I WANT PEOPLE TO RUN THE MEDIA
I want people to run the media. People like me. Not people that think like me, I don’t want to be trapped in an info vacuum! No, no – I want people that feel like me to run the media!
I decided to study Media and Communications in college. I’ll be honest, it was first a naive decision, ironically chosen by no less than a Buzzfeed quiz because I had zero ideas about what to do with my life. Five years later, I can confidently say that was the most important Buzzfeed quiz I had ever taken in my life and I am glad with the results. Studying the media industry is interesting and, I think, one of the most vital industries to study today. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, while most of the world had its sights on cures and medical advancements to save humanity, I was on Zoom trying to understand how to save ourselves from our own portrayals of the virus.
To the President of the U.S.A., it was kung flu, not a virus from China but a “Chinese virus,” portrayals that coincided with anti-Asian sentiment and violence across the country. In March 2020 we were told to “Relax.” But a few months later, in May our country’s death toll passed 80,000. All this amidst police brutality that killed Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. The world was on fire! At least, for most of us, it seemed to be.
And while it burned down around us, we were cooped up in our houses glued to our screens. In this battleground, I studied how the media was fighting for our attention— views, likes, shares, etc. It was a pivotal time for a media student to learn about media. But who is the media? People, right? Kind of.
More often than not, in capitalist-loving America, our media is run by large corporations. Whether it be Elon Musk (owner of X, formerly known as Twitter), Jeff Bezos (Washington Post), Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. (New York Times), or Rupert Murdoch (FOX) – some multibillionaire capitalist owns your news. Once you understand this, the media house of cards falls fast.
Currently in the United States, the media operates under the pretense that it is unbiased and true to the story, however, we know this is not always the case, especially when there are dollars and audiences on the line. It would be naive to imagine our economic and media systems as being separate and independent of each other.
In his book, “The Media/Democracy Paradox,” author Robert McChesney points to the influence and antidemocratic nature of media giants. According to McChesney, media in the U.S. functions as “a profit-driven, advertising-supported media system: hypercommercialism and denigration of journalism and public service.” This helps to make sense of the attention-grabbing and fear-mongering that circulated during the COVID-19 Pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. Oftentimes, the media needs to rely on finger-pointing and polarization to grab at its audience and churn over a profit. McChesney adds, “It is a poison pill for democracy.” Great.
So I decided to peel away from big-name news companies in hopes of finding a more democratic, non-profit news channel in the U.S. Unfortunately it was a lot harder than I thought it’d be. And just when I was ready to give up hope, I found it… The LAist!
The LAist is a nonprofit news and radio organization based in my hometown of Los Angeles, CA. The media company, which grew from a partnership with Southern California Public Radio, relies heavily on public donations and volunteers to stay running. Its stories are focused on local issues (though they have a global news section on the Palestinian/Israeli 2023 conflict). The LAist’s vibe is, at least to this Angeleno, accurate of real Los Angeles. Its stories focus on pressing issues like houselessness, and Latinx-American cultural topics, and most of its journalists are people of color. Dare I say, “News can be cool,”? There is hope!
When reviewing media organizations like the LAist, it looks like, maybe, the media is run by real people after all. You just need to turn away from “mainstream” news sources and look for them. Supporting smaller, nonprofit media helps you 1.) Find media run by people that feel like you, and, 2.) Helps to keep media democratic and accessible.