Malkia Cyril

Malkia Cyril is a media justice organizer, writer, strategist, and founding executive director of MediaJustice, originally known as the Center for Media Justice. Their work helped move national conversations from "media democracy" toward "media justice," insisting that communication rights are inseparable from racial justice, economic justice, and human rights. Through MediaJustice and the Media Action Grassroots Network, Malkia helped build a national organizing home for communities challenging media bias, surveillance, corporate consolidation, digital exclusion, and the systems that decide whose stories are heard.

Malkia's work matters to community media because it widens the frame. Access is not only about channels, studios, or training. It is also about power: who owns media systems, who is watched, who is misrepresented, who is connected, who is silenced, and who gets to shape public truth. Their leadership has connected grassroots organizing, net neutrality, digital rights, cultural strategy, prison justice, Black liberation, and community-controlled media into a larger vision of communications justice.

In 2015, Malkia received the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in journalism, and their writing and advocacy have appeared across national media and movement spaces. For Community Media Voices, Malkia belongs in the movement-leader lineage: people who remind the field that media access is not only a service. It is a fight for voice, dignity, safety, representation, and the right of communities to define themselves.