https://thenextsystem.org/learn/stories/next-system-media-urgent-necessity
October 12th, 2017
Movement Strategy & History Democratic Ownership
A personal introduction
In the interest of full transparency, this essay is personal. When it comes to journalism, I’ve been on a career-long search for an effective, sustainable alternative to corporate mono-speak. In all that time, regular people have never had more communications capacity than we have right now. But the goal of a functional, public media sphere remains as distant, if not more distant than ever, and the power gap separating poor from wealthy media grows more dangerous by the day.
I first thought of myself as a journalist on the day I saw a policeman shoot and kill an unarmed man in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in my early twenties. I had no credentials, no contract, no formal relationship to any media outlet, but I knew I was witnessing something important—and I was familiar with a community radio station in New York City that broadcast stories from non-professionals like myself. Indeed, listener-supported, bottom-up reporting, mostly by volunteers, was the business-model of Pacifica station, WBAI. Hours later (from a payphone), I called them up and filed my report.
The Gulf Crisis TV Project (1990-1991)
#51
How the war was been sold to the American people. Includes Laura Flanders, Undercurrents Radio; Noam Chomsky; Jeff Cohen, FAIR; Paul Zaloom, comic from Beekman’s World.
Run time 28:00
Transition Studies 