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Whose Media? Our Media!Media Justice: A Media for the PeopleNegative, demeaning imagery. Media that renders us invisible. Too little funding and too few outlets from which to tell our stories. The connections between media - its form, content, and who owns it - is inextricably tied to issues of social justice, power, and equity. Whether it is the criminalization of youth to the War in Iraq, the corporate media has been effective mouthpiece for corporate interests and has blocked dialogue and debate on our publicly owned airways. Communication is a human right. Yet, our communities are denied this fundamental right every day. And it will not change until we hold the institutions, both public and private, to a higher standard of accountability that ensures that mass media truly belongs to the masses of the people. As Media Justice organizers, we are part of a long legacy of struggle for a fair and just mass media. From the courageous organizers who stood up for fair television coverage in the 1960s, to the thousands who marched, protested and sat in to challenge media concentration among white owners, people of color are a vital part of the struggle for a free media. Today, Media Justice organizers struggle with how to build meaningful participation from communities of color and indigenous communities to take back this important right, to take back our airways, networks, and cultural spaces. We aim to fundamentally change up the structure, language, and discourse on media within our communities, so that communities who are directly affected can own the movement and the vision behind Media Justice. Why Media Justice? Media Justice speaks to the need to go beyond creating greater access to the same old media structure. We are interested in more than access, more than rights, more than taking up space in one more cyber car along the corporate information highway. Media Justice takes into account history, culture, privilege and power. We seek new relationships with media and a new vision for its control, access, and structure. And we understand that this will require new policies, new systems that treat our airways and our communities as more than markets. Similar to the Environmental Justice Movement, the organizing body of the Media Justice summit felt that communities of color, indigenous communities, and other working class communities in the U.S. needed to stake out a different space within and apart from the larger media democracy movement in order to better address differences in the focus and approach to our media organizing. At the heart of this approach is a rigorous race, class, and gender analysis. We were not content to have these issues relegated to one panel or one segment in a very different mainstream discussion. We need our own space so that OUR communities who are directly affected can forge a movement and vision for this work grounded in their own reality. Join the Movement! The Media Justice Organizing Committee is eager to grow the circle of folks excited about media justice. If you are interested in learning more please contact the following folks below. Media Justice is a concrete step toward us taking back
our institutions and building the world we want. Let's do this!
To Find out how you can get involved please email us at
info|AT| mediajustice.org
THE MEDIA JUSTICE NETWORK IS COMPRISED OF THE FOLLOWING ANCHOR
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