To some observers, the broad protest movement that erupted this summer to defend Bay Area community radio station KPFA (94.1 FM) looked like a near riot.. To others, the grassroots action that reversed the station’s shutdown looked like the deliberate work of a well-organized and media-savvy coalition of professional activists. In reality, our movement–which drew in thousands of ordinary people, commanded front-page media attention, and won the support of celebrities and government officials–was neither pure chaos nor pure calculation. Like all popular movements, the “Free KPFA” mobilization was a lot of both. At this point, we should neither mystify nor deify the struggle, but examine it critically. We can apply the resulting lessons in our ongoing fight to establish democratic, community control of the entire Pacifica network–and eventually of the U.S. media establishment as a whole. Continue reading CALCULATED CHAOS: Inside the Mobilzation that Rocked Pacifica, by Van Jones→
“Most of them are kind of cuckoo and not real clean.”
From a Matier and Ross column in the San Francisco Chronicle (11/17/99) headlined “Influx of Homeless People Angers Youth Hostel Tenants,” this quote is emblematic of the tenor of reporting on the homeless by San Francisco’s dailies. The story follows the standard frame: Dirty, smelly homeless people are ruining the enjoyment of facility X (the hostel) by upstanding group Y (tourists). City department Z (the Office on Homelessness), while trying to do its best, is just too overwhelmed to make anyone happy. Middle- or working-class citizens are interviewed about the latest dilemma, and lo and behold, out from their mouths pop prejudice and stereotypes about the homeless. A reaction quote from advocates for the homeless rounds out the picture. Continue reading Commentary: S.F. DAILY PAPERS PIT MIDDLE CLASS AGAINST HOMELESS, by Ben Clarke→
When searching for the perpetrators behind this nation’s current cops-and-incarceration boom, media workers need only look in the mirror. While reporters and writers may occasionally finger demagogic pols for shamelessly campaigning on soft-headed, tough-on-crime promises, our industry typically primes the public to salivate in anticipation of each new slab of lock-’em-up legislation. This is nowhere more obvious than with youth crime. Continue reading DISTORTED MEDIA COVERAGE FUELS ANTI–YOUTH PROP. 21, by A. Clay Thompson→
In the early 1980s, Ben Bagdikian’s famous book The Media Monopoly concluded that fewer than 50 firms dominated U.S. media, with the result that journalism was increasingly losing its ability to address the role and nature of corporate power in the U.S. political economy. By the time the fourth edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 1992, Bagdikian calculated that mergers and acquisitions had reduced the number of dominant media firms to two dozen. Since 1992, there has been an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions among media giants, highlighted by the Time Warner purchase of Turner Broadcasting (CNN, TNT) and the Disney acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC. Continue reading CORPORATE MEDIA, ALTERNATIVE PRESS, AND AFRICAN AMERICANS, by Salim Muwakkil→
Thrown into a defensive position by aggressive monopolies, media workers unions seek new sources of strength.
Bay Area media unions, like those everywhere else in the country, live today in the shadow of Detroit. Newspaper workers at the Detroit News and Free Press have been on strike for three years, since walking out in 1995 over corporate demands for deep concessions. Although the National Labor Relations Board ruled this year that the newspapers’ management had engaged in illegal bad-faith bargaining, a decision that gave strikers the right to immediate reinstatement with back pay, the two newspapers continue to run with strike breakers. The sorry state of U.S. labor law allows employers to appeal NLRB decisions for years through the courts. In the meantime, only a handful of strikers have been rehired, and there is still no contract or union at the papers. Continue reading THE STATE OF OUR UNIONS, by David Bacon→
“Are you Margaret?” two or three people ask me eagerly as I walk through the door. “No, she’s not Margaret,” responds Brian Scott, CityVisions Channel 53’s public access coordinator. The large, lofty studio is a flurry of activity this Friday night. Studio lights hanging from the rafters illuminate the stage. Two people are assigned to each of the three cameras, and they nervously practice zooming in and out and rolling the cameras around the concrete floor. They’re preparing for Open Mike Live, a show featuring local talent that airs once a month on San Francisco’s public access station. The people behind the cameras have never done this before. The broadcast is a culmination of a training program they have gone through to become proficient on the studio’s impressive array of equipment. Continue reading YOU’RE THE PUBLIC, SO GET CABLE ACCESS, by Lisa Sousa→
David Gaither is an associate editor at Pacific News Service (PNS), where he works on The Beat Within, a weekly newsletter by and for incarcerated youth in the Bay Area, as well as on New California Media: In Search of Common Ground, a television talk show aimed at members and readers of the ethnic press; Youth Outlook, a journal of youth life in the Bay Area; and the PNS wire service. He is a graduate of the 1997 Bay Area Mentorship for Reporters of Color (BAMROC) program, a month-long intensive internship that combined advanced journalism skills training with briefing sessions on issues important to local communities of color. The 22-year-old journalist and community activist lives in San Leandro with his wife, Karrima, and their eight-month-old daughter, Kalimah. Continue reading TAKING JOURNALISM TO JAIL: an interview with David Gaither, by Elton Bradman→
In the book It’s the Media Stupid, Robert McChesney and John Nichols argue for a broad-based media reform movement that can make media democracy a central political issue in the United States. Here is their platform.
Expand funding for traditional public-service broadcasting with an eye toward making it fully non-commercial and democratically accountable. In particular, substantial new funding should be provided for the development of news and public affairs programming that would fill the gap created by the collapse of serious news gathering by the networks and their local affiliates. Continue reading PLATFORM FOR MEDIA REFORM. by Robert McChesney and John Nichols.→
