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June
23, 2003
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Media Arrogance
& Insensitivity
By
WAYNE MADSEN
There is another aspect of Federal Communications
Commission Chairman Michael Powell's desire to allow more and
more media conglomerates gobble up more independent television
and radio stations and newspapers. Mega media companies are now
as arrogant and insensitive as the Bush administration. It is
no wonder that the media and Bush have developed a mutually beneficial
relationship. Bush feeds the media cheap publicity stunts like
his landing on an aircraft carrier and declaring the Iraqi conflict
over and, in return, the media gladly jumps on the chance to
produce fake movies about Private Jessica Lynch and Bush's "heroism"
on September 11.
But arrogance and insensitivity reached
a new threshold on June 21 when ABC aired the movie "Amistad."
The film concerns an 1839 slave ship revolt off the coast of
Cuba, which sees 50 Mende men, women, and children, illegally
captured by slavers in Sierra Leone, rising up and killing two
of the Spanish ship's officers, including the captain. The Mende
attempted to sail the Amistad back to West Africa but were subsequently
captured by an American naval ship off the coast of Long Island.
The Mende are arrested and in 1840 are tried for  mutiny and murder. However, in a harbinger
of the coming Civil War, a US District Court Judge, to the displeasure
of President Martin Van Buren and his southern supporters, rules
that the Mende were illegally kidnapped and sold into slavery
in violation of Spanish law and orders them returned to West
Africa. Van Buren orders the verdict to be appealed to the Supreme
Court. Former President John Quincy Adams, who, unlike George
W. Bush, was an honorable and distinguished presidential son
to reach the White House, becomes the lead defense attorney for
the Mende. Adams wins the case and the Mende are transported
back to their native land. The film, directed by Steven Spielberg,
is as uncomfortable to the viewer as his other landmark movie
about the Holocaust, "Schindler's List."
However, when NBC aired "Schindler's
List" in 1997, it was done without commercials. ABC decided
that a film showing Africans being tortured, beaten, deprived
of food, dying of disease, keelhauled, and committing suicide
was worth commercials. But not just any commercials. At a critical
point of the film, when viewers are concentrating on a pre-trial
scene involving a close up on the face of Sengbe Pieh, the leader
of the revolt, ABC quickly broke away to a commercial featuring
a chimpanzee using a banana for a cell phone. And consider the
inappropriateness of such a commercial after actors, portraying
pro-slavery figures, are constantly arguing that the Africans
on trial are not fully human and, therefore, not deserving of
equal rights under the law. The insensitivity of the Disney-owned
network could not have been more stark. ABC's entertainment division
has the professional talent to ensure the awful segue did not
occur. But it did. Chalk it up to arrogance.
But it is the same arrogance that permits
Fox News to regularly engage in the worst kind of neo-conservative
and ethnophobic propaganda. MS-NBC, not to be outdone by Fox,
has given air time to two absolute demagogues, Michael Savage
(aka Michael Wiener), an out-and-out racist, and Joe Scarborough,
an ethically-tainted former Congressman from Florida's Redneck
Riviera (the Panhandle).
The host of NBC's "Meet the Press,"
Tim Russert, a former political hack for Mario Cuomo and Pat
Moynihan, has shown his new neo-conservative allegiances by his
pedantic and irritating "no,no,no,nos" while interviewing
Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean on the eve of the
former Vermont Governor's formal presidential candidacy announcement.
Russert should have done more than to have eulogized the late
David Brinkley -- he should have acted more like a journalist
and less like a K Street or Capitol Hill lobbyist lecturing a
wayward politician. But Russert's corporate masters at defense
contractor giant General Electric probably did not mind it when
their draft dodging Washington bureau chief questioned Dean's
1Y (call up in the event of a national emergency) draft status
during Vietnam. Such arrogance is the rule with the media conglomerates.
Media arrogance will continue as long
as the media continues to grow in size and influence. Perhaps
Michael Powell should take a "time out" and think about
how his shilling for broadcast monopolies will inevitably continue
the same type of arrogant and insensitive behavior as shown by
ABC.
Wayne Madsen
is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist.
He wrote the introduction to Forbidden
Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's
Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II."
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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