As we head into the 10-day countdown to May Day, once again the mainstream media is snoozing its way into irrelevance.
Check out today’s New York Times and you will find nary a mention of the busy preparations going on now for the day of action in New York and around the country on May 1.
This seems to just prove the point of media pundit Dr. Alan Chartock, founding president and CEO of the 20-station, seven-state Northeast Public Radio Network here in my neck of the woods.
Speaking last Sunday at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Dr. Chartock depicted a coming media landscape dominated by a few big national and international players, reaching audiences principally through the World Wide Web.
Progressive media analysts have long been concerned about the homogenization of the news that comes as a result of corporate conglomerates controlling vast swaths of the airwaves, as well as almost all print news outlets.
The good news is that at least so far, it has been impossible to impose corporate control over the internet. Witness the huge outcry over the proposed PIPA and SOPA legislation last winter, which critics said would have limited free speech on the Web. Millions of signatures were collected on petitions against the legislation, and the proponents backed down—at least for now.
Dr. Chartock is worried about the wholesale media move to the internet for two good reasons.
One, accuracy: it is often impossible to know for sure that the information on a given blog or even larger online media outlet has been carefully and objectively reported.
Two, money: Where is the business model that will support the reporters and editors needed to continue to perform the traditional watchdog role of the press?
It seems to me that his own Northeast Public Radio Network provides a good answer to these issues. It is supported by local listeners and underwriters who put their dollars behind the station because they recognize a good thing when they see one. They would start to withdraw their support if the quality of the programming went down.
To counter the drift to a globalized corporate media desert, let’s let a million local radio stations, blogs, vlogs, livestreams, tweets and You-Tube videos bloom!
Let’s not only support our locally owned, locally produced media, let’s start producing it too!
Here in the Berkshires, we not only have WAMC and other Northeast Public Radio affiliate stations, we also have WBCR-LP, which is not only 100% listener-supported but also all-volunteer and open to any citizen journalist who takes the trouble to get trained as a programmer.
We have the Berkshire Record, our hometown print newspaper in Great Barrington, and we also have iBerkshires and various locally produced blogs and small websites.
And let’s not forget the countless Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and You-Tube channels devoted to getting us localized news we can use.
The truth is that the Occupy movement doesn’t need the New York Times to reach its target audience. The fact that the mainstream media is ignoring the upcoming May Day protests is just one more example of how dominated by the 1% these big media corporations are.
Whose media? Our media! Mainstream media? Who needs’em?