FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                               Contact:  Tom Crane (816) 561-6288                                                                                                                                       

Kansas City, 5/19/22 – Friends of Community Media (FCM) invites you to participate to learn how to organize a grassroots campaign to improve local news.  

Spencer Graves, president of FCM will make a presentation May 22 (Sunday), at 10 AM at an All Souls
Forum on the “Social Construction of Crime and what we can do about it.”  Media have played an important
role in our perception of crime coverage.  

To attend the free session via Zoom, people may log in to the UU Forum at:
https://allsoulskc.org/allsoulsweekly/uu-forum-weekly/

Graves points out that major media everywhere shape our understanding of everything including crime.  He said, “In the early 1800s the US had more newspapers per capita than any other place or time.  Today we face major problems with political polarization and lack of acess to local media”.  He describes research and recommendations by Robert McChesney for improving this situation.

He said, “The inspiration for what we can do about this situation, can follow the success of http://freepress.net
that got the New Jersey legislature to create and fund the ‘New Jersey Civic Information Consortium’.  To accomplish this, the get the legislature to approve the consortium, town hall listening sessions were held in every county in New Jersey.”

Mr. Graves advocates that we duplicate those efforts here in Missouri.

Information of Friends of Community Media may be found at https://ourfcm.org

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