SUMMIT

Citizen Generated Response
Danny Schechter
We have heard reference before to the TV show, the Survivor, and it looks as if we have
some survivors in the room. Survivors from back to back panels, which in any condion is
a test not only of our intelligence but also of our paence. So many interesng things have
been said. How will we retain them all? I have already taken the privilege of texng my
comments to each of your mobile phones. So, you can read them at your leisure in
another life, but right now I’d like to share some thoughts with you and I do so with a bit
of humility because I realize that I am not here as a representave of any large media
organizaon nor do I have any bosses who are going to be watching what I say and greeting
me on what I le out. I am here really as a concerned network refugee. A former
producer with CNN and ABC and for a brief me with CNBC and my book on this subject
wrapped up my experience with the tle, “The more you watch, the less you know.”
I have come to a point in my life where I am beginning to wonder whether or not our
media system is a guardian of democracy as one would have it in the classical sense, a
protector of ordinary people on their right to know or has it become someway in its giant
size and its commercial ambions in its global reach, has it become a threat to democracy.
Mr. Obama, do you believe that your pastor Reverend Wright loves America as much as
you do? That was an actual queson in a polical debate just two months ago in my
country, where increasingly young people get most of their news and most of the news
that they believe from the comedy channel and not from a news channel. We are increasingly,
thanks to advance technology, the latest is considered the best. The latest in breaking
news is considered the most important. The latest in technology is considered the
coolest. The You Tube video, where somebody sprays whip cream on himself or herself is
considered the funniest and as a consequence, 60% of our young people can’t find Iraq on
the map, five years aer a war began.
Is the media serving democracy or is it undermining democracy? Have we seen not only
giant mergers and media concentraon that is frightening in itself but a merger of newsbiz
and showbiz to the extent that what’s zappy, what’s clever, what’s graphically fantasc
becomes more important than substance, more important than ideas and more important
than values.
We are here, it seems to me and I am glad to be among you as a community of the
concerned. I am not sure if we are at the funeral of the media or we are celebrang its
great potenal but we are here because we share on our own languages and in our own
ways certain values. We believe that the people should be informed. We believe that
there is a right to know. We believe that the media should aspire to be truthful. We believe
that there are values that are more important than the next commercial. We are here with
something to tell and not just something to sell. And unfortunately the values of many of
our instuons have been driven in a sense by the market place to reflect market values,
so that the boom line becomes the only line and cizens are uncrically accepng
informaon which later turns out not to be true, oen to their own determent.
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