So that’s one resource that isn’t being used the way it could be.
In the slums of Rio, they’d be delighted if they had cable television
stations that the people could use. We have them and we’re not
using them effectively.
Cassette tapes are one mechanism to disseminate this information.
They’re easy to duplicate and pass around. The Iranian revolution
was called the first cassette revolution.
There are lots of opportunities. Compared with people in other
countries, our resources and options are so enormous that we can
only blame ourselves for not doing more.
In Elaine Briére’s documentary film on East Timor, Bitter Paradise,
you say, “The press isn’t in the business of letting people know how
power works. It would be crazy to expect that....They’re part of the
power system—why should they expose it?” Given that, is there any
point in sending op-ed pieces to newspapers, writing letters to the
editor, making phone calls?
They’re all very good things to do. Our system is much more
flexible and fluid than a real tyranny, and even a real tyranny isn’t
immune to public pressures. Every one of these openings should be
exploited, in all sorts of ways.
When you get away from the really top, agenda-setting media,
there are plenty of opportunities. It isn’t just a matter of writing op-
eds and making telephone calls, but insisting, by all kinds of public
pressures, that there be openings to your point of view.
There are understandable institutional reasons why the media are
so deeply indoctrinated and hard to penetrate, but it’s not graven in
stone. In fact, the same factors that make it so rigid also make it rich
in ways to overcome that rigidity. But you have to do something—
you can’t just sit around waiting for a savior.
Another approach is creating alternative media, which may well
have the effect of opening up the major media. That’s often been
done.
But you don’t see getting the occasional op-ed piece published as a
substitute for a truly independent, democratic media.