Three Bay area organizations, Retro Poll, the Youth Media Council (YMC), and If Americans Knew have been using monitoring tactics to challenge mainstream media’s reporting patterns. Their efforts take media criticism a step beyond analysis and are beginning to turn frustration at the lack of unbiased information in the mass media into productive steps towards media democracy and public access to balanced news. “We’ve found the media is failing to deliver honest, accurate, and full coverage, hence creating a misinformed American public,” claims Scott Campbell, coordinator for If Americans Knew an organization dedicated to providing accurate information on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict.The organization focuses on this issue because according to Campbell, “ Americans have a vested interest in the region and must be accurately and adequately informed about the issue.” Through their monitoring, If Americans Knew has found that the media highlight Israeli deaths while barely reporting on Palestinian deaths. The organization hopes that making these findings available will move the America public to “act in accordance with morality, justice and the best interests of their nation and of the world.”

Retro Poll’s work focuses on deconstructing public opinion polls and creating a follow up poll to find out what was hidden by the originally reported polling. Executive Director, Marc Sapir believes that “the purpose of polling in the mainstream media is to validate the misinformation that is delivered by the media.”

Instead of merely describing inaccuracies in polls, Retro Poll actually unravels polls. Based on a methodology relating people’s background to their opinions, they reframe the poll questions and conduct a new poll. These follow-up (retro) polls have shown that issues the media is refusing to report on repeatedly surface. For example, a recent poll conducted by Retro Poll found that a substantial number of people, possibly one in three Americans, think that President-elect Bush should be impeached based on his lies about weapons of mass destruction. “This [story] is being totally suppressed in the mainstream media,” Sapir says.

The Youth Media Council documents the mainstream media’s bias against marginalized youth. “In the media, the term ‘youth’ has become a coded mechanism to talk about race, and youth policy became a way to legislate racism while using colorblind language,” says Jen Soriano, YMC Media Advocate. Recently, the YMC has released two media assessments studying the content of local news outlet KTVU Channel 2 and of popular hip-hop station 106 KMEL, owned by Clear Channel. “In both studies, as in earlier reports by media watchdog groups, we found that most stories about youth were about crime, while there were more stories about pets than about youth poverty,” says Soriano.

While these three organizations have generated attention from the alternative media, they have mostly experienced blackout from the mainstream media. “Retro Poll recently paid US main newswires to run our poll results and nobody touched the story,” says Sapir. Considering that their findings challenge the mainstream media’s validity, it is not surprising that they must use other channels to get their word out.

Still, these groups have discovered that critiquing the media is one way to gain access to the public and build energy around otherwise uncovered topics. “People are shocked to learn about the distortion of the [Israeli / Palestinian] conflict by the media and the depth of the lopsided US involvement in the region,” Campbell says. “When they are accurately informed, people realize how crucial a fair and just solution is.”

In 2004, with the Iraq War pressing on, no end to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in sight and the presidential election in full swing, media monitoring will become more crucial in mobilizing for change. The demand for balanced information is nearly universal. By consistently critiquing unbalanced news coverage as part of strategies for social change, these three groups are leaders in creating new ways to challenge the mainstream political agenda.

For more information on the respective organizations, please visit the following websites:

Retro Poll: www.retropoll.org

Youth Media Council: www.youthmediacouncil.org

If Americans Knew: www.ifamericansknew.org

Samantha Calamari is a freelance writer studying at San Francisco State School of Journalism.

Source: MEDIA FILE: Volume 23, Spring 2004.