I'm in Boston, attending the 2011 National Conference for Media reform sponsored by Free Press. The events will occur at the Seaport World Trade Center. I hope to post at least several blog posts based on the conference events. At this point, I'll merely post an image of the conference banner:
Scientific American reports, Radiation leaking from Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant as part of the devastation in Japan from the record setting earthquake. Sure, four out of five nuclear facilities immediately shut down safely. But of one unit at the fifth, they say
The blast raised fears of a meltdown at the facility north of Tokyo as officials scrambled to contain what could be the worst nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl explosion in 1986 that shocked the world.
Uh, yeah. Actually, this looks more like the Three Mile Island "disaster" to me. Chernobyl used a reactor technology that was considered too unstable outside of the Manhattan project or the U.S.S.R. that involved a big pile of carbon graphite to regulate the reaction. Graphite burns. Chernobyl burned. Chernobyl also exploded wide open. People stood miles away touristically looking directly into the reactor core, and then dying from the gamma ray exposure. The G.E. reactors in Japan are water filled steel containers. They don't burn.They didn't burst. The reactor was idled within hours. The quake broke the outer concrete containment structure (but not the inner steel one) and also interrupted all three safety backup systems. So the reactor overheated before they got it under control, and they had to vent some probably radioactive steam to prevent the inner containment from also rupturing. I say "probably radioactive" because the cooling water certainly contains tritium (Hydrogen-3) and traces of other isotopes. But so far there are no reports of measurable radiation beyond the reactor premises. I'm sure there will be. Personally, I take this as a sign that we really need to move beyond the 1970's style Cold War reactors to the 1990's style ones now being specified in Europe. These are designed to fail safe even if all the active safety systems fail. Sure, they cost a little more to build. But they are pretty much proof against flood, earthquake, and bomb attacks short of nuclear warheads releasing radiation. I have also advocated building next generation fast neutron reactors that can use depleted uranium, thorium, and most current generation reactors waste as fuel. A past post of mine: Whatever Became of Thorium? These reactors are also inherently safer, because they are using less volatile fuel. This should be an opportunity to discuss the future safer implementation of this inevitable successor to coal power, rather than to propagate, "Gee whiz, isn't noocular power dangerous?"The co-founder of Free Press, Robert McChesney, discussed U.S. support for public broadcasting with Amy Goodman on today's episode of Democracy Now. The episode begins with Hillary Clinton's recent statement that Al Jazeera and other foreign news sources are offering real news--useful information--unlike America's corporate news. Here's an excerpt of Clinton's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Wednesday:
Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news, which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.
Robert McChesney agreed with Ms. Clinton's disparagement of America's new media. He disagrees with her proposal for addressing this serious problem. Clinton is proposing to increase funding for America's foreign media operations. According to McChesney, we should scrap the plan to increase international propaganda and, instead, provide better support for America's domestic public media. The current federal support for Public Broadcasting and support for community broadcast stations, is $420 million. This amounts to one one−hundredth of one percent of the total federal budget, (i.e., that is one ten-thousandth of the federal spending for 2010) and this only about half the amount ($750 million) that the federal government pays to support various international broadcasts (Voice of America and other international media operations). McChesney recommends that we combine these monies into a single first-rate public-supported media that will treat the United States just like it treats other countries. It should be a network with no double-standard and no blatant propaganda (BTW, I recently noticed that American media outlets call opponents of a government "rebels" when it approves of them but "insurgents" when it doesn't). McChesney proposes that this new government-funded public media should produce the type of information that other countries trust to such an extent that they will value it and rely on it; we should thus make this new public-funded entity's news freely available to the rest of the world. Wouldn't that be a fundamental change? I certainly haven't seen any indication that the world flocks to see the jingoistic arguing-head-pundit "news" that our electronic currently specializes in producing. McChesney reminded Amy Goodman's audience that those concerned with media reform should consider attending the upcoming National Conference for Media Reform, April 8 - 10, in Boston, Massachusetts. I will be there; I've attended prior national conferences by Free Press and they present numerous critically important topics, including reform of corporate media and lots of encouragement for citizen journalists. Admission to the entire conference is $175. Here's what one can expect at the upcoming conference, according to McChesney:[T]his will be the fifth National Conference for Media Reform, in Boston. I’m more excited about this one than any of the other four, because I think politically in this country right now, with what’s happening in Wisconsin, with what is happening with the battle over public media, with the battle for an open and uncensored internet, the network neutrality fight, I think this is going to be an organizers’ conference. This is going to be an activists’ conference. This is going to be a conference for people to get engaged with issues and learn how to effectively fight, because I think what we’re learning now is that on issue after issue, the vast majority of the American people support us. They care about these issues. And all they need to do is drop a match on that prairie, and we’re going to have a fire. And that’s what we’re going to be doing in April in Boston. It’s going to be an extraordinary event.
Ann Coulter is predictably absurd here, but listen to the applause of the CPAP audience after this exchange.
Coulter's comments came during a response to a question from a woman in the audience. The woman initially asked Coulter why she and other Republicans had championed free elections in Iraq but were warning about them in Egypt.
"You don't go around disturbing countries where you have a loyal ally," Coulter responded.
"What is more important though to American values--being friends with israel still or knowing there are jailed dissidents and journalists [in Egypt]?" the woman asked.
"What do you mean knowing that there are jailed journalists?" Coulter said. "I think there should be more jailed journalists." This prompted a huge round of applause from the crowd.
I get much of my news from Huffington Post. It has been an excellent source for Wall Street corruption, even if those good links come at the price of also getting a steady diet of woo "medicine" and Hollywood gossip. All in all, though, Huffpo has been a steady provider of valuable information. Let me back up: Arianna Huffington has also offered some excellent advice, such as her campaign that we should all get a lot more sleep. When I first heard today's news that AOL has bought the Huffington Post, I was disappointed. That was my honest gut feeling. It immediately occurred to me that AOL will now insist that Huffpo needs to produce significantly more revenue at the expense of progressive commentary. I suspect that that there will be new political pressures to hold back stories inconvenient to the bottom line. Thus I'm not celebrating. But I also know that Arianna Huffington has long been interested in cranking out serious investigative journalism, and I know that it takes money to do this well. I'm still not celebrating. I'm apprehensive. According to John Nichols of The Nation, though, it is not necessarily time to mourn.
If, with AOL’s resources, she is able to hire more, if she and her team are able to produce more serious content and if they can identify some of those “different ways to save investigative journalism,” it is possible to imagine that the AOL–Huffington Post deal could mark a turning point in the debate about the future of journalism. That’s a lot of “ifs…”The bottom line, then, is that time will tell . . .