Center for Media Justice
The Center for Media Justice, established in 2008 is a non-profit organization based out of Oakland, California and Brooklyn, New York. The organization is focused in being building leadership in America's social justice groups, as well as representing these groups media policy interest.[1] The group has a mission statement saying "Our mission is to create media and cultural conditions that strengthen movements for racial justice, economic equity, and human rights."[1] To do all of the things this organization sets out to do, it uses a strategy called "CultureSHIFT", a strategy used to help make culture and communications more inclusive through the strong grassroots leadership. While implementing all of these ideas the Center for Media Justice gives light to the racial justice and spreads new ideas to grassroots organization and civil rights allies. The Center for Media Justice was created by Alfredo Lopez and the current executive director is Malkia Cyril.[1]
Background
In 2002 the Youth Media Council was created by the “We Interrupt This Message and Race Forward”.[1] It was created to help the youth and minorities defend against the media bias that they were facing in California.[1] Over the years the group expanded into multiple areas that the Youth Media Council felt were being shown unfairly and unequally in the media. With the help of the Movement Strategy Center the Youth Media Council was now able to break down all of these groups and creat the group Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net). This later evolved in to the Center for Media Justice in 2008.[1] It published several research studies that analyzed bias in local news coverage of social issues such as youth, crime, and poverty.[2] The Center views net neutrality as a 21st-century civil rights issue and believes a free, open Internet is crucial.
Vision
The CMJ has a vision that states, "Media Justice is a long-term vision to democratize the economy, government, and society through policies and practices that ensure: Media Justice is a long-term vision to democratize the economy, government, and society through policies and practices that ensure: democratic media ownership, fundamental communication rights; universal media and technology access, and meaningful, accurate representation within news and popular culture for everyone."[3] The CMJ feels that it has reached its vision when media and cultural environments connect all communities and uplifts all the voices of the minority groups in America, such as people of color and low-income families.
See also
Further reading
- Published by the Youth Media Council
- Is KMEL the people's station? : a community assessment of 106.1 KMEL. 2002
- Speaking for ourselves : a youth assessment of local news coverage. 2002
- The Bay Area media map : a youth organizer's guide to the media turf in the Bay Area and beyond. 2003
- Displacing the dream : a report on Bay Area newspaper coverage of development and gentrification. [2008?]
External links
- Center for Media Justice website
- Media Action Grassroots Network (a project of the Center for Media Justice)