Emerging research issues in media

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.

Marty Kaplan.jpg

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 …

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Children and media policy

This is one of the continuing series of reports from the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee.  The conference is sponsored by Free Press. This post concerns a presentation entitled "Children and Media Policy."  Unfortunately, I was not able to hear this entire presentation.  When I arrived, however,…

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Nation Conference for Media Reform – Plenary Speech by Bill Moyers

For the past two days, I've been reporting from the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis.  This conference is being sponsored by Free Press. Here is a link to the inspiring speech Bill Moyers delivered yesterday.  I've sketched some notes below, as well, but there is no substitute for…

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National Conference for Media Reform – The Press at War and the War on the Press

I’m still reporting from the National Conference for Media Reform, from Memphis.  The conference is sponsored by Free Press.  

This afternoon I attended a panel discussion exploring the issues set forth in the title of this post. The moderator, Geneva Overholser (of the University of Missouri School of Journalism), warned that when we criticize the press, we should not be too general.  There are, after all, many good people doing honorable work in the profession.

The first speaker was Sonali Kolhatkar, who is a host and producer of a popular morning drive time program called Uprising she is also the co-director of a nonprofit organization, Afghan Women’s Mission. 

Kolhatkar noted that the media goes where the violence goes, then moves on.  At the present time, Afghanistan “is blowing up.”  There are suicide bombs, as well as no liberation of Afghanistan women (a prime selling point for the war).  Nonetheless, the media (and thus, the American public) no longer cares. She criticized the term “war on terror.”  You can’t have a war “on an abstract noun.”

The second speaker was Paul Rieckhoff, who is the Executive Director and founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of America.  Rieckhoff was an infantry officer in Iraq from 2003-2004 . He was one of the first Iraq veterans to publicly criticize the war.  We’ve written about Paul before. 

Rieckhoff described the war in Iraq as a “war of disconnect.”  For instance, “you never see a dead American soldier on TV.”  In fact, …

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Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control Media – Day 2 of the National Conference for Media Reform

I’m reporting again from Memphis, where I am attending the National Conference for Media Reform sponsored by Free Press. 

This morning, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media.  The panel was headed by Eric Klinenberg, who teaches sociology at New York University.  He is also the author of Fighting for Air: the Battle to Control America’s Media (2007).

Klinenberg indicated that we have been experiencing decades of deregulation in the media industry and we’re now paying for it.  To those who attended this conference, however, he asked whether they remembered the moment when they figured out that they did not have to accept the toxic misleading filtered version of the media that they had been getting.  He asked them if they remembered that moment when they realized that they could do something about this problem, about this media that has become “a war-mongering media.”

Large corporations are striving to finish the job of taking over the media.  They are trying to take over the entire media system and to “plunder” it for their own profits.  How bad have things gotten?  Klinenberg states that he can’t find a single person who is more pleased with the media today than he or she was 10 years ago.  No one he asks tells him that “after that newspaper chain took over, I learned so much more about my community.” 

Pete Tridish of Prometheus radio was the first speaker. Prometheus is handing out flyers containing …

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