"They can use them to say whatever they please," croons the accompanying jingle, "and put down the opinions of anyone who disagrees!"

Amusing and apt, the cartoon appeared on "Saturday Night Live" in March 1998. But when that week's show was repeated last June -- whoops! -- the cartoon was nowhere to be seen. "I don't think it worked comedically," explained "SNL" executive producer Lorne Michaels, who scoffed at suspicions that the segment's dig at General Electric led to its disappearing act.

With his disclaimer, Michaels insulted our intelligence (though, as "SNL" viewers can attest, not for the first time). Veteran journalist Moyers doesn't. Airing on PBS Tuesday at 9 p.m. EDT, "A Bill Moyers Special: Free Speech for Sale" is truly must-see TV.

He begins with this stark assessment of the First Amendment at the turn of century: "You can say anything you want to say. But if you really want to be heard today, we're talking big money."

The tragedy that follows is in three acts.

First is the case of Cindy Watson, a North Carolina state legislator who was targeted by the state's powerful hog industry for her pro-environmental stance. Under the cover of a group benignly dubbed Farmers for Fairness, a hog-industry consortium waged a massive advertising campaign against Watson. In her small rural district, she was helpless to raise money to respond in kind. Drowned out by her corporate opposition, she went down to defeat.

Next, Moyers examines how the tobacco industry last year poured $40 million into a misleading ad campaign meant to derail the popular McCain tobacco bill. Big tobacco's strategy: Shift the debate from the health issues promoted by the bill, to the bill itself, which was demonized as a tool of big government. The bill died in the Senate.

Finally, the program looks at how media outlets that stood to gain from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 did scant reporting on its legislation -- especially provisions for which broadcasters had fiercely lobbied, such as further deregulation and the gift of public airwaves estimated to be worth $70 billion.

"The media did not want to discuss what it was doing," says Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity. "It would be like a bank robber saying 'Let's have a press conference in front of the bank.'"

Gene Kimmelman, co-director of Consumers Union in Washington, echoes Lewis with the flip-side scenario: "When there are very few companies that control the most popular media outlets, and there's a policy issue that comes up that could hurt them financially, it is very unlikely we're going to get a full airing of that issue."

In a recent interview, Moyers called ever-more-consolidated ownership of the media "the central issue that faces us as a democratic society.

"With the growing interlocking concentration of media power, where the agenda is set by fewer and fewer corporations, you have the issue of political worth and net worth intruding into the whole question of who gets heard."

When a news outlet is taken over by a corporation, he added, "I think there's little sense of the public trust involved, and imminent danger of conflict of interest."

But Moyers directed blame not so much at the moguls as at the politicians who have let us down.

"Citizens have a right to expect their elected representatives to raise important political and social issues. And yet these representatives, as we try to make clear in the broadcast, have been bought off."

What to do? For starters, Moyers said, the public should understand that despite the veneer of multiplying, diverse outlets, these owners are actually diminishing in number. Today, only six corporate behemoths play a major role in virtually everything we see on television, from the programs to the pipeline of cable or satellite delivery: CBS, News Corp., Time Warner, Viacom, The Walt Disney Co. and, of course, General Electric.

"I don't think most people know how most of the main media now fall under the control of a small number of giant corporations and extremely wealthy and willful people," Moyers said. "I don't think they give much thought to how the so-called marketplace of ideas is increasingly a function not of what people need to know as citizens, but what they can be sold as consumers."

Not to be missed, Moyers' "Free Speech for Sale" warns all too convincingly that we're being sold out.
salon.com | June 8, 1999

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

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