Who will tell the news?

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I draw on my work as an international feminist media activist to explore community radio as a transformative form of political education and a cornerstone of substantive liberation for democratic societies. I detail specific histories of solidarity politics and provide archival evidence to show how community radio public affairs journalists have played an ongoing and vital role in delegitimizing colonialism, authoritarianism, and fascist misinformation and abuse of the mass media. I use careful and nuanced accompaniment, community leadership, scholarship, reporting, alternative publications, and archive founding to extend the lessons of the anti-apartheid liberation movement. As a community radio public affairs journalist, my refusal to accommodate myself to petty tyranny and bourgeois social norms has made me a uniquely trusted political voice. I have coached generations of media makers, scholar activists, and critical interpreters of the politics of representation.

KEYWORDS:

• South Africa
• anti-apartheid
• solidarity
• liberation
• community media
• radio

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elizabeth Peters Robinson

Elizabeth Peters Robinson has been a community media activist, advocate, and producer for more than 40 years at the local, national, and international levels, including her current programmes, “No Alibis” and “Third World News Review” and her work with AMARC (World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters). As a journalist and Arab American she has particularly attempted to provide corrective information about the Middle East for listeners and viewers. While the seeds of her political commitments might have been planted when she witnessed inequities as a high school student, they blossomed and matured as a consequence of her relationship with her life partner, Cedric J. Robinson, and the world he opened to her. She occasionally writes, frequently broadcasts and has mentored hundreds of broadcasters and other people. She is convinced that every voice is a ‘radio voice’ and that another world is possible and necessary.