And one more report from the National Conference for Media Reform from Memphis. YOu will not ever find a public servant who is more dedicated and more cool--If you haven't seen him before, meet FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4HlStH059M[/youtube]
This is one of the continuing series of reports from the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee. The conference is sponsored by Free Press. This post concerns a presentation entitled "Children and Media Policy." Unfortunately, I was not able to hear this entire presentation. When I arrived, however,…
This post is yet another entry summarizing proceedings of the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tennessee. The conference is sponsored by Free Press.
A panel presented yesterday was entitled “Saving the Internet.” [At his plenary speech, Bill Moyers has suggested an alternate way of designating this issue: “equal access to the Internet.”] At the panel presentation, Tim Wu summarized the concept of net neutrality issue. Tim is a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in telecommunications law and copyright. In 2006, he wrote a book titled Who Controls the Internet.
Wu explain that the Internet is a meritocratic network. It is a place where we don’t need permission to speak. The aim of “net neutrality” is “to protect this no-permission” aspect of the Internet. The electric network of the Internet, itself, is a second form of neutrality. The idea is that any compatible device should be allowed to be connected to the network.
The function of net neutrality is to protect the Internet from incursions by phone companies and cable providers. If they had their way, the Internet will become like cable companies or “like the Chinese Internet,” where the provider tells you how you can use the network.
Wu previously worked with a telecommunications company. He was not proud of this, but admitted that his job was to try to sell ways to discriminate use based on content. Ironically, this is exactly what he is now concerned about. That is why he wrote a seminal paper …
For the past two days, I've been reporting from the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis. This conference is being sponsored by Free Press. Here is a link to the inspiring speech Bill Moyers delivered yesterday. I've sketched some notes below, as well, but there is no substitute for…
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, …