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.
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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?
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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!
Rapid
Response is gearing up to take back the local media in '05...Click here to join RapidResponse - Iowa.
