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Infrastructure and Principles for Independent Journalism |
Current rating: 0 |
by Danielle Chynoweth
(No verified email address) |
26 Feb 2006
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This is a presentation I am giving Sunday, February 26th in Lafayette, Indiana for "Exploring Contemporary Media Issues" |
PRESENTATION FOR
EXPLORING CONTEMPORARY MEDIA ISSUES
2:00-4:00pm West Lafayette Public Library, Indiana
INVITATION TO BE A STORYTELLER
Stories kill and stories save lives. That is what is at stake with who controls the means of storytelling and what stories get told.
We have been trained to be story consumers. When we share stories, it is usually the retelling of corporate-produced stories we have heard. We are alienated from our own stories and the stories of those in our community. Our experience of ourselves and others is literally media-ted by corporations who have a profit interest rather than a public interest.
I am part of the Independent Media movement to turn all of us - the story consumers - into story producers. This is the first step in taking control over our lives and our democracy. Our motto is: don't just hate the media, become the media.
I invite you to pick up a pen, a microphone, a camcorder, and start making the news you want to see.
Today I am going to share the story of our local independent media center and then I will share some of the distinguishing characteristics of independent media - some guiding principles for our reporting.
This entire talk is archived on www.ucimc.org so it can be referenced by you online.
URBANA INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER
I want to tell the story of our IMC because it provides an image of where I think we should be going. Media reform is a long battle. Independent media is a parallel structure we use to get stories out at the same time that we are working on spectrum reform, internet as a municipal utility, and insisting on public interest in broadcasting. To effectively proliferate independent media, basic infrastructure needs to be in place. We have spent 6 years rapidly building indymedia infrastructure in Urbana, Illinois.
Last year, after a local grassroots capital campaign, we purchased the downtown post office building and converted it into a community media and arts center. A community media and arts center is a place where people go to tell their version of the truth, to express themselves to their community, to witness the expressions of others, and to organize for social change.
The UC-IMC houses a low power radio station which broadcasts at 100 watts or the power of a light bulb to the entire community of 120,000. Women, men, and children built this station and hoisted the tower with their own hands just this past November after a 6 year battle with the FCC to allow the licensing of low power radio stations. Read more: www.prometheusradio.org.
We have production rooms with audio, video, and print workstations; a library of zines, magazines, and books from independent and small publishers. There are public access terminals and open access wireless in the library; a performance space that can hold 300-400 people. Independent media includes poetry, dance, music; and a 2500 square foot room for large gatherings, art shows, and perhaps a future coffeeshop and bookstore.
We collect book requests from prisoners and keep an extensive library to respond to their requests. We set up a 2,000 book library in the local jail where before there were 12 dime store novels with the covers ripped off.
We provide affordable studio space for a dozen artists
We house CUWiN, the leader in open source, open architecture wireless development. CUWiN has developed an open wireless network throughout downtown Urbana. We provide workshop and meeting space.
Oh and I can not forget the public costume closet which has started the silly hat club, catching on like wildfire throughout the nation.
The post office remains in a small portion of the building so the public comes through our front door every day to see people who look like them on the air. Postal customers are met by 15 foot tall flowers and birds flying overhead.
From this base we have built, we have been able to help other IMC's grow such as NYC, DC, Nigeria, and Baghdad.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
Independent
We do not answer to corporations, advertisers, lobbyists, or government.
Opinionated, Fair, and Accurate
Every story has a point of view. Indymedia replaces the ruse of objectivity - which is so often used as a smokescreen for bias - with the values of fairness, honesty, accuracy, and opinion, to cite Amy Goodman's media credo. Good journalism does not claim objectivity, but is in hot pursuit of the "best available version of the truth.” By becoming a venue for subjectivity, we become a venue for suppressed stories. In indymedia, the subject wrestles the microphone away from an “objectivity” that hides blood on its hands. Are not afraid to take a stand or provide opinion or analysis with more factual information.
Local Local Local
Our local media has been gutted. People are least aware of this because their main source of information is the same source wanting them to continue to think that local news is local. Most of the story viruses infecting your brain come from storytelling factories out of Maryland, New York, anywhere but your home town. What we need is a fleet of amateur hero journalists - aka you and me to investigate and tell the stories that are not being told. Campus activists are focused on Darfur, Coca cola, sweatshops, fair trade coffee, progressives are focused on the war. Yes, it is important to understand ourselves in as part of a global community. But too often the local stories, where we can have the most influence, are ignored.
Go to where the Silences are
This is Amy Goodman's motto. This requires that we watch for the holes in the mainstream news, take stories that walk in off the street, and connect ourselves tightly to the underrepresented voices. On WRFU, we currently have shows run by homeless folks and children.
Participation not Just Information - Change not Just Outrage
Independent, community media has the obligation to give its audience information on issues that affect their lives then gives them the tools to make change. When we sit around our editorial table discussing this week's stories, we ask ourselves "is this something people can change? What are the levers of change and how can we show them?" Unlike the mainstream news, we report on issues before key decisions are made, not just after. Children being kidnapped in another state - brutal murders in another country, are not news.
"Experts" are those Directly Affected, not Just Decision Makers
Report on Organization not Individuals as Social Change Agents
The mainstream news, as a principle, hides the social movements behind social change. They tend to focus on individual heroes - like Rosa Parks who just happened to one day refuse to go to the back of the bus - instead of the movements behind historical progress - such as the civil rights organizations who planned Rosa Parks refusal and organized the movement support needed after that action.
Focus on the System and Perpetrators, not just Victims
Everyone loves a story about a victim. When we read about the homeless, it makes us feel thankful for what we have and reinforces our resolve to stay employed. When we read about a rape, it makes us check our doors and not walk alone at night. It does not help us change the system whose regular, predictable output is homelessness or rape. Indymedia must uncover the mechanisms of the systems whose normal, predictable outcomes are treated as shocking anomalies by the mainstream media.
In the interests of time, I will stop there.
I want to invite each and every one of you to hop over to Urbana for a visit, to host a radio show - once a week or once a month - or consider an internship. Please take a copy of the public i, our monthly publication, on your way out.
Thank you. |
This work licensed under a
Creative Commons license |
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Righty reasonings without having done the homework |
by pat n
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Feb 2006
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Jack,
You haven't replyied my counter arguments on climate change and global warming at madison.indymedia for a long time. I don't mind ... I'd rather not see your righty reasonings without having done the homework anyway. |
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Re: Infrastructure and Principles for Independent Journalism |
by Just A Reader
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
27 Feb 2006
|
News stories should not be opionated. Of course, this is hard to deal when the reporter has hands on experience with the raw emotions in any given situation, but none the less, journalism should be based entirely upon the facts of the situation.
This is why the average news consumer is tired of corporate media. Conservatives run around saying that there's liberal bias, and the liberals do the same. True media reform would involve getting back to facts and getting away from opinion and spin. But, cut and dried reporting of any given event doesn't sell to well....for currency or not. |
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Re: Infrastructure and Principles for Independent Journalism |
by Just A Reader
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
13 Mar 2006
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No answers. Should have figured. Of course, knowing Chynoweth's status on the city council one shouldn't expect answer.....
Trolling...no. Expecting ones representitives to give an answer....priceless..... |
