Reformism Critiqued

The reformist scenario is, at heart, a laudable one. After all, the reformists fight the good fight. Facing a mass culture obsessed with the entertainment fare fed to it by the captains of corporate media, the reformists pin their faith on the good sense of the citizenry and the media's ability to rise above itself. They do not resort to the censor's heavy hand, thereby rejecting the most odious aspects of the modern and classical scenarios. In this sense, reformists appear to grasp the paratroopers' paradox.

Yet, their compromise position prompts us to reconsider the earnestness of their first­amendment objectives. Although it espouses a platform for media education, the reformist agenda appears more political than educational, more of fourteenth­amendment equality than of first­amendment rationality. What animates the reformist is the desire to reallocate media power, to wrestle prime time from the commercial "haves,"' and to place it in the hands of the public "have­nots."' The power exchange, on closer examination, may achieve little else. ¹⁵⁵

The public appetite for self­amusement that feeds on the status quo will inevitably corrupt or destroy the reformist educational agenda. For example, once the reformists have created their Audience Network to caution the public to the dangers of commercial broadcasting, the question will be: Who wants to watch it? ¹⁵⁶ On the one hand, if its entertainment value cannot compete with the commercial marketplace, it most likely will fail for lack of mass interest. On the other hand, if its entertainment value is truly competitive, it will undermine its own endeavor to educate the public on media ecology. ¹⁵⁷

If the town­meeting media fails to educate, is there any first­ amendment justification for grabbing a piece of the new media pie? If they were candid, the reformists would likely retort: "As long as we are on the screen, we are doing something."' Ironically, this response dismisses all that ever mattered in the classical scenario, which informed the reformist's high educational mission, and blindly accepts the modern scenario's operative principle­­media for media's sake. Essentially, the acquisition of media power has no meaningful first­amendment purpose. If the power exchange alone is meaningful, it is only in a formalistic sense.

This formalism renders the reformists powerless to mediate between the classical and the modern scenarios. Once the reformists are stripped of their serious educational objectives, they come dangerously close to the triviality that permeates the modern scenario. The reformists may have grasped the paratroopers' paradox, but they have not escaped it.