Our Mission
WHCi is home to three community cable channels serving the Town of West Hartford, a dynamic media-rich website, and an award-winning grassroots citizen journalism project called “Be The Media.” You can watch our programming on YouTube on the channel @whci.
Community media centers and the people who work and volunteer in them are often creators of local information tailored to the needs of their communities - town government at work, high school sports, educational, cultural and community programming.
In those circumstances in which WHCi records (rather than creates), it is generally where nobody else is likely to do so, with the result that there will be no record of the information.
Cable companies use the public right of way to make billions - their only obligation for that use is to provide channels and support to local communities. That's how they were able to evolve to have channels like CT's own ESPN without local content.
We are asking state legislators to realign our funding and modernize existing state laws to allow us to continue to evolve in the current media ecosystem - free of commercial pressures and societal pressures - to remain truly independent.
Community media is independent, community owned and managed media. It is an alternative medium to public and commercial media, and therefore important for a pluralistic media ecology as it helps prevent concentration of media ownership and allows people to exercise their right to freedom of expression. Their clear definition and recognition in law are necessary for them to operate legally and without ideological, political or economic pressure.
- United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization
CORE VALUES OF COMMUNITY TELEVISION
1. Localism: Supports local viewpoints, perspectives and the interests of local communities. Most mainstream media programming is intended for national audiences and does not reflect the rich diversity of American community life.
2. Diversity of Viewpoints-Participatory: Local communities must be able to make and telecast media that reflects local experiences. Our society is founded on a belief in freedom of expression and free speech. Democracy works best when a wide array of voices and opinions can be seen and heard.
3. Promote Dialogue and Discussion: Community conversations are key to building a vibrant community. Telecasting programs provides residents, government, non-profits organizations to provide critical information and creates an opportunity for dialogue around issues and concerns that people and the community must address. We build community through media.
4. Media Literacy: A basic tenant of civil society is that the lives of all members of the community are important, and all members of society should be able to represent themselves in the media. In order to represent themselves they need access to the electronic media tools to create content, the training to use the tools, and the mechanism(s) to distribute community content.
5. Non-commercial: PEG access is an essential component in our public media ‘greenspace’ where, like a public park, we can reflect on who we are without the interference of commercial values.
6. Civic Engagement: Many of the decisions that most affect our lives are made at the local level by city councils, school boards, mayors, and so on. Community media keeps the public informed about local government elections, about health services, about public housing, and about other important local political and economic development activities.
7. Education: Public, Educational and Government (PEG) access plays an important role in our educational system. It provides a distribution medium for use by schools, libraries and colleges; and it is especially important for education in low income and rural communities.
8. Public Safety: In many areas PEG access channels provide for emergency information and community alerts.
9. Electronic Greenspace: The PEG channels are our “electronic public green space,” where democracy is demonstrated through low-cost, televised community dialogue. In exchange for using the public right of way, cable companies share a part of their profits as “rent,” and these funds create an electronic public/private partnership for greater civic participation.