Locating community media

Unless there is organized public intervention, the mass media of the twenty-first century will not represent a parliament of the people but the organizing of masses of children and adults everywhere, including the Third World, into an electronic shopping mall devoted to the culture of wasteful and ultimately fatal use of the planet's natural resources and a diminishing of the human spirit. Ben Bagdikian, Brave New World Minus 400 In the days leading up to the April 2000 International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington, DC, three reporters from WORT-FM, community radio in Madison, Wisconsin, were denied press credentials to cover the proceedings. Like their colleagues from commercial and public service media outlets, the reporters faxed their applications, complete with photo IDs, to the IMF press office well before the application deadline. And yet, WORT's reporters were denied press accreditation without explanation. Following repeated requests for clarification on accreditation procedures, William Murray, Senior Press Officer for the IMF, informed WORT's news director, Elizabeth DiNovella, that the reporters' press credentials were denied because they worked for a “community radio station” (WORT 2000). It soon became apparent that community radio was not singled out in this regard; journalists from other communitybased and independent media organizations, such as The Boulder Weekly and the CorporateWatch website, were similarly denied access to the IMF meeting (AMARC/IFEX 2000a).