Hoover Studio in West Branch, Iowa for the Public Interest, Convenience & Necessity Hoover Studio of Public Interest, Convenience and Necessity Until recently the principles of media's constitutional existence is to always serve the public interest, convenience and necessity. Standards to safeguard a public from broadcasts promoting dis-information or allowing advertisers to prey false claims upon a trusting public. Standards to keep speech free in the information age, and as we move farther into this new age we must take care not to completely abandon our Communications Standards as they host the antidote for propaganda too often spun as "no-spin" journalism. I'll speak: you decide Irony tends to believe only what has first been officially denied. The landscape of media is going from newsprint to sound-bytes and our media assumes the American attention span of 18 seconds; seemingly unaware of the impact such a trend may have on decision making. BIG Media is overtaking local media and homogenizing discussion along with regional flavors. These changes are occurring rapidly; so we best pay attention or lose out on all aspects of media access rights or what we now call NET-NEUTRALITY: all information treated equally. A tremendous momentum paradigm shift is building that has been due to occur for some time now. That said: Welcome Community Radio to Iowa's fantastic imagination as as we know what to do with it. It is a pleasure to report of so many Bright spots on the horizon. Civic Access Media Service is organizing through community producers at Channel-18 PATV Iowa City. CAMS wants to create a Statewide Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network for Iowans- sharing programming with other Access Stations and POD-Cast I pass along to you today that Iowans in all regions are becoming ambitious about their media. SCTV Iowa City (Senior Center Television) is moving deeper into technologies-Video Streaming and Pod-Casting... We have New Bohemians in Cedar Rapids. There are media groups forming around applications in Dubuque, Davenport, Muscatine and Des Moines. It is happening all together- forming from a variety of completely new ways of thinking and linking a Community Public Radio Network of thinking across our state. OUR thinking: IowaFM complete with the ethereal space to hear ourselves think. Call-In radio bubbling from our communities like wellsprings all over the state: EACH voice clear enough to cover their Low-Power or Full-Power area until we cover Iowa wall to wall... ALL the other voices from the top; we know them still, IowaFM is all about value-added media bubbling up and spreading like rhizomes across 99 counties. A shift that has been due to occur is now happening and we may soon be able to once again hear ourselves THINK: on the radio. This is actually an exciting time to be joining community media projects. Ursula Ruddenburg from Ames is working with radioforpeople.org, and if you are in earshot and want to become involved with starting a station: she is coordinating IowaFM Network and wants to hear from YOU at radioforpeople.org there are cards with websites at the back of the room. There is Common Frequency to thank and the Mid-West Media Applicants, help yourself. IowaFm's bias is most interesting and creative radio in America is invariably is heard in hamlets across this land on the left hand side of the dial [87/92 Mhz] for public use. So I thought I would talk a few minutes today about a journalism since we mark Hoover Studios in August 2007, A time we all know, Big Media journalism and a journalism that New Bohemia/IowaFM project want to help. Hoover Studios supports Iowans to create for themselves locally: A Community Media Journalism of Citizens; retirees, students, laborers, and non-profits, who may operate with budgets that have to put signs in the yards to get a word out edgewise. New Bohemia wants to help Iowans create Community shows, Talk shows, Health shows, Ag shows, Call-In shows, and build an Information Services Lab with 3 studios and a mobile unit. You got to like these guys: they think big. And Sustainably! Michael Richards is a founder of this 501c3 and all contributions are tax deductible Why Hoover, Why Now The landscape of what we know to be communications will be rapidly changing over the next few years and local journalism will have to seek new ways of information gathering. IowaFM opens Hoover Studios to become a network training ground for a Regional Citizen Public Broadcast Media Service to rise from4 current Full-Power FCC-applications offering Rural Radio coverage and subsequent Low-Power feeder stations in surrounding cities. Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was in Woodrow Wilson's presidency a100 years ago, at the very beginning of corporate journalism. It is a history few journalist talk about or think about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called "professional journalism" was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment—objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations that lead our public opinion. For what the public did not consider was- to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, And THAT is extremely true today more than ever been before. Go through any paper on any day, and check the sources. Of the main political stories—foreign and domestic—you'll find they're dominated by government and other established interests. Because THAT is the essence of our professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism is, was or ever will be excluded, but it is more likely that IF an Independent Journalistic Piece is found in any given periodical; it is the honorable exception. Let's consider the queer-role Judith Miller played in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Yes, her work became a scandal, but only after it validated and promoted an invasion based on deceitful economic ambitions: and is perhaps the very best reason why we need to create a 5th estate: of citizen journalism. Miller's parroting of official sources and vested interests came right off the Vice-Presidents desk [with a spoof of cloak and dagger] and her parrot-esque "journalism" is not all that different from the work of many famous reporters we hear each day: on the networks and NPR as in fact; consolidation grows more common with each and every day. On August 24 last year the New York Times declared in an editorial: What the Times didn't say was that if that paper and the rest of the media exposed the truth, a million people would be alive today. In every university, at every station, in every news room, teachers of journalism, editors, and owners need to ask themselves about the part they played and still play in the bloodshed for oil in our name. Consider now how powerful this invisible government has grown in the last 25 years. In 1983 the principle global media was owned by 50 corporations, most of them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just 9 corporations. Today it is probably about 5. Rupert Murdoch expects that after a NY/Presidential race there will likely be just three global media giants, and his company will be sitting on top- making it increasingly difficult and unlikely you will hear localism on your dial. We hope that you will consider joining us for a Preamble Discussion in West Branch Iowa on a summer day to reflect upon the impact and significance of the Radio Conferences of the 1920's by (then U.S. Commerce Secretary) Herbert Hoover and to plan a series of BANDWIDTH Conferences to rekindle the Standards that defined the Media and the 4th estate. Bandwidth Conferences hope to bring communities clarity concerning the ever-changing landscape of our Non-Commercial and Commercial media.