Independent World Television

• IWTnews Website Launch: June 15, 2005
  
• http://www.iwtnews.com/
  
  
• Help build Independent World Television!
  
• The Problem
  
• Serious news and full-spectrum debate—on which democracy depends—are disappearing from television. Across the globe, news media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few entertainment conglomerates whose interests determine news coverage. They promote superficial "infotainment" over tough investigation, context and holding authority accountable. Public broadcasters face shrinking budgets and growing political and commercial pressures.
  
• The Solution
• We must change the economics of journalism.
  We need a news and current affairs network which defends the public interest and the highest standards of journalism. Independent World Television will be such a network -- a non-profit broadcast service financed by its viewers across the globe, independent of corporate or government funding and commercial advertising.
  Why Hasn't This Happened Before?There were no means to directly engage people around the world to raise the funds. Now, the Internet allows millions to band together and raise capital to compete with corporate media outlets. Think of the 15 million people worldwide who demonstrated against war in Iraq on one day in 2003. Think of the Internet fundraising successes of MoveOn.org and the Howard Dean presidential campaign (senior Dean fundraisers are organizing IWTnews' fundraising campaign).
  Launch PlanThe network is raising a $7 million start-up budget from individual donors and foundations. MacArthur, Ford and Haas foundations have contributed to a planning study. In its next phase, IWTnews will launch its web site and build the online community necessary for the international mass fundraising campaign launching in early 2006. The campaign will use concerts and media events headlined by socially-conscious celebrities to drive the Internet fundraising. If half a million people in the entire world contribute just $50, IWTnews will secure the $25 million it needs to fund its first year of broadcasting, in 2007.
  ProgrammingTo be seen on its own digital television channel and the web, IWTnews is also negotiating alliances with public and nonprofit channels to carry its programming. IWTnews will cover the big issues - war and peace, political campaigns, environment, global economy, civil rights, labor issues and social policy. IWTnews will hire journalists for their experience, political acumen and understanding of history. Complex issues will be addressed with energy, bite and wit. Citizen journalism will bring insight from people around the world. Informed by a commitment to social justice and respecting diversity of opinion, IWTnews will focus on news other media ignore or suppress and on individuals and groups who are transforming the world.
  
• Founding Advisory Committee
  
• Paul Jay (Canada), founding Chair of IWTnews. He was Executive Producer of CBC Newsworld's debate program counterSpin. He is an award winning documentary filmmaker and founding Chair of Hot Docs!, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival. www.jfilm.org
  Odelia Bay (Canada), a freelance journalist, radio broadcaster and CBC television news producer.
  
• Tony Benn (UK), for fifty years a Labour MP, served as Cabinet Minister and Chairman of the Labour Party. Benn is Chair of the UK anti-war coalition and spoke at the massive London rally against war in Iraq. www.tonybenn.com
  
• Phyllis Bennis (USA), author and fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. www.ips-dc.org
  
• Charles Benton (USA), Chair of the Benton Foundation. A former Chair of the National Commission on Libraries and Information and the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. www.benton.org
  
• George Biggar (Canada), Vice President of Policy, Planning and External Relations for Legal Aid Ontario.
  
• Larry Birns (USA), Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a research group that has monitored U.S.-Latin American relations, since 1975. He is a former defence researcher and member of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and public affairs officer for the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America. www.coha.org
  
• Robert Blair (Canada), President of Photon Control Inc., he is past Chair of Nova Corporation, Husky Petroleum and Foothills Pipeline and was appointed as an Officer (1990), and subsequently Companion (1995), of the Order of Canada.
  
• Val Blokowski (Canada), former CBC Newsworld's Business Manager, Executive Director of the Education Network of Ontario and IWTnews planning study consultant on Business Models.
  
• Jack Blum (USA), lawyer, as Senate attorney investigated BCCI and Lockheed Aircraft's overseas bribes. He is a consultant to the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations and the UN Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention.
  
• Salih Booker (USA), Executive Director of Africa Action, he directed the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies Program, served on staff at the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the US Congress, and was an Associate Director for the Catholic Relief Services' Southern Africa Office. www.africaaction.org
  
• Tanja Bosch (South Africa), station manager of Bush Radio in Cape Town, Africa’s oldest community radio station. She completed her PhD in Mass Communication as a Fulbright Scholar at Ohio University with a dissertation on community radio and community identity in South Africa.
  
• Ben Cashdan (South Africa), author, lecturer, documentary filmmaker, was an economic advisor in the office of President Nelson Mandela. He produces films for SABC, BBC and Channel Four.
  
• John Cherian (India), journalist and Deputy Editor of Frontline, India's largest English language national magazine. www.flonnet.com
  
• Jeff Chester (USA), Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington DC. Chester created Ralph Nader's Teledemocracy Project on cable TV reform, and co-founded the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression as well as the Center for Media Education. www.democraticmedia.org
  
• Afsan Chowdhury (Bangladesh), Director of Advocacy and Human Rights at BRAC in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Development work and journalism with UNICEF, BBC, CNN, and Deutsche Welle. He studied the impact of satellite TV with the Media South Asia Project.
  
• Jeff Cohen (USA), founder of FAIR, the New York-based media watch organization. He has been a commentator on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, and senior producer on MSNBC's "Donahue." He is an IWTnews consultant on developing its carriage campaign.
  
• Paul Copeland (Canada), lawyer, is a Bencher (director) of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 1990, is currently a director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted, a member of Law Union of Ontario, and has been a member of the International Commission of Jurists.
  
• Mary Cornish (Canada), senior partner in a leading Canadian public interest law firm. As an international consultant, she has advised the World Bank, European Economic Community and Swedish and New Zealand governments.
  
• John Duncan (Canada), lawyer, represents domestic and foreign television and film producers in all aspects of development, production and exploitation, with particular expertise in the areas of international co-production, production financing and rights acquisition.
  
• David Fenton (USA), founder and Chair of Fenton Communications, developing public relations campaigns for public interest groups. Formerly director of public relations at Rolling Stone magazine, he was named “one of the 100 most influential P.R. people of the 20th Century” by PR Week.
  
• Laura Flanders (USA), Air America radio host and journalist. She is the author of Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting. Flanders was the Founding Director of the Women's Desk at the media-watch group FAIR. www.lauraflanders.com
  
• Bill Fletcher Jr. (USA), President and Chief Executive Officer of TransAfrica Forum. Bill was formally the Vice President for International Trade Union Development Programs for the George Meany Center / National Labor College of the AFL-CIO. www.transafricaforum.org
  
• Linda Foley (USA), President of The Newspaper Guild, Vice President of the Communications Workers of America, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO's Department for Professional Employees and Vice President of the International Federation of Journalists.
  
• Janeane Garofalo (USA), Air America radio host, comedian, actress, activist and political commentator. Film credits include Reality Bites, The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Larger Than Life and Mystery Men. She is a member of Win Without War, MoveOn.org, and the Policy Think Tank 18to25.com. www.airamericaradio.com/
  
• Amy Goodman (USA), host and Executive Producer of Democracy Now!, a TV and radio show she helped launch in 1996. She began her career in community radio at Pacifica’s WBAI in New York and produced their Evening News for ten years. www.democracynow.org
  
• Ferial Hafferjee (South Africa), editor, Mail & Guardian Newspaper, and a leading political commentator.
  
• Ron Haggart (Canada), was Co-Executive Producer on Face Off and counterSpin for CBC Newsworld. He worked as a Vancouver Sun reporter, columnist with The Globe and Mail, and Executive Producer of Local Informational Programming for CityTV and Senior Producer of the fifth estate on CBC.
  
• Adrian Harewood (Canada), a Toronto based writer and broadcaster. He hosts the television programs The Directors, Literati and The Actors and was a host of CBC Newsworld's counterSpin.
  
• Buzz Hargrove (Canada), National President of the Canadian Auto Workers Union. He is also Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress executive committee and co-author of Labour of Love: The Fight to Create a More Humane Canada.
  
• Sheri Herndon (USA), served as News Director at KCMU Public Radio in Seattle, and is co-founder of the Independent Media Center in Seattle. There she developed the Indymedia network's communications and governance structures and managed internal policy development, legal, and network collaboration projects.
  
• Roger Hickey (USA), co-director of the Campaign for America's Future. One of the founders of the Economic Policy Institute, and the San Francisco Public Media Center. Former media director for the National Center for Economic Alternatives.
  
• Jesse Hirsch (Canada), founder of the Media Collective, TAO (tao.ca), and director of Openflows.org, a professional services firm specializing in free software for open source intelligence.
  
• Tom Hurwitz (USA), documentary director of photography. Films he has shot have won four Academy Awards, over a dozen Emmy Awards, and the Camera D'Or at Cannes. His credits include Harlan County USA.
  
• Zane Ibrahim (South Africa), Managing Director of Bush Radio, “mother” of community radio in South Africa.
  
• Janine Jackson (USA), Program Director of the national media watch-group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and co-hosts and produces FAIR's syndicated radio show, CounterSpin. www.fair.org/counterspin
  
• Peter Jenner ( UK ), President of Sincere Management and Secretary General of the International Music Managers' Forum. After lecturing at the London School of Economics, he managed many music acts including Pink Floyd and Billy Bragg.
  
• Naomi Klein (Canada), journalist and author of the best-seller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies and Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. She writes syndicated columns for The Globe and Mail, The Guardian and The Nation magazine. www.nologo.org
  
• Dr. Tawana Kupe (South Africa), Head of Media Studies at the Wits University's School of Literature and Language Studies. Taught Media and Communication Studies since 1993 at the University of Zimbabwe, University of Oslo, in Norway and at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, in South Africa.
  
• Lewis Lapham (USA), editor of Harper's Magazine, has several books of essays to his credit including Money and Class in America, Hotel America and Waiting for the Barbarians. www.harpers.org
  
• Avi Lewis (Canada), broadcast journalist, documentary filmmaker (The Take), host and producer of counterSpin on CBC Newsworld, where he presided over more than 500 televised debates.
  
• Stephen Lewis (Canada), the United Nations' Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. From 1984 to 1988 he served as Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, and he is the former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF. He heads The Stephen Lewis Foundation, dedicated to easing the pain of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
  
• Joanne St. Lewis (Canada), assistant law professor at the University of Ottawa and founding Director of the Law Faculty's Education Equity Program. A Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada and was co-chair of the Canadian Bar Association Working Group on Racial Equality.
  
• Mark Lloyd (USA), Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and teaches communications policy at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute. A communications attorney and former broadcast producer at NBC and CNN, he co-founded the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy.
  
• Hanadi Loubani (Canada), a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at York University, Toronto. Her creative and critical essays are published in Fuse Magazine, Anthology of the Poetry of Arab Women in North America, and the Women and War Journal.
  
• Paul Maslin (USA), pollster and strategist for “Dean for America”, internet-based fundraising consultant and pollster for IWTnews’s planning study.
  
• Robert McChesney (USA), founder and President of Free Press, an American non-profit, media reform organization. He is a Professor at the University of Illinois and the author or editor of eight books on the media and democracy. www.robertmcchesney.com
  
• Judith McCormack (Canada), adjunct law professor and Executive Director of Downtown Legal Services, a clinical education program at the University of Toronto. She is a former Chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Recipient of the Ontario Law Society Medal for outstanding service in the highest ideals of the profession.
  
• Nicco Mele (USA), Howard Dean's campaign webmaster and internet strategist. Was webmaster at Common Cause and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. Named one of America 's "best and brightest" by Esquire magazine in December 2003.
  
• Jyoti Mistry (South Africa), filmmaker and senior lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and Head of Television at the Wits School of Arts.
  
• Mishuk Munier (Bangladesh/Canada), filmed throughout South East Asia as a news and documentary cameraman for BBC World Service, ARD1, and Fox/StarTV. Head of News Operations for the first private terrestrial network in Bangladesh, Ekushey TV (ETV) and taught broadcast journalism at the University of Dhaka.
  
• David Newman (Israel), professor of Political Geography and a Senior Research fellow at Ben Gurion University in Israel, where he founded the department of Politics and Government. Editor of the International Journal, Geopolitics, and former columnist for the Jerusalem Post.
  
• Debbie Nightingale (Canada), runs a Toronto production company. She was Assistant Programmer at C Channel, Canada’s first cultural pay television station. She was also Special Projects and Development Officer at the Ontario Film Development Corporation and founding Executive Director of the Hot Docs! documentary festival.
  
• Maureen O'Donnell (Canada), was Director of Communications for the Toronto International Film Festival and Director of Television Publicity for the CBC and is an expert in strategic communications planning and marketing.
  
• David Ostriker (Canada), was Head of Business Affairs for counterSpin, on CBC Newsworld. Ostriker served on the executive committee of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television and is a past Chair of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus.
  
• Greg Palast (USA), author and investigative journalist (New York Times bestseller The Best Democracy Money Can Buy) and broadcast journalist with BBC's Newsnight. www.gregpalast.com
  
• Leo Panitch (Canada), Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto. Author of Global Capitalism and American Empire.
  
• Robert Parry (USA), a renowned investigative reporter who exposed the Iran-Contra scandal while working at Associated Press, founder of the Internet's first investigative Zine, Consortiumnews.com, and author of four books, including Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.
  
• Francine Pelletier (Canada), independent documentary filmmaker and screenwriter, former host of CBC's flagship current affairs show, the fifth estate.
  
• Sharmini Peries (Canada/Venezuela), foreign policy advisor to the President of Venezuela, former Director of Justice International, Managing Director of Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Network and covered economic and political issues for Frontline India.
  
• Greg Philo (UK), professor of communications and Research Director of the Glasgow University Media Group. Co-author of the books Bad News, More Bad News, Really Bad News on media issues such as television coverage of the developing world and audience reception of television news.
  
• Anne Pick (Canada), independent producer, director, was with CBC, was a founding member of Hot Docs! and spent ten years on the executive board of the Documentary Organization of Canada.
  
• Michael Ratner (USA), President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York. Taught at Yale Law School, lectured at Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. www.ccr-ny.org
  
• Elliot Richmond (Canada), Chartered Accountant, leading the entertainment practice at Horwath Orenstein in Toronto, where he is a partner.
  
• Bill Roberts (Canada), President and CEO of VisionTV. Previously was Secretary General of the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), Senior Director-General of International Affairs of TVOntario and managed the secretariat of the World Broadcasting Unions.
  
• Kenneth Roth (USA), Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, a post he has held since 1993. The largest U.S.-based international human rights organization, Human Rights Watch investigates reports on, and seeks to curb human rights abuses in some 70 countries. www.hrw.org
  
• Michael Saykaly (Canada), President and Research Director of Optima Research, served as Vice President of CROP, Le Centre de recherches sur l'opinion publique, and is the author of The Guide To Public Opinion Research and is advising IWTnews on its Planning Study.
  
• Dimape Serenyane (South Africa), a principle in Herdbuoys McCann-Erickson, one of the most dynamic forces in the local advertising industry.
  
• Danny Schechter (USA), Founder and Executive Editor of MediaChannel and founder and Vice President/Executive Producer of Globalvision, Inc. A journalist on CNN and ABC, is the author of The More You Watch, The Less You Know, and Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception (book and film). www.mediachannel.org
  
• Jonathan Schell (USA), writer and journalist, Peace and Disarmament Correspondent for The Nation magazine, a fellow at the Nation Institute, visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School, was a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine from 1967 to 1987, author of The Fate of the Earth, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
  
• Stephanie Schriock (USA), National Finance Director for the Howard Dean Presidential Campaign, and previously served at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as Director of Campaign Assistance. She is lead consultant for IWTnews on fundraising issues.
  
• Andrew Jay Schwartzman (USA), President and CEO of the Media Access Project, a public interest telecommunications law firm that promotes the public's First Amendment right to hear and be heard on electronic media. www.mediaaccess.org
  
• Peter Scowen (Canada), Ideas editor, Toronto Star, was Editor-in-Chief of two weekly alternative newspapers (Hour and The Mirror, both in Montreal), and covered Quebec's National Assembly for CBC Radio. Author of Rogue Nation: The America the Rest of the World Knows.
  
• Monique Simard (Canada), heads Productions Virage, Vice-President of Cinémathèque Québécoise 's Board of Directors, and President of the board of directors for Alternatives, an international action and solidarity organization.
  
• Norman Solomon (USA), author and syndicated columnist, including Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You. He is Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts in the US, and an associate of the media watch group FAIR.
  
• Jim Stanford (Canada), economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, author of Paper Boom: Why Real Prosperity Requires a New Approach to Canada's Economy and regular columnist with the Globe and Mail.
  
• David J. Theroux (USA), founder and President of the Independent Institute in Oakland, and publisher of The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy.
  
• Jenny Toomey (USA), Executive Director of the Future of Music Coalition, activist, musician. Co-ran Simple Machines independent record label. Former writer for The Washington Post, Village Voice and CNET.
  Siddharth Varadarajan (India), journalist and commentator and Deputy Editor of The Hindu, was columnist with The Times of India. After studying economics at the London School of Economics and Columbia University, he taught at New York University for several years before joining The Times of India as an editorial writer in 1995.
  
• Gore Vidal (USA), author of twenty-two novels, five plays, many screenplays and short stories, more than two hundred essays, and a memoir. In 1993, a collection of his criticism, United States: Essays 1952-1992, won the National Book Award. He has written many films including the classics Ben-Hur (1959) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). He received an award from the Cannes Film Festival for best screenplay for The Best Man.
  
• Kenneth Walker (South Africa/USA), owner of Lion House Productions. Previously the Africa Bureau Chief for National Public Radio. Covered the White House for the Washington Star and ABC News and anchored USA Today: The Television Show.
  
• Patrick Watson (Canada), a writer, director, actor, TV host and interviewer, was co-producer of the CBC series Close-up and produced and hosted CBC's flagship show This Hour Has Seven Days. Watson is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a former Chairman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
  
• Celia Wexler (USA), Vice President for Advocacy for Common Cause. A former journalist, Wexler has played a key role in developing Common Cause's lobbying and grassroots strategies on media reform.
  
• Howard Zinn (USA), professor emeritus at Boston University, historian, author of numerous books including the classic A People's History of the United States and The Zinn Reader.
  
• (Note: organizations listed are for identification purposes only)
  
• ©2005 Independent World Television