National Conference for Media Reform #3

Memphis, Tenn.
8:43 a.m., 1/14/07

WNC is well represented this weekend, with at least 17 participants from multiple media outlets and media activist groups taking part in the conference. These include:

Anna Belle Peevey, AGR News/URTV anchor (and former Xpress intern)
Wally Bowen, executive director of the Mountain Area Information Network and WPVM.
Roger Derrough and Robin Smith, board members of MAIN
Jason Holland, station manager WPVM-LP 103.5FM
Amanda Vickers, host of River of Sound on WPVM
Cecil Bothwell, host of Blows Against the Empire on WPVM, Xpress staff writer and publisher of Brave Ulysses Books.
Tom Coulson and Barbara Coulson, of Common Cause
Janice Pope and Joan McGregor of Appalachian State University
Lee Hodges, of Untie-Unite in Highlands
David Ireland of the NC Green Party

Asheville’s Mountain Area Information Network has been a major buzz all weekend. Media activists from all over the country are talking about it as a model or as a partner. What MAIN has achieved, apparently uniquely in the media education and reform movement, is the creation of an income stream through its ISP. Other efforts seem to depend on grants, donations and private funding for their existence. (See Bowen’s comments below for more on this issue.)

With 85 concurrent workshops to pick from over the course of the weekend, it’s been hard to choose and my blogging has been, necessarily, pretty selective. This morning, I’m headed to:
Envisioning the Future of Independent Media.

9 a.m.
Moderator Linda Jue, Associate Director of the Independent Press Association until it folded two weeks ago, touched on the high points of the indy media discussions over the course of the conference. The presenters for this session have each participated in the movement for a minimum of 10 years.

Presenters include Wally Bowen, Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy, Kathy Spillar, editor of Ms Magazine and executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, Roberto Lovato of New America Media.

Chester suggested that the media reform movement needs to make a strategic commercial intervention into the current battle for broadband. “The vision the ad industry and the commercial media coroporations have is to control every aspect of the emerging mobile media system.”

“These companies aren’t just working on media, they are investing in brain research. Studies already show that teens and tweens see the electronic online world and their personal worlds as seamless.”

Bowen explained MAIN and that one of its most important functions is to direct the money that internet users spend every month back into the media reform movement. He also spoke about the urgent necessity of reclaiming low frequency bandwidth for communities.

“There’s no reason why every community TV or radio station in the country shouldn’t host its own ISP, to reclaim those monthly dollars now going to the corporations for the community.”

He also stressed the utility of cooperation and financial collaboration between activist organizations. He explained that MAIN now provides nationwide dial-up service and Web hosting through IndyLink and are in negotiations to provide nationwide DSL.

9:40 a.m.
Spillar explained that Ms considers feminist ownership of media outlets to be urgent and speculated that if the feminist movement started today it might be impossible to get the information out. “In the early days the ownership of major media reported on feminism to ridicule it, and made the mistake of exposing women across the country to the issues.” Today, she said, 68 percent of college age women self-identify as feminists.

“We are using Ms magazine and msmagazine.com and its blogs to raise issues to national prominence and break into corporate media.” As an example, she explained that Ms raised the issue of sweatshop employment in the Mariannas Islands and as a result, the minimum wage law passed last week included extending the minimum wage to U.S. protectorates.

9:50 a.m.
Lovato said “Four of the five largest cities in the South are now majority minority cities. If you look at the world, you can’t escape the fact that black and brown people are the majority.”

In explaining the importance of media reform he noted, “I’ve never seen the United States look as much like El Salvador as it does today. A military dictatorship. Given the Savadorization of America, we need a more radical response. We need to ramp up the militancy.”

“Something we don’t talk about enough is that media is not a marginal issue, it is global. People in South America have racial biases against people of African descent, in part, because of the export of U.S. media.”

“In Oaxaca the people are taking over the radio and TV stations. You don’t see that on U.S. media, but I think it would be a good idea if people started taking over stations in this country.”

10:03 a.m.
Jue talked about the failure of the IPA and the issues that brought it down. She explained the efforts of her organization to provide funding for indy publications to expand their readership, to convert to eco-friendly paper and other matters that helped them “walk their talk.” They sent an indy reporter to Iraq to cover Halliburton’s overcharges, and another to the border to cover the vigilante movement.

The key failure, Jue said, was their acquisition of a distribution network for small press publications without adequate capitalization. Payment in the magazine distribution chain is extremely slow, she said, and they didn’t have the resources to survive.

A wide-ranging Q&A session followed. Some high points:
,AecSpillar reported on a recent study that showed that the average number of readers for all blogs is,Aeiare you ready for this?,Aeione.
,AecGetting Web traffic is key. Bowen noted that one of the biggest allies of MAIN has been the Chamber of Commerce and that a conservative congressional rep got federal money for a fiberoptic network. “Think outside the box about who your allies might be.”
,Aec”Surveillance techniques in this media age don’t involve Big Brother, they involve nanodaughters and microcousins … It’s too radical a moment to be negotiating,” said Lovato.
,AecChester stressed that “We can’t count on government to change. We need to be practical and find the funding to create our platform.”
,AecLovato suggested that “If one radio station were taken down, it would scare the major media to death and people in other parts of the country would do the same.”
,AecBowen said, “I see Amy Goodman’s show as the model and the core for a new distribution model.”

10:56
In a few minutes Jane Fonda and Van Jones will host the Closing Plenary. The halls of the Cannon Convention Center are abuzz with ideas and plans. Overheard conversations range from ideas for new radio and Web sources to discussion of books and articles and policy debates. I have attended numerous national media conventions and have never seen the level of excitement and energy that I’ve experienced here.

Closing Plenary
Jeff Silver of Free Press stressed that the future of broadband will be determined in the very near future. “Media reform is about reclaiming the airwaves for the public,” he said. “We have to flood the FCC with comments.”

Kim Gandy introduced Fonda, co-founder of the Women’s Media Center and board member of GreenStone Media, a national women’s talk radio network.

Fonda used the story of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, the 14 year old girl raped and murdered by U.S. soldiers to illustrate the way important stories are buried for months or forever.  She discussed the attempt by the U.S. military to paint the crime as the action of “a few bad apples,”  but observed that the ringleader of the group had a record of drug use and violent crime, but had been admitted to the military under a program of “moral waiver.” She said that the Women’s Media Center is the only news organization that has continued to follow that story.

“We need a media so powerful that it can speak for the powerless. A truly powerful media can stop a war, not start one.”

“We’ve seen the concentration of media ownership in a few hands. Heck, I was married to it. I’ve seen in it in my own bed!

The media that is overwhelmingly white is also overwhelmingly male. You can’t tell the whole story when you leave out half of the population. All issues are women’s issues.”

Fonda offered statistical details to illustrate the absence of women in the media as anchors, commentators, sources, reporters, administrators. “The sad fact is that most people don’t even realize there is a problem. The media didn’t create gender stereotypes, but it reinforces them.”

“The mission of the Women’s Media Center is: One: To make women visible … in all media. Two: To make women powerful, to assist women in media careers.”
“I’m not naming names, but there are women out there who serve as ventriloquist’s dummies for the patriarchy.”

“The opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, it’s democracy.”

– Cecil Bothwell, staff writer