In response, Ball developed a mixtape radio structure where a mix of music and news is put together for people to listen to. The mixtape is something that can be circulated on the streets in a guerrilla fashion to take on the corporate media structures in America.
That doesn’t mean everything is good though. Democracy Now!, CounterSpin, Robert McChesney do not focus on black folks, Latinos, or white working class, which is immensely frustrating.
Attendees of the Free Press get a lot of their news from alternative sources like these. But, these sources rarely have black voices on to talk about black issues.
Jared Ball highlighted how McChesney mentioned Glen Ford in discussions of race but was not inviting him to appear on his radio show. Instead of inviting Ford, McChesney had white people on as experts on issues of race.
This would not be such a bad thing except that black issues in America have become so exacerbated lately. The necessity of representation in radio is necessary and especially among white liberal progressive media outlets that are sympathetic to the struggles of black people. And is it really too much to ask that on issues of racism, black people be the experts and not whites who live under a system that grants them white privilege on a daily basis?
Even worse, a greater dialogue between white liberal progressives and black thinkers has not been had so that all the theory and research on democratic society, current events, etc. can be better.
Ball pointed out that Frantz Fanon once identified the “Shock Doctrine” with another term or description yet now people are approaching her work as newfound. That’s not to diminish the comprehensive history, but it is indicative of the divide between a people that should be working together.
What's most upsetting is that Free Pres might actually be making the media worse by aiding media's role as a psychic violent entity. Jared Ball illuminated this point
Media is psychic violence. It is the fragmentation of a people to make them compliant, make them confused, and make it impossible for them to communicate with one another. Media is targeted to demographic groups to keep them separate. Often, this media comes from the same company so the company knows what they are doing. The is keeping people cognitively separate. It's establishing and reinforcing a system where people have no dialogue and have no idea what is going on in each other’s communities. They are subjecting us to media torture or media terrorism.
As the panel was wrapping up, a young brother in the back of the room stood up and delivered a remonstrating question to the panel asking why they are not going to the Free Press board to today to raise some of Ball’s objections with supposed allies. The panel was not willing to engage and had not thought about confronting the white liberal board of Free Press. The young man was praised, however, for his logical conclusion that what was needed was a struggle with them possibly before struggling with Clear Channel or Radio One.
The agenda of Free Press definitely does not reflect a diversification of voices even if Free Press went out of its way to offer scholarships to many different people who do not normally attend. I see a lot of non-white people, but the topics remain based on subjects where lower income and diverse voices are often ignored.
In closing, what does it mean if the Free Press conference continues to misquote James Madison? Just think about that. This isn't ludicrous. Pick up your copy of A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
Think about what it means to say Madison was championing a free press when he really as a slave owner was suggesting that a free press needed to be controlled to prevent ruling class people like him from being threatened.
The burden is on us white liberal/progressives to reach out to a black people (and Latin and other ethnicities that are marginalized deeply) and stand together. Represent these silenced voices and if we can amplify them, let us aid in doing so.
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