The forecast calls for brainstorms...

Posted by Mitchell - March 2, 2003 (entry 9)

At today's CMA meeting, I shared the following ideas (among many others) that I devised/found/stole for future directions on media activism. It would also be great if people not in CMA would take some or all of these ideas and run with them.

  • Satirical pro-media pro-ad rallies I got this idea listening to an interview on Media Matters with Jean Kilbourne, when they were repeating the line that the media give the people what they want. Bob McChesney then said that if they gave the people what they want, they'd get rid of all of the ads. You don't see, for example, huge rallies by everyday people demanding more ads. So let's hold a rally! Let's "demand" more ads! Let's "demand" more crappy TV programming! Let's "demand" greater media concentration. If such satire works for Billionaires for Bush and More, it's bound to work here.
  • Writing and performing a play about media politics I suspect that more people watch plays than read books. The matters of media concentration are well-expounded in plenty of well-written books, but I wonder how many people read them. These matters should be discussed in other media. I took a playwriting class as an undergraduate (at the same English department which gave us Arthur Miller :-/). So...how about a play about a corporate media lobbyist who owns all the politicians in Congress ("Death of a Lobbyist"?)
  • Documentary filmmaking This is inspired by my friends at the Guerrilla News Network, who make outstanding short films (what they term "news videos") with laptops and camcorders which a lot of people can afford. And there's an Academy Award for Documentary Short Film. :-)

More ideas to come.

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