For immediate release: February 4, 2000
"I urge you to make MediaChannel your portal to the Internet." - Walter Cronkite
MEDIACHANNEL.ORG, FIRST "GLOBAL MEDIA SUPERSITE" GIVES NEW ONLINE HOME TO INDEPENDENT VOICES
Responding to a "media crisis" in an age of mega-mergers and unprecedented corporate concentration, two international foundations are launching MediaChannel.org, the first Web portal dedicated to international media issues. The site will be the premier Internet source for analysis and information about the media.
Driven by content from a network of more than 300 international media organizations and publications, MediaChannel explores areas such as freedom of expression, citizen access to media, trends in media ownership, media arts, and the intersection of media and politics. A joint project of two foundations specializing in independent media, Britain's OneWorld Online and The Global Center in New York, MediaChannel.org was designed and produced by Globalvision New Media.
We created MediaChannel in response to the crisis in the media world," explains Danny Schechter, MediaChannel Executive Editor and an Emmy award-winning former ABC News and CNN producer. "The 'dumbing down' of news and trivializing of information is not just an American phenomenon, but a global one."
Echoing MediaChannel's concern for objectivity and integrity in journalism, MediaChannel advisory board member Walter Cronkite urged the public "to make MediaChannel.org your portal to the Internet." In particular, he applauded MediaChannel's "encouragement to people inside the media to speak up. Corporate censorship is just as dangerous as government censorship." You can read Mr. Cronkite's full statement online at the site, http://www.mediachannel.org.
According to Schechter, a key feature of the site is its growing network of over 300 independent organizations dedicated to media and social issues around the world, the largest such network in the world. These groups include: the Columbia Journalism Review, Freedom Forum, the International Federation of Journalists, and the Media Institute of Southern Africa. MediaChannel.org also boasts over 90 international advisors consisting of some of the world's leading journalists, academics, media professionals, media critics, and activists.
"MediaChannel.org provides the most comprehensive searchable database of media topics available on the Web," said Schechter. Stories from affiliated organizations are organized into topics such as "activism," "children," and "diversity." Issues explored in-depth on the Web sit include the AOL-Time Warner merger, violence in the media, and the media's coverage of war.
Original content on the site includes a daily media news page, with links to the most important and provocative media news stories online.
The Views section offers all-original critical commentary, inside information and open debates on the state of the global media, including Schechter's weekly "News Dissector" column, and pieces from international contributors such as Todd Gitlin, Culture and Communication professor at New York University, Nadine Gordimer, the renowned South African Nobel Prize winning writer, and the noted Latin American essayist Eduardo Galeano.
A Media Arts section includes stories from affiliate groups dedicated to artistic freedom, as well as an original column by media arts editor Robert Atkins. The section also brings back to the Web "The File Room," Antonio Muntadas's pioneering online artwork about cultural censorship.
"The MediaChannel is the first project of our new company, Globalvision New Media" said Rory O'Connor, President and CEO of Globalvision, Inc. "We are producing the site in the public interest with the support of many foundations and donors in the same spirit of public TV." The Rockefeller Foundation, Open Society Institute, Arca Foundation, Reebok Human Rights Foundation and the Puffin Foundation are among those who have provided funding for MediaChannel.
"Discussion, debate and discourse are our hallmarks," said Ken Jordan, MediaChannel's Site Director. "We don't just gripe about what's wrong with the media -- we also explore ways to make it right. We are creating an on-line center for media critics, analysts, educators and journalists world wide."