Calling all Citizens to Take Back the Media!
Visit www.freepress.net, an amazing resource for
media activists. Freepress offers an
action page where you can submit your own ideas for media actions, a database
of groups whose core missions and goals include media reform,
and a media library, in addition to lots of cool links and more...
Plus, FreePress has a friendly Beginner’s Guide
which BlogforIowa is happy to excerpt for you here.
The [Free Press] Beginner's Guide presents an introductory look
at media reform for people new to the issue. Why is the media system the way it
is? Why is it important to the issues I care about? What's being done to fix
it?
Who owns the airwaves?
Believe it or not, you do!
The “airwaves” are the transmission frequencies
used by radio, tv and satellite broadcasters, cell phone companies, even your
TV remote control, to transmit signals. The airwaves themselves, while utilized
by a wide variety of users, ultimately belong to you in the same way that your
sidewalk or your public park belongs to you.
Some businesses, like cell phone companies, pay the
government to use their airwaves (also “spectrum”). Radio and TV
broadcasters, though, use these airwaves free of charge — even though they make
enormous profits from them. In return for this favor, by law, broadcasters are
supposed to serve the “public interest.”
Although the public owns the airwaves that are used by
radio, television, cell phone and satellite companies — not to mention the land
that cable companies use to lay their networks — citizens have rarely played a
role in spectrum allocation debates. In fact, citizens rarely even get to use
these airwaves to make their own voices heard!
Click here to visit FreePress
RapidResponse is gearing up to take back the local media in '05…Click here to join RapidResponse – Iowa.
Blog For Iowa 