Community media is not a local imitation of larger commercial media that compliments the agenda of commercial media with local stories and sources. Community media offers a platform to poor and marginalized communities. Our programming and editorial is shaped by the information and expression needs of those who remain exploited and excluded in our society.
Yet producing alternative media requires resources that many community media projects do not have. For example community radios have to compile hourly news bulletins and with small and often inexperienced news teams. As a result they too often rely on the commercial media for their news. The resulting irony is that a news editor in rural Limpopo offers rural poor front-page news from Cape Town and Durban.
