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PRESIDENT'S ESSAY
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When MacArthur began its media program 22 years ago, most Americans relied on the broadcast media. With that in mind, we decided to support high-quality non-fiction programming for television, documentary films, and the infrastructure of public radio. Our underlying assumption was that the public needs reliable information in order to make good judgments as individuals and as citizens. 5
We still believe this. But news gathering, reporting, and broadcasting are being fundamentally changed by digital technologies. Sources of information have become far more plentiful and the methods of access have proliferated. Ninety percent of American homes choose from hundreds of television and radio channels on cable and satellite. An explosion of Internet video and audio has added thousands of programming choices, accessible from around the world. Video-ready cell phones, audio and video iPods, digital video recorders, satellite radio, and — of course — personal computers allow audiences to craft more individualized news and entertainment experiences, choosing what they want to see or hear and when they want it.
These technologies have not only made accessing diverse kinds of information more convenient. They have also made it easier to produce and distribute creative content, with a far larger potential audience. The barriers to entry for potential producers have been greatly reduced: anyone with a computer can establish a website, start a blog, or record a podcast. The costs of shooting and editing a film or video have also declined, and professional-quality equipment is far more available than in the past.
As a result, new creators and commentators — often amateurs — are distributing material on the Internet and reaching a wide audience more directly. “Citizen journalists” around the globe are taking advantage of these tools to complement, correct, and even compete with professional journalists and investigative reporters. 6 This participatory journalism allows citizens to play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information.
With these changes, the challenge of providing individuals with diverse perspectives and reliable information is more complex than in the past, precisely because the tools available are so much more powerful. We enjoy unprecedented access to data, analysis, and opinion from around the world, but this also requires greater effort to filter, choose, and process such information.
In light of these developments, MacArthur’s long-standing programs supporting documentary film and public radio and television are in transition. We still want to help ensure that reliable information on important topics is available and that it finds the audience it deserves. And we want to help bring fresh sources of information to bear on the debate of important issues.
MacArthur will continue to support the creation of exceptional documentary films and high-quality nonfiction programming for public radio and television. But to take full advantage of new technologies, the Foundation is challenging content-producers to tell their stories through more than one medium — radio and podcasting, for example; or documentary film and streaming video. We are especially interested in projects that invite significant participation from their audiences.
A few recent grants illustrate this transition.
FRONTLINE/World is a national public television series that features short documentaries about underreported countries and cultures. Its correspondents use portable digital cameras to observe and record people and events in remote places, often in greater depth than mainstream American press. Topics have included the 8,000 Kurdish men and boys who went missing in the early years of Saddam’s rule; the conflict between indigenous people and diamond miners in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest; and Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
FRONTLINE/World is one of the few public television producers that is truly integrating broadcast and online content. The television series is complemented by a website that contains original reporting, interviews, reporter diaries, and related articles. The documentaries themselves can be viewed over the Internet as well. Visitors are encouraged to react to the stories and post their comments, which often lead to rich, online discussions. With more than half a million monthly visitors, FRONTLINE/World reports that its web presence drives people to the television broadcast — typically, the opposite is true.
Our ultimate goal is to help bring diverse sources of information to a broader public, so some of the projects we fund use technology to expand the audience for traditional programming. For example, Public Radio Exchange (PRX) is a web-based marketplace for stories and programs produced for public radio. Producers anywhere may add their audio files to the PRX catalogue, and then radio station programmers may sample, purchase, and download those they like. If a programmer decides to buy a piece for broadcast, the producer receives a royalty. PRX helps level the playing field for independent radio producers by allowing anyone to join and sell their stories online. And it gives radio station programmers in large and small markets access to a much wider variety of content with relative ease and little added cost.
The Foundation is also interested in innovative work being produced by non-professional journalists using “citizens’ media” — blogs, audio and digital podcasts, digital video. We are seeking ways to make this work more readily available and more useful to broader audiences.
For instance, Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center sponsors Global Voices, a website that calls attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world. Global Voices is a compilation of carefully selected blogs that highlight citizen journalists across the globe. A team of blogger-editors identifies and tracks a set of global conversations every day, writing daily posts summarizing what the blogging communities in their countries have been talking about recently. These provide links to interesting content produced by individuals on every continent.
On one day in March, visitors to the website could read bloggers in Iraq discussing the effect of a daytime curfew on their lives and commenting on the growing importance of local militias following the attack on the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra. Another thread of discussion featured Kurdish voices throughout the Middle East, combining blogs from Turkey, Northern Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Meanwhile a number of Chinese bloggers discussed Internet censorship in their country: how extensive it actually is, when they are able to get around filters (and when they are not), and whether all censorship is bad. These kinds of citizen-commentators help provide uncommon insight into the developing world and can balance or enrich what is reported in the mainstream media.
This is a vibrant time of change and experimentation. The digital age is also an information age, characterized by immense diversity, greater access, and more convenience. Amidst the proliferation of choices, MacArthur intends to help users take full advantage of opportunities to stay informed and get involved. We want to help provide citizens with high--quality information that educates and provokes reflection — in formats and platforms that make optimal use of new and old technologies, combining the benefits of professional production and citizen participation. Helping harness new media for the public good — that is our aim.
PRESIDENT'S ESSAY
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