If you're an independent filmmaker, it's always a challenge to get your film aired nationally, even on PBS. And according to the producers of the documentary Fear and Favor in the Newsroom, if your film, like theirs, is about the media's self-censorship due to corporate concerns, it is even less likely to be picked up. In an attempt to bring issues of media biases to the public eye, the film's producers and independent media services like Freespeech TV and Citizen Vagrom have started a grass-roots campaign to get PBS affiliates to broadcast the film.
"The news media are owned by extremely rich people, and they have common interests.... There's very little discussion of that in the news," says Fear and Favor producer Randy Baker. "I don't think censorship of our show - or the show itself for that matter - has gotten the attention it deserves."
The film is narrated by Studs Terkel, and includes commentary from prize-winning journalists like Sydney Schanberg and Frances Cerra on how the media self-censors out of concern for offending corporate interests. Clips are shown of damning news items about nuclear power and the Persian Gulf War that were never aired, and charts depict how the same individuals often straddle both corporate and media boards. While the word "censorship" isn't prominent, the reporters and media honchos (many ex-honchos) give particularly damning evidence of how corporate concerns affect which stories are run.
Baker and partner Beth Sanders went to PBS affiliates with a rough cut of their documentary last year to ask for production help; KTEH, in San Jose, California, was the only station interested in taking them in their unfinished state. Once the film was polished, KTEH convinced a PBS distributor to distribute it via satellite uplink on 9 November; the only issue, however, was convincing the local affiliates to grab that feed and broadcast it to their local station. Without money to fund a national publicity campaign with the local affiliates, the filmmakers themselves are now having to rely on home-grown fans to demand that their documentary be broadcast - with many claiming that the film has been "censored."
"They don't have the money to put on a major PR campaign; instead, it becomes a very grass-roots campaign to call the local station in their market and say, 'I'd like to see it,'" said Danny McGuire, executive producer of KTEH. "That's what one has to do: fall back on this, put the word out the best way you can... It's not a censorship issue."
In the meantime, Baker and Sanders, as well as prominent supporters like Susan Faludi, FAIR, and video distributors California Newsreel, have started a campaign to make the public aware that this film is available for viewing. All the audience needs to do is demand that their affiliate pick up the satellite feed.
Their efforts have picked up speed online. An online "federation" of hundreds of media activists and independent press, currently named the Media Collective, picked up the Fear and Favor cause earlier this year and has started a heavy online campaign. Independent Seattle-based videographers Citizen Vagrom interviewed Baker and Sanders for the October issue of their locally-distributed videozine; the 16-minute segment includes clips from the documentary and explains their difficulties in getting aired. In turn, the Vagrom documentary is now being aired online by Web broadcasters Freespeech TV, in support of their online campaign efforts, and the activists are planning to push the issue at this week's Media and Democracy congress.
"The idea is to encourage folks to call PBS stations, because it will be available off a satellite uplink," said Joey Manley, director of Free Speech Web Video Project. What the Fear and Favor producers are going through "is exactly like what they say in the documentary - it's about when, say, a free-lance producer for NBC is told, 'This is boring,' or, 'We're not interested" - things you can't argue with."
But while the filmmakers and their supporters suspect PBS affiliates of being afraid to run the video, since both PBS and its NewsHour are criticized by the documentary of self-censoring, PBS affiliate KTEH says their concerns aren't grounded.
"There's certainly nothing in it that will step on public television's toes. We should look at ourselves critically too," said KTEH producer McGuire. "This is a program everyone should see, no question about it."
