Adrienne Maree Brown

Media Justice, Election Protection and the Issue of Race in the 2008 Election

From the National Conference on Media Reform on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman,

I think these are two ways that our voices get heard, right, in this country. One is through these media outlets, and one is through our vote. And I think in both arenas we have seen deep and inexcusable disenfranchisement happening or on the verge of happening, right? And I think that the sort of consolidation that’s happening in the media world, which, you know, Commissioner Copps was speaking about, you know, just is like watching this happen very quickly. We’ve also watched, over the last several elections now, stolen elections or unfair elections, but we haven’t seen a media that was willing and able to in the moment step up to that story and really handle it.

And I don’t think that we’ve been able to galvanize the people of this country in the moment in a way that really says, you know, the entire world is deeply impacted, we as citizens are deeply impacted, we are being sent to war, we’re looking at climate change at unreasonable amounts. Why is this happening to us? Because our voices are not being heard in these two deep arenas. And I deeply feel that, you know, I’m here to talk to this group about what they’re going to do in this election season to make sure that doesn’t happen again, regardless of who the candidates are. And it is exciting right now. This is a very exciting time to be voting in this country. But regardless of who the candidates are, our system is so flawed, and it doesn’t need to be. We know what to do. So it’s just calling people into action around that.

For the full transcript and video.

Posted at 8:44 AM, Jun 09, 2008 in Media Analysis | Permalink | View Comments