THE PROBLEM:  Increasing suppression and deliberate distortion and ignornance of legitimate news and investigative reporting in the corporately-owned and controlled newspapers, TV and radio over the last 10 to 12 years.  The results of this, along with the corporate land-grab for low-powered FM public radio and TV, are increasingly obvious... an ill-informed public blindly believing the lies which they have been told or, alternately, a cynical citizenry who feel they have no power to effect real change in this country.  This is a formula for a country well on it's way to a fascist state. The results of this assault on information can be seen in every aspect of the US today.

This year hell would have to freeze over for me to miss this conference and though it almost did, the plane finally landed over 2 hours late. After a turbulent ride and many delays I was finally at the dorm at U of Minnesota at about 1:30 AM on Friday June 6. The next 3 days were exciting, cram-packed with information, networking, lectures, forums and inspiration. It was exhausting and I'd do it all over again.

The basic premise of the Conference was that mainstream media's failure to inform our communities and represent the  diverse voices in our communities on the most pressing issues of our times poses one of the greatest threats to our democracy, that without an informed citizenry there can be no real democracy.

First the statistics: The conference offered over 250 speakers, 62 panels and workshops to choose from in 3 days.  This doesn't include the films, opening plenary talks, keynote speakers and closing plenary.  There were over 3500 attendees from all 50 states, from teens to folks well into their eighties. Some had Ph.D's, and some had not gone past the eighth grade and had worked in coal mines all their lives. Participants included people of all faiths and atheists, Greens, Trade Union members, Democrats, Independents, Wobblies, Communists, Anarchists (just about everything but Republican!), and every imaginable ethnic group.

Many (perhaps most) participants were already involved in public access TV, radio, newspapers, blogs and websites.  There were also singer/songwriters, film-makers, hip-hop artists, and people involved in community action, alternative education, the environment, living wage jobs, universal health care, the peace movement, labor, minority identity, immigration reform and people working with an overwhelming variety of social justice issues.  Everyone is looking to find ways to communicate - to get the word out to folks who may not know what's going on in their community, since the corporate-controlled media isn't doing the job.  Some were just plan concerned citizens.  The most well-known speakers included: Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Arianna Huffington, Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman, Van Jones, Rev. Romal Tune....many, many more and too many to list here.  All were excellent.

The five theme tracks into which the sessions or forums were assembled were Media Policy, Civil Rights, Social Justice and Media, Journalism and Independent Media, Media Reform Activism and Movement Building, and Media and Democracy: The Next Frontier.

The following is a list of the forums I attended, which were the less internet-technical ones and also not generally forums devoted to professional journalists: Corporate Media Confidential, Media and the War, Media and Elections, Media Reform and Social Change, Grassroots Lobbying 101, When Media is the Second Issue, The Minnesota Model: Countering Corporate Media, What About the Big Picture, and Everyday Heroes. The opening plenary was called "Media at a Critical Juncture", the Keynote Address was "Media Reform Begins With Me", and the closing was "Taking It Home".  In a nutshell, here is the gist of what I came away with.

The framers of the Constitution made a special point of naming only the press as a protected profession.  They realized that an independent press was crucial to an informed public which then could exercise their own governance, and that without independent journalism and an informed citizenry, as Jefferson said, ..."a democratic society cannot sustain itself".  Bill Moyers echoed and amplified this thought by saying,"As journalism goes, so goes our democracy".  Is it really a concidence that as the corporate media becomes less and less informative, that the American electorate allows the least informed president ever to steal two elections in a row?

An independent press is not our only problem, or maybe not even the most important one, but the health of our independent media affects our ability to understand and react to all of the other problems needing our attention as citizens.

I learned that for the progressive movement to be successful we had better stop excluding those who don't fit our definitions of what it means to be progressive. The blue collar working class may lack a "formal education" but they know when they're being looked down to.  The progressive movement needs to reach out, and by that, I mean really listen, hear their issues and respond accordingly.

I also now understand what Net Neutrality is and why it is absolutely IMPERATIVE that we preserve this last bastion of the free exchange of ideas in our society, and why the corporations are trying so hard to privatize this, too. The principle of Net Neutrality is that everyone's websiates are treated the same, for example, downloading an article from the Tahoma Organizer will happen just as quickly as downloading an article from Fox News.  Equal access to the Internet’s “last mile” of infrastructure is crucial to preserving our rights and access to freedom of speech and information. 

I learned that some broadband carriers are lobbying to be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications and /or content, that just as a telephone company is not permitted to tell it’s users who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control online activity, block information or institute a pricing structure which favors the largest carriers.

Finally, I already knew that even if Barack Obama wins the Presidency, we would have to be very vocal in stating what we want and holding him accountable, but I also learned this extremely crucial and well-stated fact, as presented by David Sirota: No President is responsible for giving the American people progressive changes in our society.

The New Deal and advances in Civil Rights didn't happen by magic. In 1932, 1964 and 1980 we were at turning points in our history.

• In 1932, following World War I, we were ready for revolution due to joblessness, poverty, real hunger and the Dust Bowl during the Depression.
• In 1964 Lyndon Johnson didn't give us Civil Rights, there was, again, the Vietnam War, rioting in the streets and the real specter of revolution.
• In 1980 it went the other, darker, way and we got a conservative backlash and Ronald Reagan.

We all can sense that we are in such a turning point time again.  Barack Obama will probably only be a one-term President due to the stagflation that has developed,  the erosion of  our credibility in the world due to our rampant imperialism, our pathetic lack of initiative in tackling our dependency on oil and addressing Climate Change unless we are so vocal that he has to go to Wall Street and tell them..."Look, if we don't do these things (universal health care, end the war now and bring the troops home, take care of climate change) there is going to be a revolution.  In that emergency case, if Wall Street and the corporations are truly afraid of the people rising up in revolution, he could see to it that money is provided for green collar jobs by the millions to spur development of sustainable ways to develop our country, our infrastructure and to retrofit every house in the nation with sustainable conservation technology.

And how does Media Reform tie into all this? We must have access to real information about what our government is doing to either solve problems or exacerbate them in our country and in the world. We must know our real choices and options in electoral politics and in grassroots movements. We must be able to share with others what we individually and as groups, movements and affiliations are discovering and doing to promote peace, fair elections, a healthy environment, universal single-payor health coverage, humane and reasonable immigration policy and all the other issues that are important and worthy of our energy and attention,  Media reform  MEANS: fair and balanced news on  mainstream radio and TV, in the mainstream papers, Net Neutrality on the web, an extensive network of vibrant Low Powered FM radio and TV programming across the nation for local news, alternative points of view, and to educate the public about our culturally diverse nation. Media reform is vital to ensure educated and involved voters, a necessary underpinning  we need to promote and succeed at effecting any  true positive change within our society.

If this occurs, we actually could move forward into the dawning of a truly progressive society instead of merely gaining back what has been lost over the last eight years.

Videos and more coverage of the 2008 National Conference on Media Reform is available at http://www.freepress.net/conference.