Culminating in a march and protest at the doors of the San Francisco Chronicle on July 28, the international conference of the North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) gathered for three days of meetings and workshops to strengthen the street newspaper movement. For three blissful days in July, our NASNA conference brought struggling street poets, writers like myself, and homeless advocacy organizations such as the National Coalition on Homelessness face to face with more than forty street newspaper journalists from across the U.S. and Canada, as well as a handful of journalists from Europe and Great Britain. The diverse group of editors and publishers assembled under one unified roof to discuss and respond to issues as varied as are the newspapers themselves. Continue reading NORTH AMERICAN STREET NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION. by Challa Tabeson.→
Question: What is the single most valuable piece of property worth owning at the dawn of the information age? Answer: The radio frequencies–the electromagnetic spectrum–over which an increasing amount of communication and commercial activity will be broadcast in the era of wireless communications. Our PCs, palm pilots, wireless Internet, cellular phones, pagers, radios, and television all rely on the radio frequencies of the spectrum to send and receive messages, pictures, audio, data, etc. Continue reading GLOBAL MEDIA GIANTS LOBBY TO PRIVATIZE ENTIRE BROADCAST SPECTRUM. by Jeremy Rifkin.→
In analyzing media coverage of the California energy “crisis,” the one crucial tool you must have on hand is a flashlight. Not for use in case of a blackout, but for hitting yourself over the head to stay awake. As David Lazarus, who has been covering the story for the San Francisco Chronicle for the last year, put it, “It’s important, it affects everybody, and it’s deadly dull.” Continue reading WATT’S UP? BEHIND THE MEDIA’S COVERAGE OF THE ENERGY CRISIS. by Andrea Buffa.→
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.→
