October 31, 2008Newsletter

In the midst of our Human Rights Film Series and preparations for our Media Literacy publication launch on November 11th, we have during the electoral campaign teamed up with other prominent fair use advocates to remind television networks of fair use  under copyright (they've been forgetting about the law when campaigns quote their work) More here>>>

Please keep an eye out for our Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Media Literacy Education in conjunction with Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property and Media Education Lab. We will release the publication in Philadelphia on November 11th. More details below.

My best to you,
Pat Aufderheide 

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy
Coming November 11th!

Watch video here

Teachers and students who use popular culture need to know when its use is legal. The CSM has teamed up again with Washington College of Law's Program on Information, Justice and Intellectual Property and with our new partner the Media Education Lab at Temple University to create a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy. To be released on November 11 at Temple University in Philadelphia, this publication will be available in hard copy and accessible on our website. It provides teachers with a step-by-step guide to fair use in a teaching environment. If you're in Philadelphia, come join us for the publication release

  2008 Human Rights Film Series
Human Rights at Home: 
A Look At Human Rights In The U.S.
October 15-November 14, 2008

We've had a really successful month with our screenings of Banished, Ballad of Esequiel Hernandez and At the Death House Door.

The filmmakers Marco Williams, Brendan Fitzgerald and Peter Gilbert spent time teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses as well as facilitating Q&A sessions at the screenings.

Special thanks to nonprofit guests that came to the events as well, who shared examples of local ways to get involved in these issues: Acesso Hispano, Just Neighbors, US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Death Penalty Information Center and Peace Action.

If you haven't had a chance to make it to the screenings, come to our last two: Cut Off with special guest filmmaker Broderick Webb on November 12, 2008, 6 pm,@WCL, and When the Levees Broke,with special guest producer Sam Pollard November 13, 2008, 5:30 pm @Wechsler Theatre. All screenings are FREE and open to the public. Screenings will take place at the Washington College of Law (WCL)campus and AU's Wechsler Theatre.

Making Your Media Matter: Ethics Money and Mission
Feb 12th and 13th, 2009
@ American University
 
Keynote speakers: Gordon Quinn and George Stoney

The Center is hosting for the 5th year, its annual Making Your Media Matter conference--for established and aspiring filmmakers, non-profit communications leaders, funders, and students looking to learn and share cutting-edge practices for creating media that matters.

Save the date and look for registration in the next newsletter.

Talking Points Memo: From Participatory to Public Media?

A transcript of Joshua Micah Marshall's keynote speech at the inaugural symposium of the Park Center for Independent Media offers some interesting clues about how open online platforms allow individual media producers to serve public media functions. Marshall started his blog, Talking Points Memo in 2000, during the Florida recount. At the time, he was the Washington editor of The American Prospect, a DC-based liberal magazine of opinion --a job he soon quit to freelance. The blog had a personal tone and a partisan bent, and started out very much as a one-man shop. But by 2004, Marshall had learned that he could ask his readers for both financial and editorial support. "What I did on the site was a hybrid of traditional journalism and what we now call collaborative journalism," he explained. More here

Blogosphere Blasts the Bailout Bill

So, it's official, the House passed the bailout. It's also official that the financial crisis has generated a groundswell of public media responses. These have ranged widely, from citizen initiatives to professionally produced tools from commercial outlets. According to Micah Siftry of the Personal Democracy Forum, the networked public sphere is rising and taking this bull by the horns. "Whatever happens with the bailout bill, I don't think this genie can be stuffed back into the bottle. An old way of doing things is dying, and the new one being born isn't quite in place yet," he writes on an NPR Weekend Edition blog called "Weekend Soapbox."

Who are the trendsetters? Here's what we're watching:

Journalistic Principles

Nick Couldry, a senior scholar in the philosophy of communication who writes on media and public life at Goldsmiths, University of London, visited The Center for Social Media last week to talk about ethics and journalism. He pointed to the declining standards for accuracy, truth and public responsibility in ever-more-economically-stressed newspapers, and to the absence of standards bodies that can provide principles rather than prescriptions. He proposed that new norms --applying alike to professionals and non-professionals-- might include not only accuracy and comprehensiveness but, in an unbounded Internet environment and a globalized news environment, also "hospitality." More here>>>

Code of Best Practices in Green Filmmaking announced at Wildscreen 

On October 21st and 22nd, American University Prof. Larry Engel, also a wildlife filmmaker and associate director of AU's Center for Environmental Filmmaking (CEF), attended the Wildscreen Film Festival in Bristol, England via Skype to help announce the Code of Best Practices in Green Filmmaking. Developed by Center for Social Media, with the Filmmakers for Conservation and CEF, the Code will be published in February 2009. The Code is an example of standards-setting documents that help people develop a vigorous public media environment for a digital era.

This pre-launch focused on an overview of the code and its principles, checklists, trackers and Web-sources. Andrew Buchanan, co-author of the code with Professor Engel, led the panel that included FFC's co-president Tanya Petersen from Australia (via Sype), a Planet Green representative, and several British filmmakers.

Civic Media Training

If you want to know more about how to do public media-or if you will, public-spirited social media or civic media, where do you go?Who's holding workshops? What kind of information is taught that is specific to the public interest, or civic action? Who are your primary target communities for these workshops? To read more on this, please visit our most recent blog post.

If you have something to add to this discussion please visit this blog post.

Find us on Twitter!

We have two twitter feeds currently: Center for Social Media and Beyond Broadcast. Follow us for up-to-the-minute updates on projects and articles that shed light on the future of public media.

Wikipedia's Town Hall on Sarah Palin

Some time ago, Pat Aufderheide argued that you could see Wikipedia as "the new town hall." Wikipedia entries aren't stable encyclopedia entries, even if they look like it; they are active, constantly morphing sites of public discussion about how to understand something. Others have made this point repeatedly, and probably Yochai Benkler has put the frame around the argument most authoritatively, in his Wealth of Networks.

Now, take a look at the Sarah Palin entry on Wikipedia. Thanks to an analysis by Dan Cohen, the brilliant director of George Mason University's Center for History and New Media, he shows 500 entries within 24 hours, generating 80 points of discussion among Wikipedians. It has pictures to prove it, too.

Should Online Video Look More like Wikipedia or TV?

A clutch of people concerned with the future of online video, including Pat Aufderheide, met at Yale on October 31 to talk about what it would take to make creating an online video look a little more like, say, creating a text document to share on the Internet. Turns out that online video faces serious challenges, if it's to become a tool for participatory public media rather than just more TV.More here>>>

Fair Use Question of the Month

Every month, the Center for Social Media answers a new question concerning fair use in documentary filmmaking. This month's question deals with posting news clips on a website. More here>>>

Open Debates: Linking Copyright with New Public Media

Tense exchanges between presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama marked the end of an extraordinary cycle of debates. The sheer number, combined with the unusual amount of public interest, forced organizers to innovate new forms and provide more openings for interaction.

Now, a bipartisan coalition of newsmakers, media critics and bloggers are demanding permanent change to make the debates more "of the people," in part by asking the networks to release debate footage into the public domain to be used for commentary and exchange on online platforms. More here>>>

How Fair Use Savvy are You?

Watching the clips posted here, we challenge you to consider if this is fair use of somebody else's copyrighted material based on the Documentary filmmakers Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. Using the categories and the logic of the Code, would you argue that the third-party copyrighted material is fairly used? Why? Why not? (Refer both to principles and limitations) Are there "gray areas"? Where and why?

Media That Matters Documentary Film Festival Call for Entries from Arts Engine

Submit your film now for the chance to be one of the final twelve jury-selected films and become part of our outreach and distribution efforts to create social change through film. Following a New York City Premiere, an Awards Ceremony and industry networking events in June 2009, your film will take part in the Media That Matters international, multi-platform campaign with DVD distribution, broadcasts, streaming and hundreds of screenings across the globe! Arts Engine create accompanying discussion guides and screening materials to promote conversation and encourage educators, activists and organizations alike to Take Action around your film. All finalists will be awarded $1000 to assist in future filmmaking efforts.

Deadline: ALL materials must be postmarked by: January 9th, 2009.

>Traveling Mercies Exhibit

Now at American University Traveling Mercies is an extraordinary new library exhibit of photographs, artifacts, and clothing from Afghanistan and Kenya. It features photographs taken by Pennsylvania businessman and humanitarian Aldo Magazzeni during his global forays to assist needy communities where he worked to remove barriers between cultures. Thursday, Nov. 13 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 visitors can hear Magazzeni speak about his experiences and view the exhibition.

Discover World Cinema: Film Festival Favorites

Why not spend Sunday nights watching internationally acclaimed films at Bender Library at American University? "Discover World Cinema" brings recent, but rarely screened international films to American University's campus. Screenings begin at 7 p.m. in the Media Services classroom, lower level.

Film dates:
Nov 2: Dreams of Dust
Nov. 9: Arranged
For additional information, contact Chris Lewis at clewis@american.edu.

Center Partners with National Museum of the American Indian on Film Series

How are North American Indians portrayed, and how do they see themselves, in film? The National Museum of the American Indian addresses cultural identity in film between October 4 and December 7. Launching the event was a screening of Native filmmaker Nanobah Becker's Conversion with the Disney animated film Pocahantas. There was a panel discussion with Center Director Pat Aufderheide, Becker and NMAI historian Gabrielle Tayac which followed.  Check out the full itinerary here.

Volunteer Screeners

SILVERDOCS, the "pre-eminent documentary festival in the US" (Screen International) seeks Volunteer Screeners to be an integral part of the programming team. Screeners review a minimum of 40 feature and short (combined) documentaries submitted to SILVERDOCS 2009. Potential Screeners should have a critical eye and knowledge of film, and be able to write articulate and concise evaluations of the films they review. Screeners must have a DVD player, reliable Internet access, and a qualified point-of-view. Regular access to a multi-region DVD player is a plus. Screeners are required to pick up films for review at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, MD during regular business hours. Deadline is December 19th. For more information look here!