A Campaign Of, By, and For Big Media

[Commentary] Maybe we asked for it. Perhaps as citizens we just can’t muster up the time and energy to delve into the issues that really matter. We can’t even seem to get to the polls in anything approaching credible numbers. When barely over 30% cast a ballot in the 2014 Congressional, state, and local elections, what’s happened to democracy’s vital juices? Voters in countries around the world turn out numbers in the 70th, 80th, even 90th percent ranges. Even in our Presidential elections, we pat ourselves on the back if we get to 55 percent. You could make Pogo’s case that we have met the enemy—and it is us. But is this skimpy democratic participation cause or is it effect? Is it only that we as citizens are short-changing our democracy? Or is someone giving us a helping hand? Even worse, is somebody else the even greater culprit? It’s no secret to readers of this space that I believe the declining state of our electoral campaigns, the news and information we are fed, and the collapse of investigative journalism have been fed by Big Media. The consolidation of media ownership in so few hands has decimated our civic and political dialogue. The billions and billions of dollars that the captains of Big Media must spend to consolidate their control leads directly, and most often immediately, to cutbacks in the newsroom, the wholesale shuttering of news bureaus, and the firing of almost a third of newsroom employees since just 2000—and it started before that.

[Michael Copps served as a commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission from May 2001 to December 2011 and was the FCC's Acting Chairman from January to June 2009. In 2012, former Commissioner Copps joined Common Cause to lead its Media and Democracy Reform Initiative.]