MEDIA TENOR STEPS IN: MEDIACHANNEL WILL SURVIVE

I am happy to report that Mediachannel.org has a new lease on life. I wish I could say that a mysterious funder like the imaginary and shadowy John Baresfoot Tipton of the old TV series “The Millionaire” showed up with a big whopping check. He didn’t. And your donations and our fundraising efforts and subsidies helped but could not provide the sustaining funding we need.

We didn’t want to have to pull the plug or stage yet another begathon next month because, as you can well imagine, the more the appeals, the less the response.

We are grateful to readers who responded because it kept us going—but we were at or near bottom and a recent server meltdown made our finances even more precarious. Some months ago, we decided that if we —our company Globalvision—couldn’t afford to produce Mediachannel, we would look for someone who could.

We thought a large media reform group might be interested but they weren’t. Maybe we are too “old school” or global or analytical or not reformist enough. We thought about possible relations with University media schools but they seem to lean towards finding benefactors, not taking in needy independent institutions like ours. Institutions like that move slowly some say glacially.

It was then that we decided to reach out to our own global network of affiliates. Among the largest and most impressive is Media Tenor, a research-oriented company based in Germany with offices in seven countries including one in New York. The Wikipedia describes them this way: “Media Tenor is an international content analysis organization founded in 1994 in Bonn, Germany. It describes itself as “the first international institute specializing in continuous and comprehensive media evaluation. Media Tenor works to provide an objective and transparent view of media content.””

Media Tenor shares our concerns about the need for an unfettered press as the key tool in the arsenal of democracy. Its founder, Roland Schatz, a research scientists with a brilliant data base metholodology for analyzing media coverage and I have worked on projects together including the book “Mediaocracy: Hail to the Thief” an analysis of the role the media played in the 2000 election. Media Ternor’s publishing arm also put out my post 911 news study, “Media Wars,” in Europe. I have participated in and reported on some of their annual conferences examining media agendas: how they are built and then cut.

Happily, Roland and Media Tenor have been supportive of Mediachannel since its formation and have now agreed to assume responsibility as our new producer. This brings a wide range of global assets, contacts, university partnerships, research and information and immediate financing to insure our survival.. No it’s not big bucks, but it will keep our web director working, and enable our readers to continue to rely on our reportage, aggregated media news and other features.

We don’t necessarily agree on everything but so what? We do both believe in diversity in the news. We believe in the importance of media analysis.

We will now be able to bring you more of Media Tenor’s unique coverage of the coverage of important issues, based not just on opinions but on deep research findings.

You will be impressed by the depth of their reporting on the role of the media in the US election. (Our elections seem to be fought our more in the media—through ads, photo-ops, staged events etc) than in the public,

Example: This article appears on the MediaTenor.com website:

The most recent data show that Hillary Clinton received the most coverage of all the candidates, as well as the highest number of positive statements. Campaign and fundraising issues composed the majority of each candidate`s media coverage. But Clinton`s personal life and leadership qualities factored in heavily to news reports about her.

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So let us welcome Roland Schatz and his colleagues at Media Tenor—to Mediachanel and the Global Center, the not for profit foundation, that will continue to sponsor Mediachannel. We are in the age of globalization and this new relationship puts our belief in global cooperation to the test. We believe that Mediachannel will be stronger than ever and better able to serve you and, we hope, a growing international audience.

It will take a while for changes to be implemented –including dumping obnoxious ads over which we have had no control–but please stick with us. I will continue to blog for now as will Rory O’Connor.

Your input and support is still very important to us.

Mediachannel started in l999—way back in the old century—and was formally launched on February 1, 2000. We have been here for you through the whole 911 trauma up to the present day. We offer a mix of original content and the best media analysis we can find from around the world. We hope we can all keep on keeping on because, as we have seen, understanding and changing media must remain at the top of our agenda.

We started with the conviction that we need a media channel to monitor the other channels. We still feel that way. Think of what’s happened in the years that we have been here—more media concentration, more dumbing down, new attempts to control the internet, the rise of pseudo news outfits like Faux News etc etc. Even as we have more outlets, we are getting less information.

We need the Mediachannel more than ever–and we hope you will help us move into a new era.

Your ideas and suggestions are always welcome. The Mediachannel needs is members and readers.

Write to Dissector@mediachannel.org

Danny Schechter
News Dissector
October 1, 2007