You wouldn’t have heard about it in the corporate press, but 2004 was a big year for the media democracy movement. We made important progress on the legal front and independent media gained credibility thanks to sources like Alternet and Democracy Now! Even street activists hit their stride, finally bringing large protests to media company headquarters during the Republican National Convention. Momentum is building in this fight for the information age.

No question, June 24 was a day for celebration. Victory in a case before the US Court of Appeals – launched by the Prometheus Radio Project and attorneys from the Media Access Project (MAP) – brought to a halt FCC plans to further slacken media ownership limits. Left unchallenged, the FCC would have allowed information giants like Viacom to swallow up even more of the country’s TV channels, newspapers and radio stations. Prometheus and MAP deserve credit for following this long battle through to victory.

Murdoch’s fanatical Fox News Channel received comeuppance twice in 2004: the scathing documentary Outfoxed – directed by Robert Greenwald and funded by Moveon.org and the Center for American Progress – exposed the channel’s misleading, partisan “journalism.” And Alternet brought a case of false advertising against Fox for its use of the tag-line, “Fair and Balanced.”

But amidst all this success, a serious warning note was sounded. On October 7, two IndyMedia servers in London were seized – apparently on orders by European authorities with FBI assistance – temporarily taking 20 sites offline. The draconian move has grave implications for free speech and privacy.

While showing promising signs, the media democracy movement has yet to find its flashpoints. The environmental movement was propelled into the mainstream by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the fight against nuclear power. We need something similar if we’re going to seriously shift the balance of media power in the year to come.

Tim Walker