Pubdate: Tue, 4 Aug 2009
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2009 NORML
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Author: Russ Belville, NORML
Note: Russ Belville is NORML's Outreach Coordinator.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/NORML (NORML)

NBC, CBS, ABC, & FOX HAPPY TO PROFIT FROM MARIJUANA, AS LONG AS 
NOBODY TALKS ABOUT LEGALIZING IT

Everywhere You Look, Corporate Media Are Covering Pot Stories, Except 
for the Issue of Its Illegality and the Lives Ruined by Prohibition.

Marijuana legalization is the hottest topic in the media these days. 
MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, FOX, NatGeo, and CBS News have presented special 
features on marijuana business, medical marijuana, and the marijuana 
legalization movement. Google Trends is showing double the interest 
in searches and news hits for the term "marijuana legalization". 
Showtime's hit series Weeds, about a suburban mom turned pot dealer, 
is entering its fifth season. Everywhere you look, corporate media 
are happy to profit from America's most popular herb.

Unless you want to address marijuana's illegality and the lives that 
are shattered by the effects of marijuana prohibition. In that case, 
the corporate media cannot have anything to do with you, even if you 
want to pay to broadcast the message of ending adult marijuana prohibition.

Case in point: CBS. At the end of June, CBS's new internet radio 
venture, ChatAboutIt.com, contacted NORML. One of our advisory board, 
Ann Druyan, advertised her podcast in Talkers Magazine, an industry 
journal for talk radio. ChatAboutIt was interested in hosting 
Druyan's show, but Druyan wasn't interested in the offer.

This is where I come in. I am a talk radio professional, having 
hosted my show (The Russ Belville Show) on XM Satellite Radio and AM 
620 KPOJ in Portland, for almost two years. I have guest-hosted for 
the extremely popular Bill Press Show in Washington DC. For the past 
year and a half, I have hosted NORML's Daily Audio Stash, the 
organization's daily news and interviews podcast. I contacted 
ChatAboutIt to discuss creating a new live talk radio show dedicated 
to this incredibly popular phenomenon around medical marijuana and 
marijuana legalization called NORML SHOW LIVE.

Throughout the negotiations, the salesman from ChatAboutIt was 
fantastic. He joined me and NORML's executive staff by conference 
call. We emphasized that we are NORML, the National Organization for 
the Reform of Marijuana Laws. We told them that we would have 
advertisers involved with promoting marijuana - legally, as they are 
co-ops and dispensaries in California and Colorado - marijuana-themed 
magazines, doctors, clinics, authors, musicians, and so on. We told 
them we would be talking about marijuana legalization, our web page 
would have marijuana leaves on it, callers would be talking about 
marijuana, and, oh, by the way, did we mention that the show was 
about marijuana?

It's all good, we were assured by the salesman. He said he'd run it 
all by his VP and this was fine. He said we'd own all our content and 
we could run all our ads. We verbally agreed this was a go and all we 
needed to do was to raise the $6,000 necessary to pay for the first 
two months of broadcast. We explained that we'd need to produce some 
press releases to raise the money. To be sure we weren't saying or 
promoting anything in any way that CBS would not approve, we 
submitted our release to CBS, which did make some changes. They 
approved of our revised release and we posted it on the NORML Blog 
and front page on Wednesday.

Thursday morning I receive a call from the salesman at ChatAboutIt. 
"People higher up" had seen the release "on the blogs" and they "will 
not green light your show".

Now, CBS has all the right in the world to decide what to put on 
their airwaves or cyberstreams; I'm not crying "censorship". If they 
want to pass up affiliation with the most recognized brand in 
marijuana and a professional live call-in show dealing with the 
hottest topic in the media, that's their call.

What I am crying, though, is "hypocrisy".

See, CBS owns Showtime. That very same Showtime that's aired for the 
past five years the tale of Nancy Botwin, suburban pot-dealing mom on 
Weeds. A show that films many scenes in the legal marijuana clinics 
and dispensaries in California that would be our advertisers. A show 
that just this year signed contracts with NORML to allow display of 
our trademark in the scenes where it is shown in Weeds.

And it cannot be that CBS is OK with airing a dramatic interpretation 
of marijuana culture, but afraid of airing a serious news program 
about marijuana culture. CBS News has an entire web special feature 
entitled "Marijuana Nation" (not-so-coincidentally the tag line of 
NORML SHOW LIVE) devoted to all their news coverage about marijuana 
dating back to Mike Wallace in 1968.

CBS will show Weeds to make money off of people who like marijuana, 
but won't allow its banner advertisements for Weeds to be seen on any 
website trying to keep those marijuana lovers from arrest and a 
criminal record. CBS will pepper their news coverage and websites 
with cannaporn* and cannabusiness, but won't allow a non-profit 
organization attempting to legalize those industries to have a voice 
on their networks.

Case #2: In addition to hosting NORML's podcast and social blog, I am 
NORML's Outreach Coordinator. In this position I recruit activists 
from all across the country (even the US Virgin Islands) to organize 
NORML chapters. These independent affiliates host events, gather 
petition signatures, and provide education to the community to 
counteract the anti-marijuana propaganda from the government (such as 
our "drug czar" recently proclaiming - in California, no less - that 
"Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit.")

I was contacted by the tour manager for the "Blazed and Confused" 
Tour. The artists performing in the most pro-marijuana concert of the 
summer are Mickey Avalon, Bob Marley's son Stephen Marley, San Diego 
rockers Slightly Stoopid, and Snoop Dogg, probably the most 
recognizable person alive associated with marijuana aside from Willie 
Nelson. They, particularly Slightly Stoopid, wanted NORML chapters to 
host marijuana information tables for the concerts and offered us the 
opportunity for free.

I combed through my chapter listings and got them NORML booths for 
over half the shows. At the show in Portland I got to interview Miles 
from Slightly Stoopid and wander around backstage. The props for the 
Stoopid show were two massive five foot skulls with pot leaves on the 
forehead. Snoop's show featured a huge backdrop reading "Tales from 
the Crip" and marijuana leaves were all around. Everyone performing 
at or attending this concert was very pro-marijuana legalization.

Yet this morning I'm contacted by the tour people who tell me they 
need to cancel the booth we have scheduled for the show last Saturday 
in Orlando. It seems the venue is the Hard Rock, and "because they 
are a Universal owned company they are much more conservative than 
your typical venue."

This Universal, of course, is NBC Universal, the parent company to 
the MSNBC and CNBC networks that reported their highest ratings ever 
for their marijuana-themed news reports on the burgeoning cannabis 
business in California. The same NBC Universal that is happy to sell 
you Cheech & Chong's Next Movie, Dazed & Confused, and Half Baked on 
DVD. The same NBC Universal that has no problem allowing Snoop Dogg 
to get the crowd at the Hard Rock in Orlando to chant "Legalize It", 
but somehow can't let a couple of college kids in NORML T-shirts hand 
out educational fliers about why we should legalize it.

Case #3: Another marijuana legalization organization, Marijuana 
Policy Project (MPP), produced an excellent TV ad calling for passage 
of a bill to tax and regulate cannabis for adults. The governor had 
recently called for an open debate about legalization and MPP created 
this thirty second ad to begin that debate:

Certainly a sober and non-sensational way to debate the issue. Yet 
when MPP offered the ad to California stations, Los Angeles' KABC 
(ABC) and KTTV (FOX), San Francisco's KGO (ABC), and San Jose's KNTV 
(NBC) refused to accept the ad. KNTV said their standards department 
wouldn't approve the ad. KGO issued an official "no comment." KABC 
and KTTV didn't even bother give the courtesy of a "no comment" - 
they would not respond to MPP's inquiries.

I've detailed NBC's and CBS's profiting from cannabis culture. You'd 
think ABC, being a part of the Walt Disney Corporation, would 
generally shy away from profiting from cannabis culture. But a little 
digging shows they own Miramax films, which this year released 
Adventureland, a comedy about teenagers smoking and dealing weed 
while working at an amusement park and in 2001 offered Jay & Silent 
Bob Strike Back, the adventures of two inveterate stoners who wrote a 
stoner comic book. FOX for eight years aired That 70's Show, a 
ratings hit whose signature sight gag was teenagers sitting in a 
smoke-filled basement passing around a joint or bong (never seen, 
however), with the camera focusing on each character as they "passed 
the dutchie on the left hand side".

So it is OK for the corporate parents of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX to 
profit from movies and TV shows that satirize marijuana culture, but 
they have a "standards and practices" problem with their broadcast 
affiliates showing 30 seconds of a 38-year-old woman suggesting we 
should tax and regulate marijuana.

Keep in mind in these cases, we are talking about one part of the big 
media company raking in huge profits with shows about the marijuana 
community, while another part of the big media company refuses the 
free educational fliers, paid advertisements, and pay-to-play 
broadcasts BY AND FOR the marijuana community. Marijuana is the 
modern day minstrel show - we're allowed on the air as long as we 
keep on our "greenface", shuck and jive (or would it be "smoke and 
pass"?), and never forget our proper place.

By the way, the NORML SHOW LIVE mentioned in Case #1 will still be 
going on the air, as promised, on Labor Day Weekend. Unlike CBS, we 
keep our promises to our customers. The money raised will go into 
promotions and producing our show through the facilities of 
BlogTalkRadio.com, which was happy to accept our business, and quite 
frankly, offers us a better production technology at one-sixth the 
price. Tune in every Saturday Night at 9pm Eastern for two hours of 
intelligent discussion about marijuana legalization.

* Cannaporn is the news specials that like to show lots and lots of 
pictures of big green sticky buds and the people smoking them, 
usually the same stock footage they've run for years with the most 
stereotypical "stoner" types they can find, lots of pictures of bongs 
and tie dyes, some b-roll from a music festival, or body-armored 
police helicoptering in to chop down marijuana plants, while intoning 
the reefer madness du jour about increased potency, psychosis, or 
clandestine cartel grows and violence that wouldn't exist in a legal 
market. In other words, not what you will find on NORML SHOW LIVE.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake