Eradicating the journalist/audience divide

The media, as a conduit for information and education, plays an essential role in affecting social change and is an integral part of any social justice campaign.

I don't want to give over much space to discussing the big bad mainstream news media. Suffice it to say they're massive, profit-driven corporations with little interest in challenging the status quo, limited by their ideology and structure to bytes of whatever's sexy and 'newsworthy' this week. Despite the lingering notion of the noble fourth estate, the people's watchdog, the content produced by these institutions is overwhelmingly shallow and disappointingly lacking in investigative or critical rigour.

So that leaves us to discuss the amorphous area of 'alternative', 'community', 'tactical' and 'independent' media. Community radio and television stations, zines, self publishing, low budget papers, student press, pirate tv and so on.

This media exists for a variety of reasons—to empower communities and allow people to tell their own stories, to document movements often ignored by the mainstream, to counter the dominant discourses, which are generally limiting and stereotypical, and to disseminate information with a view to affecting broader social change. Many outlets aim to demystify the media-making experience and make it accessible to anyone and everyone: to democratise the media.

Non-commercial media plays an important role in documenting movements of resistance and providing a space for the telling of marginalised stories. But this telling of stories is not simply the responsibility of those identified as 'media makers'. This compartmentalisation of roles reproduces the divide between journalist and audience inherent to the mainstream, and should be avoided within any alternative culture.

In my view, the most important role of community media and of a strong independent media culture is to act as a catalyst to shift the way that we think about media, our education, and how information is controlled, skewed and distorted around us in every sphere. It's a starting point to re-assess everything around us.

The alterna-mediascape in Melbourne seems to have exploded in the last couple of years. The networks and collaborations that are now taking place continue to amaze me. In many ways I think that the inception of a Melbourne IndyMedia site around the 'S11' protests was a much-needed spark that set off a number of projects and reconfigured the mediascape in Melbourne .

Despite the incredible achievements by groups like SKA TV, 3CR and The Paper on non-existent budgets and volunteer labour this realm of media is often marginalised and regarded as little more than a training ground for mainstream journalism—and rarely given credit as an important area in its own right. Alternative and radical media is about creating something outside and separate from the mainstream which does not rely upon it to survive. In many cases the mainstream news outlets harass SKA for footage, 3CR for audio and lift pictures and articles from IndyMedia: this rarely happens in reverse.

The culture that these independent outlets encourage is one of participation and involvement. This has been most remarkably demonstrated by the explosion of the IndyMedia network—by its very nature breaking down the spectator/spectacle divide and creating a space for a many to many discourse. The IndyMedia catch phrase, 'Everyone is a witness, Everyone is a journalist', captures the importance of breaking down the definitions of who is and isn't credible or privileged enough to comment on an event.

Although this shift in thinking about the media is beginning to occur the divide between audience and journalist inherent in the mainstream media is still too often replicated in alternative media. The only modes of feedback in the mainstream are mediated letters to the editor and call back radio. The basis of community media, on the contrary, is that you can have your own program and truly participate in any area of the entire process. The whole point of an 'alternative' is to remove the barriers and constructed hierarchies between those capable of presenting the news and the audience they present it to.

Quite often people will approach members of independent media groups suggesting that they do this or that with regards to their marketing, promotion, lay out or content. While feedback is great, this whole 'you should do this' approach is infinitely infuriating. The modus operandi of community media is built on a foundation of participation and notions of community ownership and loyalty. It's not a matter of telling other people how you want them to do things. To turn it into a soundbite or slogan, Don't criticise, organise.

This is the main point on which I would take issue with most activists and supporters of community media. This media is not just about a set group of people producing the content; the distribution, content production, promotion and funding should be the responsibility of the communities that support these initiatives. We can't possibly do it on our own—nor do we want to further entrench the false divide between the 'us' and 'you', 'experts' and 'public', 'media-makers' and 'media-receivers'.

Sometimes it can feel like such a cliche to say, when speaking in public, 'This is YOUR media—take it, shake it and make it what you will.' There's so much plastic reality about 'going your own way' (Sportsgirl), 'think different' (apple computers) that it makes it hard to recognise the things which really are yours and the spaces that really are for communities.

I see the role of independent media-makers working on several levels—to both inspire others to engage and to produce progressive and challenging content. I hope that Media Circus encourages more people to get involved and that the divisions between panelists, rogue states writers, organisers and audience get broken down.