Someone just sent me this.  This is several months old at this point, but it's 
still interesting...


"'Be Opinionated, Fair, And Accurate': The Success Of Independent Media"

by Danielle Chynoweth
urbanaimc@yahoo.com
Phone: 217-344-8820 (IMC)
Address: IMC, 218 W. Main St, Urbana, IL 61801


This is a transcript of a talk by Danielle Chynoweth, co-founder of the Urbana-
Champaign Independent Media Center, Oct 8, 2002 at the University YMCA.


Stories kill. Stories save lives. Every single person in this room is full of 
stories. That is the simple thesis of my talk today.

As a global society, we are bloated by stories created by public relations 
firms and corporate media. As a global society we are starving for each others 
stories, but few of us share, because we don't see ourselves as story tellers. 
We don't realize the power of sharing stories and absolute necessity of seeking 
out other's stories.

We are a people who as a people, through our elected representatives, is about 
to declare war on another people. Our self appointed leader tells us that their 
self appointed leader has the capacity to
build weapons that could destroy us. We are told that that leader is connected 
with a group that we are told is responsible for the killing of thousands of us 
a year ago. The dominant story tellers which are almost entirely owned by less 
than 10 massive corporations with budgets larger than most countries, 
speak about United States military forces as "we." This is the story that 
floods us every day - seeming like a diversity of voices, on different 
channels, in different words - but the same story.

People in Iraq are also speaking, but where are their words? They also have a 
story to tell, but we don't hear their story. They are saying "In the past 12 
years, you have killed an entire quarter of our nation." They say "your country 
calls chlorine a chemical weapon so we can't import it to clean our water. 
Every month, 3000 of our children needlessly die for lack of clean water and 
medicine because of the sanctions." They say "You bomb us to control our oil 
which was nationalized to keep it out of your hands."  They say "Your country 
has bombed us continuously for 12 years and no one has argued in your Congress 
about it. No one has called it war."

Who commands the microphone determines who lives and who dies.

Amy Goodman, hero journalist and host of Democracy Now, beseeches us to "go to 
where the silence is." This is why I have committed myself to passing around 
the microphone.

I was invited here to talk about independent media.  But I don't really want to 
use these words - media - journalism. They are fine words, but in our minds 
they refer to someone else. Not most of you, or me. These words let us off the 
hook - and when I say "us," I don't mean just you and me, I mean us as a 
society. This one word "the media" - gives us an excuse to be cynical, to stop 
reading, to chalk all news up to a bunch of lies. But as we, especially the 
young amongst us - withdraw from all story telling out 
of a sense of betrayal or indifference or a desire not to be duped, the 
decisions are still made and the bombs still fall.

Well I am going to spend my time up here giving the best case I can for 
thinking, asking questions, reading, writing, recording, and sharing.  I know 
that I am standing next to the biggest cheerleader
for reading and writing there is left in our society - the university. What I 
want to add to or perhaps counteract about this message is the importance of 
sharing - not waiting until you have your degree or know enough or have tenure, 
not always insisting on objectivity, or distance, or jargon. My call is a call 
for amateur hero journalists - you and me - that's what indymedia means to me.

I want to talk about independent media's agenda - yes, our critics are right - 
we do have an agenda.

Norm Stockwell, the station manager for Madison's community radio station - 
WORT - makes this distinction between corporate, public, and independent or 
community media.

Corporate media exists to sell ads - if it bleeds it leads. News is something 
taken off the wire about a rape and murder in a distant city that you are glad 
didn't happen to you and about which you can do nothing.  That's 
news. "Corporate media has nothing to tell, only something to sell," as Amy 
Goodman puts it.

Public radio and public TV believe that the more stuff you know, the better 
person you will be. Kinda like Trivial Pursuit for the intelligencia.  It helps 
you appear knowledgeable.

Independent, community media provides its audience information on issues that 
affects their lives then gives them the tools to make change. In fact, I would 
call this an obligation of independent media. When we sit around our editorial 
table discussing this week's stories, we ask ourselves "is this something 
people can change? What are the levers of change. How can we report on the 
levers as well." Our goal is to report on issues before they are decided in 
ways that empower listeners to get involved in the 
decisions.

This is the heart of the independent media movement.  But let me flesh out 
further elements that make this heart beat. And I am quoting from Keith 
Rosendal, of KCSB in Santa Barbara. He says the role of the independent 
journalist is "to provide real images of yourself and others, create programs 
that promote cultural survival, build connections and understanding between 
disparate groups, demystify how decisions are made, expose motivations, and 
help people participate in the decisions that affect their
lives." In short, the agenda of independent media is building the foundations 
for an expanding, sustainable democracy.  It makes politics part of people's 
lives, it doesn't just "pour water on debate."

This agenda butts up against the arguments for "objectivity."  Independent 
Media cracks open the ruse of objectivity and denies claims itself to 
objectivity. "Objectivity is when you don't know what you're standing on," says 
Frieda Werden, producer of Womens International News Gathering service.  
Indymedia replaces objectivity - which is so often used as a smokescreen for 
bias - with the values of fairness, honesty, accuracy, and opinion, to cite Amy 
Goodman's media credo. Good journalism does not
claim objectivity, but is in hot pursuit of the "best available version of the 
truth," to quote David Goodman, a Boston journalist. It is becoming a venue for 
subjectivity that we become a venue for suppressed stories.

Now, I am going to describe how every single person in this room has the power 
to be such a story teller, but first I want to do what I was invited here to 
do - to describe the framework on indymedia.

First a little history - I could go far back, but there isn't time. I suggest 
you go over to the post office, ask for the stamps called "Women Journalists" 
and look up information on the four women represented on those stamps. Read 
Mark Twain's media pieces. And George Orwell's essays. Learn about the power of 
Ida Tarbell's pen. Find out about Pacifica Network News - created in the 
twilight of the Cold War to be a voice of reason in the midst of warmongering - 
and recently recaptured from an attempted coup by 
corporate interests. Just in this country alone, there is a long history of  
these "unacknowledged legislators" as my professor Christopher Hitchens  calls 
the rich and often forgotten lineage of investigative journalists, muckrakers, 
and truth seekers.

With a little bit of context - understanding that the existence of independent 
media superceded the World Trade Organization protests - and it much broader 
that the specific IMC movement that surged into being in 1999, I want to give 
some history of that specific movement. In November of 1999, there were massive 
protests of the World Trade Organization where over 100,000 people marched in 
the streets of Seattle in to protest an international organization powerful 
enough to overturn local labor, environmental, and humanitarian laws in the 
name of creating new markets for capital. Knowing full well that coverage of 
this historic convergence of global justice activists would be butchered by a 
threatened corporate 
media, activists decided to organize their own telling of the protests. They 
rented a temporary space, collectivized their personal equipment, built a 
website, and opened their doors to anyone who walked into the makeshift store 
to post a story, audio, photos, or video to the website. The Associated Press 
stayed
with the permitted march. The Independent Media Center reporters were there at 
6 AM with people locking down in the streets. The AP, arriving on the streets 
after the police began to riot, said that the police gassed and beat us because 
we were destroying property. The IMC reporters provided a stack
of evidence in every medium that the police started gassing at 9 AM and windows 
were not broken until noon. The AP provided no context for the protest and 
tried to dismiss us as terrorists. The IMC reporters 
posted case study after case study of the devastation to the democratic process 
inflicted by the actions of the WTO. As a result, the WTO became a hated 
household name. That would have never happened if
the substance behind the protests was not reported on.

Since these protests, 82 IMCs in 35 countries have been formed. There are 
Mexico, Chiapas, and Tijuana IMCs. There is IMC Jerusalem, IMC Israel, and IMC 
Palestine. South Africa. Brisbane. Vermont.
Quebec City. Unlike our local IMC, most IMCs exist as websites without a 
physical location.  In places like China, the IMC can only exist in the virtual 
realm. Its existence is illegal and therefore its site is
mirrored in other countries in case its server is confiscated.

An IMC web site has at least 3 components: a newswire where anyone can post 
media, a features area with stories of local import chosen by a local editorial 
group via a consensus process, and links to all other IMC's what is referred to 
as the "global indymedia network." One of the goals of  this network is to 
provide local independent coverage of major events and protests. During the 
recent World Summit on
Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, I was able to go to the South Africa 
web site and read 
hour by hour updates and commentary on both the summit and its opponents -  the 
40 thousand from groups such as the anti-Privatisation Forum, the Landless 
People's Movement, and the Anti-Eviction Campaign whose existence was cited 
marginally and whose concerns were unacknowledged in the mainstream press.

Our local IMC had its humble beginning as a group of 10 meeting weekly in my 
living room starting September 24 in the year 2000.  We decided to cover local 
solidarity protests with the anti-International Monetary Fund and World Bank 
protests in Praque. We decided that if we could find 10 "founding
funders" who would donate $50/month for 12 months, we would rent a space in 
downtown. We found 25 such funders and an old printers shop - a storefront with 
reasonable rent. We are located at 218 W. Main
Street in downtown Urbana, just west of Race Street. The UC-IMC, as we call 
ourselves, has a website with an open publishing system like other IMCs. We 
house a library of 500 books, 50 current periodicals, and 100 audio tapes, as 
well as video tapes - all available for check out by members. We produce a 
monthly newspaper with a run of 5000 called the public i and IMC Radio News, a 
weekly public affairs show on WEFT 90.1 FM Mondays at 5:30 PM. The IMC has a 
production room where members can check out media equipment and use computers 
to produce media, a large room for music and theater performances, and a 
gallery space recently named the "middle room gallery" re-opening with a show 
later this month. Each of these activities is organized and sustained by 
working groups. There working groups each send two representatives to a 
steering group that coordinates between the group.  We have meeting of our 
entire membership twice a year to discuss large scale policy changes and future 
directions. We recently decided to try to buy our building so as to build 
equity in our space. All IMC groups operate by consensus.

In addition, we were the first IMC to gain 501c3 status. We are the fiscal 
sponsors for a number of IMCs including the global indymedia network, and the 
IMCs in NYC, DC, and Pittsburg. We support Palestine IMC, Nigeria IMC, and a 
mobile caravan that travels around the world to report on major events and 
protests. We recently received our first grant to hire a radio news 
coordinator. We are taking applications over the next two weeks. Please talk to 
me if you are interested in applying.

I am involved in the radio news production end of things at the IMC and want to 
share a few observations from that perspective.  One of the things our IMC does 
is "carrier pigeon reporting." We find out who is traveling to a protest or 
overseas and we train them and outfit them with a minidisc recorder and a 
digital camera.

Much of IMC's success comes from everyday people realizing that in a vacuum of 
diverse information, their eyes and ears are valuable. Tourism can be 
transformed into valuable journalism with a few pieces of equipment.  Personal 
travel diaries are radical in that they are free from the standard corporate 
agenda fare. The mainstream media, with their silence and refusal to pay for 
investigative and on-the-ground reporting actually create quite an opportunity 
for us to fill the silence.

When you travel to another country and come back with stories, it usually 
doesn't occur to you to tape your dinner conversation and broadcast it.  The 
Indymedia movement has put a frame around that kind of storytelling and 
said "this is important" "this has power."

Our local IMC has outfitted people traveling to Palestine, the FTAA protests in 
Quebec, the anti-war rallies in D.C. this past April, World Social Forums in 
Brasil, Guatemala, Mexico. If you are traveling oversees, call us and we 
provide you equipment, training, and will get your stories on the air.

There is also much to report here locally. More and more, local news has global 
import and visa versa. In our own backyards is the Caterpillar factory 
producing the bulldozers rampaging Jenin right now. We joke that we are mired 
in a corn field and yet let's look a that corn. We are actually mired in Pepsi. 
Much of this corn is corn syrup. And we are in the heart of battle over 
genetically modified organisms. Recently the News Gazette reported about how 
our local corn is going overseas to fight malnutrition.  The President of 
Zimbabwe turned down a shipment of corn - most likely from here - because it 
was genetically modified. Cancer rates in Champaign county are higher than 
state and national averages. Now who is investigating the root of that? 
Monsanto is just around the corner near St. Louis. They are directly 
responsible for the firing and suppression of Fox journalists who did 
investigative work on Bovine Growth Hormone - one of Monsanto's major products.

Have I peaked your interest? Well, I will leave you with a proposal.  Consider 
yourself an independent journalist. Just try on that hat for a week or two to 
see how you filter your experiences differently. Do you notice things you could 
share? Are there questions you've always had but never had an excuse to ask 
them? I will tell you the best thing about this role. It is an excuse to talk 
to anyone about anything. If you want to learn about Yoga, investigate it like 
a story and then produce that story. If you want to understand what happens to 
all the money that comes into town because of the Bears games, play the 
reporter and put it in print.  Come get press credentials from us if that helps 
you feel more official. Becoming a citizen reporter is the key to lifelong 
learning. If you read an interesting story in the paper and want to know more, 
call up a contact from the story and ask her questions on tape. Get that tape 
to the Radio group. That's why our motto is, "don't just hate the media, become 
the media."

_______________________________________________
imc-audio mailing list
imc-audio@lists.indymedia.org
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-audio

*NEW * Watch the Streaming REAL-VIDEO Slide-Spin show from The ' Angels of the Public Interest protest at the F.C.C. ' from 3-22-02 in Wash DC

Windows Media Player Video my_GuitarWeeps , , 2nd planecrash
RealVideo of WTC on fire @,nd plane hit , New York City ( right click,download )
You can Listen to indy world news headlines with Winamp streaming mp3 16kbs mp3

Surf to Blast Furnace - Pittsburgh Web Radio Alternative News and music and real video

KPFA/ KFCF Listen to there realplayer or winamp mp3. . /Pacifica/Democracy Now! in Exile or cool Music.

as a back up 2'nd plane crash in NY *.avi download and play video with sound.
from patik.org

*NEW*
Real Video about BUSH / CIA / 911 cover up connection's


Real Video from accross the river view

2000 gather in Precita Park to declare San Francisco a hate free zone!
by Dan Mattson September 17 2001, Mon, 3:14pm handyman@california.com
Click here to watch the real video of this peace rally


Real News from Real folks

WBIX.org, a web-based radio station, a global gathering of audio refugees -
comprised of New York City's WBAI radio IN EXILE producers, listeners,
and others fired, banned, and exiled from WBAI radio,
with help from the Independent Media Center of NYC, Washington, DC, and Seattle


New York events listing.


indymedia.org


Crime Fighter Links


web server by Partytown.com/ CMP

The worlds largest tire fire


Background on the world trade center antenna towers
and the corporate radio/tv broadcasters / microwavs on the roof top
New York City, New york



Click here for Weather report
Alt- Weather site

NY AREA WX


If you see any corporate crime , please capture the picture (Right click,Save Image) and send it to Me!


The Corporate Media Portal [ CMP ]
What everyone should know about corporate radio and TV broadcasters

A repository of information about Corporatized Media

Real News from Real folks

indybay media



Indy Radio shows at Radio4All.net You can upload your audio newscasts and download news and radio shows.

community/indy/pirate/ MicroRadio.net radio network




New York links World Trade Center pictures and messages , notes, art., cards

Ralph Nader's new Rap remix , The Count-Down Windows Media Player format.



Spanish news and streaming mp3 webcast??
indymedia es un colectivo de organizaciones independientes y de cientos
de periodistas que ofrecen una cobertura de base y no
corporativa sobre las protestas importantes.
Argentina indy radio stream or real-player Stream

Argentina TV streaming news


a Real- video: War & racism are not the answer
from the INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER:
March for Peace September 29 in Washington, D.C.

this is some sort of FLASH movie show , never seen any page like it.
Stop the war


IMC Moives you can watch on line or order the video movie

---

goto this web site




PartyTown Streaming Freedom Network

live 24 hour WORLD NEWS

*NEW* Streaming
Alternative Talk Radio



EMERGENCY COMMUNITY BROADCAST RADIO
REPORTING on events like WEF WSF FTAA Seattle DEMONSTRATIONS
& best of IMC radio archive
16 kbs .

Best of WEF radio show microradio EBB playlist

connecting *you* to the frontlines of Local & global indy media mobilizations.


Please join us on the MicroRadio CHAT ROOM on the irc.indymedia.org #radio for larger protests CHAT with http://radio.indymedia.org
if you have news from a event submit your mp3's news/events or songs , we want to play them !

PartyTown Retro-Rock 32 , X 16 kc Stereo
Streaming INDY music from unsigned bands: 24Kbs MP3 or 24Kbs Streaming RealAudio player
PartyTown PURE RETRO 24 hours a day 32 Kbs x 22kc mono
PartyTown PARTY ROCK 24 , Kbs

PartyTown Guest Low Power Station: FreakRadio Santa Cruz California RealAudio , mp3-pls , streaming mp3 Check'em out !
Pagan Radio Spiritual stream 24kbs mp3 also in 24kbs realaudio player format by F.O.T.E.


PARTYTOWN Guest DJ: * SystemP * RealAudio and Streaming mp3 or try the new mp3 syntax @ 32kbs x 22 khz.


wef video


Best of WEF radio show microradio EBB playlist


www.fair.com counter spin show test

---

Michael Moore reports (real player)

Blues song Who Are the Terrorists in this World ( 32kbs v the sf.indymedia.org real-server )


Harry Potter Shoping gift MALL online.

one of older free radio station in Spain and
also can be listen by internet.
the web site for more information:
http://www.radiovallekas.org

And de internet listening:
Modem: 

http://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/shoutcast-playlist.pls?rn=0&addr=www.live365.com/play/242813&file=playlist.pls


Banda ancha:
http://www.shoutcast.com/sbin/shoutcast-playlist.pls?rn=0&addr=www.live365.com/play/243215&file=playlist.pls

I hope you publish this and enjoy Radio Vallekas.
I recommend La región Perdida, sundays 14-15:00
(spanish hour), with anarchist persons to comment
actual notices from Spain and social movements.