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A BOOKLET SERIES ON RESTRUCTURING
WORLD COMMUNICATIONS
The Media Liberation Movement
(Sorry, currently no more copies of this booklet are available .)
ISBN: 0-930470-18-4
By Sena Christina, 2004
$10 (plus $3 shipping & handling)
The Media Liberation Movement focuses on the philosophies, focuses, strategies and
media organizations leading the movement. WIFP published its first
booklet in 1990, which was written by founder Donna Allen. Since
then, the WIFP has published booklets. Prior to this year's booklet,
the most recent one was published in 2002 and chronicles the hisotry,
activities and accomplishments of WIFP. Following is a passage
from the introduction of the new booklet:
Over the past several years media activists have developed a political
movement for the achievement of media liberation in the United
States. The media liberation movement expresses dissatisfaction
with the mass media system and focuses on a large vision of radically
restructuring media and communication systems, seeking to democratize
the communications media by expanding freedom of the press to
enable all people-rich and poor, male and female, whites and people
of color-to have the equal opportunity to speak directly to the
whole public about our own issues, perspectives and concerns.
As Donna Allen, founder of the Women's Institute for Freedom of
the Press, says, "Access to the public constitutes political
power and in a democracy it must be equal. Freedom of the press
is a citizen right of democracy and should not be a right based
on wealth" (WIFP).
In this booklet we will begin by looking at philosophies to guide us and the importance of feminist perspectives in media activism. We will then take a look at the media liberation movement by focusing on a few key ways activists are attempting to change the media and its foundation to create a media democracy. We will first look at how women are leading the way in the movement and then we will look at liberal media reform as one step in the movement. serving the public interest... Next we will focus on people speaking for themselves and independent, alternative and public media. Throughout we will highlight particular media organizations working for change... While reading through this booklet recognize women's contribution to the movement. Also keep in mind that at the heart of the media liberation movement work is an arduous power analysis with gender, race and class at the center and the principle that no press is free unless all members of society share an equal voice.
Media Democracy: Past, Present, and Future
ISBN: 0-930470-20-6
Edited by: Julia Beizer, Ann Keller, and Joanne Lipson, 2002
Production Editor: Pamela Bradshaw
$10 (plus $3 shipping and handling)
Five or more copies $7 each (30% off) plus S&H ($3 first
copy, 50 cents each additional copy)
In celebration of our thirty-year anniversary, WIFP published
the sixth booklet in the Booklet Series, Media Democracy: Past,
Present, and Future.
In honor of our three decades of work in media democracy, the
first third of the booklet remembers and celebrates our first
thirty years. In this retrospective, we look at the various endeavors
WIFP has accomplished. From Media Report to Women to the
Satellite Teleconferences, WIFP has, without many financial resources,
pulled off some pretty amazing undertakings. We celebrate these
accomplishments as first steps down the long road to media democracy.
In the next segment of the booklet, we examine our present. What
does "media democracy" mean today? How accountable is
the mass media and the institutions that are set up to keep it
in check? We look at how smaller independent and women's media
cover women's issues. We examine how growing technologies like
the Internet enable the expansion of more voices both nationally
and internationally. We also examine current issues of today that
need a women's media to represent them because the mass media
is not doing an accurate job.
In the final segment, we look to the future. MORE
The Media Technology Road to Democracy and Equality
(Sorry, currently no more copies of this booklet are available .)
By: Dr. Donna Allen, 1995
for $5 (plus $2 shipping and handling)
In a little over two decades we changed thousands of years of accepted male myths about us. This booklet shows how we did this by creating our own media -- and the way to more such progress in the future. MORE
What's Wrong with the Mass Media for the Women Half of the Population -- Re-building the System
Compiled by: Alison Hardin, WIFP Associate,
1993
$2 (plus 50 cents S&H)
This booklet illustrates the issues on which we made and are making progress: the survival issues (health, safety, peace), the economic issues for our independence, the political issues for assuring our progress, and the media issues by which to continue the progress.
Media Without Democracy and What To Do About
It
By: Dr. Donna Allen
for $5 (plus $2 shipping and handling)
ISBN: 0-930470-15-X
Media Without Democracy is a dynamic approach to a media problem facing all Americans, whatever their political convictions.
It describes in realistic and clear terms how the First Amendment's "freedom of the press went off the track not long after the country's founders wrote it into the U.S. Constitution." It describes the damaging effects of two wholly unexpected subsequent developments, one in the 1830s and the other more recent. The first put the right to freedom of the press on the basis of money. The later development saw the First Amendment right to press freedom as a corporate media right to speak for others, claiming that corporate role was the nation's free press and to serve a public utility function. The corporate owners' judgment of what the public "needs to know" was substituted for the citizens' own judgment of what their information needs.
The second part of this 50-page booklet, Media Without Democracy And What To Do About It, proposes four ways people can restore the First Amendment free press right.
A National Citizens' Network of Radio and Television
By Eleanor Messenger Stiling, WIFP Associate
for $2 (plus 50 cents shipping and handling)
The answer to campaign spending abuses. First proposed as an initiative for the California ballot in 1980, it is even more timely today and in keeping with the First Amendment could end once and for all campaign spending abuses.
The Source of Power for Women: A Strategy to Equalize Media Outreach
By Dr. Donna Allen
for $2 (plus 50 cents shipping and handling)
This booklet is a presentation by Donna Allen to the " First World Summit on Women and the Many Dimensions of Power" Montreal, Quebec Canada, June 3-8 1990. The Summit was held with the participation of women from some 40 countries on all continents to encourage "worldwide collective action in order that women permeate all the spheres of power in the hope of bringing about a new vision. Their vision."
__________________________
All five of the booklets still available have a special price of $12 (full price $16) plus $5 shipping & handling.
For more information or to purchase any of these items, please
contact:
1940 Calvert St., NW
Washington, DC 20009-1502
Phone: (202) 265-6707
Email: allen [at] wifp.org
Media Report to Women / Directory of Women's Media / No More Fun and Games / Paid My Dues / Celibate Woman Journal
and more
Directory of Women's Media
print edition
Return to Home
More information on the booklets:
Media Democracy: Past, Present, and Future
ISBN: 0-930470-20-6
Contents:
About WIFP
Associates' Statement
Past: A 30 Year Retrospective
WIFP Timeline
Donna Allen: Visionary, Activist, Theorist and Founder of WIFP
Martha Leslie Allen, Director
Exposing Media Injustice: WIFP's First Initiative
Promoting a Network of Media By, For, and About Women: The Directory of Women's Media
Bringing the History of Women's Media into the Classroom
The Annual Conferences on "Planning a National and International Communications System for Women"
Women Mastering the Technology of Communications
The Booklet Series
Present: Media Democracy Today
Monitoring the Mass Media
The FCC: A Work in Progress?
A Tradition Continued
The Internet: Opening Doors for Media Democracy
IMC: A Network of Communication Among the People of the World
Indy Media Centers: A Democratic Media Outlet
The GW+M Project: Promoting Media Literacy Among Women and Girls
The Diversity of Women's Media
The ERA and the Media
CEDAW: The Effects of Media Bias
Pornography: Defining Our Voices
The Media's Complicity in Domestic Violence
Future: Seeking Progress in New Directions
Equality and Difference in Women's Media
The Future: Media Democracy
WIFP Associates
The Media Technology Road to Democracy and
Equality,
by Donna Allen
Introduction
by Martha Leslie Allen, Director, WIFP
July 15, 1995
In a democracy all people should be able to be heard equally. Unfortunately, this is not the reality in the U.S. The owners of the broadcast networks reach 98.6% of American households and their few dozen wealthy white male owners (see pp. 20-21) can reach the public with their information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They can decide "what the public needs to know."
Although mass media owners claim to be speaking for us, in reality they do not. They cannot (they don't have our information). And in a democracy they should not try to speak for us.
Where are women's opinions, experience, and perspectives?
Women are a 53% majority of the public; we are the majority of every race, creed, color and ethnic origin. The information of this vast majority is heard by too few of the public to have its democratic effect on political decisions.
In a democracy, why isn't this majority making public policy?
Because we have -- until now -- lacked the media by which to communicate our information to each other and the public.
But in this booklet you will see the signs of revolutionary change beginning to come about. You will see the majority's new potential for democratizing the media.We cannot change the ownership of mass media, or even slow the pace of media mergers, but it is wholly within our jpower now to create our own media of communication to each other -- and through our own media then to reach both the mass media and the public.
This booklet shows how to do that by showing how we have been doing it: we used the new communications technology as it came along and in the last 2-3 decades began making permanent progress that is reversing thousands of years of discrimination. The lesson for the future is clear. The faster we put the new media technology to use increasing communication first with each other ("getting ourselves together"), then to the public, the quicker we will democratize media and make national and internatonal political decisions more viable, peaceful, and respectful of people.
Everywhere in the world, communications systems are beginning to be restructured by the majorities in our populations. By demoratizing media we democratize society and bring equality. It is happening.
Media Report to Women / Directory of Women's Media / No More Fun and Games / Paid My Dues / Celibate Woman Journal
and more
1940 Calvert Street, NW
Washington, DC 20009-1502
Email: allen [at] wifp.org
phone: 202-265-6707
www.wifp.org