Colin Rhinesmith

From “Fighting Poverty: Community Media and Communication for Development in the Digital Age”:

Access to the means of voice and communication is central to a people-centred approach to development both for its intrinsic human importance and its rola in shared culture, access to knowledge and education, civic participation in decision making, ensuring good governance through accountability and providing other tools that assist the achievement of development goals. This has been acknowledged repeatedly in major international development reports such as the World Development Report, the Final Report of the United Nations Millennium Project and the Commission for Africa Report among others.

Community media has a vital role to play in giving access to voice and communication for poor and marginalised groups. Frequently excluded from mainstream media. It has had a central impact on development and is of increasing relevance in the context of new information and communication technologies and the trend towards more liberalised communications environments. The impact and value of community media has been repeatedly demonstrated over many years most centrally in its central and critical role in Nepal in the recent peaceful transition to a new democracy.”

Download the full report at the AMARC website.

Community Media, Community Radio, Development, Independent Radio, Media Policy

Reason #1134 why C-Span rocks: Podcasts (iTunes) & YouTube episodes of The Communicators, “C-SPAN’s new weekly series featuring a half-hour interview with the people who shape our digital future.”

Watch C-Span’s “The Communicators” episodes on Obama’s and McCain’s Telecom Policy Agenda for the next administration.

Broadband Policy, Politics, Telecom Policy

On Thursday, the Alliance for Community Media issued the following press release, entitled “U.S House Subcommittee will ask FCC to examine harm to public, educational, and governmental television“:

In response to testimony from Alliance for Community Media members yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government voiced strong bi-partisan support for public, educational, and governmental (PEG) access for communities and asked the FCC to examine whether AT&T and other cable operators are in compliance with the Cable Act of 1984.

In opening remarks, Subcommittee Chairman Congressman Jose Serrano (NY-D) and Congressman Mark Kirk (IL-R) expressed concern that local PEG access channels are in danger of declining or disappearing as a result of the current regulatory and business environment.

Barbara Popovic, Executive Director of Chicago Access Network Television, representing the Alliance, and Michael Max Knobbe, president of the Alliance’s New York chapter, and Executive Director of BronxNet, presented testimony that detailed multiple problems with PEG access channel delivery arising out of recent actions by the FCC, state legislatures, the cable industry and AT&T. Problems that were outlined included a loss of funding and channels, movement of PEG to higher numbered channels (referred to as “channel slamming”), reduced quality and functionality of existing channels, and loss or reductions in public cable drops to schools, libraries and other public centers. Regarding the issues of AT& T’s treatment of PEG channels, Ms. Popovic said “Bottom line, AT&T, the company that promotes ‘choice’ in cable franchising, is giving viewers no choice when it comes to PEG.” Mr. Knobbe discussed the problems associated with channel slamming, which include additional costs to consumers to view PEG channels.”

Read the complete press release here.

Community Media, PEGTV, Policy, Public Access TV

Broadcasting & Cable published two good articles detailing the positions of McCain and Obama on some of the most pressing media policy issues of our time, including media ownership, the digital television transition, and network neutrality.

Read “Obama’s Media Agenda” here and “McCain Campaign Mum on Media Policy” here.

Thanks to Bob McCannon for the pointer.

Internet, Internet Policy, Media Policy, Net Neutrality

(This is a cross-post - with a different title - from here)

A few weeks ago, I spoke with Jared M. Gordon from NewEnglandFilm.com. He was doing a piece about the Flip Mino cameras and contacted me to learn more about how we’re using them here at CCTV.

The article, entitled “Three Filmmakers, Three Cameras” is now online at their website. Here’s a bit from the article:

“What projects are you currently putting together?

During this year I’ve been the project manager of what we call Bridging the Digital Divide. We’re putting computers and Internet access into the hands of people who need it the most in Cambridge. Another project, the Neighbor Media Program, is a citizen journalism program (neighbormedia.org) in which ordinary community folks are reporting on local news. A lot of what will be involved segues into the Flip Mino…

Tell me about your experience with your current camera of choice. What sort of work have you done with it?

We’ll be distributing [Flip Minos] to neighbor media journalists on a monthly basis. They’ll take them out, hopefully use it to cover stories, and we provide support, training, and all kinds of production skills that can help augment their stories. Some journalists weren’t ready for the advanced cameras and they wanted an easier way to start involving themselves in media production. We bought the Flips for that purpose, then realized that we could use them for our summer institute (youth program).

I have spent enough time to get to know some of its quirks, what it’s good for and what it’s not good for. For the money and for what it is, it’s absolutely worth it. It’s a cool little camera.”

Read more at NewEnglandFilm.com.

Cambridge Community Television, Community Media, Community Technology, PEGTV, Public Access TV, Video