June 2002

WITH STARZ IN THEIR EYES

All you have to do is turn on the television news and you will find yourself immersed in a torrent of information, most of it flowing free of context. While even the most casual viewer can receive up-to-the-minute news on the situation in Israel, Afghanistan, or Colombia, how many have heard of Sabra and Shatila, Massoud, or La Violencia?

"Human rights abuses are worse when violators aren’t afraid of detection." That’s the considered opinion of Gillian Caldwell and the driving force behind Witness, the organization she heads.

"We are a voice for activists working independently of large media companies, to some degree in opposition to them," explains Free Speech TV founder John Schwartz. "We champion work that presents an explicit point of view, which means we do have a distinctly different vision than most television channels."

Since shortly after September 11th, Democracy Now!, already a well established radio show hosted by Amy Goodman, has been televised nationally. The show uses a groundbreaking method of distribution. Each day as the show is aired live (9 to 10am est on Manhattan Neighborhood Network), the show is simultaneously encoded into an MPEG2 file.