(C) Fairness & Accuracy in Media This story was originally published by Fairness & Accuracy in Media and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . ‘The Reality That We Live In Today Is Not Immutable’ [1] ['Janine Jackson', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Vertical-Align Middle .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar Is .Alignleft .Alignright'] Date: 2020-11-01 16:23:25+00:00 CounterSpin’s Janine Jackson (9/25/20) interviewed Laura Flanders—the founding producer of CounterSpin, and for many years Janine’s co-host—about her current project, the Laura Flanders Show, which just started being distributed by the PBS World Channel. This is an excerpt from that conversation. Janine Jackson: The Laura Flanders Show itself is not new, but it is coming to a new audience, for which we say congratulations. How do you talk about the vision for the show? What is it that you set out to do each week? Laura Flanders: We say it’s “the TV and radio program where the people who say it can’t be done take a backseat to the people who are doing it”—from Jim Hightower, with his permission, I might say. And I think that about sums it up. We are, some people say, “the solutions of tomorrow, today.” Basically, what we’re saying is, the reality that we live in today is not immutable. It is the product of choices, of power dynamics, of motivations of certain sectors over others, a set of priorities that we can shift. And not just in some abstract, pie-in-the-sky, theoretical thinking, but actually right here, right now. We try as much as possible to talk about and to report on examples of shifting power in the worlds of arts, politics and economics. So whether that’s land trusts or worker-owned co-ops, or community wealth-building in cities like Preston in the UK, or even right here in Sullivan County, it’s really trying to say, look, there may be experts in your neighborhood that you can team up with and make a real difference. Not to say we don’t need government power, too; we do. I sometimes say we can do bottom-up change about as far as our bottom, and then we need help from government. But we try to hit that sweet spot of inspiring people to make change, and also to realize what more change needs to be made. JJ: Media don’t just tell us what to think, they tell us who’s worth listening to, who’s an expert, and “regular” people are generally not considered experts, including on their own lives. They may get to say “I’m poor,” or “We want police to stop harming our community,” but they aren’t usually asked for more than a soundbite on their ideas about how to change things. They don’t lead the piece. And that’s something else that’s different, is who; who are the voices in the show? LF: Well, you know, I learned so much of what I do and how I think from you all, and our time at FAIR together. And I think even back then, we used to say, look, the corporate media is about directing public eyeballs and ears to corporations, to advertisers. And our independent media is about introducing people to each other. Our democracy, and the way we cover it, tends to cast our glance always upwards, like, “Who’s at the top of the ticket? Where are the powerful, and what are they doing?” As opposed to laterally, towards one another: “How do we together make change? And where are some examples of exactly that?” So that is exactly what we try to do on this show, is to give people some sense of how change happens, what goes into the pudding, and what people can do to change that. I think my entire job, Janine, frankly, is introducing people to each other. That’s what we try to do on the show. JJ: It seems to me that you’re overwriting some of the rules of “traditional” or corporate journalism when elevate sources that aren’t generally elevated, and when you compare internationally, as though that were a relevant thing to do. LF: I think we are given news from abroad with a very clear emphasis on “this is foreign, no relevance to you,” when, in fact, so many of these stories are examples of places and people not unlike ourselves, doing things that we could well do likewise, if we just got to hear about them. And I also think, when you talk about “who gets to be an expert,” it is always true, or almost always true: Poor people, women of color, women, people of color, immigrants, people who don’t speak English—in the US corporate media, they only ever get to be, like, the color, what you used to say at FAIR about being “wildlife footage,” with your fist in the air. Women especially, I think, we get to have experiences—“Oh, my uterus hurts,” you know—but we don’t get to have expertise: “Well, I actually am a gynecologist with expertise; I know what I’m talking about.” Or, better than that: “I’m a Supreme Court justice.” You know what I mean? It’s different, who gets to be an expert. And I think that’s one of the fundamental things we try to shift on our program. [END] --- [1] Url: https://fair.org/home/the-reality-that-we-live-in-today-is-not-immutable/ Published and (C) by Fairness & Accuracy in Media Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/fair/