- Organize a day of "Action for
the Cultural Environment," including a Parents' March, teach-ins on
college campuses and town meetings in selected cities, in collaboration
with affiliated and supporting groups.
- Convene a Second International Broadcast
Standards Summit of CEM affiliates and supporting organizations, media
executives, and representatives of producers and creative workers in participating
countries, to develop a mechanism for regular consultation and broad participation
in the development of media policy standards and international trade.
- Set up a Global Marketing Awareness
Task Force to expose the "dumping" of cultural products worldwide
that drive out home- produced and quality materials.
- Initiate a formal complaint procedure
to investigate and publicize violations of the People's Communication Charter.
A People's Media Inquiry, in collaboration with local and regional affiliated
and supporting organizations, would hold open hearings and publish a report
at the end of the year.
- Support a Women's Roundtable committed
to strengthening women's voices in male-dominated media.
- Arrange a Media Literacy and Critical
Awareness Program Development and Coordination project, culminating in
an international assembly of leaders of the movement.
- Advocate that schools, churches,
youth organizations in the community include media literacy in their programs.
Attend school board meetings, promote candidates, support teachers and
students active in the media literacy movement. Oppose the use of media
literacy as a public relations tool to rationalize the existing media system.
- Hold forums with community leaders
and media professionals devoted to creating alternatives for the cult of
violence and brutality that hurt our youth, cultivate meanness, glorify
domination, deform masculinity and sexuality, and polarize our society.
- Promote the development of and access
to successful resource- generating and organizing models for independent
productions and journalism. Explore what mechanisms (e.g. media laws, direct
and indirect subsidies) democratic societies around the world use to support
independent voices.
- Enhance regular monitoring of media
ownership, employment, and content, and release annual reports of the health
and diversity of the cultural mainstream. These reports should include
assessments of and guidelines for: (1) diverse and equitable media ownership
and employment practices; (2) fair and realistic gender, racial, ethnic,
aging, disability and mental illness portrayal; (3) health- related presentations,
including depiction of addictive substances without consequences, promotion
of prescription drugs to the public, the aggressive marketing of pharmaceuticals
as "miracle drugs," and other inducements for "pill popping"
that, together, make for a drug culture; (4) fast and reckless driving
both as a dramatic and sales feature; (5) violence with invidious patterns
of victimization and without realistic consequences or suggesting alternative
approaches to conflict, and; (6) impossible standards of beauty, especially
for high fashion, diet programs, cosmetics, cosmetic surgeries, and other
products that imply that normal women are defective.
- Conduct cross-national comparative
studies to document trends in global homogenization vs. diversification.
- Publish major CEM documents widely,
including full-page advertisements with lists of affiliated and supporting
organizations and donors, soliciting other affiliations, and announcing
forthcoming action.
- Develop a Center to serve as an information
service, clearinghouse, speakers bureau, and newsletter editorial office
to coordinate action on the national and international levels. Publish
a calendar of events to link independent producers and publications to
in local communities. Include notification of teach-ins, town meetings,
open hearings, policy briefings, and activities of affiliates.
- Use CEMNET and Internet as organizing
tools and forums for independent voices, while also noting that powerful
technologies are used most effectively by powerful institutions; there
is no technological fix to social and cultural problems.
- Propose ad-free zones for schools;
oppose the use of school time and space for commercial messages.
- Design a cultural environment education
course showing how media- driven consumer lifestyles impact the environment.
- Devise a pilot program to promote
communication skills through storytelling and to counteract media-driven
expectations. Propose at least one storyteller's presence in every school
or school district.
- Launch a campaign for the establishment
of a National Endowment for Telecommunications to support alternatives
to cultural dependence on private corporate advertising.
- Explore the feasibility of a Constitutional
challenge of the give- away of the public airways for private profit.
- Join legal action to (1) reverse
media monopoly; (2) force strict compliance with EEOC diversity and FDA
food and drug testing and disclosure rules; (3) limit surveillance of consumers
in the market place and employees in the work place, and (4) to encourage
and protect Micro-Radio projects of low power broadcasting (5) ensure that
all individuals have equitable access to new communication technologies
at affordable rates, and (6) to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine and strengthen
the Equal Time provisions of the FCC, and (7) restore the family viewing
hour and require substantial quality children's programming per week, some
of it in prime-time, as a licensing requirement
- Create a CEM Awards and CEM Censure
program that (1) honors outstanding media challenges to media stereotyping
and other harmful or wasteful practices, and (2) exposes the most flagrant
examples of media "pollution."
- Establish an Award category for productions,
including children's programs, that promote portrayals of older adults,
especially women, as vital productive persons in realistic, believable
situations with the full range of human emotions, hopes and desires.
- Start a network for mentoring young,
alternative-oriented media professionals through internships with affiliated
and supporting organizations and media.
- Work with communities of faith and
spirituality to help express their views and concerns about diversity and
freedom in the cultural environment.
- Collaborate with the AFL-CIO and
the media workers unions (1) to develop labor participation in CEM and
leadership in communications and cultural policy-making, and (2) to create
public support for diversity efforts and avoid policies that result in
loss of jobs in the cultural industries.
PCC, p/a Society for Old and New Media,
Nieuwmarkt 4, 1012 CR Amsterdam, phone: +31 20 5579898, fax: +31 20 5579880 pccmaster@waag.org
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