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The
Get-Rich Con: Are Media Values Better Now?
by
Norman Solomon
September
22, 2003
Presidential
candidates have become fond of asking whether Americans are better off now than
they were four years ago. Looking back at a sensational Time magazine story
that appeared in late September 1999, we might want to ask a similar question:
“Are media values better than they were four years ago?”
The
enthralling title of Time’s 20-page cover story -- “GetRich.com” -- heralded scenarios for wondrously swift
elevation into the ranks of the wealthy. The spread had its share of wry digs
and sardonic asides, but reverence for the magnitude of quick money in
dotcomland seemed to dwarf any misgivings.
Although
the magazine explained that “it’s not all about the money,” the punch line
arrived a few dozen words later: “But mostly, it’s the money.” And back in
1999, there was plenty of it moving into new digital enterprises. “In the
second quarter of this year, venture-capital funding in the U.S. increased 77
percent, to a record $7.6 billion. More than half went to Internet start-ups.”
At
the time, Silicon Valley executives were holding stocks and options valued at
$112 billion -- a few billion dollars more than the GDP of Portugal.
Computer-literate job seekers were riding high: “Never before have the
unemployed been so cocky. ... E-commerce niches are getting claimed so quickly
that there might not be time for business school anymore.” Said one Stanford
grad who was enjoying the rush of launching his own dot-com firm: “It’s all
about the buzz. I can’t explain it. It’s like magic.”
The
“GetRich.com” story was part of long-running media themes. Fourteen months
earlier, Time was euphorically insisting that “the real economy exists in the
thousands -- even tens of thousands – of sites that together with Yahoo are
remaking the face of global commerce.” The nation’s largest-circulation
newsmagazine saw general prosperity on the cyber-horizon: “The real promise of
all this change is that it will enrich all of us, not just a bunch of kids in
Silicon Valley.”
While
Time and other media outlets were simply reporting on the dot-com phenomenon,
they were also hyping the phenom -- glorifying it and egging it on. They did so
repeatedly during the last few years of the 20th century.
That
coverage makes for sad reading now. But, truly, it was just as sad then. The hollowness
of monetary dreams is scarcely mitigated when they are being fulfilled. Half a
century ago, sociologist C. Wright Mills warned of “a creeping indifference and
a silent hollowing out.” In the United States, he observed, “money is the one
unambiguous criterion of success” -- and behind the obvious fact that people
“want money” lurked the more unsettling reality that “their very standards are
pecuniary.”
Such
monetarily fixated standards are so widespread that they often permeate
discussions of life and death. In mid-September, when Colin Powell strained to
justify Washington’s refusal to let go of the occupation of Iraq, he used the
language of a venture capitalist: “Since the United States and its coalition
partners have invested a great deal of political capital, as well as financial
resources, as well as the lives of our men and women ... we can’t be expected
to suddenly just step aside.”
The
departed Internet boom may be the stuff of some fond memories, but its heyday
came in a dubious economic context. The tech bounties were hardly being shared
equitably. In a book titled “Economic Apartheid in America,” authors Chuck
Collins and Felice Yeskel pointed out: “Between 1977 and 1999, the average
after-tax income of the wealthiest 1 percent of households went up 119.7
percent. The bottom fifth of households lost 12 percent and the middle fifth
lost 3.1 percent.”
Those
kinds of enormous disparities rarely seem to trouble the journalists who avidly
recount the ups and downs of big investors. The sensibilities that major media
outlets bring to bear on economic reporting are not far afield from the goals
that preoccupy the media moguls who are yearning to gain even greater market
share and even more humongous profits.
“You can have wealth concentrated in the
hands of a few, or democracy,” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented.
“But you cannot have both.” This observation applies fully to the news media --
the lifeblood of vitality for the body politic.
About
20 years ago, when cable TV arrived with great fanfare, the upbeat futurist
Alvin Toffler foresaw the emergence of “a truly new era -- the age of the
de-massified media.” In theory, the country would be cable-wired for democracy.
But
today, as Americans can see by clicking through the corporate-dominated fare,
the realities of economic power have implemented very different plans for cable
television. In 2003, the cable picture is grim. On Sept. 15, a Wall Street
Journal article noted in passing: “Of the top 25 cable channels, 20 are now owned
by one of the big five media companies.”
The
likes of Viacom, Disney, News Corp. (which includes Fox), AOL Time Warner and
General Electric continue to promote values similar to the ones that were
implicit in countless news stories celebrating the dot-com boom. Fixations on
getting rich are the propellants of profit-driven media conglomerates. When the
subject is zeal to accumulate wealth, they’ll be the last to focus on the
downsides: for individuals and for democracy.
Norman Solomon is Executive
Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (www.accuracy.org) and a syndicated
columnist. His latest book is Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell
You (Context Books, 2003) with Reese Erlich. For an excerpt and other
information, go to: www.contextbooks.com/new.html#target. Email: mediabeat@igc.org.
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