Picking the top ten anything is a pretty daunting task, and selecting ten top media movies proved to be more of a challenge than I was expecting. I’m no Pauline Kael, only a humble media worker and Media Alliance board member, and off the top of my head, I could only come up with about four movies. I ended up polling journalists, friends, movie buffs, and the aggressively opinionated for suggestions. This got me a list of about 50 recommendations, ranging from illuminating to bizarre. I happily shuffled off to my local video store and indiscriminately selected movies from my master list. At first it was an unfamiliar thrill to go into a video store and not agonize for an eternity before selecting a flick. But after a few weeks my eyes began to bug out, my roommate’s VCR started to smoke, and late fees began to seriously eat into my burrito budget. Continue reading TOP 10: BEST MOVIES ABOUT MEDIA, by MiHi Ahn→
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→
