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Spotlighting Real News
Click here for MediaChannel interviews in streaming video.
The reporting that's come out of this week's IMF protest not only proves
that the independent media can work together, it also highlights the
failings of the mainstream press, whose coverage is long on sensation
and short on context. An international audience still hungers for
satisfactory journalism.
It's fitting then that the Press Freedom
Conference and Project Censored
Awards, held April 12 and 13 at New York's Fordham University,
preceded such a high-profile demonstration. While many independent
journalists see their mission as to comfort the afflicted and afflict
the comfortable, the comfortable are working more effectively than ever
to avoid affliction.
To those who see the mainstream media around the world as owned and
operated by the comfortable, media cannot in their current condition
speak truth to power. As Project Censored's Robin Andersen, who sat on
the panel selecting this year's top 25 censored news stories, said in
her opening remarks, "They've got vertical and horizontal monopolies.
They've got tight diversification and consolidation. They've got
synergy, cross-promotion and merchandizing. They've got theme parks,
Blockbusters, supra-narratives and cross-media promotions. They've got
product-plugging parent companies, newsmagazines, and mega mergers.
Viacom's got CBS, Time Warner's got AOL, and Disney's got ABC. Diane
Sawyer flirts with the sock-puppet from Pets.com because Disney bought
stock in the company."
But a funny thing happened for the independent media on its way toward
confronting its vertically-integrated aggressor: A torrid argument broke
out among the most fervent supporters of the alternative press. Pointed
questioning of Project Censored's relevance by Alternet's
Don Hazen — along with an even harsher critique from Mother
Jones magazine — brought on a red-hot response from Andersen
and Project
Censored, as well as some unexpected navel-gazing at the Press
Freedom conference.
This alt.media set-to functioned as an unofficial subtext of last week's
proceedings and seemed to inform the passionate outlining of publication
and dissemination strategies. MediaChannel asked some of the
accomplished media makers participating in the Press Freedom Conference
and Project Censored Awards about approaches to lifting real news out of
the margins and explanations of how the present environment came to be. From the notion of the independents co-opting big-media techniques of
manipulation and propaganda to the covert history of overt censorship,
the insights that sprang up from our informal salon are as strikingly
diverse as they are hopeful.
This Page: Getting the story heard.
Next Page: Independent journalists speak out on censorship.
- Donnell Alexander,
editor.
 To play the video below, download RealPlayer 7 Basic (free).
MediaChannel: What's the most effective way of getting important
stories out of the margins and into the spotlight?
David Barsamian, Alternative Radio:
Having the synergy, learning from what the corporate
media does well. So that if something appears on the MediaChannel, is
it refracted in Free Speech TV? Is it reflected in an Alternative Radio
Program? Can you
hear it on Pacifica? Is there an article in The Progressive? Are the
'zines talking about it? Are the kids talking about it? That's how you
create momentum, and that's how you create an electronic buzz. Click here for video!
Peter Arnett, veteran television correspondent:
The best route to get information known is basically to work through the
established media — it is, first of all, doing the investigative
reporting that is valuable — and then trying to get it into your
local or national media, lobbying for their attention. Primarily, we are
required to come up with the investigative report that is of great
value, and there are many magazines, cable television, ... lots of outlets
today that are mainstream or verging on the mainstream. And it is a
matter of lobbying them to get your information out there. Click here for video!
Manse Jacobi, Free Speech TV:
One tactic is to try to get the corporate media which
dominates our information dissemination to try to cover a story, but it
doesn't always work, because it's not in the interest of corporate media
to cover some stories. I think this is where the concept of guerilla
media, of tactical media — using different forms of spreading
information, either by printing pamphlets and going to people's doors
and giving them the pamphlets or sending messages to e-mail lists, sort
of net activism... or, media activism on the net.
Abby Scher, Dollars and Sense:
I think we can have major stories not be marginalized through
cooperation. Project Censored is a great form of cooperation because
they pick out stories that maybe didn't get a lot of play and then
repackage it into a book. And you can pick it up and say, "Wow, these
are great stories I didn't know about that passed me by." I think that
the progressive media can print and cover each other's stories. That
happens all of the time at Dollars and Sense, where radio and TV
interviewers call up all the time to interview our writers. Click here for video!
Mimi Rosenberg, WBAI:
I think one of the most representative of the forms of potential for us
defining the issues — and by 'us' I mean those of us who are
socially-minded, who are creating the issues in the forms of
social-protest analysis — is what happened in Seattle. There were
tens of thousands of hits on Web sites that were broadcasting
information directly from Seattle. That showed that, one, there's a
public who is desperately looking for alternative forms of information
and expression, and that they are willing to utilize alternative media
as a mechanism of doing that. Click here for video!
Next Page:
Independent journalists speak out on censorship.
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