[IMC-US] personal reprtback for indy folks abouttheNationalCOnference on Med

[Kat Aaron]

I agree with deva on many levels. I think the corporate media is
garbage.  I think they do their job with tremendous effectiveness,
given that their job is to sell an audience to advertisers rather than
provide information (or even entertainment) to viewers  I think that
the tools that Indymedia has created are an important part of the
changes underway in the media world.

So lets agree on the Fuck the Corporate Media point. At the same time,
I think there's a really important distinction (already raised on this
list, recently by Mike & Ali in particular) between creating *open*
tools and having a media that's *accessible* and relevant to all
people, particularly those who historically have been excluded from
the mainstream media.  Creating open tools (like the tools of IMC)
doesn't neccessarily mean creating an open media.

I think its important to look at who in society is told that they have
a voice, that available resources are theirs to be used.  People of
color, women, working class people, queers - I could go on here, but
you get the idea - are not told that they have a voice, or that "open"
tools are for them.  It's not even neccesarily that anyone is saying
no, this isn't for you.  It's more like that you've been told in a
million subtle and not-so-subtle ways that your voice is lesser, that
your issues are less important, that your skills and abilities are
lesser.  And even if you know it's not true its hard to avoid
absorbing some of that message.  Of course, lots of people from all of
these groups say bump that and make media, and make social justice. 
And I'm not saying all white men have it easy.  Life's not that
simple.

What I am saying is that priviledge (race, class, gender, sexuality)
is deep, and it affects us in ways that we might not even be aware of.
 What is open to one person might seem really closed to another.  I
don't think it's enough to just create vehicles for people to make
media.  That has to happen in conjunction with organizing, with
outreach, with building alliances with media justice groups, with
doing trainings on community journalism that respect the different
ways that people might want to tell stories.

It's something we are struggling to address in the radio project I
work on in Brooklyn - can a group of relatively priviledged people
create something meaningfully open if the group forming the project is
different in race, class, or educational background than the people
the project ultimately seeks to work with?  Can an editorial team
that's mostly made up of people of similar race and educational
backgrounds truly understand and respect different storytelling
methods and goals?  I'm not saying that we're all locked into one
rigid perspective based on our backgrounds (cause that would be
fucking depressing as hell).  But it can be hard to take a step back
and think outside your own brain.  That's especially hard when shit is
urgent.  The need for change in this country, the world, and the media
feels (and is) pretty pressing, but I that's not a reason to put off
talking about how to create a really open, accessible, diverse media
that brings in the voices that aren't in this tent yet.    Sacrificing
inclusiveness for expediency seems a little self-defeating.

Yes, corporate media is bankrupt (not financially, unfortunately).  It
should not maintain its unfettered access to the public airwaves, our
airwaves.  But that "we" is something that was bothering me at the
media reform conference, and it's a slippery term.  If media activists
and media makers inside and outside IMC are going to push for reform,
or for a total takeback of the airwaves (my personal preference!), the
question to me is then what?  What sort of a media will replace the
corporate media, and who will be making it?  This new media, whether
it be IMC or something else, is only going to be as good as the
community ties behind it.  If we're making a new media, I don't want
to make a more left or more radical version of what we took down.  I
don't want a new media that's horizontally organized but still
under-represents people of color, women, immigrants, queers, etc.  I
know I'm not alone in that, even just based off the discussions in
this thread.

Argh, I can get so worked up about this.  Sorry, I didn't really mean
to rant, and I don't think that deva is coming from a super different
place than I am.  It's just important to me that if possible we keep
the conversations from the NCMR going about the
justice/democracy/reform issues, and think broadly about the openness
of IMC.  I hope that the conversation doesn't get subsumed under a
corporate-media-is-bullshit blanket.  Let's take that as a given and
work from there.

Finally, as a ps, I just watched the movie Network (1976, Faye
Dunaway, Robert Duvall, etc) about the television industry.  It's so
amazing and great and funny, and if you're in a fuck the corporate
media kinda mood (and I know you are!) then watch it.  And then email
me off list so we can talk about how great it is.  Actually, if you
tune in to the August Sound Coalition segment of this Friday's
Critical Mass Radio Network broadcast (www.criticalmassradio.net) you
will probably hear some speeches from the movie.  We're on 8-10 EST,
aka 5-7 PST, etc.

rock rock on.  
- Kat / New York