[WSIS CS-Plenary] Comments on Civil Society Priorities Document - "Something called community media"

[Ronald Koven]

Dear Mr. Van Oeyen --

I do not speak on matters of substance as the "Focal Point" of the "Media
Family." Any suggestion that I did so is inaccurate.

I am also chairman of the Media Caucus, made up of the journalistic
organizations attending its meetings and open to all interested related
groups attending the Prepcoms and the intersession meeting. Anything I
might possibly have reported as being an opinion of the Caucus would have
reflected the overwhelming opinion of those taking part in its meetings.

That does not mean that I have given up the right to hold and express my
own views, which, I think, are clearly understood as such, when I speak in
my own name.

As for community media, which I highly favor, I assume them to be as
diverse and pluralistic as any other media. I rather doubt that they could
all or mostly fit your description of their characteristics -- unless you
mean to say that local media that don't fit that description could not, by
definition, be community media, properly so-called. If that were so, it
would raise a number of rather intriguing questions. But I am confident in
doubting that to be your meaning.

Incidentally, my first paid journalism job nearly 50 years ago was as a
jack-of-all-trades at a community weekly newspaper in southern Ohio. It
gave me experience as a reporter, editorialist, classified ad taker, proof
reader, linotypist and operator of a mid-19th Century flatbed press. So I
am an old community newspaperman myself. 

In fact, our publisher/editor was a member of the American Socialist Party,
and his No. 2 was a Quaker and conscientious objector (which I also was at
the time), but the newspaper served the whole community and did not attempt
to sell an "agenda" based on the views of the staff leaders, even if the
editorials -- strictly separated from the news -- did reflect their
sensitivities. The paper won numerous awards as a model community newspaper
in the Middle Western region.

The expression "something called community media" was simply meant to
convey the idea that there are other possible definitions of what
constitutes community written and broadcast press than the cause-oriented
one(s) I have encountered in the Civil Society discussions surrounding the
WSIS.

Best regards, Rony Koven