The Political Whore

From the CL intern desk:

Florida’s first conference aimed at media reform is under way at New College in Sarasota today.

“The goal of the conference is to heighten people’s awareness to the media reform issues in the country and the state and to get everybody doing media reform work together,” said Florida Media Project co-founder and director Mark Kmetzko.

Florida Media Project was created during another conference in St. Louis in 2005. Media reform has been a hot issue since 2003, when the Federal Communications Commission moved to allow corporations to own more media and more types of media in the same markets. So when New College approached FMP co-founder Jean Etsinger, he agreed to do the conference.

Organizers said they looked at the myriad issues in media reform and, democratically, narrowed the conference down to nine panels. One will discuss Florida cable issues and Hillsborough County cable access funding.

On cable: Ever notice the Bright House Networks asterisk commercials — the ones where Bright House costumers are being “attacked” by asterisks and “fine print” from the telephone companies? They were made possible because lawmakers earlier this year allowed telephone companies to apply to the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services for statewide cable television franchises, removing oversight by local governments and opening the cable/telephone/data market to the telecomms.

On Hillsborough County funding: Howard Troxler would love that one. You can read his blog about the county’s decision to cut funding to its public-access cable TV channel to see how Troxler has turned his word processor loose on governments spending cable dollars on themselves and cutting the public’s access.

Other topics include community news outreach, media literacy, net neutrality and media ownership. In the media ownership panel, expect a lot of discussion about the Tampa Tribune/TBO.com/Newschannel 8 conglomerate and its affects on news coverage in the Tampa Bay Area.

Kmetzko hopes the conference solidifies the loosely organized Florida Media Project as a group so that when its members attend the national media reform conference in Minneapolis in 2008, they will be recognized and have their issues heard.

The conference runs until 6 p.m.

— Kat Clement

(Kat Clement is a USF-St. Petersburg journalism major. She was awarded a CL Spring 2008 internship.)

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