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JonCarlson

Jon Carlson, newly returned from duty in Iraq, brings a unique perspective to the CAT Conference and to our local programming.

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Community Media, by Jon Carlson, Community Access Television Technology Coordinator

I get this all the time; somebody asks me while I'm filming something for a show of my own, or while I'm doing my part in a contract production for my beloved station, CAT (Community Access Television), "so, how much do they pay you to make a show?" After getting over the initial surprise and exasperation, I take a deep breath and explain for the last time that they don't. Most of the viewers and citizens CAT services in Fayetteville and beyond have no idea what the station is about, which causes some of the outrage and confusion when controversy may spring up about our more outspoken producers. To sum it up most succinctly, and in the parlance of our times, I shall quote Mike Myers in his portrayal of his character Wayne from Wayne's World, "I'd like to someday get paid for making Wayne's World. Sheah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt!"

That odd little building on the outskirts of the Fayetteville town square is much more then locally produced programming. It is, in the greatest sense of the definition, a community media center for all citizens to take part in an exploit, the same as your local public library or the many beautiful parks in and around Fayetteville. A community media center is a place where free speech is honored, the First Amendment the highest priority, and absolutely all are welcome to make use of their services to whatever ends they see fit. Although this can bring in, inevitably, an opinion or behavior that is unpopular and scandalous, but the flip side to that effect is that any individual so inclined can bring their own differing opinion to the same public forum and make it heard. There are plenty of shows across all airwaves, cable channels, and satellite programming, and a good many of them reach the level some citizens may complain are "inappropriate," however it is only when the subject matter in question is local that you can point to somebody in the community and denounce them. What's the solution then? Remove the forum entirely, or balance it with your own voice? Before answering, consider carefully the following:

I am a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. I am no longer in the Army Reserves, but I left Fayetteville in the latter part of January 2003. My job was Psychological Operations, so the information war was my first priority and our mission while I participated in the war. During our tour, my platoon discovered an abandoned and looted broadcast station outside of Baqubah. The tower itself was 1,200 meters tall, one of the largest standing towers left in the country, but the building was severely damaged along with most of the equipment. That television and radio station became our home for the greater part of our tour, as we worked diligently to rebuild and restructure it. Previous to our arrival, Saddam had contracted out German and Japanese engineers to build the structure and tower, and to fortify it with a perimeter and guard towers. The initial bombings of the war had left it relatively unscarred, but the massive looting that took the entire nation within the first few days of liberation left the structure a shell, down to the doors and windows torn off their hinges. The Iraqis had nothing against ripping the station to pieces because it had played nothing but propaganda and Baathist-approved programming to this point.

The most crucial part of the restoration was to get the station up and playing again. Grant money was requested through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and we were given nearly $250,000 in construction work and operational supplies. A few initial repairs were completed with the aid of the original crew of engineers, many of which worked gladly alongside us for months before we were able to wrangle a regular paycheck for them, and before we knew it, the "Diyala Media Center" was on the air for the first time for the Iraqis themselves, and no other. I personally produced many Public Service Announcements concerning local elections, food and water distribution, safety bulletins, and other topics of local interest and news. These messages really amounted to little more then animated PowerPoint? presentations with voice and music, much like the community message board system at CAT, but it was enough for the time being. In fact, the whole reason I was there on the project was that somebody had caught wind that I had been a producer at CAT before I enlisted, and knew the skills it took to put something on the air; I was pulled from a team out on the Iranian border and brought in to help with the reconstruction and development of the crew.

The reporting and filming crews were a struggle to be sure, language barrier aside, but they began to find positive messages and programs to produce throughout the community. They filmed at local universities, marketplaces, and at civic gatherings. They were even remarkably on site when a terrorist attack hit a local marketplace, far from any American activity. The crew I trained and worked with made me proud that day, because they proved to me and to their own viewers that they were not afraid to show the truth to the Iraqis: these gunmen, these attackers, are not on your side. They made it their civic duty to not passively accept what was told to them by their previous leaders, or to be roused up by the flowery and bloody words of terrorist propaganda, but rather get out there and see the news for themselves, put themselves and their images on the line, and possibly their lives, to ensure that the public got the fair chance to say what they wanted. They even developed, completely on their own, an Iraqi version of Short Takes, a program produced by the staff at CAT to allow anybody in the city to speak on camera for five minutes about anything they want, though my crew's version was a man-on-the-street questionnaire format, which we were glad to air for them. Although in our state of information and psychological eggshells we were walking on the station couldn't work 100% on free speech, the issue never came up. If anything, we had to be careful what we said on the station rather then what the crews were finding in the opinions of the Iraqis they spoke with. It was a welcome and heartwarming sight to be known and appreciated when our platoon would ask those we encounter on our missions and activities what they felt of our station. Not everybody shared the opinion, however.

One of the pitfalls of sharing an opinion is that someone else will always have a differing one; I believe I touched on that topic earlier, but rather then dealing with citizens' complaints, we had to deal with an entirely different form of dislike. The members of my platoon, specifically myself and the command staff, were targeted because of the impact we were having in the area. The villagers of the surrounding areas were able to warn us of several of the bombs planted on the roads leading from the station, but not all of them. I myself was attacked by five separate roadside bombs while in transit to and from the station, and our crews were often in danger of the same. In fact, as I write this I have little knowledge of how the original crew and interpreters are doing now, or if they are alive at all. We were able to capture one of the attackers on occasion, and it turned out that he was a hired mercenary paid to kill us, and we were successful in taking that information and breaking up a local terrorist cell in operation.

Taking all of this into account, ask yourself now, "What is a community media center, and why do they exist?" Those who participate in CAT and other community media centers work towards many differing goals and hold many differing opinions, but they all exercise what we as Americans take completely for granted, and sometimes are too shortsighted to keep up with: an average citizen's rights. I know of people, American and Iraqi alike, that bled for that right, whether it would be exercised or not. We have an incredible amount of freedom that we neither think about nor realize we have the access too. Sometimes it can make someone such as I that lives so close to the belly of the beast want to crack the average blindsided citizen over the head when they ask me how much I get paid to produce a show at CAT, because just like you, just like me, it's free.