Queen

I asked some of my volunteer transcribers to tell me some of the reasons why they're helping with this project, and a lot of their responses shows that they are largely driven their concerns about the state of US politics and the mainstream media -- as well as a number of other personal reasons as well.

I originally started the film with an advocacy goal trying to convince people that they should adopt my progressive worldview after I laid all of the facts out on the table. I was really pissed off with everything that's going on in this country both with politics and the media and the war, and I just wanted to provide information so that people could think just like I did -- Then all the world's problems would be solved, right?

But then I went through quite an evolution after interviewing so many different perspectives last July. I decided to put my focus and energy on how I could use this documentary project to create more inclusive and collaborative journalistic paradigm that could help solve a lot of the problems with the press that were identified by these insiders.

I intend to help create a media that promotes dialogue and understanding and not one showcases people screaming ideology at each other for the sake having a dramatic debate that scores big ratings....

June 18th, 2004
Transcription by Volunteer Citizen Journalist Jerry Helbling

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. So why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself and your role at Harvard.
CHRISTOPHER QUEEN: Okay, Kent. I'm Christopher Queen. I'm a lecturer on the study of religion at Harvard University. And two courses that I teach at Harvard are Buddhism and Social Change and Buddhism in America. And my special research in Asia has to do with the Untouchables who have converted to Buddhism since 1956 in their effort to overcome the abuses of the caste system. And I recently wrote a paper on the concept of Right Speech in Buddhism because Right Speech is one of the important ethical tenets, and also one of the steps on the Eightfold Path. So it’s a very central idea --communication, and also of the notions of consumption and how those affect our behavior and our values.

I am trying to take an integrative, systems approach to this documentary. It’s hard to pin the blame of any alleged failings of the mainstream media squarely on the media.

This is because there is a complex feedback loop relationship between the government, the media, and the society. Just critiquing the supply (media) without analyzing the demand (popular culture) is a simplistic and reductionistic approach to the issue.

One implication of this is that our public education system and college educational paradigms have a major impact on our culture, which then influences the demand for the programming that commercial broadcasters provide.