roundtable: Re: The Liberty Tree and CEM

roundtable: Re: The Liberty Tree & CEM

Re: The Liberty Tree & CEM

Trudy Dunham (TCD@fourh.mes.umn.edu)
Mon, 4 Dec 1995 17:51:17 CST6CST 

From: "Trudy Dunham" <TCD@fourh.mes.umn.edu>
To: Vigdor Schreibman - FINS <fins@access.digex.net>, roundtable@cni.org
Date:          Mon, 4 Dec 1995 17:51:17 CST6CST
Subject:       Re: The Liberty Tree & CEM
Message-Id: <ED516A45AB6@fourh.mes.umn.edu>


How does the media vs the internet fit into communitarianism?

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Trudy Dunham, Research Fellow        Internet: tdunham@mes.umn.edu
CYFERNet Coordination Team                     cyf@reeusda.gov
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> ----------------Original Message Posted in Multiple Lists----------------- 
> -------Republication is Authorized Only When Message is Kept Intact-------
>   
> FINS: Communicating the Emerging Philosophy of The Information Age       
> FEDERAL INFORMATION NEWS SYNDICATE                    
> Vol III, Issue No. 23 (114 lines)                          December 4, 1995
>     
>      
>                   READ THIS ISSUE OF FINS TO CONSIDER:      
>                                                              
>                 *   A new electronic journal is launched
>                                           
>                 *   Heroic cyberspace "story tellers" in sight
>     
> ========================================================================= 
>  
>  
> CLOSING THE "VALUES-GAP":
> The Liberty Tree & CEM
> By Vigdor Schreibman
> 
>    A new electronic journal has been launched: The Liberty Tree.  Its
> guiding spirit is Jerry Landy, former CBS News Correspondent and tough
> media critic, who intends to place primary focus of the Tree on news and
> critical commentary on the popular mass media. 
> 
>    Landy observes, "(I)n the United States, unlike most enlightened
> democracies, radio and television and print do not hold themselves
> effectively to account for their performance.  They do not really talk back
> critically to themselves.... We are a nation in denial, a nation of brooding
> silences.  TV-oriented media is silence institutionalized.  They are no
> longer the solution but part of the problem."  Indeed, Newton Minow recently
> told Landy's ISSUES IN TELEVISION class, "telemedia have become a global
> force second only to nuclear power -- but we're not treating it as such." 
> What gives The Liberty Tree its very special direction at this time, in
> addition to Landy's formidable talents as a journalist and teacher, is the
> emerging Cultural Environmental Movement that Landy promised to support. 
> 
>    CEM is the brainchild of George Gerbner, Dean Emeritus of the Annenberg
> School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.  Its founding
> convention has been scheduled to be held on March 15-17, 1996, in St. Louis,
> hosted by Webster University, and co-sponsored by Webster and other
> organizations representing a broad range of social and cultural concerns. 
> In a message to supporters sent out earlier this year, Gerbner explains the
> cause of CEM, as no one can:
> 
> >    "Scotch patriot Andrew Fletcher once said that whoever tells the stories
> > of a nation need not care who makes its laws. That was at a time when  
> > stories were still hand-crafted, home-made, community-inspired.  Today,
> > they are the products of a complex mass-production and marketing process.
> >
> >    "Who tells most of the stories today? No longer home and community.
> > No longer parents, schools, or church. In many parts of the world not
> > even the native country. Our children are born into homes in which the
> > dominant story tellers are not those who have something to tell but a
> > small group of global conglomerates that have something to sell."
> >
> >     It is impossible to exaggerate the consequences of that historic
> > shift for human socialization and governance.  Channels multiply but
> > communication technologies converge and media merge. With every merger,
> > staffs shrink and creative opportunities diminish. Cross-media
> > conglomeration reduces competition and denies entry to newcomers. Fewer
> > sources fill more outlets more of the time with ever more standardized
> > fare. Alternative perspectives vanish from the mainstream. Media
> > coalesce into a seamless, pervasive, and increasingly homogenized
> > cultural environment that has drifted out of democratic reach. Even
> > fund-starved public broadcasting is fighting for its life and needs
> > urgent support.
> > 
> >      Other distortions of the democratic process include the promotion
> > of practices that drug, hurt, poison, and kill thousands every day;
> > portrayals that dehumanize and stigmatize; cults of media violence that
> > desensitize, terrorize, and brutalize; the growing siege mentality of
> > our cities; the drift toward ecological suicide; the silent crumbling of
> > our infrastructure; the widening resource gaps in the richest country
> > that already has the most glaring inequalities in the industrial world;
> > the costly neglect of vital institutions such as public education and
> > the arts; and image politics corrupting the electoral process.
> > 
> >      The Cultural Environment Movement was born to meet the crucial
> >  challenge of our time: to build new mechanisms of independent citizen
> >  initiative and participation in cultural decision-making.  We shall no
> >  longer beg for favors in an area where we have constitutional rights,
> >  human rights, and civil rights.  We must mobilize as citizens as
> >  effectively as commercials mobilize us to act as consumers.
> 
>    It is the Constitutional theory established in an era of the solitary
> pamphleteer, that the communications media should operate as a
> "marketplace of ideas."  This could bring to bear on civilization, so the
> theory says, the valued ideas of the whole citizenry in the process of
> cultural development and formulation of public policy.  We live, however,
> in a "rigged and lopsided competition of ideas," Yale political economist
> Charles E. Lindblom observed in his classic volume "Politics and Markets"
> (1977).  From this situation there has come to exist an opportunistic
> "marketplace of media ideas" one may see, serving merely to maximize the
> profits of the media owners and their favored clients, at the expense of
> society-at-large
> 
>    That is only the beginning of the story, however. A new media is unfolding
> in cyberspace; one that can challenge the whole structure of contemporary
> civilization derived from the opportunistic "marketplace of media ideas." In
> cyberspace the ideas of the citizeny have a stunning new chance to regain
> compelling command.  That is where The Liberty Tree is going to pave its
> heroic path.  The URL is http://www.prairienet.org/libertytree/. 
> 
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