We now had a way to realize our big idea. One World's technology was a bit clunky, but it worked. Some funders saw the potential. One gave us computers and even sent over a crack team of Chinese technicians to wire it up and help us get online.
The core of the idea was to build partnerships with like-minded organizations worldwide so that readers would find a wide range of diverse views. As we struggled with the technical challenges - that would later support more than 1300 affiliates - not always smoothly, we hammered out a mission statement and plan of action:
MediaChannel.org is a nonprofit, public interest web-based network dedicated to raising awareness and promoting citizen action around global media issues. We seek to do more than encourage structural reforms and regulations; we seek more responsibility, accountability and transparency within media organizations and seek to defend media freedom while encouraging better journalism to serve the public interest.
Media channel aspires to become a robust, internationally respected on-line media platform for an informed non-partisan and post-partisan discourse about the critical link between media and democracy, featuring solution-oriented media analysis, education, research, criticism, debate and activism.
We report on the media but also inspire citizen engagement by participating in industry conferences, speaking out on radio and television, producing books and encouraging films, while campaigning to challenge and change media practices.
What We Will Do
Media Channel is concerned with the political, cultural and social impacts of our media system, large and small. Media Channel exists to provide comprehensive news, information and diverse perspectives to inspire collaboration, action and engagement through citizen journalism and reform. Making sense of the steady stream of info-tainment requires background, context and interpretation. It demands outreach and inspiration.
Media Channel is unique in offering news, reports and analysis from our editors and an international network of contributors, media-issues organizations and publications, as well as original features from contributors and staff. Our highly visible and diverse team speaks widely at universities and events worldwide, organizes well-attended public events and appears on radio and TV.
Our slogan: "While the media watch the world. We watch the media."
THE NEXT STEP
Once we had a prototype, we began to reach out to organizations and individuals we thought might join us. Since we saw media as a global force, we needed to involve colleagues overseas. We were not just interested in recruiting from the progressive community. As media makers, we wanted other media professionals to join us. If we were to be taken seriously as more than advocates on the fringes, we wanted to engage with as many media people and institutions as possible. From our own experience we knew that change had to take place on the inside often with pressure from the outside.
As I began to reach out for people who might be interested in helping us, I spoke with Lewis Lapham, the former editor of Harper's, a brilliant thinker and writer. Lewis told me about an Italian publisher who was very outspoken on the issue but also very busy and hard to reach during his infrequent visits to America.
His name was Leonardo Mondadori, the scion of the famous publishing company that had been taken over by the Berlusconi media interests. Some in Leonardo's family had connived with Berlusconi while Leonardo resisted the takeover. In the end, the company was acquired but Leonardo remained in charge at least nominally. This experience had raised his consciousness about the dangers of media consolidation as a global problem and he vowed to fight it.
I dropped the names of Lapham and an Italian supporter of ours, Marialina Marcucci, who ran our Rights & Wrongs series on the Satelllite channel Superchannel she once owned in Europe. He then agreed to see me in his penthouse apartment at the posh Hotel Carlyle on New York's East Side. He was friendly, charming and interested and checked me out quickly by calling Marialina on her cell phone in Italy to see if she really knew me. He put her on the phone. After a few Ciaos and some personal back and forth, he was was ready to hear my pitch.
He loved the prototype and "got" the idea and its value at once. He offered to help, and eventually did with advice, active support and money. Here was another lesson in the power of positive contradictions. A wealthy Italian in the top ranks of that country's media elite wanted to change the media as much as we did, and he had the means to help us do it.
With Leonardo's help and a few foundation grants, we launched Media Channel on February 1, 2000. The date had a special significance for me because it was the anniversary of the first student anti-segregation sit-in at the Woolworth's store in Greensboro North Carolina. That dramatic action sparked the civil rights movement of the 60s and inspired me to join in.
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