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Upstream: Public Media Online - An Arts Engine Perspective

Published on October 16, 2007

This article is adapted from remarks Katy Chevigny presented at the DocAgora debate at Silverdocs in June, 2007. Katy is the founder and executive director of Arts Engine, the organization behind MediaRights.org. Most recently, she directed the film "Election Day" (2007), which premiered at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival.

The topic of the DocAgora debate was, "Given that New Media has redefined the meaning of Public, the wall between public and commercial media no longer exists."

I'm a Libra, so I'm cosmically wired to feel uncomfortable with the whole idea of a debate. I prefer to weigh the issues and then forge a path using the wisdom of both sides. But I'm also an independent filmmaker so I know it's important to bring a strong perspective to the subject at hand. In this case, the perspective I'm bringing is that of preserving and fostering media in the public interest within the new media structure. I'm going to talk a bit about the pluses and minuses of what's happening now and make some recommendations for what we might push for as we move forward in this new landscape.

I want to start by saying that the flourishing of creativity in producing and watching media online is tremendously exciting. It is a watershed of free expression and an unqualified good. But it has also blurred the line between commercial and public media. Online media has commercial potential—Murdoch's shrewd appraisal of MySpace and Google's acquisition of YouTube shows this. Yet at the same time, online media also has the potential to be showcased and utilized with the context of public media exchange.

So I think a useful way of asking this question is, "How can we develop a radar to highlight the public interest media within a very crowded online landscape, and ensure this space is accessible to everyone and protected?" Another way of putting it is to ask whether there is a way the media can remain "free"--both in terms of cost as well as in terms of expression.

As typically occurs with widespread societal shifts, the response of Americans has taken opposing sides: one group heralds the growth of media online as an improvement over all past systems, and another cries that it's the end of the world as we know it.

In the first group, we find starry-eyed boosters of the new system, mostly from commercial media. Here we see a group of people trying to be the next YouTube, trying to figure out how to lead the pack at showcasing the most popular videos, or asking themselves, "How can I make a bunch of money channeling this creative outpouring?"

On the other hand, we are also hearing a lot from people who are scared of new media and of the effects of YouTube. Some of the things we are hearing are: there is no quality control. It's all noise. It's all navel-gazing. There's no professionalism or accountability. Some even call it the end of popular culture. (For a reference to this, see Angela Tucker's staff blog post). Part of this outcry is nostalgia for a romantically-imagined bygone era, which can be summed up in the plea: "Where's my Walter Cronkite?"

So we hear a lot of speculation and criticism from these two positions. What we don't see enough of, and what I think we need, is a cornucopia of creative ways to use the existing tools out there to ensure that public media is accessible, findable, protected and showcased. We don't need a new channel for it necessarily—we need organizations, individuals, and even public agencies to start providing resources that filter and curate and bring public media to light.

Why do we need to filter and curate? There's a couple of reasons.

It is not a meritocracy out there in the world of online video. The cream does not necessarily rise to the top. For every "American Idol" equivalent--the little video that makes it big and gets tons of hits--there are also many gems going unheard and unseen at the end of the Long Tail.

It is noisy and crowded and confusing out there for the viewer. Barry Schwartz's book The Paradox of Choice talks about the psychological problem presented by too many choices, and argues that if there are too many choices available all at once, many will people will shut down and make no choice at all. It was much easier a couple decades ago to choose between four television networks than the 50 million online videos today.

This is not to say that we need to go back to four networks again—that's certainly over. But we do need trusted sources where the media can be contextualized, critiqued, or positioned for political action. The internet is excellent for these activities, much better than the old one-way platforms of distribution—but we don't see these tools used enough in the interests of public media.

So to serve as these new trusted sources I'm envisioning hundreds of 21st century Walter Cronkites. They will be overlapping, contradictory and heterogeneous sources who will filter existing media—pointing, critiquing, commenting, categorizing, organizing. Public media will be searchable and, more importantly, findable from many different entry points. All to help showcase the kind of public media that might otherwise get lost.

I'm also looking forward to a broader definition of public media that might be identified by these new trusted sources. Some of the kinds of public discussion that could emerge from new intermediary sources are:

Raising the culture of documentary criticism.
Linking current affairs media more strongly to public action efforts.
Creating a guide for online video that comes from the perspective of art for art's sake, rather than for any commercial or political purpose.

In keeping with my aforementioned Libra-ness, I also want to make a contrasting point. At the same time that we are pushing for this mediating effort of curating and filtering, we also need to promote the noise.

When I was preparing for DocAgora, I checked in with our staff at Arts Engine and asked them what they wanted me to talk about. And they said, make sure you talk about the digital divide! For those of you well-versed in this conversation, it may seem more like a tired harangue. We have made huge inroads now that people without connections or media experience can create a video and put it online. But there are still barriers to entry.

Not everyone has a computer in their home or a camera to tell their story and illuminate their perspective. Making a homemade video is not yet the equivalent of the soapbox in a town square, nor is it, say, the contemporary version of being a graffiti artist in New York City in the 1970's. And we need this tool to be more universal. People complain about the noise of the tens of millions of videos online but, honestly, it needs to be noisier for it to fully enfranchise the public around media.

So we need both these efforts simultaneously. We need to keep pushing the envelope for full access to these tools for everyone as well as creating secondary tools to comment, coordinate, showcase and protect. In a free-for-all, public media is likely to be lost in the noise and more likely to be commercialized. And if we just have the selected, curated media then we might lose the benefit of low barriers—we'll just be creating new barriers that will prevent some media from participating in the public space.

Lastly, I would like to say that we would be naïve to think that the current widely accessible new technologies will be "free" forever. It could all be monetized in a way that pushes important public media out of the marketplace. Then we would lose the Long Tail—grandma's blog would be gone and the 14-year-old could no longer expect websites to stream her video for free. We need to be vigilant to keep alive those aspects of the new world order that are better than before and also foster a friendly environment for public media to be created and seen online.

Overall, I'm optimistic and energized by what's happening. We're moving towards a more participatory culture—we're not just passively watching moving image media, we're more active and engaged. People are passionately commenting on media and responding to it in the public sphere, making video responses, sending news to their friends, blogging, you name it. Whether you're making videos about Barbie, football or Congress, it's the step in the right direction because it's a citizenry engaged in dialogue because it cares.