(Note: This post was re-edited on March 18th and updated March 21st) Editor & Publisher published the latest article by CMA co-founders Scott Sanders and James Owens. However, E&P; editors chose to change the original title in a way that we feel obscured the primary issue of the piece -- the understanding that control of public media is a social justice issue. Truthout republished the piece with the original title and so we are linking to that version here.

The article has been re-published or linked to by Danny Schechter's Mediachannel, The Center for Media Justice, Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net), Richard Prince's Journalisms, Business Week's Business Exchange???, Indigenous Peoples Literature Weblog - Dedicated to all peoples of the World, Black Agenda Report, Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media, Chicago Indymedia, Progressive Radio Network, Anarchism Today, and elsewhere. So without further ado --


A Neutral Network Alone Will Not Build a Just Media System for Us and Neither Will Professional Journalists: Control of Public Media as a Social Justice Issue - By Scott Sanders & James Owens

Media justice organizers at the Center for Media Justice and MAG-Net have recently produced a brilliant campaign plan (The Campaign for Universal Broadband) to win three policies crucial for just and democratic communication: Network Neutrality, Universal Broadband, and Universal Service Fund reform. Considering the renewed struggle required to win these goals, and to protect them afterwards, two questions seem particularly important. First, to win media access rights, social justice movements need media access. So, how do we get the kind of access that can allow us to succeed? Second, as Net Neutrality and Universal Broadband are not ends in themselves but rather the means to enable a just and democratic media system, who should produce that system? Open access to a media system controlled by the status quo will not provide the necessary means for disadvantaged communities and social justice movements to change power relations . . . (continue reading at Truthout)

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