sd indymedia, prometheus radio project, rAsD | 21.02.2005 00:00

From October 6th-9th, as the National Association of Broadcasters was
holding their annual Radio Road Show in San Diego, a group of media
activists converged to try to illuminate what is wrong with the corporate
media and to strengthen independent, community autonomous media. This
convergence was called the Media emergenC, highlighting the two themes of
emergency and emergence. With 4 days of talks, film screenings, marches,
panels, forums and independent media making, the media activists, mostly
composed of members of San Diego Indymedia and radioActive sanDiego, but
including media makers from as far away as New York and Philadelphia,
tried to confront the NAB as had been done in many other cities, but also
to challenge the independent media movement and push it forward.

We've written this self-critical document in the hope of creating more
critical dialogue within the Indymedia community and the independent media
movement. It is our hope that people will read this, give us feedback and
make more documents like this critiquing their own events and actions and
circulate those for discussion as well. We hope that this can be read and
discussed at the upcoming Indyconference in Texas this month
( http://www.indyconference.org/).

Towards a Critical Analysis of Media EmergenC
======================================

Introduction
-----------------

From October 6th-9th, as the National Association of Broadcasters was
holding their annual Radio Road Show in San Diego, a group of media
activists converged to try to illuminate what is wrong with the corporate
media and to strengthen independent, community autonomous media. This
convergence was called the Media emergenC, highlighting the two themes of
emergency and emergence. With 4 days of talks, film screenings, marches,
panels, forums and independent media making, the media activists, mostly
composed of members of San Diego Indymedia and radioActive sanDiego, but
including media makers from as far away as New York and Philadelphia,
tried to confront the NAB as had been done in many other cities, but also
to challenge the independent media movement and push it forward. For an overview of the events, see:
 http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/106129.shtml


Independent Media Coverage
------------------------------------------

The Prometheus Radio Project, after trying out a community reporter
program at the Philadelphia NAB Radio Show in 2003, was eager to take
this program to San Diego in 2004. Prometheus secured local reporters in
Philadelphia, as well as some community reporters who'd be coming in from
the Chesapeake Bay, and others from Baltimore, NAB press passes.
Community radio stations, primarily Low Power FM stations all over the country, provided the press credentials to these reporters. Then, these reporters collected audio inside the NAB convention, which would otherwise cost between $400-$700 for entry. This audio was processed into headlines,
print articles, and longer audio pieces for some of these stations.

The same stations, for the most part, provided credentials to local San
Diego reporters, as well as reporters flying in from New York (!) and
other exotic places. These reporters went into the NAB in San Diego, and
collected a wide variety of audio for production.

What were the goals here? First, to form relationships between community
reporters and community radio stations all across the country. It was
originally a hope of Prometheus and some of the participating stations
that these reporters and their contacts at the home stations might decide
to work together in the future, and provide regional/beat reporting to the
local stations even from far away. This ties in to the larger goal of
networking stations to other stations more effectively, and sharing
content/beats.

Second, to get representatives of independent media into workshops and
forums where they almost never go. The National Association of
Broadcasters is a very closed organization, and its behaviors have a
great impact on community media and its ability to proliferate (ex. the
LPFM expansion). If our reporters can hear about the planned strategies
of the corporate media, and bring them to the stations who might suffer
the impact, or those community members who might want to fight for more
accesses, then we've succeeded in really penetrating the NAB.

Third, to teach ourselves audio production, and try to bring new
community producers into the larger stream (Free Speech Radio News,
Critical Mass Radio, Indymedia audio). New blood!

Fourth, to form relationships between reporters. New allies and friends!

Fifth, to create finished pieces that told the story of NAB resistance, in
a fashion that could be widely distributed amongst a wide variety of
radio stations and communities. Mixed between resistance outside, the
counter-conference, and reporting inside.

How many of these goals were met?

Were relationships between reporters and stations made? Nope, not
really. We didn't turn in most of the audio, because we didn't finish
producing much in SD and followup work wasn't kept up after the
convergence.

Did we get representatives into the NAB? Yes. And they asked amazing
questions of people who everyday community radio folks never get to
engage, like head counsel of the FCC, John Cody, and John Hogan, the
president of Clear Channel. And they were present as community radio
stations, showing themselves to this community of commercial broadcasters,
large and small. That simple visibility makes a difference when the
community of the NAB is using its girth to affect regulations at the FCC.
If they, even for a moment, remember the motley crew inside the NAB,
asking challenging but well-thought out and responsible questions, then
that might make a difference. (This is not a radical analysis, rather it
is grounded in changing the NAB and its constituents from the inside... we
are, however, interested in working on and discussing radical analysis)

Did we learn audio production? I think so, to a large extent. But in San
Diego we hadn't prepared an editing lab that made it easy for reporters to
edit their sound. We didn't even prepare enough to have the right
minidisk recorders for all the community reporters -- some folks were
relying on little cassette recorders. Arrgh! We didn't prep the mass
production studio necessary for this kind of effort. Next time we must:
a) Pick a few local folks to prep and organize a studio. Buying/securing
computers that have enough memory for editing, and can also do file
transfers of finished and raw audio. b) Prepping the reporters so they
have a sound recorder that will actually transfer files cleanly to the
editing machines. c) Getting a few volunteers around the production studio
at all times to help folks out. d) Giving folks examples of good pieces to
hear ahead of time, for ideas on structure. e) Community handbooks with
tips on using Audacity/minidisks/etc f) Always having cables for transfer
around. g) Loaner/purchase of good mics. h) Some strict deadlines/time
budgeted into the schedule for production, rather than more gathering, or
partying, or protesting. There's nothing like the feeling of a finished
piece to encourage a reporter to produce again. i) Good followup to
encourage finishing pieces that remain undone after the end of the
convergence.

Did we form relationships between reporters who weren't previously
working together on projects? Hells yeah!

Did we create finished pieces? Again, no. Any future convergence, as
I've already mentioned, should include more of a focus on production and
the importance and pride of completed production/training of new
volunteers. We did, however, half-finish one audio piece that can be found
here:  http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/02/3652.php

There were a few finished pieces produced by members of Free Radio Santa
Cruz, and one of these was broadcast on Free Speech Radio News. The Free
Radio Santa Cruz members did not have press passes to get into the
official NAB event though. Their pieces were entirely about the Media
emergenC events.

One success of the independent coverage of the Media emergenC was the live radio production. Throughout all 4 days of the conference, radioActive
sanDiego did interviews with people around the country on the topic of
media consolidation and independent media. These interviews ranged from
Michael Albert to Conglomco to the Arab-American Anti Discrimination
Committee. In addition, the conference itself was broadcast live on
radioActive sanDiego and was picked up and rebroadcast by a local pirate
radio station, 106.9fm. In addition, people at the street actions were
able to call in their live reports and share their experiences with
listeners. For example, see
 http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/106125.shtml

Street Actions
-------------------

There was one main street action. This was a march from the NBC building
downtown to the steps of the awards ceremony for the NAB. On the lawn in
front of the NAB awards ceremony, we deployed a sound system and staged a
mock awards ceremony. The march and theatre went well, with over 100
people in attendance who were all very enthusiastic. Nevertheless, in the
end, the Media emergenC received little corporate media coverage. This
could've been helped by having more direct action.

Here it seems like one of the major problems was just a lack of serious
dedicated people towards getting our message out in the media. Three
organizers worked on press releases a lot, but only Hannah from Prometheus
did any follow up work. I think that what has to be done to really get the
story in the media is to have a whole media team of a few people on the
phone with the corporate media all the time. It’s a traditional attitude
of indymedia folks to not want to work with the corporate media at all.
It’s often decried as counter-revolutionary by some folks. But I think
that its just another part of the resistance. As long as we have this huge
system around us, we have to work within it to fight it, like buying PVC
for lock-downs. But PVC can be stolen, some might say, but we have not
done any serious work on the issue of how to steal the audience of the
corporate media. I've heard of some people claiming to do mini pirate
broadcasts that take over corporate frequencies, but never heard of it
materializing.

Conference
----------------

Were there too many traditional critiques and not enough anarchist, or
more radical critiques?

We did not have enough discussion of anarchist critiques; subverting the
media hierarchy should have been a more prominent focus. It seems like
here, we were just running up against some of the limitations of
indymedia being unassociated with any explicit politics. While it could be
an opportunity to move beyond more traditional theories of revolutionary
change, in fact it seems more like a bunch of people who have their own
theories (communist, marxist, anarchist, etc) who simply don't agree.
There are lots of widely varying political philosophies in our own imc, so
to say "lets make this more anti-authoritarian" might not work. Is the
indymedia principle of "organizing using anti-authoritarian methods"
enough? Do we ever use the space of indymedia to consciously move beyond
traditional political organizing strategies?

Did we show that there's a growing indymedia movement and did we move that forward?

Again this seems like a problem created by our scheme of bringing big name
speakers instead of bringing kick ass media activists. We said many times
"the problem with finding speakers is that in indymedia, no one is
supposed to be more important". That seems like the problem with our
method was right in front of our face.

One possible problem was that there was lots of intro content, not much
discussion on moving indymedia forward, very little work done on the
issues around oppression and difference and very few people of color in
attendance at all. These issues are obviously very difficult ones. Did we
do enough outreach in communities of color and in Spanish? We tried to
have a pre-event in a neighborhood of people of color, but only two of us
worked on it and it was not done very well.

But again I think this gets back to the issue of inherent limitations in
the "Indymedia" model. Does the phrase "independent media" mean anything
to people who are not in the movement? Are we effectively communicating to
people the fact that we're trying to get people of color's voices into
the media? Does "media" mean anything to people?

Also, a number of people have told me that the theme we used "media
emergency" was hard to understand and doesn't mean much to people. i don't
know what would be clearer, but something like "books not bars" is
undeniable.

So, these problems seem to stem from the lack of inclusion of people of
color in the organizing process, based on a lack of dedication on our
part to include them (ours as in the organization). We had our events at
locations focused on communities of color, but those folks didn't come to
our events. How could we have included our hosts better?

Critiques of content, structure and Indymedia
--------------------------------------------------------------

Some people felt that not enough people came to the conference part. This
issue taps at the fundamental type of media we are making. Are we trying
to convert others (media as propaganda) or trying to educate ourselves
more (media as self-critical)? When one of the speakers at our conference
asked about who owned NBC, almost everyone in the audience replied “GE!”
How do we move beyond the choir? Should we? In other words, does the
structure of indymedia facilitate the possibility of media that is a) not
parasitic on the corporate model, b) not propaganda, c) self-critical, d)
educational, e) empowering, and f) challenging.

In her essay The Language of Tactical Media, Joanne Richardson discusses
the parasitic limitations of indymedia:

"Indymedia critiques the pretensions of mass media to be a true, genuine,
democratic form of representation; it opposes the false media shell with
counter-statements made from a counter-perspective – a perspective that
is not questioned because it is assumed as natural. My Italian friends who
work with Indymedia showed me a video they co-produced about the
anti-globalization demonstrations in Prague and asked what I thought. I
replied that it was a good piece of propaganda, but as propaganda it
never examined its own position. In this video you see a lot of activists who
came to Prague from America, UK, Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, etc;
occasionally you even get ossified Leninist bullshit from members of
communist parties. What you really don’t get is any reflection of the
local Czech context – many locals denounced what they saw as an attempt
to playact a revolution by foreigners who invoked slogans from an ideology
the Czechs themselves considered long obsolete. The confrontation of
these different perspectives is absent from the video, since it is meant to
promote Indymedia’s own anarcho-communist position, raised to the level
of a universal truth. And in this sense it was as strategic and dogmatic as
mainstream media; it was only the content of its message that differed."

But is it just propaganda? What does it mean to be tactical? How can we
have a self-inflected politics that includes and contests the ideas of
Power and Representation? Is the goal to educate others or ourselves? How
do you go beyond the parasitic, binary dependance on corporate media
(i.e., counterconference, counterinauguration, anti-x, counter-y) How do
you become more creative, politically? How can we expand our political
imagination?

We don’t believe that Media EmergenC was just propaganda with different
content. The local music, local spaces, local radio and local networks
involved in the organizing and actualization of the event represented a
broad range of methods, forms, and analyses of media, the NAB, and radio.
Our main purpose with Media EmergenC, and perhaps with Indymedia too, is
to produce a safe and autonomous space to rethink and remake our own
political imaginations. We hope to construct spaces within the airwaves,
the streets and cyberspace that allow such imaginations to flourish.


The structure was very much like a traditional conference: audience vs.
speaker. We tried to subvert that with the workshops. But how do we go
beyond the “conference” model. Should we? Maybe it should have been set up more like a media lab, where every participant could come in and make
media. what if we transformed the World Beat Center into a huge media lab
with different mediums in different corners? That would've radically
changed the whole dynamic of "presenter" and "listener" What would a media
lab look like?Could it be: Media Hobbyism, Biomedia, Cybermedia, Robotic
Media, Gendered Media, Ethnic Media, Indigenous media, Insurgent Media,
Foreign media. Perhaps we should learn from the FreeCooperation
conference that took place on a campus of the State University of New
York, late April 2004. This conference seemed to extend beyond the stale
politics of panelism and the traditional conference model:
 http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2005-February/000022.html

And then there's Radio, that beautiful device of political polyphony that
precipitated the entire conference. Since the enemy was a radio lobby,
should we have focused everything on radio? Yes: it would have been more
specific, effective, technical, creative. No: perhaps, less interest, and
we should work on broadening the debate. Perhaps the radio kids who got
inside the NAB should have had a report back on Saturday at the
conference.

Conclusion
------------------

We've written this self-critical document in the hope of creating more
critical dialogue within the Indymedia community and the independent media
movement. It is our hope that people will read this, give us feedback and
make more documents like this critiquing their own events and actions and
circulate those for discussion as well. We hope that this can be read and
discussed at the upcoming Indyconference in Texas this month
( http://www.indyconference.org/). Above all, we hope that people can think
hard about the questions and challenges that we've posed here, which are
constantly manifesting themselves in the work of creating our own media
structures, and come up with new methods and ideas which are more
inclusive and more effective and incorporate those methods and ideas into
their work.

By any media necessary,
San Diego Indymedia - Prometheus Radio Project -radioActive radio
and all the others who participated in Media EmergenC.

--------------------------------------
Links and stories about "Media EmergenC"
 http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/106129.shtml
 http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/02/3652.php
 http://MediaemergenC.org
 http://radioActiveradio.org