Time to break up the mass media

At Reader Supported News, Carl Gibson makes a good case for breaking up the six big enterprises that constitute most of our media:

The reason the bulk of the most important information won't ever reach the exact people the Occupy movement is reaching out to is because 90% of all media Americans consume is owned by six corporations. To put that in perspective, 232 executives at GE, NewsCorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS are deciding what 277 million Americans will watch, read and listen to every day. That's one media executive for every 850,000 subscribers. There's an easy fix that doesn't involve new legislation or Constitutional amendments: make the government do its job. Since 1995, the FCC forbade any company from owning more than 40 stations. Currently, Clear Channel owns 1,200 radio stations. We have antitrust laws already in place that broke up colossal monopolies like the kind Standard Oil had in its heyday. Why should big media monopolies be exempt from those laws?

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NYT launches more ad hominem attacks against Julian Assange

You need to read the NYT's hatchet piece regarding Julian Assange to believe it. The writer, Alessandra Stanley, apparently has no idea how utterly sick the mainstream media is, including her precious employer, the NYT, which is significantly responsible for plunging the United States into a needless war in Iraq. Instead of showing some appreciation that Assange has used his new television show to provide meaningful dialogue with a significant world figure, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, she repeatedly tries to draw attention to her own sense of superiority, ignoring the horrifically unjust treatment Assange has received on many fronts, especially from the United States. She blithely writes, citing no sources, that nowadays Assange "is most often portrayed as a nut job." She has no idea, and offers no appreciation for the mission of Wikileaks or for the personal sacrifice experienced by Mr. Assange. She should start with this list of the many accomplishments of Wikileaks. Then she should consider this presentation at this year's National Conference for Media Reform and this. Glenn Greenwald forcefully and precisely puts Stanley's piece in perspective:

Assange developed an alternative template to the corporate media — one that was far more independent of, and adversarial to, government power — and, in the process, produced more newsworthy scoops than all of them combined. As NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen once put it about WikiLeaks: “The Watchdog Press Died; We Have This Instead.” The mavens of that dead watchdog press then decided that they hated Assange and devoted themselves to demonizing and destroying him. That behavior makes someone a “nut job,” but it isn’t Assange.

More revealingly still: it is simply impossible to imagine The New York Times using the phrase “nut job” to describe how anyone who exercises actual power in Washington is “most often portrayed.” The same is true of the rank speculation Stanley invokes to imply — without having the slightest idea whether it’s true — that Assange “wore out his welcome” at his prior home: that sort of gossipy ignorance, designed to smear without any basis, would rarely make its way into an article about someone at the epicenter of America’s political class. That’s because American media outlets are eager to savage those who are outcasts in Washington, but unfailingly treat its most powerful figures with great reverence. Stanley may want to reflect on that the next time she seeks to portray some media outlet other than her own as a subservient tool of state propaganda.

Unlike Alessandra Stanley, Julian Assange is not beholden to a corporate master in disturbingly over-consolidated industry. And it shows. To be convinced, all you need to do is read Stanley's mocking article, then view Assange's focused and revealing interview of Hassan Nasrallah.

Continue ReadingNYT launches more ad hominem attacks against Julian Assange

Motherhood and Politics

I don’t have a lot to say about this kerfluffle over the remarks of someone who, as it turns out, is not actually working for Obama regarding Ann Romney never having worked a day in her life.  This kind of hyperbole ought to be treated as it deserves—ignored. But we live in an age when the least thing can become a huge political Thing, so ignoring idiocy is not an option. I remember back in the 1990s a brief flap over Robert Reich.  I’m not certain but I believe it was Rush Limbaugh who started it by lampooning the Clinton Administration’s Secretary of Labor for “never having had a real job in his life.”  Meaning that he had gone from graduation into politics with no intervening time served as, at a guess, a fast-food cook or carwasher or checker at a WalMart.  Whatever might qualify as “real” or as a “job” in this formulation.  In any event, it was an absurd criticism that overlooked what had been a long career in law and as a teacher before Clinton appointed him.  It’s intent was to discredit him, of course, which was the intent of the comments aimed at Mrs. Romney by asserting that she has no idea what a working mother has to go through. A different formulation of the charge might carry more weight, but would garner less attention.   It is true being a mother has little to do with what we regard as “gainful employment” in this country: employees have laws which would prevent the kinds of hours worked (all of them, on call, every day including weekends and holidays) for the level of wages paid (none to speak of) mothers endure. Hilary Rosen raised a storm over remarks aimed at making Mrs. Romney appear out of touch with working mothers.  A more pointed criticism might be that Mrs. Romney does not have any experience like that of many women who must enter employment in order to support themselves and their families, that a woman who can afford nannies (whether she actually made use of any is beside the point—the fact is she had that option, which most women do not) can’t know what working mothers must go through. But that’s a nuanced critique and we aren’t used to that, apparently.  Soundbite, twitter tweets, that’s what people are used to, encapsulate your charge in a 144 characters or less, if we have to think about it more than thirty seconds, boredom takes over and the audience is lost. Unfortunately, the chief victims then are truth and reality. So the president gets dragged into it for damage control and the issue becomes a campaign issue. Which might not be such a bad thing.  We could stand to have a renewed conversation about all this, what with so many related issues being on the table, given the last year of legislation aimed at “modifying” women’s services and rights.  Whether they intended it this way or not, the GOP has become saddled with the appearance of waging culture wars against women, the most recent act being Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin’s repeal of that state’s equal pay law.  Romney is the presumptive nominee for head of that party and one of the things he’s going to have to do if figure out where he stands on these matters and then try to convince the country that he and his party are not anti-woman. Yes, that’s hyperbolic, but not by much.  This is where the culture wars have brought us—one part of society trying to tell the other part what it ought to be doing and apparently prepared to enact legislation to force the issue.  Ms. Rosen’s remarks, ill-aimed as they were, point up a major policy problem facing the GOP and the country as a whole, which is the matter of inequality. That’s become a catch-all phrase these days, but that doesn’t mean it lacks importance.  The fact is that money and position pertain directly to questions of relevance in matters of representation.  Ann Romney becomes in this a symbol, which is an unfortunate but inevitable by-product of our politics, and it is legitimate to ask if she can speak to women’s concerns among those well below her level of available resource and degree of life experience. The problem with all politics, left, right, or center, is that in general it’s all too general.  Which is why Ms. Rosen’s remarks, no matter how well-intentioned or even statistically based on economic disparities, fail to hit the mark.  She can’t know Ann Romney’s life experience and how it has equipped her to empathize with other women.  Just as Ann Romney, viewing life through the lens of party politics, may be unable to empathize with women the GOP has been trying very hard to pretend are irrelevant. Like with Robert Reich’s critics, it all comes down to what you mean by “real” and “work.”  And that’s both personal and relative. Isn’t it?

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“At least I can get accurate news on NPR.” Wrong.

For those of you who think that you are getting accurate U.S. foreign policy news stories on NPR, think again. NPR, like most other new outlets, has annointed itself a stenographer for the U.S. government. Glenn Greenwald proves this point beyond debate by dissecting a recent NPR store on Iran. It would all be laughable were the stakes not so serious. Here is an excerpt from Greenwald's story. I highly recommend following the link to his entire story:

This morning, Temple-Raston began her report by noting — without a molecule of skepticism or challenge — that Iran is accused (by the U.S. government, of course) of trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil (a plot traced to “the top ranks of the Iranian government”); there was no mention of the fact that this alleged plot was so ludicrous that it triggered intense mockery in most circles. She then informed us that Iran is also likely responsible for three recent, separate attacks on Israeli officials. These incidents, she and her extremely homogeneous group of experts from official Washington explained, are “red flags” about Iran’s intent to commit Terrorism — red flags consistent, she says, with Iran’s history of state-sponsored Terrorism involving assassinations of opposition leaders in Europe during the 1980s and the 1996 truck bombing of an American military dormitory in Saudi Arabia (note how attacks on purely military targets are “Terrorism” when Iran does it, as are the assassinations of its own citizens on foreign soil who are working for the overthrow of its government; but if you hold your breath waiting for NPR to label as Terrorism the U.S. assassination of its own citizens on foreign soil, or American and Israeli attacks on military targets, you are likely to expire quite quickly). All of this, Temple-Raston announces, shows that Iran is “back on the offensive.”

Continue Reading“At least I can get accurate news on NPR.” Wrong.

Status on Illinois law prohibiting citizens from recording police

Illinois Republicans voted down a bill that would have allowed people to record public police activities in Illinois. What are they afraid of? The good news:

Even without the legislation, however, the law’s days might be numbered. Two judges, one in Cook County and the other in Crawford County, have declared it unconstitutional in recent months.

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