Page 47 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Alternat ve Med a n the Un ted States

In March 2003 when the bombing started, Americans were invited to look through the el-
evated eyes of the warriors in control of the exciting high-tech weapons. The digital imaging
of weapons is a graphic style recognizable now across the media spectrum from TV news to
films and video games. Its prominence confers a kind of video-game sensibility to war, one
antithetical to concerns for the victims on the ground and such digital thrills are easily dis-
sociated from the killing of real people. The Deep Dish series brought those people to life.
An overpowering impression begins to take hold as viewers are shown how people, art
treasures, antiquities, and important archeological sites have been destroyed—none of it
makes any sense.
But before the bombing it seemed to make sense on American television as former generals
and news celebrities alike spoke of strategies and battle plans, and made use of Pentagon-
supplied graphic illustrations. The producers of Deep Dish also used graphics, but they were
used to illustrate other perspectives of war. Editors visually superimposed the faces of chil-
dren inside the target structures as cable-news generals illustrated aerial weapons on news
shows. Exciting images of advanced weapons systems are far less convincing when noncom-
batant victims are pictured on the receiving end. The technique shatters the meaning and
sensibility made of war on U.S. media.
Recognition of the compelling quality of the series, and the public need for a twenty-
first-century creative merger between critical art and politics, was conferred by the Whitney
Museum of American Art in New York City, which aired the tapes continuously at its 2006 Bi-
ennial from March 2 to May 28.

As telecom corporations such as AT&T and Verizon move to provide video
programming, pressure builds to minimize the public interest requirements
for PEG access and to eliminate local franchise regulations. Media activists are
working to ensure that PEG access will stay in cable and serve as a model for
other platforms.

PuBLiC inTErEsT sET-asiDE
Direct Satellite Broadcasting (DBS) is one arena to have developed a “pub-
lic interest” set-aside. DBS can provide the sort of channel choice that cable
provides via satellite. It is the only programming available in many rural areas
where cable lines are not cost-effective. In the late 1990s, when DBS systems
were being marketed around the country, organizations such as the Consumer
Federation and the Instructional Telecommunications Foundation lobbied to
make sure that some sort of public “payback” would be required from these sys-
tems. After several years of lobbying and activism, 4 percent of DBS channels
were required to be educational and nonprofit. This has enabled the University
of California and University of Washington as well as several consortia of col-
leges to have national programming via satellite. It has also enabled two “alter-
native” channels: Link TV and Free Speech TV, which provide national space
for, among others, antiwar activists and environmental advocates. Free Speech
TV airs Democracy Now!, the television version of the popular Pacific Radio