Independent media

A multilingual, global collaborative Internet site devoted to recording research on and connections with alternative, radical, citizens, Community, independent, militant, autonomous, media throughout the world. 

Do you want to use multimedia, online or offline tools to advance your cause?   Creatively and effectively? To reach the broadest possible audience?

Do you want to create and distribute audio programmes, comic books, posters and newsletters? Set up a website or a blog to champion your issue?

Tactical Tech's "Message in-a-box" is a set of strategic guides to using communications tools for social change, together with a suite of open source tools to get you making your own media. The toolkit is designed for small and medium-sized NGOs, advocates, and citizen journalists to help them create and distribute content for their advocacy efforts while exploring the constantly evolving world of campaigning and communications.

Reclaim the Media is pleased to announce the publication of a set of full-color media heroes trading cards recognizing the accomplishments of twenty-one praiseworthy journalists, media activists, and educators. The fun and informative cards are a fantastic teaching tool for students, or an exciting gift for friends, family or budding media activists.

The Media heroes being honored include historical figures such as legendary anti-lynching reporter Ida B. Wells, Newspaper Guild founder Heywood Broun, and Elias Boudinot, founder/editor of the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. Also recognized are contemporary media movers and shakers, including intrepid PBS producer Bill Moyers, Paper Tiger TV co-founder DeeDee Halleck, Puerto Rican community activist Richie Pérez, and others. Organizations or collaborations singled out for hero status include news program Democracy Now!, media watch group FAIR, and the Children's Television Workshop, creators of Sesame Street.

Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007

How the index was compiled

Paris, 16 October 2007

The Reporters Without Borders index
measures the state of press freedom in the world. It reflects the
degree of freedom that journalists and news organisations enjoy in each
country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure
respect for this freedom.

A score and a position is assigned to
each country in the final ranking. They are complementary indicators
that together assess the state of press freedom. A country can change
position from year to year even if its score stays the same, and
vice-versa.

This ranking reflects the situation
during a specific period. It is based solely on events between 1
September 2006 and 1 September 2007. It does not look at human rights
violations in general, just press freedom violations.

To compile this index, Reporters
Without Borders prepared a questionnaire with 50 criteria that assess
the state of press freedom in each country. It includes every kind of
violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders,
imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship,
confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment). Ánd it
includes the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these
press freedom violations.

It also measures the level of
self-censorship in each country and the ability of the media to
investigate and criticise. Financial pressure, which is increasingly
common, is also assessed and incorporated into the final score.

The questionnaire takes account of the
legal framework for the media (including penalties for press offences,
the existence of a state monopoly for certain kinds of media and how
the media are regulated) and the level of independence of the public
media. It also reflects violations of the free flow of information on
the Internet.

This is a directory
of media owned and operated primarily by, for and about women.
We do not include men's "women's magazines" (magazines
directed at women), even if they have a female staff. We do include
many academic periodicals which are published by institutions,
but only those where women determine content and make up the majority
of the staff. If a woman's media feels it fits our definition,
we usually include them.

In the 1970's and '80's, the Women's
Institute for Freedom of the Press published 15 annual editions
of the Directory of Women's Media. The National Council
for Research on Women, in New York, published two more editions
in the early 1990's. Now, once again, WIFP is publishing of the
directory of periodicals, publishers, media organizations, and
other media categories. It is available here on the WIFP website
with no access charge. Since we are continually updating the Directory,
please send us any new entries or changes so we can immediately
include them. We want the Directory to be as accurate and
as inclusive as possible particularly when we produce our print
version of this Directory of Women's Media available.

During the last five years, no movement has had as great an impact
on progressive politics as the liberal blogosphere. Built from
grassroots anger over Democratic leadership support for the Iraq war in
2002, liberal bloggers have chastised party leaders who backed
President Bush, causing many prominent Democrats to reverse — and even
recant — their positions on the war. Just as impressively, the blog
voices on the left have played a critical role in pushing less visible issues
— like electronic voting machines, bankruptcy legislation and telephone
companies’ liability in wiretapping programs — into the mainstream.

The ultimate measure of this shift of influence came this summer,
when virtually every Democratic candidate for president attended the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, and skipped the annual convention of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council in Nashville.

But notwithstanding this stunning success, this week’s withdrawal by
John Edwards, coming a week after the departure of Dennis Kucinich,
means that both of the preferred presidential candidates of the liberal
blogosphere are now out of the race.

(see link for rest of article)

(excerpt) 4. Before you handle tapes or set up computers to catalogue
stuff, here are simple things you can do that will immediately add
years to the life of the media: Move materials on the windowsill in
the sun to the shade. Pile media in cool, dry spots. Put a pallet under
stuff on wet floors, and plan to move them to cool-and-dry soon. Move
stuff out of basements and attics and foul storerooms, even if it means
temporarily taking over the coolest, driest corner of the office. Tell
everyone (staff, board members, makers, families, the public) to spread
the word: Media materials like people-comfortable space. Let film
breathe easy; get it out of coffee cans or Tupperware. Give co-workers
the window on the sunny side of the building. Tell jokes while you move
stuff.

5. If the technology, material, and terms are not familiar to you, get help now. Help can be as close as us “old, weird film guys” (or our brethren, those “videots” sharing air at this NAMAC salon).

Find a knowledgeable older film or video maker who still has memory
(joke). (You do not have to fly me in to train you but I will consider
any offer this month from Italy or the Antilles.) Or find a media
teacher, local professor, or a retired Kodak, Sony, or Fuji rep with
enough years’ experience to have handled all these various materials.
Make a sample pile of strange items, and have her or him show you what
each tape, reel, gauge, or format is. Take a picture of each item, and
write down where it fits in the history of technology—film, audio, or
videotape.

The media landscape is dominated by massive corporations that, through
a history of mergers and acquisitions, have concentrated too much
control in too few hands. This leads to a lack of diversity of voices,
programming that is out of touch with local concerns and increasingly
commercial and homogenized news and entertainment. Further
consolidation will produce media in which only the powerful few will be
heard.

The chart below maps out the control the eight most concentrated giants
exert over all forms of news, entertainment and information.

Click on these links to view information on conglomerates that control:

• Television
• Radio
• Publishing and Newspapers