Making it happen now

Various studies have concluded that news and public affairs programming in the U.S. exhibit biases that derive from the mass media's institutional structures. According to authors such as Ben Bagdikian, Edward Herman, and Noam Chomsky, media content is influenced by institutional factors such as the media's private ownership, its dependency on advertisers, and the industry's concentration. These authors claim that changes in media content depend on changes in media institutions. Such structural modifications would require fundamental changes in the media's organization and ownership. But Herman and Chomsky have also alluded to a different, and decidedly more modest, program of change. Alternative media institutions exist, most notably community radio and television in cities and towns throughout the U.S., and they could provide more independent programming than they currently do. Herman and Chomsky make this point when they say that: “Local nonprofit radio and television stations ... provide an opportunity for direct media access that has been underutilized in the United States.” This suggests that by reducing underutilization, that is, by making more effective use of existing alternative media institutions, greater programming diversity is possible. Although this would produce much less than a wholesale restructuring of media institutions, a greater use of alternative media could promote more independent programming.