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  • Progressive governments in Latin America have expanded government owned media and used regulations to break the stranglehold the wealthy had over public debate.

    Progressive governments in Latin America have expanded government owned media and used regulations to break the stranglehold the wealthy had over public debate. | Photo: Reuters

Published 9 December 2015
Opinion
The region must aggressively democratize media to block a return to neoliberalism.

Mauricio Marci, Argentina’s right-wing president-elect, is already aiming to take control of public media. Despite winning the presidency with only 51 percent of the vote and facing an opposition controlled congress, he could succeed. Macri needs all the media cover he can get for personal as well as political reasons. Macri and his allies are already implicated in a huge number of corruption scandals. If half the media - reflecting the vote in the election – is willing to hold Macri aggressively to account then he is in for a tough time. Macri’s long term success requires the kind of lopsided media landscape that helped military dictatorships and hopelessly corrupt elected government’s like Carlos Menem’s thrive in Argentina. The same is true for right wing politicians in Latin America in general.

The Venezuelan opposition's big win in the National Assembly elections could begin to set the clock back to 2002 when the private media played a crucial role in bringing about a military coup.

Argentina’s economic implosion in 2001 – a consequence of a menu of right wing economic policies that have come to be known as neoliberalism - was so horrible that the media could not prevent progressive change. Similar stories played out throughout South America and led to the so called “pink tide” of left wing governments in the region. But what if the rich – through a politician like Mauricio Macri – end up in a position to dominate public debate again? It could easily have happened in Venezuela in 2013 when Henrique Capriles came within two percentage points of winning the presidency. The Venezuelan opposition's big win in the National Assembly elections could begin to set the clock back to 2002 when the private media played a crucial role in bringing about a military coup. In Ecuador and Bolivia, a return to an oligarch-dominated media seems much less threatening at the moment because Presidents Rafael Correa and Evo Morales are both riding high in the polls.

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Progressive governments in Latin America have expanded government owned media and used regulations to break the stranglehold the wealthy had over public debate. The international press and some high profile NGOs have predictably demonized this process as a “crackdown on free expression.” But to people who really value freedom of expression and democracy the critique that should be made is quite different.   

In Ecuador, Rafael Correa has, with very good reason, called the “mercantile press” his political party’s most formidable rival. Yet it is hard to see how the media reforms he has implemented since taking office in 2007 could not be quickly undone if a right wing president and National Assembly take power – even if they do so in very close elections.

Consider Correa’s weekly television show – where he rebuts the private media and updates citizens on his work. It is very popular, extremely informative, and a key tactic he has used to level the media landscape, but a right wing president could put an end to it immediately. The show would either be cancelled or used to echo what is said in the right wing media. Presently, that possibility seems very remote which is why Correa announced that he will not run for re-election in 2017.   

The Right – backed by the very wealthy people who own media outlets and are its most influential customers (advertisers) - does not need to hold political power at the national level to have a significant voice in the media and, contrary to much fantasy, its voice has been very far from silenced in countries like Ecuador since the end of the neoliberal era. For progressives on the other hand, a loss of political power can quickly lead to being marginalized in the mass media. Grassroots political organizing is an important layer of protection against this - a way to bypass the media. Nevertheless, the mass media matters – specifically having the resources to reach a significant audience matters tremendously - and it would be very unwise to ignore it.

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The mass media provides (or is supposed to) an essential democratic service. It should allow citizens to hold both elected officials and unelected private elites to account. Relying on concentrated power - either high level elected officials or wealthy owners and advertisers – for the resources to do this creates serious problems, most especially when elites in government and in private industry are allied against the public on key issues. That basically describes the situation in many rich countries like Canada and the U.K. where delusions are promoted that they set the standard for “press freedom.”

Several years ago, John Nichols and Robert McChesney suggested an ingenious solution to this dilemma. Allow each voting age person control over an equal amount of government money that he or she can direct to any non-advertising, non-profit media outlet of their choice. The funds, basically media vouchers, come from the government but control over the funds is shared equally by all voters. Ironically, this idea was inspired by an essay written in 1955 by Milton Friedman, a far right economist, who promoted government supplied vouchers as a way to reform public education. Applied to education the idea is a disaster, but picking which media outlets you’d like to see thrive is not at all the same as picking an elementary school for your children.

No political process, whether we consider it wonderful or repugnant, can ever really be made “irreversible.” However, the more the public comes to see the media as something that is truly theirs and accountable to them – not high level politicians or, even worse, unelected tycoons – the harder it will be for elites to undermine democracy by dominating public debate. In fact, the harder it will be for unaccountable elites to exist at all.

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