Items tagged with "media reform"

In the last issue of MAIN, NAMAC co-director Helen De Michiel covered the National Conference for Media Reform, organized by Free Press in St. Louis this past May. After discussing the various clarion calls sounded at the conference, she observed that NAMAC’s own constituency seemed sparsely represented among the participants. She emphasized the imperative for NAMAC members to get involved in the burgeoning campaigns for media reform and media justice.

Since Free Press organized its first conference on media reform in November 2003, this new phase of a watchdog movement begun more than fifty years ago is recapturing the energies of journalists, politicians, and grassroots activists. Not only media professionals but ordinary citizens are paying closer attention and getting involved. They are alarmed at the harsh realities of partisan media in a period of Republican hegemony, war, and economic turmoil; they are frustrated at telecommunications policy that has gone unchecked; and they are concerned about a digital revolution that is restructuring reality yet is fueled by marketplace forces. Media is becoming an environmental issue that touches all sectors of society.