MediaFile Archive |
 | MEDIA RACISM. By Salim Muwakkil. We seem to be in the midst of some kind of paradigm shift in the way that news is produced, packaged, and consumed. Increasing numbers of news shops are beginning to display their ideologies in their windows. They continue to give lip service to those cherished journalistic ideals of objectivity and impartiality, but the actual news product is shot through with bias. |
| METHODS OF MEDIA MANIPULATION, by Michael Parenti We are told by media people that some news bias is unavoidable. Distortions are caused by deadline pressures, human misjudgment, budgetary restraints, and the difficulty of reducing a complex story into a concise report. Furthermore, the argument goes, no communication system can hope to report everything. Selectivity is needed. |
 | MEDIA SERVE GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOOD INDUSTRY. by Jane Akre and Steve Wilson. Sitting in his Baltimore office the other day, Charles Margulis, Greenpeace's quiet and thoughtful anti-genetic engineering warrior, seemed chagrined |
| MEDIA ALLIANCE STAYS TRUE TO ITS ROOTS. by Makani Themba. These journalists and these times gave birth to Media Alliance more than a quarter century ago as an institution that would hold the profession, and democracy, accountable to the highest standards of quality and transparency. MA took on union busting, protection of reporters and sources, and the perpetual corporate cover up; and it moved beyond those issues to become the area's most important training resource for those seeking a career in media and those seeking to influence the media for progressive change. |
| MEDIA IS THE MIRAGE, by Mumia Abu-Jamal American mass media is a marvel of technology. It is whiz bang, sparkle glitter, and satellite wizardry. It is a master plan of methods to communicate, and a pauper's worth of substance. With such technology, how are people so woefully misinformed? |
| ANTI-IMMIGRANT RACISM AND THE MEDIA. by Arnoldo Garcia. September 11. After an 18-hour flight from Johannesburg, where I had attended the World Conference Against Racism, I was seated in a San Francisco-bound United Airlines jet plane at JFK International Airport in New York, when the captain announced that a hijacked plane had been crashed into the World Trade Center (WTC). |
| JUSTICE JOURNALISM: JOURNALIST AS AGENT OF SOCIAL CHANGE. by Terry Messman. Many forms of politically engaged journalism have arisen to fight social injustices in the course of U.S. history: the radical pamphlets by Thomas Paine that helped incite a revolutionary uprising against British rule; the muckraking reporting of Upton Sinclair that exposed inhumane conditions in the Chicago stockyards; the investigation of the Standard Oil Company by Ida Tarbell; Dorothy Day's prophetic reporting on the injustice of poverty in her groundbreaking Catholic Worker newspaper; the attacks on municipal corruption by Lincoln Steffens; the exposé of the profiteering funeral industry by Jessica Mitford; the no-holds-barred struggle with the war machine waged by the underground press of the 1960s. |
 | MANY VOICES, ONE WORLD. by Dee Dee Halleck. The recent activism against globalization has encouraged people the world over to reassess the role of transnational corporations and their governmental counterparts in the widening of the gap between rich and poor and the headlong rush toward global warming and ecological devastation. Media corporations are key targets in the ongoing struggle. |
| MEDIA, OIL, AND POLITICS: ANATOMY OF THE VENEZUELAN COUP. by Eric Quezada. The April 2002 attempted coup against president Hugo Chavez in Venezuela was widely applauded in U.S. corporate media editorials the day after the coup. In Venezuela itself, the mainstream media helped mobilize the anti-Chavez demonstrations which were used as the coup pretext. But a people's movement, with information and support from online and alternative news sources, ended up reversing the coup. In the months since, evidence is mounting of direct U.S. participation. |
| MEDIA LOCKOUT: PRISONS AND JOURNALISTS, by Helene Vosters The prison industrial complex--one of America's costliest public institutions, fueled by billions in tax dollars and millions of devastated lives--operates largely without public scrutiny. |
| WHAT'S CENSORED? Project Censored Fights for Media Freedom, by Peter Phillips In medicine, it's called Managed Care. In media, it's Managed News. Corporate media today is in the entertainment business. Market shares, advertising dollars, and political self interest drive the news. Stories about the decisions and manipulations of the powerful and news about challenges to power by the powerless are continually ignored or under-reported in mainstream media. |
| PINOCHET AND THE AMNESIA OF THE U.S. PRESS, by Roger Burbach The arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London on October 16, 1998 was a major victory for progressives and human rights activists around the world. |
| THE MORE TIMES CHANGE . . . THE BAY AREA ALTERNATIVE PRESS '68 - '98, by Marcy Rein As I walk into the Long Haul for the Slingshot newspaper meeting, the smell of boiling beans hits me first, then the moldy odor of old paper. Or perhaps it's a whiff of history: Thirty years ago, this Berkeley storefront housed The Black Panther newspaper. |
 | FREE SPEECH TELEVISION. By Eric Galatas. n your article on the state of our national progressive media (MediaFile, Jan/Feb 2001), Don Hazen is quoted as saying that there is currently no progressive television network operating in the United States. Happily, Mr. Hazen is wrong. |
| GREENS SHUT OUT BY NATIONAL MEDIA. by Peter Hart. The pain the establishment media felt over Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader's challenge to the two-party system was evident in CBS's election night coverage. When reporter Ed Bradley commented that Ralph Nader might approach the five percent threshold for receiving federal matching funds, Dan Rather interrupted: "About $12 million, $13 million of your money and mine." As Bradley pointed out that Nader was "hurting" Al Gore in several states, Rather added: "And every taxpayer." |
| INFORMATION WARRIORS: PENTAGON'S MINISTRY OF TRUTH SHAPES WAR COVERAGE. by Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org The Pentagon has set out to win at least three wars, the one on the battlefield of the moment, the so-called war for hearts and minds in the countries under attack and "the media war." |
 | CALCULATED CHAOS: Inside the Mobilzation that Rocked Pacifica, by Van Jones, Photos by Rebeka Rodriguez ©1999 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. |
| Commentary: S.F. DAILY PAPERS PIT MIDDLE CLASS AGAINST HOMELESS, by Ben Clarke 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. |
| DISTORTED MEDIA COVERAGE FUELS ANTI–YOUTH PROP. 21, by A. Clay Thompson 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. |
| CORPORATE MEDIA, ALTERNATIVE PRESS, AND AFRICAN AMERICANS, by Salim Muwakkil 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 |
| THE STATE OF OUR UNIONS, by David Bacon. Thrown into a defensive position by aggressive monopolies, media workers unions seek new sources of strength. |
| YOU'RE THE PUBLIC, SO GET CABLE ACCESS, by Lisa Sousa 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. |
 | TAKING JOURNALISM TO JAIL: an interview with David Gaither, by Elton Bradman 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. |
| PLATFORM FOR MEDIA REFORM. by Robert McChesney and John Nichols. 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. |
| EVOLUTION OF MA: FROM THE NEWSROOMS TO THE PICKET LINES. by Martha Wallner. Media Alliance 25-Year Anniversary Interview with Raul Ramirez, Executive Producer of News & Public Affairs at KQED-FM |
| TAKING BACK THE MEDIA: NOTES ON THE POTENTIAL FOR A COMMUNICATIVE DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT. By Bob Hackett Of all contemporary popular struggles, the struggle to democratize the communication media is arguably one of the most important and least recognized. In this article, I first argue for the importance of placing media democratization higher on the progressive agenda, and briefly sketch its normative commitments. Then, I explore the potential social and political obstacles and bases for a media democracy movement, concluding with a few strategic suggestions. |
| NOAM CHOMSKY: BEHIND THE HEADLINES ON COLOMBIA. AN INTERVIEW by David Barsamian. DB: Talk about evolving U.S. policy in Colombia. The Interhemispheric Resource Center in Albuquerque has issued a statement: "U.S. Policy in Colombia: Towards a Vietnam Quagmire." Do you think that's an appropriate analogy? The New York Times writes in an editorial titled "Dangerous Plans for Colombia" that the aid to Colombia "risks dragging the United States into a costly counterinsurgency war." |
| WHO WILL COUNT THE DEAD? U.S. MEDIA FAIL TO REPORT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN AFGHANISTAN. By Marc W. Herold. The air attack on Afghanistan began at 8:57 p.m. local time on October 7. The following day, Reuters carried an interview with a 16-year-old ice cream vendor from Jalalabad who said he had lost his leg and two fingers in a Cruise missile strike on an airfield near his home. |
| SEATTLE 2002: MEDIA DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT CHALLENGES NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS. by Susan Gleason and Jonathan Lawson. The stars--or satellites--are aligned for the explosion of a national media democracy movement. Confronting dramatic consolidations of corporate media ownership and power, pro-business court rulings, and looming threats of further deregulation from an FCC Chair who openly mocks public interest standards, activist groups across the country are finding common languages of resistance. |
| PBS SHUTS OUT INDEPENDENT PRODUCERS. by Jerold M. Starr. Despite its auspicious and promising beginning, the Public Broadcasting Service largely has failed its congressional mandate. PBS was supposed to compensate for the inadequacies of advertiser-driven network programming by providing, in the words of its mandate, an "alternative" that expresses "diversity and excellence," involves "creative risks," and addresses "the needs of the unserved and underserved audiences." |
| ACTIVISTS FIGHT MEDIA CONSOLIDATION: FCC DROPPING OWNERSHIP LIMITS by Aliza Dichter Under intense lobbying pressure and lawsuits brought by corporate media, the federal government is now considering removing the last few media-ownership limits. These rules--intended to protect diversity of viewpoints, competition and local ownership-- keep major TV networks from merging into one and prevent a single company from dominating the local TV market or owning a town's local newspaper, TV and radio station. |
 | CAN MUNCIPAL BROADBAND HELP SF SMASH THE DIGITAL DIVIDE? by Jeff Perlstein What do Tacoma, Provo, Lompoc and soon Philadelphia share in common? All residents there have access to very low-cost, very high-speed Internet service thanks to visionary policy initiatives, known as Municipal Broadband. |
| STREET SOLDIERS SILENCED BY MEDIA MERGER, by Laura Saponara Produced in San Francisco, the radio program Street Soldiers is well known as a live forum for youth to talk openly about their experiences with gang violence, crime, drugs, pregnancy, and countless other issues. Antiviolence activists credit the program with saving lives by mediating conflicts through dialogue and providing an on- and off-air system of social support. |
| AT&T STALLS BROADBAND ACCESS, by Laura Saponara Tired of the dial-up routine that connects your computer to an Internet service provider through your telephone line? If you've been following the debate over control of broadband technologies, you know that faster, smoother means of sending and receiving data over the Internet already exist. But questions about how these services will be provided, who will control the way they function, and what their financial and social costs will be remain unanswered. |
| INTERNATIONAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS WIN VICTORIES, by Dorothy Kidd The convergence of activists on the recent World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle signaled not only worldwide concern about the effects of globalization, but also the emergence of a well-organized and increasingly sophisticated network of internationalist media campaigners based both in and outside the media world. |
| MUMIA'S TRIAL -- THE SMELL OF SMOKE, by Margot Pepper I saw the ad in the last issue of MediaFile soliciting signatures for the writers' petition in support of a fair trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal. I am signing the petition and would like to share my reasons for doing so. |
| REPORTS FROM THE FIELD: FCC says to Hell with the Public Interest , by Camille Taiara Congress has been hacking away for years at the Federal Communication Commission's original mandate to regulate the broadcast industry in the public's interest. The passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the relaxation of antitrust regulations related to media ownership were major blows. And now, with the release of its Draft Strategic Plan for the 21st Century, the FCC itself has openly renounced its mission as regulator and forfeited democratic concerns in favor of a new role as "market facilitator." |
| WHAT'S NEXT FOR FREE SPEECH RADIO? by Ben Clarke Wresting control from the central bureaucracy is key. |
| REPORTING ON DISABILITY, by Suzanne C. Levine Media coverage plays a crucial role in educating the public on disability issues. It could--and should--be helping people understand that these are civil-rights issues. But more often than not, reporting on disability perpetuates negative stereotypes or fails to tell the story from the perspective of people with disabilities. |
| WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH WELFARE REFORM?, by Camille Taiara Three years after the federal government ended subsistence guarantees for low-income people--and after hundreds of thousands of people have left or been kicked off the benefit rolls--welfare is no longer considered newsworth |
| PACIFICA MANAGEMENT AND BOARD ATTACK KPFA, by Belinda Griswold The Bay Area progressive community unites for the first time in 50 years around the progressive listener-sponsored radio station. Can we win? |
| TIPS FROM A PRO ON INVESTIGATING DEATH ROW CASES, by A. Clay Thompson h. In the past few years Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and his students have helped liberate three wrongfully convicted condemned men through two class projects in investigative reporting (their work wasn't published but was covered by the press and used by the defense lawyers). Inspired by those successes, MediaFile asked a prominent local defense investigator for tips on digging into death-row cases. |
| DISSENTING VOICES OF THE STREET, by Terry Messman Over the past decade, an outspoken brand of iconoclastic journalism has emerged from the harsh experiences of people living on the streets in dozens of cities in the United States, Canada, and Europe. |
| REPORTER'S FILE: Using Tax Returns to Investigate Nonprofit Organizations, by Mónica L. López Unlike commercial businesses, nonprofit organizations tend to operate at the edge of the public eye. |
| INVESTIGATE '98: Highlights of Community-based and Investigative Journalism, by Akilah Monifa The San Francisco Bay Area is rich in resources for investigative journalism: It supports several journalism schools and countless news outlets. Despite the possibilities, however, most major publishers and television and radio station owners did business as usual in 1998, choosing to leave in-depth, well-researched community reporting to the alternative media. |
| ALTERNATIVE INTERNATIONAL NEWS SOURCES: FOCUS ON MEXICO, by Ben Clarke & Steve Rhodes When events like the Acteal massacre in Chiapas or the U.S. bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan occur, there are a variety of news sources you can go to for perspectives other than uncritical reporting of the latest press releases from the State Department and Pentagon. Some of the following resources deal with breaking stories; others provide the in-depth information necessary to interpret the news. |
| CUAUHTÉMOC CÁRDENAS MEETS THE PRESS, by John Ross Inside Mexico, the media have mounted a sustained attack on the capital's left-leaning mayor that could help squash chances for democratic reform. |
| THE MEXICO CONNECTION, by Sharon Donovan and the Media Alliance Latin America Committee A survey of mainstream media reporting on U.S. military aid, the "drug war," and human rights in Mexico. |
| WORKING THE ALTERNATIVES: Media Employment Outside of the Mainstream, by Wilma B. Consul Chuy Varela is a hustler. He once collected recyclable metals in East Bay industrial parks and worked as a gardener and hauler who cruised around Oakland's Fruitvale and Jingletown in his truck "looking for a dólar." |
| TOP 10: BEST MOVIES ABOUT MEDIA, by MiHi Ahn icking 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 |
| STUDENTS STRUGGLE AGAINST CENSORSHIP, by Lian Cheun High school students continue to find that their First Amendment rights are invisible to school administrators, despite years of struggle against censorship. |
| HAVANA JOURNAL, by Elaine Elinson Magnolia trees and purple jacarandas sweeten the heavy tropical air of the courtyard of the UPEC building, whose marble staircase and stately columns testify to its past as an old Havana mansion. |
| WHY PROGRESSIVES KEEP LOSING CALIFORNIA'S INITIATIVE WARS, by Hunter Cutting and Kim Deterline, photos by Scott Braley In the past few years a pattern has emerged from a string of explosive political campaigns in California that have sparked public debate across the nation. Launched in the form of ballot initiatives, these campaigns have attacked affirmative action, immigrants, bilingual education, and labor unions. They have divided traditional progressive coalitions, scapegoated marginalized communities, and revived formerly bankrupt social policies. |
| HE SAYS, SHE SAYS: HOW CALIFORNIA'S MAJOR PAPERS HAVE COVERED PROP. 227, by Manisha Aryal Proposition 227 opponents say software millionaire Ron Unz's initiative is not about bilingual education. He insists it is. |
| FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS: why labor actions are not news, by Akilah Monifa It's a typical Wednesday evening in November and it's raining again. I hear loud chants outside my office window, the same ones that pierce that air three times a week, every week: "Union--Yes! Marriott--No! Union bashing's got to go! What do we want? Contract! When do we want it? Now! Hey there Marriott, you're no good! Sign that contract like you should." |
| FIT TO PRINT?, Complied by Jeff Gillenkirk Complete list of sources, in order of appearance, for Dec. 29, 1997 New York Times article, "U.S Helps Mexico's Army Take a Big Anti-Drug Role," by Tim Golden: |
| READ 'EM AND THINK (CRITICALLY): A media criticism reading list, by Gabe Martinez and Akilah Monifa Media bashing has become a reflex for many, but critical analysis of what we read, listen to, and watch is what's essential |
| BAY AREA GROUPS MONITOR MAINSTREAM, by Samantha Calamari. Three Bay area organizations, Retro Poll, the Youth Media Council (YMC), and If Americans Knew have been using monitoring tactics to challenge mainstream media’s reporting patterns. Their efforts take media criticism a step beyond analysis and are beginning to turn frustration at the lack of unbiased information in the mass media into productive steps towards media democracy and public access to balanced news |
| DEMOCRACY WHEN? AN UPDATE ON THE BATTLE TO SAVE PACIFICA RADIO. by Eileen Sutton. As this issue of MediaFile goes to press WBAI has been attacked by Pacifica with firings, lockouts, and banning of production staff. |
| INTERNATIONAL NEWS: WHERE IS IT COMING FROM? by Franz Schurmann. American newspaper readers traditionally haven't taken much interest in "foreign" news. Nevertheless foreign news has been on newspaper front pages for a long time. And America has had foreign policy ever since the USA was formed. Where do the ideas and intents of those policies ----- and the news shaped by them ----- come from? |
| NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE MEDIA: WHO'S LEFT? by Andrea Buffa. When it comes to the question of why most progressive national media outlets reach such a small persentage of their potential audience, progressive activists are conflicted. |
| DEMOCRATIZING THE MASS MEDIA: AN ASSESSMENT AND PROPOSAL. by Randy Baker. Robert McChesney's contention that democratizing the mass media must become a central--perhaps the central--concern of progressives is hard to dispute. However, the ways in which progressives are currently approaching the issue seem unlikely to substantially change the status quo. |
| WHOSE MEDIA? OUR MEDIA! by Dorothy Kidd. During the action against the National Association of Broadcasters last September, a small group met to discuss a Communications Bill of Rights for the United States. Our aim was to start envisioning a democratic media that was accessible, inclusive, and accountable to everyone, and independent of both corporate and government control. |
| FANG'S EXAMINER. by Harrison Chastang. "You get what you pay for," was the opinion of one reader looking at the first edition of the "new" San Francisco Examiner. |
| FCC EMBRACES MONSTER MERGER: AGENCY IMPOSES MILD OPEN ACCESS PROVISIONS ON AOL TIME WARNER. by Marshall Runkel. What do Bugs Bunny, Batman and Steve Case have in common? They are all now brothers in the same corporate family. So you ask, "What's up with that, Doc?" From CNN to BMX Business News, Dancer in the Dark to The Sopranos, old-school publications like Time to new-school rap and roll, AOL Time Warner has now got it all. |
| YOUTH MEDIA: THE POLITICS OF SELF-EXPRESSION. by Twilight Greenaway. Much of today's youth media stems from a long tradition of DIY (Do-it-Yourself). Look at the zines of the 1980s and '90s. These self-published, cut-and-paste tracts took young people's sense of expression to a new level |
| PUBLIC BROADCASTING FOR PROFIT ON SATELLITE RADIO. by Ben Clarke. National Public Radio (NPR), Public Radio International (PRI), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and the hundreds of public TV and radio stations across the U.S. are the institutions which, in aggregate, are known as public radio and television. |
| TENANT ACTIVISTS WIN MARKET STREET BUILDING, MEDIA YAWNS. by Randy Shaw. Media coverage of the recent victory of the Grant Building Tenants Association (GBTA) once again shows how the media can diminish the role of grassroots activism in shaping the world. |
| ANTI-REPARATIONS ADS BUILD RIGHT-WING MOVEMEMENT. by Bill Berkowitz. As the smoke cleared from David Horowitz's recent carpet-bombing of the issue of reparations for African Americans, he sought safe harbor in the First Amendment and then claimed that his attack was prompted by a desire to prevent African Americans from becoming targets of resentment over reparations. Sounds like the old Vietnam War saw about "bombing the village to save it." What's up with this Master of Mean, Prince of Conservative Politics? |
| 25 YEARS: MA EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS COVER THE DECADES. by Rich Yurman. The accomplishments, crises, and controversies that make up Media Alliance's 25-year history are reflected in its eight very different executive directors. I thought it would be a fitting part of MA's silver jubilee celebration to tap into their memories. |
| NORTH AMERICANSTREET NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION. by Challa Tabeson. 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. |
| GLOBAL MEDIA GIANTS LOBBY TO PRIVATIZE ENTIRE BROADCAST SPECTRUM. by Jeremy Rifkin. 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. |
| WATT'S UP? BEHIND THE MEDIA'S COVERAGE OF THE ENERGY CRISIS. by Andrea Buffa. 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. |
| UNDERMINING EFFECTIVE REPORTING: NEW FCC PROPOSALS. by Jeffrey Chester. 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. |
| COLOMBIAN JOURNALISTS UNDER ATTACK BY PARAMILITARIES. by Frank Smyth. 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. |
| MEDIA JUSTICE, by Makani Themba-Nixon. 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. |
| MEDIA DEMOCRACY: PACIFICA VICTORY LAYS GROUNDWORK FOR MOVEMENT. by Juan Gonzalez. 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. |
| INTERVIEW: LINDA FOLEY, PRESIDENT NEWSPAPER GUILD. by David Bacon. 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. |
| STAYING HOME TO ORGANIZE THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR INFORMATION JUSTICE. By Dorothy Kidd. 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. |
| PALESTINIAN MEDIA BULLDOZED. by Cherine Badawi. 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." |