Aliza Dichter, this year's Visionary in Residence, delivered the keynote address Wednesday night in Collis Commonground at a dinner about problems in the media and actions that needs to be taken to ensure balanced news. Dichter, who was brought to campus by the Center for Women and Gender, stressed the dangers of a few corporations owning growing numbers of media outlets, hypothesizing that the public will not receive balanced coverage of events.
"If we don't have news that informs us of an issue, we can't make informed public policy decisions," Dichter said. "I'd say this is damaging to democracy."
Dichter founded the Center for International Media Action in 2003, a non-profit organization that serves other media activist groups by helping them collaborate and find funding. She claimed that everyone can influence the media by questioning what they read and by reading independent news sources.
"We can tell our stories -- tell our perspectives," she suggested. "We can also misbehave."
Dichter spent time criticizing all different media for their portrayal of women, coining reality television game shows as "seduction and humiliation competitions." Even public figures are treated differently by media, depending on their gender, Dichter pointed out.
"Condoleezza Rice wears a size 6; we can read that in the news. What size suit does Tom DeLay wear?" Dichter asked rhetorically. "I don't think it's ever been mentioned."
The dinner attendees, mostly women, raised many gender-related concerns during the dinner's informal discussion session. Robin Rathmann-Noonan '05 criticized how women's issues are covered by Dartmouth's media outlets.
"I watch the way that it's written about and I want to scream. I feel like we're taking steps backward," she said.
Michael Amico '07 also expressed frustration with Dartmouth news sources, saying that he is hoping that the Student Assembly will approve a memo he wrote stressing similar criticisms of Dartmouth media. He was one of only five men to attend the dinner.
As proof that people can stop the spread of media moguls, Dichter cited a 2004 case in which the Federal Communications Commission wanted to loosen regulations on media owners, allowing single media conglomerates to reach even more viewers. Over two million people wrote letters to the FCC and to the government, pressuring Congress to write legislation. The courts eventually ruled against the FCC.
"It was a really historic, extraordinary win," Dichter said Wednesday afternoon before her keynote dinner.
But Dichter believes that there is more work to be done. Dichter is worried about new technologies including digital cable, the internet, and TiVo, saying that their use can become positive or negative.
"They could be a place for diversity of culture, arts, and freedom of speech " a place for people to have the information they need to have for a real democracy," Dichter said. "The risk is that many of these new technologies may become dominated by commercialism, stereotypes, and invasions of privacy."
This is the seventh year that the Center for Women and Gender has brought a Visionary in Residence to the College. Each Visionary is a person who can "provide answers as well as ask questions, to provide a vision as well as a critique," Xenia Markowitt, the head of the Center for Women and Gender said.
