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 New NALIP Website and LITI Design Unveiled
Attention NALIPsters!
Have you had the pleasure of visiting NALIP's amazing and gorgeous new website?
Have you checked out the hip new layout, manifest by the generous and talented NALIP member Antonio Sarmiento? Have you noticed the NALIP Videos on our homepage, that have a link to our YouTube page? What about the Podcasts, the very best info from Conference 7 & 8 provided by NALIP-Orlando leader Jesus Silva in a player designed by member/ex-webmaster/future celebrated director Hector Ceballos? And how about this new LITI look, re-visioned by Jesus Garcia and carefully edited by our web whiz Zach Evans?
We welcome you to the new NALIP, a community site where your news and information are front and center. What is happening in Latino Media? Who would like to be a highlighted member? Where are your films playing or premiering? What else would you like at nalip.org?
Watch for new opportunities for each member, chapter and program group to have your own personal pages, to show off your photos and videos, your work, resume and blogs. Visit www.nalip.org today and let me know your thoughts!
Warmly,
Kathryn Galan
Executive Director
Civil Rights Leaders Unite Against Media Consolidation
21 groups send letter to FCC urging immediate action on media diversity crisis
Leaders from across the civil rights community are calling on Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin to immediately address the lack of minority broadcast ownership in the United States.
Twenty-one groups - including the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Rainbow PUSH, National Council of La Raza, Urban League, League of United Latin American Citizens, Hip Hop Caucus, and National Association of Hispanic Journalists - asked the FCC to create an independent task force to study the media diversity crisis before moving forward with any new media ownership rules.
In the letter, the groups write: "We are alarmed by recent reports indicating that you will not wait until the work of such a task force is completed before issuing new rules that may permit further media consolidation. This is not acceptable. An uninformed rush to eliminate ownership limits may set back the expansion of minority ownership by a generation and leave us little recourse."
The letter follows news that Chairman Martin is pushing for a vote to relax media ownership rules by Dec. 18. The FCC is reviewing longstanding regulations that prohibit a company from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city.
The full text of the letter is included below:
The Honorable Kevin J. Martin
Chairman
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554
Dear Chairman Martin:
We are writing to call on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to address the issue of minority ownership. Assembled together here as leaders of minority communities speaking with one voice, we request the creation of an independent task force to conduct a specific inquiry into the impact of market concentration on female and minority ownership before moving forward with issuing any new ownership rules for broadcast media. On its face, the Commission's movement toward eliminating media ownership limits appears to severely undercut its statutory and moral obligation to promote minority ownership of broadcast stations. The failure of the FCC to even acknowledge this contradiction is deeply troubling, and this letter is intended to highlight the problem and propose a course of action.
We appreciate that you are open to the idea of creating a task force to thoroughly study the policy goal of promoting minority ownership of broadcast stations. But we are alarmed by recent reports indicating that you will not wait until the work of such a task force is completed before issuing new rules that may permit further media consolidation. This is not acceptable. An uninformed rush to eliminate ownership limits may set back the expansion of minority ownership by a generation and leave us little recourse.
The Commission already labors under a credibility deficit on this issue. Minority ownership is in crisis precisely because the FCC has long neglected to consider the issue as a critical public policy goal. The frustration is not limited to our community. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals admonished the FCC for failing to address the issue of minority ownership. The available evidence indicates cause for deep concern. According to the best available independent research-which, unfortunately, has never been duplicated by the Commission-women and minorities own broadcast stations at roughly one-tenth the level of their representation in the population. This statistic should have set off alarm bells long ago. We simply cannot understand how this is not a top priority for your agency.
Yet for many years, the FCC has failed in its responsibility to examine or address the impact of market consolidation on communities of color and broadcasters of color. The Commission has never even managed to conduct an accurate count of its own data on the race and gender characteristics of licensees to determine the true number of women and minority owners. Economists hired this year by the Commission to study the problem were unable to do so because the data provided to them was unusable. They wrote: "The data currently being collected by the FCC is extremely crude and subject to a large enough degree of measurement error to render it essentially useless for any serious analysis." Without this information, it is impossible to have an adequate understanding of how different policies governing media ownership in general would impact minority ownership specifically.
We call upon the FCC to elevate its commitment to the promotion of minority ownership. The Commission should create a task force on the issue which would, at the very least, conduct the simple steps that the agency has inexplicably failed to accomplish to date. First, the task force should ensure that an accurate accounting of the FCC's data is conducted on the actual number of minority and female broadcast station owners. Second, the task force should perform an analysis on this accurate data set to determine the likely impact of policies which permit further media consolidation, policies which tighten ownership limits, and policies which may offer incentives for expanding minority ownership. Only when the work of this task force is completed should the FCC move forward with any changes to the rules governing media ownership. Only when it is well armed with the facts and analysis provided by this task force can the Commission expect to determine the appropriate policies which will further the goal of increasing minority broadcast ownership.
The legacy of race and gender discrimination in the broadcast industry is a disgraceful reality in America today. It is not a problem that will be solved quickly or easily. But we must take the first step by truly understanding the nature and scope of our present crisis. History will not excuse ignorance as a justification for policies that further depress the level of minority ownership. We ask that the Commission take adequate steps to ensure that it makes the right choices to reach a long overdue justice on the issue of minority ownership in the broadcast media.
Most sincerely,
Rainbow PUSH, National Hispanic Media Coalition, National Council of La Raza, Asian American Justice Center , Hip Hop Caucus, National Congress of Black Women, Native Public Media, National Institute for Latino Policy, Urban League, Industry Ears, League of United Latin American Citizens, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Independent Spanish Broadcasters Association, Black Leadership Forum, Cuban American National Council, Latino Literacy Now, National Association of Hispanic Publications, National Association of Latino Independent Producers, Latino Gerontological Center, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation
 Call for Entries: San Francisco International Film Festival
Enter your film - shorts, features, animation, docs, narratives - for a chance to be shown in one of the world's premier film festivals.
All genres and styles welcome.
Golden Gate Awards
13 categories with prizes of up to $10,000.
SFIFF51 will be April 24-May 8.
Final Deadline: 11/30/07
For More Information: http://www.sffs.org/festival/enter.html
 Comedy Show Fundraiser on the Queen Mary
Deuces Wild Productions invites you to a night of comedy aboard the historic Queen Marys Royal Theatre. Help us launch this much needed production company with some of L.A.s hottest comedians at Rock the Boat on Saturday, November 10th. Rock the Boat will be hosted by actor/host Emiliano Torres (Splinter, Mind of Mencia) and feature comedians Rick Ramos (our headliner from Payaso's Comedy Slam), Noel Elgrably, Momo Rodriguez, Francisco Ramos, Sarah Hyland, Iliza Schlesinger, Shawn Halpin and Peter the Persian. This unique mix of comics performs regularly at the Comedy Store, Laugh Factory, Improv, Icehouse and have been seen on Punk'd, Comics Unleashed, Fox, SiTV's Latino Laugh Festival and more.
Doors open for the event at 7:30 PM with the show starting at 8:15 PM. The show will include celebrities and entertainers from the Latino community present in the audience. After the show, come join us upstairs on the Observation Deck to meet and hang with the Comedians along with the founders of Deuces Wild (Carl Escobar and Daniel Sogamoso) in the 1940s styled Observation Lounge overlooking scenic Long Beach Harbor. Full Bar will be available for drink purchases before, during, and after the show. Appetizers are also available in the Observation Lounge with the bar closing at 2AM with a last call at 1:30AM. TV crews and press are welcome to stay as long as they would like. Dress is semi-casual to casual.
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