The Global Council for Media Transformation is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization created to initiate a critical shift in the media’s perspective, and by doing so improve media’s service to humanity.

The Global Council for Media Transformation will increase the public’s comprehension of our global need for a new media structure that highlights our human interconnectedness and works in humanity’s interest. It will champion a set of media principles and practices designed to facilitate every human being’s ability to successfully recognize, understand and manage our human interdependence.

The Global Council for Media Transformation will invite the public to endorse, and media organizations to adopt, the charter that lays out those principles. We anticipate over 100 million individuals will be impacted directly through the reach of the media who adopt the principles and practices outlined by our organization.

Context

The Global Council for Media Transformation has been launched to initiate a shift in the media – a shift that will bring it line with global needs and realities.

Media serves two functions: It enables us as human beings to grasp the world around us as it changes and it serves as a method of informing, educating and engaging the public in issues and events as they occur. In broad terms the existing media structure came of age in the era of the nation state – causing media outlets regardless of size, location, focus, or reputation to habitually take a national or local perspective in their reporting of events. The result is that globally, the public consumes a story (the same story) that has been interpreted through dozens of different editorial and geographic prisms, giving it as many different meanings.

Ultimately, media structured in that way reinforces our notion that we as human beings are different from each other rather than underscoring the many human concerns that we share. When media takes a national stance it fundamentally fails to reveal the meaning of events with regards to humanity as a whole.

Today, we are in a time of transnational challenges, issues which no one government can control and from which no community will escape. We are one, global, human community defined by profound interdependence and interconnectedness. Media’s default perspective fails to recognize or address that reality. In doing so media fails in its core mission – to serve humanity.

Media can change – not just technologically – but by redesigning itself to reflect the world we now live in. Most critically, media can do that by shifting its perspective – reporting in the human interest, rather than the national interest. That shift will dramatically impact our collective future: A global population consuming media that underscores and reinforces our human interdependence will in time share a core belief structure regarding our interdependent world. Those changed beliefs will drive action – resulting in dramatically improved global human and government cooperation towards resolving our shared challenges. At that point individuals will act as global citizens, with the global community in mind, driving change.

The Global Council for Media Transformation will initiate that change in media perspective as the first, crucial step towards a new era, a fourth generation of journalism (4GJ).

4GJ is designed to update media so that it reflects the societal and technological changes that have occurred in the last century. It helps media to recognize and meet its responsibilities to a single, global audience while bringing media in line with the realities and needs of our times.

To succeed in its core mission - serving humanity - media must update its voice and perspective, reinforcing the reality of human interdependence. The media must fulfill its responsibility humanity - one, global community - by fostering our capacity to successfully recognize, understand and manage our very real global challenges. The Global Council for Media Transformation will initiate the first step. We must transform the media.