- Temperatures are generally in the upper 50's
to around the 60 degree mark and they'll be rising.
(REPORTERS SPEAKING OVER ONE ANOTHER)
- Thanks, I'm Bill Griffith.
We have an update on that crash that was causing tie ups on
Southbound 163 near the 15.
(SIRENS WAILING)
- We spoke to the DEP's Deputy Commissioner moments ago
and he says that this
main burst simply because it's old,
100 years old to be exact.
(REPORTERS SPEAKING OVER ONE ANOTHER)
- Also good to know, I think I remember the Roeblings
built the Brooklyn Bridge 125 years ago.
- In this country, the most powerful country on earth,
is is so actually difficult to get information,
especially outside our borders.
Not to mention what's going on inside this country.
- Four hours and 20 minutes ago
at 9:42 PM Eastern Time
that would have put it at five.
- Public information,
the news we rely on to learn about
what's happening in the world,
to learn about one another,
is in the hands basically of commercial enterprises.
- And agreement on health care is close,
- but support could still crumble. - Giant media corporations like
Time Warner and News Corporation, Disney, and so forth,
they get to decide what is news,
what is newsworthy, and what is not newsworthy.
- This is America,
how many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage?
- What the press is pushing is distortions,
lies, lack of balance.
- I have 900 channels on my TV
but 700 of them are selling the...
(REPORTERS SPEAKING OVER ONE ANOTHER)
- The American public
knows far more information about sex scandal, celebrities, Hollywood,
than they know about economics and the environment.
That's by design.
- When was the last time, Governor,
that you were at a Wendy's and had a Frosty?
- Make no mistake about it,
it's to control people's ideas,
it's to control their imagination.
(REPORTERS SPEAKING OVER ONE ANOTHER)
(INTENSE MUSIC)
- They wouldn't say it in that way
but they would edit my pieces,
they would push me in different directions,
they would turn down stories that were more critical.
- We're in a profound crisis of democracy.
You can't choke off discourse
and have a free society.
- This is what you get with drunkard kneeling,
it's... it's gonna happen.
- These are stories you will not be told
on radio, in newspapers, or on television.
(SIRENS WAILING)
A clash between two worlds,
big media corporations
spinning public perception for profit
versus the defenders of truth
who stand for liberty and democracy.
- And that's our news for tonight.
(LIGHT SWITCHING)
(FLICKERING)
(SUBDUED RUMBLING)
(CAR DRIVING PAST)
(CAR HONKING)
- I'd often been asked if there was any pressure on me
because of the kinds of stories that I do.
I was always asked,
"Are there some stories that you can't do?
Are there sometimes that you're not allowed
to report on certain things because of advertisers?"
And my answer is always, "Absolutely not."
(GUNS FIRING)
(INTENSE MUSIC)
- Two decades after the end of the Vietnam War
the United States lifted the trade embargo against Vietnam.
And CBS chief correspondent Roberta Baskin
looked into one corporation's search for cheaper labor markets.
- The premise for the story was the fact that Nike
were subcontracting to these factories
on the other side of the planet,
but they weren't really taking responsibility
for how the shoes were made.
(PLANE TAKING OFF)
And I asked to follow the trail.
- In August of 1996
Baskin and a CBS News film crew
flew to Vietnam to investigate the Nike factories.
- We were able to kind of peek through the keyhole but...
We were not allowed inside.
We were barred.
(TALKING CONFUSEDLY)
- Go!
(CARS HONKING)
- One of the things that really shocked me was to discover that
the word Nike had become a verb.
The word Nike meant
to abuse your employees.
(MACHINES RUNNING)
There were incidences of physical abuse,
women who had their mouths taped shut
for talking on the line.
15 women who were systematically hit
with a top part of a Nike shoe around the face and the neck.
(SOMBER ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)
It was this disparity between seeing
the corporate image that the company sells
and the reality in these factories.
"Just do it, or else."
(CARS DRIVING PAST)
- Roberta Baskin's news report about Nike abuses
was broadcast on CBS News television across the United States.
- CBS was very pleased, submitting it for prestigious awards.
For me what was really...
exciting about it was that the phones rang off the hook.
(GENTLE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)
(YELLING)
There was picketing of Nike towns across the country.
There were boycotts that were being organized by students on campuses.
- We are not a Nike school. We are not a Nike school.
- I realized that it had touched them kinda nerve.
- Nike's labor abuses reached the media
and the shoe giant came forward to limit the damages.
- We don't have abusive labor conditions in our factories,
and really never have.
- With Nike in denial,
CBS News commissioned Baskin to do a follow up investigation
working with a Vietnamese labor group.
- Roberta's work was mainly about
the corporal punishment.
We helped add another dimension to the problems,
the wages and the excessive amount of overtime.
(RHYTHMIC ROCK MUSIC)
(RINGING)
(CLINKING)
Nike's not the good guys.
Even though they've done a lot of commercials saying they are,
but people at that moment realize
that they are not part of a good team.
- As Baskin was putting together
the updated news report on Nike's labor practices
she received unexpected news from inside CBS.
- I got a call from my executive producer
who said, "The story is not gonna air,
it's been taken off schedule.
There's some sort of deal being made
between Nike and CBS News
for the upcoming Winter Olympics."
The air went out of my soul.
(SOMBER MUSIC)
(CAR HONKING)
- CBS News was paying an enormous amount of money for the rights.
And so by definition, they would be seeking out commercial sponsors
who would pour lots of money into it
so that they could recoup
the millions that they were paying for the rights of the Olympics.
- The 18th Olympic Winter Games on CBS.
- As CBS revealed their Olympic coverage,
the deal between Nike and CBS was plain to see.
- The women's super-G...
- (ROBERTA) Correspondent after correspondent
are wearing these Nike jackets on the air
with a little CBS something or other,
you really couldn't read it, in a big swoosh on the shoulder.
- Is also scheduled on the adjacent race course.
- That was the deal.
Nike had convinced CBS News to turn it's correspondents into billboards.
It was heartbreaking.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
- The CBS News correspondents were furious.
They had to wear the Nike harkus
whenever they appeared on air.
It's just not done.
- Baskin wrote a memo requesting CBS management
to take the Nike logo off the correspondents.
- CBS had crossed this incredible line.
How do you trust serious stories
when you're seeing the reporter
wearing a bunch of logos?
Immediately the President of CBS News responded saying,
"This was a breach of professional etiquette."
It meant that I should shut up.
How dare I raise a question
about the integrity of CBS News.
(CAR DRIVING PAST)
- After questioning the deal with Nike
Baskin was removed from her position
as the chief correspondent of CBS News.
- It wasn't an ordinary transfer,
a change,
it was a demotion.
And it was a demotion that was ...uh...
to send a message.
(DOOR SHUTTING)
- I ended up asking if I could get out of my contract.
The president responded, "Great."
They were, you know, happy to see me go.
- Hi, Mr. Southron.
- I'm Roberta Baskin from CBS News. - Yeah?
- I wanted to talk to you about the problems...
- To this day CBS network has buried
both of Baskin's reports on the Nike sweatshops.
- These are the kind of fundamental conflicts of interest
that result in censorship,
that result in a narrow debate,
and they come directly from the fact
that we have made these historical choices
to allow corporations to own and control our media.
(SUBDUED ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)
- Media today is dominated by a handful of corporations.
This is a far cry from the original ideals of the country.
(CRACKLING)
As Americans fought for independence from imperial rule,
the revolution found it's inspiration
in an unexpected place.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)
(HOOF BEATS)
(GUNS FIRING)
(YELLING)
- The United States was in many senses founded by a journalist,
Tom Paine,
who called Americans to revolution
against a British Empire that was thought to be
completely unbeatable.
(FIREWORKS EXPLODING)
- This country was really founded
on the concept that if you gave citizens
the information they needed
they could govern themselves.
- The founders of the United States
gave citizens the fundamental right to a free press.
- A revolution for freedom of information.
(CROWD YELLING)
- One of the primary reasons for freedom of the press
was that it was the only way that people outside of power
could keep the government from becoming an empire.
Stop militarism, stop the corruption,
the secrecy, and the cronyism.
That was the function of freedom of the press.
(SLIDING)
- There is a reason why our profession,
journalism,
is the only one explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution.
'Cause we're supposed to be holding those in power accountable,
asking the critical questions.
(PRINTING MACHINE RUNNING)
- One of the first steps of the new government
was to encourage the distribution of independent news
through subsidies.
(RHYTHMIC ORCHESTRAL MUSIC)
(PRINTING MACHINE RUNNING)
- Read all about it!
- This was actually America's revolutionary contribution.
The genius of the subsidies is that
it did not discriminating, it's the content of the newspapers.
- The abolitionist movement didn't start in Congress,
it started in those freely distributed weekly newspapers.
And that was really where we began to address
the most fundamental sins of the American experiment.
(CHAINS CLINKING)
- It's simply information that is power.
It's information that frees us,
because when people get information they then can decide what to do.
Today the founding vision of America's journalistic independence
has become deeply distorted.
- Media is the conversation we have as a society.
It's the way we learn about the world,
it's the way we learn about one another.
We see the range of public debate
constrained because there may be
many things that citizens of a democratic society need to know about
that private corporations may not be interested in telling them.
- The International Silver Company.
(RADIO STATIC)
(LIGHTHEARTED MUSIC)
- Just as newspapers had been
the driving force behind democracy,
the great hope of the 20th century
was the birth of mass media.
(APPLAUDING)
- We think Google and Facebook is a big deal,
imagine what it must have been like in rural Kansas
to suddenly be able to listen to a broadcast
from New York City every night.
- And now we move down 45th Street to the Music Box Theatre.
- You people must have faith.
You must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses.
Together we can not fail.
- It was apparent to people at that time that
the control over this medium
was going to be a form of social control.
(RADIO HOSTS SPEAKING OVER ONE ANOTHER)
- With advertising money pouring in,
corporate networks pressured Congress to uphold profit
as the basis for American broadcasting.
- Your cigarette taste.
- This was publicly owned property,
and lots of American protested
the we would turn over this scarce resource,
these extraordinary airways,
to a handful of private commercial interests
to make money by selling advertising to us.
- From Hollywood, the Rolly's cigarette program.
- In 1934 Congress passed the Communications Act,
sealing the future of America's broadcasting
as a for-profit system.
- NBC, CBS, ABC, these huge empires,
were built upon the gift for free
of monopoly rights to government property.
It was an extraordinary corporate welfare
that boggles the mind.
(GENTLE RHYTHMIC MUSIC)
- With broadcasting set up as a commercial enterprise,
government regulations were put into place
to prevent monopolies.
- There was a cross party agreement
that commercial activity would be regulated by the government.
No individual should have such dominance of our media
that they could effectively define the discourse.
The great transition came in the election of Ronald Reagan
as President of the United States.
- Government is not the solution to our problem,
government is the problem.
(CLAPPING)
- Ronald Reagan believed the answer to any concern,
any question as regards how to create a good media system
was to get government out of the way.
(GUN FIRING)
(CHEERING)
- In order to restructure media ownership
Reagan removed regulations.
(CROWD CHANTING)
- Driving the bears back into permanent hibernation,
we're going to turn the bull loose.
(CHEERING)
- That whole model
was the idea that if you removed all controls and regulations
and allowed the free market rip,
then everything would be fine,
everything would be wonderful.
In reality what it does is it allows
a handful of giant corporations to come in
and gobble up everything.
And these conglomerates don't see
journalism as actually being central and essential
to the functioning of a democracy.
Their main interest is making profit.
- One merger symbolized the takeover of mass media
by conglomerates seeking ever higher profits.
- For General Electric,
here is Ronald Reagan.
- Good evening, on this last Sunday before Christmas.
The Christmas season is a time for the family.
- People should remember that Ronald Reagan
was funded by large corporations.
And so suddenly we saw a radical transformation
of the media system in the United States.
(SOMBER MUSIC)
- General Electric and RCA,
two of America's biggest and best known companies,
in a dramatic move last night the two announced plans to merge.
- We'll now have the strongest network,
we'll have a stronger defense piece.
This is gonna be one dynamite company.
(CAMERA SNAPPING)
- The concentration
of mass media in the hands of a very few,
very large international corporations
who have a lot of different businesses.
Defense business, theme parks.
And news became a smaller and smaller part
of ever larger corporations.
- The Reagan administration approved General Electric's purchase
of major media holdings,
despite ongoing violations of industry
laws and practices.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
- Meanwhile, from General Electric and from my family and myself,
a merry, merry Christmas.
Eddy, don't you want to say Merry Christmas?
- The original sin was going to Wall Street.
The demands of wall street will require
empty desks in your newsroom.
So why don't you minimize your actual product
and make more money?
Capitalism is not the best judge
of what's good for society.
When I knew it was time to go the last speech I got from a CEO,
he had been selling cereal,
breakfast cereal,
before he was selling newspapers.
He came in at the bottom where he gave a speech about the product.
He never once mentioned news.
He never once mentioned...
the role of a newspaper.
- We're now at a stage where every journalist who isn't asleep
understands that corporate power has made it
impossible for them to do the job
as it needs to be done.
(SUBDUED SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC)
- (POLICEMAN) Police, freeze!
- One of the biggest news stories of the 1980s
was the explosion of crack cocaine in the United States.
- The crack epidemic not only destroyed lives
in the sense that people were addicted to this powerful drug,
but also it set off gang wars.
Certain communities like the African American communities
were disproportionately hurt.
Gary Webb, he began investigating that.
- Gary Webb, he thought being a reporter
was the best thing you could be.
The only independent force in the society
to establish truth.
(MOTORCYCLE DRIVING PAST)
- What first caught his eye,
he's got Nicaraguans dirty in a drug deal
and they're not going down, they're getting a walk.
Now if you're a reporter you look into that.
- As Webb looked at the suppliers of the crack trade in Los Angeles,
the trail led back to a U.S.-sponsored war
a decade earlier in Central America.
- The Reagan administration wanted to be
proactive... uh... in...
uh... sticking it to the communists around the world.
President Ronald Reagan authorized the CIA
to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
building, supporting, directing the Contras
against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
(HELICOPTERS FLYING)
- They are the moral equal of our founding fathers,
we can not turn away from them.
- Sponsoring violence in a small Central American country
was far more important (GUNS FIRING)
Than stopping drugs from flowing in
to our cities and our communities.
- After a year long investigation
Webb's report broke new ground
by becoming the first major news investigation
published both in print and on the Internet.
- As a consequence,
even though the San Jose Mercury News
is considered a regional newspaper,
it was able to get national traction
and even international traction on this story
because it was now on the web.
- We've got all the DEA undercover tapes,
we've got the FBI reports,
we've got the court records,
and they're all posted for people to see.
- By the way, when you look at his research
and what he was doing, and tracing it,
and he was hip enough to check it and know it was true.
(CHEERING)
- By November 1997
the website was getting over a million hits a day.
- Thank you.
What is the word on the street now?
Have you heard about the CIA?
Well you know what?
We have heard,
we have seen, and now we are moved to action.
- With the CIA on the defensive
and the public demanding answers,
the major national newspapers
waded into the controversy.
- You have the fact that the San Jose Mercury News
being in Silicone Valley
was sort of challenging
the gatekeeper function
that the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post,
and other big papers, had assumed was theirs.
(MACHINE RUNNING)
- The Washington Post weighs in and says,
"Gary Webb got it wrong,
but we can't tell you exactly how he got it wrong
cause we haven't the fainted god damn idea."
It was accompanied by a piece that declared
that the African American community
was conspiracy prone.
So that sort of set the tone
that Webb's story would be dismissed
and to agree, ridiculed.
(PAPER MACHINE RUNNING)
- You had major media outlets
going to the CIA and saying,
"Is this true?"
And the CIA would say, "Oh no, this is not true."
And then the reportage was,
"Oh, well it's not true."
- This is nonsense.
Come on, come on. I mean, come on.
Listen, listen,
there has never been a conspiracy
in this country.
- The fact is that the shoddy reporting on this story
was not from Gary Webb,
it was from his corporate back detractors.
(PAPER MACHINE RUNNING)
- Now, I had a drink with a major figure at the L.A. Times
and I asked him about the crack back,
and he said, "Look, there were meetings
in the building that they weren't gonna let
a guy from San Jose, California
come into their turf and win a Pulitzer Prize."
- (CROWD) Expose CIA.
Expose CIA.
- As the press attacked Gary Webb,
the public protested.
- I got involved with the protests
because Gary Webb, he had no hidden agenda,
he's not lying.
- And we gonna put the CIA and this country on notice.
(GENTLE DRUM BEATING)
- With the national media calling for a retraction,
the Mercury News took down the Dark Alliance website
and reassigned Webb to a bureau
150 miles from his home.
(COMPUTER SHUTTING OFF)
- In the beginning, they were behind you. - That's right.
And then they caught a wild world of hell from the establishment media
and now they're not behind me anymore.
- And here is this guy that had all these awards,
they scar that and broke a story
that everyone warned him not to break.
All of a sudden a journalist that should be hailed
is treated like a piece of crap.
- A year later the CIA released
it's internal report into the agency's involvement
with Contra drug traffickers.
- There are instances where CIA
did not in an expeditious or consistent fashion
cut off relationships with individuals
supporting the Contra program
who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.
- The contents of the report,
if you go into the actual nitty-gritty of them,
what you find is that there was a serious problem that
the U.S. government knew about it,
and that the Contras were far more guilty of drug trafficking
and the CIA was more guilty of looking the other way
than even Gary Webb had suggested.
- With the CIA's report
about it's relationship with Contra drug traffickers,
the media had a chance to vindicate Webb's investigation.
- The New York Times,
they do a story that is half kind of mea culpa,
"we should have done more with this,
it was worse than we thought."
And half, "Gary Webb's still an idiot."
The Washington Post waits several weeks
and does a rather dismissive article.
And the L.A. Times never reports
on the CIA's findings.
So even though Webb was proven correct
he's still considered a flake
who got a story wrong.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
- When he was interviewing on another job,
they'd always say, "Aren't you the guy who wrote Dark Alliance?"
And then they would kill the interview.
He couldn't make a living being a journalist anymore,
and that ripped his heart out.
- He's despondent about his inability to find work.
He got his father's pistol,
laid out a certificate for his cremation,
and then he shot himself.
- Frankly you know, if I have to stand up and take a beating
for putting the issue of government complicity
in drug trafficking on the national agenda,
I'll take that beating any day of the week.
I mean, I was glad to do this story,
I'm proud of what we did, and I'd do it again in a second.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
- We killed one of the few
decent working reporters in the country.
By that we, I mean the business I'm in,
media.
- With the new technological revolution,
Congress began drafting new media legislation.
- The media conglomerates created the fantasy
that if they were allowed to own
dramatically more media
they could make dramatically better media.
Big is better,
effectively.
- Media corporations need that favorable policy
that's gonna allow them to grow
and make more and more money,
and politicians need that media
to give them the air time that they couldn't exist without.
Who's left out of that deal,
of course, is the public.
(CLAPPING)
- At that point behind closed doors
these media conglomerates are asking for the rules
to be loosened even more.
(CLAPPING)
- Fantasy became reality
for the media conglomerates
when President Bill Clinton signed the 1996 Telecom Act into law.
- This law is truly revolutionary legislation
that will bring the future to our doorstep.
(CLAPPING)
- Telecom '96 really rang the dinner bell
for media conglomerates to come and eat up
every station that they wanted.
- Following the Telecom Act
a wave of massive mergers swept through the media industry.
- A handful of entertainment stars
using mega mergers
are preparing to dominate TV and movie screens worldwide.
- The combination of the two together
gives us the opportunity to become
the strongest creative company in the world.
- The superlatives were flying
as Viacom and CBS announced the biggest media merger ever. (SHATTERING)
- A new multi media giant
will soon control an enormous amount of the entertainments.
Viacom is buying CBS,
parent of CBS News.
- When you think about the new Viacom,
you really only have to remember
a single number,
that's number one.
- Capitalize on the convergence of media, entertainment.
- Almost as American as apple pie. (SHATTERING)
The world's largest provider of Internet access
is merging with the world's largest media and entertainment company.
- When media consolidation began to happen
the local broadcasters weren't able to compete.
Well guess who those local radio station owners were?
They might have been a person of color,
or it might have been a woman.
This really just knocked people out of the game.
(WIND BLOWING)
(RINGING)
- We've totally destroyed the localism
of broadcasting purely to serve corporate interests.
There's nothing in market economics that justifies it,
it's pure crony capitalism at it's worst.
(SIREN RINGING)
- In this high tech digital age
with high definition television and digital radio,
all we ever get is static.
A veil of distortion and lies
and misrepresentations and half truths
that obscure reality.
(HELICOPTERS FLYING OVERHEAD)
- In times of war the press loses all critical distance.
Journalists see themselves as
first and foremost, patriots.
The result is essentially
the dissemination of propaganda.
- In the word's media capital,
on September 11th, 2001,
the unthinkable happened.
(CHEERING)
- The people who knocked these buildings down
will hear all of us soon.
(CHEERING)
- The terrorist attack of September 11th,
as tragic as it was,
was almost like a godsend to the Bush administration
because it gave them the raisondetre
that they were looking for
to invade Iraq.
(PRINTING MACHINE RUNNING)
- To link Saddam Hussein to 9/11
the Bush administration turned to the intelligence community.
(BELL RINGING)
- You have to remember this is not an inductive process,
it's inductive.
You decide to go to war
and then you go find the justification.
And this is exactly what happened.
- Look, I ran Iraqi operations.
We didn't have any information.
(PAPER MACHINE RUNNING)
- With no evidence of Saddam Hussein's role in the attacks,
defectors starting emerging from Iraq
with exclusives for U.S. news outlets.
- There was an Iraqi
by the name of Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri.
He claimed to have evidence of you know,
biological and nuclear,
and various kinds of weapons of mass destruction.
- He also talked about
various facilities being under Saddam's main palace,
he talked about nuclear facilities being disguised as water Wells.
I mean, he was their best corroboration
that Saddam was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
(SUBDUED TECHNO MUSIC)
- Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
Among other sources we've gotten this
from first hand testimony from defectors.
- We know where they are,
they're in the area around Tigrett and Baghdad
and east, west, south, and north somewhat.
(PAPER MACHINE RUNNING)
- The success of their propaganda campaign
would depend on one news outlet.
(CARS DRIVING PAST)
- I watched this from the inside.
They created a stage and broad journalists
into the audience dutifully took notes and reported it.
They believed all the crap they were fed.
- The New York Times
is the intellectual and political opinion leader
in the United States.
Sucking up the government in the most outrageous ways.
Constantly trying to placate
the Military Intelligence Complex.
- There's a story in the New York Times this morning.
- Read in the New York Times today.
- And I want to trip to the Times and I want to talk about this week.
- Closer to acquiring nuclear weapons.
- We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
- The smoking gun...
That could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
- With the mainstream media convinced of the necessity for war,
the administration took their case
to the world stage.
- The coup de gras
and the most brilliant propaganda maneuver of all
was Colin Powell's absolutely fraudulent
presentation in front of the united nation's security council.
- Let me share with you what we know
from eye witness accounts.
We have first hand descriptions
of biological weapons factories on wheels
and on rails.
And Saddam Hussein has not...
- Much of the fabricated information
that was passed on by the quote on quote, "defectors"
form the basis for Colin Powell's accusations.
He didn't have any hard evidence, but...
You should have seen the
press fall all over themselves
as soon as he was done saying that this had
been a definitive case for war.
- This irrefutable, undeniable, incontrovertible evidence today.
Colin Powell brilliantly delivered that smoking gun today.
- He just flooded the terrain with data.
- He has closed the deal.
(PAPER MACHINE RUNNING)
- CNN, FOX, CBS, ABC,
the giant echo chamber that creates public perception in the United States
were giving out the administration lines.
- Show down Iraq.
If America goes to war,
turn to MSNBC.
- If you looked at the television screens
with these graphics, and drum-rolls,
and countdown to Baghdad, and this kind of stuff,
it was a raw and open
celebration of American power.
- This hour American and coalition forces
are in the early stages of military operations
to disarm Iraq,
to free it's people,
and to defend the world from grave danger.
(MISSILE LAUNCHING)
(EXPLODING)
(GUNS FIRING)
- After the fall of Saddam,
Al Haideri,
the INC's defector,
finally had the chance to show the world
the justification for war.
- Mr. Haideri couldn't bring these guys to a single place
that he claimed had housed the weapons of mass destruction programs.
The media fell hook, line, and sinker
for the administration's case for war.
And in fact,
certain publications appear to have been deliberately used
and openly receptive of
information that the Bush administration
produced that was wrong
but that bolstered it's case for war.
- Ladies and gentlemen,
the President of the United States.
- King, John king.
This is a scripted...
(LAUGHING)
- Thank you, Mr. President. How...
- You can not go against the White House and survive.
You're finished.
- April.
Did you have a question or did I call upon you cold?
- I have a question. - (GEORGE) Okay.
(LAUGHING)
I'm sure you do have a question.
- The whole idea in Washington is to marginalize people
who go against the consensus,
and they do it very well, you don't get invited to the party.
- For me to blame the reporters is to miss the point,
you have to blame the owners.
These are the people who are responsible
for the conduct of the people who work for them.
(SOMBER MUSIC)
(PLANE FLYING OVERHEAD)
- (SOLDIER) I want everybody to get back, in the back of it now.
- It is my belief that wars really are started by the mainstream media.
It is my belief that the press getting too close to the government,
actually, we are talking about
a sort of interbreeding
or intermeshing between
the structures of the mainstream media
and this structure of the Military Intelligence Complex.
(HELICOPTER FLYING OVERHEAD)
- The impact is that we've got all of these
innocent people in Iraq that have died,
we've got thousands of American soldiers
and British soldiers that have died.
They died for a lie that was so easily uncovered,
but it wasn't allowed in the biggest news outlets.
- These private corporations are making profit off the killing.
They push for more war, it builds their audiences.
They limit the discussion about whether war should continue.
The bring you the general versus the colonel,
or the pro-war Republican versus
the pro-war Democrat,
and they have these extremely limited debates.
When most people are outside of that spectrum,
most people are against war.
(GENTLE MUSIC)
(CHILDREN YELLING)
- The rapid consolidation of media
across broadcast, also into film, book publishing,
created a situation
where instead of having the democratic media system
that the founders anticipated,
with thousands of different owners
of small weekly newspapers.
You no longer had Tom Paine,
you had Rupert Murdoch.
- Rupert is any agenda that you want to shape.
For example, take the war.
You're having a global media enterprise,
and if you shape that agenda at all
in terms of how the war is viewed?
No, I didn't think so. I mean, we've tried.
(LAUGHING)
- Tried in what way?
- Well, we basically supported our papers, and um...
I would say supported... uh...
The Bush policy.
- News Corp and others have eaten out
nearly every single independently managed newspaper
with the United States.
That is something that is quite dangerous,
in putting it's business interests
and it's political interests over the top of all that.
- In order to prevent media monopolies
the Federal Communications Commission
was charged with regulating the media.
- The most important job the FCC has
is looking out for regular citizens
and making sure that whatever media policy is made,
that it's the best for the public
and the best for democracy.
- I'm available for questions. - So.
- Colin Powell leads the drum beat for war,
and his son Michael Powell
was attempting to lead the war against diversity,
of voices at home.
(GENTLE TECHNO MUSIC)
- Once in office Powell waged war
against the last remaining rules on media ownership.
(WATER SPRAYING)
- Here is this agency that very few people knew about.
And they were trying to push through regulations
that said, "In a town, the...
Newspaper, radio, and television could be owned by one person."
By a media mogul,
someone like Rupert Murdoch.
- This is what people feared the most,
that all the content for TV, radio, and the newspaper,
coming out of one shot.
A one size fits all,
one news room community.
- There was almost no public scrutiny
until Michael Powell called network coverage of the Iraq war,
"Thrilling."
- There were these millions of people
and they hear the FCC guy
is calling the coverage "Thrilling"
while he's trying to obliterate the last remaining rule.
And it just tapped into this anger
that people were feeling about the war.
- Despite millions of people protesting against the FCC,
Michael Powell didn't get the message.
♪ Mass communication
♪ is the end of democracy
- Even when people did say,
"Hey FCC, we're the public,
we don't want you to do this."
The FCC turned around and did exactly
what those mega-corporations wanted it to do in the first place.
(CHEERING)
- With victory at hand,
the media giants publicly expressed
their gratitude.
- And it was pretty stunning.
The head of Viacom, the Sumner Redstone,
he repeatedly said,
"Having a Republican in the White House
is better for my company.
And I vote Viacom
and for that reason I endorse Bush's election."
(SIREN WAILING)
- These large conglomerate companies,
they contribute to political campaigns.
They expect to get something for their money.
Deciding on their own and for their own purposes
the news we see and hear.
(REPORTERS SPEAKING OVER ONE ANOTHER)
- Is an inescapable conclusion
that we must reach if we are to have a better society.
The only reliable,
durable,
and perpetual guarantor of independence
is profit.
Thank you.
(CLAPPING)
- Every aspect of our lives,
from what we buy,
what is sold to us,
who produces it,
all those things are connected.
It's not only a monopoly of wealth,
it's a monopoly of information as well.
(GENTLE GUITAR MUSIC)
- In 2007,
with the FCC reviewing it's media ownership rules,
the public came forward.
- Millions of people wrote to Congress,
wrote to the FCC,
emailed,
spoke out at forums.
You'd have a forum of 1,000 people,
this was unheard of,
saying, "No."
One media mogul can't own the radio, television, and newspaper in a city.
- Here was an example where the public had intervened
and gummed something up.
- Under new Chairman Kevin Martin,
the FCC announced public hearings
on media ownership in cities across the U.S..
- We have some of the most entertaining people on the planet,
but we don't know a lot about what's going on in the world
because the way our world is, we have something.
(CHEERING)
- Four companies controlling the 6% of four places of your markets.
That is not diverse,
it is not competitive.
(CHEERING)
- Look where I am, we are concerned citizens.
We're tying to believe that we matter,
don't make fools of us.
(CHEERING)
- And I beg the FCC to help us.
- You can switch from channel to channel
and see the same thing.
- It's very clear that this country has become
profits over people.
(CHEERING)
- Despite overwhelming public opinion against more consolidation,
Kevin Martin sided with the media conglomerates
and removed the cross ownership ban.
- The two Democratic commissioners have voted.
- What Kevin Martin did was demonstrate
his absolute thoroughgoing contempt for
doing his job and representing the public interest.
Embracing entirely the interest
of wealthy corporate benefactors, period.
Pure and simple.
(GENTLE RHYTHMIC MUSIC)
(CAR DRIVING PAST)
- I think the people that own the media
would be much happier
if we were a nation of mindless consumers
rather than a nation of informed, active citizens.
(FIREWORKS EXPLODING)
(BIRDS SINGING)
- To seize this moment we have to ensure
free and full exchange of information.
That starts with an open Internet.
I will take a back seat to no one
in my commitment to network neutrality.
Because once providers start...
- It's simple, it's net neutrality,
it's non discrimination,
and it's a basic principle that politicians
pay lip service to it.
That if the same players like AT&T,
Comcast, and Time Warner,
are able to take over the Internet
through lax public policy,
that we'll lose even the Internet.
(CHEERING)
- Despite his election promises,
President Obama has brought in new
Internet pricing rules,
going against the principles of a free and open Internet.
- It is by making publishing cheap, that permits
many more people to become publishers
that permits many more different voices.
That's where the Internet has really excelled.
Blue Helix has published a lot of information
about war,
about militaries, how they behave,
intelligence organizations.
And that information often comes as a surprise to the public.
It's because the public has been lied to.
- Come on, fire.
(GUN FIRING)
- We have moved the envelope for
what is acceptable for people to publish.
- The United States do something to stop Mr.Assange.
- We're looking a that right now.
- Mr. Connels says he's a high-tech terrorist,
others say this is akin to the Pentagon Papers, what do you comment?
- I would argue that it's closer to being a high-tech terrorist
than the Pentagon Papers.
(RHYTHMIC ROCK MUSIC)
- The greatest fight we have had
in bringing the first amendment to the world
was in the bringing the first amendment to the United States.
- This guy's a traitor, a treasonist, and... and...
and he has broken every law of the United States.
- Will the Internet remain free
or will a few companies be able to control and monetize it?
That's the debate of the era.
(CHILDREN PLAYING)
- We have to stop,
recognize that our media is in crisis,
and ask ourselves,
what is the media that we want?
- We want more information,
access to more information,
we have fewer people who control the information.
- Can't allow this country to go down for the count
'cause some guys in Wall Street can't make money producing garbage news.
- The media is that kind of issue
where if we want it to be better
we have to fight for it.
- These are the critical battles we face right now
in the United States and frankly,
in the countries around the world.
How we respond to this moment
will be every bit as definitional
as how the founders responded to their moment.
- This is really about having a conversation about
what kind of decisions we want made in our name.
That's really what will save us,
is when we really know what's going on.
Not filtered through the lens
or the microphone of corporation.
(RHYTHMIC ROCK MUSIC)