A recent post on Daily Kos reported on the U.S. House of Representatives passing a bill to loosen Republican restrictions on stem-cell research. Although it sailed through the House and looks set to pass the Senate, George W. Bush has threatened to veto it, and it has not yet gained…
I’m reporting again from Memphis, where I am attending the National Conference for Media Reform sponsored by Free Press.
This morning, I attended a panel discussion entitled “Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media. The panel was headed by Eric Klinenberg, who teaches sociology at New York University. He is also the author of Fighting for Air: the Battle to Control America’s Media (2007).
Klinenberg indicated that we have been experiencing decades of deregulation in the media industry and we’re now paying for it. To those who attended this conference, however, he asked whether they remembered the moment when they figured out that they did not have to accept the toxic misleading filtered version of the media that they had been getting. He asked them if they remembered that moment when they realized that they could do something about this problem, about this media that has become “a war-mongering media.”
Large corporations are striving to finish the job of taking over the media. They are trying to take over the entire media system and to “plunder” it for their own profits. How bad have things gotten? Klinenberg states that he can’t find a single person who is more pleased with the media today than he or she was 10 years ago. No one he asks tells him that “after that newspaper chain took over, I learned so much more about my community.”
Pete Tridish of Prometheus radio was the first speaker. Prometheus is handing out flyers containing …
How many of you remember the first time you did it? Eat barbecue in Memphis, that is. In cities where barbecue is taken seriously, you can easily become embroiled in vigorous debates about where one must go to can eat the best barbecue. Memphis is famous for its barbecue restaurants. …
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 …
It's snaining, again. Oh, no, it's snaining again. This word is one I got from my father, who always said it with an appropriate sneer. Rain, sleet, and snow all rolling in at once. He'd never seen this sort of weather until he moved to the Midwest the year I…