Headlines, North America

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE: Guerrilla Admakers Try to Buy U.S. TV Airtime

Gabriel Packard

NEW YORK, Nov 18 2003 (IPS) - Independent film producer Steve Garfield says there are two reasons he is planning to enter MoveOn.org’s ‘Bush in 30 Seconds’ commercial competition.

“First, I’m feeling really lied to about the reasons we went into the (Iraq) war,” he says.

“And second, I’m just doing corporate and music videos at the moment, but I want to get into TV production. This will be good practice.”

The point of ‘Bush in 30 Seconds’, says MoveOn’s Campaign Director Eli Pariser, is not only to expose the lies and failed policy of the administration of President George W. Bush, but also to open U.S. commercial airwaves to the voices of ordinary Americans.

That aim is shared by Adbusters media alliance, which has been fighting for months to have its “uncommercials” aired on the major networks around the world – without success.

MoveOn’s competition is open to filmmakers, amateur or professional, able to submit a 30-second TV ad that tells ”the truth” about Bush.

The winning entry will be short-listed by an online poll selected by celebrity judges, including director Michael Moore (‘Bowling for Columbine’), James Carville (co-host of CNN’s ‘Crossfire’ show and senior political advisor to Bill Clinton) and the musician Moby.

Garfield, a 45-year-old from Boston, plans to tell the truth about “a couple of Bush’s lies: his claim there was a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, and what he said about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”.

MoveOn.org is a non-profit political group that solicits most of its support via the Internet. ‘Bush in 30 Seconds’ was being funded entirely by this grassroots network until last week, when George Soros, one of the world’s richest men, pledged up to five million dollars as part of his mission to have Bush defeated in the 2004 presidential election.

Ousting Bush is “the central focus of my life”, said Soros, 74, at a recent media conference, where he confirmed he had donated 15 million dollars to anti-Bush and anti-Republican movements, to date.

Soros, along with business partner Peter Lewis, pledged 50 cents to MoveOn for every dollar donated by others.

“In the 24 hours after Soros’ announcement,” Pariser says, “over 15,000 contributions totalling over one million dollars came in.”

“It’s great that small donors encourage large donors, who in turn encourage more small donors.”

That grassroots support is the mainstay of MoveOn and the appeal for many observers, including media analyst Danny Schechter, founder and editor-in-chief of media monitoring group Media Channel.

But while he thinks the ‘Bush in 30 Seconds’ competition is “cool and fun and imaginative”, Schechter also says that it will not be sufficient to actually change anything.

“If you play according to your enemy’s rules, you are going to lose, because, in this case, you don’t have enough resources,” says Schechter. “People who run politics play by a rulebook which is based around 30-second TV slots.”

Even if there was some way to beat the politicians at their own game, says Schecter, the victory would be hollow.

“There is a danger in relying on 30-second ads. It means people absorb politics as slogans, and that is one of the reasons why the political culture is so degraded.”

The Bush in 30 Seconds competition is “probably good,” he says, “but there are deeper problems”.

What really needs to change, argues the analyst, is people’s involvement in the political system. People need to vote, and people need to be given information so they can think critically about politics, he says.

Pariser admits that commercials are limited. But he argues that the fault lies with television networks, not limitations in MoveOn’s campaigns.

“We hope to move away from TV commercials, and we hope that journalists in the U.S. become more quick to cover this type of issue (Bush’s performance) so that we aren’t in a position where we have to get the message out ourselves using our strategy.”

It is not just that U.S. TV networks shy away from tacking hard political issues themselves, says Pariser. They also block independent groups, such as MoveOn, from buying commercials to get their messages out.

“We frequently run into networks that don’t want to run our political ads,” says Pariser. “As far as I know, they can refuse an ad on any grounds.”

MoveOn is not the only group to run into hostile television networks.

The forthcoming January-February issue of ‘Adbusters’ magazine will feature an expose on how virtually every media network in the industrialised world refused to sell airtime for Adbusters’ so-called ‘uncommercials’.

“We tried just about all the networks in the U.S., Canada, Germany, the UK, South Africa, Australia, Japan,” said Kalle Lasn, founder and editor in chief of Adbusters, in an interview with IPS.

“They all said ‘No,’ except for CNN in America and a little on CBC in Canada.”

These “uncommercials” were timed to coincide with the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), scheduled for Dec. 10-12 in Geneva. They include promotions for Buy Nothing Day and ads saying that Big Mac hamburgers are 52 percent fat.

“We argued for hours with some of the networks,” says Lasn.

Sound clips attributed to some of those conversations are posted on the Adbusters website. “Anything that’s controversial, we can’t accept,” says a voice attributed to MTV’s manager of commercial clearance, Kristie Carlson.

“And we can’t accept commercials that tell the viewer either (a) to turn off your TV – that’s our business; or (b) don’t buy products. We have, obviously, numerous huge major advertisers. They spend an awful lot of money on our network (laughs).”

Lasn says this “boils down to the right of a TV station to make money versus freedom of speech, a first amendment right”.

Now, he says, networks draw a false distinction between product advertising and advocacy or issue advertising, such as environmental messages or anti-consumerism messages.

“It’s understood by almost everyone that ‘product’ ads are themselves advocacy ads,” says Lasn. “Everyone understands that BMW spends millions on ads that say both ‘buy a BMW’ and ‘a personal automobile is the best way to get around.’ That is advocacy.”

“But when Greenpeace want to run an ad saying ‘SUVs (sport utility vehicles) harm the environment’, the networks won’t allow it.”

That is why Adbusters is using some of its three million dollar annual budget on legal action against the three biggest U.S. TV networks – ABC, CBS and NBC. The lawsuits will aim to win the right for groups such as Adbusters to buy airtime.

“After that,” Lasn says, “we’ll see mind-bombs exploding. It will be wonderful. Television will no longer be a monolithic voice hyping us up to ever-higher levels of consumption”.

“TV will be worth watching again. It will be a medium for debate, for communication, for voices.”