Call for a General Assembly 

in favor of pluralism of information and media

We are calling upon all citizens aware of the importance of pluralistic and independent information: journalists and other professional salaried actors in the news media and its satellites, to activist movements, union members and leaders, non-profit organizations, cultural and political groups, to members of the educational community and all those who esteem it important to oppose resistance to mercantile culture and information

To organize, locally and nationally,

A GENERAL ASSEMBLY IN FAVOR OF PLURALISM IN THE NEWS AND THE MEDIA 

Why a general assembly?

1. In order to fulfill their democratic function, the news media ought to be freed of the direct subordination economic and political power now wields over them. Which is not the case either in privately owned media, or in the public service media. The former have always been ruled by financial considerations which have long since prevailed in the so-called public service sector, that would seem to owe survival to political support.

The concentration of the media in the hands of industrial consortiums, pension funds and financial groups whose main objective is to keep their shareholders happy, seriously compromises the quality and diversity of information, entertainment and culture.

The press organs that are not directly subordinated to these powerful groups are thus encouraged to fight for market shares using the same commercial gambits.

This fight for commercial aims engenders dizzying job instability within the professions of news and culture. Journalists and other news and cultural professionals are increasingly pressured by their hierarchy to produce increasingly similar programs and news producers and their staff are all dependant on the rules laid down by distributors and advertising companies.

Most of the big media groups are both actors of world globalization and the ultraliberal trend observed in Europe, as well as propagandists in favor of this evolution, via the chroniclers and editorialists they employ. Regardless of the diversity of opinion and the aspirations of their readers, listeners and viewers. However, when this diversity is scorned, democracy is gravely endangered.

The public service sector of the news media is no exception. To the contrary, it is strongly dependent on advertising income, because its public income is largely insufficient. In the fight for audience ratings facing private channels and stations, it is condemned to resort to the same arms its rivals use. How can the public service sector fulfil its public service mission when it is directly subject to the pressures and whims of changing government policy?

2. Far from guaranteeing equal rights in matters of access to the media, pluralistic information and the independence of newswriters, the public service:
•	encourages concentration of power over the media according to the market’s devouring greed for maximum profits in the minimum time;
•	makes over the audiovisual media and large sectors of the printed press to the appetites of groups belonging to industrial empires built on public spending;
•	maintain their political hold over a public audiovisual sector deprived of the means that should ensure its financial independence; 
•	perpetuate a system of subsidies to the press that favor the most powerful and the most mercantile media groups;
•	contribute to the sabotage of independent media by dismantling the public services such as the Post Office, that reserves its preferential tariffs to the most lucrative media;
•	refuse to grant non-profit media, and more specifically the non-governmental non-profit media, the subsidies and legal status without which their existence is severely compromised.

A general assembly, to what aim?

A general assembly is the place where its actors can pool their experience, take stock of the problems to be tackled and suggest solutions before presenting an extensive report to political and parliamentary groups. 

These are some questions we should like to bring up for discussion:

•	Information is a basic human right. How to guarantee the right to inform and to be informed against all political and economic attempts to confiscate those rights?
•	These rights must be protected by law and legislation and by sufficient means to ensure that protection, in view of the stakes: what is at stake? How to preserve and reinstate the audiovisual public service sector? 
•	How to guarantee the right of access of non profit media to the audiovisual sphere and the right to develop the non commercial potential of the Internet by conferring upon non governmental, non profit media and Internet organizations the legal status and the financial means they need to exercise those rights?
•	The right to information is first of all the right to diversified information in all domains: how to guarantee this right, and in particular, how to encourage quality and plurality in the domains of economic, social and international news?
•	The right to information presupposes new rights for journalists and more generally, for producers of independent information: what are these rights and how to guarantee them?

A general assembly, how?

1. Our appeal is for an open, decentralized, pluralistic general assembly. 

-	Open – The issue of the right to information is too important to be entrusted to leaders of the media. It concerns all those who, professionals or otherwise, journalists or not, contribute to producing information: journalists, professionals, employees, unions, listeners, viewers, readers …

-	Decentralized – The issue of the right to information must not be entrusted to national representatives of the media, disregarding regional media delegates. That’s why the procedure we hope to set in movement will have to combine local and national meetings and favor workshops, commissions, seminaries to encourage reflection and propositions. In this way, we hope to counter any temptation to surrender to the sirens of the personality trips and showmanship we so condemn in … the media. 

-	Pluralistic – Nobody has the right to monopolize the issue of the right to pluralistic information. Any claim to exclusivity will come from those who refuse to endorse that right. 

2. We hope to see the emergence, not of a new structure, but of an agendum marked by successive stages. We thereby appeal for: 

A first national session of the General Assembly in favor of pluralism of information and of the media in 2006

List to date (Signatures received before September 30 2005)

National organizations and unions

- ACJ (Association des cyber-journalistes).
- ACRIMED (Action Critique Médias)
- Action  Consommation 
- Appel et Réseau pour une information impartiale et pluraliste
- Association Faire Le Jour
- Association JAL (Justice Action Liberté)
- ATTAC
- Casseurs de Pub 
- Confédération paysanne
- Corali (Association pour la Coopération des radios libres)
- FERC-CGT (Fédération de l'Education, de la Recherche et de la Culture)
- FNVDPQ (Fédération Nationale des Vidéos de Pays et de Quartier)
- FSGT (Fédération Sportive et Gymnique du Travail) 
- FSU (Fédéation Syndicale Unitaire)
- Les Pieds dans le Paf
- OFM (Observatoire Français des Médias)
- OMOS (Observatoire des Mouvements de la Société)
- RACCFC  (Rassemblement des auditeurs contre la casse de France Culture)
- SCAM (société des auteurs multimédias)
- SIPM-CNT (syndicat interprofessionnel de la presse et des médias)
- SNJ (Syndicat National des Journalistes)
- SNJ-CGT (Syndicat National des Journalistes-CGT)
- Sud Culture 
- Sud Education
- UFAL (Union des Familles Laïques)
- Union Syndicale Solidaires
- Voir&Agir

To be updated…

Local company unions, groups and organizations (communities, counties, regions) 

Collectif de la Région Rouennaise d'Observation des Médias - Collectif Kraken-Art - Les Inattendus (Lyon) - Les Pieds dans le Paf Loire Atlantique - Observatoire bisontin des médias - Observatoire nantais des médias - Observatoire grenoblois des médias (Ogremed) - SNJ-CGT France-télévisions - SNJ-CGT Radio France - SNJ-CGT AFP - Sud PTT44 de la Dirr - Sud Santé Sociaux de l'Isère - Spasmet-solidaires (Syndicat des Personnels Assurant un Service Météo) - Sud-Radio France - Sud-AFP..

To be updated…

Non profit and cooperative organizations 

Aligre Fm - Co-Errances - CQFD - Cuverville (Toulon) –Fréquence Paris Plurielle (Paris) - La Lettre les alternatifs (Loire Atlantique)- La televisionpaysanne.org - L’Accroche (Montpellier) – Primitivi (Marseille)  - Tv Bruits (Toulouse) - Zalea TV - Zapito (Rouen)

To be updated…

With the support of the undersigned organizations and political groups: 

- Alter  
– Ligue communiste révolutionnaire  (LCR) 
- Mouvement Républicain et Citoyen (M.RC) 
- Les Verts 
- Parti communiste français (PCF) 
– Le Parti socialiste (P.S.) – 

To be updated…

The great number of individual signatures, namely of those journalists and political representatives who support the appeal will be published at a later date. 

______________________________

TO SIGN THE APPEAL: 

- Individual signatories (except journalists), please send your signatures to this address only: l'inscription automatisée sur le  site de l’appel.- Page d’accueil : http://www.etats-generaux-medias.org/  

- Collective signatures (non profit and cooperative organizations, groups, unions, movements, political groups, etc.) and journalists, please sign at this address: contact@etats-generaux-medias.org  (ou etats-generaux@ouvaton.org).