Community Garden

By Sara Falconer

Few things like the "war on terror," with its embedded journalists and WMD, bring issues around media and democracy into such sharp focus. So it's fitting that the local Media Democracy Day (MDD) will tackle the theme of war and independent media.

The first MDD, held in Toronto in 2001, was concerned with many of the same questions. And with no easy answers in sight, the annual MDD has morphed into several days of events in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Windsor and Ottawa.

Meera Karunananthan, a member of the Ottawa Indymedia collective, is helping organize the October 30 event. She cites the importance of blogging in publicizing stories from Iraq - stories that corporate media aren't covering.

"A lot more accurate information has come out of that, as opposed to the mainstream media which has really served as a propaganda tool for the U.S. and Canadian governments," she says.

Independent journalism gained momentum with the introduction of an international network of Independent Media Centre (a.k.a. Indymedia or IMC) sites that began by reporting on the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. But activists and journalists still struggle to determine how to build an effective and sustainable independent media movement, which is another reason for MDD.

"One of the challenges with the IMC is that it has been active primarily around major protests but then fizzled out afterwards," says Karunananthan, who has been working with the Ottawa group since the recent demonstrations at Montebello. "Our

group is now trying to keep it alive as an organizing tool for grassroots groups and a source of information for local activists here in Ottawa."

The IMC sites use open publishing, so that anyone can submit reports and photos. It's about getting the public not just to consume media, but to be the media, and in turn, confronting the idea that only professionals can tell stories.

"To get people to value their own voices is a challenge," she adds.

Joanne St. Lewis, keynote speaker at the MDD event, will talk about what it means to be a journalist in a time of war. She is a law professor at the University of Ottawa and one of the founders of Independent World Television (www.therealnews.com).

"To us there was a need to create a space that would provide a place for people to develop a critical perspective. And when I say critical perspective, I don't just mean that we have a perspective and that's what we advance." So far the budding station has featured contributions and interviews with the likes of Stephen Lewis, Naomi Klein, David Suzuki, Gore Vidal and Jonathan Schell.

"It's with Indymedia and documentary producers that you get depth of analysis," St. Lewis explains. "Because they're looking at something that's beyond the soundbite, it develops a different idea of what democracy ought to be."

Ottawa's MDD event takes place on Tuesday, October 30, at 7 p.m. Location is at the Fauteux building at the University of Ottawa. Check ottawa.indymedia.ca for details. The event will include a screening of the feature-length documentary BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge, produced by the Sundance Award-winning Guerrilla News Network.