Interesting article in the New York Times today about how the radical media activist group Free Press is now working with an organization called The Harmony Institute toward the goal of “Adding Punch to Influence Public Opinion.” The way they want to “add punch” is through entertainment propaganda. The Times article notes that Harmony’s mission is “aimed at getting filmmakers and others to use the insights and techniques of behavioral psychology in delivering social and political messages through their work.” And now they want to use such “behavioral psychology” and “political messaging” (read: propaganda) techniques in pursuit of Net neutrality regulation.

More on that agenda in a second. First, I just have to note the irony of Harmony’s founder John S. Johnson citing “The Day After Tomorrow” as a model for the sort of thing he wants to accomplish. According to the Times interview with him, he says the movie’s “global warming message [and] rip-roaring story, appeared to alter attitudes among young and undereducated audiences who would never see a preachy documentary.” I love this because “The Day After Tomorrow” was such a shameless piece of globe warming doomsday propaganda that it must have even made the people at Greenpeace blush in embarrassment. After all, here is a movie that claims global warming will result in an instantaneous global freeze (how’s that work again?) and leave kids scurrying for the safety of New York City libraries until a quick thaw comes a couple of weeks later. (Seriously, have you seen that movie? That’s the plot!) So apparently we can expect some pretty sensational, fear-mongering info-tainment from Harmony and Free Press.

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There are many battle fronts in the war for human freedom, but perhaps the least-appreciated of these is the battle over America’s communications and media marketplace and whether free markets or government mandates will ultimately rule them.  This battle takes on added importance since all other public policy debates depend upon an unfettered press and robust, independent channels of communication.

What many on the far Left have long understood, and many defenders of freedom have failed to appreciate, is that the battle for control of media and communications policy is fundamentally tied up with the broader war for control of our economy and society. “Instead of waiting for the revolution to happen, we learned that unless you make significant changes in the media, it will be vastly more difficult to have a revolution,” argues the prolific Marxist media theorist Robert W. McChesney. “While the media is not the single most important issue in the world, it is one of the core issues that any successful Left project needs to integrate into its strategic program.”

Normally we wouldn’t need to pay attention to what unrepentant ‘60’s radicals or neo-Marxist university professors think about media and communications policy. In this case, however, it is essential we pay attention. First, McChesney is right in one sense: history reveals that almost every successful effort to impose sweeping controls over an economy / society was accompanied by government efforts to control press and communication systems. If the State is going to have any luck gaining widespread and far-reaching control of an economy, gaining more control over “the Press” — which means all of us these days — becomes an essential part of the “strategic program” for control. Second, we need to pay attention to these radicals because McChesney and the group that he and John Nichols of The Nation co-founded — the insultingly misnamed Free Press — have given this fight new immediacy with their relentless agitation for media and communications policy “reform.”  And they are not the only ones. (more…)

In the battle over media and communications freedom, no group poses a more serious threat to a free and independent press than the insultingly misnamed regulatory activist group Free Press. Along with their founders, the prolific neo-Marxist media theorist Robert W. McChesney and Nation correspondent John Nichols, Free Press has engaged in relentless agitation for a truly radical media and communications policy agenda, and their influence is now spreading throughout the Obama Administration.

The Free Press-McChesney blueprint for media “reform” reads more like a script for State servitude. On the regulatory side, they call for media ownership restrictions, “localism” mandates, “Net neutrality” regulations, price controls on broadband, advertising and copyright restrictions, and layers of additional regulatory edicts.  Once all that red tape smothers the life out the independent press and private communications providers, they plan to have the State step in become the primary benefactor of the Fourth Estate and high-tech infrastructure. For starters, McChesney and Nichols advocate a $35 billion annual “public works” program for the press modeled after the Works Progress Administration of the New Deal era. Their media WPA would include a “News AmeriCorps” for out-of-work journalists, a “Citizenship News Voucher” to funnel taxpayer support to struggling media entities, a significant expansion of postal subsidies, a massive new subsidy for journalism schools, corporate welfare for newspapers sufficient to pay 50 percent of the salaries of all “journalistic employees,” municipal government ownership of press and infrastructure, and many more bureaucratic programs. (more…)