Sut Jhally   -   Media Education Foundation

Robert McChesney    -    Media Matters

Academics have good jobs with good pay.  Yet they still insist on charging top-dollar for their video work. Why?

Jhally often tells his MTV story, yet MEF is a just another video store.  ...Does MEF allow academic fair-usage to their work?

Can Jhally be an academic, dedicated to informing a public, and a media (non!)profiteer charging $200-$400 per video?  Which is it?

MEF gets millions of viewers over 15 years! YouTube distribution model can potentially provide millions of viewers in a single day.  Yes, I know YouTube and Google are preeminent media capitalists, but even puny little sites like Media Nipple, using it's own solo server, has had 500,000 page views over 22 months.  Note: Nobody "forces students to think" these days.

Critical Civic Media should be an opposition to advertising.  Jhally skirts the option of full, equal, open citizen participation.  Indeed, we all should be making media... and doing it for free.  Civic media is civic discourse.  The public can (and should) do much more than watch.... or, make videos for "a few thousand dollars"?

Critical Civic Media literacy does not mean "the ability to see what is being done to them."  It means becoming fluent in the language and technique of media.  Citizens have the tools already... now, it is time to stand up and speak.  Corporations do not control our culture - our actions do.  Censorship is when MEF charges for their work... and more so when it is justified with "old fashioned liberal education" double-speak.  What does "take it back" mean?

Even McChesney sees the hole in Jhally's argument...

Dr. Jhally, if you want people to see your important work - give it to them. The Internet is for much more than just "organizing".  It is our digital ether. Your documentary filmmaking "media system" is little different from Blockbuster, PBS or MSNBC.  Your unspoken point here is that giving academic work away means less MEF (non!)profit."

All the videos in Cultural Farming were made for "free."  And they are given away for free - on the Internet.  Anyone with an inclination can do the same. This is the "environment" in which Cultural Farming operates -- it is today's reality of "means of production and distribution".  Maybe this is a fundamental difference between MEF and Cultural Farming.  Jhally has a different POV of "exactly the world we live in."

MEF is only one kind of media producer/distributor.  There are many other varieties; and the others must be equally supported.  As important as Jhally's documentary work is, the flaws are breathtaking.

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NOTE:  Now, of course, I really do like and admire both Sut and Bob.  Indeed, my very first PhD audit class was at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2004 where I introduced my odd research to Jhally.  And while I was deciding that that program was not for me, I flew to University of Illinois to chat about admissions with Bob, in his kitchen over morning coffee and muffins.  So believe me, I’m serious when I say I do admire these guys.  

The problem: Sut is much too precious about his righteously ideological work.  It smacks of big media.  And Bob’s radio show “Media Matters”, which I listen to faithfully every week, has become an obligatory and formulaic stop on every academic book tour (after all, books remain academia’s coin-of-the-realm).   That said, I owe much to these two gentlemen.  And I pay them my respect by honestly challenging their work and ideas.

February  2008