This year’s Media Democracy Day movement in Toronto is hosting a series of
thematic and skill-based workshops. Topics range from media criticism and
examples of truly independent media to training sessions on creating videos
and podcasts.

A network of independent media organizations, advocacy groups and media
activists have come together under the umbrella of Media Democracy Day to
host more than a dozen workshops which are geared towards students,
activists, community organizations and individuals who share a common
interest in media democracy. This year’s Media Democracy Day theme is
"Missing in the Media."

Derrick O’Keefe, the editor of rabble.ca, is co-facilitating
a workshop with Andrew Mindszenthy of the Housing Not War campaign with a title that he says is only slightly
tongue-in-cheek, "Beyond CBC-Pravda," looking at media spin on Afghanistan
as well as the coverage of the homelessness crisis.

Such media criticism, he argues, "is really not even hyperbole at this
point. The coverage that The National in particular but the public
broadcaster in general has been providing represents a major disservice to
democracy and public debate in Canada. Peter Mansbridge is, clearly,
personally very committed to promoting Canada’s war effort. In many ways,
the anchor views himself, in my opinion accurately, as an important figure
in the Canadian establishment."

So where can we get the real news on Afghanistan? The best monitoring of
media coverage of the war he has seen is by a Vancouver activist, Dave
Markland, who maintains a blog that draws from English language press worldwide,
including stories of civilian casualties, which are rarely picked up by
Western corporate media, but are regularly documented by Al-Jazeera or in
the Central Asian press.

O’Keefe says, "The blog also keeps close tabs on
what analysts across the political spectrum are saying about the war. War
hawks here in Canada, the stay-the-course jingoists, would do well to pay
attention to what a lot of frankly right-wing analysts are saying: in the
view of many of these people the war in Afghanistan is a lost cause for the
imperialists—a familiar result for empires in Afghanistan down through
time."

O’Keefe is also inspired by the example set by Amy Goodman and Juan
Gonzalez’s Democracy Now! based in New York.
"On every international solidarity issue I have personally been involved
with, whether East Timor, Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan, Democracy Now! has
always been a vital source of real information and critical analysis. And
it’s a daily program heard by millions. Canadian activists frustrated with
our media definitely have to look closely at a success story like that and
seek to emulate it."

The idea of the Beyond CBC-Pravda workshop is to share sources of
information and to strategize about doing a better job of disseminating this
information.

Darren Alexander, a professor with the University Partnership Centre (UPC)
who contributed to the Indy Media Centre set up at the anti-globalization
protests in Seattle in 1999, is organizing a workshop on the Open Source
movement.

Technologists and programmers who believe strongly in promoting democratic
access to the new tools of digital technology are spearheading the movement
to develop software products in the public domain and foregoing any
copyright privileges.

"This in stark contrast to ‘proprietary’ software products, strongly
perpetuated by the likes of Microsoft and other behemoth corporations, whose
products are often released at inflated, often inaccessible costs to the
consumer or end user," notes Alexander.

Virtually every digital product imaginable, from web browsers to
spreadsheets, from content management systems to video games, currently
exists in the public domain. Often times, these products are as good, if not
superior, to their proprietary counterparts.

"Want another option to Microsoft Word? Check out Open Office. An
alternative to Explorer? Check out Mozilla Firefox. Need a content
management system that is freely available for download? Joomla and Drupal
are two open source initiatives that immediately come to mind."

Net neutrality is essential to maintaining the democratic nature of the
Internet. For example, peer to peer (P2P) exchanges allow international participants
to share information freely over the internet and bounce the products they
are assembling back and forth between them.

"P2P is contingent on the principles of net neutrality, whereby anyone can send or receive digital
information, in any form, without undue cost or discrepancy. Again,
commercial interests have every reason to be concerned about this, as they
would like to be charging a price for every product, a tariff on every
transaction," says Alexander.

In his workshop, Alexander will also address the revolutionary media and
communication potential of Web 2.0 applications.

What are Web 2.0 applications, you may be asking? They are the blogs,
wiki’s, twitter and media sharing sites, such as YouTube and Flickr, and
scores of other examples of interactive sites winning users
regularly.

"What all of these applications have in common," Alexander explains, "is
that they insist on the user’s participation in the media creation. This
amounts to a fantastic subversion of the old consumer mentality that once
prevailed regarding media such as television and film and video. The best
part is, you don’t have to be a programmer or a technologist to participate!
These applications are typically super user-friendly."

Participants in Alexander’s workshop will have a chance "to roam the web and
have a look at some of the fantastic opportunities that are available to us
all, via Open Source and Web 2.0 products and technologies."

Carmelle Wolfson and Susy Alvarez, locked-out volunteer programmers/hosts at
CKLN, are organizing a workshop on "Campus community radio in Canada."

Wolfson says, "CKLN has a long history of social justice programming, a voice
for the voiceless for many marginalized communities."

The dispute over the control of the station means that "shows no longer being broadcast include a
psychiatric survivor show, a First Nations woman show, a queer black woman
show and other queer programmers and programmers of colour, and a show run
by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, No One is Illegal, and two
feminist shows just to name a few."

The workshop will also include representatives from other campus community
stations facing similar problems, including CFRU in Guelph and the
University of Waterloo community radio station which recently lost their
student funding.

Wolfson and Avarez say, "The objective of this workshop is to address current
problems and hopefully come up with possible solutions and strategies to
reclaim and rebuild ‘community’ radio in this country."

Other workshop topics include: anti-oppression and the media, distorted media
coverage of low income families, media and the case of the Cuban Five, the
origins of the Ryerson Free Press and plans to set up Free Press papers
across other campuses, a panel on citizen journalism, investigative online
research, podcasting 101, and how to create and distribute on-line video.

The final plenary session will feature Maude Barlow, national chair of the
Council of Canadians.

The day concludes on Thursday night with rabble.ca‘s re-launch party: a
panel featuring Maude Barlow, Murray Dobbin, Duncan Cameron, Anne Lagacé Dowson and Jessica Yee, and then a party with
musical guests LAL and Maryem Tollar.

For all the details on Toronto’s Media Democracy Day, check out http://missinginthemedia.ca/.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Ryerson Free Press.

Derrick O'Keefe

Derrick O'Keefe

Derrick O'Keefe is a writer in Vancouver, B.C. He served as rabble.ca's editor from 2012 to 2013 and from 2008 to 2009.