I settled into my chair to watch CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports. The show is typical CNN fare-the news with a mildly liberal twist, lots of ominous theme music and clips of people standing in front of the White House. Then, it happened.
During a commercial, three-dimensional blue letters appeared on the screen. It was not Sorority Girls Gone Wild Part XVII. It was the three words that strike fear in the hearts of journalists everywhere-AOL-Time-Warner.
A cheery voice announced that all the media pleasures that we Americans like so much will now be even easier to use because of the recently approved merger of the two "info-tainment" giants.
Like a scene from A Clockwork Orange, pictures of Sports Illustrated, Time, chat rooms, Wolf Blitzer, Greta Van Susteren, TNT, TBS, Ted Turner, LA Confidential and Dawson's Creek flashed on the screen to the tune of sunny, encouraging music. It was horrifying. And then, it worsened: The last image that the advertisement treated me with was of The Sopranos.
The Sopranos! My television show! The only television show that is completely unapologetic to its viewers was now part of the biggest media monopoly. I became worried, is the third season going to show scenes of Tony Soprano buying AOL-Time-Warner stock? Would Silvio and Paulie get into an argument about whether CNN's Van Susteren was better than CNN's Roger Cossack?
Paulie: You know, Silvio, that Greta, on every night at 8:30 p.m. on CNN, has one nice rack.
Silvio: What? Is she your new goomah or something? She wouldn't be nothing without Roger Cossack, who still hosts a show at 12:30 p.m. weekdays.
Tony: Hey! What's-a-matta-with you two? I'm trying to use AOL version 7.0 to e-mail Carmela and the kids. I can even insert movies and sounds into my e-mail!
Uncle Junior: Did you see the new DVD of Dawson's Creek? It's fantastic! There are even f---ing outtakes! I love that Joey!
Scary. And it gets much worse.
But what about the news itself?
None of the networks are independent anymore. NBC is owned by General Electric and has close ties to both Microsoft (MSNBC) and The Washington Post. ABC is part of Disney's gigantic empire that includes ESPN, Go.com and the NHL's Mighty Ducks. CBS is part of another super-conglomerate, Viacom, which also owns MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures. Fox is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.-the scariest conglomerate of them all, as it owns a few hundred newspapers worldwide.
In 1976, before Murdoch's Fox network defined sensationalism, Sidney Lumet directed a film called Network. The movie looked at a news network that had gone completely sensationalist and had given up on content for the sake of high ratings-all in an effort to obtain a higher price when the network went up for sale to a giant corporation. One of the film's characters asked once the corporation owned the news, "who knows what s--t will be peddled for truth on this network?" Look at Fox-point proven.
Lumet was not the first to point this out. French existentialist Albert Camus wrote, "A free press can be good or bad, but most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad." Camus was referring to the problems of government-owned media.
And while Americans do not deal with government-controlled information the way the Cubans and the Chinese do, we do face a corporate takeover of our information. The free press is our defense against being run over by big government and big business. But with political campaigns paid for by soft-money donations from big businesses, the line between the two is rapidly blurring.
The Federal Communications Commission, a politically appointed body that approves mergers, seems to be content with different corporations owning different major networks-as if competing corporate control will keep everyone honest. Yeah, right.
While Disney, AOL-Time-Warner and Viacom might be competitors in various ways, who exactly is competing with GE? What happens when Viacom wants to purchase AT&T? Will Disney gobble up MCI? Will dial tones be replaced with advertisements?
Voice: You've got a dial tone!
Minnie: Gee, Mickey, it's time to dial the phone!
The FCC is the one body that can put an end to big media mergers, but as long as it is in the pocket of the contributors of both political parties, there is little hope for reform that would free up the press.
Until then, read the article in Sports Illustrated that is about the use of e-mail in sports. Or check out Time's big story on the changing cast of Dawson's Creek.
Martin Barna is a Trinity junior and editorial page editor of The Chronicle.
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