Why we won’t solve any other major problem confronting the U.S. without media reform.

The following remarks were delivered by Bernie Sanders to the National Conference for Media Reform. Sanders is the junior United States Senator from Vermont.  He is an independent, but caucuses with the Democrats.  Amy Goodman describes Sanders’ speech as an “alternative State of the Union.”

The full text to Sanders’ speech can be found here.  Video of his presentation can be found here.  Here are excerpts of Sanders’ speech to the NCMR in Memphis:

[W]e will not succeed unless you are there, unless there is a strong grassroots media, which demands fundamental changes in media today and the end of corporate control over our media. We’ve got to work together on that.

Now, you are going to hear from a lot of folks who know more about the details of the media than I do, but what I do know a lot about is how media impacts the political process, what media means for those of us who day after day struggle with the major issues facing our country and a goal of trying to improve the quality of life for all of our people.

And I want to spend just a minute in telling you what I suspect most of you already know. If you are concerned, as been said, about healthcare, if you are concerned about foreign policy and Iraq, if you are concerned about the economy, if you are concerned about global warming, you are kidding yourselves if you are not concerned about corporate control over the

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How to make energy a serious campaign issue

In the January 29, 2007 edition of Time Magazine, Montana Democrat Governor Brian Schweitzer was asked how Democrats could make energy an  issue in the upcoming presidential campaign.  Here's what Schweitzer said: I can do it in a 60-second spot," he said.  "Put me on the clock."  And he was off…

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Reporting on Iraq – from afar

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…

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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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