Author: Sam Slesinger
On Saturday, March 21, local journalists, talk show personalities and interested mediaphiles congregated outside of Mosher hall for the Local Media for Social Change Southern California Regional Summit, organized by California Common Cause and the L.A. Media Reform Group. Occidental’s Urban and Environmental Policy Institute sponsored the event, in addition to 24 other organizations including The Center for Media Justice, Mashable.com and The Media and Democracy Coalition.
Summit attendees mingled on Mosher Patio and enjoyed the live music of folk ensemble Pushing Air before Common Cause volunteers ushered the crowd into Mosher 1 for the opening panel: How do local media help or hurt our communities and how can we participate in the affect social change?
Brave New Films founder Robert Greenwald prefaced the event via a pre-recorded video, as he is headed to Afghanistan for a new project. He encouraged viewers to participate in citizen journalism. “We have to make sure we are questioning, pushing, probing […] in socially responsible work,” he said.
Common Cause Organizer Jon Bartholomew introduced panel moderator and political analyst Tanya Acker, who has appeared frequently on CNN, MSNBC and FOX, among other networks. Acker then presented the panel members: widely published journalist and teacher Linda Milazzo, BradBlog founder Brad Friedman, syndicated columnist and Black commentator Anthony Samad and progressive radio host Mario Solis-Marich.
“I was at Fox News last night, so today is a little bit like breathing fresh air,” Acker said. She then posed her first question to the panel: what do you consider local media in this day and age?
“While we do have the technology to create strong local media, we don’t necessarily have the organization and funding,” Solis-Marich said.
“I am looking at the media now,” Milazzo said, looking at the audience.
“I see media as either relevant or irrelevant,” Samad said. “The irrelevant media is the gatekeeper, ideological, partisan media.”
Acker asked the panelists how they make themselves heard in credible way.
“My work is 99.99 percent online, it is a process of working very hard to tell the truth,” Milazzo said.
“We don’t need to be second-class citizens,” Friedman said. “Is it really that progressive media isn’t as popular? No, we are ghettoized, given the lowest frequencies to voice ourselves.”
Friedman’s remarks were met with enthusiastic applause.
Acker then asked the panel whether blogs were a credible resource for information, citing the frequency of easily disseminated misinformation about President Obama. The panelists countered that mainstream media should be held up to the same scrutiny.
“Rhetoric media promoted a culture of anti-intellectualism,” Samad said. “Over the past eight years the White House press threw softballs at the president for fear of having their press passes revoked, or never being called on.”
Friedman made a case that the airwaves are publicly owned, and allowing corporations to profit from this free resource is a form of “wingnut welfare.””We have to be careful about becoming a Wikipedia society,” Samad said.
During the presentation, Common Cause organizers solicited questions from the audience. Acker posed the final question to the panel, how do you respond to the idea that alternative media can foster a more divisive environment, where people only seek out information that affirms their beliefs, and no productive dialogue can be had?
“It’s not wise for us to stay in one playground,” Milazzo said.
Solis-Marich said “[It can be] good to preach to the choir [because it legitimizes a space for progressive thought].”
The panel concluded just past 12:30 p.m. to healthy applause, and the attendees once again convened outside of Mosher for lunch. The conference then split into six breakout sessions held in Mosher and Fowler Hall. The sessions included Citizen Journalism: U B The News hosted by L.A. Progressive’s Dick Price and Sharon Kyle; Getting Your Message Out: Using Social Media to Affect Social Change hosted by Vincent Jones; and Start Your Own Story: Youth Media in Los Angeles hosted by Sabina Khan and Amber Mobley.
At the Citizen Journalism breakout session, Price and Kyle presented the development of their website and vision. Price said that he seeks to affect social change by putting pressure on legislators, and that pressure is first aggregated from the content on L.A. Progressive.
Another round of breakout sessions was held from 3:00 to 4:15 p.m., and included Indigenous Media: Marginalization in the Media and Media Sovereignty hosted by Larry Smith, Marcus Lopez and Corey S. Dubin; and Internet Freedom: The Internet is for Us Too; a conversation amongst advocates about broadband, net neutrality and social justice hosted by Brandon Lacy Campos.
Following the breakout sessions, the attendees reconvened in Mosher 1 for the keynote speaker, talk radio host and community activist Dominique DiPrima.
A final reception was held following the keynote. Common Cause volunteer and lead organizer for the event Jim Rhyne said that the conference was a success, despite a small decline in attendence from last year
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“We’d be kidding ourselves if we said we solved all of these problems in an afternoon,” Rhyne said. “But we are working toward a more accountable media in all aspects. [One in which]we can watch the news without seeing Britney Spears.”
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