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Journalism in the era of media monopolies

The 6th annual Whistler Readers and Writers Festival produced by the Vicious Circle is Whistler’s premier literary celebration and a key fixture in the resort’s growing cultural calendar, taking place Sept. 14th through 16th.

The 6th annual Whistler Readers and Writers Festival produced by the Vicious Circle is Whistler’s premier literary celebration and a key fixture in the resort’s growing cultural calendar, taking place Sept. 14th through 16th. The festival has something for everyone including opportunities for good discussion, chances to meet some of Canada’s brightest literary talents and he ar them read and perform their work, and if you’re a writer or a prospective writer, this is the place to kick-start or re-ignite your efforts. The countdown to the festival began last week when we started a series of articles written by members of Whistler’s own writing community, The Vicious Circle. This week we have a topical article by one of our own real activists. Our second writer, Pina Belperio enjoys researching and writing non-fiction and journalism articles. She is a freelance writer, community activist and co-founder of Whistler Watch. Her writing has appeared in Pique Newsmagazine, the Whistler Question and the Georgia Straight. Her article “Hands Off Our Crap,” which recaps Whistler’s P3 fight in 2006 to maintain its sewage system in public hands was recently published in Canada’s long-standing environmental magazine, Alternatives. Pina will be moderating a workshop on Citizen Journalism: the Role of the Writer in a Political World with Michael Tippett, founder of NowPublic.com on Saturday, Sept. 16th at Millennium Place. To register, please contact Stella Harvey at 604-932-4518 or Stella25@telus.net .

The festival is brought to you by the letter W, the number 15, and the funding support of the Resort Municipality of Whistler, the Community Foundation of Whistler and the B.C. Arts Council.

 

 

Journalism in the era of media monopolies

 

These days, political literacy is more than just knowing you’re A, B, Cs. It's about navigating through vast media repositories, deciphering framed messages and being able to critically assess the information you're given. The rise of the Internet, combined with new media and affordable technology has placed powerful tools in the hands of the average person, giving rise to one of the hottest buzzwords in news today, Citizen Journalism — news and commentary provided from the public at large. There is nothing to stop amateur reporters from having a direct say in the way that news is reported and disseminated. All you need is a computer, a cell phone and a link to YouTube.

Over the past few years, our media ownership has become monopolized to the point where media ownership in Canada is highly concentrated. Canada’s news is controlled by three media powerhouses: CTVglobemedia (owners of CTV, CHUM and Globe and Mail ), CanWest Global and Astral Media Inc.

According to the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (www.presscampaign.org), “The three biggest chains now control more than 74 per cent of the daily circulation. One company, CanWest Global, owns or controls more than 40 per cent of English language circulation. Particularly troubling is the fact that there’s a complete monopoly of the daily press in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland.” The fear is that this type of monopoly will lead to editorial bias and only allowing certain topics to be covered.

The flipside to this media hegemony is the emergence of independent media sites like rabble.ca and TheTyee.ca. Citizen participatory media owes its start to the Korean online site, Ohmy News, which reshaped the entire political landscape in South Korea. According to founder, Oh Yeon-ho, he began the site in 2000 to encourage “every citizen to be a reporter and to make available a spectrum of news and views not contained in Korea’s conservative mainstream media.

Other visionaries include Americans Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media, Jay Rosen a professor at NYU, and Howard Rheingold, founder of The WELL — the web’s longest running virtual community.

Vancouver’s largest, crowd-powered citizen journalism site, NowPublic.com was started by internet visionary Michael Tippett and views itself as a platform for disseminating news, much like Telus is a platform for communication tools. The site claims 129,752 members in over 4,186 cities. Tippett is changing the way that stories are reported and distributed “by harnessing the wisdom of crowds and tapping into news, thereby creating potentially hundreds of millions of Internet users, bloggers and photography enthusiasts.”

Tippett was dissatisfied with the way news was being reported in the mainstream media because it was creating a biased editorial slant and acting as an impediment to free and independent press. He wanted more people to participate in telling their stories, and wanted to empower people with new technology and tools. Three years ago, he created a blog called BlueHereNow.com, to discuss new wireless technologies. He began adding camera phone images next to the news stories and it turned out that readers were more interested in the photos than the actual news.

With the help of his two partners, Michael Meyers and Leonard Brody, Tippett turned his blog into a commercial enterprise. Over the past two years, they have worked to strengthen existing technologies and to encourage the public to submit their news and photos.

“NowPublic.com allows stories to be told that would otherwise never come to light,” said Tippett. “We are taking the discussions that used to take place behind closed doors into the public realm. We accept all stories, provided they’re legal, and we don’t believe in censorship. Competing ideas and diversity are good things. I don’t think that anything should be controlled by one player, whether it’s music, news, books or software.”

Tippett is no longer worried about Canada’s media concentration because the new tools have made news so much cheaper to cover and produce — something that wasn’t possible even a few years ago. Although NowPublic contributors are not paid for their submissions, the site is linked to the Associated Press (AP). On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP, so even a small story has the potential to reach global audiences. And this keeps everyone honest.

NowPublic.com was the first media site to report the now-famous “Sippy Cup Terrorist Incident” where a former secret service professional was bullied by security guards at Reagan Airport over the water in her 19-month-old son's sippy cup. She wrote an account of her experience and mishandling, and it soon became an overnight media sensation, ending up on Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room. During Hurricane Katrina, NowPublic had more reporters in the flooded areas than most news organizations have on staff.

“The dynamics of protest have also changed,” said Tippett. “In the past, protestors would hope that a TV camera would catch a glimpse of them. But today everybody owns a cell phone or a camera, so suddenly they can post details about their events and causes by using sites like YouTube and Flickr. These alternate accounts of events help keep everyone honest, especially the mainstream media,” adds Tippett.

"People" journalism was at the forefront of last week’s North American leaders summit on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in Montebello, Quebec. When B.C. filmmaker and journalist, Paul Manly captured footage of three Quebec undercover police deployed as agents provocateurs to instigate violence against the riot police so they would then attack the peaceful crowd, he never envisioned that his video would receive 143,000 views over a two-day period on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow ) or that his powerful footage would be broadcast to 100 sites worldwide. By the end of last week, the controversial video had received over 249,000 hits on the site. Due to the video’s controversial subject matter, online users were accusing YouTube of restricting access to the video and its commentary.

The story was picked up by the Canadian Press and became front-page news on CTV and CBC, appearing in most Canadian newspapers. Other submitted photos linked the shoes of the provocateurs to those of Quebec’s riot squad . Three days later, the Sûreté du Québec admitted that three of their police officers had disguised themselves as protestors during the leaders’ summit. This forced admission now raises further questions about whether the Quebec police contravened section 464(a) of the Criminal Code on Unlawful Assemblies and Riots.

Although opponents of citizen journalism have attempted to discredit news reported by “untrained” reporters with books such as Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur , Tippett believes that the user community does a great job in policing the integrity of citizen media. NowPublic is run as democratically as possible and its integrity is maintained through its vast user community, in much the same way that consumers will buy a Ferrari on e-Bay because they trust the vendor’s history based on consumer feedback.

“Some of the greatest journalists never received training as reporters,” said Tippett. “Instead, they have an instinctive appetite for news and are willing to risk their personal safety to get to the bottom of a story.” Take for example, famed U.S. journalist, Walter Cronkite, regarded by many Americans as "the most trusted man in America." He dropped out of the University of Texas in 1935, yet he went on to cover pivotal historical news events like the assassination of President Kennedy and the Vietnam War.

Tippett believes that over the next year, there will be a shift away from media repositories like YouTube and Flickr, and a move towards social networking websites like FaceBook. So, if you’re unhappy with the way news is being reported, pick up your camera and create your own piece of history.

 

Michael Tippettt, founder of NowPublic.com will be leading a workshop on Citizen Journalism: The Role of the Writer in a Political World at the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival on Saturday, Sept. 15 th that will provide an overview of user-generated content, mash-ups, blogging, vlogging, podcasts, Web 2.0, News 2.0 and a hands-on demo of the newest tools.