http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4440

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Extra! December 2011

Media Justice and the 99 Percent Movement
How net neutrality helped Occupy Wall Street

By Betty Yu

It all started with one message posted on a blog on July 13, 2011. 
The magazine Adbusters, a not-for-profit, reader-supported, 
120,000-circulation magazine that combats corporate consumerism, 
issued a call: "On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood 
into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and 
occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly 
repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices."

On September 17, a thousand people marched to Wall Street, and then 
hundreds stayed to occupy Liberty Plaza in New York's Financial 
District.

Even after a solid two weeks of this Occupation, corporate media 
largely blacked it out. What coverage there was depicted protesters 
as drug-abusing hippies (the Fox News spin-Hannity, 10/10/11), or, in 
the "liberal" version, as directionless naifs with no message (New 
York Times, 9/23/11). As the OWS Declaration in New York City put it, 
the 1 percent "purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful 
through their control of the media."

But grassroots, independent media outlets like Democracy Now!, 
Pacifica Radio, the Indypendent newspapers and public access TV 
channels, with a combined audience of millions, covered the 
Occupation from the perspective of the people-the 99 percent. These 
independent outlets provided a platform for protesters to talk about 
why they were supporting the Occupation-speaking out about rising 
unemployment, declining wages, diminishing quality of life, 
foreclosures, education budget cuts, lack of healthcare and unjust 
wars, just to name a few.

What elevated the activism to a national and global movement, though, 
was the sophisticated and widespread use of social media. Independent 
mediamakers, citizen journalists, everyday people with camera phones 
were capturing the voices and faces of this burgeoning movement and 
uploading them to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, mostly within 
minutes of being captured. Group text-messaging was used to share 
information and media quickly.

These tools for instant communication not only helped to mobilize 
thousands to marches and events, but also captured police brutality 
toward the protesters. It was only when images were disseminated of a 
senior New York City police official pepper-spraying peaceful women 
protesters, temporarily blinding them, that corporate media began 
paying attention. The pepper-spraying incident was documented by 
fellow protesters and uploaded to YouTube-where it was viewed more 
than 2 million times-then posted on Facebook and tweeted to be shared 
with the world.

In the age of digital media, anyone with an Internet connection can 
watch OWS's General Assembly meeting on the livestream of the Occupy 
website. They can share an Occupy update on Facebook, or tweet it on 
Twitter-providing an ongoing venue for people to show support and 
participate virtually in the protests. One Tumblr site houses the 
stories of thousands of supporters who share why they are a part of 
the 99 percent, holding up handwritten signs and telling their 
stories.

Of course, human, face-to-face interaction and relationship-building 
is irreplaceable. Social media have helped get people out of their 
nests and into the streets of Liberty Plaza and elsewhere, to attend 
a General Assembly or a working group meeting. In New York, the 
working groups, many of them self-organized, have grown from 10 to 
over 70, largely through outreach done on the Internet. People in 
nearly 900 cities formed MeetUp.com groups, using the 
OccupyTogether.org website as their central hub.

The democratization of media-making tools, particularly an open and 
unfettered Internet, has made all this possible. Right now, though, 
this open access is under threat. Network neutrality is the principle 
that requires Internet service providers to treat all content 
equally, guaranteeing a level playing field for all websites and 
Internet technologies.

Since the invention of the Internet, net neutrality has facilitated 
democratic participation, allowing social justice organizations, 
cultural workers, citizen journalists, artists and small businesses 
to create, share and receive information freely. Right now, the 
livestream of Occupy Wall Street downloads just as quickly as the 
website of Goldman Sachs. Without net neutrality, small businesses, 
nonprofits and individuals who can't afford high-speed services would 
have their ability to reach a mass audience online severely limited.

The telecommunications corporations that provide Internet 
connections, like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, want to increase their 
already mammoth profits by controlling websites, video, content and 
applications. These corporations want their own sites and services to 
be easily available to the public, while slowing down access to those 
owned by their competitors-or by independent groups who can't afford 
to pay the gatekeepers' tolls.

In December 2010, the Federal Communications Commission issued new 
rules on net neutrality that were a devastating blow to media 
democracy. Labeled "fake net neutrality" by media justice advocates, 
the new regulations have no real enforcement mechanism. Worse yet, 
they provide zero protection for wireless devices-the mobile devices 
that have been so vital in the OWS movement for documenting police 
misconduct and spreading the word. As Extra! went to press, the 
Senate was considering a "resolution of disapproval" that would 
effectively remove all existing protections for Internet users and 
give unrestricted power to corporations like AT&T, Comcast and 
Verizon.

The communities that will be most affected by the lack of wireless 
net neutrality provisions are low-income and people of color. A 
recent Pew Center study (7/7/10) showed that nearly two-thirds of 
people of color, mainly Latinos and African-Americans, access the 
Internet through their phones.

One of the biggest media justice fights now is to break up the 
emerging duopoly between AT&T and Verizon, potentially controlling 80 
percent of the mobile market. In March 2011, AT&T announced plans to 
acquire T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. The loss of a low-cost wireless 
carrier like T-Mobile threatens to limit affordable mobile broadband 
access and stifle competition in the broadband market-making the 
absence of net neutrality protections for wireless devices even more 
problematic.

It's clear how vital the mobile Internet has been to Occupy Wall 
Street and the flourishing global Occupy movement. But an open 
Internet is also a basic communication right. In a 21st century 
digital age, access to jobs, healthcare, housing, government 
assistance and education require Internet access.

This is not just an isolated issue about media policy-it is a social 
justice, civil rights and human rights issue. This is about the lives 
of the 99 percent.

Betty Yu, a longtime social justice organizer, media activist, 
educator and filmmaker, is the national organizer at the Center for 
Media Justice. She coordinates the Media Action Grassroots Network 
(MAG-Net), a national coalition of over 120 social justice, 
community, arts and culture organizations working for media justice.

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