Be The Media.Visioning Media / Media Bill of Rights

Blogging from the audience, hallways and streets of the 2005 National Conference for Media Reform

The question is, what is public media and it's role in society? These are the big questions we're asking of individuals and institutions, and we're going to ask you. We hope over time you give them some good consideration, and hope you'll reask those questions and ask them of friends, family, neighbors and elected representatives.

We hope will come up with answers that will collectively serve our nation, and have a construtive dialogue about public media.

First the questions:
1. what is public media and how does it serve society?
What should a sustainable public media econlogy look like?
How can it encompass news, public affairs, education, arts and culture, civic engagement.
How does it fit within the media reform movement?
How do we develop strategies and tactics to realize those goals?

What infrastructre does our public media need to have.
How do we ensure ease of use for producers, distributers and users?

The Bill of rights is the foundation for thinking of that structure.

Sustainability. What models of financing should we explore? Should we explore multiple methods? Tax, portion of spectrum sales, advertising?

Governance. What standards do we put in place to ensure accountability and transparency, to offer true diversity.

Another theme is the role of public media in society -- what can it provide that won't be provided by private media?

Should an explicit role be to stimulate creative innovation?

Movement building. How do form stronger alliances? Do we start with mapping all aspects of media reform and independent production?

Do we work more closely together to avoid duplication?

These are the questions we need to answer in order to address the issue. Public media needs to be reformed.

How do we do it?