In a typical year, the number of news stories about Indigenous Peoples that appear in the New York Times and National Public Radio news programs represents less than one percent of all the stories they produce. And the vast majority of those few indigenous stories deal with Native Americans, ignoring all the other Indigenous Peoples in the world. Cultural Survival has set out to change that equation, and took the first step on March 12, when Cultural Survival staff convened a panel of media experts at the Open Society Institute in New York. The meeting was intended to explore the nature of the problem and to look for strategies that might increase coverage and understanding of indigenous issues. The participants included both Indigenous and non-Indigenous media representatives and covered both traditional and new media. There were experts on film (Sundance Institute, Makepeace Productions), television (CNN,TimeWarner), print and new media (Seattle Times, Free Range Studios, Red Hand Media, WITNESS), and many others. It was only the first of what will likely be a series of meetings to address the problem, but even in this initial meeting there were many innovative and constructive ideas presented.
