Journalists and academics set professional "zones of freedom"

By Barbara McKenna

Is there any principle more basic to the academic and journalism professions than the right of free speech? Higher education and news organizations are the primary purveyors of knowledge and ideas in our society. And ferreting out information and exposing it to the light of day are the very heart of what professors and journalists do.

Yet, say many who work in these fields, external forces increasingly are threatening their professional freedom. While political forces might seem to have the most sinister effect, the growing influence of the corporate mindset is even more threatening, experts say. This threat cannot be ignored.

The labor unions that represent academic and journalism professionals have a response, and that is to organize. In late October, the American Federation of Teachers; the Newspaper Guild, which is affiliated with the Communication Workers of America; and the Department for Professional Employees (DPE) of the AFL-CIO announced formation of the Professional Rights and Opportunities (PRO) Network.

PRO will issue reports, hold forums, coordinate public information campaigns, and propose model contract language and legislative and regulatory reforms on issues relating to the rights of professional employees. It will also manage a Web site, www.dpe-PRO.org, to "report the good news and bad news about the cornerstone of democracy--freedom of speech," said Paul Almeida, DPE president.

"Fifty percent of union workers in today's information-based economy are white collar," he noted. One reason they are attracted to unions is because "many are finding their rights constrained and their autonomy limited."

Exploring the boundaries of professional rights in a market-oriented world was the theme of PRO's first event, a forum called "The Corporate State (of Mind) and Free Expression," held Oct. 23 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

In his opening remarks, AFT vice president William Scheuerman, president of the United University Professions/AFT, shared some of the thoughts of AFT president Sandra Feldman, who is keenly interested in the topic.
 

Defining zones of freedom

"A great strength of our country lies in the rich and diverse flow of information and ideas," said Scheuerman. In the fields of education and news reporting, that flow of information relies on two fundamental principles: academic freedom and a free press. "In order to maintain a free press and a high-quality education system, the professionals who work in these institutions need a zone of professional independence and expression."

That zone has shifted over time, he noted. Journalists, professors, engineers and other professional employees increasingly feel threatened by corporate influences in classrooms and newsrooms, by the use of technology to monitor workers, and by challenges to academic freedom and intellectual property rights.

Implicit to the right of free speech is the imperative to use it responsibly, Scheuerman explained. Defining responsible use and ensuring public access to free speech and its products are concerns that must fall within the zone of professional independence and expression, Scheuerman and others suggested. Allowing those driven by a profit motive too much control over what the public is to hear and know can hinder both the free flow of information and the mission of our institutions.

Newspaper Guild president Linda Foley asserted that changes in newspaper ownership have affected the quality of news and the ability of reporters to cover stories. "Our society is built on the premise that a free press is composed of many voices. Having a few large corporate conglomerates control news is potentially dangerous to our democracy."

In two panel presentations, speakers described how the corporate mindset is constraining professionals in the education and news industries.
 

Academic capitalism

For two decades, colleges and universities have pushed to capitalize on the products faculty create, said Gary Rhoades, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, and author of Managed Professionals: Unionized Faculty and Restructuring Academic Labor (SUNY Press, 1998). Institutions have used the products of faculty work to generate new revenue streams and to enhance institutional prestige.

"That's capitalism, academic style," he pointed out. Now, it extends beyond patents to curricula, online courses and materials, and distance education--the basic everyday activities of faculty.

This can blur the boundaries between the for-profit world and us, said Rhoades, but traditional institutions are not skilled in this competitive arena. For one thing, they aren't good at turning a profit, he said. For another, the pursuit of revenue "turns us away from what we do best."

"We're investing less in the average person in need and more in those who will generate a buck." This leads to second guessing in the missions of education and journalism, Rhoades noted.

"Just as professors are less likely to undertake certain research if it is not marketable, it is the same with journalists who are less likely to write about non-marketable topics.

"What sets us apart in higher education is not our vibrant science and humanities departments," he said, it's the forum it provides for unpopular ideas--places "where people search for truth, and educate citizens, not employees."

Can the search for truth be credible when it is cloaked in secrecy, asked Lawrence Soley, author of Leasing the Ivory Tower: The Corporate Takeover of Academia (South End Press, 1995) and, most recently, Censorship, Inc.: The Corporate Threat to Free Speech in the United States (NYU Press, 2002). At the outset of his remarks, Soley noted that he is the holder of a named chair, the Colnick Professor of Communication, at Marquette University. The frequent failure of government and corporations to disclose their associations with much of the research being done in universities is a grave compromise to academic freedom and the mission of institutions, he said.

Soley detailed only a handful of the many "conflict of interest" collaborations in the research world. It began during World War II, with the government's funding of covert research, which continued in secret after the war ended. When government money dried up for biomedical or engineering research, businesses were at the ready to provide hundreds of millions of research dollars, which arrived with strings attached--licensing rights, secrecy agreements and exclusivity contracts, for example--that dictated how the knowledge generated from the research could or could not be shared.

What about government-funded incentive programs for university-corporate collaborations that result in taxpayer dollars being diverted to business profit lines? Or researchers who fail to disclose that they own stock in the companies funding their research? And what about institutional reward systems based on faculty collaborations with corporate sponsors who forbid the faculty from going public with their research? These examples, Soley made clear, are only the chilling tip of the iceberg.

To this mix, Scheuerman added the State University of New York's experience with "activist" trustees: the politically appointed board members who feel obliged to meddle in the academic life of the institution. Such meddling led the 29 chapters of the statewide union and the 29 academic senates to pass a unanimous censure of the board of trustees--a first in the institution's history.
 

The pen's not mightier than the board

Watchdogs of the media world painted no less chilling a picture.

A battle over who will dominate and control our democracy in the 21st century is under way, said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a public interest telecommunications advocacy organization (www.democraticmedia.org). The control question relates to airwaves, broadband, media ownership, the Internet, copyright, privacy rights--you name it.

Currently, the Federal Communications Commission is considering changes that would weaken "several key rules that were designed to protect the public's First Amendment rights to a diverse media marketplace of ideas," Chester warned. At risk, for example, are 25-year-old rules that govern media ownership. One rule prohibits one company from owning the two most important sources of news in a community, e.g., the local TV station and the local newspaper. Another rule bars one network from buying another.

What is as devastating to the free press as the possible pullout of government from regulating media commerce is the way the media have covered the story, Chester lamented. They haven't.

The New York Times has never reported that it is lobbying--and lobbying hard--over the issue of the broadband/newspaper cross-ownership rule. No media outlet reported on an amendment before Congress that would have lowered the cost of political advertising. And the media

didn't report that the broadcasters' lobby killed it. On a broad spectrum of telecommunications issues that affect every American, "the failure of the news media to report on their political activities raises serious questions about corporate media's level of integrity," Chester said.

Two journalists sharing the panel with Chester chronicled the recent decline in cogent news reporting. John Nichols, national correspondent for The Nation described "the enormous pressure on every media institution to replace civic and democratic values with commercial and entertainment values" in their news reporting. Since passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, said Nichols, we've seen the loss of 10,000 on-air radio and TV professionals. There is one region in which one company owns 1,400 local cable, television and radio stations.

"Local TV news has become a cesspool of weather, 'news you can use,' repackaged video news stories from pharmaceutical companies and sports," Nichols said. "Many surveys show that if you watch local news, you know less after watching it than you did before."

Janine Jackson, program director of FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (www.fair.org), cited example after example of concrete instances of corporate and government influences on the news. She reminded those present that "we make frequent obeisance to the idea of free press, but the industry is capital intensive." Somehow, she said, "We have to break the lock of corporate control on the media."

How does a free market exist with other values, asked Robert Kuttner, co-editor of American Prospect magazine? The story of the past 20 years is one of market forces overwhelming other forces, he said. At lease half of the time, he noted, "Regulation is our way of dealing with the failure of the market to provide for the public good."

What we are seeing now, Kuttner summarized, is the unraveling of social and democratic values as money intrudes into politics. "It used to be one citizen, one vote." Today, he said, it's "one dollar, one vote."

The possible glimmer of light in this David and Goliath battle, the speakers concluded, is labor.

"We need a broad-based media reform movement that brings together labor, civil society, churches and so on," said Nichols. "The basic struggle is job-related," he added. "We can't do our jobs in a media environment that says you can't report the news."

Rhoades noted that little resistance can be mounted on campuses that aren't unionized. Yet even on unionized campuses, Soley added, the largest staff growth has been "professional bureaucrats, such as lawyers and grant writers. The full-time faculty has been reduced in size, making resistance that much harder."

"The right to organize, to free association, is as important as free speech," said the Newspaper Guild's Foley. "Our organizations can push back against these trends."

In the months ahead, the PRO Network will continue to hold forums and shape its advocacy on such issues as covenants used in the broadcast industry to restrict employee speech; the lack of academic freedom for part-time and temporary faculty, who are a growing portion of the professoriate; and ways in which the law and technology are changing intellectual property rights.