A New Media Revolution

Some thoughts on where we go from here.

February 18th 1983 – as we were all talking about that horse running down the hill scene in the man from snowy river, something sinister was going on in Washington. In a White House meeting arranged by Roy Cohn – Rupert Murdoch, Ronald Reagan, Propaganda tsar Charles Wick discussed a “perception management” program aimed at mobilizing cold-war style Soviet propaganda against the American people to win support for Reagan’s regime change in Nicaragua.

By the time 1987 rolled around, the State Department gave Murdoch access to global satellite technology which he used to infiltrate European news agencies which weren’t doing so well because of the global financial crisis. The scene was set for Murdoch to control the global media and sell the Reagan administration’s push to oust the Sandinistas. Murdoch’s media assets, and the project to consciously mislead the American people was led by Oliver North and the CIA, and we didn’t learn about Murdoch’s role until some Iran-Contra documents were declassified in 2014.

It was the demise of the Fairness Doctrine that cemented Murdoch’s move to the Unites States, and we all know the rest. He set up Fox news in 1996 and put Ailes in charge, and as Rolling Stone wrote in 2011, “Ailes has used Fox News to pioneer a new form of political campaign – one that enables the GOP (Grand Old Party) to bypass skeptical reporters and wage an around-the-clock, partisan assault on public opinion.”

Before the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine so Reagan could convince us that Regime change in Central America was awesome – the airwaves belonged to the people. Roy Cohn (lawyer for Donald Trump), Rupert Murdoch, Ollie North, and The Gipper are probably single-handedly responsible for the disaster we find ourselves in. Untangling it is going to take a bit of a miracle and probably at least generation or two.

We need to take back the airwaves.

That’s already been going on in large part thanks to digital media. Instead of having to seize the satellites – which would be difficult and also illegal - we’ve found a back door. Making end runs around the establishment is nothing new. The music industry did it. Ben folds compared it to a forest burning down, followed by new flora growing up in the place where the forest was, with the new growth having things in common with the old forest. Eventually, though, it will grow into its own old forest and the cycle will start again. “I feel like you’re in the world of the new flora.”

I spoke to Wajahat Ali about this new growth, and I told him it reminded me of an old, obscure movie called Pump Up the Volume. Imagine my surprise and delight when Waj said that not only did he own it on DVD (as do I. It’s very difficult to find), but that he had just watched it, and it holds up.

Pump Up the Volume was released in 1990, when I was an impressionable junior in High School. The film is set in a cookie-cutter suburb of Phoenix, which also happened to be exactly where I lived. The soundtrack was new wave and post punk, including precisely the kind of music I was listening to at the time, like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Pixies, Leonard Cohen, Sonic Youth, Cowboy Junkies, Bad Brains, Henry Rollins, The Beastie Boys, and Was Not Was. It stars Christian Slater, who just the year before, starred in the cult classic Heathers – which my friends and I were all still reeling from.

Slater is a student at Hubert Humphry High, and like most teenagers, he’s got a lot of ennui and angst going on, so he starts a pirate radio station in his parents’ basement to air his feeling about what’s going on with authority at school and in the community. On air, he’s articulate and brave and has a lot to say. In person, he’s shy and kind of nerdy. His on-air persona is so different from his day-to-day life that it’s almost like Superman stepping out of a phone booth and into a studio. Slater’s real name in the movie is Mark Hunter, but he goes by the alias “Hard Harry”, a derivative of Happy Harry Hard-on – a spoof on the school’s initials HHH.

His show becomes wildly popular, especially after confronting the topic of suicide after a student took his own life after calling into the show. The very next night, Harry gave an impassioned speech about it.

“At least pain is real. You look around and you see nothing is real, but the pain is real. You know, even this show isn't real. This isn't me; I'm using a voice disguiser. I'm a phony fuck just like my Dad, just like anybody. You see, the real me is just as worried as the rest of you. They say I'm disturbed, well of course I'm disturbed. I mean we're all disturbed, and if we're not, why not? Doesn't this blend of blindness and blandness want to make you do something crazy? Then why not do something crazy? It makes a hell of a lot of sense than bl*wing your fu**ing brains out you know. Go nuts, go crazy, get creative! You got problems? You just chuck 'em, nuke 'em! They think you're moody? Make 'em think you're crazy, make 'em think you might SNAP! They think you got attitude? You show 'em some real attitude! Come on, go nuts, get crazy. Hey no more Mr. Nice Guy!”

That’s when the shit hits the fan. Suburban teenagers across the valley of the sun, throwing their cheer trophies in the microwave, lighting fires to kitchens and likely breaking all kinds of HOA rules. Dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria! Something must be done about these hooligans disrupting the peace all because some anonymous voice is pushing back against the status quo (hey, that sounds vaguely familiar). The adults send in the FCC to investigate and rout out this whippersnapper, but not before Hard Harry exposes the school for expelling problem students to boost test scores while secretly keeping them on the roles to get paid (hey, that also sounds familiar).

At the crescendo of the film, Mark knows he’s being pinged by the FCC so he straps his rig to a jeep so he can broadcast on the move while his girlfriend drives him around. They dodge helicopters and cop cars and eventually end up in a football field at the school where the students have been meeting to listen to his broadcasts collectively. Happy Harry is exposed for who he really is and addresses the crowd as his true self (whoa, so familiar):

“Everyone, mix it up, it's not game over yet, it's just the beginning, but it's up to you. I'm calling for every kid to seize the air. Steal it, it belongs to you. Speak out, they can't stop you. Find your voice and use it. Keep this going. Pick a name, go on air. It's your life, take charge of it. Do it, try it, try anything. Spill your guts out and say shit and fuck a million times if you want to, but you decide. Fill the air, steal it. Keep the air alive! TALK HARD!”

And then the FCC pulls the plug with a loud SNAP and some feedback, put the cuffs on him, and takes him away. The end credits will roll, but not before we see a montage of new voices springing up from the basements of America.

Fuck yeah.

It was such an amazing walk down nostalgia lane talking to Waj about the movie, and he also brought up several great points. “I think the movie also shows the strengths and weaknesses of what happens when you have citizen journalism or new media because in that movie, if you remember, he's just a kid trying to get his voice out there and he's talking about the issues that concern the youth in a non-bullshit way. Which of course, then threatens the status quo and power very similar to a lot of what we're doing. But at the same time, then without any sort of like boundaries because it's the wild, wild west.”

The wild, wild west is putting it mildly. We still aren’t regulated in the podcasting world, and social media regulation varies depending on which platform you’re using. Hell, podcasts didn’t even have industry standards to define what counts as a download for ad sales purposes until the Interactive Advertising Bureau developed some in 2016. Most major platforms didn’t adopt them until 2019. Meanwhile, networks buying ads from outsourced third-party subsidiaries would just send checks to podcasters with no accounting after god-knows-how-many entities would take their cut. For a time there, no one really had any idea how many downloads counted or who was getting how much of your revenue. That kind of uncertainty freaks me the fuck out so I started my own podcast network with complete accounting transparency. Hoo, boy, did I learn a lot.

But it’s not just about the behind-the-scenes lack of regulation, it’s the outward freedom to do and say whatever the hell you want. That’s something that legacy media has to contend with, though I love when Nicolle Wallace lets slip a “bullshit” every now and then.

“That’s why I’m so glad we’re talking about Pump Up the Volume. First, how often do you get to talk about Pump Up the Volume. But secondly, here we are starting our own things trying to fill in the news gaps left by media consolidation, and sometimes we don’t realize that our voices echo beyond our own cocoon.”

I started a podcast at my kitchen table in 2017 with a purpose to inform as many people as I could about the Mueller investigation - but one of the wonderful, unintended consequences is that we built a massive community on one simple fact: people like to know that they’re not alone. Those three words - “you’re not alone” - are more powerful than even “I love you.” I experienced the power after appearing in the Oscar nominated documentary about military sexual trauma called The Invisible War. Before I interviewed for the film, the only person I had told about my sexual assault was my therapist. When I first saw the film at the premiere in Los Angeles, I was curious to see how my story would fit into the movie. As it turns out, they used it in a series of interviews to illustrate the fact that all of us had been told the same things when we tried to report. We were all asked what we were wearing, whether we’d been drinking, and if we had been flirting with our attackers. Then we were all threatened with the same refrains: you could get in a lot of trouble for filing a false report. You could be dishonorably discharged - something that will follow you your whole life. You could lose your benefits. You could even be court martialed because your rapist was married.

It began to dawn on me that I wasn’t alone. That powerful realization allowed me to get angry. It allowed me to process what happened. It stripped apologists of their ability to gaslight me. I was not alone. And that was everything.

So for people to say that independent journalists and content creators help them feel like they’re not alone seems like a great reason for everyone to grab a mic and tell their stories. Because if just one person is no longer alone in the dark, that’s a win.

The best part about setting up a microphone in your kitchen and talking into the void is that you don’t have the influence of a live audience giving you feedback every ten seconds. But in your kitchen with a friend, or especially after the pandemic where we’re all on Zoom, there’s no one in the room to provide feedback. That makes it way less scary, and it allows your true voice to shine through. One of the longest lessons I’ve learned is that short term adjustments to live audience feedback don’t hold a candle to the power of your true voice.

Find it. Share it. Let people know they’re not alone. Help democratize the new media landscape, and push the legacy media to adapt.

Steal the air.

Talk Hard.