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 [...]

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.
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I’m really looking forward to presenting at the Grassroots Use of Technology conference at UMass Lowell next weekend with a few of my fellow Boston Action Tank cohorts, Marie Celestin, Aliza Dichter, Denise Moorehead, and Ada Robinson. Here’s a description of our panel, entitled “Strategies for Shaping the Media/Tech Future: Policy, Funding & Organizing“:
The [...]

David Isenberg and I finished an hour long radio show today that we’ve been working on over the past month, titled “Four Voices from Freedom to Connect“.
It’s up at the Public Radio Exchange. We hope that public radio stations across the country will download the program and air it on their stations, since the [...]

(photo by Andy Carvin)
Today, thousands in cities across the country from New York to San Francisco to Chicago to Boston joined in protest against the major telephone companies. These companies are spending one million dollars a day lobbying Congress to re-write the nation’s telecommunications laws–while press reports reveal that these same companies provided [...]

I was interviewed today by Hiram Scott of the Boston Neighborhood Producers Group about bills in Congress threatening access to Community Media and the Internet. We also discussed ways that people can get involved and take action now to ensure that Congress protects the public interest in communications policy making.
Click here to listen to the [...]

Download the podcast from last night’s meeting with the Berkman Blog Group, where Jason Crow, Access Coordinator at CCTV and Editor of Media Policy Blog and I discussed threats to Net Neutrality and Access to Community Media from bills in Congress.
Learn more and take action today at SaveAccess.org!

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Broadcasting and Cable’s John Eggerton writes,
“Not included in the bill are voted-down amendments that would have held national video franchisees to a build-out schedule and toughened prohibitions on red-lining–building out more attractive parts of a franchise and bypassing ones with less potential return on investment or, as Ed Markey (D-MA) puts it, ‘the other side [...]

Congress Votes Against Net Neutrality Bill
From NPR, April 27, 2006
By Laura Sydell
“Congress defeats legislation that would have required all Internet traffic to be treated equally as it moves across the network. Telephone and cable companies want to start charging higher rates for faster and preferential connections.”
Listen to the NPR report here.
Thanks to Free Press for [...]

From Media Policy Blog
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce considered amendments to the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006. There were a few positive moments, despite the overall somberness of the afternoon as the majority party pressed the telco agenda and defeated public interest amendment after public interest amendment. Read a good [...]