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May 18, 2005

Mixed Ruminations on the debate regarding NCMR '05

I'm not sure I agree with Paul's post, but I'm not sure I disagree with it either.

On the one hand, Paul and BHT do have a point that the conference, at least to me and with those with whom I spoke about the conference, seemed to have an inordinate amount of preaching from on high and vague generalities that frankly don't seem all that helpful. I imagine that for the overwhelming majority of people attending the conference, they already know that the media sucks and that we don't need to hear it, or hear it over and over. What we need to do is to discuss strategies and tactics on what we have to do to improve things. And to have a structure that helps facilitate that.

On the other hand, other conferences which are far more radical and participatory in their orientation -- like the Chicago Social Forum and the Allied Media Conference, operate along the same lines. You have one or more people serve as hosts of "received wisdom" who pontificate to attendees, and whose participation solely consists of questions. Speech, then Q & A. I suspect even the Z Media Institute which I'll attend next month will be similar to this, though I'll reserve judgment on this count until the conference ends.

Then again, it's not to say that is necessarily bad. On occasion, you want someone with more experience or knowledge of the topic to speechify to people who don't have that knowledge and who are willing to listen and learn. But then again there are times when those in the room who have serious levels of knowledge about a topic don't get to share what they know, and everyone else in the session loses out as a result. Heck, I received three compliments over the course of the weekend for questions I asked during sessions I attended.

I'm wondering also if it's a matter of size. In some of the sessions, you have upwards of a thousand people attending a plenary session. This doesn't lend to very much outside of lengthy speeches, and no way for everyone involved to be able to participate in Q & A.

What I'd also like to know is: What was the criteria by which Free Press chose the people to speak on a given topic. Now, there are instances in which the decision is easy (e.g., George Lakoff on framing). But there are others in which the choice is a shot-in-the-dark at best, someone badly discredited (e.g., the Chicago Media Watch fiasco) at worst.

I have an idea. The workshops on Sunday were probably the most useful part of the conference; the conference should have more of those throughout the conference. Plus, for sessions themed to a given topic (e.g., copyright reform, radio) the structure should be far more loose. Instead of speechifying and Q & A, conference organizers might want to have a modified caucus, where people can openly and freely discuss with others on the same topic, instead of the sermonizing model commonly used.

Posted by Mitchell at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2005

We Have Experts, but Do They Share?

bht from Portland IMC has posted his reportback from the National Conference for Media Reform. I really appreciate his observation on one panel, which reflects, in many ways, how conference panels tend to run in general:


[The panelists] talked of their successes, and it was so funny, because sitting through the opening of this panel, the first couple of minutes is just listing off the panelists achievements and I felt that it was so unnecessary. This is a personal opinion, but it isnt how much a person has done in their life that makes me beleive them or think that they are good people, it is how accessible and open they are with that knowledge they hold. I saw none of the panelists anywhere but on the panel. That is a continuation of this overall system of beleif that we do not hold in ourselves, each and every one of us, the ability to be successful (in whatever permeation you shoose to define success). The elitism that reflects reinforces in my mind the idea that there are people better than me and why cant us allies all be on a level playing field, why cant we share with each other in a human way?

bht's comments really make me think about this issue again, since I had similar thoughts during the first NCMR in 2003.

I went to several panels then where I could look around the room and see people who I know had at least as much experience, wisdom and expertise on the subject as hand as the folks on the panel in front (and above) us. Too many times I saw panelists reaching to answer questions that they really didn't have a good answer for, where the question could probably have been better answered by more than one person in the audience.

I found this frustrating and expressed as much in my evaluation form at the end of the conference.

Unfortunately, I had this feeling again at the 2005 NCMR, especially in the 2006 Telecomm Act session.

I do think it's valid to say that in some cases some of the panelists have very valuable information and experiences that are not widely known or otherwise shared. It is useful for them to share it with us. However, the simple Q&A after several serial presentations is not really sufficient to create dialogue and move us forward.

I think sessions would be so much more enjoyable and productive if panelists really acted more like facilitators, bringing in information and ideas and then catylizing discussion. I realize that it's a practical problem for sessions with larger audiences, but I also think it's something that can be solved with creativity or just having smaller sessions.

Unforunately, we're still sitting and listening to "experts" tell us what works and what we should do, and I'm not sure that counts as really sharing.

Posted by paul at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2005

More Responses to NCMR

Rabble has compiled some links to comments from IMCistas on the IMC-US list, as well as putting out some of his own thoughts on the relationship between the media reform movement and Indymedia:

There are to issues which stick out to me. First the media reform movement has organized itself as a small professional cadre in suits which comes to it's annual conferences to preach the reforming the FCC gospel. Their stated goals include building a social movement to push forward media reform. To build a movement you need organizing and struggles in which people can participate. Sure, inspiring speeches and leaders can be a major part of it. By my mom's account, the Bill Moyers' speech was truly inspiring. But we also need space to talk. ...

The other major issue was the media reform NGO's looking at independent and indymedia activists as outlets for their message. They are locked out of the corporate media they are trying to reform, so they see the radical / participatory / grassroots / alternative medias as a place to get their message out. While we find the issues that the ngo's are talking about to be compelling, and do cover their work, that's not our job.

Posted by paul at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)

Mediageek Radioshow Live from NCMR on Friday Now On-line

Subject says it. Drew and I phoned in from our well-appointed 1970s vintage Adam's Mark hotel room at 5:30 PM last Friday to do our radio show live from the conference. We had a couple of audio clips from Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein in Urbana earlier in the week and talked some about our experiences with the first day of the conference.

Click here for a download link, or you can subscribe to the mediageek podcast feed and listen every week. It's medialicious.

Posted by paul at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)

Commenting on and Critiquing the National Conference for Media Reform

Saturday night St. Louis IMCistas organized an impromptu media center in the conference lobby area outside the ballroom where the keynote festivities were going on. Almost a dozen laptops with Wi-Fi were brought together so that conference participants could air their views and frustrations on the St. Louis IMC website.

Frustration over many things -- from the lack of involvement with the local black community and press to the apparent use of the Independent Media caucus to rally journalists to spread the word of Free Press' and Media Access Project's campaigns, and Free Press' refusal to allow a media center to be set up in the first place -- had been building for two days. This indy press room provided some release valve for these frustrations, while also communicating them outside the walls of the Milennium Hotel.

Handbill fliers were made explaining Indymedia and pointing people to the media center and were handed out as conference attendees exited the keynote. I helped cut up fliers and handed out a bunch, and was brought back down to earth with the reminder that still even at this media reform conference a lot of people really don't know what Indymedia is and how it works.

Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi went down before the Keynote ended and bulk of the attendees entered the lobby. At first there was some wondering if the spiking of the wi-fi was retaliation for organizing the expression of dissent. But moments later Phlegm came running out of the ballroom saying that the network was down everywhere and that they'd lost the ability to do the live stream. So, instead it was just part and parcel of the overall crappy net access that had plagued the conference from the start.

Comments about the conference have filled the St. Louis IMC newswire, and they've been posted in response to a feature recounting the first day of the conference.

I'm a little burnt after 6 days of media reform / consolidation conferencing, but will try to gather my thoughts and post them here and at my blog. I hope some of my fellow BeTheMedia bloggers will do the same.

I will say right now that I feel less energized than I did after the 2003 conference, even though I think I was more exhausted after the one in 2003. I'm glad I went, and attending has forced me to think harder about the tension between the media reform movement and Indymedia and other movements that focus on more fundamental and systematic change.

Posted by paul at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

This Blur Has Two Days

A slow Saturday morning and afternoon turned into a whirlwind of activity very quickly for the rest of the weekend. I'm still trying to mentally digest it all, but am gagging despite considerable rest. I'll probably post more thoughts on what happened, piecemeal, as specfic memories and posts occur to me.

On the Chicago Media Action front, we had a very successful workshop along with GRIID and Grade the News. Plus, thanks to everyone involved with the book The Future of Media who mentioned CMA twice in the book. (Hey, guys! If you're interested in us writing a chapter or two for your next book, get in touch with me!)

I'll post some specific suggestions about conference logistics and suggestions for conference improvement, which I'll also direct to Free Press, as thoughts come to me and when I get time to breathe.

Props to a number of excellent projects, including Independent World Television, The NewStandard, and MediaChannel.

And damn, I didn' get to visit the Gateway Arch.

Posted by Mitchell at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2005

Audio Update

Audio from the National Conference for Media Reform is slowly but surely getting online. So far all of Friday's sessions are up, as are many of Saturday's and the Bill Moyers speech at today's closing session. Hopefully within the next day or so we'll have nearly everything in place. All of the audio is available in MP3 format, but beware the largesse (~40-50 MB per file).

Posted by phlegm at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)

Saturday Night Keynote Event

I got to the grand ballroom, where Saturday night's Keynote event was taking place, a little late. We had spent the last two hours at the "Media Democracy Showcase Meet and Greet." For being in a location so off the beaten conference path, we were never without someone to talk to at our table. Sure some of the folks who stopped by the table bent our ears too long, but it was good that people took the time to stop by the tables and see what folks were doing.

The ballroom was full and Al Franken was crankin', introducing Bob McChesney as I found a seat. Perhaps responding to subtle undercurrents of gripes about marginalization by the conference's focus on policy and reform, McChesney called for all of us concerned about media to work together. "It's the way we go forward," he said. Pointing the finger at corporations for corrupting our media, Bob called the idea that media reform is just a left wing movement "bogus". The only way they could win on this issue is by labeling people working on media issues "wacky liberals." But in fact, issues like local ownership, government propaganda, censorship, and "children's brains marinating in advertising" are important to conservatives too, he said.

Up next was FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who got a standing ovation just for walking on stage. He waxed nostalgic about Bill Moyer's keynote speech at the first media reform conference in Madison, WI. Adelstein gave what can honestly be called an impassioned plea to fight the most "pernicious" elements polluting our news media: video news releases, product placement, and all kinds of lack of disclosure for advertising. "VNRs masquerade as news," he said, "squeezing out local concerns." It is an issue uniting "right, left and middle." Referring to the Thursday's Senate hearing before the Commerce committee on the Truth in Broadcasting Act, Adelstein said that government propaganda is now getting the treatment it deserves. But citizens have to keep the corporate media accountable, he said, then called on people to record anything they see on TV that looks like a VNR and see if there was any disclosure that it was footage provided to the station. If not, it may be a violation of current regulations. Adelstein called on people to send formal complaints to the FCC, making sure that he gets a copy. "Because we'll get it to be investigated," he said. "You need to be doing the monitoring. We need to shut down this fraud being perpetrated on the American public. You need to do it."

FCC commissioner Michael Copps, also getting a standing ovation for walking on stage, said this is a "weekend America can be proud of." Copps vowed to work against piecemeal rule making by the FCC, heavily influenced by corporations and hidden from the public view, which would destroy media's ability to serve the people. Is media reform winnable? "Damn right" it is, he said. "If we roll up our sleeves, all of us, we can settle this issue of who controls the airwaves."

Franken returned to the stage, riffing on being an old disconnected white guy and not understanding what it is that Davey D does. Fortunately, it was a brief introduction, and Davey D took the mic.

"We can no longer afford to treat media as passive spectator sport. We have to be interactive," he said. "We need to hold the decision makers of broadcast media accountable."

"We have to inform creatively and intelligently others on this issue," he continued. Davey D ran through several local campaigns actively challenging broadcasters on their decision on what goes on the air. Because it is a 40- or 50-year-old guy making the decision that it is okay for announcers to use the "n-word" and the "b-word" and other "nonsense," he said. "Communicate with each other, network, use each other's resources and recognize each other's strengths," he said. "And by next year's conference, make sure things have changed for the better." Davey D. brought the house down, receiving enthusiastic applause.

Nichols got on stage and proclaimed that the 2500 people attending the conference - representing the 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico - were with "Davey D and your struggle." Then he actually brought a tear to my eye (because I'm easily moved by these types of things) when he listed all the cities that were hearing the program, being aired live by Pacifica.

Then, the entertainment part of the show, but to call Patti Smith an entertainer, does not do her justice. She's so much more. Her performance was great.

When Franken returned (again), he thanked the close captioner. This was the funniest routine of the night: an odd exchange between him and the woman typing what he was saying (adding her own comments, which he had to read on the big screen). Really, she got all the good laughs.

Jim Hightower, with his big white cowboy hat, followed Patti Smith. The man radiated humility and righteous indignation, delivered with smooth Texas charm and such coolly colorful and poetic phrases. But he spoke too swiftly for me to quite capture them. I did catch this: "Using the feather is erotic, but using the whole chicken is kinky." I'm sorry, though, because I did not get the context.

"My message to you tonight - I'm sure you're wondering - is that this is a big time for us," he said. "You are on the right path of challenging the great media combines. ... The majority of Americans are on your side. ... Not just the bean sprout eaters, but those snuff dippers too."

Al Franken returned once more to the stage and assured the audience that his fellow Minnesotan's have as many "color aphorism" as Texans, introducing NOW's Kim Grandy as a "real nice lady." Grandy talked about NOW's commitment to media reform and its importance. By now, my brain is tired and I'm having trouble picking out the important stuff. But she does make a joke that "women can't get equal pay and they can't even get equal payola," referring to the amount of money Armstrong Williams received from the Department of Education to Maggie Gallagher's payments from the Department of Health and Human Services. The lack of media diversity impacts everything we do, she said. "Put media diversity on your group's agenda [whatever it is]."

Grandy introduced California representative Diane Watson. There is a growing consensus that "media is the issue," she said. Watson represents Hollywood, located in the 33rd Congressional district, perhaps the most diverse district in the United States. American culture account for 40 percent of U.S. exports, she said. "Our nation's creative voices inform and shape our understanding of the world," she said. But they are "under siege" by consolidation, lack of consumer choices and exclusion from regulatory decisions.

Looking at George W. Bush's press conference two weeks ago, CBS initially decided to air "Survivor" instead of the press conference on its main channel, but would carry it on its digital TV network, radio network and over the internet, she said. After negotiations, CBS did agree to carry it on its main network channel, but only if the time was changed by a half hour. And the press conference coverage was cut short.

"The real questioned that must be asked: do Americans have a real choice in receiving the programs they desire?" How can voices free from commercial interests get to Americans? she asked. "If the president can't get full coverage on TV, how can [others] expect to be seen and heard so that the public can make an informed choice?" she asked.

I stepped out to edit the post thus far. When I come back in, Phil Donahue was introducing the "Big Media Hall of Shame" A pre-produced video presentation briefly profiled the nominees: Lowry Mays, Michael Powell, Rupert Murdoch, Ed Rendell, and Dave Smith. "And the winner is ... Rupert Murdoch." The announcement is followed by a full round of "booos." Amy Goodman accepts the award on behalf of Murdoch.

And then I left the hall to post this post. But low and behold, THERE IS NO WI-FI ON SATURDAY NIGHT. By now, a familiar problem. I look forward to the day of community wi-fi. May it be 1 hundred million times better than this "millennial" hotel.

Posted by Pollyanna at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2005

Session: Visioning Media / Media Bill of Rights

No Wi-Fi in this room, so the notes are delayed a few hours. I prefer live blogging, since I don't feel obligated to edit and copyedit. But I didn't do that here, so I guess that obligation is gone...

Introduction, Lauren Coletta, Common Cause,

Creating Media and Demcracy Coalition, working towards a media democracy bill of right. A Consensus document, a set of tools to guide work with congress, fighting against further consolidation, cross-ownership.

We've spent a lot of time talking about this document, and last Monday we held an event at the press club where we had 22 journalists from around the country and consumer groups like Consumers Union and other groups like the UCC and the leadership coaltion for civil rights. They're talking about doing these sessions in San Francisco, Los Angeles and points in between.

She wants various stakeholders in the movement share their perspective on how a media system that serves their needs might look like. And she would like to hear from us on what that system ought to look like.

They're taking notes to capture our ideas, and are interested in other organizations joining in.

Jonathan Rintels, Creative Voices in Media
Thrilled to see so many people here. Founded center 2.5 years ago. He is a screenwriter, though after doing this for 2.5 years, he's really a former screenwriter. We try to look at media concentration issues from the perspective of people who make media. Most of the people on our board of advisors are well known names like Warren Beatty, Sissy Spacek, and lot of other people. We come at it from a commercial perspective and are trying to broaden it to a noncommercial perspective.

We had a wonderful media reformers retreat that Common Cause put on, and we talked about the media we'd like to see, and talked about pushing that forward in Washington with concrete action. We came up with creating a media bill of rights that would lay out a set of principles that would guide us and policy makers in the way they look at media.

It was kind of easy to come up with this since in his spare time he was noodling with a media declaration of independence, which was entirely negative -- it was about what they don't like. When he was tasked to be the lead drafter of the bill of rights, he turned it around to be all postiive -- nondiscrimination, artists creative rights being respected. He wants to confess something here, he actually voted for Republicans in the past.

In terms of the rhetoric I wanted to bring to this, it's a mainstream rhetoric that would appeal to Democrats and Republicans, conservatives as well as progressives. America is a country built on vision, so visioning is important -- it's in our constitution, bill of rights, supreme court decision. His thought in doing this was to place the media reform movement in this tradition. Put the vision that underlies those documents into this, and have it be the outgrowth of how that vision applies to the media reform movement.

It's a way of saying we're on the right side of all of this. We can trace these principles through American tradition and legal precedence. The other side, that favors consolidation, is outside that tradition and has hijacks. Efficiency and expediency don't show up in any part of the tradition.

Some people from the original committee noted that I'd left things out, since I was from a commercial media background. So we put it out to broader realm of media groups and found that I'd left a lot out.

We've come up with something that does lay out a lot of principles, a kind of wish list, that we can take to place in the debate with policy makers in Washington, and not be seen as off the wall or radical, or outside the mainstream American political tradition.

I know we're going to speak in this room about if we've left other things out. This is a process, this isn't something that's come down from the mount. The way to get the broadest basis of support is to get as many perspectives in the document as possible. This is our vision document. Whether it's lpfm, free wireless, or network neutrality.

Alice Myatt, media consultant.
She's new to the coalition and hasn't yet participated in a meeting, though she's seen a lot of emails on the listserv. She started out always wanting to make television. Went to school for masscomm in the late 60s when it wasn't popular. Went to school in Boston, worked in production, then development, then strategic planning. Has worked in public and commercial media and has moved back and forth.

Was program officer for media at MacArthur foundation, moved onto PBS until 2 years, when the institution was taking such a drastic turn that she felt she could not longer be productive there. She moved to consulting nonprofit organizations.

One group she's worked with has been the Center for Digital Democracy and Jeff Chester. Their work is tied to the bill of rights, in the subsector of public media. The Bill talks about media as a whole, but they think public media has a particular place -- it's more than NPR and PBS, more than municipal wireless and community radio.

The question is, what is public media and it's role in society? These are the big questions we're asking of individuals and institutions, and we're going to ask you. We hope over time you give them some good consideration, and hope you'll reask those questions and ask them of friends, family, neighbors and elected representatives.

We hope will come up with answers that will collectively serve our nation, and have a construtive dialogue about public media.

First the questions:
1. what is public media and how does it serve society?
What should a sustainable public media econlogy look like>
How can it encompass news, public affairs, education, arts and culture, civic engagement.
How does it fit within the media reform movement?
How do we develop strategies and tactics to realize those goals?

What infrastructre does our public media need to have.
How do we ensure ease of use for producers, distributers and users?

The Bill of rights is the foundation for thinking of that structure.

Sustainability. What models of financing should we explore? Should we explore multiple methods? Tax, portion of spectrum sales, advertising?

Governance. What standards do we put in place to ensure accountability and transparency, to offer true diversity.

Another theme is the role of public media in society -- what can it provide that won't be provided by private media?

Should an explicit role be to stimulate creative innovation?

Movement building. How do form stronger alliances? Do we start with mapping all aspects of media reform and independent production?

Do we work more closely together to avoid duplication?

These are the questions we need to answer in order to address the issue. Public media needs to be reformed. How do we do it?

Jenny Toomey, Exec. Dir. Future of Music Coalition
One of the ways she was going to talk about it, is to talk about the organization. She is an activist and a rocker, and started the coalition about 5 years as a result of a few things. She ran an independent record label for 8 years. Thought one way to change things was to create better music and do good business, treat artists well. She was lucky to start out in punk rock, which had a parallel culture, it's ideals weren't overtly commercial. At some point in time the style of music they were making, and the parallel economy of college radio, record stores and zines, became cherry picked by the major labels. We realized we'd spent 8 years building a parallel economy that was vulnerable.

It was actually profitable, in that you could be 25 years old and live on it. But then you'd loose all your popular bands because they could make more in the mainstream economy media.

They closed down the label because they were faced with the choice to join a distribution deal with a major label or close down. They didn't start a label to own bands' copyrights and sell them to the major labels.

So she worked for the Washington Post for a few years and was asked to write about and MP3 jukebox early on, and thought this would be disruptive to the mainstream music economy. So she called all her friends in independent labels still struggling with it and began interviewing them and asking if they were using these technologies. They said they were too busy to think about it.

So she started going to these conferences with no artists there were professors say that artists would make all their money off t-shirts in the future. She thought they need artists in the conversation.

They knew early on that DRM would never be successful because of the analog hole -- if you can hear it, you can tape it.

They also knew that the law would not be on the side of the technologists. Like the MP3.com lawsuit, which sucked the momentum out of energy to use mp3 to create new music distribution methods.

All the people working on digital music started to consolidate, and the biggest one required artists to sign exclusive contracts, which got them back to the start of where major labels are.

So she knows that they had to have a different group. She didn't pay any attention to politics until she started the Coalition.

We need an artists middle class to find ways that musicians get paid. They need health insurance. Musicians quit music because they need this sort of resource.

They need access to an audience. That's why we started working with Common Cause, because they did a big radio consolidation move. We counted what happened with radio consolidation, and we had the resource to do this research.

All you have to do is say to an average american that Clear Channel went from 40 to 1200, and do you like what you hear in the radio, and they start to get it.

It's very hard to organize artists, they're individual, iconoclastic, and it's bred into them. They told their art isn't valuable. Media activists are a bit like that, too. One of the things they were able to bring to the process of the Media Bill of Rights is to work with people who don't generally want to work on these sorts of things.

Common Cause was very helpful in getting people to work together. This is a first step and she's very proud to be a part of it.

Danny Schechter, Mediachannel.org, the News Dissector
No matter where you go that's where you are. We're in St. Louis in the United States of America, the Land of Media. Conference started with Nichols invoking Joseph Pulitzer, and the next day the Post-Dispatch announces that they're being sold to Lee media. On page 16 there's a intesting story about people arguing about a driveway, and the news from Iraq is even deeper.

We can't have a democracy in american without a media that respects and promotes a democracy. Our media system has gone from an institution protected by our constitution to serve a watchdog role, to one that is conducive and colluded with the worst aspects of our political culture. Without the media the Iraq war wouldn't have happened the way it did.

The media is not just something students write papers about, that we complain about when we can't find anything we want to see.

As we go through that exercise it increasingly typifies american life. Maybe there's a problem here.

I worked for ABC, CNN, I worked for a company taken over by Infinity, they took over an announced that they were firing 19 people. They were surprised that we wouldn't go quiety, and had one of the few successful strikes and got a small victory. I know that media can matter in people's life that people care about media.

I know from a recent Pew study that we are not alone. We are not grumpy and cranky like people imagine us. In fact many people share our concerns. According to Pew 70% of people are dissatisfied with an industry that prides itself on a claim that they're only giving people what they want. Well, we don't want it, and we're not going to take it anymore.

Guess what, 70% of people working in the media are also dissatisfied. Our stories are spiked, we don't get to work on what we believe in. Days of work get shrunk down to a few minutes or seconds.

I became a refugee of network news. I started a company called Globalvision which tried to tell stories from the inside out. Did a series on South Africa starting with $200 a month that informed people about what was happening with Apartheid.

Went to PBS and said human rights was the key challenge they were facing, looked at their pilot and told him that human rights is an insufficient organizing principle for a program, unlike cooking, which is.

We worked station by station to get their programming seen. This was not a welcoming environment for a diversity of point of view. It was not living up to its mandate.

These issues brought us back to one place. One day they were in their Times Square office and they saw the porn theater get torn down and replaced by a big tower for an investment bank. Then we looked up the street and there was media consolidation in our face: FOX, MTV, NBC , Reuters. They're all there. We realized our world had changed.

We realized we had joined media to spotlight the problems of the world, but now media was one of the problems. It's pervasively invisible, but we look at like a piece of furniture, a toaster with picture, in the words of an FCC Chairman.

so I wrote the More You Watch the Less You Know. I was encouraged to be positive in the last chapter. So I proposed a media channel to watch all the other channels, but that would cost $100 million to get off the ground. So we went on-line and reached out to other groups, and 1300 organizations are now part of the network.

People said they needed a prominent person to bring people in. They told him to go to Noam Chomsky at MIT, but then he realized that Noam doesn't watch TV. So he went to Walter Cronkike, not only did agree, but he made a video on the website that makes him sound more radical than Danny.

We have allies in places we didn't realize we had. They're fed up.

This is a battle we can take on and win. There are many people who will join if we can just talk to them.

Who? Parents, who are worried about what children watch on TV. Teachers, because the TV is competing with the classroom.

People in TV and the media industry but who are having doubts.

We have to figure out a way to cross the partisan divide. He knows it's a drag, but look at the media consolidation fight. Half from progressives, and the other half from the NRA. It was that combination that got Congress to vote for reexamining media rules.

We don't have enough people here to enforce our agenda, but we can talk to other people who don't know what's going on. The last thing the media wants you to know about is it's interest. We need to build common ground with other people

It's unfashionable. I went to Moveon.org, and he has great respect for them. He has a film on media and war, and asked about getting media issues on the agenda, their members say media is #2. If you look at their priorities media is not even on the list.

Look at the foundation side, it's changing, but the ones on the right have been ahead of us on investment. Not just grants, but 3 to 5 years of funding to create institutions. On the left they often have more money, but media isn't even on the list.

he found that people want to talk about these issues and get out side the box, and to think about new ways to build support for our concerns, values, hopes and dreams. I hope this is a sign that people want to get involved in the process. Not just hear from great thinkers, but be great thinkers.

I've heard some great projects from people doing interesting stuff. We need to hear their stuff. But with so little funding everyone's scrambling for crumbs.

Has to give credit to Common Cause. They got started with campaign finance reform. But what are politicians raising all the money, to buy media time. So they've taken a leadership role on media as an issue. They're willing to work with others and they want to make it work.

We need to fight for what we want, not just what we're against. This is everybody's issue, not just our issue. We can win our democracy back.

Moderator Lauren Coletta:
One thing the ACLU did around the Patriot Act was to get local city councils to pass resolutions on it. It helped to raise consciousness and get people involved against it. If you have any ideas like this, or any other ideas we'd like to hear them.


Comment:
Coming from outside the States, he's struck by one thing: that the focus is on diversity and localism, and local ownership. But his fear is that if you don't focus globally you won't get progressive voices to the rest of the world, they'll get CNN and FOX, and you won't get progressive voices from places like the Middle East. How does the Bill of Rights address that.

Schechter answers: this visioning exercise has a long history going back into the 70s and the roundtables that were held and the UNESCO meetings on the new info order. In a way we're drawing on the past. I'm working on a book called the Media Manifesto, and he's researching a very rich history of media criticism around the world. He went to Doha for the AlJazeera festival. They couldn't be nicer and more willing to connect with us. They know the Bush Admin doesn't speak for all of us.

Al Jazeera is launching an international channel with documentaries about the whole world. They're attempting to become a global broadcaster, can they get on the air here? Who knows, but we hope we can work with them and people in other countries.

We are not alone. Berlusconi in Italy is already ahead of Murdoch. In Eastern Europe they replaced public state broadcasters with American-based commercial media.

Comment:
He studied mass comm up to Masters degree, gave up during the Gulf War. Now he's getting back. His vision is radical, maybe stupid, he would like to see everyone get together to initiate legislation to make it illegal to own a radiostation newspaper or tv station outside the area it serves. It's big, so he throws it out there.

Comment:
This whole things reminds him of how the Encyclopedia Brittanica got together. In Scotland scientist and mathematicians got together and this reminds me of it. I had a bar and booked a lot of bands and became familiar with how musicians weren't given access to their music, and how difficulty it is to crack into the industry. The idea he had was to harness the energy of people who dissented, and to change the distribution of the music so that we divorced it from the RIAA and redistributed the money to promote free media, something self-supportive. Could the structure be changed?

Jenny Toomey answers: if you're going to redistribute music, it should go to the artists. 99% of artists are in debt to their label. The contracts have an audit deal, but the record companies don't have to say how many records they made.

We wanted to remove the middle man. One of the big hurdles is the existing control of the promotion distribution, the airwaves. One area where we doing a better job at building international movements is copyright -- it's one area where artists and producers are able to retain control, and therefore have the final say on the structure around new technologies.

There's a lot of parallels with patent laws, patenting seeds. It's one place where the world justice movement comes together.

Comment:
She went to school to become a DJ and learned about FCC and media issues, and now doesn't want to work for corporate media. She went to one conference where she wanted to create a statewide organization to help get media literacy out -- about the landscape of media reform. She wants all of Colorado to understand that media reform affects them at a local and state level. She needs to know if anyone is working specifically to do that, or if there are other statewide models they can follow.

She does interviews all over the state to talk about media reform on community radio and public access. She talks about these issues all the time, she can take cartons of the Bill and get the word out.

Lauren coletta responds: They are working with groups all over the country trying to work on good outreach strategies. The work they're doing with the Coalition they hope will just reinforce what is already out there.

Comment:
What about John McCain's media reform bill he heard about in another panel? Are you trying to introduce this to Congress?

Jonathan answers: Things in terms of policy are converging, like the indecency question, the digital transition, a rewrite of the Telecom Act, which is many ways in 1996 was the predicate for all the consolidation that's happened since then. It was hoped that the Bill is not the legislation itself, but would form the foundation of a piece of legislation that would be a model for legislation.

Jenny Toomey answers: on McCain's LPFM bill, it's great. It's a small solution, but it's a good one. The bill would allow more LPFM in urban areas.

Posted by paul at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)

Indymedia Caucus:

Over 40 Indymedia Activists from across North America gathered at the National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) to discuss a varienty of different issues concerning the Indymedia Network, IMC-US, and local Independent Media Centers; action items and next steps in coming months; and hard-hitting critiques of the NCMR.

NCMR suckiness/concerns included: lack of any focus on Indymedia & access to answers to questions people had about Indymedia; banging of heads between Indymedia & Free Press -- because Indymedia is subversive and Free Press is reform-oriented; expectations that conference would be different (than the last NCMR in Madison) because local media _were_ contacted; lack of an open media lab; framing of actionable items (in caucuses) as "how can you amplify Free Press' message"; closing of registration, cost of registration & attending, and general feeling of inaccessibility; the non-democracy of caucuses; lack of discussion about how capitalism is intertwined with the issues of the NCMR; and the lack of centering of media justice issues at the conference.

Actionable items include creating an IMC at next year's NCMR; creating an intervention at this year's NCMR; a possible intervention during the rest of the conference.


Posted by sascha at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)

Uzbekistan and torture

Speakers such as Naomi Klein and Seymour Hersh have been linking issues of media and war so I think it's relevant to point readers toward the repression that is happening in Uzbekistan today with over 200 dead protesters. Uzbekistan is of course a valued ally of the U.S. in the 'war against terror' - they have particular expertise in torture, such as immersing prisoners in boiling water. There's a lot of talk here of coalitions and linking media reform with other issues of social justice - I'm working on a larger, reflective, piece on that - and hope readers won't mind the slightly tangential link. For those who want a specific media angle, there's word that "A group of foreign journalists was detained earlier today and told to leave the city immediately."

Posted by andrew at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

More blogs covering the NCMR

In addition to the blogs listed on the right-hand column that are covering the NCMR, there are several others, in which conference attendees write about their experiences here.

More blogging about the NCMR can be found in this Technorati search.

Posted by kfk at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

Inside the media showcase

In my capacity as an attendee of the NCMR, I am spending most of my time staffing a table in the Media Showcase, which is a large room at one end of the conference area where organizations are presenting their work, distributing literature, and answering questions of interested passers-by.

Though the room was pretty quiet yesterday, as most of the attendees were getting settled into the opening of the conference, traffic is up significantly today. About a third of the tables are staffed currently, with this number gradually increasing in anticipation of the Media Democracy Showcase. This Showcase is a two hour block of time this evening during the dinner period in which conference attendees are encouraged to visit all of the participating organizations. In other words, it's a chance for on the ground media groups - working on creating independent media, media literacy, media justice, and media policy, among other efforts, to share their work with media activists.

Posted by kfk at 12:28 PM | Comments (0)

Meta: Traffic to BeTheMedia Starting to Grow

We've gone from having less than 100 hits yesterday to having 235 as of 12:22 PM today. It seems like the site Buzzflash.com is driving 3/4 of the traffic. I've never read the site before, but it seems kind of like a left-liberal Drudge report. Apparently it gets a lot of traffic because they're diving it here like crazy.

So, hello to Buzzflash readers. Please send us an email with any comments about what you're reading, and share this site with your friends.

Posted by paul at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

Session: Globalizing Media Reform

I didn't initially choose this as the 11 AM session to go to. I thought I'd go to the Copyright session, but the room was smaller and filled to capacity. So I planted the minidisc recorder in the copyright session then came over here.

I'm glad I showed up to the Globalizing session, it exceeded my expectations. However, I shouldn't be surprised since it was one of the International media reform sessions at the 2003 NCMR that I also learned the most from.

In this year's version the global south and non-Western perspective is much more emphasized. This is vital information for us in the US, given how little we get in the mainstream media about the rest of the world, especially places where we're not fighting wars.

I knew that there was some state repression of community radio in Brazil, but I did not know the frightening extent, nor that the government is stepping up efforts, not ratcheting down, even though a left-leaning government is in power.

Myoungjoon Kim from Korea gave the most rousing talk outlining the amazing media access and reform victories they've had there, and how they are aligned with Korea's more militant labor movement. He emphasized clear long-term goals and charting progress towards those goals, along with the unification of media reform with other movements.

This last point was also emphasized by João Brant from Intervozes, Brazil, who also emphasized framing the movement and goals.

It's funny, but I don't recall such clear calls to framing and goal setting in any other talks, which perhaps fleshes out some of the differences between American activism and movements elsewhere in the world. It seems like the media reform movement in the US is not quite unified around particular and well-defined goals, understandable given how multivariate the constituencies are, even if the movement is largely left-leaning and/or liberal.

Read on to get more specifics from my session notes:

Des Freedman, Goldmith College, University of London:

How is British movement linked to US. There is not yet a Global Media Policy -- it's largely made at national level. The difference is that national policy is increasingly influenced by transnational agreements, like GATT, copyright agreements, etc. Agreements are there to police American intellectual property around the world.

Movements are linked because we face the same neoliberal institutions that have given us deregulation, stolen our water. In Britian they don't have a media reform movement as big as the US. But they do have a large energetic anti-war movement, where media has remained a big issue. The key is link up media issues with other social justice movements.

The campaign for broadcasting freedom held sessions at the European Social Forum, where people connected. This is how we globalize media reform, not by pretending that we have one global media policy. Acknowledge that we already have global movements against war, against World Bank debt payments. Put media democracy on the global map and inside these issues. Recognize that mainstream media converage helped Britain and the US go to war in Iraq. They don't question the right of drug companies to exploit the poor.


Graciela Baroni Selaimen, RITS (Information Network for the Third Sector), Brazil:

In 2001 when the first world social forum was held in porto allegre, communication was the subject of just one session. In 2003 proposed that there would be a whole axis of activies about media democratization. In that year the organizing committee realized that communication should be a central issue, it is immediate and central to every political debate.

Last January the 5th WSF happened, bringing together over 6000 media professional. The theme Communications, Counter-Hegemonic Practices was the focus of a whole day. Never before were so many different communication activists brought together.

In her opinion this evolution of the communication scenario reflects a growing global movement where civil society is understanding communication rights as fundament to democracy. The creation and strengthening of things like the free and open source movement against closed intellectual property is important to confront market-driven policies about communication, culture and knowledge.

It's no longer feasible to tackle local needs and challenges without knowing what's going on at the local level. Globalizing media reform and democratizing communication is important for people to express their voices. Communications rights should find ways to put local experiences and needs in the global perspective. We need to find ways to put the concepts we believe in into practice.

Some data and information about Brazil. Consolidation there is amazing, 277 media channels are owned by the largest corporation, including all forms of media. More than half of the daily news production in just a few hands. NTT Globo reaches more than 99% of the population.

Community radio are under a restrictive law that limits them to broadcasting 25 watts, in the cities this doesn't even reach an entire block. There is no state support and they may not carry advertising. They are often violently rerpressed and shut down by police. This year the number of stations closed by police increased 37%.

There are many challenges in Brazil -- they must be faced while recognizing what is global and working with the US, Europe and the whole world. We must understand what are common goals and what are differences. It is quite different for people in the North and the South.

In the South it means fighting for cultural identity, and the lingering effects of colonization. A sort of colonization that imposes every day how they should behave, consume and look like. Telling them that fitting into these patterns makes them fit into the world.

We need hands from all countries to come together, network and strategize, keeping in mind that our richness and strength is our diversity.

João Brant, Intervozes, Brazil:

Organization deals with activism and policy, bringing communications into the agenda, supporting common coverage of social movements. We try to do everything, and we can't, but we try to go on.

The point he would like to addres is: What is our common goal as a Global movement? What's our agenda for linking movements, especially in terms of long term actions and goals?

If we could define an ideal scenario, what would it be in 10 years time? If we keep our minds only on the present we lose our main goals, we're always trying to catch up, and we don't know how far we stray.

His group working with people from other countries to work on a generic framework around issues like freedom of expression, plurality, cultural rights and intellectual property rights. This leads to policies where communications rights are central.

It's not a state's role to create communications, to facilitate their creation. There should be a public system, neither private nor public.

Five objectives that we should try to have as goals:
1. access to means of productions
2. Technical and material conditions to listen and communicate
3. Autonymous relation to media
4. Active participation to creating policies to create and sustain
5. Balanced conditions and regime to participate in the public sphere

How to finance these things?

Imagine if part of commercial funds could be used to fund this sort of public/community media.

Participatory democracy means that representative democracy is not enough. Mechanisms like local councils, consults can be means to look after civil and human rights in the media. Not control over content. We can't look a freedom of expression without other freedoms from repression.

Four goals and principles:

Plurality and diversity of means and content.

Participatory democracy with citizen participation in policies.

have to get the public sector as the reference of our policy. Private sector should the exception not the rule. We've been brought up with the private reference, but profit does not match with public interest.

Information is not a commodity. Material commodity is not as easily reproduced as information. This principle shows us that information as a commodity is a distortion that the private sector is trying to force on us.

There will be a meeting of WIPO where the US is playing a prominent role, in private interest, not ours. Trying to put cultural communication under WTO rule. We're talking about global strategies and goals which we can deepen in the debate.

Emanuel Njenga Njuguna, Africa Policy Monitor Project, Association for Progressive Communications, Kenya/S. Africa:

They monitor communication and info policy development in Africa with goals around civil society, equal public participation against what private interest is pushing.

A few issues in terms of Africa, Kenya and South Africa are two cases.

In Africa, most people depend on radio, about 80% of households have radio, whereas with internet it's only 2%. In the last few years there's been a move towards liberalization.

In Kenya the colonial history had one state broadcasters to push gov't propaganda on TV, and several radio stations in different language. In the last few years there have been more actors, private broadcasters.

In 1992 with the advent of multiparty politics they've seen more objective reporting in the media. The government has turned to new and subtler ways to censor and control the press.

As a result the media suffers an everpresent threat of being censored or stifled.

Most of the private broadcasters are in the urban areas, because that is where they can generate advertising revenues. In the rural areas they only get the public state broadcaster.

Another key are is local content. Kenya has no regulation on foreign broadcasts and programming. Not enough has been done to encourage the growth of local content, especially in the local area.

By 2004 private and gov't broadcasters have 75-80% foreign content. In 2002 there was a change in gov't after 24 years. They're hoping by next year local content can go to 60%.

The content being produced in America is going all the way to Africa, and people think what they see is true -- they see the US view on the war in Iraq. It's all linked to financing and donor dependency. There is also the lack of resource and facility to create content.

With regard to the Alternative media, there's a lack of clarity and vision on what kind of independent broadcasts they want.

South Africa is making up most of the foreign content, and is becoming the first world part of Africa.

People have been focusing on access to information. The gov't has been working hard to ensure control over media by controlling access to gov't information.

Some victories in Kenya. Some community media are trying to create room in the rural areas, though limited in funding.

In South Africa it's a similar situation, so he will skip forward. However, the Internet has started to have an impact there. In 2004 there were presidential elections, and the current president used the Internet very well.

Legislation development -- in Zimbabwe they have used laws to control what is transmitted in the media. There have been a few victories here and there. They've created some awareness that people don't need to believe everything the media tells them.

Myoungjoon Kim, MediACT, S. Korea

Making labor news documentaries and getting workers to make their own videos in trade unions. They have a media center that is funded by the media board, but they have autonomy in running the center to support public access and indpendent filmmaking.

Start with media literacy. It's true that we have a strong tradition of a militant labor movement, but it is a superficial impression you get from the media. You get the impression that Korean laborers are born fighters and US laborers are born losers. That is incorrect. Korea has a lot problems, with bureaucracy in unions, etc. But we do have militancy. It's not natural, but it's built on media literacy and activism.

Before this session was organized, he was asked by organizer what he thinks of US media activsm. He thinks it's important effective to many countries. The victory with the FCC and fighting back was important. It was covered in Korea as a top storty when the FCC was announcing deregulation. When it was struck down, there was no coverage. So, congratulations.

At the same time the US is playing an important role to push a neoliberal agenda against the public interest. Because of that other social movements in other countries should support the US. You should learn from other countries to strengthen your movement.

Applause.

I will emphasize the Korean cases. Some of the gains we've had were made possible by your gains. The basic media situation is similar, with monopoly and consolidation. We have some public broadcaster. Korea is #1 in broadband connection, which gives us opportunity and problems.

We have a strong tradition of alternative and independent activism, which has been linked with the labor movement. IN the past 25 years there has been a lot of progress. In the labor movement there are a lot of web sites, and lots of laborers producing videos. The Hyundai union is the most left of the labor unions, and they have 3 full time staff making videos. By contract there is a closed-circuit TV system at the factory that workers can watch during lunch, one day every week, where they broadcast programs from the workers' video collective.

They asked his group to make a video once a week that the workers' collective can learn from.

Based on this legacy, the past 5 - 10 years they have been partically successful in the realm of the public sphere and public policy. Based on our media experiment now many local media centers are being established by the ministry of culture. We got legislation in 1999 to establish public access. Now we have 30 minutes every week for public access on the public broadcaster, and we have public access on cable. You can get access to $1000 to create a 30 minute program for public access.

They have a satellite channel that is 24-hour public access also funded by the communiations commission, $20 million. We got this by researching different cases around the globe, including free speech TV and the public access structure in the US.

Based upon our expreiences and research we could create our own perspective and action, which should be done around the world. The conclusion was that we should have a framing perspective on media activism.

Should have a clear position for different media areas, mainstream, public and the public sphere. Activism should come from alternative area. Use public resources for activism and to push issues in the mainstream media.

This should be done offensively rather than defensively. It's important to defend against censorship and deregulation. How can we set an agenda in the name of the people and working class, not in reaction to the corporations and the ruling class. We should trap them into being defensive. Applause.

One important point is how we can have a close link between areas like policy research and activism. Strategy research is important, too. At the same time this kind of research should be closely linked to training people in the fight. There should be a close link with other social movements, and how they can have media activism as their own agenda and we can interact. One way we got policies like public access is due to change of the government in Korea. We have neoliberal gov't but the people know they must move and can exert force. In a way we bluff, the gov't worries that they can mobilize the whole labor movement to defend public access.

He hopes the issue is how we can share the strategies and gains, just like they do at the WTO. How can we grow a regional or bilateral network? We should have a very specific plan. After this we should talk about how to implement a structure to improve the movement in different countries. Maybe someday we can have a big march for media refrom here or in Korea.

Maybe a goal can be addressed in this kind of conference.

Posted by paul at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)

Session: News, Information and Corporate Media - Naomi Klein

[Naomi Klein, as usual, cuts to the core of the issues with incisive, original language that encapsulates deep insights in easily understood language.]

Her first point is: The Issue of media reform in the U.S. is a global issue in the sense that what happens in the U.S. reverberates throughout the world. Yet our children learn about "geography through war" and "religion through torture".

Media is the "meta-issue", which pervades all other social justice issues. It's an "invisible concrete wall that blocks the sunlight from all our social movements".

We should not be reduced to pleading with the media, being content with letters to the editor, etc. We must "revolutionize" the media.

Primary point of her talk: We *must* root the media reform movement in resistance to the war. This because it hits both the administration and the media where they are the weakest.

There actually is a good deal of great low-level reporting going on. The amplification is what's missing.

What's not being amplified is Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, 9 million missing dollars.

Television networks exist to be outraged - it's just that they're outraged about extremely odd things. The judgment on when to scream and when to shrug is off.

"How do we make people care about torture?" - Abu Ghraib details are available in existing documents, but the information is not getting out. Helped by Kerry campaign. the message became "it's not that bad - you don't really have to care about this".

The media focuses on outrage, but not on topics like U.S. torture.

If we're all "outraged together", it's a scandal if we're "outraged alone" we're "crazy". Outrage needs company.

We need our own methods of amplification.

Example: The Afghanistan/Pakistan riots regarding the Koran desecration, also released U.S. prisoners in Afghanistan are talking about their experiences of abuse at the hands of the U.S. Instead, U.S. media coverage focusses on what *might* have happened with the Cessna airspace violation in DC if it had been terrorism.

Another example: The "ritualized mourning" and "controlled compassion release valves" of the Terry Schaivo story and the Pope's death. "spasms of compassion or moral outrage". But no coverage or compassion about U.S. soldiers coming home critically injured or dead.

A free press is a threat to war. It's "arguably incompatible" with war.

Example: During the April 2004 seige of Fallujah there was straight footage of the carnage at the main hospital on Middle-East channels like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, including interviews with hospital staff who affirmed over 600 deaths. This lit a firestorm among the Iraqi public. But Rumsfeld said "What Al-Jazeera is doing is vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable". During the second seige of Fallujah, just after the election. Al-Jazeera was banned from Iraq. The single Al-Arabiya journlist present in Iraq was arrested. The first thing the military does is take over the hospital to prevent the release of information in the way it got out during the first seige.

Currently 9 iraqi journalists in detention and many are being harassed.

The reason this is happening is because the press is such a threat to war and occupation.

It should be the "central demand" of the media reform movement to demand coverage of the war. We should "use the media's jingoism against itself", pointing out the paradox of waving the flag, yet not showing what's actually going on with the soldiers, not covering their deaths.

"We can't bring the troops home if we can't see them".

The Media reform movement should join with the anti-war movement and make the simple demand "show us the war".

Posted by Randall at 03:13 AM | Comments (0)

Reflections on Telecomm Act Session

I was pretty disappointed with the session on the forthcoming Telecommunications Act of 2006. Primarily because 2 of the 3 speakers really didn't have much new information to offer, especially for anyone who was already familiar with previous iterations of the Telecom Act.

Mark Cooper was the highlight, and he has come to earn my respect as one of the smartest persons working in media reform, with a very incisive and realistic view of media policy and what goals may be achieved. He breaks things down into readily understood chunks, and outlines plans for action. He also scored points for not repeating his talk from the opening plenary, instead expanding on some elements. Read my notes on the session for more details.

Unfortunately, the other two speakers had little to offer by comparison. The opening speaker of the session, John Arnold, is a former talk radio host. He certainly had the pleasing trained voice of a radio host, with a smooth delivery, even when his facts were scanty. Mr. Arnold went back to school for a PhD. in comm as a result of an awakening to media consolidation. However, his thin observations and platitudes about the state of media ownership sounded like someone with less than a semester of Political Economy under his belt.

His gloss of the Fairness Doctrine was thin, as was his overview of the 1996 Telecom Act. Frankly, I'd be surprised if half the room wasn't more knowledgeable about these topics than he.

I went to this session hoping to learn about what the specific items of contention and negotiation would be for the Telecom Act in 2006, and Mr. Arnold provided no information on this, and certainly no new information for anyone with even a cursory education of media law an policy in the US. There must be several dozen other PhD. students wandering the halls of the conference who could speak with more precision and authority on the subject than Mr. Arnold who could have filled in for him. Which begs the question of why he was on the panel at all.

My review of Lauren-Glenn Davitian is somewhat less scathing, since I do see why she was on the panel, though I do not think she spoke to her strengths. She started off by telling us that she was going to summarize 4 months of research into the Telecomm Act in five minutes.

Four months of research? Frankly, from a session like this, I'm hoping the speakers have put in YEARS of research, because I, and many others in the audience, certainly have.

Ms. Davitian's background is in organizing around community and public access TV, and she did emphasize the importance of local community organizing as a force of change. She also emphasized the need to have long-term institutional organizing, not just single-issue organizing. It's this that she seems to have the most experience with and could speak most valuably about. Unfortunately, it only came up at the end of her talk, and not nearly to the depth that I would hope.

Mark Cooper very clearly laid out particular points that are important to see addressed in new Telecom legislation. I hoped that Ms. Davitian would have been able to speak more specifically about how to organize local communities around these issues.

Rather, she spent most of her talk giving us a hackneyed gloss history of telecom legislation in the US, that it seems she has only recently gotten any handle on.

The point that Ms. Davitian was trying to get at and emphasize is that the battleground for regulation over broadband services will be fought over whether it is to be regulated as common carrier or as media. But her point was clouded and late in her presentation. I think it would have been clearer and more effective had she ditched the attempted overview of Telecom law and simply started with this premise.

I think what she wanted to convey was communities want their broadband providers regulated more like telephone companies and less like media companies, and they should organize to achieve this. That's a very keen observation and then she could have focused her talk on telling us how we might do that.

In fairness, she did speak more directly to the question of organizing in the Q&A after the speakers' presentations. Mr. Arnold, however, did not redeem himself in this portion, at one point stating simply, that there is little hope for reform. Then why be here?

Frankly, Russ Newman, who was the Free Press moderator for this session, in just his introductory remarks demonstrated a clearer understanding of the elements at play with a new Telecom act than either Mr. Arnold or Ms. Davitian. I was hoping to walk away with more information that I don't already have, and Mr. Cooper did make sure that this was true, though it's too bad that it didn't extend to all panelists.

Posted by paul at 02:03 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2005

You can't compress a day like this with Lempel-Zif!

I have about 10 minutes or so before my ride arrives to skirt me to my living arrangements for the weekend. So I have a lot to braindump and not a lot of time. Here we go.

The radio show went well. Joe Gentile, the owner of the show, took part in the talk for about 20 minutes. I got a whole hour to talk about the media to four whole counties in the Chicago area. Schwing!

I also got interviewed by Media Minutes. Thanks John.

Also, I saw Mr. Donahue again right after the public file challenge. He recognized me as having met in Urbana. Brief conversation between us is as follows.

Me: Kalamazoo, WWMT. Donahue at 5pm. I would watch it every day when I went to work.
Phil: Ah, well. You turned out okay anyway.
Me: It happens.

And tres cool: I ran into former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson -- in the elevator of all places. I had a lot to talk to him about (the connections to Iowa City, the rampant quote quoting, the FCC stuff).

Triple word score: I asked a really cool question to Mr. Paul Jay about his new incipient project, and he gave a great and inspiring answer. The room was packed with the elite of the media democracy movement.

Oh, and that whole episode of the Democracy Now action outreach where we had banner and posters out on the streets during rush hour; that went well with some outreach (the timing wasn't good, we could have gotten more people, damn!). I got some of it on tape. Plus, some -- ahem -- rather provocative photos that I'll almost certainly never share. ;-)

I'm probably missing something I should write about, but I'm out of short term memory and almost out of time.

Posted by Mitchell at 11:13 PM | Comments (0)

Conference Audio Update

Just a quick note to let folks know that MP3s of all of Friday's events will hopefully be online by early Saturday. Check here for the list when it's up and ready; the rest of the conference audio will also be put in the same location.

Also, the entire "pre-conference" audio from Urbana, IL earlier in the week ("Can Freedom of the Press Survive Media Consolidation?") is online in the Media Minutes archives.

Posted by phlegm at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)

Notes from “The Song Need Not Be the Same”

This panel was not initially on the schedule: it features legendary retired rockstar Patti Smith and legendary record producer Sandy Pearlman. John Nichols is moderating. The room is packed, even the aisles are full. Probably 150 people crammed into a room designed for 100. They’ve closed the door, somebody is watching it, and when one person leaves another can be admitted.

Patti Smith says she used to be able to go to radio stations on appearances and, once upon a time, things like strict formatting were not an issue. She’d ask that DJs play non-greatest hits and they would comply. As time wore on, DJs would get nervous at such requests.

She also hates whiners who complain about lack of access to airplay and distribution: “you have to work for it,” and if you put enough energy into it, you can succeed. To me that sounds kind of old-fashioned, but Smith walks the talk, and that deserves respect.

John Nichols: Do you know that Patti Smith has no gold album? And that Sandy Pearlman is credited with coining the term “heavy metal” in reference to loud rock-n-roll?

Smith laments the loss of radio as a “cultural voice,” as it taught her via music about politics, spirituality, and more. She’s laments the creation of music television: it has become sexualized and turned into a money-machine, instead of playing music as a creative act. In fact, Smith thinks music on television has also corrupted music, because it imposes visuals on the medium when music should inspire imagination in every individual that hears it.

Pearlman laments the heyday of the record business, when “insane entrepreneurs” who were passionate about both the music and the business.

Pearlman says the great old days of radio (late 1960s, early 1970s) were cool because stations actually cared about adding material to the collective cultural palate. He says radio is being destroyed by consolidation and the life’s been sucked out of it. He also is unhappy with MTV and its “disciplined and ill-vectored” ethos; aesthetic that believes “Spring Break is actually 52 weeks of the year”; and the “cult of the concave abdomen.”

Pearlman is a visiting scholar at McGill University, and after talking to media executives in Canada he says they have some interesting insights on U.S. media. For example, in Canada making music is “an honorable and important thing,” and this is reflected in federal/provincial culture subsidies. Not so in the U.S. They also believe that the way U.S. media relies on near-constant market surveys is a terrible way to program any media outlet.

Smith: Being without censorship is not being without responsibility. If you want to feel free then it is incumbent upon setting the same scenario with your fellow man.

Smith: we must keep fighting, even if the cause seems desperate and lost. She places this in the context of the anti-war movement and its need to keep resisting the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan: “We will lose and lose and lose and lose until we win.”

Pearlman: “We accept the idea that the world is devolving into a nihilistic chaosium,” with groups fragmenting into single-issues with dogged conviction. We should not become like them, but on the other hand...the left needs to take a stand on issues of fundamental moral importance. “We need to respond to conviction, but not insanity.”

Pearlman: Is working on “recommendation engines” at McGill – these is a conception of personalized search engines related to uncovering the “infinitely deep layers of music” that exist online. (I can agree with this sentiment, and also that some of it can be hard to find unless you really hunt for it). He would like to see a database of all the music in the world put online and mounted on a search engine. Tracks would be priced at five cents per download. He cites the fact that 28 billion downloads last year can be tapped, provided the price point is right. Recommendation engines are key, because they would connect consumers not just with artists, but entire genres of music somewhat “This concept is much, much, much, much, much more closer to the model of what Apple wanted to do (with the iTunes Music Store) before the record labels told them otherwise.” He’s been invited to talk to Microsoft about the concept but hasn’t yet because “he worries about becoming unclean.”

Pearlman: “Give me a million dollars and five people to help me, and within a couple of weeks I can put together a roster (of artists) who can put to shame the entire combined output of the American record industry.” He believes there is an agenda within the music/media businesses to teach the “semi-righteous middle classes” that they are worthless and cannot affect positive change.

Pearlman: You have to be willing to work to find information you need. Do not expect content to be delivered to you on a silver platter: putting in effort to find what you want “beats living in Darfur.” He has faith that alternate mass media distribution systems outside of radio/TV/online portals has made a big difference in the availability of content.

*Audience question: Can you envision a world without record companies?

Pearlman answer: I don’t really give a damn about them. If they get out of the way and don’t cause any problems then I have no problem with their existence. However, in my world-vision I don’t really see a need for them. Once you make the content available along with the means to effectively find it, “self-organizing processes” will take hold (he also admits being addicted to “the cult of self-organizing processes”). If you want to comply with the creative and legal restrictions of working within the record label environment, that’s your choice. But he’s trying to create a world of “ethos-based music communities,” where connections between music artists and fans are not several steps removed from each other. Having said that, here’s something to think about: Net worth of an average major label is between $10-12 billion. But the business is in a freefall – down 40-50% from just four years ago.

Smith doesn’t answer the question, instead rambles thru some anecdote about her hair clip and socks. (If you are confused, join the club).

*Audience question: If you could send to Clear Channel’s CEO a postcard, what would the front look like and what would you write on the back?

Pearlman: “I don’t give a damn about Clear Channel. I think Clear Channel is racing to irrelevance and insolvency.” They’ve gotten big benefits from the Telecom Act of 1996, but they’ve squandered their opportunities, and now they will pay for that. “Reap what you sow.”

*Audience question(s): What can people on the ground do to help change the state of the music business?

Pearlman: Nobody takes seriously the notion that musicians should be paid for their work. Musicians are a sphere of the workforce. Perhaps with my world vision of cheap, ubiquitous music distribution, we can satisfy people’s desire for rich content while helping those produce it

Smith: People need to expect more of their artists, and artists need to seriously consider why they are creating music. Is it for expressive purposes and/or to contribute to the cultural millieu, or is it simply to make big money and become a “rich, rockstar asshole?” She doesn’t feel like artists have an obligation to be publicly transparent, but they do have an obligation to be valuable, in a philosophical sense. And if they hold deep convictions, they should express them, “perform their civic duty just like everybody else,” and not be afraid of what effects that might have on their career.

Pearlman: In the United States we don’t have a state-supported media, we have a media-supported state. FOXnews has “three distinct foreign policies”: one for domestic consumption, one in the UK (leaning slightly more socialist), and one in the People’s Republic of China. They already have a lot of influence on who runs the US and UK and aspire to the same in China.

Session ended at 5:42 (1 hr 42 min).

Posted by phlegm at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)

Session: Telecomm Act - Lauren-Glenn Davitian

Lauren-Glenn Davitian:
She wants to recognize that there is a handful of people, like Mark Cooper, who spend their entire professional life thinking how to deal with congress, FCC and the courts, to protect our rights at a very high level. The work of these people really depends and must be informed by the grassroots.

I came up when public access was one of the few areas where this was being fight. CCTV is putting together a citizen's guide to the 2006 Telecomm Act. It may not be a wholesale rewrite, but it will be a series of changes and additions. She's been reading quite a bit of what people thought about what happened in 1996.

A five minute summary of 4 months of research. She had to start with the 1934 Act, which dealt with radio regulations and telephone monopoly. It created two regulatory regimes, common carrier/telephone, and radio, later known as broadcasting, now known as media. Common carrier is based upon public right-of-way as public proerty. Media is based on spectrum as public property, like the Mississippi River.

So there are public interest requirements. Until 1980 AT&T was an utter monopoly and they were consistently invetigated for monopoly practices.

At the end of World War I the gov't took the assets of American Marconi and split it up to three parties, who acted like a cartel with radio patents. It was essentially broken up, with RCA being the one holding the patents with two networks. The blue became NBC the red became ABC.

Media Consolidation is not new. It's not like we're the first generation to have our panties in a twist about media consolidation.

So the Internet happens, it's a whole new thing where you can transport digital info over phone, air or cable. But cable is not a common carrier, it's considered a publisher/broadcaster in the media category, but still providing broadband service. So we have two different regulatory regimes. Common carrier which requires letting others onto your network, which regulates Telcos.

The other are cable companies, regulated as media. A whole new subcategory called information services, which means they aren't subject to open access requirements.

So the question in the rewrite to the Telecom Act is what regulatory regime should be adopted? the open access common carrier model, or the media, we control who comes on our network model?

How do we take all this complicated legislation for which 2006 is just the next frontier? There will always be another crisis like this.

The way we should respond is through old-fashioned grass-roots organizing. And keep them going over time, because these fights will continue. It's not like it ends after the 2006 act.

To quell the sense of "what do we do now?" it requires the discipline of local organizing. We need to connect the principle of open access to the issues that affect us in local communities.

Every community will see this different. Just like there is nothing like a typical public access TV channel. She thinks the challenge here is to take what we're learning at this event, and the 2006 act in particular, and connect it to the basic principle of public access to public property.

We take that to our local community and try to connect it to what concerns us in our local commmunities. It's about solving problems at a local level. Door-knocking, talking person to person, finding out what really concerns people, and can inform DC and the long-term fight at the state and legislative battles. And the essential long-term local fight is how do we the public take back that local property to set up community broadband and control our own infrastructure.

National, state and local. We need long-term institutionalized community organizing, aggregated across communities. So we can go to Congress with information backed by millions of people who believe the same thing that are willing to stand together for free speech and democracy.

Posted by paul at 04:47 PM | Comments (0)

Session: Telecomm Act - Mark Cooper, Consumers Federation


Mark Cooper:
It was the first time that he was the least loud and inflamatory person on a panel this morning.

He's proud to say that the 4 court cases he mentioned this morning, Consumers Union and Consumers Federation is a part of all. But court cases are like black holes, that suck in energy, then explode. That's what's going on here in DC. We've frustrated the corporate interests. They said Congress didn't know what they did in 96, the corporations didn't know what was happening with digital media. Russ is right, the legislative battles have already started.

Go home, start a committee of correspondance and write your representatives about what to do and what not to do. This is about a very specific concrete thing the American people want to happen. he will suggest the direction we want to go in. He really believes they have lost control of the means of production in our society. So we must preserve that free speech and fair use.

We also want to do more than perserve what we used to have. We want to ensure that the digital future gives us more stuff. There was a picture a few weeks ago of Bush shaking hands with Sheik Abdullah, that picture was grabbed by all sorts of people and circulated on the web. If the broadcasters have their way, you won't be able to do that. The broadcasters wanted to take the record button off the VCR 20 years ago -- only a 5 to 4 decision.

We need to make sure that we get to have those record and playback button. They'll confuse you with the most technical gobbledygook. But it's simple: We want that record button.

There will be language in the communications Act of 2006 that addresses this issue. We want to share what we have.


We gave the broadcasters this spectrum for Digital TV, they couldn't figure out how to make money out of it. So they didn't use, and because they got it for free they sat on it. Well now they've been sitting on it for 10 years. Almost nobody here has a digital TV, nothing's there. People want that spectrum back, and Congress wants to sell it. They're selling your free speech, to fill the defecit. We thought it was silly to give it away, selling it is worse. We should try and stop them.

If we can't stop them the one thing we can really ask for is the right to use it in the Wi-Fi mode. right now Wi-Fi networks are compacted in what is known as the junk bands. When they let people use the airwaves, a wonderful thing happened, people used it. The same thing can happen in other spectrum that isn't junk. We want the right to share in other spectrum, we can get that.

When we gave the broadcasters the digital spectrum they went from 1 to 6 channels, it's an outrage. The fact that some will have 12 because they own 2 original analog signals, maybe we should take some back. We should also ask for that 1 of the 6 be dedicated to something else. We can ask for that stuff, it won't lower the price they get for selling the other stuff.

We can ask for these things in order to balance out the giveaway of the spectrum. The giveaway shouldn't have happened, but at least we should get something in return. When we get the power to speak it makes a difference.

Network neutrality -- his Paul Revere example. At least since original roads are built, we have forced them to allow anyone to use these networks on a non-discriminatory basis, common carriers, etc. This is a principle that is almost 500 years old in our capitalist tradition.

The final thing we can ask for is with regard to community wireless. We were fighting in Pennsylvania and they asked, why shouldn't the telcos and cable operators be the ones to do this? They're doing a crappy job is one answer, but a better answer is, why do cities build streets? Because if we let corproations do it, they'd only build them to the rich people. We ought to allow cities to build the on-ramps to the information superhighways.

We at least can get Congress to pass a law preventing States from stopping cities from building wireless networks. In the 1996 Act it said any entity can build a telecomm system, but the courts said "any" didn't mean cities. So it's just a small change to existing law to add "cities." Not every city will do it. But it scares the bejesus out of the companies that they'd better do it right or be beat to the punch.

Posted by paul at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

Media Activism 101

There were three good strategies outlined by Nan Rubin and followed up by many others in the room:

Strategy 1 – own our own media
Simple concept; if activists own media, then they're probably going to be receptive to activism.

Strategy 2 – use the corporates
Of course if you can get your message on CNN or even FOX, you're getting a free ride into a market you can't buy (unless you're rupert murdoch). Some expressed skepticism to this strategy later in the session with suggestions for more direct action against them if you get close enough for an interview.

Strategy 3 – change the rules
Media distribution is always being reinvented, and it makes the corpos nervous. More new ideas can make a dent in the landscape. Some interesting ideas I heard: take your favorite magazines to the dentist's office and swap 'em in for Vanity Fair or whatever, pull the cables out of news vans (but maybe only if they're giving coverage that hurts), giving out flyers to disinformed special interest groups (like the minutemen of Arizona). We should all invent our own, and tell our friends to pitch in. It might even be fun.

Posted by drew at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

Session: Telecomm Act - John Arnold

Russel Newman introduces, points out some places where the Telecomm Act may impact, such as access to websites within consolidated corporate internet providers. Already in DC meetings are happening behind closed doors between industry reps and elected officials.

The time is now to make your voices heard, before policies are set. The point of this panel is to give you the info and tools to insert yourself into the debate.

Three panelists: John Arnold was a nationally syndicated radio host before becoming a PhD candidate at Wayne State University. Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation of America. Lauren-Glenn Davitian, CCTV Center for Media Democracy. Helped establish strong community access in Vermont, has advice for how to stand up against the large powers.

John Arnold first. His family owned radio stations in Detroit and decided to branch out in 1970. They had to reconfigure the antenna. He was operations manager, uncle was chief engineer. His uncle decided to put the antenna in the middle of the Mississippi River. He doesn't have to tell us what happened when Spring came.

I read a book in 1999 when he was still doing the talk show. It was writeen by Robert McChesney, didn't know him. Did PoliSci in undergrad, but the book clicked with him. Thought he couldn't be crazy here.

After reading his book it inspired him to go back to school to get his doctorate, to study broadcasters and the public interest. 1987, the fairness doctrine was suspended. Where if you give someone running for office airtime, you have to give it to the opponents, too.

Remember 9/11, it was an election day in his city, Detroit. About 9:15 the networks broke about what was going on in New York City. You've all heard all your lives "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System." Anyone in here, did you hear the EAS test on 9/11? What sense does it make to test it?

The Fairness Doctrine was struck down in 1987, in 1996 the revision to the Telecom Act. The result is we don't have limits on how many radio stations a single company can own. We have companies -- one in particular -- that own more than 1200 stations in america -- there's only 12000. In Detroit 5 companies own all media, aside from newspapers.

The original argument in the first telecomm act was that because spectrum is a scarce resource, it should be regulated in the public interest. Now in 2005, we have lots of information, so the argument is that scarcity isn't an issue. but we still own the airwaves, and scarcity is still an issue.

Cable, internet have subscription cost. Radio and television have virtually no cost over the air. It's up to us to keep it this way.

Posted by paul at 04:04 PM | Comments (0)

A couple quick notes and observations on lunch, first set of sessions, and reporting

Meals are pretty much on your own with this conference, and that's fine -- food is expensive to provide. But this part of downtown, in the words of Drew, is "a corporate desert." Fine if you TGIFriday's and Max & Erma's, not so great if you don't like corporate consolidation of dining.

Drew and I wandered a bit for lunch -- just getting out of the Millenium was a like being caught in a cattle call, just keep moving, don't dauddle. We found a local Italian place called Caleco's -- seems like real St. Louis Italian, decent food, not too filled with conference folk. But then, who should walk in, but John Nichols -- we must have found one of the secret places not in the guide. And I'm 90% sure one of his companions was Patti Smith. I didn't bug her, because I'm sure she was at least as hungry as me and Drew. They didn't stay long.

Howard Feld, who we Urbana folks met at the Community Wireless Summit last August ended up at the adjoining table. Began to feel like a NCMR ghetto.

I don't want this to turn into Media Reform Celebrity Watch, so I'll move on...

I'm in the Media Consolidation session right now, and I really appreciate the perspectives here, because I don't often hear from the labor side of reporting, indpendent newspaper publishers or about the Spanish-language industry.

Everyone makes a lot of the same calls to action and fact-checks that we've been hearing all week, but I'm glad to get some different data that isn't so prevalent even in the Media Reform movement.

This session is well attended, but not packed. Probably 1/2 full, with between 2 and 6 video cameras during the height.

Next door is the News, Information and Corporate Media session with all the big stars, like Donahue, Klein, etc. It's full to capacity and my friend Pauline Bartolone from national Radio Project (and UCIMC alumna) stopped through here saying that they wouldn't let her in, even as a member of the press, to record. Lisa Rudman from the Radio Project is here in this session -- she is very nice and helped me gaffer tape down the minidisc recorder to a chair to create a de facto minidisc zone.

Lisa told me that this week's Making Contact is a Pauline production: Media Justice: Access and Accountability. Pauline is a great producer with incredible empathy and skills -- I will have to get a copy to listen to it (it aired on WEFT during the Tuesday night Media Consolidation Conference festivities).

I'm glad to see that most of the reporting is grassroots and independent here, and that there is so far a good deal of cooperation and comraderie. The folks running the sound are also very helpful and cooperative, making it easier on everyone. Free Press is asking all journalists recording sessions to sign a sheet at each session so that we can all network afterwards to exchange audio.

This is one big thing that Free Press is doing right -- they are putting emphasis on networking and facilitiating connections, and that is one of the big benefits for me to be here in the first place.

Posted by paul at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

Session: Media Consolidation - Federico Subervi, Latinos and Media Project

Federico Subervi, Latinos and Media Project:

Has been studying how Latino/a issues are covered in the news. In the last year less than 1% of broadcast TV covered these issues. I come into this arena of media conglomeration discussion because a few years ago I was asked to write a position paper against Univision.

For some of you Latinos is just a generic statement of a population you may not be familiar with. There are 40 million Latinos in US, which is only 14% of the population. Latinos now outnumber African-Americans. In some communities this is not 14%, it's 20, 30, 40, 50 60%. In some communities where it may only be 40% the percentage of Latino children in the public school system may be as much as 70%, because others are going to private school. This is not just Chicago, LA, New York, Miami and the usual suspects. It's all over Atlanta, South Carolina, the Midwest and elsewhere. Often Latinos are the largest minority groups in an area.

With this comes marketing, advertising and media directed to them, not necessarily by them. Why are these populations so important. For some they may be a nuisance or problem. For many of these populations these are the margins of victory in a close election. We know that in the 2000 election, if Gore had done what Clinton had done, it would have been different. Gore abandoned the South Florida contingent before he should have.

These Latinos are being reached by systematic campaigns by both party. Unfortunately more sophisticated and systematic by the Republican National Committee and trickling down to their local. 75% of Latinos are Spanish speaking, 1/3 of which are primarily Spanish speaking, who can be reached by spanish media. Today there are 19 daily newspaper, five years ago only 6. There are over 550 weekly newspapers in Spanish, many are community owned, increasingly corporate owned.

Spanish-language radio started with home-owned stations. Spanish broadcasts started on the off-hours of English stations, which became successful enough to buy stations. Now they are corporate owned.

Now Telemundo is owned by NBC. Univision, a major company, once owned by hallmark, is corporate owned.

I was more in documenting history of this media, but I got into the corporate element with the Spanish Broadcast System asked me to write a position paper regarding the Univision and Hispanic Broadcasting System merger. My colleagues all agreed it was bad, but the FCC approved it.

When the FCC made its decision, they said that they were not treating Hispanics as a separate group to be considered apart. yet, they didn't take into consideration that for its first 20 years, Univision had been saying "we are a unique market." Univision is accessed only by part of the market, not the whole US market.

The major owner of Univision is the major contributor for the Republican Party in California. The reporters don't take direct orders, but the news management know who they have to be responsive to. They do a better job of covering the Latino community than the networks. But when it comes to what they cover, and how critically, it's a different story.

We need to include the study of the Spanish media -- they do make a difference. We must include Univision, Telemundo and the spanish language radio stations. If we are thinking of democracy it has to include the whole society, which includes the US Spanish-speaking population.

Posted by paul at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)

Session: Media Consolidation - Linda Foley, The Newspaper Guild-CWA

Linda Foley

The Seattle Times is a fine newspaper that covers the community in a very thorough way. This getting replaced by what goes on elsewhere would be a tragedy. It's important that we push for good journalism and newspapers.

Journalism is a profession to explain to others what it personally doesn't understand. If you're going to do that well, you need resources and time, and you have to learn about the people and issues you write about. In the sound bite journalism it doesn't happen.

Why is there this consolidation? It's a way to gain efficiencies and drive up profits. From where I sit at the bargaining table, it means first and foremost job cuts. 2200 fewer newsroom jobs since 3 decades ago. In that same period of time as jobs were being cut, profits have risen more than 207%. You can see how that happened. Profits didn't go up because newspapers expanded, because journalists were cut.

Mark Twain once said a journalist is a reporter out of work.

that's not the only effect that consolidation has had on my members. Investigative reporting has suffered. It used to be the hallmark of american reporting, but now little is done. Why? time and resource. Another problem is that localism has suffered. It's about one thing: location. You have to be local to cover the local news. You can't cover it from afar.

We did a survey of our member along with three other unions that represent journalists. A couple of things were interesting. One thing, 76% had a colleague who had been laid off. 1 in 5 had been laid off themselves. As a result 73% said morale in newsrooms had declined in recent years. Another finding was that 65% said there wasn't enough coverage of average people. Fewer reporters working in a corporate atmosphere results in an elitism that disconnects reporters from the people they're supposed to cover.

There's much less passion in reporters, and thus much less trust from the public.

What do we need to do in order to reverse this trend? Most reporters don't get into it to be rich and famous. Most get into it for the same reason why we're interested in the media. They want to make a difference.

One thing we need to do to reverse the trend is to change the commodification of news. New trends like blogging, indymedia, lpfm, things outside the mainstream media are changing the view of news, and maybe help reverse the trend of commodification.

For these media conglomerates, news is just a tiny part of what they do. When you look at a company like GE, which owns NBC, news barely registers on their profit monitor. that's why I'm so active in this movement.

The other thing we need to do is break down this wall between news professionals in their communities. We need fewer business reporters and more labor reporters, farm reporters. Cover more school board meetings and fewer corporate board meetings. An infusion of diversity - diversity of all kinds: viewpoint, people, coverage, owners.

Finally, we all need to make restoration of credibility a top priority, from the newsroom to the boardroom, or the public won't have any trust is what you do.

Another trend that needs to be reversed is the targeting of journalists. they have become a target from the right of the political spectrum. They are blamed for many ills they just report on. We have to be careful we don't fall into that trap. What is happening in media is not the fault of individual journalists. What's wrong is the systematic corporate disillusion of what we know is credible reporting and journalism.

Journalists are not just being targeted politically and verbally, but for real, in places like Iraq. There's not enough outrage towards the blatant kiling of journalists in Iraq. Not just from the US, but other countries, especially Arab countries, targeting and blowing up their studios with impunity. It takes the heat off the media conglomerates who are the heart of the problem.

I want to work with you, my members want to work with you to change this. We need alternatives and we need your help to change from within. Keep in mind the other part of the first amendment also talks about the freedom of association. Not just in media, but all across america the ability of workers to form free trade unions is in peril like it's never been before. There has never been a democracy in this world that hasn't had a free press and a free trade union movement.

Posted by paul at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

Session: Media Consolidation - Gene Kimmelman, Consumers Union; Frank Blethen, The Seattle Times

Gene Kimmelman:

Get almost all new reporting and news from newspapers, not corporate radio or television. That's important. We are on the brink of disaster if there is any further relaxation of those rules.

Heard of the DTV transition? Broadcasters are supposed to give back their old analog spectrum and use digital spectrum? And one thing that's not talked about is with this new spectrum, each station, 6 Mhz, can broadcast the equivalent of 6 stations. If we were worried about an ABC affiliate owning 2 or 3 stations, every broadcaster in this transition could have the equivlanent of six, or twelve with 2 licenses. If they own the newspaper in your town, then that's more.

If there's only a small news staff for one station, how much news is going to be on the other 5 channels. this is one of the biggest media ownership issues and it hasn't been discussed at all.

Turn it over Frank Blethen, fourth generation of a family owned newspaper, 109 years old. Dedicated to journalism, inclusion, diversity, public service, and not maximizing profits. I am probably the only newspaper owner working against newspapers being able to own more. Why am I the only one? Because most publishers are just bank managers whose only job is to soak the community for as much money as possible and not make any waves.

Luckily I have an enlightened family that believes this is important.

I believe American democracy is at risk. I believe there is hope, but only if the public continues to assert itself and motivates Congress to action.

As this media field evolves, the really critically question is: where will journalism come from? Quality independent journalism?

When he started his career 30 years ago, there were 700 daily newspapers in the US, almost all tightly connected to the communities and regions they served. The publishers were public, known and accountable. It wasn't all the best, but you could hold them accountable.

Today fewer than 20% of the daily newspapers are locally owned -- not chains or corporate-owned. The big chains don't care about local communities, don't care about democracy. this 30 year trend you can directly trace to bad public policy.

The big battle is with the FCC -- it's not typically connected, but it is. What the big owners want to wipe out is the cross-ownership band. Their strategy now that they've been beaten at taking it all at once is to go to the telecomm act rewrite and get rid of the cross-ownership ban. that would be a disaster for democracy.

One of the things that is important to remember: there is not an enemy out there in terms of the American public. Republicans aren't our enemy here, they are citizens like we are. The work he does in DC is primarily targeted at Republicans in Congress, because this is often thought of as a Democratic issue. I can't tell you enough that this has to be inclusive, and a nonpartisan issue. the biggest outreach we need is to Republicans.

The people we've worked with are very responsive once their educated on the issue. I think everyone is this room should be in constant communication with your own congressional delegation, especially Republicans who need more education on this issue.

If your representatives are on commerce commitees, they need to hear from you.

Don't overlook the state house, and don't over look your local mayors. These local folks understand that if they loose local media outlets, everyone suffers, they may loose their voice.

I am the voice of localism here. We get in a lot of these discussions when we talk about the networks, but it starts with the local. When you look at the loss of local newspaper and disappearance of local TV and radio news, we see people less connected with their community, civic engagement. People under 35 say "why should I get active, I don't see myself in this community?" Localism is where democracy starts.

Gene asks: what would happen if a TV owner bought the Seattle Times?

The staff would be cut maybe 45%, the circulation would be cut back. We have a strong committment to education and inclusion, and make sure there's lots of content dedicated to it. It's expensive to do, and it would be gone, looking like any Gannett paper, with canned content. There would be one monolithic voice in the community. No longer any diversity.

The argument these guys make in Congress is that if they could own a TV and newspaper they could save money, with just one crew covering city hall. They view having multiple takes as redundant and wasteful. then they stop covering it altogether.

Posted by paul at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

WiFi woes

My live-blogging isn't as live as I would like. The network in the room I was in for the last panel kept coming in and out and I couldn't sustain a connection long enough to update. Ah well - things seem much better here in the lobby.

Posted by andrew at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

Newshare coverage

Bill Densmore at Newshare is covering the conference too.

Posted by andrew at 02:07 PM | Comments (0)

Panels - history of media activism victories

Jeff Cohen is chairing. He believes media activism falls into three areas: that which challenges bias and exclusion; that which builds non-corporate media; that which pushes for greater diversity in media. FAIR concentrates on the first but does all three. The panel spans these three groups.

Cohen is listing a number of successful projects FAIR has had over the years. Internet makes their work easier - can mobilize people quicker. Is also namechecking various members of the audience. Their headline of Chomsky's appearance on PBS Newshour: "Chomsky appears on Newshour. Western Civilization survives."

"The bigger our movement for media and democracy gets the more likely that the journalists on the inside will get reacquainted with their back-bones." When he was a producer, when they had an anti-war guest had to have 2 pro-war guests. When suggested Michael Moore as guests, told had to have 3 pro-war guests to provide balance.

First panellist: DeeDee Halleck. Slide show - based on her personal files. Movement didn't start with Free Press - as McChesney's own work shows. Struggle for public TV 1976-1988. The Television lab at thirteen. New Jersy Coalition for Fair broadcasting. Association of Independent Film and Video Makers. There's lots of other people and pictures. I won't go through it all, because I can't keep up with all the names, and because the slide-show is due to go online at some point. The campaign got quite a bit of coverage over their campaign, including in TV Guide! Interesting to see the TV Guide piece mention the United Church of Christ, AFL-CIO and others co-operating to push for media reform - plus ça change....

Work against stereotypes of race etc. Paper Tiger - particularly successful in bringing meia activism to the streets. Some nice pictures from NAB in SF in 2000. Mentions activists at NAB locking themselves together in middle of exhibition hall. Security can't unlock/remove them, so put barrier around them, but don't gag them, so the activists effectively become a radio show in the middle of the room, hidden behind barriers.

1978. OUR - organization for Unique Radio - people pushing for more classical music on radio. Then stuff from Stephen Dubifer, Prometheus etc.

Various internet/Indymedia images.

International struggle - declaration in support of McBride Commission. CRIS - Campaign for Rights in the Information Society, WSIS - beautiful image of marginalised role of civil society at WSIS. AMARC's role in activism at WSIS.

Mark Lloyd - works with Center for American Progress. Has been a TV producer etc. Works on media diversity. Asks those under 30 to raise their hands (first time I've been the situation of not getting to raise my hand in that situation). Many people raise hands. Lots of the rest clap [enter rant about romanticization of youth - which sounded less bitter before I turned 30!]. He tells these people "this is your movement."

Talks about how troubling things are at the moment. FCC don't just not get it, they are an active opposition. We don't have a single house of Congress on our side. The courts are not on our side. This is a dark, dark time. We do not have political power in office - our power is on the streets. We can't even, despite our votes, get a president elected. And oddly enough the darkest times seem to make the greatest opportunities for reform. [He's sounding quite like Roberta Baskin here] Invokes civil rights movement. Mentions Everett Parker, of whom we saw a photo during Dee Dee's slide show. Talks of his role in showing the people had a right to challenge FCC decisions. Prometheus case depended on this - had standing before the court, as a result of Parker's case. So we have had victories of which we are not even aware. Talks of the good points of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Universal service funds, etc. Section 706 - FCC must report every two years on access to technologies. These various things show that somebody was there arguing for these things. Obviously not business, so there were activists who created this work.

Andy Schwartzman, Media Access Project. Compressing remarks, because many of his prepared thoughts have already been made. Disagreed with Mark's pessimism. This session is turning into an 'old farts' session. Talking of Everett Parker, 92 year old activist, who he was in touch with last week (of United Church of Christ?) who is still angry and active. "How to talk back to your television set" is still an important document that stands up well to time. "Why I don't work for the telephone company, or for whom does Bell toil" - available in Federal Registry.

Lesson to take away - if these experienced activists can pass their experience to the new generations who have access to new technologies that make organizing easier, then ....

Story: FCC supposed to make decisions based on evidence on table before them. Not apolitical, but needs to be evidence that withstands judicial review. Michael Powell tried to ram through regulations. Meets bi-partisan coalition who file postcards, hold own hearings, go to court, gain stay,.....

The court adopted a precedent from another circuit of the court of appeals. Typically when deciding on a stay you weigh liklihood of success, harms, public good etc. Court said sometimes you can't measure the harms, or the liklihood of success. Doesn't matter, according to court. Court asks FCC "You got a million postcards, does that matter?" FCC says, the postcards didn't provide economic evidence etc.

Court says - if that many people care, think there's a problem, believe enough to seek redress from government, then there's a perception of harm. Stay was granted on the basis that so many people believed there was a problem. People power counts. It's not easy, these are difficult times, but there's a lesson to be taken from this.

Q & A:
Q. Salient points from activist history?
A. There's a new book: K Mills: "Changing channels: How a lawsuit involving a small station changed the history of the South" U of Michigan Press. Important point is to realise how to translate core values (justice, social inclusion, etc.) to deal with changing technologies.
Q. Where to now?
A. Take back the public stations: we paid for them. Legislation requires open board and committee meetings. Take 60 people there, they will change their policies, take 3 people and they will get nervous. Jeff Cohen wants insulated funding for outlets (I take it he's referring to TV license fee style funding). He's involved with Independent World Television which is having a screening tonight at 9.
Q. (Aimed at Mark Lloyd): What is CAP, relationship to Democratic Pa