BKM: How can people become more involved in playing an active role in shaping media policy?
RM: Well, I think the best answer is to go to the group that I helped start with John Nichols, the journalist who writes for the Nation, called Free Press. We started this group Free Press to basically try to draw together all the disparate elements working on media reform and bring them together.
When we started Free Press in December of 2002 we had one staffer, Josh Silver, and he was a volunteer. We always thought it would be a five- or ten-year period to ramp up this to lead the popularized media debates and change our media system. But thanks to the media ownership fight to serve as a catalyst, today we have 12 full-time organizers working on this issue. We're booming. And all our people are working 24/7. It's a movement. It's really extraordinary what's going on. We're fighting a whole range of issues including media ownership. We're organizing around the country. I urge people to go to the Web site - www.freepress.net. We have readily accessible background information on all the issues - local, national, and global, information on all the groups working on media issues in your state and community, how to contact them. We'd love to have people join our e-activist list and get involved with our group.
