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Leading lights in the international broadcasting space will be congregating at New America this afternoon to weigh in on the subject of International Broadcasting and

New America Foundation President Steve Coll was a guest on NPR’s On the Media two Fridays ago, commenting on his open letter to the FCC in the The Columbia Journalism Review and the accompanying op-ed in The Washington Post. In these publications and on NPR, Coll made the point that it is in the best interest of Americans for commercial media to give up the existing public interest obligations, and instead pay spectrum usage fees that could go towards strengthening the public media to provide the information the commercial media hasn’t been providing.

Though we focus on media policy here at the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative (MPI), such policy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It must address the needs of the day. As the FCC explores policies in its “Future of Media” inquiry, understanding the changes in technology and designing the policies to address these changes is crucial to successful media policy.

Plenty going on this week.

• On Sept. 29, Fellow Jessica Clark published a blog post on behalf of American University’s Center for Social Media, “Making the Case for Public Media at the RIPE Conference.” The RIPE conference (Re-visionary Interpretations of the Public Enterprise) in London early last month was the site of a discussion on the role of public media, specifically public service broadcasters (PSBs), in the digital age. 

• Version 1 of the Media Policy Initiative’s latest information community case study, The Research Triangle, North Carolina: A region oflocallyowned media outlets and entrepreneurs on the verge, was posted to the website on Sept. 16. Fiona Morgan has reported on the “information health” of the Triangle area, i.e. Durham, Wake, Orange, and Chatham counties, according to The Knight Commission Report on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy.

• First of all, we would like to announce that Version 1 of Daniel Amzallag and Amalia Deloney’s information community case study on Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota: Adapting business models to digitalized information demandhas been completed and posted to the Media Policy Initiative’s website.

Mobile journalism’s rapid climb in popularity has been front and center over the past month, with an unrelenting stream of iPad apps, iPhone apps and other new digital endeavors being sent out into the world by traditionally print news outlets. From Marie Claire to Rupert Murdoch, everyone and their brother seems to be getting on the mobile bandwagon.

Since freedom of the press is the foundation that American news outlets are built on, we all know that the First Amendment is sacrosanct to this country’s journalists. However, there are a few situations that test the limits of this freedom, and one of these situations has been in the news recently. Though it traditionally falls under the protections of the First Amendment, photography occupies that ambivalent space where cameras can be wielded by both journalists and private citizens with potentially harmful intent. It’s the latter group that leads to conflict between law enforcement officials and camera-toting individuals and frames the debate over security and freedom of the press in the incongruous terms of the Second Amendment.

But in the modern information society, the camera is not a weapon; on the contrary, it’s increasingly the main tool of citizen journalists in their effort to spread information. The easiest way that an average person can contribute to the news ecosystem—one of the prime opportunities for civic engagement—might be to take just one picture. As we pointed out earlier this month, this is how citizen journalism first took off.

But not everyone is happy to let your average American snap photos in public areas, even if it is for the good of the community.

We don’t normally address questions of media policy abroad on this blog, but the situation in Italy seems worthy of highlighting.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been increasingly critical of the media, recently giving public voice to a cause that is apparently very close to his heart: “Italian citizens, please go on strike. Stop buying newspapers for a while. They only tell lies. They totally disinform. They give an upside down view of reality.”

He got a strike, but not the one that he intended.

In the face of danger, human nature may dictate a fight-or-flight response, but mobile technology has created a new reflex: point and shoot. This week marks the 5-year-anniversary of the 7/7 bombings that shook London’s mass transit system, a tragedy that, in addition to its cultural and geopolitical consequences, helped formulate a new understanding of what it means for the world to witness the immediate aftermath of catastrophe. Cell phone photos taken by survivors—average citizens—have had consequences that few could have predicted: July 7, 2005, was one of the pivotal moments in the development of citizen journalism as a legitimate, continually evolving part of the modern media landscape.