CHICAGO MEDIA ACTION NEWSLETTER, January 4, 2004 http://www.chicagomediaaction.org (1) ANNOUNCEMENTS: UPCOMING EVENTS Chicago Media Action is organizing a public education forum for Martin Luther King Day weekend, to be held Sunday, January 18, 2004, 3pm-6pm, at the Chicago Temple (77 W. Washington). Admission is $5 or pay what you can. The forum is scheduled to include: * Commentary by radio talk show host Cliff Kelley and In These Times columnist Salim Muwakkil. * "At the River I Stand", a 56-minute documentary on Dr. King's last labor organizing movement. * A 23-minute excerpt from Dr. King's "Why I Oppose The War in Vietnam"--given April 4, 1967, one year to the day before his assassination. * An audience comment/discussion period for memebers of the community to voice their opinions and interact with our speakers. * A celebratory hearing/singing-along-to Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday To You" (the hit song Wonder wrote honoring Dr. King when Reagan was asked to sign the bill making Dr. King's birthday a federal holiday). More details to come in an upcoming alert, and on chicagomediaaction.org. Come hear Robert McChesney, author of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy" and a leader in the media reform movement, speak on "The Emerging Struggle for Control of the Media in the U.S." Tuesday, January 27, 7:30-9:00 pm, White Activity Center, North Central Colllege, Naperville, IL. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 630-637-5369. (2) WHAT'S HAPPENED LAST MONTH WITH CMA? * FCC chair Michael Powell gave a dinnertime talk before the Economic Club of Chicago on Thursday, December 18, 2003 at the Chicago Sheraton. Chicago Media Action organized a protest against Mr. Powell which brought some 20 attendees despite freezing cold and at least three events occurring at exactly the same time. The protest saw the debut of some media-and-protest-themed Christmas carols. More details at: http://www.chicagomediaaction.org/index.php?link=powell_xmas_protest * WTTW-TV Channel 11, Chicago's main PBS affiliate, held its bimontly meeting of its Community Advisory Board (CAB) on December 9, 2003. Four members of CMA attended the meeting and gave a 25 minute presentation of CMA's '4 demands' for fundamental WTTW reform. CABs are required by law for public funding. WTTW's CAB, like most around the nation, is carefully constructed and managed, making it very tough for reformers to work with. (The general poor and working class public that CMA is activating on media issues is much friendlier.) Before our "public comment" time, we saw the CAB vote down every recommendation to actually advise station management. (CAB gadfly Todd Wexman had proposed recommending that NOW with Bill Moyers be in Friday primetime, that local children's shows be produced, and that some new shows be based on ideas from CMA and environmentalists.) At the end we walked out when a CAB member said we were just wasting their time. CMA didn't expect to convert the CAB; we had only hoped to try it out and to find some allies there. Some members of WTTW's CAB did seek us out afterwards for future contacts. * CMA also made radio appearances on December 19 (on WZRD, 88.3 FM) and December 20 on Live From The Heartland (on WLUW, 88.7 FM). * On December 6, CMA co-presented (with Andersonville Neighbors for Peace and Chicago Filmmakers) the film "Plan Colombia: Cashing-In on the Drug War Failure" at Chicago Filmmakers. CMA moderated the post-film discussion. * And the CMA website underwent a substantial redesign: http://www.chicagomediaaction.org And don't forget our current rapid response campaign against WTTW-TV. To learn more and to take part, please visit: http://www.chicagomediaaction.org/index.php?link=rapid_response (3) WHAT'S HAPPENING IN MEDIA POLITICS? It was a slow month legislatively, as Congress adjourned for the year. But before adjourning, the House approved the Omnibus appropriations bill which includes the rigged 39% "compromise" on the national TV ownership cap. Read more here: http://www.mediareform.net/congress/updates.php?id=28 The media ownership fight will resume in January when Congress reconvenes. Meanwhile, the FCC controversially approved on December 22 (by the usual 3-2 vote) a $6.6 billion merger between Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and the DirecTV satellite television service. Read more about this dreadful development: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17447 Common Cause reports that the Bush Administration has awarded two major Republican donors seats on the nine-member board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Bush appointees Cheryl Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines and their families have given over $800,000 to Republican causes in recent years. Read more here: http://capwiz.com/afr/utr/1/LTYBCOPFVS/KRCECOTBKG (4) MEDIA FACTOID OF THE MONTH To quote from http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/htmlC/columbiabroa/columbiabroa.htm "In 1927, when David Sarnoff did not see fit to include any of talent agent Arthur Judson's clients in his roster of stars for the new NBC radio networks, Judson defiantly founded his own network---United Independent Broadcasters. Soon merged with the Columbia Phonograph Company, the network went on the air on 18 September 1927 as the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting Company." In 1929, that network was renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System--CBS. (5) MEDIA QUOTE OF THE MONTH "If knowledge is power, if the function of information is to modify or provide direction to action, then it is almost precisely true that TV news shows give nearly no information and even less knowledge. Except of course through their commercials. One can be told about Bounty, Braniff, and Burger King, and then do something in relation to them...Everything on a TV news show is arranged so that it is unnecessary, undesirable, and in any event, very difficult to attend to the sense of what is depicted." -- The late Neil Postman, in an essay published in The Nation magazine on TV news, reprinted in The Nation, October 27, 2003, pg. 7 (6) THIS MONTH'S WEBSITE http://www.thisishell.net Chuck Mertz hosts the weekly Evanston-based radio program, which airs on WNUR 89.3 FM on Saturday mornings. The website includes online archives of past shows and links to many informative essays and articles. (7) MORE ANNOUNCEMENTS The Chicago Independent Press Association will be having an Empowerment Meeting for the Chicago Independent Press. The meeting will be on Tuesday, January 13, 2004, 6:30-8:30 pm, at 1211 S. Western Ave., Chicago. The host will be Isaac Lewis, Editor and Publisher of the North Lawndale Community News. For more information, email jacklalleyipa@sbcglobal.net or call 773-973-4690. "News from the Underground" is a festival of autonomous media which will celebrate all the news and views that corporate interests marginalize, organized by the Chicago Independent Media Center and by Hasta Cuando. It'll take place January 16 at Women in the Director's Chair (941 W. Lawrence) and January 17 at Decima Musa, 1901 S. Loomis. For more information, contact Thomas Yun (312-505-0764, mayday@riseup.net) or Tracy Kurowski (312-282-6787, tracykurowski@postmark.net). Or visit http://chicago.indymedia.org for forthcoming details. The next CMA meeting will be on Tuesday, January 13, at 6:30pm, at 3411 W. Diversey (corner of Diversey and Kimball, near the Logan Square stop on the CTA Blue Line). All are invited. *** *** *** *** *** *** *** This is an email from Chicago Media Action, a Chicago activist group devoted to media issues. Chicago Media Action, P.O. 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