Our Media Voice: Campaign for Accountability

HISTORY OF THIS INITIATIVE

Our Media Voice is an organization that has been in formation for more than two years. Launched in 1999 by Helen Grieco, Kimberly Weichel and a community of women, it was originally named "The National Women's Media Campaign" to shed light on the stereotyping, sexual exploitation, growing violence in our media, and media reform. For nearly two decades, Helen Grieco has worked intensively to improve the rights and status of women in society, in the workplace, and in the media.

For twenty years, as a parent and a professional, Kim Weichel has consciously used radio and cable TV to produce positive, inspiring stories that are part of everyday life but are rarely covered in mainstream media. As a social pioneer, she believes in the potential of the media and has worked for its reform.

As men also wanted to join the campaign, it was renamed the "Campaign for Positive Media" to be inclusive. Although this campaign has been concerned about all forms of mass media, we have decided that, because of its dominating influence, our initial focus will be on broadcast television.

Given dramatic developments in media conglomeration and the absence of tools for discerning the public interest, we realized that more effective ways of giving citizen feedback were vital. A key question became: How do we bring in the voice of the public to balance the power of media conglomerates and ensure that the vital interests of the public are truly served? Recognizing this may be the most important challenge facing our society and democracy, we are proud to announce our name as Our Media Voice: Campaign for Accountability.

This initiative also draws upon more than two decades of prior work by Duane Elgin who has worked both nationally and in the San Francisco Bay Area on media accountability and the renewal of citizen dialogue. In 1987 a pilot Electronic Town Meeting (or ETM) was produced by his non-profit organization, Choosing Our Future, working in cooperation with the local ABC television station and was seen by over 300,000 persons in the Bay Area. This successful “electronic town meeting” (or ETM) relied upon live feedback from a pre-selected, scientific sample of citizens located throughout the Bay Area.

After the pilot ETM was produced, it was followed by a two-year organizing effort out of which emerged the non-partisan organization, “Bay Voice” (the electronic voice of the Bay Area). The Bay Voice organization negotiated an historic agreement with the NBC station (KRON) for putting regular Electronic Town Meetings on the air beginning in the fall of 1989. Despite the commitment of the NBC-TV station, there was not a sufficient commitment of funds from Bay Area foundations and corporations to launch the Electronic Town Meetings and active organizing for these forums was put on hold. Given the inspiring leadership provided by Helen, Kim, and others, Duane returned to active organizing and began working with the campaign in mid-2000.