Media Alliance - A VOICE OF SANITYBy Andrea Buffa
Media Alliance is a 23-year-old nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting media workers and improving the diversity of voices and perspectives in the media. We offer classes in journalism and computer skills and media advocacy, run a media job listing service, and publish MediaFile, a Bay Area media review. We run the Raising Our Voices Training Program for homeless and low-income journalists, and Arts Online, an Internet and web training program for artists from marginalized communities. We hold regular events about controversial media issues--from CNN's firing of April Oliver and Jack Smith to Fox TV's firing of the journalists who exposed the dangers of the bovine growth hormone--and analyze media coverage of issues such as bilingual education, welfare, and U.S. policy toward Mexico.
Our interest in maintaining KPFA as an independent, progressive media institution (and wresting the Pacifica Foundation from the hands of its current board of directors) stems from our recognition that we -- the three thousand plus progressive journalists, political activists, community organizations, and others who make up the MA community -- cannot afford to lose the few broadcast media outlets that still exist outside the sphere of corporate influence. We realize that if we lose KPFA and the other Pacifica stations, there will be no place on the radio (until micro radio becomes a legal reality) where we will be able to hear about radical critiques of the political and economic establishment and about organizing efforts that seriously challenge the status quo. As my co-worker Ben Clarke says, if they get rid of KPFA, no one will hear about it when they come to get rid of us. As my colleague Van Jones says, we are not just fighting for the station that KPFA is but for the station it can become--a liberation station that can excite and inspire millions of ordinary people to fight for change on a revolutionary scale.
In the upcoming phase of the Pacifica struggle, Media Alliance has decided to set several goals for our work as an organization and to focus our energies on those goals. We developed the goals by consulting with a diversity of Pacifica-interested organizations and individuals and then coming to a consensus about which strategies we think make the most sense for MA to pursue and will be most effective at this time. Individual MA staff and board members also work on Pacifica-related projects initiated by other organizations. For example, MA’s Noelle Hanrahan participates in KPFA programming decisions as a member of the program council, and our administrative director Tracy Rosenberg works with the Coalition for a democratic Pacifica on democratizing the KPFA local advisory board.
Following are the areas toward which MA will dedicate staff time during the next six months:
- Continue our work doing media support/community education for KPFA and reformers within Pacifica. Since Nicole Sawaya was fired last April, MA has sent out close to fifty press releases and organized nearly a dozen press conferences on issues of concern to the Pacifica community. Our press releases have resulted in media coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, AP, San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, Houston Chronicle, NPR, and dozens of alternative and community media outlets throughout the United States. We forward all of our releases to the Save Pacifica and Free Pacifica websites and to several other email lists so that media activists stay abreast of developments throughout the network.
- Write a position paper on healthy radical radio stations. We feel that one thing that has been missing from this movement is a vision statement for the kind of radio station we would create if Pacifica allowed us the freedom to do so. We also feel the need to respond to the Pacifica five-year strategic plan, the vision document that Pacifica is using to guide its changes at the Pacifica radio stations. We will interview community leaders, political organizers, and radical radio programmers, and come up with a document which we will circulate among interested parties at all of the stations -- to encourage dialogue about community radio and help move forward a consensus on a vision for the reform forces within Pacifica.
- Support people organizing delegations to the next two Pacifica national board meetings. Media Alliance helped organize and participated in a 10-person delegation to the June 1999 Pacifica board meeting and organized a 40-person delegation to the October board meeting. Now that we have developed contacts in the other signal areas, we will mainly focus our efforts on people in the signal areas where the board meeting will be held. We will encourage them to attend the board meetings and pressure the board about issues such as censorship, democratization, and adherence to the Pacifica mission. We believe that without more participation and leadership from people on the East Coast, we will not be able to succeed in our fight against the board members--many of whom live in New York and Washington, DC. Therefore, MA will try to provide support and technical assistance to East Coast Pacifica reformers inside and outside of the stations.
- Revitalize the transformation process at KPFA. When Pacifica ordered the KPFA staff into the building, MA quickly pulled together staff and community members to come up with a plan to make sure that KPFA did not go back to business as usual. Community input needed to be included more in programming and decision-making at the station. Programming needed to reflect more of the diversity of voices, perspectives, and backgrounds of the Bay Area. Although some have argued that the transformation of KPFA should not be a priority until the network is safe, I would argue that we will not save the network unless we transform KPFA now. Many individuals who marched, got arrested, and slept out on the street to save KPFA are dissatisfied with the slow pace of the transformation of the station and lament the lack of radical political content on most of the shows. Unfortunately, those people have decided to spend their time working on other issues. We need those people if we want to keep KPFA safe. MA will work with KPFA staff and community organizers outside the station to move things forward again. This does not mean that we will attack the KPFA staff. A revitalized, re-politicized station could invigorate the staff at KPFA, who, everyone should know by now, manage to do their jobs in a bizarre and dysfunctional work environment. The management and board of the organization hate the station, try to set the workers against each other and the community, and do their best to bleed the station dry of money and staff.
If you are not already a member of Media Alliance, I encourage you to join our organization and to support our work. We think we’ve proven ourselves to be an effective media activist organization. We also hope that someday all of us who’ve been working to democratize and transform Pacifica can turn our considerable energies to democratizing and transforming the corporate media.
For more info on MA, see our website: www.media-alliance.org. Or come to our annual membership meeting and party on Wednesday, March 29, 6 PM, Cartoon Art Museum (down the hall from MA), 814 Mission Street (@4th Street), 2nd Floor, San Francisco. The speakers at the meeting will be Nicole Sawaya and Dan Coughlin.
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Andrea Buffa is the executive director of Media Alliance. Some of the above content reflects her personal views, not necessarily the views of MA as an organization.
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