Paper Tiger Television

Paper Tiger Television is a New York-based public access video collective. Co-founded by DeeDee Halleck in 1981, Paper Tiger TV was the first nationally distributed public access television program. Its programming critiques media corporatization and censorship, covering issues such as racism, sexism, economic inequality, and U.S. imperialism. Episodes often follow the format of a guest scholar reading and critiquing a piece of mainstream media, such as Paper Tiger TV's earliest programs featuring Herb Schiller critiquing The New York Times. Frequent guests include Herb Schiller, Brian Winston, Tuli Kupferberg, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and Joel Kovel.

In 1986, Paper Tiger TV founded Deep Dish Television, the first grassroots satellite network in the United States. From 1986 to 2018, Deep Dish TV produced work by independent videomakers, programmers, and social activists on a variety of cultural and political topics. Deep Dish TV collaborated with Paper Tiger TV on the Gulf Crisis TV Project, a ten-part series exploring many aspects of the Gulf War.

In addition to being broadcasted nationally on public access channels, Paper Tiger's programs have been shown internationally in screenings and installations. Installations in this collection include "Dream House" at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 1991; "Smashing Myths of the Information Age" at the San Francisco Art Institute, 1992; and the "Being the Media: Designing a New Rrradical Media" Conference in New York, 2012.

Paper Tiger TV has a history of advocacy in and outside of their television programming. Members of the collective have organized workshops and programs, distributed educational resources on video production, and collaborated with youth in New York City to produce programs such as "Homecoming Queens" (1999), "Access Orbit" (2001), "Biorhythms" (2002), "On the Real" (2002), "War and the Economy" (2002), and "Basta Ya!" (2010). Paper Tiger has also continuously advocated for public access programming, and has long standing relationships with other independent media organizations such as the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Democracy Now!, and the Alliance for Community Media.