Be The Media

Linda Stout spoke in November at an event preceding the Be The Media conference sponsored by PCN/Boston chapter.  Folks can go here to download a report, Raise Every Voice, which includes case studies of the impact of using media in organizing for change.

 

Here is her speech: 

I want to thank our co-sponsors, Solidago and Haymarket.  I also want to thank Solidago for funding the report. 

My first introduction to the power of media was in the early 80’s when I began organizing in rural NC, my home, to change the conditions that affected us as poor people. 

We very quickly began to see our local media – all of which was controlled and owned by the local textile giant – Cannon Mills – as the enemy.  The media always reported negatively on our activities and the issues we were concerned about. Often they made very personal attacks on our organization and on us individually. 

In 1989, we won the National Grassroots Peace Award. We were told that, in addition to the cash prize, we would receive the services of a media consultant to help us run a national media campaign.  I thought about this idea for a minute, and then asked “can we have the money instead?”  I did not see how doing a media campaign could possibly serve us.  But, luckily we were told no: the press campaign was a requirement of the prize. 

After that experience, my understanding of the power of media was transformed.  Not only did we get amazing coverage nationally, but we were able to tell our stories in the local papers and received positive coverage for the first time. 

That was only the beginning.  We took the prize money we won – a huge amount to us –$10,000 – and hired the media consultant to continue working with us.  We learned to use the media to get our messages out, and in doing that, began to build a reputation as experts around the issues that impacted us.  Before long, when the state budget was released, the state paper would call us to talk about how the cuts in the budget was affecting people in our community rather than calling the local economist at the University as they always had in the past.  

We not only saw how our messages were getting out to a much broader public, but noticed that the media began to run more Associated Press stories that covered the kind of issues we were raising.  We began to see much more success in our ability to change public policies; we were able to build credibility among elected officials; Additionally, we were able to grow our membership and our funding significantly as a result of our media work.   

I began to understand that media was critical to our work for social change.  Today, as someone who is both a foundation funder and an organizer, I believe that media is more critical now than it ever has been. 

In 2000 we started Progressive Communicators Network, a national network of communicators working to strengthen and amplify and voices of grassroots groups working for social, economic and environmental justice. 

I have been thrilled to see grassroots groups become more interested in using media over the past few years (as shown today by the fact the conference had to start turning people away because so many people signed up) but I’m also excited by the number of funders who are taking an interest in supporting media work. 

The majority of that interest has been focused on 3 critical areas.  There has been a lot of funding and work on reforming the media – an important, vital part of our work in today’s overwhelming corporate control of information.   

There has also been increased interest and understanding of the need to fund alternative and independent media that is free from corporate control. 

And most recently, there has been a growing awareness of the need to put attention on framing and messaging to reach the broader public. 

But I believe that one of the areas that has been most overlooked by many funders has been the need to support grassroots organizations to receive the training, the support, and the funding to develop and carry out a powerful communications strategy. 

While in some cases independent local media reaches the community, most often alternative media only reaches the “already converted”.  This is important and gives us the true sources of information we need to do our work effectively.  For instance, the work of Democracy Now has played a key role in bringing us the truth that we will never hear from the usual new sources. 

But, in rural NC, we knew that getting an article in the Nation, or MS Magazine, or even on NPR (which didn’t even reach the area we lived in) would never reach the folks in our community.  In order to reach our people, we had to get our messages into the local papers, on the local television stations and in places like Family Circle Magazine.  That’s what people in our communities responded to. 

Another important area of media work that I mentioned earlier is messaging & framing;  Many of us were influenced by George Lakoffs book, “Don’t think about an Elephant,” but it is not enough to just fund “messaging & framing” at the national level.  We must also be funding the grassroots who can develop the messages that most speak to their folks, and who can translate the broader national messages and carry them out into the local communities.  We can develop powerful messages, but without the groups to carry them forward, they will not have the impact we would hope for. 

I want to tell a story about how one of the working groups of Progressive Communicators Network were able to come together to become more effective.  There were several groups who came to our annual gathering that worked on criminal justice.  But they had political & strategic differences between those working on prison reform and other  working on prison abolition.  They realized that they had many different messages and in some cases messages that actually undermined each others work.  They recognized that shared messaging and communications strategy would serve to strengthen everyone’s work on prison issues.   

So 16 people met together for the first time to develop a collective communications strategy.  One of the first things they did was put on the wall all the messages they were currently using.  There was over a 100 different messages.  This often happens when we work in isolated ways.  The result is that instead of having a powerful unified message that gets echoed and becomes part of the public discourse, we find ourselves mumbling and giving the public a confused message at best.  

This gathering focused on a shared vision of creating core strategic messages that would advance many different types of anti-prison work. They worked on developing common messages and all of the participants agreed to quit using messages that undermined each other’s different strategies while at the same time deciding on the importance of putting forward a unified message that “prisons do not make us safer.”  

For the folks who participated, it was the first time they had the opportunity to brainstorm and develop messages together, so all of their work could be more effective and become greater than the sum of their parts. 

I believe it is critical for those of us who want to build a different world to support this kind of strategic communications work at the grassroots. 

You will hear several stories today about how grassroots media strategy has made a difference – we need to ensure that this work continues to grow.  (readers can find these stories in our report, Raise Every Voice)

Thank you so much for your participation and interest in this critical part of our work for social change.