Rethinking Independence and Our Media

Photo by Flickr user ricardo.martins

What is true independence? From a rethinking of the term for our contemporary challenges, Beyond Independence, by Robert Jensen and posted today at Zspace:

…we all know that we are not independent beings but profoundly interdependent with each other, other organisms, and the non-living world. The task is to create a system that gives us freedom from the illegitimate authority that people and institutions attempt to impose on us, but recognizes our obligations to each other. One way to think through this is to imagine what a world would look like if power were not “over” but “with,” if we understood that our power can be magnified in collaboration with others.

Jensen’s words brought to mind for me the nature of our current media system, though he intends his discussion of the issue on a much larger scale. I find our current media system to be largely an “imposition” upon media audiences. True, we can always turn off the TV or computer and walk away, but most of us want the connection to current events and our culture that media provide. So we end up using media products that are created by corporations, for the most part, and whose goal is to generate profit for their producers, not to enlighten and inform us or to improve our society. We use media products that regard us as consumers, not as citizens, and that care little for our “pursuit of happiness” beyond making sure we watch commercials and buy stuff.

Other models of media production are available, and some of the most potentially powerful options follow the alternative definition of independence that Jensen offers: independence and power found through connecting with other people and, indeed, relying upon them – as opposed to maintaining passive audiences with little connection to the source of media or to each other. These alternative systems can be large-scale, as in public media on the national level, or micro-scale, as in small online social networks around topics of interest.

Two examples of “interdependent” media systems that would free us from the corporate concerns of today’s media are publicly funded media systems – along the model of the BBC or a souped-up, politically independent remodel of PBS – and the creation of community media, like low-power FM stations or local nonprofit news sites like Voice of San Diego.

These systems force the interdependence of creators and users by requiring funding to come from the public, thereby (ideally) increasing transparency and the accountability of media creators to their consumers. They also offer opportunities for audiences to contribute their own voices to the mix, as in comments on blogs and video uploading.

These advantages make it possible for media consumers to become part of the creation process, and therefore the ultimate quality of the media products is dependent partly upon their contributions, whether financial (via taxes or donations) or creative (via their addition of their own content). Either way, the media created through these models are certainly far more “independent” than anything we see in today’s corporate media. They represent us – our voices, our interests and our needs as citizens – and in fact require us to be active and responsible to each other. The growth of these types of media can ensure that we continue to work toward democratic goals, rather than merely the goal of profit – while putting power into the audience’s hands, not the hands of media corporations.