« Enrapt | Main | Great lakes of Titan » Austin Media JusticeAustin Media Justice, a coalition of community media, technology, and social justice groups, met today to share discuss aspects of housing (and the lack of it) in Austin -- according to the announcement, "everything from affordability, sustainability, accessibility, and land use to historical preservation and gentrification." The idea was to focus on this specific issue and consider how the group can leverage community media and technology to mitigate the lack of affordable, sustainable housing. The first speaker, DeAnne Cuellar of San Antonio's Texas Media Empowerment Project, explained how the organization has worked with citizens to collect data on bias and misrepresentation in local media through their media monitoring project. They've also helped find alternatives to public access programming, which went away when the latest Texas telecommunications bill was passed, taking franchising to the state level and freeing cable companies from an obligation to negotiate local franchises. Communities like San Antonio negotiated public access programming in franchise agreements. Time Warner shut down SA's public access channel as quickly as it could, though it later provided a replacement channel, but that channel is only accessible to subscribers who pay for digital service. The second speaker Susanna Almanza of PODER (People in Defeinse of Earth and her Resources), gave organization's history as an environmental justice group that helped shut down Austin's infamous tank farm and relocate the Austin recycling center, among others. Now the organization is focusing on gentrification of East Austin, where propoerty values have quadrupled, and as a result taxes have increased beyond any possibility of payment for many residents. One proposed solution to the housing problem: $55 million in affordable housing bonds, one of several bond propositions voters will decide in November. A first project of the media justice coalition: support the bond program, in part by noting in bias or misrepresentation in reporting prior to the election. My own proposal was for the group to put together a site for local media analysis and criticism, similar to Media Matters (which has incidentally, launched a regional sitefor Colorado). We discussed setting something like that up as part of a larger initiative that would include expansion of media monitoriong into Austin and other parts of Texas, and education on critical evaluation of media. jon posted this at 6:42 PM |
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