Action Committee

Action Committee:


Arnold Amber:
Arnold Amber is the Director of CWA-SCA Canada, a union which represents employees at more than 35 newspapers, news agencies, and broadcasters across Canada. He also served for six years as a member of the executive of the International Federation of Journalists and currently is a vice president of the Canadian Labour Congress. Previously, Arnold was an Executive Producer with the television news department at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation where he won three annual Gemini Awards for producing the best television social events coverage. His last two posts at the CBC were as the Executive Producer of the weekly programme, Inside Media, and of Newsworld International, the CBC’s former 24 hour, seven days a week all-news channel which was beamed to the United States and the Caribbean.

Arnold has conducted journalism and broadcast training in 11 countries and was head of a five-country international team which oversaw the coverage of the historic first democratic elections in South Africa in l994. Academically, Arnold was granted a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Ottawa and a Masters degree in political studies from Queen’s University. He taught part time in the fields of social and political science at Queen's and at Glendon College, York University. He is the author of chapters in books on African politics and on televised election debates.

He is also President of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), an organization which supports journalists’ right and free expression in Canada and abroad.

Steve Anderson:
Steve Anderson is the national coordinator for OpenMedia.ca (Formally called Campaign for Democratic Media). He is a contributing author of Censored 2008 and Battleground: The Media and has written for The Tyee, Toronto Star, Epoch Times, Common Ground, Rabble.ca and Adbusters.

Kim Elliott:
Kim Elliott is publisher of rabble.ca. Founded in 2001, rabble is Canada's leading online source of progressive independent news and views.

Robert Hackett:
Robert A. Hackett is professor of communication at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, and co-director since 1993 of NewsWatch Canada, a media monitoring project. He has written, co-authored or co-edited a number of articles, books and monographs on journalism, political communication, and media representation. His books include Remaking Media: The struggle to democratize public communication (2006, with William Carroll), Democratizing Global Media: One World, Many Struggles (2005, co-edited with Yuezhi Zhao), The Missing News: Blind spots and filters in Canada’s press (2000, with R. Gruneau, D. Gutstein, T. Gibson and NewsWatch Canada), Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the politics of objectivity (1998, with Yuezhi Zhao) and News and Dissent: The press and the politics of peace in Canada (1991). Hackett is on the editorial boards of Journalism Studies, Media Development, and Democratic Communique. He has also been involved for over 20 years in community-based media education and advocacy projects and groups, including Vancouver’s annual Media Democracy Day, the Union for Democratic Communications, and the North American executive committee of WACC, a global NGO concerned with communication for social change.

Anita Krajnc:
Anita Krajnc is a Toronto media democracy activist and writer. She is currently working on a book on protest art and independent media. Anita coordinated the 2007 Media Democracy Day events in Toronto.

Philip Lee:
Philip Lee is the Deputy Director of Programmes at the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC). He is also the editor of the international journal Media Development and is responsible for liaison with Africa for WACC. Recent publications include Requiem: Here’s Another Fine Mass You’ve Gotten Me Into (2001); and Many Voices, One Vision: The Right to Communicate in Practice (ed.) (2004). He speaks English, French and Spanish.

Michael Lithgow:
Michael Lithgow is a long-time community television advocate and organizer from Vancouver now living in Montreal. He was one of the founding directors of ICTV on the west coast, former member of the Cue Up collective at Video In. He is currently a PhD student at Carleton University.

Garry Neil:
Garry Neil is a policy issues management consultant working in all cultural industries, media commentator, and on the board of directors of the Council of Canadians. Garry is also former general secretary of ACTRA and vice-president of the Canadian Conference of the Arts.

Leslie Regan Shade:
Leslie Regan Shade is an associate professor at Concordia University in the Department of Communication Studies. Since the mid 1990s, her research has focused on the social, policy and ethical aspects of information and communication technologies, with particular concerns towards issues of gender, globalization and political economy. Her research contributions straddle the line between academic and non-academic audiences, including policymakers and non-profit groups. Leslie is the author of Gender and Community in the Social Construction of the Internet (Peter Lang 2002) and co-editor of Feminist Interventions in International Communication (with Katharine Sarikakis, Rowman & Littlefield 2008), as well as the author of numerous other publications. She is the former president of the Canadian Communication Association and the former editor of Computers and Society. Leslie is also the editor of CCPA book For Sale to the Highest Bidder: Telecom Policy in Canada, and a Director at Media Action.

David Skinner:
David Skinner an Associate Professor in Communication Studies at York University in Toronto. Previously, he was the founding chair of the Bachelor of Journalism at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C. He has written a number of articles on media reform, alternative media, and traditional media in Canada and the United States and is co-editor of Converging Media, Diverging Interests: A Political Economy of News in the United States and Canada (Lexington Books, 2005). Most recently he is co-author on the sixth edition of Mass Communication in Canada (Oxford, 2007).

Karen Wirsig:
Karen Wirsig is the communications co-ordinator for the Canadian Media Guild and is based in Toronto. Previously, she was a print reporter focused on municipal affairs, and a planner with the Community Social Planning Council of Toronto. She has also been involved in community media projects.