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his countrymen and extend the political power of the communist state, few ex-
tend that same critique to the contemporary corporate media apparatus which
controls American mass media today.
In April 1997, the big four television networks, General Electric (NBC),
Westinghouse (CBS), Disney (ABC) and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation
(Fox) were each given six megahertz of the digital broadcast spectrum, enough
for each corporate enterprise to create four to six digital channels (McChesney
1997: 21). The cost to the four corporations is the return of their current ana-
log broadcast spectrum to the Federal Communications Commission once the
changeover from analog to digital systems is complete. These same corporate
entities that control mass media in America today will continue to exert hege-
mony into the next millennium. Analog systems and broadcast spectra, which
will revert to the “public domain,” will quickly become obsolete due to new
digital equipment standards. Citizen's lobby Common Cause reports that 98
percent of American homes have televisions, that most Americans get most of
their news from TV, and asserts that the broadcast industry has the “ability to
shape the national news agenda by controlling the messages that TV viewers
will and will not see” (Common Cause 1997). It is not a great leap to conclude
that the national news agenda and the public presentation of history reflects a
combined corporate ideology.
At the same time, public television stations across the United States are
struggling to survive. Most stations have already eliminated local production,
becoming venues for uncritical social history documentaries, cooking shows
and science and nature programming. Public television in America has not
generally fostered community involvement or alternative points of view in
show production and/or content. Media watcher Robert McChesney points
out that public stations in the U.S. are far more inclined than public stations in
Canada and Great Britain to reflect elitist culture due to their reliance on local
and corporate underwriting (McChesney 1996).
Corporate control of broadcast and cable television has kept innovative
and critical historical documentaries, as well as media of other genres, from
reaching the public. With the “cookie-cutter documentary” model, the story
of any particular moment is presented as the historical truth. Historical data,
facts, quotes and imagery are carefully edited to seamlessly produce the nar-
rative. Control of ideological messaging is exerted firstly through choice of
subject matter and secondly through the style of narrative production. Both
form and content, thus combined, have become codified as the “mass media
method” for discussing historical issues.
