Media Channel

1. What is MediaChannel?

MediaChannel is a media issues supersite, featuring media criticism, news, reports, resources, research and perspectives from hundreds of organizations and contributors worldwide.

2. Who does MediaChannel serve?

It is our hope that MediaChannel will be an essential bookmark for every media professional, student, activist, critic, academic, or policy maker interested in the state of the media internationally. But it is more than a site for specialists. The media are among the most influential forces in contemporary life, and the number of citizens concerned about the media is already high and continues to grow. MediaChannel is designed to engage citizens with their media and to attract a broad, general audience.

3. What distinguishes MediaChannel from other publications about media?

MediaChannel looks at structure and trends in media from an international perspective rather than focusing on personalities and corporate personnel shifts. It is about substance, not gossip. As a publisher of original news and opinion, and as an aggregator of content from hundreds of affiliated sites, MediaChannel offers a platform for provocative voices often unavailable through the mainstream media.

4. Why is MediaChannel relevant?

The media today are experiencing extensive and rapid change. Media conglomerates are merging into increasingly mammoth entities, in some cases more powerful than governments, with significant implications for the future of democracy; a recent poll showed that 65 percent of American journalists believe that journalism is in a state of crisis. At the same time, we are experiencing a revolution that empowers independent media, worldwide communication and innovative media projects affecting everything from community development to political action. Around the world, a growing number of organizations of media professionals, scholars and critics are focusing on these issues. MediaChannel brings these diverse groups together to focus on how media impacts all of our lives.

5. Where does MediaChannel get its information?

MediaChannel has hundreds of national and international affiliated sites, including media-watch groups, university journalism departments, professional organizations, anti-censorship monitors, trade publications and many others. Content on the Web site is drawn from this base of affiliated sites, which constitutes the deepest, highest quality database of media-related news and information on-line. Our editorial staff selects relevant material to highlight on MediaChannel; links from these summaries provide direct access to the complete, original articles. In addition, MediaChannel also publishes original news, reports and opinion from leading media professionals, journalists, scholars and critics. These articles are thoroughly fact-checked and held to the highest standards of journalistic accountability. The site draws on 90 advisors in 36 countries. Our advisory board includes prominent and experienced journalists such as Walter Cronkite; Tom Winship, former editor of the Boston Globe; and Les Brown, former TV editor of The New York Times.

6. What are MediaChannel’s criteria for choosing affiliates?

Being an affiliate means membership in a community of media-issues organizations. Affiliation does not mean the support of a single belief, but rather the mutual recognition of the value of a diversity of media sources and criticism. Our only criterion is that sites are engage media issues in a critical and insightful way.

7. Does MediaChannel have a political agenda?

No. MediaChannel is home for a wide variety of international perspectives. There is no unanimity of opinion among the Affiliated Sites, though many tend to agree on two broad positions: support for freedom of expression and the belief that media consumers are better served by a diverse array of media outlets than by a few.

8. Who are the financial supporters of MediaChannel?

MediaChannel is a not-for-profit project of two established foundations: the U.K.-based OneWorld, publishers of the leading international supersite about human rights and sustainable development issues, www.oneworld.net; and The Global Center, a New York-based foundation that supports independent media. MediaChannel has received support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Reebok Human Rights Foundation, the Arca Foundation and the Puffin Foundation, as well as grants from individual donors. Globalvision New Media maintains MediaChannel under the direction of the two foundations. Additional underwriting support has been provided by the ABB Group.

9. Who are the principals behind MediaChannel?

MediaChannel founder and executive editor Danny Schechter is also a founder and vice president/executive producer of Globalvision, Inc., an award-winning media company formed in l987. Mr. Schechter was a Nieman Fellow in journalism at Harvard University, and his work has been honored by Emmy awards, the Iris award, the George Polk Award, the Major Armstrong Award and the National Association of Black Journalists, among other recognitions. Rory O’Connor, co-founder and president of Globalvision, is also president of Globalvision New Media. Mr. O’Connor is a journalist whose work has received many awards, including a George Polk Award, a Writer’s Guild Award, two Emmy awards, an Iris award and a Cine Gold Eagle. (Click here for a full listing of MediaChannel staff.)