| April 1, 2005 Become The Media Fighting Apathy With A New View by Katy Parrish One night in July of 2002, I found myself questioning the mainstream media. I decided to Google “alternative media”. What I found reminded me of the movie, The Matrix, when Morpheus offered Neo a choice of two pills; one would let him forget the brutal reality he’d found, and the other would commit him to it, for good or ill. Upon my discovery, I was committed. The
Nation http://www.thenation.com/
Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org Truthout http://www.truthout.org Democracynow http://www.democracynow.org Z-mag http://www.zmag.org/ The Memory Hole http://www.thememoryhole.org/ Indymedia http://www.indymedia.org Crimethinc http://www.crimethinc.com/ Alternet http://www.alternet.org/ FAIR http://www.fair.org/index.php Columbia Journalism Review http://www.cjr.org/ Salon http://www.salon.com/ Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/ Why pursue alternative media? The information shared by independent publications and broadcasts is news not reported by corporate media. It is news many Americans would deem disturbing and a resource for documents that are hard to find, seem to disappear quickly and are practically never shared in the mainstream. A good example is the first source document I came upon. “The Dossier” is a document (http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page271.asp) the Bush administration used to initiate the illegal invasion of Iraq. This document was so vague that any reasonable person would have wondered where the “smoking gun” was. There was no solid proof of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons detailed in this document. Infuriated that the Bush team would push this garbage as definitive proof, I became active in speaking out against the invasion. Alternative media educated me about the Project for New American Century and their famous publication, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” published Sept. 2000. http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf Page 50-51 of the document (or page 62-63 of the pdf) states “The effects of this military transformation will have profound implications for how wars are fought, what kinds of weapons will dominate the battlefield and, inevitably, which nations enjoy military preeminence. The United States enjoys every prospect of leading this transformation…A transformation strategy that solely pursued capabilities for projecting force from the United States, for example, and sacrificed forward basing and presence, would be at odds with larger American policy goals and would trouble American allies. Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.” Remember, this document was published a full year prior to 911. And who did the FBI expedite getting out of the U.S. 48 hours after 911…prominent Saudis plus members of the Bin Laden family…By the way, that recently made the front of the Anchorage Daily News on Sunday, Mar. 25, 2005, a full three and-a-half years later. What if the American people had been fully informed of this shortly after this had occurred? And this is just the beginning.
Alternative media introduced me to the USA PATRIOT Act. For more
information visit: http://www.bordc.org.
Our
local papers didn’t start reporting on it until we started
speaking out against it. Many people still do not have a clue
about how invasive this act is. Thanks to the progressive people
in Alaska, we were one of the first three states to pass a resolution
protecting our civil liberties against, according to State
Representative Don Young (R), “One of the worst pieces of
legislation I’ve ever signed.” Despite our voices, our federal delegation continues to ignore our wishes to address this egregious act. Yes, Lisa did toss a bone out in the Fall of 2003, only to let it die in committee. That was about the same time the Dick Cheney was up here raising money for her campaign. (For $2000, people could have their picture taken with him.) The PATRIOT Act is not dead and its big brother is just around the corner. We can’t let up on this assault to our civil liberties. The idea of a government boot in my face is not a pleasant one. In late May of 2003, alternative media informed me about the efforts by Michael Powell, then in charge of the FCC, to change the rules to increase the percentage of market share that one media corporation could own. Thanks to the efforts of Free Press (www.freepress.net ) and Move On (www.moveon.org ), over 2 million people flooded Capital Hill with letters and petitions protesting the rule changes. I was one of those people and I know for a fact that had I not known about alternative media, I would have not found out about the changes through CBS, NBC, ABC and especially FOX. Despite the FCC’s vote to change the rules, our voices were heard in Congress and the rules were reversed. Currently a media company can own up to 35 percent of a local market including print, radio and television stations. The new rules would have bumped it up to 39 percent. That’s when it became crystal clear that my focus should be media reform and I decided to attend the first National Media Reform Conference in Madison, WI scheduled for November, 2003. I witnessed Amy Goodman, Bill Moyers, Billy Bragg, Al Franken, Ralph Nader, Jon Nicols, Naomi Klein, and many activists from all over the world who gathered together to stand up against the media conglomerate’s desperate efforts to carve out more market share. http://www.freepress.net/conference/2003/ While waiting for award-winning DemocracyNow anchor Amy Goodman to sign my worn copy of Orwell’s, 1984, I thanked her for the work she was doing. She commented on how she couldn’t remember a time more laden with newspeak, doublespeak and ever expanding memoryholes. If you haven’t read 1984 in awhile, do. But the speech that really got to me was given by veteran journalist, Bill Moyers. At one point he said, “What I know to be real is that we are in for the fight of our lives. I am not a romantic about democracy or journalism; the writer Andre Gide may have been right when he said that all things human, given time, go badly. But I know journalism and democracy are deeply linked in whatever chance we human beings have to redress our grievances, renew our politics, and reclaim our revolutionary ideals. Those are difficult tasks at any time, and they are even more difficult in a cynical age as this, when a deep and pervasive corruption has settled upon the republic. But too much is at stake for our spirits to flag.” All in all, I listened, danced, cried, laughed, made new friends, dedicated energy to fighting apathy and the whole time remembered my son’s beautiful eyes sparkling with hope for the future. St. Augustine said, “Hope had two beautiful daughters, anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and courage to change them.” My goal is to turn people on to information that stirs their outrage and destroys their apathy. Because, I believe, in order to fully realize the courage of hope, one must fully experience the anger of hope. Believe me, this administration provides plenty of fuel to feed my anger. The Bush Administration is so arrogant when it comes to pushing their agenda, that they allowed Jeff Gannon to pose as a reporter at White House press briefings. This man is known to have participated in gay prostitution rings and bragged about outing the CIA operative, Valerie Plame, (Outing a federal agent is an act of treason, yet this man is not in jail.) Gannon was repeatedly called on only to ask bogus questions that never really got to any serious point. The President has yet to respond to a formal congressional inquiry about how this man got into the White House press briefings. (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/021505Z.shtml) So nice to see Mr. Bush finally got his mandate. Also, two weeks ago, reports surfaced (not in mainstream press) about more efforts by the current administration to purposefully manipulate news. Production of Video News Releases by a variety of federal agencies, created using our tax dollars, are being sent to major networks to be used as news clips. (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031305Z.shtml ) These releases are not being identified by the networks as pieces produced by the administration and sport a definite GOP agenda. However, most people think these releases are actual news reports. The good news is, many local efforts are underway to fight apathy, create awareness and report the truth, including: - Dahr Jamail (Alaskan independent journalist just back from Baghdad – The Anchorage Daily News won’t print any of his work –you can find his reports here http://dahrjamailiraq.com/index.php - KUDO 1080 am - KYES Channel 29 (DemocracyNow can be viewed at midnight and 4 am) - www.alchemedia.org - Alaska Humanity News - www.insurgent49.com - Jay and Jean with OutNorth Theatre - http://socialistinspirit.blogspot.com/ My hope is that you will join us in becoming the media, before it is too late. We have a small window of opportunity to turn the tide. Our children’s lives and the fate of the planet depend on it. Edmond Burke believed, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” Martin Luther King Jr. added more urgency to that sentiment when he said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Katy Parrish is a freelance writer and media activist who can be reached at takebackthemedia@hotmail.com. |
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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