Drawing its inspiration from the environmental justice movement and their efforts to advance a different analysis from the “mainstream” environmental movement, media justice proponents are developing race, class and gender conscious frameworks that advance new visions for media content and structure. A Media Justice Summit is planned for summer 2004, the first gathering of its kind. Continue reading MEDIA JUSTICE, by Makani Themba-Nixon.
The Pacifica radio network, the nation’s only listener-sponsored community radio network, has recently emerged from a period of unprecedented turmoil, one that threatened its very survival as an oasis of free speech and dissent, a forum for news and radical analysis, and a venue for serious music and art. Continue reading MEDIA DEMOCRACY: PACIFICA VICTORY LAYS GROUNDWORK FOR MOVEMENT. by Juan Gonzalez.
Writers and photographers during the Vietnam war considered it their responsibility to expose the lies of the Pentagon’s propaganda machine, and they often did so brilliantly. But reporters during Desert Storm and in the war in Afghanistan have generally accepted a different role, willingly or unwillingly, and pictured those wars within the political limits dictated by Generals Schwartzkopf and Franks. Continue reading INTERVIEW: LINDA FOLEY, PRESIDENT NEWSPAPER GUILD. by David Bacon.
At the huge peace demonstration in November in Florence, Italy, together with “No” to war on Iraq, were “No’s,” to globalization, genetically modified foods, commercial control of the Internet, copyright laws, and Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. While the mainstream media have trouble connecting the dots between these demands, the demonstration of a half-million people in the street was the culmination of a week of European Social Forum workshops, in which activists had been meeting to do exactly that: connect the demands of peace, media justice and anti-globalization. Continue reading STAYING HOME TO ORGANIZE THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR INFORMATION JUSTICE. By Dorothy Kidd.
“Yesterday had to be one of the worst days,” begins the email from Dalia, a 21-year-old Palestinian-American journalist, to her friends. “Israelis have gone into all media stations and either taken them over or searched them.”
Dalia works in Ramallah for Al-Jazeera–the popular Qatar-based satellite news channel and one of the few international news media that could continue news coverage in Ramallah during the Israeli-imposed 24-hour curfew that lasted almost a month (March 29-April 24). Continue reading Palestinian Media Bulldozed – by Cherine Badawi and Marc Sapir
Famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was one of the featured speakers at the August 4th anti-spying protest. Ellsberg was joined by Jennider Granick, AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein and author Norman Solomon at the rally in the heart of San Francisco.
Continue reading Restore The Fourth (Amendment) – San Francisco
Update 8/19: The FCC rejected Verizon’s “fast track” request to not rebuild phone lines on Fire Island and forcibly transition residents to Voice-Link “wireless-only” service. Had the Commission not done so, Verizon’s request would have been automatically granted. Continue reading Verizon Abandons Fire Island: Not Yet Says The FCC
This letter, signed by a who’s who of Bush-era military politicos was sent to Congress before the Amash/Conyers vote.
Signatories include Alberto Gonzalez, John Negroponte, Stephen Hadley, Porter Goss and Michael Chertoff.
The Amash/Conyers vote (the amendment to defund the telephone metadata spying program was defeated 217-205) was a bizarre vote by even DC standards. Continue reading Strange Bedfellows: Bush Security Apparatus Letter to Congress
