Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age

Egal Shidad: Stories of Somali Health

(Photo credit: St. Paul Neighborhood Network)

Guest post from Colin Rhinesmith, Community Media and Technology Manager for Cambridge Community Television and an Affiliate with the New America Foundation's Media Policy Initiative.

For over thirty years, people living in big cities and small towns across the United States have used Public, Educational, and Government (PEG) Access Television to inform, engage, and entertain others in their community. The Cable Act of 1984 mandated that cable operators in the 100 largest markets set aside channels, equipment, and facilities for PEG Access TV in exchange for commercial use of public rights-of-way. In many districts, a local franchise authority negotiates with the cable company to establish the licensing terms. The franchise authority may also conduct a needs assessments to gain input on how residents can use PEG to create a healthier, more informed community. This democratic process gives ordinary people the opportunity to determine their local media's future. However, the recent shift from local to statewide franchising laws has jeopardized much of this process.

In its report, "Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age," the Knight Commission found that a community is a healthy democratic community when local media reflect "the issues, events, experiences and ideas of the entire community." PEG Access TV represents the daily life and aspirations of all residents, regardless of race, class, age, and gender. The diversity of PEG content often connects people across social, cultural, political, and economic divides. A principle that many PEG access centers are extending online through innovative broadband channels, such as Denver Open Media, the Internet Archive's Community Media Collection, Cambridge Community Television's (where I work) Media Map, and the MIRO Community project at Medfield.TV.

Many of these issues will be explored at this week's second FCC Future of Media workshop, entitled “Public and other Noncommercial Media in the Digital Era" (PDF). In advance of the workshop, I was curious to know how other PEG access centers are addressing the information needs of underserved residents in their communities. I asked the Executive Directors at four community media centers to respond to the following question, borrowed from the FCC's inquiry:

"What is the role of PEG Access TV in serving the information needs of the underserved, including language minorities, ethnic minorities, children, the disabled, and the economically disadvantaged?"

Here is what they said:

Mike Wassenaar, SPNN, Saint Paul, MN

"We’ve had a long tradition of working in the South East Asian refuge communities, because the information needs of those communities who came here in the 1980’s were not being met by commercial broadcasters. There was a market failure. Therefore, individuals stepped up to produce programming for their own communities because they have both a sense of civic pride and investment in bettering their community, and they saw the opportunity of working with the channels in Saint Paul.

The same thing is true with the African Diaspora that’s come to the Twin Cities in the last 15 years. There are now 8 regularly produced weekly series in Somali that work with both educational content, cultural content, religious content, by, for and about the Somali community, which has a population of about 60,000 people right now in Minneapolis, St. Paul. Not large enough to get the interest of commercial broadcasters of any sort. They’ve been able to find a haven, if you will, within our center and through our channels.

We have a longstanding partnership with a black publisher here in town who, the last 25 years, has published a weekly paper called Insight News. He does a public affairs discussion forum of significant importance to the African American community in community settings often with public officials. Very often it’s the only way in which either business owners or community activities, or just plain folks, have the ability to have any face time with public officials. Because he’s a publisher, he can bring them in to have that community discussion about issues of significance, such as hiring practices, economic development, community police relationships and the like. We tape those programs for distribution both here in St. Paul, as well as metro wide through other cable channels. Once or twice those have actually gotten onto Comcast’s Video on Demand service. Those programs, again, are not of significant interest to a commercial broadcaster.

We do a similar thing also now with non-profits that work for Spanish speaking audiences. We’ve had a very successful relationship in the last four years with an organization called The Neighborhood Development Alliance, NEDA. And NEDA does a lot of work on financial literacy, home ownership education, and foreclosure prevention, bankruptcy issues within the Latino community. We’ve actually developed programming in Spanish for residents on what you have to do to navigate through this system. It's been very, very helpful for them because they can actually use this as outreach materials through a wide set of community institutions, many of whom don’t have cable or internet distribution. But they may have a DVD player and can actually show this material in a home setting or in a church. It works very, very well in terms of community outreach work."

Barbara Popovic, CAN TV, Chicago, IL 

“The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund is one of the groups in Chicago tapped by the 2010 Census to do outreach. They came to us and said that CAN TV is one of their top communication strategies, because they had worked with us in 2000. When they came back, they had three goals, three PR tools. Two were nationally mandated by the 2010 Census effort. The one local one was CAN TV. They wanted to use CAN TV because they were able to speak directly with the viewing audience to dispel fears, stereotypes, and answer questions. They said that for the immigrant community it’s really important to work with and hear from a trusted local organization. And that’s how CAN TV is viewed.

She felt that using CAN TV was especially important because of the live call-in format. People were talking directly with her in its bilingual program, and asking their questions. And the way the format works, she can put the Census document right up and show people how to fill it in and this kind of thing. We developed a program starting in April, and spanning to Census day, to help the Census through two or three of our services to get the word out.

We’ve also been working with hospitals. We heard from Children’s Memorial Hospital here, which is the premier children’s hospital. We worked with the Asthma Research team. And they put messaging on our channels to recruit people to take place in clinical trials and specialty asthma care. They had great success working with CAN TV."

Lauren-Glenn Davitian, CCTV, Burlington, VT 

“We have programs that you would not see anywhere else, just as with other access channels, particularly programs having to do with the refugee community, of which we have a very big and growing African community. People from the Congo and from Somalia. Viewership is highest when we cablecast programs about the Congo. People have a network that they animate to watch it. And they’re political programs. They’re about what’s happening there politically.

Again, this is an information network that’s not available in any other place for them. And for members of the wider community as well to understand what’s going on. But, for this particular network of people living in Diaspora, it’s a really important and vital program source.”

Laurie Cirivello, GRTV, Grand Rapids, MI

"From the onset, the public access channel was very much tied into a project called Community Story Tree Project. It was collecting personal digital stories from 25 people in two very different neighborhoods. Part of that plan was bringing them together for a screening.

The intent behind the project wasn’t to make a TV show. The intent behind the project was to really enable and empower people in two marginalized neighborhoods. And when I say 'marginalized' I mean by people, economically challenged, very diverse but not intersecting very often. And to have their stories captured, preserved, presented to try to give people a better sense of their neighbors. And not just by stereotypes and broad brushes.

A big part of that project was that these stories are shared on GRTV for the broad audience, so there is that broadcast thing. But, also they’re on the web at communitystorytree.org, and they’re all story maps. They’re also embedded in the permanent community archives as part of the historic record of this community. So it’s multifaceted and it’s very tough for us to separate those things out.

That being said, the bearing wall of this organization is PEG access TV. In other words, so many of these other things just don’t happen without PEG."