3 Advocacy
The Alliance for Community Media has consistently been in the forefront of those advocating for community media in the state houses, in the Congress, and in the courts. In 2006 we joined with many other organizations in the successful effort to block federal legislation (the so-called COPE bill) aimed at ending local municipalities’ authority to issue cable franchises. This legislation would have reduced the number of PEG access channels in the US, and would have slashed the funding for many of those that remained.
This year we face similar threats in several states, as proposed legislation would move franchising from the local level to a statewide level. Many of our members have been collaborating with allied organizations to oppose or amend this legislative assault on community media. A number of them have established websites from which to wage this campaign for these channels’ survival. Links to these websites, and other resources for tracking statewide video franchising legislation, appear at the top-right of this page, titled “Saving Public Access.” Links to a number of the allied organizations participating in this effort appear further down, under the heading “Allies.”
Related to these efforts is the Alliance’s participation in a suit filed against the FCC’s action last December that, were it to go into effect, would have very nearly the same impact on PEG access channels that last year’s proposed federal legislation would have had. Our allied organizations retained counsel in this matter, and on April 4 we filed suit.
Numerous press and blog reports of these battles are published each day. The Alliance provides an online clippings service so that our members and allies can stay up-to-the-minute with many of these fast-moving events.
Although protection of local franchise authorities’ ability to require PEG access channels and their support from their cable providers is a central advocacy concern of the Alliance, we share many related goals with our allied organizations. These include caps on media ownership, increased diversity in media ownership, and net neutrality, just to name a few. Other organizations whom we salute for their strong work in these additional areas of media reform include Free Press and the Media & Democracy Coalition. Please visit their sites, and the sites of our other friends, listed under “Allies” in the sidebar to the right.
