Just two days after the terrorist attacks in the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission moved ahead with plans to end or weaken several long-standing policies designed to promote diversity of media ownership. Under the leadership of the new FCC Chairman Michael Powell (son of Secretary of State Colin), the commission released two proposed “rulemakings” that will have a major impact on the country’s newspaper, broadcasting and cable TV industries. Continue reading UNDERMINING EFFECTIVE REPORTING: NEW FCC PROPOSALS. by Jeffrey Chester.→
On May 3, 2001, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) named Colombian paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño to its annual list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Six weeks later, a reporter from the Paris daily Le Monde caught up with Castaño in northern Colombia and asked how he felt about the distinction.”I would like to assure you that I have always respected the freedom and subjectivity of the press,” said the leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), Colombia’s leading right-wing paramilitary organization. “But I have never accepted that journalism can become an arm at the service of one of the actors of the conflict. Over the course of its existence the AUC has executed two local journalists who were in fact guerrillas.” He no longer remembered their names. Continue reading COLOMBIAN JOURNALISTS UNDER ATTACK BY PARAMILITARIES. by Frank Smyth.→
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.
