This Week: The Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive, Week Two

A Slow Start! Send in your Pledge today, so we can get this over with!

"Quote" of the Week

The Keys to Media Empowerment, Part 2: Beyond Truth and Reality

The Keys to Media Empowerment, Part 3: Asking Questions and Media Activism

 

Please Pledge Now! Become a Type Two (See Below) Today!

The Fall 2007 Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive is off to a slow start. So...

I BEG YOU TO MAKE A PLEDGE OF SUPPORT TO NYGAARD NOTES RIGHT NOW!

I figure there are three basic types of readers of Nygaard Notes, at least in terms of the Pledge Drive.

TYPE ONE is really hurting for money. I don't expect Type Ones to make a pledge. In fact, one of the reasons I try to support Nygaard Notes with Pledge Drives is exactly so that Type One people do not "have to" pay for it. And I never copyright anything, so anyone, anywhere can make use of my work to do their own work, or just to be better able to understand our world.

TYPE TWO is the person who already pledges. Type Twos realize that this project and its independence means something to them, and they also realize that it means something to Type Ones. So they send in their support to make this ongoing experiment in independent journalism sustainable. Thank You, Type Twos!

TYPE THREE is new to the Notes, and either hasn't thought about how such a service is supported, or imagines that it must be supported in some way that has nothing to do with her or him. After all, most "independent" projects like this have an outside source of support, of some kind, don't they? Like, a spouse or a partner who has a high-paying job of some sort. Not the case with Nygaard Notes. Your pledges are IT. That's why I have two different day jobs.

TYPE FOUR is the average person who realizes that they "should" make a Pledge. They have been meaning to make a Pledge. They understand that their Pledge is important to the sustainability of this unique project called Nygaard Notes. Yet the Type Four, like Type Fours everywhere, just hasn't gotten around to it yet.

It is for all of you Type Threes and Type Fours that I do these Pledge Drives. They're not my favorite things to do (although I do enjoy the tradition of using the Pledge Drive to reflect on the meaning of independent media, as I seem to do in recent years). Really, I would rather have the money that supports this project come to me just me wishing. Or, perhaps, through a project like the Artistic Freedom Voucher that I explained in Nygaard Notes #332 ("An End to Copyrights: The Artistic Freedom Voucher")

BUT IT DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT!

Most people who pledge continue to renew their Pledges faithfully, but not all of them do. That's why YOUR Pledge is so important! I need to at least maintain my current level of $500 dollars a month in total pledges. If I can increase that level, then I can spend even more time on the Notes. That would be good for everyone. And it would be good for my mental and physical health, as well. It's a lot of work doing Nygaard Notes. Please do your part to keep it going!

Make your check payable to "Nygaard Notes" and mail it to:
Nygaard Notes
P.O. Box 14354
Minneapolis, MN 55414

OR pledge online at http://www.nygaardnotes.org/ Click on "Donate to Nygaard Notes"

"Quote" of the Week

I don't often quote George W. Bush in this space, but I couldn't let this one go. On September 25 Mr. Bush was talking about Darfur at the United Nations. There has been a debate about whether what is going on in Darfur is technically "genocide" or not. I won't get into that debate here, but it's an important one. Anyhow, in response to this debate, Mr. Bush said the following:

"Maybe some don't think it's genocide, but ... If you're mercilessly killed by roaming bands, you know it's genocide."

I could find no record of anyone asking the "President" what he could possibly have meant by this, but it's more idiotic than usual. By the same logic, someone who steps outside and gets wet "knows" that it is raining over the entire country. Personal experience is not universal experience. Someone should tell Mr. Bush.

The Keys to Media Empowerment, Part 2: Beyond Truth and Reality

When it comes to the importance of asking questions in terms of Media Empowerment, there is both a personal aspect and an activist aspect, as I said last week. I ended last week by suggesting that one might discover three benefits once one fully understands the importance of asking questions. Those three benefits are:
1. It allows us to find answers to our questions in unlikely places, like the corporate media;
2. It allows us to stay clear on our own values and priorities, and not accept someone else's, and;
3. It makes us better able to find news sources that serve our needs.

In fact, there is a fourth benefit that individuals might discover, and I left it off because it is a benefit both on the personal side and on the activist side. That benefit is:

Asking questions helps us to avoid the oversimplification of issues that is a huge barrier to clear understanding, and that also makes us more vulnerable to Propaganda.

What I mean by this is that, by focusing on the questions rather than on the answers, we help ourselves to stay away from an attachment to such abstractions as "truth" and "reality." It keeps us focused, instead, on the unfolding process of discovery that is what learning is all about.

Don't misunderstand me; I am not promoting some sort of "relativism" here, where nothing is less true than anything else, and everybody's "version" of reality is equally valid. Let me go on record as saying that there IS such a thing as reality. I'm just not so sure that we can ever "know" exactly what it is, and I don't think it's all that important.

Think, for a moment, of a photograph. We all know, when we look at a photograph, that it was only "true" at the moment it was taken, and that the reality it depicts is more complex and dynamic than the photo can tell us. That doesn't mean the photo isn't "true." It just means that reality is more complicated and dynamic than can be captured on a piece of paper or on a computer screen.

Now think of a news story. It's the same thing. A news story—assuming it's true in any sense of the word—can only be true at the moment it is written. That is so because the conditions it describes, no matter how accurately, are constantly changing. A quick glance at an unfolding activity is unlikely to give us enough to understand "what is going on." Likewise, a headline—or even a single news story—is going to answer very few important questions in the absence of an ability to see the "bigger picture." Such "bigger pictures" rarely fit into the format of the daily news.

That's why Step #1 in reading the news is: Learn the context elsewhere. (See Nygaard Notes #36: "Reading the Newspaper: A Four-Step Process.")

So, on the personal level, a questioning attitude will help us think, and make us more resistant to the oversimplifications and caricatures that often make up the "news." And this same attitude will help us create effective, and truly alternative, media. As I explain in the next article.

The Keys to Media Empowerment, Part 3: Asking Questions and Media Activism

Three weeks ago I said, in my editor's note, that "Much of modern journalism in this country is nothing more than well-written, factually-accurate answers to the wrong questions." When I say "wrong" it's not some kind of moral judgement. I am simply referring to questions that do not help us to understand the issues that are important to us. Call them "not useful" questions, or "unimportant" questions, or whatever. I call them "wrong."

When one asks a working journalist how they decide what is important in the news, they often say that it is not their job to decide such things. Their job is to give people what they "want." When they say such things, they seem to be reluctant to acknowledge the power that a big media outlet has in shaping people's ideas about what is important. That is, they act as if the decisions they make about what is "news"—that is, which of the day's events are worth talking and thinking about and which are not—are simply a reflection of some larger, pre-existing external political reality. In fact, big media outlets have a large role in creating that reality. How many times do we see something become a hotly-debated political issue only after it gets into "the news"? One can only guess at how many stories, equally or more important, fail to become issues because they do not make it into the news. That's power.

If we find that the corporate news media chronically asks the "wrong" questions, then we need to put some energy into creating our own methods for asking, and answering, the "right" questions. That is, questions that are useful, important, and relevant to our current situation and the challenges it presents. If we want such questions to be asked as part of the news "cycle" we have to create and support independent media.

Not Looking for "Truth"

The greatest danger for people trying to create independent, or alternative, media is to focus on "telling the truth" or seeking to find out "what is real." It's dangerous because ideas like this keep us thinking about the "answers," and make it easy for media activists to think that our job is to enlighten the ignorant masses. In terms of building a movement, or even in terms of winning support for some short-term changes we may want, this is bad strategy. Nobody wants to be "enlightened," at least not in the one-way, political, "I-know-the-truth-and-you-don't" sense. And, in any case, nobody is qualified to enlighten anyone else. The best we can do is to help each other learn, in a two-way, collaborative process.

Rather than worrying so much about "truth" and "reality," it would be far better for would-be media activists to focus on asking the right questions. A truly "alternative" journalist would understand that the questions that she/he asks in the process of pursuing a story do not just come from nowhere, but arise from certain sets of attitudes, values, beliefs, and priorities. The formation of one's attitudes, values, beliefs, and priorities is a complex process, but it's not entirely out of our control. By developing media that continually ask people-oriented questions, we reinforce the importance of the people-oriented values that gave rise to them. This is true whatever the "answers" we find may be.

The reasons that the corporate media often ask the wrong questions are many, but the fundamental reason is that this is not what they are organized to do. They are organized to make money for stockholders, which means that their energy goes into—and must go into—getting as many people as possible to look at the advertisements for which the "news" is the package. This is not "people-oriented." This is product-oriented, and brings us lots of news about airplane crashes and celebrity divorces. News we can use?

A truly "alternative" media organization would be set up to respond to, and to be accountable to, the needs of the community and the society, as defined by the members of the community and the society. Step One in this process is to change the way media is financed. This means that advertising is out, since it demands allegiance to the needs of the advertisers. Direct financing by readers and viewers—or indirect financing, using public funds— is in.

Once a media organization has broken free of the dependence on corporate money via advertising, it is free to engage with the people in our communities, to ask them what the issues are, and what they need to know in order to take effective action to address them. And that is where the questions that shape the stories come from. This "bottom-up" approach is as different as it could possibly be from the "if it bleeds, it leads" approach taken by the corporate media, where the primary question is and must be: How many viewers will this pull in?

A successful media project will understand that the best questions to use in shaping the news will reflect the underlying values of the community. The questions will be connected to the community, and to real needs and values. I've said before that a journalist is a surrogate for the community, so it is the job of the journalist to ask the questions that you and I would ask if WE were able to be there covering the story. This is how we can get REAL news we can use.

In Summary

Let me use a health analogy to summarize my point in this series: On the personal level, learning to ask OUR OWN questions about what is going on in the world has the effect of "inoculating" ourselves against propaganda in the corporate media. If we formulate our questions before we look at the corporate media, we'll be able to know an answer when we see it, and we'll be able to ignore or discount the answers to questions that don't help us. This self-conscious formulation of questions is like getting a shot—it protects the question-asker from being infected by Propaganda. This sort of inoculation can be done at any time, by anybody, and it will protect the person who does it.

On the political, or activist, level, the creation of new sources of news that are focused on asking the "right" questions is like a gigantic public health campaign. By reducing the Propaganda in the larger culture, we can make it less likely that even the un-inoculated will be infected by that Propaganda. It's great to inoculate ourselves on the personal level, but it's even better to change our toxic environment and reduce the risk of Propaganda infection in the first place. That way, even people who don't know they are at risk of Propaganda are protected.

WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW to contribute to this public health campaign is to support independent media like Nygaard Notes. The values from which I derive my questions are my four core values of Solidarity, Compassion, Justice, and Democracy. By supporting Nygaard Notes you are helping to hold this project accountable to those values.

Please send in your pledge today, and affirm your support for the kind of questions that Nygaard Notes will continue to ask. Thank you.