[Imc] IMC criteria
eric hiltner
akaphrates at hotmail.com
Mon Dec 18 21:29:30 UTC 2000
Criteria for evaluating IMC's progress by Peter Miller
We succeed when we:
* Produce media that others find useful and ensure that it’s widely viewed
on the website or through other of our own or already available media
outlets. "Others" include progressive community organizations, disempowered
individuals, activists, etc. "Useful" means that our productions help
achieve progressive goals.
* Produce media that is reproduced or broadcast in mainstream outlets such
as the News-Gazette, WILL radio, and other local and national outlets.
* Build a culturally and economically diverse organization.
* Sustain our organization by creating an environment that's inviting, open
and supportive to people who want to be heard and help others be heard.
<sum> Sustain our organization by distributing the work and not relying on a
small number of individuals for most of the effort.
Paul R. Criteria for Evaluation
Is it Accessible (can people outside the IMC read/hear/see it)?
Does it fulfill a need or information gaps?
Who is the intended audience?
Who is the actual audience?
Is the report/piece an end in itself-or does it stimulate a response? What
kind of response?
Who participated in the piece?
CRITERIA TO EVALUATE OUR WORK:
Can or Does the IMC Fulfill these desires?
-What we report on and how we report on it, helps to change policies
-Our reports elicit thinking
-Through the IMC, people who are usually represented in ways they don't
like, are able to represent themselves.
-By telling their own stories, people become empowered to participate in
the decision that affect their lives
-Reporting on events is linked conveniently to acting on those events.
-Our reports generate conversations that wouldn't happen otherwise.
-The IMC stitches together communities in Urbana that usually don't talk
or are unaware of each other.
-The IMC creates networks of social change activists.
-The IMC does not add to the flood of media information.
Laura Haber
Independent-not beholden to any commercial interest or content or choice of
stories
Looks at stories from new, interesting, challenging angles
Can be critical of status quo without being afraid of appearing biased
Not everything has to be fun and entertaining, looks at issues in depth and
critically, doesn't reduce things to sound bytes or infotainment, doesn't
rely on the usual official sources of information and perspectives -examines
how news is made by, affects and appears to groups and individuals who are
usually hidden from news-workers, people of color, women etc.
Can experiment w/ style and format-doesn’t have to hold to conventions of
news presentation
Can break down participant/observer distinction
Makes connections between issues given context-not isolated facts
Sarah Kanouse
"Standards" are, often used to codify bias and more assumptions beyond the
realm of debate.
The choice of what to turn into news is a political act more profound than
the "slant" of the news item produced.
I would like our criteria to be tactical-Does our work succeed in presenting
underrepresented subject matter/events in a manner convincing enough to
bring them into the public discourse?
What must we do to be convincing?
-Research
-Production values
-Presence/absence of opinion
-Presentation of conflicting information
Sascha M.
How to evaluate
-Clearly delimit facts, editorial content, opinion pieces, Meta editorial
commentary
"Facts" must be factual to some high standard
Editorial/opinion must be supported?
-Coverage should focus on local and underreported news
-The IMC should be explicit about its social justice agenda
-IMC news should empower both the objects of coverage &
Those "consuming" the coverage
-An open-forum should be maintained while paying particular attention not
to silence dialog through dominating discourse/discussion
-Devolution of hierarchy should be done as much as possible
1) Involvement of community in IMC
2) Availability of IMC product to the public at large.
Mike Lehman
Kate criteria/answers to which I hope the answers will be "yes."
Are we reporting news not reported elsewhere?
Are we reaching a broad audience and presenting news that is of interest to
people with a wide variety of political views?
Russ
-Readability
-No political science-jargon so first time reader can understand it
-Supported by studies or facts or clear that the piece is a commentary
-Variety of issues covered
-Issues covered in a timely manner
Molly Stenz
Quality of Good Journalism
1) Accurate (i.e. facts checked)
2) Well Researched & Informative
3 Represents a Diversity of Viewpoints
4) Avoids triteness & Cliches
5) Thorough & Encompass Subtlety & Nuance
-Brings up little-known facts/ideas/problems
-Sheds new light on existing story
Mark Enslin
1. Oppressors don't mind oppressing, but object to being called oppressors,
their objection comes from a sense that public notice of oppression would
interfere with oppression.
A primary criterion for evaluating IMC work is whether it interferes with
oppression by contributing to public notice.
2. Avoids appeal to truth and objectivity.
3. Lessen differences of power: lending voice to the voiceless.
4. Stories to expose links and patterns in a way that readers/hearers are
inspired and assisted in changing the status quo so exposed.
I would like to offer I.M.C. art of my weekly radio program to discuss in
depth any topic discussed on the Monday night program. Perhaps this is a top
too complex to fit into that program.
WEFT
Tues Morn Express (6-9AM)
Ed Mandel
3351 8120
Nancy
-Ease of understanding
-(Explain background facts: not written at Ph.D. level)
-Give an alternative viewpoint; more liberal views than mainstream press
where needed
-Cover topics that may not be adequately covered in media
Brent McDonald
That we provide local and regional, non-commercial news that involves
perspectives of the community (biased or unbiased).
I feel that we especially have a responsibility to make public-raise to the
panel so to speak-issues that represent less privileged and minority groups
in the community (social, ecological, political, etc)
I do not; however, wish to see IMC become an arm for leftist propaganda
(publications).
Paul Kaiser
buddy1 at advancenet.net 351 8149 home 359 7099 work
1. Facts from both sides i.e. If present a fact from side A, be sure to
present the opposing fact from side B, or say they have no facts for their
side. I see this as important for being a credible news source, as people
may scrutinize our work and be actively looking for us to "conveniently"
leave facts out from the other side.
I am specifically talking about facts, though not opinions.
2. No racial slant
3. No economic level slant
4. No sex slant
5. Local/Regional Interest (What is "local" though?)
6. Affects people in ways of: (relevance)
-Living environment (housing, ecology) etc
-Working conditions (labor)
-Civil rights (person rights, choice, etc.)
-Political influence
- Education (availability, cost, quality of, etc.)
If you have questions about what I mean by any of these, so you can rephrase
them, please let me know
Bob Cook
Whether the media produced reaches a wider audience than simply those folks
in the Indy Media Center
Whether the media produced contains within itself enough "background"
"foundational" material to place it (for an otherwise "hostile" or
"un-informed" audience) easily into contexts that "make sense". (for those
audiences).
Whether the media produced focuses on local issues, with an eye towards
connecting these tissues to a global context (specifically the global
consequences of these issues).
Brian Hagy
Criteria for evaluation:
Useful
1) People ask us for info (in addition to our offering info)
2) People (not IMC) do something with the info (talk, protest, change,
refute, etc)
3 More people give us info (become homemade info givers) housewives,
unemployeds, children, blue collars, white collars, business people, become
reporters.
Not Useful
1) No one notices/responds to our presence
2) Or info is one-sided (progressive or leftist, or green, etc)
3) No community dialogues, no input from or output to the neighbors
Criteria for evaluating our Media
-Does it conveys the message we want it to convey? ex. A non-biased report
of X, or an article to convince people of X
-Is there a purpose?
-Is it readable? Does it use language, which privileges only few to be able
to read it?
-What does it leave the reader thinking? Moods, thoughts, ideas?
Criteria for Evaluating Media
-To what extent does give a comprehensive view of what happened
-To what extent does it represent a perspective of All Needs Met or
progressive/radical/anti-authoritarian ideas and actions, that is to what
extent does it increase our alternatives?
This is part of the care package that my group compiled for the IMC.
they happen to be criteria for evaluation of media.
1. News is generated so tht the system that makes the issue a reality is
exposed.
2. Stories are reported so that the issues connect to current larger socail
trends. This included recognizing how the local issue pertains on a global
level, and how a global structure creates a local issue.
3. The story creates the conditions for a dialog. Teh dialog may take place
in the text by asking questions, questioning assumptions, assessing many
angles to the story, and/or sparking interest in teh reader so that they are
inspired to create a dialog with someone else.
4. New includes proposals for how the reader can process the information and
participate in solving the issue.
5. Personal connections are created between the reader and the text so that
the reader may understand or relate to the new that is being reported.
6. Different perspectives are represented.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*INDEPENDENT
Corporate media outlets distort information in favor of their
owner-class and in favor of a status quo which distorts the power of that
owner-class by keeping power away from billions of people. Corporate media
perpetrates this distortion in part by contextualizing its content as
nothing more than the bait on the hook--"the hook" being commercial
advertisement, which is designed to distort people's perception of their own
needs in order to stimulate consumption, which in turn generates profit,
which in turn distorts the allocation of resources, which in turn distorts
the distrobution of power.
Independent media UNDISTORTS. It does so by spotlighting sequestered
information, by seeking out the side of the story which was not told, and by
contradicting the myths, misconceptions, and lies which corporate media
spread. As it undistorts, indymedia acts as a catalyst for equalization of
power distrobution, for the reduction of coercion and oppression, for the
meeting of human needs, and for the freedom to think and express ideas.
*MEDIA (I have set this portion up in the medium of "newspoem," in the
hopes that it will be read several times, and slowly--and also, to provide
an example of what I mean.)
"Media" is plural.
("Indymedia" is singular.)
Indymedia works
in every medium
its makers can imagine,
in order best to convey
undistortions
to information,
technologies,
cultural content,
and, ultimately, society.
*CENTER
A center is the point upon which the whole can balance. A center is the
point around which the whole can rotate without wobbling or collapsing. A
center is accessible to all the parts of the whole and from all sides of the
whole. A center, once found or founded, serves as a focal point, providing
clarity (which is the opposite of distortion). A center is the bull's-eye,
the goal at which we aim.
--12/18/00 Paul Kotheimer
One may discriminate between an act, such as distorting, and the medium in
which that act becomes a repeatable action, such as distortion. as an
audible example, a sound system may be set up such that one sound comes into
the system, is transformed, and becomes an output of the system, another
sound. one could then tie the input to the output, by putting the
microphone beside the speaker, a single input generates a sequence of
outputs.
Furthermore, that sequence will continue, without regard to any further
inputs (more sounds as input only generate a louder, more distorted sound),
until there is a change of the system itself.
If your desire is to create an indymedia, rather than an indymedium, you may
consider, in regard to the medium in which that indymedia exists, whether
the medium which allows and perpetuates messages is desirable, and whether
the currently available medium will allow desireable messages to be
perpetuated, and whether it is desireable for the perpetuation to outlive
the speaker.
If the medium is desireable, then wanted and unwanted messages are in
conflict.
If the perpetuable and desireable messages are wanted, while undesirable and
wanted messages are perpetuated, then the wanted and unwanted messages are
in contradiction, instigating the invention of a new medium in which only
wanted and desireable messages are perpetuated.
If we desire a system in which a message cannot outlive, speak for, and take
responsability of the speaker, then we will invent a medium in which no
message is perpetuated.
A joke about centers.
When one speaks about a particular body and its center of gravity, the shape
of, and distribution of mass across, that body will determine one, only one,
and not more than one center of gravity. Once that center is determined,
there are infinite shapes of, and distributions of mass across, a body that
will generate that center.
ben
that's all for now
eric
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