The unofficial battle cry of the Media & Democracy Congress, held in Manhattan in October, had been given out a week early in a Newsday article headlined: cut the media giants down to size. Mark Crispin Miller and Robert McChesney -- professors, authors, and Media & Democracy panelists -- wrote that everybody talks about the media's ills, "but so far there's been little serious talk about the democratic possibilities for curing them."

Cut the media giants down to size! The sinking public trust in an increasingly corporate mass media had some people on the left wondering whether the time was ripe for a unified effort. So the Institute for Alternative Journalism (IAJ), an advocate of independent, non-corporate journalism, called a town meeting. More than 1,000 people came, from mainstream journalists to left-leaning intellectuals to grass-roots veterans to Unabomber look-alikes. "We need to talk about the building of the independent media, about forming networks with activists all over this country," said Pacifica radio host Amy Goodman (at a panel called 'What is alternative about alternative media?') "It's the only way we're going to make it, because the power on the other side is tremendous."

So tremendous, perhaps, that the resolution to confront the Goliath sparked flashes of grassroots enthusiasm: a few participants boarded a red double-decker to ride uptown and join a demonstration outside the offices of Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, NBC, CBS, Viacom, and Time Warner. Back in Greenwich Village, workshops offered instruction in "do-it-yourself-media" and guerrilla p.r. ("the vital craft of framing the issues for a mainstream audience"). Jubilant cheers hailed the crowning of eleven "1997 Media Heroes."

The heroes may need a little help. Panelists across the board agreed that journalism -- inside and outside of corporate towers -- needs to take on those important issues that aren't considered advertiser-friendly: economic injustice, poverty, racism. In her opening night speech, Barbara Ehrenreich, the essayist and author, called for stories about ordinary lives which, she said, have been made invisible by celebrity-driven mainstream media: "The message that we people of the left want to get out is that everyone matters, because everyone is a star."

 Talk-show host Jim Hightower reassured the crowd that its mission is viable: "What you want is what all Americans want," he said. "We want our country back from the speculators and the spoilers, from the bosses and the bankers. Get the biggest microphone you can possibly grab and say it again and again."

Only how to get that microphone? On a sunny autumn weekend, the networks and other mainstream media outlets were nowhere to be seen. A press conference, announcing a "Pledge of Journalistic Integrity" to be sent out to major media around the country, was poorly attended. On The Nation's "State of the Media" panel, Walter Isaacson, managing editor of Time, took a beating in lieu of all the corporate players who had not been invited or stayed away.

 If the tenor of the 1997 congress was meant to be a call to battle, the mighty opponent probably did not so much as notice. On one panel, New Yorker media critic Ken Auletta offered his view of what the media powerhouses do take to heart: "These are public companies," he said. "The audience they care about is not necessarily the community or their readers and viewers but Wall Street, and Wall Street goes by a different scorecard than most in this room."

 New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez added to that picture, calling today's journalists "just content providers, driving the spikes," while the "information robber-barons try to figure out which route will be the most profitable."

At the final ceremony, one of the Media Heroes accepted his 1997 award on a similarly sober note: "The progressive movement has much reason to be unhappy," syndicated media columnist Norman Solomon said quietly, after the hurrahs and bravos faded away. "There's the joy of the battle, there's the human solidarity and connection that we feel, but there's also the reality that, on many fronts, things are not going well."

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