From FM website 11/20/23
A link to Media Matters may be found on this website at:
Decline in Local News Coverage Affects All Americans
From Associated Press 11/15/23
“The decline of local news in the United States is speeding up despite attention paid to the issue, to the point where the nation has lost one-third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005.” Giant media corporations continue to dominate American information outlets – even digital media decline.
https://apnews.com/article/local-newspapers-closing-jobs-3ad83659a6ee070ae3f39144dd840c1b
Reporter “Shouted Down” in U.S. – What’s Next?
From the Daily Beast:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dems-turn-mike-johnsons-first-viral-moment-into-anti-gop-ad
Will any questioning or criticism be illegal soon?
Woman on right shouts “Shut up, shut up!” (Getty Image)
FCM Meeting Next Week
Want to learn more about the media?
The next monthly meeting and potluck for Friends of Community Media will be held at 5 PM CST, October 28th at 3707 Pennsylvania Avenue, Kansas City. Issues discussed will be upcoming events.
Program Next Week on Information Access
Spencer Graves, President of Friends of Community Media, will address the All-Souls Forum in Kansas City on Oct. 29th from 9:30 – 10:30 AM CST. The media-related topic will be “Information is a public good: Experiments in better government”.
This will be occur both in person at All Souls UU Church, 4501 Walnut Street, KCMO 64111, and via YouTube Live at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIoASyxWDu-DqHJZh-2gcjQ
The audio from the presentation will also be broadcast 11 days later on Nov. 9th on:
http://kkfi.org
Below is a related link to Mr. Graves’ Wikiversity article called, “Information is a public good: Designing experiments to improve government”. This article covers the topic in more detail than will be discussed Oct. 29:
https://kkfi.org/program-episodes/information-is-a-public-good-experiments-in-better-government/
FCM Sponsors Event With Community of Reason
Friends of Community Media is now a co-sponsor for the Oct. 29th session of Community of Reason. This program (2-4 PM CST) will feature Romary Daval, General Secretary of “Un Bout des Médias” (translates – a purpose for the media), speaking to us via Zoom from Paris.
“Un Bout des Médias” is roughly a French counterpart to the U.S. Freepress.net but their activism program seems to be getting more traction than the media reform movement in the US is getting. They actively raise funds for nonprofit journalism organizations giving journalists more power in editorial decisions than may be possible in the U.S. due to legal structures.
For information:
How Can You Influence the Media?
From Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post 9/20/21
“You can write short, polite, specific and constructive letters to the editor and to individual writers. You can support good journalism by subscribing to solid local news outlets. You can use your own presence on social media to raise up examples of truth-seeking journalism. And you can tune out and turn off cable and TV news that practices bothsiderism and allows MAGA guests to lie with impunity.”
What Happens in Kansas – Doesn’t Stay in Kansas – Threat to Journalism
This is an in-depth article on 8/26/23 from the Washington Post about the police raid on the newspaper in Marion, Kansas.
“In New York and Washington, word of a police raid on a small Midwestern newspaper caught the immediate attention of a cluster of organizations devoted to asserting First Amendment rights and promoting the safety of journalists around the globe. Over the years, these groups have stood up for reporters detained by police while covering stories or pressured by prosecutors to reveal their sources, they’ve gone to court to challenge government officials over access to public records, and they’ve raised concerns about an overt strain of antipathy toward the media increasingly displayed by some politicians and public officials since the dawn of the Trump era.
“Yet an actual raid by police represented a kind of government intrusion on media operations that none could remember seeing in this country.”
