cmj

@NCMR 2008: How can social networking technology support the work of grassroots organizers?

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:36:40 GMT

I hit up a lot in the last few days, but right now I am sitting in a panel of organizing the social web for change. The panel has Feministing's lovely tech lady, Deanna Zandt, along with Chris Rabb from Afro-netizen, Andrew Slack, Craig Newmark (craigslist) and Ruby Sinreich.

They are talking about how we use the web for social change. And asks the critical questions, "How can social networking impact politics and policies, and what new technologies will revolutionize organizing in the future?"

Earlier today I hit up "Netroots: What's Next?" about the power of the political blogosphere. It was interesting, but I am really apprehensive about the role of political blogs in the changing political landscape. The panel asked some key questions, one of which I care about dearly, "How are the Netroots connecting with the grassroots and organizing for lasting change?"

After 3 days of hanging out with media reformers and media justicers, I am still stuck on this question. How do blogs and online technologies connect with real grassroots efforts? I know you can give me a list of online efforts, campaigns, petition signings, action centers that have in fact been effective. But the communities that I work with aren't online in the same way that we are. They don't use the web in the way that many of us do, let alone go to a blog to understand how it can help in their campaigns and on their issues. As long as that disconnect exists and only certain people are producing and consuming blogs, I don't see how it is creating this democratic space that so many big political bloggers claim it to be.

Other ideas? How do we use the web to connect with people doing work on the ground? Email lists, listervs, blogs, online journals, myspace? Is Feministing doing this? Are we creating a space where organizers can come together to work on their issues in a real way, make connections and create impact?

@NCMR 2008: No Justice without Media Justice

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:34:02 GMT

When we speak of a justice agenda we are talking about greater political, social and cultural changes that are plugged into an analysis of power that reform focused movements often times overlook. Many times it is a matter of semantics, since all of us working in justice are effecting change at the level of reform. We are usually working on strategic campaigns, limited in scope that create small pieces of change, but hopefully greater in impact. Collectively and through sharing pieces of our agenda these changes can become a justice movement.

The media reform movement has been around since the 90's and made its debut in 2003 when fighting the cross-ownership rules that are being challenged currently. One of the explicit differences between the media reform movement and the media justice movement is that media reform believes the appropriate end goal for media reforms is more diversity. Media justice believes that reform without a power shift leads to reproduction of status quo inequities. This means that without a redistribution of the means of media production and ownership, our media will not reflect the needs and issues of our communities.

Although, reform and justice work together on certain pieces of reform and many of the wins have been fundamental, any type of social change that is not grounded in the needs of our most disenfranchised communities, often fails to be as effective as we want it to be. Media reform is a key and necessary step on our way to media justice. As I sat at one of the pre-conference events at the National Conference on Media Reform, the convening of Diverse Voices on Power, Justice and Media Change we started to lay the groundwork and have a conversation on the ways that we can build a media policy movement that is accountable to social justice goals. Simply put, how do we create media change that is driven by the needs of our most marginalized communities? Racist, sexist, classist, homophobic media policy affects all of us, whether it be through our inability to control the way we are represented in the media or the means of control to that representation. The dearth in community owned media due to corporate take over has had disastrous effects on the way that we are represented, the way we tell our stories and how we are understood. The danger of this is not just about having the ability to tell our stories. When our stories are not told in a fair and balanced way, our needs are not met at the legal, cultural, economic and social ways.

Kudos to NCMR for creating spaces where we can talk about the different ways that communities of color, women and queer folks have used media change and media activism to educate our communities and work for a just and fair media. But our work is till cut out for us. According to Carol Jenkins at the Women Media Center,

According to various studies, women hold only 3 per cent of “clout” positions in the media (“The Glass Ceiling Persists,” Annenberg, 2003). Only a quarter of the newsrooms are led by women (Dates 2007, Cramer 2007, Nicholson 2007, Media Management Center), while women hold only a quarter of jobs as syndicated opinion writers at our newspapers (Estrich 2005, Pollitt 2005). Women online are facing the same fate. Across all platforms, women are missing. Women of color are the most invisible of all.

Minority ownership is just as tenuous. According to Reclaim the Media

The state of minority media ownership in America is in crisis. According to a study by the nonprofit, nonpartisan group Free Press, people of color own just three percent of all local TV stations and eight percent of all local radio stations, even though they make up 35 percent of the U.S. population.

A media justice agenda would target the structural forms of oppression that create these disparities in ownership and that also lead to this "crisis of representation" for disenfranchised communities.

The media is an issue of life and death. Blogging, vlogging, independent and alternative media are all ways we have started to retell our stories. But without changing the mainstream media, without fighting for a fair and just media, and for our fair and equitable access to the media, the mainstream media will continue to set the agenda for the way we tell our stories. We are always responding to biased coverage and forced into a defensive position as opposed to setting the agenda ourselves. We can tell our stories till we are blue in the face, but if we are still playing by their rules, our stories are never told the way we want them to be.

@NCMR: Great day of Media Justice

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:27:29 GMT

So, we are running out the door to the Media and Democracy Coalition party, but I had a great and fulfilling day including meeting some great bloggers (Jenn Pozner, Baratunde Thurston, Matt Stoller, and if I forgot any others than shout out in comments!) and shared our ideas on media policy change, activism, and internet tools and how it relates to the communities that we work with. I also met some amazing organizers and activists.

I am so hyper and full of information and will definitely have some more substantive posts tomorrow about content, but all the panels I hit today were excellent. If you are around I will be that MAGnet table tomorrow morning from 8-10 so come say hello.

@NCMR 2008: Opening Plenary-Media at a Critical Juncture

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:43:19 GMT

I am watching the amazing Adrienne Maree Brown ED of the <a href="http://ruckus.org/">Ruckus Society</a>, activist, singer and gal pal is keeping it real about the necessity for the media reform movement to be accountable to community organizers in this morning's key note. This is going to be a theme throughout the conference for me. Media justice is not just about inviting us community groups to the table of your reform agenda, but letting us set the agenda through our grassroots work.

You can listen live <a href="http://www.freepress.net/conference">here. </a>

She also gave <a href="http://centerformediajustice.org/home">CMJ</a> and <a href="http://www.mediagrassroots.org/">MAGnet</a> a shout out as an example of community based activism around media policy. YAY!

UPDATE: I am sitting next to Jenn Pozner of Women in Media and News. You know you want to be me. She is live-blogging as well <a href="http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=1058">check here</a> for updates.

@National Conference for Media Reform 2008

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:25:04 GMT

I am in Minneapolis for the National Conference on Media Reform. If you are here, please come say hi! I am here with my organization the Center for Media Justice and will be repping at the MAGnet table tomorrow from 5:30-7. I am also live-blogging most of the conference and will be filling you in with happening and rants of the media justice movement and where disenfranchised communities fit into this debate and why media has to be on the agenda of every campaign for social justice. Media reform and media policy is not just for DC wonks, but something all of us have a stake in. So please check back over the next few days. The program agenda looks awesome. You can also follow me on twitter if you do that sort of thing.

FCC Votes for More Media Consolidation

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:21:33 GMT

Today, despite public outcry, the Federal Communications Commission voted to remove the longstanding "newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership" ban that prohibits a local newspaper from owning a broadcast station in the same market. To read more about this, you can go here.

This means more media consolidation, less diverse sources of news and information and less media accountability...giving us even more reason to organize for a media system we want and deserve in the New Year.

Bay Area Media News Group Editor Responds to Community Concerns Around Youth Coverage

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:03:21 GMT

To the representatives of the Youth Media Council:

We enjoyed out meeting today at the Tribune to discuss why the Alameda Journal, Oakland Tribune and other Bay Area News Group papers ran the names of the youths arrested and later cleared.

We look forward to working with the council to expand our sources to better represent the diverse community we cover.
However, the Alameda Journal, Oakland Tribune or other Bay Area News Group papers did not commit “a shocking breach of journalistic ethics" in publishing the names of the two youths charged in this incident. The youths were not merely arrested, we waited until they were charged to report who they were.

In general, the Bay Area News Group takes great pains to protect the identities of youth and already have in place standards that under most circumstances keep the names of youth out of the press.

Only in cases of serious crimes, such as felony assault, a child being tried as an adult, or charges of murder, do we ever print the names of minors. Whether or not even that is appropriate is a debatable issue and you will have people who come down on both sides. But as a news organization, those are the standards in place and we feel they are fair and just.

I disagree completely that running the names after the minors were charged was inappropriate. It is unfortunate the authorities charged them when it was later discovered they were innocent. But that responsibility lies with the D.A., not the news organization that reports the filing of charges.

As a news organization our job is to report and we did so only after they were charged. Our mistake, which we have agreed to correct, was not running the names of the young people when they were cleared. We did run a story in the same location which said they had been released, but we tried to minimize their exposure by not including the names in the follow-up story. In hindsight, that was a mistake, but one we offered to correct.

It is important to note the Oakland Tribune and Bay Area News Group have a very progressive stance when it comes to the issue of youth.

We have a relationship with the Boalt Hall School of Law and Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley to collaborate on a project examining the potential benefits of using Restorative Justice as an alternative sentencing model in Alameda County. We believe there have to be better ways (than punitive approaches) of redirecting young people to become productive adults, and RJ is a potential program that could work. I do not know of any news organization in the Bay Area, California and maybe the nation taking that kind of editorial position and applying resources to see if it could work here.

That action, more than signing some pledge, speaks to our commitment to addressing the issues that impact our youth.
We also have a project called Not Just a Number which among other issues, looks at why youth in Oakland are, by and large, succeeding despite the many challenges facing them. To see that project visit www.oakalandtribune.com <file://www.oakalandtribune.com>

The Tribune does agree to work with the public and the council to expand our sources so the official story is not felt to be the only story, especially when it comes to accessing ethnic communities. But this has to be a two-way street. We need members of those communities, many of whom are reticent to open their doors, to step forward and be willing to engage our reporters so their voices can be heard. Our doors are always open for discussion and we look forward to an ongoing dialogue with the community and the council.

Being an African American male, I understand what it feels like to be a person of color and the dynamics that often exist between communities of color and the authorities.

Lastly, if anyone has information the Alameda Police Department violated anyone's rights in the course of its investigation, we need to know and will follow up any credible leads we are provided.

Our responsibility is to be professional, respectful and accessible to the communities we cover.

Martin G. Reynolds
Managing Editor
The Oakland Tribune
AME for Local/Regional News
Bay Area News Group-East Bay
510-208-6433
mreynolds@bayareanewsgroup.com

Media Consolidation-Responding to the Other Side's Arguments, Jonathan Lawson

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 21:14:55 GMT

Our allies in the Northwest are doing a great job preparing for Friday, Nov. 8 when the last of FCC's Public hearings on Media Ownership will be held in Seattle where communities are voicing how harmful Media Consolidation and Deregulation is.

Jonathan Lawson of Reclaim the Media wrote a great response to the argument for further media consolidation that I've reposted here:

As we get ready to speak truth to power at tomorrow night's FCC hearing in Seattle, we know that public opinion is on the side of local media accountability, media democracy and media justice. Political opposition to further media consolidation runs across the political spectrum- it's one of the few issues on which Congressional Democrats and Republicans mostly see eye to eye.

But there is a powerful elite who are pushing hard to change the rules of the media game -- and to make it a game of Monopoly. For example, the National Association of Broadcasters represent the big media corporations who stand to gain financially from making our media system even less accountable to local communities. The head of the Washington State branch of the NAB has an op-ed in this morning's Seattle Times; it's an interesting read because it lays bare the weak arguments the other side is making in favor of loosening (erasing) media ownership rules. Here are a few excerpts from Mark's article (with RTM's comments interspersed):

FCC SHOULD FACE REALITY

by Mark Allen, Washington Association of Broadcasters
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004000441_broadcasters08.html

It's easy to get swept up in the hysteria surrounding media-ownership rules, easy to bash big media, and easy to blame the world's ills on the messenger.

Opponents of modernizing the ownership rules want the Federal Communications Commission to view the world with blinders, to ignore the myriad of changes brought on by new technologies, and to continue to believe that the media marketplace exists today as it did in the 1970s.

Comment: Like other big corporate interests, Big Media's favorite trick is to pretend that marketplace deregulation is a force of nature or simply "reality," rather than a deliberately constructed policy decision favoring one set of values (elite power) over another (access to diverse information, democracy). Remember that we're talking about private control over public resources - the public airwaves. Will this resource be used to serve the public, or just a small class of wealthy business owners? That's a question of political decisionmaking, not nature or "reality."

But here's the reality: There are nearly twice as many radio stations today as there were in 1970. Cable and satellite channels have increased the number of stations available on American television from an average of five in the 1970s to more than 500 today.

Comment: Many channels, but few voices. Just six corporations control more than half of everything Americans watch, listen to, or read every day. That's an astonishing level of concentrated media power, and it's still trending in the wrong direction (two decades ago, people were shocked that just 25 companies controlled most media, that number has shrunk even more since then.

And, when the Internet is added to the equation, the number of available voices jumps to the nearly infinite. The simple fact is that Americans today have access to more independent voices than at any point in our history.

Comment: The Internet is not a panacea. Among people who look online for news and entertainment, a great majority are going to sites owned and controlled by the same media megacompanies that own broadcast properties. This is not simply because the big media content is so fantastic, but because they are able to leverage their dominance of the broadcast and newspaper industries to boost their online visibility. It matters a great deal who owns what, on the Internet as well as off. Also, the Internet may not be as free as we like to think it is. There's a raging debate over Net Neutrality, or whether all content on the Internet is created equal. If big telecom corporations win that battle, big media companies will have an even more unequal advantage online.

Despite what can only be described as a multimedia revolution over the past several decades, many of the FCC's rules that restrict local radio and television stations remain intact — including the archaic newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban...

Comment: The broadcasting lobby calls the cross-ownership ban "archaic" because there is simply no rational argument to be made that it's good for democracy to allow a single company to control the newspaper, TV stations and radio stations in the same city or town. That kind of concentrated media power translates precisely into shrinking newsrooms and narrowing of political debate.

...People in Seattle turn to their local broadcasters for critical, up-to-the-minute news and emergency information they need and that, because they are local, broadcasters are uniquely positioned to provide. Local stations reflect the cultural richness of our city and state through a variety of locally produced content, covering Seattle's famously eclectic music scene, politics and other community-oriented issues.

Comment: Seattle has better radio than most cities in the US -- better than in rural areas such as Minot, North Dakota where, thanks to deregulation, there were no local announcers on the air able to provide information during a disaster. However, even in Seattle, out of 49 radio stations on the air, only five have local news departments - including NPR and community stations.

It is simply hilarious to suggest that media deregulation is in any way supportive of either local or eclectic music. As Seattle music industry leaders have pointed out in the past, the national explosion of a regional music scene such as Northwest 'grunge' in the early 90's, would be absolutely unimaginable in the post-1996 consolidated radio industry, with its centralized gatekeepers, "voicetracking" fake-local DJs and payola.
Detractors say that the time is not right for reform, and regulators are rushing to judgment. This ignores reality as well. The FCC has spent the better part of the past decade studying the effect of media-ownership rules...

Comment: We need policies designed to give us more, not less, media ownership by minorities; more, not less, media access for Native Americans and immigrants; more, not less, community access to the airwaves; more, not less, quality journalism instead of racist/sexist shock-jocks and overheated hackery. That's just common sense - and it's diametrically opposite the path that Mark Allen and the NAB would send us down.

This Friday night, let's show the FCC and the country (Pacifica Radio will be broadcasting the hearing live) that Seattle chooses democratic media values over Big Media's corporate greed!

USSF 2007: Reflections on Another U.S.

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 23:56:49 GMT

While thousands of attendees, representing millions of people were coming together, finding points of unity, envisioning another U.S. and planning for its coming, there was a virtual media blackout on the scope and significance of the first ever social forum.

USSF was a beautiful meeting of minds, hearts and spirits. When working in the "Social Justice Movement" within the United States it is sometimes difficult to conceive of what that movement actually is, who is part of it, what is our history, what we are doing, and where are we moving the movement towards.

The U.S. Social Forum was a meeting point for me as well as countless others, organizations, communities and movement sectors:

* to raise our own and each other's consciousness of the histories, forces and issues we share

* to begin a shared vision of what is possible for the world and the role of the United States Social Justice Movement in achieving that vision

* And, finally, to begin the long but beautiful struggle for that vision by laying out practical and strategic plans, and committing ourselves to them.

One of the biggest concerns people have about gatherings like this one is that participants come together, bond, get inspired, get fired up, share stories, share ideas, make plans, but months go by, and nothing happens. I truly do not feel this is what's going to happen here, because, well, frankly it cannot and must not happen. And, we are not going to let that happen.

At Sunday's Peoples Movements Assembly, there were opportunities for folks to present summaries of resolutions covering issues as wide and diverse as the people in attendance. The process alloted 2 minutes per presenter. Conflict arose when due to time constraints, facilitators took the microphone away from members of the Indigenous contingent. Later on, they were given space to express the hurt from having one's voice dismissed. A healing space was presented, and I think everyone understood that there was no ill intention.

The fact is that there are time constraints, and there is a process involved. We are not each other's enemies. We cannot be fighting for crumbs from each other. And as the facilitator reaffirmed, we came here to build, not to be broken.

Another World is Possible. Another U.S. is Necessary.

Arundhati Roy affirmed at the World Social Forum in Porte Alegre, Brazil that, "Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." I could hear it in the resolve of people's voices at the end of every workshop as next steps were discussed. It was in in every "Si Se Puede!" chanted, every raised hand, listening ear...in struggling through differences, and in building, building, building... constantly building.

USSF 2007 Day 4: Laying the Groundwork for Strategic Action

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 22:35:50 GMT

The consciousness-raising and vision-making of the past few days were harnessed into strategy, commitment and action today.

Workshops of interest included:

* Media Justice Now! (Third World Majority)

* Growing Grassroots Media Networks (Pacifica Foundation)

* The State of Mass Organizing in the U.S. (SOUL)

* The Crisis in the US Media and the Growing Movement for Media Democracy (Between the Lines Radio and Toward Freedom)

* Exploring the Challenges of Organizations Led by People of Color (CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities)

*Educating for Another World: Political Organizing and Movement Strategies (Project South, GGJ & World Education Forum)

And of course, "THERE'S NO JUSTICE WITHOUT MEDIA JUSTICE - A Strategy Session" facilitated by MAG-Net (Media Action Grassroots Network--a network YMC is part of) and our very own Malkia Cyril. The room was packed with oncerned individuals, representatives from organization that work on Media Justice in one way or another, and social justice based community organizations that utilize media in their work.

This wasn't a workshop or a visioning session (both of which are extremely important parts of the process). We were all there to work and create the beginnings of a practical strategic plan for next 10 years of media justice work. We accomplished a lot in a mere 2 hours. By issue area (Content & Media Bias & Accountability, Policy Change, and Grassroots Media and Cultural Production) we discussed Opportunities and Threats. To complete our SWOT Analysis (Strenths, Weakesses, Opportunities and Threats) we also completed a strength/weakness analysis by region. We then began collectively laying out 2, 5 and 10 year benchmarks for a Media Justice Sector Strategic Plan.