are outgunned by a factor of 10 to 1 in lobbying clout."
 
It gets worse. Earlier this year the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held a hearing at Harvard University. According to the Baltimore Sun (sorry, the link is no longer available), Comcast is the prime pusher in splitting the Internet into 2 "roads," a fast one and a slow one. You have to pay to get the fast one. "The company says it has the right to take actions that amount to 'reasonable network management' to keep up network speed for the rest of its users. . . Comcast Corp., AT&T Inc. and other providers decide(d) they have the absolute right to slow down some users and speed up others - for whatever reason." Comcast was so intent on promoting its money-making, information-manipulating scheme that it filled the seats at the FCC hearing with off-the-street shills so that the general public couldn't get in. (SaveTheInternet)
 
Advertising on the media is more insidious than many understand. When The Issue Wonk was being developed we looked at advertising so that the content could be free to the public. However, reading the required contracts changed our minds. All required that we allow advertisers to place tracking cookies on the site so that they could follow our readers around cyberspace in order to electronically bombard them with unwanted advertising. We balked. Many were even worse. We found deep in some contracts, like on page 8 when your eyeballs were already rolling in your head, an obscure "term" stating that the content would never be derogatory toward the advertiser or its affiliates. The Issue Wonk decided to charge for the service, for the immense amount of time and cost for researching and publishing, rather than subject our readers to these kinds of things.
 
Attacks against net neutrality are not only continuing, they are stepping up. Recently I posted a blog about Senator Joe Lieberman's (I, CT) efforts to control Internet content. We have to be vigilant. We have to be vocal. It's not just about our rights, it's about our duty to protect free speech and the freedom of the press (and, yes, the Internet can legitimately be called "the press") if we want to be a self-governing people.