PS: How did that all happen? How did this grassroots thing happen when there was a virtual blackout from the mainstream media.

BM: That’s a great question. You had a lot of people working on it in the margins, and I think that a lot of things came together. I started a group called Free Press; we started that group in December, thinking that we were going to slowly ramp up in two or three years to be a media activist group. Suddenly we’re thrown in the middle of this fight, so we sort of became a serious organizing group right away. Most importantly, I think, was groups like MoveOn, the antiwar group. This is a membership-driven group with over a million people who participate via the internet. And their members during the antiwar drive were so upset by the terrible press coverage in the US news media that when the word got out the FCC was going to give companies like Rupert Murdoch and Clear Channel the right to own a lot more media than they already own, the people flipped out and said, “This is absurd!”That gave a lot of momentum to this drive. People linked up the fact that we’re making lousy policies in support of this war and crappy media coverage, and the media coverage is being provided by a couple of companies that want to increase their power. I think that generated lots of enthusiasm and interest, and a lot of the momentum that opposed the invasion of Iraq went to people who said “OK, let’s nip this thing in the bud and stop having a press system, a media system where this corporate media serves up the government line uncritically to us.”

MoveOn's members during the antiwar drive were so upset by the terrible press coverage in the US news media that, when the word got out the FCC was going to give companies like Rupert Murdoch and Clear Channel the right to own a lot more media than they already own, the people flipped out and said, “This is absurd!”

And I just think the truth of the matter finally dawned on people in a manner it never has before, which is: media are very important to politics in this country. The right-wing has understood this for a long time. Since the 1960s and 1970s, they’ve devoted inordinate influence to making the media more sympathetic to the political right. They understood that once they accomplished that, everything else would fall into place. I think a lot of people realized: they know something we don’t. So I think you’re seeing a lot of minority groups, journalists, who sort of feel that what they’re doing is impossible to do in the commercial environment. Recording artists, musicians, entertainers, directors. People in the kitchen of corporate media see what concentrated ownership has done to their ability to do good work. All these groups said, hey, this issue became a symbol of the problems with media, and they jumped on it.

Finally, the whole notion of concentrated media is anathema to everyone. That’s why 750,000 people contacted the FCC and the 300- or 400,000 since then who’ve contacted Congress runs 99.99% against letting fewer companies own more media. You could probably find more people who want to put Osama bin Laden on Mt. Rushmore than you can find who want to let fewer media companies own more media in this country. It’s simply a non-starter across the political spectrum. That’s been the corruption of this that’s become transparent, because the arguments on behalf of this are ridiculous and implausible.

PS: It seems that the Left’s tactic with media is related to content: get the protesters out and get coverage. And, while the Right does that too, it seems they’ve been working at the structures that underly media much longer: who gets the licenses, how the spectrum’s divvied up…

You could probably find more people who want to put Osama bin Laden on Mt. Rushmore than you can find who want to let fewer media companies own more media in this country.

I think you’re right. The left hasn’t fought over these policy issues until now. They’ve either not recognized them as serious issues, so they haven’t felt they’ve had a hope, and I think increasingly they’ve seen their leverage in the political culture and the media culture as much less as a result and, absolutely, they’re wising up. You can’t expect to get favorable coverage of an antiwar movement, or even decent coverage of the war, on the radio when one company owns all the stations, like Clear Channel, that’s sponsoring pro-war rallies and its management is completely in bed with the current administration. It’s just unthinkable to ban the Dixie Chicks when they say something critical about the maximum leader. This is simply not going to happen, and people have to wakeup to it.

PS: So, how does this all fit into the conservative values of free market capitalism or neoliberal ideology?

BM: What can be said without trying to get into the motivations—the unspoken motivations, which gets us into a difficult turf of moronic speculation—is that having corporate commercial media is a crucial part of the US global vision for the world. Has been for a long time, but especially since the early 1980s at the dawn of what’s called neoliberalism, under Reagan and Thatcher, and certainly carried on since then by the United States and Britain. This vision of the world is one in which the non-profit, non-commercial sector is small, in which commercial interests run everything, and it’s one in which the idea of media as a commercial enterprise is central, under the belief that, if it’s a commercial enterprise, the chances are very good that the coverage and culture that will emanate from it will be sympathetic to broader commercial interests. And I think that’s true. And that’s why they proposed it and pushed it worldwide.