Bob Bytes Back Archive: Uneasy Ecology (environment and media)
3/6/1996
Uneasy ecology (environment and media)
by Bob Fitrakis
San Francisco–Imagine my surprise while I’m sitting in a workshop called “(Un)covering the Environment” at the Media and Democracy Congress in San Francisco when someone hands a fax to the moderator–Columbus’ own Mr. Greenpeace, Harvey Wasserman–about the trash-burning power plant back home.
Harvey excitedly relayed the tortured tale of the trash-burner and the good news that Michael Long, executive director of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, has recommended turning it into a recycling facility. The bad news is that Columbus Mayor Biggus Guyus–a.k.a. The Crazed Anti-Green Cossack–is not happy with the proposal.
But Mayor Lashutka, even in his Buckeye football days, is usually slow off the line. Remember, he was the last person left in Columbus leading cheers for Battelle’s proposed radioactive and toxic waste dump on the banks of the Olentangy River. Battelle had changed its mind and had come up with a more innovative approach to the problem while the mayor was chanting, “Give me a T, give me an O, give me an X…”
Plus the mayor’s got a good reason to be pissed. Long’s essentially embracing the proposal of Lashutka’s electoral opponent, Bill Moss, who had the good sense to have Wasserman write his environmental policy statements. Lashutka prefers the advice of paid propagandists, like Kay Jones, in today’s multi-billion-dollar liars-for-hire PR industry. After William Sanjour of the U.S. EPA publicized that Columbus’ trash-burner was spewing the highest amount of deadly dioxin ever recorded, Jones was brought in to put a positive “spin” on the story. What Jones did in Columbus in cooperation with our mayor is simply a small part of a much larger corporate-sponsored and financed anti-environmental backlash. A must-read for anyone concerned about the fate of our little green planet is Toxic Sludge is Good For You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber, who also spoke at the environmental workshop, and Sheldon Rampton.
Environmentalism, following the original Earth Day, was nearly next to godliness. Now what was once universally regarded as a noble cause is often portrayed as a sinister conspiracy of tree-worshipping pagans or anti-economic-growth fanatics. All too often the mainstream media buy the simple-minded spins put forth like, “The issue here is jobs vs. the spotted owl.” Ecology isn’t that easy. Yet where can we go for complex answers?
A recent study shows that 60 percent of the population gets all its news from TV, but who owns TV? The megacorporations Westinghouse, General Electric, Disney, Time-Warner and Rupert Murdoch decide what you see and hear based on their economic self-interest. Environmental panel member Karl Grossman, founder of Enviro-Video, pointed out that 85 percent of the nuclear plants in the world are built and designed by Westinghouse or GE. Are they likely to tell us horror stories about potential nuclear holocaust, like the Cassini Mission, that Grossman related at the conference? A public document published by NASA in June 1995 states that if the Cassini Mission, a satellite to be launched in 1997 that includes a payload of 25 pounds of plutonium, misses its mark during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, “approximately 5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time of the swingbys could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure.”
Grossman’s Enviro-Video Nukes in Space tells of this and other potential nuclear nightmares the corporate media conveniently ignores. For example, Grossman told us the makers of the Academy Award-nominated Apollo 13 made an “artistic decision” to leave out the fact that there were 8.3 pounds of plutonium in that capsule hurtling towards the Earth. In Columbus, the only TV station that plays Grossman’s videos is the public access channel, ACTV Cable 21. That’s also where Harvey and I co-host our muck-raking show, From the Democratic Left.
Public access is our electronic soapbox. It is the antidote to commercial corporate programming. It is the only genuine expression of democracy on TV. Perhaps that’s why it’s currently under fire from Lashutka appointee Maureen Conley, Columbus’ City Administrative Services director. Conley is not happy with some of the current programs seen on ACTV. No wonder, it’s the only station where she and her boss are routinely criticized and the full, rich reality of Columbus’ many voices can be heard, uncensored.
Whether it’s coverage of the trash-burner or nukes in space, if we are to be an informed and educated citizenry, we must preserve the last bits of free, unspinnable, non-corporate, non-commercial spaces be they in the alternative press or public access TV. That’s also where Harvey and I co-host our muck-raking show, From the Democratic Left.
Public access is our electronic soapbox. It is the antidote to commercial corporate programming. It is the only genuine expression of democracy on TV. Perhaps that’s why it’s currently under fire from Lashutka appointee Maureen Conley, Columbus’ City Administrative Services director. Conley is not happy with some of the current programs seen on ACTV. No wonder, it’s the only station where she and her boss are routinely criticized and the full, rich reality of Columbus’ many voices can be heard, uncensored.
Whether it’s coverage of the trash-burner or nukes in space, if we are to be an informed and educated citizenry, we must preserve the last bits of free, unspinnable, non-corporate, non-commercial spaces be they in the alternative press or public access TV. That’s what I learned at the Media and Democracy Congress.