Here’s one perspective.  It’s an excerpt from an article from The Economist, entitled: “Who Killed the Newspaper?”:

Having ignored reality for years, newspapers are at last doing something. In order to cut costs, they are already spending less on journalism. Many are also trying to attract younger readers by shifting the mix of their stories towards entertainment, lifestyle and subjects that may seem more relevant to people’s daily lives than international affairs and politics are. They are trying to create new businesses on- and offline. And they are investing in free daily papers, which do not use up any of their meagre editorial resources on uncovering political corruption or corporate fraud. So far, this fit of activity looks unlikely to save many of them. Even if it does, it bodes ill for the public role of the Fourth Estate.

The following remarks were delivered by Bernie Sanders to the National Conference for Media Reform. Sanders is the junior United States Senator from Vermont.  He is an independent, but caucuses with the Democrats.  Amy Goodman describes Sanders’ speech as an “alternative State of the Union.”

The full text to Sanders’ speech can be found here.  Video of his presentation can be found here.  Here are excerpts of Sanders’ speech to the NCMR in Memphis:

[W]e will not succeed unless you are there, unless there is a strong grassroots media, which demands fundamental changes in media today and the end of corporate control over our media. We’ve got to work together on that.

Now, you are going to hear from a lot of folks who know more about the details of the media than I do, but what I do know a lot about is how media impacts the political process, what media means for those of us who day after day struggle with the major issues facing our country and a goal of trying to improve the quality of life for all of our people.

And I want to spend just a minute in telling you what I suspect most of you already know. If you are concerned, as been said, about healthcare, if you are concerned about foreign policy and Iraq, if you are concerned about the economy, if you are concerned about global warming, you are kidding yourselves if you are not concerned about corporate control over the media, because every one of these issues is directly controlled and directly relevant to the media.

In terms of the war in Iraq, the American media failed, and failed grotesquely, in exposing the dishonest and misleading assertions of the Bush administration in the lead-up to that war, and they are as responsible as is President Bush for the disaster that now befalls us . . .

. . . If you were to ask me what the most significant untold story of our time is, in terms of domestic politics, I would tell you very simply that that story happens to be the collapse of the American middle class.   . . . [D]espite an explosion of technology, huge increase in worker productivity, tens of millions of our fellow Americans have seen a decline in their real wages and are working longer hours for lower wages. In fact, what you probably don’t know is that the working people in our country work longer hours than do the working people in any other industrialized nation on earth.

How did that happen? How did it happen today that a two-income family has less disposal income than a one-income family did thirty years ago? . . .  Now, one might think that this is an interesting story. One might think that globalization and disastrous trade policies, which have lowered the standard of living of millions of American workers, might be a story that should be covered. . . .

Now, what is all of this about? What happens? If the reality of working people’s lives are not reflected in the TV, in the newspapers, what happens? . . . (more…)

I have a PayPal account, so when I received the following email yesterday, it concerned me enough that I decided to log on to PayPal to find out more about this unauthorized change to my account:

You’ve added an additional email address to your PayPal account.
If you don.t agree with this email tcgrady@cox.net and if you need assistance with your account,
please click here to login to your account.
 
To make sure you can use your PayPal account the next time you make a purchase,
all you need to do is confirm or not your email address.
If your email program has problems with hypertext links,
you may also confirm your email address by logging in to your account.
 Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team
—————————————————————-
Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response.
For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link located in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

This email is great bait.  After all, it causes urgency in that the recipient will want to find out who the hell is adding an “additional email address” to PayPal.  To find out, I first clicked on the link on the email to get to my PayPal account. I was taken to this fraudulent site.

[THIS ABOVE SITE IS FRAUDULENT--DON'T USE IT! Notice the difference between the fraudulent site's URL and PayPal’s actual URL:  https://www.paypal.com/.     If the site doesn't start off with "paypal" immediately following www, beware.]

The fraudulent PayPal site (which was an elaborate replica of the real PayPal site) immediately asked me to log in by keying in my credit card number, security code and other confidential information (no, I didn’t provide any of that information).  If you dig around enough on the fake site, though, you’ll see that many of the links are broken.

This criminal attempt was carefully concocted so that it looked an awful lot like the legitimate PayPal site.   It makes me wonder how many people responded to this manipulative email by handing private confidential information to the criminals. 

PayPal is quite familiar with this problem: 

What is Phishing?
Phishing is a form of fraud designed to steal your identity. It works by using false pretenses to get you to disclose sensitive personal information, such as credit and debit card numbers, account passwords, or Social Security numbers.
One of the most common phishing scams involves sending a fraudulent email that claims to be from a well-known company. Phishing can also be carried out in person, over the phone, through fraudulent pop-up windows, and websites.
DEFINITIONS
Phishing (pronounced “fishing”): Fraudulent emails that request or initiate a scam to get sensitive personal information.
Spoof Site: Fraudulent sites – usually linked from a phishing email – that look like well-known websites.

In my opinion, two issues which overshadow all other issues: media reform and public financing of political campaigns. Why?

Without these two reforms, public information will continue to be dishonest information. The media and those running for national public office will continue to present a picture warped by corporate (purely financial) interests. This is a recipe for disaster. Corporations “care” about making money. Corporations don’t care about individual liberties, except to the extent that it helps them make more money. I’m not saying that the people who work for corporations are necessarily moral monsters. I’m only saying that when those (often good and decent) people are sitting behind their corporate desks, they know that their primary job is to make the balance sheet look good.

Corporate power in both of these arenas, then, should be minimized. Instead, they dominate. Currently, big corporate money determines what is news and what isn’t. Big corporate money tells us who will run for national office and who won’t. It’s that simple.

When we vote in November, it admittedly feels like a choice. But it is always a choice between two candidates who have been pre-chosen based on their abilities to beg for enough corporate money to get their messages out. The People vote only after big corporate money chooses. Why else do most national candidates from both parties take huge donations from most of the same big corporations. Corporations have bought “access” with that big money. And the more “access” they have, the less you and I have. Here’s a clear statement of the problem. and here’s the website of Public Campaign, which includes much more detailed information about why we need to end the current system of legalized bribery.

I’ve decided to take the time to point out major candidates who have staked clear positions in favor of A) Media Reform and B) Public Financing of Campaigns. I’ll be keeping a tally in the coming months. Last week I attended a press conference of Dennis Kucinich, where he strongly supported both reforms.

Today’s featured candidate is John Edwards, who unmitigatedly supports public financing of political campaigns, as indicated by the excerpt from a town hall meeting:

Here’s a site for scientists looking for help in presenting the need to vigorously teach evolution, when confronted by anti-science types. 

I keep falling into the trap that this should be easy to convince people to study evolution in light of the abundant evidence in support and the elegance of natural selection.  On the issue of whether the Earth is 6,000 years old, how about this:  If you believe in God, the universe would (it seems to me) to be God’s elaborate “clock.”  Dozens of physical and biological mechanisms are commensurate in suggesting that the Earth is far more than 6,000 years old.  Why deny these numerous testable clock mechanisms in order to pursue a narrow inquiry-ending view (one of many) of an ancient book of aprochraphal (un-testable) origins? 

But, alas, presenting well-established scientific facts don’t convince Creationists.   In fact, no evidence convinces them that the version of the Bible that they bought at Wal-Mart is the one true inerrant version, despite an avalanche of evidence to the contrary.  To me, it is a red flag when non-experts reject the experts when virtually all of the experts (those trained and practicing in a field) speak in unison.

Certainly, then, announcing broad-minded scientific principles is not enough to pry open most of those closed minds.  In fact, the terms “science,” “academic” and “intellectual” make many creationists bristle and turn away.  Turn on any 24-hour Christian AM radio show for confirmation.

This new site is sponsored by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Rockville, Maryland, an umbrella society of numerous other scientific organizations.  At the site, you’ll find many links relevant to evolution, of course. Noteworthy, though, are templates for op-ed letters, and rubber to the road strategies for discussing the issues with public officials and power point presentations.  These can be modified as needed, at the invitation of the Society.  This is not the only site a school board would need to fight the good fight, of course, but it’s a good start. (more…)

In the January 29, 2007 edition of Time Magazine, Montana Democrat Governor Brian Schweitzer was asked how Democrats could make energy an  issue in the upcoming presidential campaign.  Here’s what Schweitzer said:

I can do it in a 60-second spot,” he said.  “Put me on the clock.”  And he was off to the races: “folks, we’ve got a problem.  We Americans use a 6.5 billion bbl.of oil a year.  We produce 2.5 billion ourselves.  We import 4 billion from the world’s worst dictators.  We need to stop doing that.  We can save one billion bbl. through conservation.  Things like more efficient cars, homes and appliances.  We can produce another one billion bbl. of biofuels with agricultural crops like corn, soybeans and canola.  We can produce 2 billion bbl. a year turning our enormous coal reserves to clean-burning gas.  We can achieve energy independence in 10 years, create a whole new industry with tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, and you’ll never have to send your grandchildren to war in the Middle East.  I’m Brian Schweitzer, and I approved this message.

Schweitzer proclaims that Montana is going to save the world in that it is “the Saudi Arabia of coal.”  He argues that coal can be turned into a clean-burning liquid fuel, and that this fuel (plus biofuels and conservation) “can completely eliminate the need for imported oil.”

Time doesn’t overlook Schweitzer’s credentials: “Schweitzer has a Masters in soil science from Montana State University and spent seven years building irrigation projects in Saudi Arabia.  He speaks fluent Arabic and has a sophisticated grasp of middle eastern politics and the history of oil.”

There is a risk to knowing more than a little history (or religion or politics).  Learning more than the popularized cartoon version of traditional history lessons has a way of contaminating comforting myths.   See here and here.

Take, for example, the story of William Clark of Lewis and Clark.  Everyone knows about the 1803 expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory.  That journey makes those intrepid explorers heroes, right?  Clark is also presented as an early multi-culturalist, in that the expedition was joined by Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman who served as their interpreter.
 
My 8-year old daughter is currently studying Lewis and Clark at school.   She mentioned that the explorers were not in good spirits when they reached Fort Clatsop (a fort they built in Oregon, along the Columbia River).  I wondered out loud if they were glum because they were utterly exhausted and missing their families.  My daughter then mentioned that one of the men never made it home to see his family.

His name was “York.”

York was forced to go on the expedition because he was William Clark’s slave, having been inherited from Clark’s father.  He was the same age as Clark.  The journals present York as a “large, strong man, who carried a gun and shared the duties and risks of the expedition in full.”

And when the wildly successful expedition returned, York was given his fair share of the spoils, right?  Well, not exactly.  This, from Wikipedia:

After the Corps returned, York apparently asked Clark for his freedom based upon his good services during the expedition. Clark refused, claiming financial difficulties. York, who was married to a woman owned by a different master, pleaded with Clark to be allowed to return to the Louisville area where his wife’s owner lived. Clark’s letters to his brother reveal increasing irritation with York. Feeling that York was being disobedient, Clark threatened to hire him out to a severe master; he also “gave him a Severe trouncing”, and even had York jailed briefly. York was finally sent to Louisville and hired out to a demanding master for at least two years.

Clark may have set York free sometime after 1816 and set him up in a freight business in Tennessee and Kentucky which later failed; he then tried to rejoin Clark in St. Louis, but died of cholera on the way. There are, however, some doubts about this story; he may simply have been hired out to the owner of a freight business. At least one later account suggests he may have escaped to live on the frontier.

Reading this passage made me wince.  It made me embarrassed that I’ve been carrying around such a simplistic version of the Lewis and Clark story.  But I’m also relieved that my second-grade daughter is learning more about Lewis and Clark than I ever learned in school.  Her teachers aren’t avoiding history’s pimples.  For that, I am grateful. 

Does the story of York lessen Clark’s great accomplishments as an explorer?  Not clear.  After all, when we honor Clark, aren’t we honoring him as both an explorer and as a person?  Isn’t character an implied part of honoring one for his or her accomplishments?

In the end, York is a tragic figure, as tragic as any you’ll ever read about in an Shakespearean tale.  Small consolation that York has been honored with a statute near Louisville. 

The reclusive artist behind the Doonesbury comic strip is interviewed for the Washington Post Magazine (here) in October 2006, and I only found it today.

I figure that this fits neatly in with the recent theme of media issues.

For the past week, I have been posting information I’ve learned from the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis (January 12-14). This post is yet another in that series.

One of my favorite parts of the conference was the exhibit hall. There, I met dozens of exhibitors, representatives of organizations dedicated to alternative media and other media issues.

I decided to spend some time interviewing many of these exhibitors. I hope you will be impressed, as I was, by the exhibitors’ enthusiasm and dedication to numerous critically important media issues.

I certainly learned a lot by talking to these people. For those of you who are interested in pursuing media issues further, these videos will give you many links to worthy organizations. Of course, as another a starting point, consider visiting the site of Free Press, where you will find videos of all the major speeches. You will also find numerous suggestions for A) taking action to stop big media, B) preserve equal access to the Internet and C) to promote media reform.

Due to technical limitations of YouTube (most videos may not exceed ten minutes), I have broken my interviews into three separate segments. The first segment involves the following exhibitors:

• See Jane
• First Freedom First
• Real News
• Deep Dish TV
• Project Censored
• In These Times Magazine
• Public News Service

In the video immediately below, you can see my interviews with the following exhibitors:

• Social Service Research Council
• Consumers Union
• Free Speech TV
• Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood
• Common Dreams

In this final segment, you’ll hear from the following exhibitors:

• The Well-Connected Project: the Media Tracker
• The Action Coalition for Media Education
• The Media Education Foundation (consumer site here)
• Haymarket Books

People living in small rural villages in Uganda have found a practical solution to a problem which the greatest minds and vast resources of the United States seem unable to confront, let alone solve: how to make basic health care available and affordable. There’s no national health insurance and people are quite poor by American standards (the GNI in 2006 was US$280), so they have formed health co-operatives which make regular payments to the local hospital, in return for the provision of medical care to co-op members. It’s basically a group insurance plan on a very small scale, which includes the following points: 1) pooling risk 2) agreement among members about what services will and won’t be covered.

 The first point is the very basis of insurance: many people pay a small amount into a risk pool with the understanding that most of the time, they will not need the services offered; the money in the pool is there to pay for services for individuals who do need them, because no one knows when they will become sick or injured and the costs of care may be prohibitive. Of course a larger risk pool, such as the entire United States, would be preferable because the larger the pool the better risk can be absorbed, a fact our government seems not to understand. Think of it this way: is it better to spread the cost of paying for one expensive disease among 10 people, 100 people, or 100,000,000 people? Small group health plans have had to fold because of the costs of caring for one hemophiliac, for example, a problem which would not arise in a national plan.  

The second point may sound heartless but is in fact only facing up to reality: if the coop tried to pay for every possible health procedure, no one could afford to be a member. This point is less applicable to the United States, because we are a very rich country, but still food for thought: if people had some awareness of the costs of, say, MRI machines which sit idle, they might reconsider whether it is money well spent.

Of course the Ugandans have several advantages we in the United States don’t have. For one thing, they have no health care bureaucracy to impose 15-20% in administrative costs on their health care. For another, they don’t have a highly-profitable industry of health insurance companies to lobby against any simple method of financing health care.

 I don’t want to idealize the Ugandan experience. It is not universal care: you have to be a member of a co-op to receive treatment, and it doesn’t cover everything. And this system is not available throughout the country, only in 30 villages, and builds on the pre-existing structures of farmer’s co-ops. But there are definitely lessons in the provision of care at a reasonable cost in the Ugandan experience.

This was covered in a story on NPR, located at this link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6915566

Here, courtesy of DemocracyNow.org, it the written text of Bill Moyers’ plenary speech during the Nation Conference for Media Reform.

Where is the movement headed? Read this part of Moyers’ speech:

SO I’M BACK WHERE I STARTED WITH YOU, AND WHERE THIS MOVEMENT IS HEADED. The greatest challenge to the plantation mentality of the media giants is the innovation and expression made possible by the digital revolution. I may still prefer the newspaper for its investigative journalism and in-depth analysis, but we now have it in our means to tell a different story from Big Media, our story.

The other story of America that says, free speech is not just corporate speech. That news is not just what officials tell us. And we are not just chattel in the fields living the boss man’s story. This is the great gift of the digital revolution, and you must never, never let them take it away from you. The Internet, cell phones and digital cameras that can transmit images over the Internet makes possible a nation of story tellers, every citizen a Tom Paine.

Let the man in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue think that over, and the woman of the House on Capitol Hill. And the media moguls in their chalets at Sun Valley, gathered to review the plantation’s assets and multiply them, nail it to their door. They no longer own the copyright to America’s story. It’s not a top-down story anymore. Other folks are going to write this story from the ground up. And the truth will be out that the media plantation, like the cotton plantation of old, is not divinely sanctioned. It’s not the product of natural forces. The media system we have been living under for a long time now was created behind closed doors where the power-brokers met to divvy up the spoils.

Check this out, from Iraqslogger:

The New York Times and Washington Post are stuffed with Iraq-focused reporting, analyses, and commentaries – 25 in all. Yet, amazingly, not a single one of those original stories comes from Iraq itself (in fairness, there’s a Baghdad-datelined AP report in the NYT). Why? With 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, Iraqis and Americans being killed there every day, and with the U.S. troop presence costing American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a day, Americans deserve and need meaty reporting from the war zone daily.  And I pity the newspaper correspondents risking life and limb in Iraq only to see their editors opt not to include a single original story from Iraq in the huge Sunday papers (two days straight for the NYT).

It reminds one of the old joke (told here by iMedia Connection, in a different context):

But, there’s an old joke, and the joke is that: There is a drunk under a streetlamp; he’s looking for his house keys. A passerby comes up to him, he says, “What are you looking for?” And the drunk says, “I am looking for my house keys.” And then, the passerby says, “Well, where did you lose them?” And, the drunk says, “Oh, oh, I lost them over there.” And, he says, “Oh, so why are you looking for them over here?” And he says, “Well, the light is better.”

The question is whether we are reporting Iraq news from where we can really expect to get on-the-ground accurate facts or merely from where places where it is convenient to do such reporting. The above story from Iraqslogger strongly suggests the latter.

What would we have thought had the national media presented the drowning of New Orleans without any reporters getting their information, first hand, by interviewing people still based in New Orleans?  Here’s what: we would have been highly suspicious of such “news” reports.   Paul Rieckhoff would agree.

It’s about time.   As reported in the NYT:

The House voted this evening to rescind $14 billion worth of tax breaks and subsidies for oil drillers and channel the money into a fund that would finance renewable energy projects and new technologies for conserving energy.

Despite opposition from the oil industry and the Bush administration, which contended that the bill would unfairly single out oil companies for higher taxes and could increase the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, the measure passed, 264 to 163, with overwhelming support from Democrats and a considerable number of Republicans as well.

There is no long-term promise for energy independence by drilling for the dwindling reserves of petroleum.  Also see here.

On the other hand, there are numerous approaches for immediately saving energy through conservation and through alternative energy sources.  For instance, see here, here, and here.

Who is the God about whom each item on this list is allegedly true:

• He “was the biggest healer in Antiquity, even raising the dead.
• They called him Savior and Redeemer.
• He was born of a mortal virgin mother, but had a divine Father.
• He walked on water.
• He was not part of polytheism.
• He was “light of the world.”
• He rose from the grave and ascended to heaven.
• He was the “single true God.”
• He was the “Light of the world.”
• He was the “good shepherd.”
• He was the “lamb.”
• He was “way, the truth and the life.”
• He was identified with a cross.
• He had 12 disciplines who gather together for a last supper.
• He was found by wise men who were guided by a star.
• One of his disciples was a favorite and another was a traitor.
• He performed countless miracles.
• His message was of love and compassion.
• He preached that there was only one true God.
• Declared that the righteous will go to paradise.

[Hint:  he is not necessarily Jesus.  See this succinct summary.   The answer to each of these might also be Asklepios, Hercules, Prometheus, Dionysos, Osiris, Horus, Mithra, Krishna, Buddha or Apollonius of Tyana].

I’ve written before about how banking laws are for sale (some would say I’ve ranted before).  In that post I discussed payday lending.  I often hear that payday lending is not predatory and that such lenders must be offering a service, else why would people borrow money at 300%, 400%, 500% or even more?

I also hear people blame the victims of payday lending.  Others say the borrowers are at fault for borrowing money at horrible interest rates.  Even borrowers hold themselves at fault.  When (if) they get out of the trap (and make no mistake, it is a trap with a cycle of borrowing the same money repeatedly, because the costs are so high people have great difficulty paying the debt without borrowing to do so) they still blame themselves for getting into it.

Many borrowers blame themselves for being stupid or taking the ‘easy way’ out.  One person I know, when faced with the choice of becoming homeless or getting some money, said she thought the loan was an answer to prayer.  “As I prayed for help,” she said, “an ad for payday loans came on tv.  I thought God was answering my prayer.”  Hundreds and hundreds of dollars later in interest, she thinks it was the devil. (more…)

I reviewed about six sources for quotes to find quotes about journalism and media.  Here are some of my favorites. 

This is one of those whimsical videos that struck my fancy.  I’m passing it on for what it’s worth.

It brings to mind this quote from Monte Python and the Holy Grail.

I think I’ve seen one of the top ten stupidest headlines ever created (although I probably should reserve judgment, no doubt humans have not yet reached the zenith of stupidity). It is authored by someone named Charles Murray and in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

The headline that caught my eye:

Intelligence in the Classroom:  Half of all children are below average and teachers can only do so much for them.

With a headline like that, I didn’t even bother reading the article.  It reminds me of the saying they have about Lake Wobegone on the Prairie Home Companion, “where all the kids are a little above average.”  I always got a chuckle with that, but I knew it was a joke.  This guy is dead serious. 

I have another headline for him: 

Half the people in the U.S. have IQs below 100.

How’s that for a scoop. Erich, did you learn about this at the Media Conference? 

A few days ago, I was at the Memphis Convention Center waiting for Dennis Kucinich to enter a large room to begin his press conference.  The reporter sitting in front of me noticed that I was wearing credentials bearing the word “press,” credentials granted by the National Conference for Media Reform.

She asked me about “Dangerous Intersection.”  I told her that it is a blog created in March 2006.  I mentioned that we have a dozen participating authors and that we get about 1100 unique visitors each day. 

She asked, “Would you have ever believed back in March that you would be sitting here covering a press conference of a person running for President of the United States?”   It didn’t cross my mind back then. This blogging experience has taken lots of unexpected twists and turns.  I jokingly told her that she was making me nervous by making the press conference seem more important–and reminding me that I am merely a citizen journalist.  

                        
(Here I am in Memphis, Citizen Journalist.  The bottom of my badge reads “Press.”)

One of the main points stressed throughout the Media Reform Conference, however, was that journalism is changing rapidly.  Corporate media is struggling (often because its corporate owners are muzzling its reporters) and citizen journalists are stepping into the void.  Though the citizen journalists range in quality, they do include many highly qualified reporters who are having lots of fun contributing to the public discourse.  Prior to this movement, most of these people were largely shut out.  They were at the mercy of the editors of newspaper op-ed sections, who quickly chopped out anything that deeply challanged the status quo. It was, for me, extremely frustrating permission-based access. 

But now the bloggers have the means to publish on their own, as well better access to the stories. For example, check out this recent headline from the Washington Post. 

Too Casual To Sit on Press Row? Bloggers’ Credentials Boosted With Seats at the Libby Trial

The bottom line is that bloggers will be among those attending and reporting the trial “Scotter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff.  Here’s an excerpt, also from the Washington Post:

[T]he Media Bloggers Association, a nonpartisan group with about 1,000 members working to extend the powers of the press to bloggers, has won credentials to rotate among his members. The trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the highest-ranking Bush administration official to face criminal charges, could “catalyze” the association’s efforts to win respect and access for bloggers in federal and state courthouses, said Robert Cox, the association’s president.

The new validation doesn’t necessarily clarify the blurry line between bloggers and traditional journalists at a time when millions of people are discovering that they can project their opinions and expertise around the world with just a few keystrokes. The debates over the traditional checks-and-balances process that journalists follow are continuing, and some bloggers are resisting efforts to be put under the umbrella of the traditional news media.

“The Internet today is like the American West in the 1880s. It’s wild, it’s crazy and everybody’s got a gun,” said Thomas Kunkel, dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism school. “There are no rules yet.”

Media Bloggers Association, apparently tired of having its members dissed, presented a different spin on the event:

The army of journalists covering the Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial showed up for work today. The E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse is still standing. The sun will set in the west. All this despite bloggers showing up today for the first time as credentialed members of the media covering a federal trial.

With all that fun comes a downside, however.  (more…)

Imagine that you’ve been given a huge box, hundreds of yards on each side, filled with hundreds of millions of parts.  Imagine that you been told that it is your job to assemble all of those parts into a single functioning machine.

To your dismay, though, you can’t find any assembly manual.  Imagine your frustration!  It’s hard enough to assemble much simpler household products without their manuals.  Without instructions, then, how can you possibly assemble hundreds of millions of parts into a functional whole?

Just as there are hundreds of millions of parts in this hypothetical machine, there are hundreds of millions of flesh and blood Americans.  Together, we constitute a complex adaptive system of an unimaginably huge number of permutations of interactive possibility. 

A vigorous media is the instruction manual for our democracy.  It tells us how we fit together by telling us important things about each other.  A healthy media doesn’t merely tell us information. To accomplish this, it must also listen to the stories that matter to each of us.  A healthy media is necessarily interactive.

The decision to have vigorous media is therefore an affirmation that each person has a significant story to tell.  A free and vigorous media allows the people to become self-assembling parts of a Democratic whole.  When we are well-informed, we know the real-life possibilities for interacting with each other. 

To function smoothly and efficiently as a democracy, we often need to work closely together, in a coordinated fashion. A healthy media system allows us to know each other’ stories.  Knowing each others’ stories allows us to coordinate working with each other.  It keeps us from blindly bumping into one another.  Coordinating our actions with each other allows us to anticipate each others’ needs and wants, thereby avoiding unnecessary conflict.  At bottom, Democracy fueled by wide-open interactive knowledge is a matter of efficiency. 

It is critical to note that this process of assembling ourselves into a functioning whole is an ongoing process.  It never stops.  Therefore, a true democracy that ceases to have a healthy media continues to be a democracy in name only.

Without a depth of understanding of the numerous other people with whom we share our country (and planet), we will be guided by misunderstandings, conflict and violence.  In the absence of a free media, much of that violence will take the form of the state’s police power.  Without a free media, the state will strive to achieve order in the only way it understands: it will attempt to force us into ostensible order through top-down coercive tactics. Governing a complex adaptive social system in a top-down manner risks dangerous inefficiencies; it invites jamming parts of the system (citizens) into places where they don’t belong. Where we are kept in ostensible order by such tyranny, there is no need for the diversity of stories that characterize a bona fide media. (more…)

The American public has a friend in Ed Markey, the Massachusetts’ representative who is the now the Chairman and the highest-ranking Democrat of the House Subcommittee on Telecomunications and the Internet.

Markey knows media well. This video is proof. He knows that the telephone companies have one full-time lobbyist in Washington DC for each member of Congress. He knows that we are up against big corporate money in the fight to keep the Internet available for all providers and all consumers of information.

He’s a big advocate of network neutrality. He commends the bourgeoning movement of grass roots citizens who have stepped up to defend the Internet with massive demonstrations of support. He speaks with vigor against media consolidation. BTW, check out this study showing the bogus arguments the big telecoms make in their attempts to justify further consolidation.

Markey speaks in support of the many forms of alternative media and he recognizes the power and accomplishments of blogs (here’s one recent example).

He’s the right guy at the right time and the right place.

I happened upon this beautifully produced anachronistic commercial, and it started me thinking.

If only the effort that went into producing this product-targeted circus went into promoting newsworthy events.

This is how the Lorraine Hotel looked last night (January 13, 2007) at 9 pm.  

I had never been to Memphis until this weekend, so I had never before visited the Lorraine (it is now a preserved historical site).  It was eerily quiet last night, not at all the way it was at the moment the Lorraine became famous.  It was here that Martin Luther King was gunned down on April 4, 1968.  King’s second-floor room is marked with a large wreath.

The Lorraine reminded me of my visit to the site of JFK’s assassination in Dallas a few years ago.  Both sites seem too small and ordinary to be as significant as they both are.

Here are some of my favorite quotes of Martin Luther King:

• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
• All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
• Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
• In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
• Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
• Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
• I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
• Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
• I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
• All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

This post is one of a continuing series of summaries I am creating regarding the sessions I attended of the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee.  Much more information about the conference, including audio of all of the sessions (and video of many) can be found at Free Press.

The academics that spoke at this particular session (“Media Scholars’ Policy Research Review”) were proof that academics (the people and their topics) can be exciting. 

Mary Kaplan is the associate dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication, as well as the founder and director of the Norman Lear Center.  Kaplan has focused his research on the content and regulation of local television news.

The Lear Center studies “entertainment.”  Broadly defined, this is the “attention economy” which is no longer a separate economy from anything else.  Entertainment has expanded like an empire to consume all other activities.  Media and journalism are mere branches of entertainment.

Kaplan reports on research establishing that local TV news is, by far, the most important source of news and information for Americans. Almost unbelievably, 65% of Americans say that local television news is their number one source of information.

I write “unbelievably,” based on the widespread lack of serious news content. The fluff of local newscasts drives me to distraction.  See an earlier post on local TV news at this site.  Kaplan is troubled that most of the content of local news is “soft.”  News directors of TV stations have repeatedly told Kaplan that covering politics and public affairs is “ratings poison.”  As a result, “earned media” for politicians doesn’t exist anymore.  Almost all media covering politics is now “paid media.” 

In 1974 study showed that only 2.5% of election cycle local news concerned the California governor’s race.  In 1998, this amount of coverage fell to 0.45%.  When the news directors were asked why they didn’t cover these important issues, they told Kaplan “it’s too hard.”

In 2000, the Gore commission regarding the Digital Age (this commission included the chair of CBS) convinced stations to pledge to spend five minutes each day covering candidates for the 30 days prior to each election.  This pledge was voluntary and generally not monitored.  Kaplan’s group did monitor 58 markets to see what they were doing in the month prior to the election, however, and found that the stations averaged only 74 seconds of coverage per night.

Kaplan describes this as the “stick.”  The “carrot” is the Walter Cronkite Award, given by the Lear Center to stations that are doing an especially good job of reporting real news.

The statistics cited in this post are available at the Lear Center.

In 2002, the University of Wisconsin “Newslab” undertook an ambitious study.  The group studied 10,000 broadcasts in the top 50 markets of the United States.  The results showed that 6 out of 10 local television news programs in the top rated markets provided virtually no political coverage prior to the elections.  For those that did provide coverage, horse race politics (reporting the polls) dominated substantive coverage four to one.  Equally amazing for local “news” shows, 92% of broadcasts provided absolutely no coverage to the elections of state and local officials.

Susan Douglas teaches communications studies at the University of Michigan.  She is also the author of The Mommy Myth (2004) among other books.  Douglas argued that it is critical to know the history about how we got where we are in media.  Corporations have excelled in obliterating history.  Those that obliterate history have empowered themselves to create their own history (she jokingly referred to the history Channel as the “Hitler Channel”).

When it comes to media issues, Douglas argues that we need to combat the word “inevitable.” The problems with our media do not have to be the way they are. Corporations constantly drone that the market is a giant all-knowing Buddha that knows best, as if the market is the only way to run things.

Here’s the history: an alternative model had been in place prior to the 1980s.  Corporations were seen as custodians of public airwaves.  They could retain custody if they gave equal time to opposing viewpoints and if they provided public service programming.  These obligations were enforced by the threat of license revocation (though licenses were not often revoked).

How did we get where we now are?  Prior to 1980, Radio stations needed to reapply for their licenses every three years.  Now they need we re-apply only every seven years.  Public service requirements have now been suspended, even though this requirement enabled and inspired local filmmakers to report on stories involving local communities. The deletion of this requirement was the brainchild of former FCC Commissioner Fowler.  The FCC also allows stations to increase the amount of commercials they ran per hour.

In 1985, cross-ownership started growing.  In 1985, a station could own 7 AM stations and seven FM stations.  TV station owners could not own newspapers in the same market. Those were the days. In 1992, a single owner could own 18 AM stations in 18 FM stations.  In 1996, thanks to the Communications Act, “all hell broke loose.” (more…)

Martin Luther King Day never meant that much to me. I grew up in a school district where I was a minority. I was an (epithet for white), I was a (epithet for Polish descent). I was a (epithet for German descent). I was a (epithet for culturally Jewish). I was an Atheist (apparently an epithet unto itself). I was a dumb boy (the minority gender). I was the smallest kid in my class until I was 16, and started to top some of the girls (in the vertical sense, you dirty-minded rurals). As a small, blond, blue-eyed, unathletic teenager, I was typically also mislabeled as (multiple epithets for homosexual). It seemed natural to be picked on because of my minority standing.

When I was attacked, I passively resisted. They usually got tired of hitting someone who didn’t fight back, or even teasing someone who separated words from meanings. Inaccurate descriptors didn’t hurt me because they didn’t stick. Accurate ones I accepted with dignity, if not necessarily honor.But my most memorable MLK day was over two decades ago, and had little to do with race or politics. I was practically grown up, less than a year out of college with the proverbial couple of fancy college degrees, and was working feverishly to install a robotics system in a rural factory. Literally with a fever. I’d been working alternately all-nighters and short-nighters for a week. When a security guard had spotted me napping on a roller conveyor, word spread. Everyone knew how tired one had to be to find that surface acceptable! The entire factory was shut down for the first two weeks of January to let us install the system we designed.

At dawn on MLK day, the assembly line started to roll, our new system began to run, and the problems started to flow. I literally had no voice left, and had to give many people instructions. I hung a sign around my neck reading:

To my surprise, no one in the factory was even aware that it was Martin Luther King day! There were many mothers of grade school children working the line, but apparently recognition of this holiday was mostly an urban thing.

Fortunately, my brother was working with me. This robotics company was small enough that nepotism was simply a way to get help fast. Our sibling relationship is stormy, but we have a near-telepathic ability to communicate. I had no voice, but I could whistle and point. We quickly worked out codes so he could assist me. Things like, “Check the voltage” and “Pull the cable” and “Stop the assembly line, now!”

Aside: This latter one got me in hot water, but it prevented injuries and damage. I was eventually forgiven by the VP in charge of letting our company do the job. But this individual screamed at me till he was red in the face several times that day. I think he couldn’t get over my not hollering back, even with the sign on my chest. No one in authority had ever screamed at me before, but I had developed a thick skin over the years. I did threaten to quit (in writing) and walked away the third time he exploded. Then he calmed down, or maybe just expended his wrath elsewhere.

Anyway one whistle code for my brother became “Please come and explain MLK day to yet another person.” I no longer remember the code, but that day is inexorably tied to Martin Luther King Day in my memory.