LPFM

Local radio wins a victory in the courts and gets a hearing in Congress. And the ACLU helps lead the way in unblocking websites based on "viewpoint discrimination" in Tennessee and Indiana schools.

An industry-sponsored bill in the North Carolina state legislature would squash attempts by cities and towns to follow the City of Wilson’s lead and build their own broadband networks. And local radio advocates lobbied Congress last week to pass the Local Community Radio Act.

Blogger Glen Greenwald and Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman are sharing the first annual Izzy Award for Independent Media. And the Local Community Radio Act will be invaluable to local musicians across the country.

Media Minutes looks at five of the top stories of 2008: The FCC proceedings concerning Net Neutrality, the 700 MHz spectrum auction and white spaces; Pentagon propaganda; journalists’ arrests at the RNC; and grassroots media organizing for PEG and LPFM.

This video is 28 minutes."KPCN--Radio Movemiento" is Pepperspray Collective member Bill Birney's piece on the efforts to build a low power FM station in the Chicano town of Woodburn, Oregon. Bill traveled to Woodburn three times to make this piece. He led the first Pepperspray team which went to Woodburn and out into the fields to interview farmworkers, making an advance video that served to build media interest in the Radio KPCN project. Then he went back to cover the Prometheus "barn-raising" weekend, where activists converged and merged with the community, to build the station in a single weekend. Finally, Bill returned to Woodburn for the final occasion, the celebration of the station commencing regular programing. His excellent and uplifting report fills this week's whole program, and is the final of three pieces Pepperspray has produced on this topic.