The 2007 Media Reform conference organized by Free
Press met in Memphis, Tennessee this year. After holding
conferences in Madison and St. Louis, this year’s organizers
are to be congratulated for taking the event to the
South, where many stories go untold. Public i journalists
Marcia Zumbahlen and Brian Dolinar attended the conference,
along with several other independent media
activists from Urbana-Champaign. The Media Reform
conference was a great coming together of media policy
analysts and media makers.
Amy Goodman spoke of how appropriate it was that
the conference was held in Memphis the weekend of
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. When King came to
Memphis, he was supporting a strike organized by 1300
black sanitation workers who were demanding a union.
King’s legacy is a reminder that the struggle must continue.
Outside the Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated,
a billboard reads, “Become an activist today. Help
wage peace.”
The atmosphere of racial hostility in Memphis is still
palpable. When we drove to the conference, we passed
the courthouse where there was a long line of people
outside entering for their court cases. As we left the
conference that day, we went by the jail where another
line of people was waiting to see their loved ones during
visiting hours. Both lines were overwhelmingly
African American.
Inside the conference, the community was diverse in
age, in media focus, and in background. Panelists included
professional journalists who had made careers in the
mainstream media, became disillusioned, and forged
their own paths. They were working to develop cable TV
programs like Air America and Real TV to compete with
the major cable TV news programs.
Josh Silver, founder of Free Press, explained the
forces that influenced him to fight for independent
media. He cited Michael Powell’s attempts to allow great
media consolidation and the response of three million
people in 2003 who sent a message to the FCC that
they did not want such corporate control. He also cited
the figures that 60 percent of the U.S. public gets their
news from mainstream TV sources. This had disastrous
consequences after 911 and the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq.
Young activists spoke about their fights for public
access cable stations. These stations in major cities like
New York and Chicago have been a lifeline for the LGBT
community, for people of color, and for the youth. While
much local news coverage is being downsized, local TV
gives communities the chance to decide their own issues
and give voice to those shut out of the corporate media.
Activists from Prometheus Radio, who came to
Urbana-Champaign to help start WRFU, were well represented.
Prometheus held a table that was well attended
and encouraged many others to form radio stations in
their own towns. Pete Tridish gave a talk about the mammoth
efforts of Prometheus radio. He told the story of
founding a pirate radio station in Philadelphia and being
shut down by the FCC. The radio pirates stood in front
of Ben Franklin’s printing press and vowed to fight the
FCC’s dictatorship over the public airwaves. Three years
ago, the FCC passed legislation to disallow low power
radio in urban markets. The challenge for Prometheus is
to roll back that legislation and open up low power radio
in major cities across the United States.
Panelists who addressed the topic of hip hop activism
leveled an important criticism of independent media and
the conference organizers. Rosa Clemente, a Puerto Rican
activist, noted that in the talk by Bill Moyers, a keynote
speaker for the conference, there was no analysis of race.
Rosa pointed out how questions of race were relegated to
a few select panels. She also said that an entire panel on
the media coverage of hurricane Katrina was cancelled.
On the flip side, audience members in the “Women in
Media” presentation questioned how to define diversity
in media. “I’m tired of diversity being race and gender,”
one woman said, ” I look like plain vanilla but I am a 54-
year-old disabled Appalachian lesbian pagan.” Another
asked, “Where are the ‘old women?’” A third suggested
that, “It is the queer women who are diminishing crosscultural
divides.”
Perhaps the moderator’s response synthesized these
two sides: “Everybody should be able to speak power to
the backgrounds they represent”.
If the media showed Black Folk how they really are, in
an honest, raw depiction, this civil rights movement
would take care of itself—sentiment of Dr. Martin Luther
King’s autobiography.
Independent media is a way to speak that power. The
Texas Media Empowerment Project encouraged conference
attendees to let the people (in their case, women)
tell the truth of how they live rather than turning their
stories into a sound bite. Change rarely comes from
sweeping the hard parts of reality under the rug. Vigilance
is the only thing that is going to stop anything you
want to stop.
The “Diversity in Media Content & Representation”
panel reminded us that even the littlest things have an
impact (e.g., referring to a Mexican immigrant as a
“legal” or an “illegal” shifts attention away from the person’s
complex humanness). Creating an avenue by
which immigrants can tell their own stories will help
others hear what’s missing and strategize ways to bring it
forward.
But strategizing requires unity, a prized commodity in
a world of techies heading in different directions, on their
own timelines. Alas, a conference session called “Bubbling
Up” offered strategies for transforming said techies
into activists with a cause. If you give people a topic they
want, they will self-organize a social network from the
bottom up, a network that can later feed into a larger
activist network.
How can you be sure that the topics you give are the
topics people want? Let them self-publish. Anybody
with a good cell phone with video is ready to catch live
unfiltered footage wherever they go (e.g., youth talking
about police intervention in their schools, community
folk talking about why their neighborhood school
needs more money, etc.). In just a few clicks, your video
can be uploaded to a video blog (e.g., ucimc.org,
Blip.tv, MySpace, YouTube, DailyKos, Facebook, etc.) or
a podcast on Itunes and PodPress Professional (where
you can even get paid to be a blogger) or converted into
a video game for social change (see Games for Change).
These spaces allow your viewers to ask questions and
post responses (even with their own videos). If only a
few respond, don’t worry. According to one of the panelists,
“For every 9 that comment there are 90,000 that
read” your site. Follow up on these responses to engage
people in dialogue and post responses to similar sites
(asking for feedback on your site is an easy way to link
back to your own blog), then PRESTO, you have a
social network.
How do you convert passive users into active users?
Consider helping this virtual social group work a virtual
phone bank or draw in new people who usually aren’t
able to participate (e.g., people who are disabled, isolated,
housebound). You can also convert people from
watchers to creators by telling them how to send a cell
phone video and labeling them as “citizen journalists.”
Next thing you know they have called all their families
and friends to “see them online” and you have a new
branch of observers. You may even find some funding for
your site.
Having trouble getting people to show up at real-time
events? Ask a few people to post why they are going to
show up for your event. Cross promote throughout the
internet (e.g., MeetUp.com, Yahoo lists, Google blog,
AOL) using tag words that help people find your site.
When it looks like people are going then others won’t
want to miss out.
People are hungry for meaningful social networking
around shared core beliefs, and they’ll soon realize how
inseparable these beliefs are from the political work
that’s happening. They will want to meet in a real place
and plan a meeting or a convention that provides a positive
outlet for social action. There is no demarcation
between social actions and desired outcomes. Spending
personal time together forms bonds between members
and communities.
With that, we ended our conference by dining with
other IMC folk around the country. We all agreed that the
Media Reform conference was just a glimpse at how powerful
independent media can be if we work together. It is
our hope that UC-IMC can host a regional retreat this
summer to strengthen this unity. After all, that’s what
Independent Media is all about: giving the People the
power to make their own media and letting the people,
not a network boss, decide what to watch, regardless of
what’s on TV at 8 p.m. on Thursday.
So hop onto ucimc.org today and upload your story.
Get Connected
Search Public i
Public i
Get Connected
Archives
- December 2024
- October 2024
- July 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- February 2024
- November 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- February 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- September 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- November 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- September 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- September 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- January 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- July 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- November 2008
- October 2008
- August 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- June 2005
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- September 2003
- August 2003
- June 2003
- May 2003
- November 2002
- October 2002
- April 2002
- March 2002
- February 2002
- December 2001
- November 2001
- October 2001
- September 2001
- August 2001
- July 2001