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In my naivete, I had imagined that the solution for a television program you didn't like was the off switch or the channel changer, both quite accessible with remote controls.
But I reckoned without the creativity of the bean counters at Rocky Mountain Media Watch.
Several years ago, I received one of their studies which implied that the Post should quit publishing my columns. Not because I tend to topics, or because my prose often digresses, but because Mediawatcher analysis detected too many males practicing punditry in Colorado.
Women see the world very differently than men do, the Mediawatchers explained, and so Sue O'Brien, the editor of these pages, was putting too much testosterone-crazed text before the public.
It did seem odd, though, that the Mediawatcher pronouncement was signed by four people -- three of them men. The Mediawatcher bean-counters can insist on gender balance in publications owned and operated by other people, but it's just fine for them to carry on with a 3-1 ratio of male to female in their own operation.
The same sort of do as we say, not as we do
logic
applies to the latest Mediawatcher effort.
In February, the Mediawatchers went to the Federal Communications Commission and filed their opposition to the renewal of the broadcast licenses of Denver's four major commercial television stations: KWGN, KUSA, KCNC and KMGH.
Their news broadcasts are severely unbalanced, with
excessive reporting of violent topics and trivial stories
and, consequently, inadequate news coverage of a wider
range of stories and vital social issues, including local
elections, the arts, science, education, the environment,
AIDS, children and others. In addition, newscasts present
stereotypical and unfavorable depictions of women and
minorities.
To absolve those sins, the Mediawatchers wanted the FCC
to require these stations to broadcast announcements about
the potentially harmful side-effects
of their news
programs, deliver prime-time media literacy
programs,
require employee brain-washing (called
mandatory training for news staffs regarding media
violence effects
), and improve their election
coverage.
The FCC rightly denied the petitions, since it isn't the government's business to decide what is and isn't news. But last Thursday, the Mediawatchers appealed.
Their continued assault on the First Amendment is
disguised like every other recent effort to destroy the
Bill of Rights. They say it it's not censorship or
government control of content. Instead, we must protect
children from a toxic stew of negative influences in our
community.
Accompanying this Mediawatcher propaganda were detailed charts demonstrating that Denver TV stations devoted nearly half their news time to such toxic material.
So if it's bad for us to watch it while we're sitting in
our living rooms, often distracted by our own
conversations, think how much more toxicity
one
might absorb by staring at the screen steadily for several
years, clipboard and stopwatch in hand, analyzing each
snippet to categorize it as violent, stupid, lascivious,
hyperbolic or mere celebrity-worship.
In other words, if this stuff poisons those of us who just glance it at, think how it must destroy the souls of the glaze-eyed Mediawatchers. Again, do as they say, not as they do. We're susceptible, but these wizards are immune.
Are the media perfect? Of course not. But the essence of the First Amendment is that, if the media annoy you, you enjoy the absolute right to start your own medium.
And people do. People raise money to build repeaters to bring in remote radio signals, or put together their own community station, or buy or build a regular commercial station to reflect their idea of how it should be done.
Denver had only five TV stations to poison my youthful mind 30 years ago; now it has 14. Any dedicated person can found a magazine (Martha and I did that a few years ago) or start a newspaper -- an old friend, Allen Best, just moved from Vail to Denver to edit the infant Sol-Day News. For that matter, you can put up your own Web page.
So the Mediawatchers, if they sincerely believed that Denver's media are so terrible, could take advantage of the First Amendment rights they share with the rest of us. They could solicit investors, sell advertising, hire a staff that was balanced however they wanted it balanced, and print or broadcast their notion of socially responsible news, all the while trying to meet deadlines and a payroll.
But instead, the Mediawatchers would rather abridge the First Amendment rights of all citizens, in the guise of protecting children.
These aspiring dictators would be dangerous if anyone took them seriously; fortunately, that hasn't happened yet.
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