The highlight of Tuesday–indeed, the most widely-attended presentation at the Big Tent so far–was longtime newsman Dan Rather giving a powerful, and at times emotional, talk that Jon covered in more depth earlier.

His key message at our symposium on media and democracy is that we NEED citizen journalism, we NEED owners with the guts to take any heat from talk radio, and we NEED to stop media consolidation. I caught a few minutes on video that don’t do it justice, but hopefully they give a sense of his passion, including a moment of choking up about a minute and a half in.

But the day was about much more than Dan Rather. Indeed, that was the whole point — that a healthy democracy depends on a diverse and free media that prods, questions, and educates the public rather than a small handful of networks controlling what people see and hear and what constitutes “news.”

The day began with me and FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who lamented his own agency’s tilt towards consolidation and favoritism of big media conglomerates.  Issue advocates such as Gene Karpinski of the League of Conservation Voters, Heather Smith of Rock the Vote, Mark Lloyd of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and David Bennahum of the Center for Independent Media spoke on a panel to dissect the failure of the mainstream media to cover issues of concern to many voters.Smith in particular identified the press’s inability to avoid the youth vote as a topic in 2006 and this year, but still manage to focus on tangential issues — like new technological breakthroughs to target young people — rather than going in depth on what issues motivate young people to go vote in such numbers.

A panel of bloggers and new media experts roundly criticized the mainstream press, a theme of the day — and one that, given their declining readership and viewership numbers, it seems the American public shares.

Our agenda on media reform for the next administration tells a story of the importance of stopping consolidation, preserving net neutrality, and promoting more diverse media ownership and community broadband, all critical pieces of a healthy democracy that allows citizens to be informed on their world and avoid the tacky, celebrity-obsessed coverage that too often defines today’s big media.

Given the big turnout for Dan Rather, it appears that a lot of folks appreciate how important the media is, and how public policy in the coming years can make it — and our democracy, and our country — a lot healthier or a lot weaker in the coming couple years.  It depends on how we address the problem and who has a seat at the table.  Will it be the public and its nonprofit advocates or the wealthy media conglomerates?  Today was a step to make sure that it’s us.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 10:22 am and is filed under Politics .