Be The Media

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)

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)

May 14, 2005

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)

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)

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

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)