Wikileaks in the spotlight at the National Conference for Media Reform

I'm in Boston attending the National Conference for Media Reform - 2011, sponsored by Free Press. I'm one of 2,500 would-be reformers on hand, learning a lot about the state of the media, but there's not enough good news about the news these days. Countless journalists are losing their jobs, newspapers are being shuttered and important stories are thus not getting adequate coverage. On the other hand, the attendees at the conference are, as a group, affable, intelligent and capable people, as are the presenters. Yesterday I attended a panel discussion on Wikileaks, hosted by Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow. I'll offer some of my observations below, before presenting several videos I shot during the discussions.  These videos include of all of the comments by Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald, who has made Wikileaks a strong focus of his work over the past year.  I've also included a video of Amy Goodman's opening comments. In addition to Glenn Greenwald, the panel included Greg Mitchell, who has created an ongoing and comprehensive Wikiweaks series of posts, in The Nation. Each day's entry at his blog includes multiple items, and he's up to at least Day 132. Mitchell has just published an excellent book, The Age of Wikileaks: From Collateral Murder to Cablegate (and Beyond) (2011); I bought a copy at the conference and I'm halfway through. Mitchell suggested early in the session that the federal government has been treating Bradley Manning inhumanely to discourage future whistle-blowers.  Why would that be?  Many of the answers are in Mitchell's own book.  For instance, Mitchell reports that prior to the release of the "Collateral Murder" video, Julian Assange predicted:

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Blogging the 2011 National Conference for Media Reform

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:

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Newspaper Guild asks unpaid bloggers to stop blogging for Huffpo

Media Alley is reporting that the Newspaper Guild is asking unpaid writers at the Huffington Post to stop providing their written work to Huffpo, which recently AOL paid $315 million for Huffpo last month. I'm well aware of Huffpo's policy, which is to "pay" writers with exposure rather than money. It's a deal that I sometimes think of offering to make. Then again, I understand the Guild's position that when others work for free (especially when they do high quality work for free) it hurts the economic position of the 26,000 members of the Newspaper Guild.

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Anthony Weiner aims his sarcasm at do-nothing Republicans

NPR is fighting hard to keep it's sliver of federal funding. On the Hill, Anthony Weiner aims his arrows at the Republicans. And at least one Republican, Ron Paul, understands that our Nation's (destructive) money pit is Afghanistan, not NPR. Every week we spend four times more on our military adventure in Afghanistan than we spend for one year on funding domestic public media (we spend a lot more on propaganda devoted for international audiences than we spend on domestic programming).

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The political left chokes–allows Bradley Manning to be tortured

There are a few news media figure who are taking principled stands regarding the the horrific way that the United States government is treating Bradley Manning, who has not been convicted of any crime. Glen Greenwald is one of the few with scruples. Other principled voices can be read at Alternet, including Lynn Parramore, who (rightfully) suggests that we'd be outraged if we viewed a fictitious movie of someone being treated as badly as Manning, but since it's happening in real life we don't give a shit. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has admirably covered the story. Andrew Sullivan has weighed in. Barack Obama has fully earned the title of America's Second Modern Torture President. This is not hyperbole. Bradley Manning is being tortured by the United States. We are enthusiastically treating Manning the way we treated the (mostly innocent) prisoners at Gitmo. We are doing to Manning what we criticize when other countries do it. Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC has also presented the story with energy. The torture is bad enough, but the silence by mainstream Democrats is infuriating. We're running a great country, aren't we? No need to speak out about Wall Street corruption, massive problems with health care "reform," the right to assassinate U.S. citizens, government spying on its own citizens, and not blatant torture.

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