Be The Media

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)

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)

May 13, 2005

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)

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)

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 Party.
A. Independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank funded by some very wealthy (and some not so wealthy) individuals. Growing fast in its (2?) years. No formal ties with Democratic party. Would like to push Democratic party further to left. Not pushing to get Democrats elected, working to get progressive, left ideas out there.

Mark Lloyd: have to support alternative media, but they're not enough. Alt media show how bad the other media are, but we need to change the other media, not just rely on weblogs, FSTV, etc.
Q. What was the name of the primer by Nick Johnson?
A. How to Talk back to your TV - it and all other materials by Johnson are available on his website.
Q. Is there a danger of right-wing taking over the satellite setasides, LPFM etc. opportunities that we work to open up.
A. If they right-wing are better organised and take over those outlets - shame on us for not pushing for our fair share.

Q: Other books
A: Bagdikian and McChesney are both cited, especially Telecommunications Mass Media and Democracy. Dee Dee mentions her book, which deals in part with battles over independent media in the 1970s. Paul Starr's Creation of the Media.
Q. Can the genie be put back in the bottle?
A. Some networks are selling properties etc., showing we were right in claiming they were getting too large.

[This last point doesn't really make sense to me - it is possible that large networks would be a coherent response for corporations but also be bad for society. Similarly, the collapse of the networks (if that were to occur) due to their failure to maximise ROI would not validate our arguments against the networks]

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

Opening Plenary: Amy Goodman, Democracy Now

35 years ago the transmitter for Pacifica station KPFT in Houston, TX, was blown up by the Klu Klux Klan. The Klan understood how dangerous the station would be. They took the station off the air for a few weeks, but it drew attention to the station and the network. A few months later the Klan did it again, and the station stayed off the air for three months. but just a few later the 5th pacifica station went on the air.

Pacifica was started by Lew Hill with KPFA in Berkeley, follwed by KPFK, WBAI, KPFT, WPFW.

Paul Robeson was whitelisted from nearly every space in the US, yet he knew he could be heard on Pacifica, breaking the sound barrier.

James Baldwin debating Malcolm X on Pacifica. The Pacifica archives are part of our history, and our future.

Dred Scott decision was made here in St. Louis, but he launched a movement, the Civil War ensued, ultimately Africans were freed and he was one of those who freed them. We have to recognize these movements. We need a media that recognizes mechanisms for change, not celebrities.

On mother's day, we think about the mothers of movements. Rosa Parks, didn't do it alone, didn't do it just because she was tired and wanted to sit down. She was an organizer, she worked with the NAACP. She understood the power of nonviolent civil disobedience, and chose her moment, and launched a movement.

It is critical that we have the media broadcast the voices at the target end of US foreign and domestic policy. We know what the media did at the invasion of Iraq, beat the drums for war day after day. We're not just talking FOX -- CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS. FAIR did that study just before the invasion looking at the major newscasts -- of 390 interviews only 3 featured anti-war voices. It didn't represent mainstream america when most of the country was against war at that time.

The voices that are excluded are not a silent majority, but a silenced majority. We've been on an unembed the media tour for the last month. More powerful than any bomb the Pentagon has deployed the US media and we have to take it back. The media are the most powerful institutions on earth. They're the way we learn about each other, how we learn about the rest of the world, and how they learn about us. It cannot be through a corporate lens. That is dangerous.

To be here in the city of Pulitzer she thought it would be relevant to bring one campaign started here. Embedding did not start now. It has been a disaster for the media. We have reporters embedded with troops. What about Iraqi communities? If we saw the images of war, we need reality TV when it comes to war. If we saw for just one week babies dead on the ground, women with their legs cut off from cluster bombs, soldiers coming home by the thousands in flag-draped coffins that Pres. Bush ordered not be filmed by executive order. Amy asked Aaaron Brown, "Where are the pictures." He said it's a matter of taste. Amy says, war is tasteless.

This is a movement for them.

The great untold story is the level of resistance from the top brass down to individual soldiers.

Going back to WWII, we can look at the precedence. Look at two reporters who were there when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One reporter defied MacArthur's order and travelled to Hiroshima and saw the destruction -- said there was bomb sickness and plague. He typed: I write this as a warning to the world. The Army and Gov't called reporters to counter radiation sickness and "Japanese propaganda." A NY Times reporter was working for the gov't and yet won a pulitzer for his reporting. She has called for the Times to be stripped of that pulitzer.

We are supposed to be the check and balance on government. As we sit here the democratically elected president of Haiti lies sick near death in jail. We should be hearing this story daily, how the country suffered a coup in it's bicentennial year, the oldest black republic.

It was independent media that brought out the story of Aristide's ouster last year. Pacifica, lpfm, public access TV -- we need to celebrate it all, powerful force.

Just down the road in Champaign-urbana one of the most powerful indy media centers, they just bought the Post Office.

Recently DN had the opportunity to cover the return of Aristide to this hemisphere. Corp. networks, are they there to cover this historic mission? DN went to chronicle.

AP took our reports. CNN called us on the tarmac, the lifestyle host thought this was a travel report. She told them of the coup, the CNN host said "you're kidding?" Amy calls this trickle-up journalism.

There is no question that what we can do together is a force more powerful than anything the network have presented at this point. If it involves taking on the networks and challenging their taking our properties of the public airwaves.

At 4:30 they will be outside the hotel to leaflet commuters to let them know that KDHX and other community stations. This hasn't reached the mainstream radar screen, but that may be a good thing.

We have a decision to make, What do we want the media to represent?

Democracy Now.

Again, more rousing applause, standing ovation.

Bob thanks everyone.

Posted by paul at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)

Opening Plenary: Malkia Cyril, Youth Media Council

Bob says our power is putting bottom up pressure on those in power. The next speaker is an example of such a person.

Malkie Cyril: I mean, are we winning? Would I be remiss if I ask in true activist tradition, when I say media, you say justice? Media! Justice!

She's prvileged to be here with great minds and people like you. These organizations teach me every day that we are winning, we can win. There continue to be questions about who we are. She hopes to answer some of these questions today.'

George Clinton said, whoever controls the news controls our destiny. The question for some of us is how we restore the historical context of our media. The answer lies in dispelling myths about the free press, using reform towards justice and structural change.

She was born in New York into the language of welfare mothers, inhaled in the media everyday. This distorted media bias told a story about her character, and about the war on drugs that led to the incarceration and deaths of many she loved. It is a fight for our lives. We face today a Bush-led war on the world. Our media system represents a crisis of democracy for the vast majority of the population. Civil rights will not be rolled back without a fight.

What is a free press and how is it guaranteed? We've heard that Jefferson and Madison saw the press as a guard against power. As the founding fathers were writing their tomes on a free press they were building a slave owning capitalist economy. Our current media system maintains its colonialist beginnings. We can dispel three myths: 1. The media used to be better and more fair. This is false, there has never been a free press for minorities women and youth. 2. Communication rights are inherently individual civil rights guaranteed by citizenship. What about undocumented immigrants, those who are young or incarcerated whose civil rights are infringed? When civil rights are infringed, there is no free press. 3. sorry, missed that one -- can't type fast enough.

In a free market society organized by class race and gender, no press can be truly free. If we want change then the media reform movement must center class, race and gender justice.

We want accountability and alternatives.

Wow, she is on fire and raising hell, but I cannot keep up.

Marginalized communities care about media reform because our lives hang in the balance. Our communities remain producers and consumers in a media system we cannot control. We must not be powerless. The US has used the media system to export racism and war, the problem of the US media is a problem for the entire world.

Victory is imminent, it is everwhere. Marginalized communities are here as stakeowners and organizers.

Rousing applause and standing ovations around the room.

Posted by paul at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)

Opening Panel: Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation of America

Amy Goodman gets all the mics back up to the podium.

Mark Cooper says you can tell that he's supposed to do the analysis part, he hopes it won't be too much of a downer. He's going to focus on 4 simple reasons why the momentum of the media reform movement will reclaim the first amendment: law, history, technology economics. Law: there are four court cases: Prometheus rolled back media ownership loosening, Brand X, Broadcast Flag case just last week, Grokster case where court refused to shut down file sharing.

Law is in our history, free speech and fair use are ingrained in our DNA. The roads that Paul Revere traveled to say the British were coming were free to all under British Common Law. The new wireless provides the road for the blogs and websites of today. The airwaves belong to the public. Try as they might, they can't get rid of that.

At the end of the 19th century when the railroads and corps tried to shut down the means of communication, the people rose up, especially here in the Midwest.

What is really happening is the dramatic democratization of the means of communication in our society. These technologies have transformed consumers into producers. We are putting the mass in mass media for the first time in history. It is a revolution, and it won't be turned back.

Wireless and the community internet movement is a great example. It's a demonstration that the airwaves belong to the people and that it is a commons, where people are free to use it without restriction or license.

Whenever powerful interests loose their technological and economic edge, they turn to force. Exampled in thousands of lawsuits against filesharers without due process, how telcos are trying to shut down community wireless.

The big companies lost in court due to history and law. Now they will go to congress. That is our legislative agenda.

Why is he confident that we will succeed? You won't let them do that to us. In 1996 it was cable vs. broadcast, that is not the case today. Today the case is free speech and fair use. We will not let them do that.

There was no conference like this in 1995 when they were divvying up our media landscape. No bloggers, no meetups, no sense of outrage about the manipulation of the media and the masses. The Telecomm Act of 2006 will not be written behind closed doors. JFK said it way: the hottest places in hell will be reserved for those who remain neutral in the time of crisis. This is a time of moral crisis, brought on by the media's failure to provide their responsibility to this society.

This is a tough revolution and we will win. Using the tools of expression for involvement and participation to drive american democracy to a higher level.

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

Opening Plenary: Janine Jackson from FAIR

Bob introduces the panel -- first up is Janine Jackson from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Bob will consider this conference a success if you and two right-wing friends each get a subscription to FAIR's EXTRA magazine.

Janine Jackson takes over -- prefers to speak seated at the table, rather than podium. Amy Goodman makes sure all the microphones make it to Janine -- I'm certain at least one of those is for Democracy Now.

Freedom of the Press belongs to the man who owns one. She keeps thinking of another quote: the press is the weak slat underneath the floor of democracy.

The idea that information is public commodity is an old idea. A lot has changed, even since FAIR was founded in 1986. Back then in 86 a lot of smart people thought of media as an ancillary issue. There was a sense that better media might flow from other political change. We know differently.

Years ago if someone complained about what they heard on the media, they were told to turn it off. You don't hear it so much anymore, it's like telling someone 'don't breathe' if you complain about polluted air.

Media is a political issue, a keystone issue that critically affects other issues. To make change people need to see what's wrong and know what to do about it. We know this and it's sea change moment that we do.

Now we've got people talking about media reform -- we won that part. As we go forward we need to keep asking ourselves, media reform for what? Do we want to break up dominant media corporations because it sounds better to have smaller companies? It's not an academic exercise. Bad media hurts real people. Better media would help real people. It means taking power from people who have it now. Media Reform is dangerous if done right.

She wants better media because 45 million Americans don't have health insurance. She wants democratic media because public TV just said that a family with lesbian mothers is unfit to be acknowledged. If we had democratic media then the tens of thousands who died in Iraq might be alive today.

Asking ourselves media reform for what? Helps us keep focused on the changes we want.

You're going to hear this weekend about many ways to get involved. None is better than the others -- the point is what engages you? We're trying to move a big rock, there are a lot of hand-holds on that rock and we need lots of help.

Posted by paul at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

Welcome Session - Friday 11 AM

Oh, yes! There is wireless here in the Ballroom. Thanks Free Press for making live blogging possible!

John Nichols is here to rabble rouse, announcing that there are people here from all 50 states and DC. Invokes Joseph Pulitzer, who started the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, saying he would be horrified about the current state of media.

The place is filling up, they have two projector/jumbotrons so those of us in the back can see.

Points out the petition against police repression and violence here in St. Louis and asks people to sign on. Josh told me last night that Free Press as an organization decided not to sign on, saying that it isn't their issue. So I guess this is Nichols' way of making good on it.

Person from KDHK on stage now. They do radio, public access TV and community access TV. They put on the party last night.

Josh Silver, head of Free Press, is up next. He says there are 8 countries here in addition to the 50 states. Says it's an unprecedented network for media reform, and we're actually winning. That's the great untold story, the mainstream media doesn't report it. We blocked the FCC's effort to let big media get even better, forced Sinclair to stop airing electioneering instead of news, and got the FCC to investigate payola pundits. Got Congress to required disclosure of video news releases.

Community internet -- cable and phone companies are trying to make it illegal. Legislation to do this is stopped in Florida, Illinois and Indiana. Cable franchise renewals, there have been great fights on the ground in Arizona, where they beat back hostile legislation that would have hindered cable diversity.

There's a lot of victories that he's leaving out, he says. One of the plenaries is "fight of lives." this is not hyperbole. People said the media reform movement could never come together, but we've proven the sketpics wrong.

He wants to note that we need to support some of the other structural issues, cannot forget about campaign finance reform, election reform. Victories of the past years have happened within one of the most hostile political environments.

Conference organizer Yolanda Hibbensfield (sorry for slaughtering the spelling) is up next. Thanks us for being here, extends thanks to other helpers. Outreach committee (including bethemediablogger Josh) brought in over 175 participants on scholarship.

The theme is building momentum, key policy battles in the coming years, including a rewrite of the Telecomm Act. It's imperative to have regular people who know about these policies and get their voices heard.

Points out conference highlights, panels, videos showing, media democracy showcase open this evening and all day tomorrow featuring 70 media activist organizations. Saturday at 4 PM there is a round of caucuses for constituency groups to gather -- something that was left out of the last conference. There is an opportunity to put together caucuses and meetings. Reception this evening, and on Sunday morning a round of action clinics. Key piece of feedback from last conference was that people were inspired but didn't know what to do, and they're hoping the clinics will help.

Bill Moyers will join on Sunday morning, a new addition to the bill.

Nichols is back, tells us Patti Smith is here at 4 to talk about Rock N Roll and why you don't hear it on the radio anymore.

Nichols says he and McChesney stand on the shoulders of giants, like Don Hazen from Alternet, Danny Schechter the News Dissector. He introduces Bob McChesney.

Bob tries to start with a Dylan quote, wishes everyone could stand in his shoes to see the room full of people. It's an historic moment in this country's history. Where it's going to go, we don't know. In media we have a crisis. The chinese character for crisis is a combination of danger and opportunity.

Public broadcasting is in danger, we have an explicit attempt to violate the law by the person in charge of that body to force political influence. This is causing more outrage than media ownership, and it gives us an opportunity to educate and do outreach to draw people into our movement. A moment of danger and spectacular opportunity.

Five years ago if you asked what the state of the media reform movement was, there would be no answer, there wasn't one. People regarded media like the Rockies, it's there, but you can't do anything about it -- it's in your way, but your powerless. The media system is a corrupt system designed behind closed doors -- it's not designed by the founding fathers. Policies made in my name must be made with my consent. We saw millions rise up to oppose consolidation in 2003 -- this movement has grown so dynamically.

We had to close off attendance to this conference and could have had twice as many if we had the room. You could probably hock your admission for a trip to Europe. Who would have thought that five years ago?

The great new is that organizing around this issue is not hard. It's like putting a seed in 10 foot deep Illinois top soil. If we talk about it, we win. That's why the opposition is dedicated to keeping it behind closed doors in Washington. Not in the streets of St. Louis.

The next conference will probably be in 18 months. You know Moore's Law that says the power of microprocessors doubles every 18 months. We have our own Moore's Law -- this movement doubles every 18 months.

Posted by paul at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)