11
Apr
New Letters for a New Week
I have finally heard from Riverbend, the wonderful Iraqi blogger who has been kind of incommunicado with me. She explains why in this from Baghdad:
“I’m sooooooooooo sorry I’ve been nearly impossible to reach. One of the people I used to regularly correspond with accused me of turning into a ‘rockstar blogger’ who doesn’t answer emails. The truth is that I haven’t been able to write lately because we’ve been having a weird telephone electricity situation.
“The media here is bordering on ridiculous. Local media is a choice ofIslamic Shi’a channels or American supported channels that have you wanting to poke an eye out after twenty minutes of Michael Jackson and his whole ‘did he’/'didn’t he’ saga.”
TWO LETTERS FROM ITALIA
Joanne Mahoney, chair, Bologna Chapter Democrats Abroad, Italy, writes:
“First, let me thank you for your excellent and important work. I met you two days ago at UC in Bologna and saw you last night at the screening of WMD in Bologna.
“I have a different analysis than you do regarding the 6 million people who went to Rome to pay their respects to Karol Wojtyla. Certainly, as you said many may have been affected by the incessant TV ‘coverage’. But in large part, the masses flocked there because this man affected each of their lives in some way. He gave guidance and an empowering message that many have applied in their lives: ‘Have no fear’. If you think about this, it is the antithesis of what the corporate mass media and Bush Administration message which is ‘Be afraid’.
“The Pope was one of the foremost spiritual leaders our times and reached across heretofore unbroken lines to promote world peace…
“And thank you again for your important work. Rest assured I will be helping you, spreading the word and promoting your website and your film, WMD.”
Frederico Straccia came to see my film and was gutsy to write:
“I’m a 20-year-old boy who studies in bologna, and i’ve been really pleased to know you personally here in bologna. Tonight i watched your film (Weapons of Mass Deception) at Lumiere cinema and i’m really happy to see that there’s still someone who fight against the ‘media oppression’. Here in Italy there’s a situation (about information and politic) really similar to the american one, as you may know. Well, I can’t see how to dismantle this oppressive structure even with the help of free press when there’s a so strict control by politic and economic power over information.Actually there’s always someone disposed to obey rich men’s orders and to keep safe the ’status quo’ of society. Where do you think could start such a ‘revolution?’ And, above all, how? I hope you will answer me, bye.”
I need some help in responding to Frederico. What should we advise?
ON OP-ED PAGES
Tony Sutton, who edits the great site Coldtype.Net, comments on my piece on TomPaine.
“You use Bluffton Today in your latest article as an example of ‘New initiatives in citizen journalism are demonstrating that anyone with a computer, DV camera or cameraphone can now “be” the media.’ I’m not sure how accurate your point is: the paper is a product of the corporate mainstream media and I think you’ll fin that the blog content will be anything but political – community journalism, perhaps, but dog shows and school news rather than any political dissent.”
Also commenting is Jon Kay, who edits the comment pages of Canada’s National Post:
Subject: “Fighting For The Op-Edisphere
“Enjoyed your article. But it may please you to know that not all newspapers are starving their comment pages. Canada’s National Post, a 6-day-a-week national Canadian broadsheet with 250,000 circ., recently moved to 4 comment pages per day, every day (one letters page; 2 op-ed pages; and an editorials, which also contains an editorial cartoon and a featured column). Our readers seem to like it.”
INVESTIGATING ROBOTS.TXT
Shebar Windstone tells us of an ongoing investigation:
“For a website that I’m working on, I’ve been researching the how-to’s of a standard piece of website paraphernalia known as ‘robots.txt,’ which tells search engine webbots & other trawlers which directories & files they may access/index & what is forbidden, & which may also restrict or deny entry to some or all webbots. Sometimes webbots are excluded because they consume too many system/server resources or because website owners have deals with the owners/managers of specific search engines. What isn’t disallowed or excluded is permitted. Many professionally done sites have a robots.txt; most non-profit & amateur sites do not.
“Below I’ll copy several examples of robots.txt that I’ve found, for you to glance through & get some idea of how brief or detailed such a page might be. The real jaw-dropper — what spurred me to write this message — is too long to copy here, & I’d like to encourage you to go see it for yourself:
* http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt
*In case the significance of this isn’t clear to you: disallowing access to specific directories is to put information beyond the reach of search engines, forcing people to manually go through a website to find out what it says & where. Some parts of a website may be closed to the public for very good reasons, such as: user privacy, protection from hackers, protection of trade secrets, to deny access to non-subscribers or unregistered users, or to prevent search engines from linking to pages that are online only briefly. But in the case of whitehouse.gov, one can only conclude that the purpose of such exclusions is to keep the public in the dark (or to push us back to the Dark Ages).”
PROTESTING THE MEDIA
Connie Julian passes this on and says this new NBC show will be a target of protests:
“Protest Revelations: Propaganda for the Christian American Taliban
“On April 13, NBC will begin pumping their premium new miniseries, Revelations, into millions of households. This marks a major leap into mainstream entertainment by the ‘ministers of Christian fascist propaganda.’
“This fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping, mystery/thriller series is based on an extremely dangerous interpretation of the last book of the Bible; its return of an angry God who judges and destroys all non-believers through plagues, war, pestilence and famine.
“No less than the propaganda that associated Jewish people with rats in Nazi Germany, these films do great harm. The slick packaging and flashy ads are aimed at ’softening up’ society to accept things they never would have before. They foster a hurtful morality that excuses any horrors done to ‘non-believers’ and fosters an airtight world-view that hardens itself to reason, facts, or rationality. In a time of unjust war, deep divisions in the world, of economic insecurities and great moral questions, this is propaganda to create and fuel a Christian American Taliban.”
ON COVERAGE OF PALESTINE:
Mazin Qumsiyeh writes CNN:
“I was very dissappointed and rather angered by your story on the murder of 3 Palestinian teenagers by Israeli forces in occupied Gaza. Why can’t CNN simply report the facts? Your story was a classic examp,e of shoddy journalism where you swallowed the Army version of events and did not even present what the Palestinians said about the death of their own Children. When Reuters, AFP and essentially all European media report in an objective manner and giving all sides of the story (plus the obvious facts), there is simply no excuse for CNN. Please correct your coverage on this and future stories.”
Daniel DeLeo writes from Denver:
“I was surfing aljazeera.net and found an interesting article about Palestinian rappers who speak out about the occupation: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/250D841C-87D6-4554-9A71-83D44ABBD539.htm
“The article mentions that film-maker Jackie Salum is making a documentary about Palestinian hip-hop called slingshot hip-hop’ (http://www.slingshothiphop.com). There’s a fascinating trailer at the site which shows the Palestinians standing next to the apartheid wall (I had read that the wall is 30 feet high, but seeing a person standing next to it is an amazing and awful sight). Also in the trailer, one of the Palestinian rappers gets harassed by Israeli police just for speaking arabic… and the cop admits it on film! I highly recommend that you and your readers check out this trailer. Its only 5 minutes, but its enough to make you sick to your stomach every time you pay taxes, knowing that congress sends $4 billion of our money to Israel every year.
“So much injustice, so little time. Keep up the fight Danny.”
COVER THE OIL CRISIS, DO IT NOW!
Eugene Duran wants more of a MediaChannel focus on the shortages of oil:
“I find a paradox that mediachannel which claims to be on the cutting edge of news, has missed the BIGGEST story of our lifetime. Unless the Yellowstone Volcano blows! Danny, how long have they known? How would the gov’t respond to knowledge that World Oil production levels would drop soon? What is most interesting about Hubbert Curve is that although the Lines of production and demand are essentially at the same point. This is the point in time that the lines want to keep even, though the CANNOT. Demand can only meet production in an ebbing market. High oil prices are just the start. When we know we are in or past peak, the markets will be the first to demonstrate this. I am less concerned about high prices as I am rationing which IS inevitable within a few yeas of Peak. But this will be nothing compared to the rationing of food which must follow soon thereafter.
“I am no gloom and doom person. I live in the real would, not the fantasy American dream sold to us. Danny, the piper is coming to collect on a bill whose payment will come at quite a cost. I will not give up on Mediachannel but I will monitor several economic criteria in order to know how close we are. Strangely, the dates seem to be getting closer as the experts amend their data. Mediachannel does great with media issues. This is Essential for determining when the PR machines are fooling us but so what. But if you could dissect that same information and predict future behavior based on your observations, then you would capture my attention more. Until then Mediachannell shall remain in the domain of interesting but not crucial information. Your future is in your hands. Temporarily! Never have I seen so make factors come together than now and tomorrow.”
Associate editor Evan Derkacz writes from Alternet:
“I’m sure you’ve heard, but another (iraqi) journalist was shot by the US. Aren’t they wearing brightly colored, clearly marked vests? Have there been any cases of Iraqi insurgents wearing these vests to deceive the US? If not, then how did they miss the vest? Why don’t they ever mistake cameras that white cameramen are holding for guns?”
Palmer Frith is back with a response to his response on the need for a more civil discourse:
“I agree completely that things can be accomplished if people calmly discuss matters rather than yelling and name-calling; but calm discussion means a well-thought-out debate about particulars, not a knockdown, drag out fight about generalities. For example, many of our friends on the right use the Ann Coulter method of arguing by claiming their opponent is a liberal without saying what a liberal is. I’ve even had some right-wing acquaintances say, ‘I don’t know what a liberal is, but I know one when I see it.’ It might surprise some conservatives to find out that there are other people who pray, think abortion is a bad thing, and own guns: they just think their views on such matters are their own business and no one else’s, especially the government’s.”
Dan Cooper writes:
“I am trying to get something monumental off the ground, and am in need of journalists to join the project. Not being a journalist, just being a pissed-off American, I thought maybe you might have made connections with people that would at least be interested in hearing me out. The idea is to build a privately owned tv news network from multiple private sources of money. There are at least three billionaires that are on record as saying our media is not doing its job: Soros, Buffett, and Turner. And I suspect there are others that would donate to a private network.
“A brief outline of the concept is here: http://www.apnnews.com . The idea is to assemble a team of impeccably-credentialed tv journalists, along with business folks, to assemble a business plan and sell it to the above-mentioned types of people, who would then make money back in the form of dividends (but none would have so much power that they could unilaterally corrupt the news). This would take some seed money.”
EVENT:
“Rebuilding Baghdad: The Future of Civil Society?
A discussion with Benjamin Barber and Fergus Muir;
moderated by Marc Pachter
Wolfson Center for National Affairs at The New School
The New School Box Office, 66 West 12th Street
Wed., April 13, 6:00 p.m. $8.
http://www.nsu.newschool.edu/02_special.htm
CONGRATULATIONS TO LINK TV
Kim Spencer writes:
“We have just learned that Link TV has won a Peabody Award for our daily newscast ‘Mosaic’. As the first satellite-only channel to win the Peabody, both DIRECTV and DISH have taken notice… and this should help in our campaign to get on cable nationwide.
“Thanks to all of you for your support, and especially to Jeff Chester, the folks from MAP and the other media reform activists who fought so hard for the ‘set-aside’ slots on satellite that made Link TV possible!”
YOUR TURN TO HELP
Another week is here. I hope you will stay with us and help MediaChannel grow by supporting our work and telling your friends to “tune in.” Latest media coverage of our work comes from two poles of American culture: Harvard and Hustler. Harvard’s Nieman Reports quarterly of journalism praises WMD at the centerpiece in “Iraq War Documentaries Fill A Press Vacuum.” It’s a very thoughtful account by filmmaker Laurie Conway. And then, to my surprise, I found my name on the cover of the new edition of a magazine I usually don’t read. It’s Larry Flynt’s Hustler that carries a very substantitive four page interview on “How The News Lies to You.” (Sorry, gasp, no centerfold for moi.)
Write: dissector@mediachannel.org
