MEDIA POLICY - Grassroots Activism

The growing movement for media reform and justice is proving that grassroots organizing can make a difference, and that citizens have a voice when it comes to government regulation of corporate media. Over the last several years, grassroots media activism has gained tremendous momentum - and won key battles - as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency that regulates broadcast media and telecommunications, attempted to loosen media ownership rules in 2003 (see Movement Time Line).

The consolidation of media ownership has increased dramatically over the last 25 years, as the FCC has gradually lifted caps on media ownership, allowing a handful of corporations to own the vast majority of media outlets in the United States (see Ownership Time Line) For a pluralistic society, the implications are alarming. Many believe that democracy is weakened when local concerns, diverse voices, and independently produced programs are diminished or eliminated from the mass media in favor of programming that reflects commercial corporate interests. For media activists this has been an opportunity to galvanize labor organizations, the working poor, consumer groups, and a wide range of social justice allies. Interestingly, this is a movement that has attracted people across party lines. But even as the movement grows, grassroots activists have to contend with shoestring budgets, little or no paid staff, and the challenge of convincing grantmakers that media policy is a vital issue.

With tactics ranging from letter-writing campaigns to public events and demonstrations, from building community radio stations to creative street theater, activists have enlivened the public's awareness and understanding of media issues. The fact that over 2 million people responded in opposition to the FCC's plan to further deregulate media ownership indicates that this movement is a force to be reckoned with, and one that is continuing to broaden its base.

Battles over media are likely to intensify. Winning one round with the FCC is a major accomplishment, but there are more fights to come over media ownership and other complex policy issues. Local battles are also of great importance to media activists. Grassroots organizers are working with communities to monitor coverage of local issues and ethnic stereotypes, preserve public access cable stations, and create forums for people to express how media can better serve their interests.

Combining local, national, and even global perspectives, grassroots media activists are working to implement long-term strategies while poised to respond quickly to shifting policies. Working on shoestring budgets, grassroots organizations must grapple with sustainability and the need to bring larger constituencies into the fold.

Founded in 2001 to establish an Independent Media Center during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Media Tank has been instrumental in local and national media activism. In 2002, when the FCC announced that it would review media ownership regulations, Media Tank was at the center of the battle. Michael Powell, who was chairman of the FCC at the time, had made it clear that he favored further deregulation of media owners. In an earlier statement as FCC commissioner, Powell had spoken disparagingly of the very notion of a public interest:

Grassroots media activism was given a boost when Reclaim the Media hosted their founding conference during the 2002 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) meeting in Seattle, Washington. Knowing the FCC ownership ruleswere coming up for review, Executive Director Jonathan Lawson saw the NAB meeting as an opportunity to energize Seattle activists and bring together other grassroots organizers working on media reform in other parts of the country. The massive five-day event became the strategic launch site of the campaign against the FCC ruling that included Media Tank and other activist organizations.

In the spring of 2003, Seattle became the venue for one of the unofficial hearings on media reform that FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein had planned. Copps and Adelstein were the only two commissioners to oppose the FCC's move to loosen ownership rules, and they believed it was important to hold public hearings, despite not having official support from the FCC, and find out how citizens across the country felt about media consolidation. The original idea was to hold the hearing in Seattle in a classroom at the University of Washington. Reclaim the Media decided it was time to think big.

Organizing with labor groups, community groups, local government officials, and some well-known musicians, Reclaim the Media transformed the event into combination FCC hearing and rock-and-roll show that brought out 800 people. Using terminals with Media Tank's software for filing comments to the FCC, people could immediately participate on several levels, speaking out and writing directly to the FCC. Lawson says the impact was especially important with Commissioner Adelstein. "He began to feel free to speak and feel empowered, like we had his back. So he became more of a public advocate for the positions that he and Commissioner Copps have so ably advocated for."

Reclaim the Media has continued to seek public engagement around media justice and is participating in the grassroots cable campaign, which, along with other urgent actions, is a long-term effort that Lawson says requires nationwide networking among grassroots organizations and Washington, D.C., advocates.

Realizing that there were no legal mechanisms for setting up low-cost community radio stations, as an act of civil disobedience Tridish and some colleagues began traveling around the country helping communities build pirate stations. They gained sympathetic press, and in 2000 the FCC ruled in favor of low power FM. Before the ruling went into effect, however, commercial broadcasters convinced Congress to add a rider that greatly limited where stations could be built. "Under the original FCC plan there would have been about 25 new stations in the top 10 urban markets in the United States," Tridish notes. Under Congress's rules, there was only one station given out in the top 50 urban markets.

This hasn't stopped Prometheus Radio Project. In Maryland, Prometheus Radio helped build WRYR the first radio station owned and operated by an environmental organization. In Opelousas, Louisiana, the Southern Development Foundation's radio station serves not only as a crucible for public conversations about school reform and local development but also as the only broadcast outlet for local zydeco music. But the greatest radio success comes from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a group that represents migrant farmworkers in southern Florida. Earlier this year, CIW used its radio station to organize over 300 temporary workers to demand wages from a contractor who had been withholding pay for several weeks.

Prometheus Radio was the lead plaintiff in the case that led to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals' June 2004 decision overturning the FCC's new rules. "The lesson here is that solidarity works," Tridish says. "It's that working on your particular interest is very, very important. But it's also important to see the larger issues around you. Working together, we can move these seemingly small, technocratic issues to the point where we can really win on them."

The Double Bind
Media Policy as a Racial Justice Issue

Malkia Cyril, the director of the Youth Media Council in Oakland, California, calls media a "double bind." As a young woman of color, Cyril grew up in Brooklyn with disparaging media coverage of black urban youth that she felt was negative and unfair. "I saw images of the communities that I was from being completely distorted," she says, pointing to the relentless coverage of drugs and violence. But the double bind is that media, from Cyril's perspective, represents "both a threat and an opportunity." At the Youth Media Council, Cyril has worked hard to take advantage of the opportunity to expose injustice and engage urban youth in media activism. It's a big challenge.

At the Youth Media Council the strategy has been to monitor and document media content and call on big media to be accountable to the communities in which they operate. A large focus of their work has been on the Bay Area radio station KMEL. After the 1996 Telecommunications Act lifted some ownership restrictions on radio stations, Clear Channel Communications, one of the nation's largest radio corporations, bought KMEL, a Bay Area hip-hop station and a touchstone for the local African-American community. "If you need to reach young people and young adults, you needed to get with KMEL. It was a good thing," Cyril says. After the sale, Clear Channel began gutting the station of community content in an effort to boost profit. In the economic downturn following the attacks of September 11^th, 2001, KMEL fired Davy D, host of the popular show "Street Knowledge." But as Cyril points out, "It wasn't a personal beef - it was a corporate agenda." After Davy D was fired, KMEL ended the show and eliminated the position of community affairs director, replacing it with promotions director.

For the local community, the changes at KMEL were a devastating loss. "He was the entry point," Cyril says of Davy D's show. "He was a doorway. He opened a door for hundreds of people to get on the radio that normally wouldn't be able to get on." Cyril's Youth Media Council responded with a vigorous grassroots campaign against Clear Channel. The organization charted playlists, documenting the paucity of local artists. It tracked political bias in public service announcements, noting that the Youth Media Council's institutional members couldn't get their PSAs on the air but the Boys and Girls Club could. The campaign culminated in a report, "Is KMEL The People's Station?" which garnered significant attention among the Bay Area's sympathetic independent print media. The station also agreed to a live on-air accountability session, something they had never done before.

Cyril is eager to point out that Youth Media Council's activists are teenagers, local community college students, welfare recipients, and young people who have been in trouble with the law, which makes their victories especially remarkable. Empowering marginalized communities to confront corporate media is part of a bigger picture for Cyril:

G ene Kimmelman directs public policy research at Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reportsmagazine. Based in Washington, D.C., Kimmelman has frequent interaction with the Senate Commerce Committee, which opposed the FCC's vote to loosen media ownership rules. Still, the committee's leader told Kimmelman he didn't think they could win this in Congress. Kimmelman believes it was the grassroots organizers who changed the political tide when they got people to respond in writing, show up to protests, and voice their opinions at public hearings. Kimmelman sees this victory as indicative of how grassroots activists and Washington advocates are working together:

Jeff Perlstein is executive director of Media Alliance, a Bay Area media action group that was founded in1976. Media Alliance was started by media workers, many of whom were journalists influenced by the social movements of the sixties and seventies who were focusing their work on community media. Racial and economic justice is at the core of Media Alliance's work on local, regional, and national media issues.

Perlstein describes the battle over Bay Area radio station KPFA as a case in point. KPFA was the first community-supported radio station in the United States and is the flagship station of Pacifica Radio, the country's first public radio network. A few years ago, the station was under threat by corporate raiders. For grassroots activists working across social justice issues, KPFA was an essential outlet. "Media Alliance got very involved in defending the station and reclaiming it, not because we had a certain policy analysis around consolidation, etc. It came from a very real organizing need," says Perlstein. "Organizers came to us and said this is a very rare, powerful, and important space for us to do our organizing, to have conversations around what our communities are facing and what our strategies are for change."

Perlstein says that the success in eventually saving KPFA as a community radio station helped Media Alliance work to develop strategies for local media issues that could be replicated in other regions and build toward national impact. Perlstein believes that local grassroots activism is the critical link in making issues come alive.

Time Line: Media Ownership & the FCC
Source: HearUsNow.org (www.hearusnow.org./index.php?id=97)

1941	Local Radio Ownership and National TV Ownership Rules limit media concentration. A 35% national cap prevents broadcasters from owning stations that would reach more than that number of the nation's homes.
1946	Network mergers prohibited. Dual Television Network Rules bar one major network from buying another.
1964	Broadcasters can only own one station per market. TV broadcasters prohibited from owning more then one station unless there are more then eight stations.
1970	Cross-ownership of radio and TV banned. Broadcaster cannot own a radio station and a television station in the same market.
1975	Newspaper and TV cross-ownership restricted. One company is prohibited from owning both a newspaper and TV broadcast station in the same market.
1981	Deregulation by FCC and Congress. This first round of deregulation allows a company to own up to 12 TV stations (up from seven), as long as those stations do not reach more than 25% of the population.
1987	DC Circuit Court eliminates Fairness Doctrine. Since the FCC's inception, the Fairness Doctrine had held that radio and TV license holders were public trustees charged with (1) taking reasonable steps to present multiple and opposing viewpoints; and (2) performing public service reporting on key community issues. In 1987, the DC Circuit Court rules in Meredith Corp. v. FCC that the FCC cannot enforce the doctrine.
1992	The Cable Act of 1992 gives broadcasters the power to demand "bundled programming." Large broadcasters, claiming that cable companies are getting rich from "re-transmitting" their programming, prompt the Act's "must carry"/"retransmission consent" option. Smaller stations elect "must-carry" in order to be sure that all broadcast programming is aired. Larger broadcasters, however, are able to negotiate favorable contracts in exchange for "retransmission consent," contracts that often require cable companies to show - and pay for - additional stations owned by the broadcasters (bundling).
Feb. 1996	Telecommunications Act of 1996 engenders further deregulation of media policy. The Act envisions robust cross-market competition among different types of telecommunications services, eliminating Congressional bans of broadcast and cable provider cross-ownership and replacing them with a directive for the FCC to review and eliminate ownership limits as markets become more competitive. The FCC begins relaxing these limits almost immediately, resulting in unprecedented levels of consolidation in virtually every communications and media sector.
July 2001	Senate Commerce Committee holds hearing on media ownerships in which participants express grave concerns over the effects of further concentrating media ownership.
Sept. 2002	FCC announces upcoming review on media ownership rules.
Jan. 2003	Due date for comments to FCC on media ownership. Viacom (which owns CBS/UPN), General Electric (NBC), and News Corporation (FOX) all request that media ownership rules be eliminated.
Jan. 2003	Senate Commerce Committee hearing on media ownership. FCC Chairman Powell declares that there will not be a radical change in the media ownership rules, after senators of both parties express concerns about the increasing levels of consolidation.
June 2003	FCC votes to overhaul limits on media ownership. Despite having held only one official hearing on the complex issue of media consolidation over a 20-month review period, the FCC, in a party-line vote, votes 3-2 to overhaul limits on media concentration. The rule would (1) increase the aggregate television ownership cap to enable one company to own stations reaching 45% of our nation's homes (from 35%); (2) lift the ban on newspaper-television cross-ownership; and (3) allow a single company to own three television stations in large media markets and two in medium ones. In the largest markets, the rule would allow a single company to own up to three television stations, eight radio stations, the cable television system, cable television stations, and a daily newspaper. A wide range of public-interest groups file an appeal with the Third Circuit, which stays the effective date of the new rules.
June 2003	The Senate Commerce Committee approves, by voice vote, a piece of legislation entitled Preservation of Localism, Program Diversity, and Competition in Television Broadcast Service Act of 2003 (S. 1046), which would make the 35% cap permanent, unless Congress expressly decided otherwise. The Committee also approved an amendment that would restore the "cross-ownership" media rules that the FCC overturned.
July 2003	A House panel votes to withhold funds from the FCC to enforce the 45% ownership cap as part of an appropriations bill (H.R. 2799). The committee amendment passes 40-25. The full House approves the bill, signaling support for the lower 35% cap.
Sept. 2003	The Senate passes a joint resolution (S.J. Res. 17) 55-40 disapproving the FCC rule changes.
Dec. 2003 - Jan. 2004	Congress changes the aggregate cap to 39%. After voting to keep the ownership cap at 35%, both the House (242-176) and Senate (65-28) raise the aggregate cap to 39% through a rider to an omnibus spending bill. The 39% cap allows Viacom/CBS and News Corp/FOX to keep all of their stations.
June 2004	Third Circuit votes 2-1 to overturn the lax FCC rule. The court overturns the FCC's controversial media ownership rule passed a year earlier, emphasizing that the Commission's method for determining ownership limits is based on "irrational" assumptions. The Court sends the rules back to the FCC for revision. In the ruling, the Court underscores that the burden of proof was on the FCC to provide evidence to justify loosening the ownership rules. We now await the FCC's new rules.

Time Line: The Movement Against Media Monopoly>Time Line: The Movement Against Media Monopoly
Activism & Organizing in the Fight Against Media Ownership Deregulation (a select list)
Source: Center for International Media Action (www.mediaactioncenter.org)

October 1997, New York, NY: "The Media Mogul Tour" -- Hundreds of protesters march to corporate media headquarters, issuing "subpoenas" against media monopoly policies; "Media & Democracy Congress II" -- Nearly 1,000 attendees at this three-day conference.

October 1998, Washington, D.C.: "Showdown with the FCC" -- Protest and march of more than 50 activists and community broadcasters against the FCC and NAB in support of microradio, also called low power FM (LPFM).

September 2000, San Francisco, CA: "Slam the NAB: Media Democracy Now!"-- Protests, panels, and a march of more than 1,000 people against corporate, concentrated media.

November 2001, New York, NY: "Challenging Corporate Media: Strategy and Action Meeting"-- Gathering of more that 35 organizers from across the country. Activist e-list at Media Tank founded.

January 2002, Philadelphia, PA: "Organizing Summit to Free the Media"-- Day-long strategy meeting with media activist organizers from NYC, Philadelphia, Maine, and Washington, D.C.

March 2002, Washington, D.C.: "Angels of the Public Interest"-- Protest at the FCC. More than 60 activists and independent journalists present a "public interest crystal ball" at the FCC's door.

September 2002, Seattle, WA: "Reclaim the Media: a Community Media Convergence" -- Founding conference of the Reclaim the Media coalition, featuring a protest against the NAB and strategy sessions to plan for the fight to stop media ownership deregulation at the FCC.

May 2003, Philadelphia, PA: "Protest Corporate Media: March to NBC, ABC, and Clear Channel" -- A coalition of anti-war, environmental, and media groups team up for a public demonstration.

Public hearings before the FCC's June 2003 vote on media ownership: All hearings except Richmond were unofficial, organized by advocates and academics. Attendance is approximate and taken from newspaper reports and organizer estimates.

June 2003, Philadelphia, PA: Public interest activists and advocates file an appeal of the FCC ruling in the Third Circuit Court.

June 2004, Philadelphia, PA: The Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturns the FCC rules.

The FCC is directed by five commissioners. All five are appointed by the President and must be confirmed by the Senate. Only three commissioners can be of the same political party and none can have a financial interest in any commission-related business. From the five commissioners, the President selects one person to serve as chair. All the commissioners, including the chair, have a five-year term, except when filling an unexpired term. By tradition, the chair resigns when a new President is elected.

Bios of Participants

Helen Brunner (Washington, D.C.) is a consultant for the Media and Democracy Fund, a new foundation/donor collaborative supporting media reform. She also serves as director of Foundation Services for Art Resources International. Brunner previously served as program consultant to Albert A. List Foundation's Freedom of Expression, Arts, and Telecommunications Policy and Advocacy Programs. She has also advised Ford, Pew, Andy Warhol, Leeway, and other foundations in the areas of communications policy, First Amendment rights, and the arts. She was executive director of the National Association of Artists' Organizations from 1993 to 1995, director of programs at the Washington Project for the Arts from 1982 to 1985, and coordinator of the Research Center of the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY, from 1975 to 1982. In her role as a visual artist, Brunner received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1985. She has served on numerous boards of directors, including the Progressive Technology Project, the Campaign for Free Expression, and the National Association of Artists' Organizations.

Inja Coates (Philadelphia, PA) is co-founder and director of Media Tank (http://www.mediatank.org/), a nonprofit media education organization based in Philadelphia. Since 1997, Coates has helped build and serves on the planning board of the Philadelphia Community Access Coalition (PCAC), a diverse media coalition of 80+ groups working on cable access issues. She was a co-founder of the Independent Media Center of Philadelphia, a 24-hour newsroom that served over 600 journalists and activists during the 2000 Republican National Convention. She also worked with Prometheus Radio Project doing outreach about low power FM and has over 15 years experience working with community groups and nonprofits, including the Asian Arts Initiative, Spiral Q Puppet Theater, the Village of Arts and Humanities, and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

Michael J. Copps (Washington, D.C.) was sworn in as a member of the Federal Communications Commission on (http://www.fcc.gov) May 31, 2001, for a term that ran until June 30, 2005. Copps, a Democrat, was nominated by President George W. Bush on May 1, 2001, and confirmed by the Senate on May 25, 2001. He served until January 2001 as assistant secretary of commerce for trade development at the U.S. Department of Commerce. In that role, Copps worked to improve market access and market share for nearly every sector of American industry, including information technologies, telecommunications, aerospace, automotive, environmental technologies, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, textiles, service industries, and tourism. Copps devoted much of his time to building private sector-public sector partnerships to enhance our nation's success in the global economy. From 1993 to 1998, He served as deputy assistant secretary for Basic Industries, a component of the Trade Development Unit. Copps moved to Washington in 1970, joined the staff of Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC), and served for over a dozen years, first as administrative assistant and later as chief of staff. From 1985 to 1989, he served as director of government affairs for Collins and Aikman Corporation, a Fortune 500 Company. From 1989 to 1993, he was senior vice president for legislative affairs at a major national trade association, the American Meat Institute. Copps, a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, received a B.A. from Wofford College and earned a Ph.D. in United States History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He taught U.S. history at Loyola University of the South from 1967 to 1970.

Malkia Cyril (Oakland, CA) is a 30-year-old queer black writer, organizer, and media strategist. A working-class Brooklyn native, Cyril has worked with racial and economic justice youth, community, and activist groups in the S.F. Bay Area for the past nine years. As director of the Youth Media Council (http://www.youthmediacouncil.org/) and co-founder of the Media Justice Network, Cyril's goals are to build the strategic communications capacity of the progressive movement to move a racial/economic justice agenda and to build the power of youth and other marginalized communities to hold corporate media accountable for biased content and policy. She believes that communication is a human right and should not be for sale. Cyril was recently featured in the documentary Outfoxed and is the primary author of numerous articles and studies including "Speaking for Ourselves" and "KMEL: The People's Station?" (YMC, 2001 and 2002).

Aliza Dichter (Brooklyn, NY) is the co-founder and director of programs for the Center for International Media Action (CIMA) (http://www.mediaactioncenter.org/), a new not-for-profit organization providing strategic services to media advocacy, reform, and education groups. Previously she helped found MediaChannel.org, where she became senior editor and education coordinator for an information network serving more than 1,000 media-issues groups. Dichter helped plan and launch the Action Coalition for Media Education, a national media-literacy membership organization, and works with the Angels of the Public Interest, an activist group challenging FCC deregulation.

Harold Feld (Washington, D.C.) is the associate director of the Media Access Project (http://www.mediaaccess.org/), a nonprofit public interest law firm working to ensure a public voice in telecommunications policy. He is the primary author of many of the current public interest filings on spectrum proceedings at the FCC. Feld joined MAP in August 1999 after practicing communications, Internet, and energy law at Covington & Burling. From 2002 to 2003, he served on the ICANN Names Council as representative of the Noncommercial Constituency, and he currently serves as the Noncommercial Constituency representative to the Advisory Committee of the Public Interest Registry.

Saskia Fischer (Washington, D.C.) is the project manager for the United Church of Christ's Office of Communications (OC, Inc.) Media Empowerment Project (http://www.ucc.org/ocinc/mep/), which is working with people of color, women, and youth in low-income communities around the country to help them think about how media could best serve their needs and advance their struggles for social justice. Of Indian and Dutch descent, Fischer was raised in Europe and came to the United States to attend graduate school. Her main focus of study was the relationship between media and immigrants' identities in the United States. After graduating with a master's degree from the Annenberg School for Communication, she worked as a union organizer for the American Federation of Teachers in Philadelphia. Fischer has been involved in community arts projects and grassroots media as well as independent video production.

Amy Goodman (New York, NY) is the host and executive producer of "Democracy Now!" (http://www.democracynow.org/), which airs on the Pacifica radio network and more than 200 radio and TV stations across the United States and around the world. She is co-author of the national bestseller The Exception to the Rulers, written with her brother David Goodman. The book was chosen by independent bookstores as the #1 political title of the 2004 election season. Goodman is the co-producer of Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, which exposed the oil company's role in the killing of two Nigerian villagers on May 28, 1998, and MASSACRE: The Story of East Timor. Goodman has received dozens of awards for her work, including the Journalism Award and the George Polk Award.

Joan Grossman (Brooklyn, NY) is an award-winning media artist and producer. Her company, Pinball Films, is based in New York and Vienna. She has worked in radio, video, film, and installation. Grossman's work has been screened and broadcast internationally. She has also taught film and video production and theory in the public schools, to inner-city teens, and to undergraduate and graduate college students.

David Haas(Philadelphia, PA) is chair of the steering committee of Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media (http://gfem.org/content/), an association of grantmakers committed to advancing the field of media arts and public interest funding, which serves as home of the Working Group on Electronic Media Policy. In addition, Haas serves on the board of the William Penn Foundation (http://www.williampennfoundation.org/), a regional grantmaker focusing on the greater Philadelphia area, and as a trustee of the Phoebe Haas Charitable Trust "B," which supports a range of 501(c)3 charitable organizations, including media projects. From 1989 to 1997, Haas worked as coordinator of the Philadelphia Independent Film/Video Association (PIFVA), a service organization for independent film-, video, and audio makers based in the greater Philadelphia area.

Gene Kimmelman (Washington, D.C.) is senior director of public policy and advocacy at the Consumers Union (http://www.consumersunion.org/). Kimmelman is a recognized expert on deregulation and consumer protection issues, particularly in the area of telecommunications (http://www.hearusnow.org/). He is a frequent witness before congressional committees that set telecommunications policy. He was the lead consumer advocate on the omnibus Telecommunications Act of 1996 and was successful in seeing significant consumer protections added to the telecommunications deregulation legislation. Kimmelman is widely quoted on telecom issues in a variety of publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. He has done numerous interviews for network and cable television news programs.

Jonathan Lawson (Seattle, WA) is co-founder and co-director of Reclaim the Media (http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/), a Seattle-based organization that advocates for media democracy in the Northwest. He also directs organizing communications for the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME (http://www.wfse.org/). Lawson's articles have appeared in numerous publications including Adbusters, Yes!, and Z Magazine.

Becky Lentz (New York, NY) is program officer for Electronic Media Policy at the Ford Foundation (http://www.fordfound.org/program/media.cfm). In that capacity, Lentz directs a three-year initiative called "Reclaiming the Public Interest in Electronic Media Policy in the U.S.," which focuses on seeding the development of a "field" of sustainable institutions, organizations, coalitions, and networks that can advance the public interest over the long term. As a practitioner, advocate, and academic, Lentz brings to Ford more than 20 years of combined experience in the information services industry, state and local government, the nonprofit sector, and most recently in academia. As a grantmaker, she is a member of the steering committee of Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media and chairs its newly formed Working Group on Media Policy.

Jeff Perlstein (San Francisco, CA) is the executive director of Media Alliance (http://www.media-alliance.org/), a 28-year-old media resource, training, and advocacy center in San Francisco. As director he has initiated campaigns for greater press freedom during wartime, expanded public input into the FCC's rulemaking processes, and increased accountability to local communities from Clear Channel-owned radio stations in the Bay Area. He is a co-founder of the Media Justice Network as well as the initial Independent Media Center (IMC) in Seattle and the Web site Indymedia.org, which now links 130 IMCs in more than 23 countries.

Pete Tridish (Philadelphia, PA) is founder and director of the Prometheus Radio Project (http://www.prometheusradio.org/). Tridish actively participated in the rulemaking that led up to the adoption of low power FM and served on the committee that sponsored the crucial Broadcast Signal Labs study, which proved to the FCC that LPFM would not cause interference. Tridish has helped build a number of low power radio stations across the U.S. as well as conducted radio trainings in Guatemala, Colombia, Nepal, and other countries.