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…
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, …
It wasn’t on the original schedule of the National Conference for Media Reform, but Dennis Kucinich agreed to hold a press conference tonight. Kucinich ran for president of the United States in 2004. He has indicated that he plans to run again in 2008.
I hadn’t ever before been to to a press conference of a presidential candidate. I learned of it at the last minute. I packed my press credentials (the media reform conference granted these to me on the basis of this blog), my video camera, a still camera, a pad of paper and a couple pens and dashed to the designated area.
In his prepared remarks, Kucinich pounced on the issue of media reform. He demonstrated himself to be familiar with many aspects of media reform and the Internet. In the not-too-distant future, he intends to hold Congressional hearings on media reform (“for an entire week, if necessary”). He believes that media issues are among the most important issues facing this country today. In response to a question I asked, Kucinich said he considers the media reform to be closely related to the possibility of campaign finance reform. At the point when we have more of the former, he said, we will have the opportunity to implement the latter. Campaign finance reform should take the form of public financing, he asserted.
He invited those attending to submit their ideas for issues to explore at his media reform hearings. Foremost among those topics will be media ownership. In …
I am currently attending the National Conference for Media Reform at the downtown convention center in Memphis. It’s pretty amazing to see and feel all this energy everywhere I look. There will be in excess of 100 presentations. This is still the first day of the 2 1/2 day conference, yet I have already learned more than I can meaningfully absorb. For more on all the things going on out here, go to freepress.net.
Simply understanding concepts is not what this conference is really about. It’s about putting this understanding into action. The organizers chose the following quote of Dr. Martin Luther King for the first page of the conference guide: “And nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.”
It is media reform, in addition to being an important issue, an issue that inspires people to organize their strength into action? Apparently so. This is the third time freepress.net has sponsored a national media conference. The first conference drew 1,800 people to Madison, Wisconsin. Last year, 2,200 people came to St. Louis. This conference is being attended by the more than 3,000 people. According to one of the speakers, the current issue of The Nation features an article advocating the reform of the corrupt mainstream media. You won’t find much about this conference or these topics in the mainstream media, however (correct me if I’m wrong). That is not unexpected, given that the mainstream media is a constant target of criticism here.
It’s …
President Bush is going to send more than 20,000 more troops into Iraq and spend billions of more dollars to carry on a hideous war. Why? To protect Americans from terrorists, he tells us. Bush convinced Americans to invade Iraq by accusing Iraq of being responsible for the 9/11 attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. This argument suggests that the deaths of 3,000 people is a horrible thing.
Whenever 3,000 people die, it is a horrible thing. It might justify hundreds of billions of dollars, though certainly not the diversion of money from programs that save equal numbers of lives. 3,000 deaths justifies the deaths of more than 3,000 soldiers, we are told. I don’t agree with this. The political party that argues that there are clear moral rules (the Republicans) isn’t convincing me.
Does it make a difference that 3,000 innocent Americans die on the same day rather than over the course of a year? I wouldn’t think so. A death is a death, in my opinion. And 3,000 deaths are 3,000 deaths.
Therefore, shouldn’t the 16,000 murders that occur every year in the US require a response five times bigger than the invasion of Iraq? That’s 3,000 every ten weeks. Shouldn’t it require focused efforts to protect these victims? Shouldn’t it require a revamping of our entire criminal justice system, especially our prison system, which so often trains criminals to be even more vicious, rather than preparing them for ready for release? Where is our war on criminal violence? …