Global Media Justice Organizations
As multinational communications conglomerates extend their influence around the globe, media policy has ceased to be a nation-specific issue. The next few years will be critical for the development of global communications policy.
> Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch: www.citizen.org
GTW promotes democracy by challenging corporate globalization, arguing that the current globalization model is neither a random inevitability nor “free trade.” At the same time that there is a genuine media reform movement in the United States (demonstrated by the immense public reaction to the FCC’s proposed lifting of media ownership restrictions), media conglomerates are turning their attention to international trade forums where they face less public opposition to their efforts to define media and communications issues as entertainment rather than unique cultural assets that must be protected through public interest requirements forged on national levels through democratic processes.
> Free Press Global Communication Project: www.freepress.net/global
Learn how international institutions such as the World Trade Organization affect domestic media policy and about activist efforts to reform them.
> World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS): www.wsis-online.net
> Communications Rights in the Information Society (CRIS): http://www.crisinfo.org/
Communications Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) is a campaign to ensure that communication rights are central to the information society and to World Summits to the Information Society (WSIS).
> The People's Communication Charter: www.pccharter.net/charteren.html
The People's Communication Charter provides the common framework for all those who share the belief that people should be active and critical participants in their social reality and should be able to communicate their ideas and opinions
> UNESCO Communications and Information Sector: http://portal.unesco.org/ci/
UNESCO's Communication and Information Sector (CI) was established in its present form in 1990. Its programs are rooted in UNESCO's Constitution, which requires the Organization to promote the "free flow of ideas by word and image."