Latest Street News:

Here are the latest features that have fall from a great height to land at Street News - Beyond TV.

Street News:

Street News features grassroots news from the UK. The news you don't see on the news. It continues a section of the Undercurrents Alternative Video - This section will use short on line features to encourage reporting of news of environmental and social justice issues and any other subjects that are neglected by the mainstream.

How you can be a part of a new, ethical media network:

100,000 camcorders have been sold in the last 3 years. Thousands of students graduate from film making courses every year. It is notoriously difficult to put across minority and environmental messages on mainstream television. But technology allows us to side step this problem.

The Internet allows us to open up the Street News section [which originated on the undercurrents alternative news video] to all Video activists and independent video journalists. Undercurrents videos features were edited and produced centrally then there was a delay until the next alternative news video was produced. However technology has changed the situation for the better.

The Time is now:

Now, you can go out and cover an action during the day, and use a relatively inexpensive home computer to edit together a functional short news piece for Beyond TV and similar Internet sites. This can be networked on the Internet well before the Nine O' Clock news even shows.

The Media Network that works:

If you are interested in having your campaign event or action covered then you can use the directory of video activists to get in contact with someone in your area. This has been described as a kind of campaign issue dating agency, where we introduce campaigns that want coverage to filmmakers who are interested in covering the issues.

This idea is a continuation of the undercurents Video Activist Network, which ultimately proved to be a network that didn't work. By creating an open database which can be used by both activist to find media volunteers and get in touch directly and vice-verse we hope to remove the "information bottleneck" caused by the centralised organisational structure of undercurrents and lack of human resources.

Spies like us - a lot!

We recognise that information services on the internet lack the personal touch. Please remember that we can't guarantee that filmmakers listed aren't representatives of Britain's' thriving surveillance industry, part of the legacy of our establishment "intelligence gathering" obsession. Such monitoring professionals often use the profession of journalist as a cover. From personal experience we often find such plants easy to spot, but then again we don't know about the ones that aren't.

If you are a campaign group and you're worried about meeting "The Man" when you talk to the Media, be it "independent" or otherwise, why not ask for references? It's likely that the the media volunteers listed have worked with other campaigns. Arrange to meet up and see if you speak the same language.

We encourage campaign groups not to be too paranoid. Openness at times may not be appropriate but it can also be your best defence. It may be a good idea to have a chat with the minions of the establishment. It can be disarming. The powers that be may feel more comfortable and more likely to leave you alone if they think you are genuinely working for positive change. Transparency can be very useful as a legal defence and as a way of preventing paranoia [it's called pronoia - you know they're watching - thus you act accordingly]. We ask campaign groups not to contact us electronically or by phone with information that they wouldn't consider in "the public domain".

If you work for an intelligence-gathering agency and you would like to talk to Beyond TV, we'd love to meet up. Please drop us a line and pretend to be a BBC journalist researching a BBC2 program. You buy us lunch tho', right?