The People's Media Reaches More People Than FOX Does
Radio
As I’ve learned from the past dozen years of on-air experience, radio can be a very democratic little box‹in part because it’s ubiquitous (in our bedrooms, cars, showers, etc.), and also because people tend to hear what’s said on radio, as opposed to TV, where they get an image but don’t much follow the story being told. The bad news is that the radio dial is fast being bought up by Clear Channel and a couple of other conglomerates. The good news, however, is that we still have hundreds of extremely important stations in our hands, beaming out a steady progressive message to millions every day.
Since 1993, my own two-minute radio commentaries (“little pops of populism,” we call them) have aired every weekday, now being heard on a mix of 130 commercial and community stations coast to coast, plus Alaska, Hawaii, and - get this - Armed Forces Radio, as well as on the web (www.jimhightower.com). But I’m the least of it. From Amy Goodman’s sassy Democracy Now to Working Assets Radio with Laura Flanders, from New Dimensions to Latino USA, from Counterspin to RadioNation, from ACORN Radio to Alternative Radio with David Barsamian, from Media Matters with Bob McChesney to The World - there’s a wealth of national and local broadcasters putting forth progressive issues and insights every day.
Because of the corporate bias of its owners, commercial radio is the hardest nut to crack, but we have such voices as Enid Goldstein at KNRC in Denver, Sly Sylvester on WTDY in Madison, and Mitch Albom on WJR in Detroit. And now, Air America is making a bold play to bring 17 hours a day of progressive talk radio through its burgeoning network, broadcasting such live-wire hosts as Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, Randi Rhodes, Chuck D, and Rachel Maddow. This brand-new upstart is already in 15 cities, and is drawing millions more listeners each day on the web (www.airamericaradio.com).
Then there are our community owned stations. Many people assume that these are little one-watt nothings, but that’s nonsense. Indeed, some are powerhouse blasters in big cities, such as the Pacifica Network’s five flagship stations in Berkeley, New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Houston. Pacifica’s KPFK in LA, for example, is 110,000 watts, reaching from San Diego to Santa Barbara and stretching inland to San Bernardino. Likewise, the independent community station WMNF in Tampa is a 70,000- watt treasure that reaches from Sarasota on the Gulf Coast almost to Orlando in the middle of the state.
Even the small-town community broadcasters pack a punch. WERU in Blue Hill, Maine (pop. 700), for example, reaches clear to the state capital in Augusta and is a beloved rallying point for the whole Penobscot Bay area (“We-are-you” is how the station pronounces its call letters). The same with KAOS in Olympia, KBOO in Portland, KGNU in Boulder, and so many more‹people don’t just tune in, they count on these stations, trust them in a way no one would trust Clear Channel, and are willing to act on the information they receive.
The web
A democratic tool that Jefferson, Madison, and the other Bill of Righters could not have imagined, but would gleefully embrace today, is the world wide web. This computerized architecture of interconnected hubs and spokes allows us to link our thoughts and actions instantly in virtual space and produce tangible political results that would have taken months before.
Every progressive group (even Luddites like me) now has lively, interactive web sites through which we can share a gold mine of information, forge coalitions, hold “meetings,” and mobilize mass actions (from local to global).
The growth of the net is explosive - 68 billion emails per day, for example, and 10 million daily blogs by everyone from the kid next-door to famous pundits to me! MoveOn.org, TrueMajority.org, and the Howard Dean campaign have shown the phenomenal potential of the web, not only for fund-raising and blitzing Congress with citizen opinion, but especially for organizing people for action (a breakthrough that you’ll hear more about as the Lowdown itself develops a web-active program to link all of us Lowdowners into more grassroots civil action).
The web gives us the means to bypass the corporate media, creating our own low-cost, decentralized network of news that, say, The New York Times does not consider “fit to print.”
In addition to hundreds of specialized news sites, there are “aggregators” that amount to news services for progressive content - credible outfits like Alternet.org, TomPaine.com, Buzzflash.com, and CommonDreams.org
Some are creating their own virtual newspapers. Check out iBrattleboro.com. For more than a year now, this Vermont website lets the readers be the reporters on what’s really going on in town. Anyone can contribute, and anyone can comment on the contributions. In a town of 12,000, the virtual pages of iBrattleboro are getting 260,000 viewers a year.
Alternatives galore
If reading the daily press depresses you, get a lift by going beyond your “Daily Blather” newspaper to such spunky journals as The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, In These Times, American Prospect, Ms., Harper’s, and The Progressive Populist. Also, Utne rounds up articles every month from more than 2,000 alternative media sources. And two groups, the Independent Press Association (indypress.org) and the Alternative Press Center (altpress.org), give you access to magazines, newsletters, and ‘zines that cover every political and cultural issue imaginable.
Chances are your own town has one or more independent weekly newspapers offering detailed coverage of progressive issues and events that the monopoly dailies miss or avoid. The Association of Alternative Weeklies (aan.org) plugs you into 120 of these local voices that, collectively, reach 17 million readers a week. Even television, the feeblest member of our democracy’s media mob, is perking up a bit. PBS’s Now with Bill Moyers has been a blast of fresh air (though its direction is uncertain now that he has announced his retirement), and C-SPAN continues to do a great public service by simply clicking on its cameras and letting us see events without edits or editorializing. And you can forget the network news and go directly to The Daily Show for Jon Stewart’s irreverent, on-target satires, broadcast on Comedy Central.
Especially encouraging in TV-land are the insurgents of the air, including Free Speech TV and WorldLink TV, reaching a combined 20 million homes. Grassroots rebels are also making their own TV, thanks to Cable Access Television, available on some 600 public-access channels, as well as a feisty group of Independent Media Centers (indymedia.org) that are particularly good at streaming raw footage of protests and other actions, with their media activists taking their web-driven videocams right into the center of things, bringing you news as it happens.
Finally, don’t discount the power of face-to-face networks. On any given day, thousands of people are gathered in various-sized groupings to listen, learn, discuss, interact, strategize, and organize. These forums include the nation’s 2,200 independent bookstores, which are not merely book peddlers, but also community meeting places and informal bulletin boards (go to booksense.com to find ones near you). Public libraries, progressive speakers’ series, pot-luck suppers, conversation cafes and progressive festivals (Greenfest, Bioneers, Rolling Thunder, etc.) are also part of this vibrant, high-touch outreach that goes on daily in practically every city and neighborhood.
Years ago, my momma taught me that two wrongs don’t make a right - but I soon figured out that three left turns do. We must apply that same kind of street savvy if we’re ever to find our way around the media blockages that the corporate interests have put in place to shut out our voices.