Community Anchor Institutions

A healthy public sphere needs a healthy public media. We’ve built the equivalent for television and radio. Now it’s time to do it for the Internet. The simplest way to proceed is to tax major technology companies to pay for better content.  A billion-dollar federal funding infusion to upgrade public media would be a start — perhaps paid for by a “journalism tax” on the largest tech platforms, as has been proposed in Britain.

Income is the largest determinant of whether or not someone has access. Only 67 percent of households with less than $25,000 in income have access to a computer, and only 51.7 percent of them have access to internet. In comparison, households making between $50,000 and $99,999 had 93.9 percent of households with a computer and 86.2 percent with internet access. Income can determine whether a community needs to rely on the library for internet access. Rural communities with more low-income people have less home internet access.

Dear Chairman Pai,

Public access stations such as Vermont's Greater Northshire Access Television (GNAT-TV) are facing an uncertain future following a proposal by the Federal Communications Commission that would change the way subscriber fees are collected to fund programming and broadcast services. On Sept 25, the FCC issued proposed rulemaking — Docket 05-311 — which, if adopted, could allow cable operators to reclassify certain in-kind services and subtract their monetary value from the 5 percent that cable companies are required to pay to fund public access stations. 

On Nov 27, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's responded to various Democratic Sens regarding the impact of statutory cap franchise fees on funding for Public, Educational or Government (PEG) channels. Responses were sent to Sens Ed Markey (D-MA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Gary Peters (D-MI), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

The Federal Communications Commission is moving toward adopting a new rule that community television groups say would gut funding for public, educational and governmental channels. “The loser if that ends up happening will be the local taxpayer, the local cable subscriber and the everyday citizens who rely on access to public information that’s provided through these programs,” said Geoffrey C. Beckwith, executive director and CEO of the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

A coalition of organizations told the Federal Communications Commission that the FCC should retain its children's programming rules. The Center for Digital Democracy, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Common Sense Kids Action, Color of Change, Dr. Jenny Radesky, and the Benton Foundation wrote:

For residents in thousands of communities across the country – inner-city neighborhoods, affluent suburbs and rural towns– local newspapers have been the prime, if not sole, source of credible and comprehensive news and information that can affect the quality of their everyday lives. Yet, in the past decade and a half, nearly one in five newspapers has disappeared, and countless others have become shells – or “ghosts” – of themselves. Our research found a net loss since 2004 of almost 1,800 local newspapers.

The rise of digital media labs and spaces for content creation in public libraries has been documented in the scholarly literature. However, fewer studies have investigated the outcomes of media literacy initiatives in community media centers (CMCs) and how they might inform similar programs and services in public libraries. This article reports findings from a study that used qualitative research to investigate the current goals and activities of CMCs across the United States.