It was 1976. Democracy was holding on for dear life in the aftermath of Watergate. And at the center of the drama were reporters; real reporters, damn it, like the ones I wanted to be when I grew up; the ones that would take on the big guns armed with little more than an old typewriter, a pad and pencil, and bad, plain label coffee.
These journalists and these times gave birth to Media Alliance more than a quarter century ago as an institution that would hold the profession, and democracy, accountable to the highest standards of quality and transparency. MA took on union busting, protection of reporters and sources, and the perpetual corporate cover up; and it moved beyond those issues to become the area’s most important training resource for those seeking a career in media and those seeking to influence the media for progressive change. Continue reading MEDIA ALLIANCE STAYS TRUE TO ITS ROOTS. by Makani Themba.→
American mass media is a marvel of technology. It is whiz bang, sparkle glitter, and satellite wizardry. It is a master plan of methods to communicate, and a pauper’s worth of substance. With such technology, how are people so woefully misinformed? The average American neither knows nor cares about the vast world beyond the nation’s border. The average American student knows little math, no history, and very little geography and nor does he or she want to know. Americans have computer in school, dozens of TV stations, and the most aggressive news media on earth, does that mean they’re better informed?
September 11. After an 18-hour flight from Johannesburg, where I had attended the World Conference Against Racism, I was seated in a San Francisco-bound United Airlines jet plane at JFK International Airport in New York, when the captain announced that a hijacked plane had been crashed into the World Trade Center (WTC). Continue reading ANTI-IMMIGRANT RACISM AND THE MEDIA. by Arnoldo Garcia.→
Many forms of politically engaged journalism have arisen to fight social injustices in the course of U.S. history: the radical pamphlets by Thomas Paine that helped incite a revolutionary uprising against British rule; the muckraking reporting of Upton Sinclair that exposed inhumane conditions in the Chicago stockyards; the investigation of the Standard Oil Company by Ida Tarbell; Dorothy Day’s prophetic reporting on the injustice of poverty in her groundbreaking Catholic Worker newspaper; the attacks on municipal corruption by Lincoln Steffens; the exposé of the profiteering funeral industry by Jessica Mitford; the no-holds-barred struggle with the war machine waged by the underground press of the 1960s. These and other crusading journalists have left us an inspiring historic legacy of morally charged, politically engaged reporting. They were all socially conscious writers who, in varying ways, practiced “justice journalism.” Continue reading JUSTICE JOURNALISM: JOURNALIST AS AGENT OF SOCIAL CHANGE. by Terry Messman.→
The recent activism against globalization has encouraged people the world over to reassess the role of transnational corporations and their governmental counterparts in the widening of the gap between rich and poor and the headlong rush toward global warming and ecological devastation. Media corporations are key targets in the ongoing struggle. The actions in San Francisco last September against the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) were a hopeful prelude to a global movement for authentic public media. Continue reading MANY VOICES, ONE WORLD. by Dee Dee Halleck.→
“Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator.” [Chavez] “stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader.” New York Times Editorial, April 13, 2002
The April 2002 attempted coup against president Hugo Chavez in Venezuela was widely applauded in U.S. corporate media editorials the day after the coup. In Venezuela itself, the mainstream media helped mobilize the anti-Chavez demonstrations which were used as the coup pretext. But a people’s movement, with information and support from online and alternative news sources, ended up reversing the coup. In the months since, evidence is mounting of direct U.S. participation. Continue reading MEDIA, OIL, AND POLITICS: ANATOMY OF THE VENEZUELAN COUP. by Eric Quezada.→
The prison industrial complex–one of America’s costliest public institutions, fueled by billions in tax dollars and millions of devastated lives–operates largely without public scrutiny. While mainstream news outlets flood us with sensational crime reporting, they pay comparatively little attention to the brutal conditions within U.S. prisons. Continue reading MEDIA LOCKOUT: PRISONS AND JOURNALISTS, by Helene Vosters→
In medicine, it’s called Managed Care. In media, it’s Managed News. Corporate media today is in the entertainment business. Market shares, advertising dollars, and political self interest drive the news. Stories about the decisions and manipulations of the powerful and news about challenges to power by the powerless are continually ignored or under-reported in mainstream media.
