To all --

Media-ocracy.com has published the second of two articles based on talks given at the USSF2010 workshop "Control of Public Media as a Social Justice Issue: Lessons from Latin America and the U.S." The workshop was organized by members of Chicago Media Action, La Voz de los de Abajo, Radios Populares, the Raices Collective of KUNM-FM, and the USSF International Soldarity Team. About 65 attendees of that workshop, including members of various media justice organizations, signed up to be a part of ongoing, expanded discussions about community control and media governance.

"Elite Control or Community Governance of Public Service Media: Which will it be?", by Scott Sanders, can be accessed here.

"We must first understand that the U.S. public media system has been purposefully and severely handicapped by the professional culture of journalism, and by corporate and government powers, and philanthropies, from the beginning. Only with this knowledge can we discover that the primary solution to this problem is not simply more money and technology for public media but rather the direct, democratic, community control of public media. Only with this knowledge can we take action to create a public media system that enables marginalized groups to speak to themselves and to wider audiences..." (more here).

Here is a link to general information about the workshop.

The first of the two articles "The Battle to Control Media Systems: The Culture of Professionalism Versus Cultures of Direct Participation", by James Owens, can be accessed here.

These articles support ongoing collaboration to help marginalized communities and grassroots social justice movements to wield media development in the service of social justice. As part of the effort of building relationships with movement based media, we are proud to work with Media-ocracy.com, an independent, non-commercial online journal committed to combating the entrenched media system and devoted to the study of mass media, public opinion, and social discourse.

Peace and praxis,

Scott Sanders and James Owens

Chicago Media Action

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