District makes deal with hedge fund group to sell KCSM-TV's public airwaves to wireless companies

Blackstone Group to pay District $900K per year for 3-4 years and will then receive 38% of proceeds from sale of station's "spectrum holdings"

by Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance

Time is running out for KCSM-TV. The 5th largest public television station in California, whose license has been owned by the College of San Mateo since 1964, has been placed in the safe-keeping of Locuspoint Networks, a commercial entity founded by former wireless executives. Locuspoint's activities in "spectrum speculation" are described by Ben Mook in an article in the February 26, 2013 issue of Current. Locuspoint, which is a 99%-owned subsidiary of one the nation's largest hedge firms, the Blackstone Group, is described as one of three for-profit firms gambling on the upcoming TV auction to hit the jackpot buying and disposing of television stations around the country, including noncommercial ones like that belonging to the College of San Mateo.

So what does that mean for us here in the Bay Area? Local media watchdog group Media Alliance has observed the transactions surrounding KCSM-TV's demise for more than two years and has filed several public records act requests to get more details on the actions of the SMCCD board. The requests have not always been responded to promptly (one filed in April of 2012 took more than six months to get any response at all), but the most recent one has provided supporting documentation for the Locuspoint deal. If you'd like to look at the documents, they have been posted on the Media Alliance website and can be downloaded.

Disturbing implications

Given the massive amount of lawyers involved, one can assume the legal dots have been connected at a significant cost, but the gist of the agreement has some disturbing implications. Here's a quick version of what we're looking at:

Locuspoint will subsidize the operations of KCSM-TV at the cost of $900,000 per year for the next 3-4 years. The District will operate the station at substantially reduced costs for this period, which indicates a program schedule consisting of a feed from one national program supplier, aired without closed captioning for the hearing-impaired or elderly, to cut station costs. Should the TV auction go forward during this period, on the receipt of a bid at or above the unknown number described as the "minimum acceptable bid" (which is blacked out), the station's spectrum holdings will be surrendered to for-profit wireless companies and broadcasting will cease. The Blackstone Group via their "tactical opportunities division" will receive 38% of the proceeds in a massive shift of millions of dollars in public assets to the private capital firm.

Should the national spectrum auction not proceed within the designated time, then the speculator may exercise an option to sell off KCSM-TV's license to any FCC-qualified bidder of their choice, with no right of refusal from the District. In practical terms, an FCC-qualified bidder can be any California not-for-profit corporation, including national chain Christian broadcasters like Daystar (a bidder in the earlier RFP). The District, in order to meet financial obligations to a hedge firm, has signed away the ability to exercise any discretion over the invasion into Bay Area broadcasting of entities who may not be desired or appreciated by the viewing community. The members of KCSM-TV, past and present, the college community, and the viewers will have no say. It's up to the Blackstone Group.

Loss of airwaves = loss of public expression

This loss of control over college property poses some questions about the District's interpretation of the preamble to their mission statement: "The District actively participates in the economic, social, and cultural development of San Mateo County. In a richly diverse environment and with increasing awareness of its role in the global community, the District is dedicated to maintaining a climate of academic freedom in which a wide variety of viewpoints is cultivated and shared".

The financial pressures on higher education, and the California community college system in particular, are intense and should not be minimized. But by turning down an offer for $6 million dollars received last year, in search of greater short-term riches, the District's Board of Trustee's have brought to the campus community the kind of irresponsible speculation that has defunded public education and a host of services and damaged our economy – all to hand over a piece of the campus for profiteering.

It's a real question whether the campus community, the viewing community and the residents of the Bay Area would have agreed to this if the District had ever asked them.

A Washington State appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling and ruled in favor of Washington State University communications professor David Demers in his faculty free speech case against WSU.

Demers is a professor at the Murrow School of Communications and sued for First Amendment protection after submitting plans to improve the school's programs.

He writes about his experiences in an e-book. The Lonely Activist, available here for complimentary download.

Often disparaged as "Obamaphones", the Lifeline program (which was actually started during the Reagan administration) provides subsidized communication services to low-income people, enabling critical safety, health and job search services.

This DC panel (heavily populated by Californians, including Sacramento congresswoman Doris Matsui and CA Public Utility Commissioner Catherine Sandoval), deconstructs the myths about Lifeline and defines why we all need to care about affordable communications for all.

Here in California, the Public Utilies Commission is overseeing Lifeline modernization and recently fought off an attempt from legislators in Sacramento to gut the Lifeline update.

An article by Danielle Paradis in PolicyMic:

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Online harassment is a prolific, largely a gendered problem. A University of New Hampshire study found that 72% of online harassment victims are women. As the prolific, self-described "troublemaker" Laurie Penny wrote in the Independent a few years back, "a woman's opinion is the mini-skirt of the Internet." Cyberharassment isn't limited to women who critique gender roles, either. Audrey Watters, an ed-tech writer disabled comments on her blog in an effort to stem similar issues.

Unfortunately, when the harassment is addressed at all, it is usually through inneffective means such as insisting people use their real names in the comments. Ultimately we need to look beyond the usual surface strategies but first we have to understand the problem.

Here are six of the primary ways online harassment silence women.

1. The cyber mob

Anita Sarkeesian launched a Kickstarter campaign to examine how women are portrayed in video games. No stranger to backlash, she has come to expect gendered insults and yawn-worthy jokes about kitchens and sandwiches. After the campaign, however, she found herself targeted by thousands of commenters threatening violence, rape, and even murder. Her Wikipedia entry was vandalized by people with dozens of different IP addresses. Attempts were made to hack into her email and other online accounts. DDoS (distributed denial of service attacks) were launched to knock her website offline for days at at a time. She was harassed by pornographic renderings depictingher being raped by video game characters. A particularly dedicated harasser created a video game where people were invited to "beat the bitch," which caused a virtual Sarkeesian to become bloody and bruised.

The cyber mob mentality plays into all the ways in which harassment of women takes place in online spaces. This harassment does not happen in a vacuum and it is not new, but new technology enables faster pile-ons and ways to coordinate attacks.

Sarkeesian speaks about her harassment in a video, along with the ways she combated the abuse. One particularly disturbing revelation: mimicking a key way women are silenced in real life, she had to document everything because she was so often met with disbelief.

2. Anti-harassment tools used for harassment

Sarkeesian's YouTube videos were false-flagged, meaning her videos were labelled as violating the YouTube's terms of service agreement. Sarkeesian says people reported her accounts for spam and even terrorism; in a sad twist that shows how ill-equipped we are to deal with cyberharassment, anti-harassment tools themselves were used to harass her. Sarkeesian's crime? Starting a project to critique video games.

When Adria Richards complained about a joke about "dongles" at a conference and Tweeted a picture of the two men she too was subjected to harassment and rape and death threats. Her website was under DDoS attack and she was fired for causing a stir. The two men making the jokes were also fired which further antagonised the situation. Whether or not you agree with her actions of outing people rather than attempting a conversation the amount of vitriol she experienced was disproportionate to the offense.

3. Take-down Culture is a Game

Un-moderated and anonymous forums like some areas of Reddit or 4Chan act as a gathering place to plan attacks and post triumphs when a group of people with similar beliefs decide to target someone. The connectivity that works so well in creating viral content also aids a pile-on in the case of disagreements. In her video about online harassment Sarkeesian spoke about the ways in which online harassment was treated like a game. People would gather in forums with screenshots as proof of the harassment and as people sought to outdo one another the ferocity of the attack escalated.

4. The Online Tools Used to Connect People Also Marginalize People

There are many dynamic web 2.0 features that allow for the compilation of data in interesting ways. Ask.fm, for example, allows a platform for anonymous questions and is great for a "get to know you" low-stakes situation. It has also facilitated online bullying that led to suicide, and is frequently used to target outspoken trans women through Twitter. One trans woman I spoke to, who wished to remain anonymous, is subjected to abuse all day without a way to block it. The harasser copy-pastes a degrading message including the transwomen's Twitter handle so the message is sent to her.

Ana Mardoll writes on her blog about a harassment issue with Storify that was also recently covered by The Daily Dot (author note: yours truly is quoted). Writes Mardoll, "[The Storify user] ElevatorGate has been instead using the Storify tool to obsessively compile the tweets of women he is stalking." He now has over 7300 stories compiled that he claims is journalism. Unless users opt out, they receive notifications that your tweets have been storified: a little reminder to keep looking over your shoulder because people are watching you.

Elevatorgate on the other hand does not feel as though he has been harassing anyone. He minimizes the distress expressed by those who are having their material collected by him by reminding people that their tweets are publicly available, and that he is not misogynistic because he also collects tweets from men. And while the Tweets certainly are public, Storify can be used to collect pieces of a conversation out of context and encourage a cyber mob-style pile-on.

These two methods of harassment have no way of blocking a person that you do not wish to engage with and no mechanisms in place for dealing with the harassment. Free speech is often cited as a defense that excuses the actions of the people upset by this.

5. The Problems Are Erased

When in the midst of an internet takedown a lot of the advice that you are given is the same as it would be in grade school. Stay away. Pay no attention.

In the UK, Laurie Penny mentions in her book on cybersexism that as cyberharassment is being written about in the media, women are being warned against engaging online. In a video about online harassment she says there's little difference "between that and people saying … well if you don't want to get raped maybe you shouldn't go out at night on your own." The logic is still the same. Women are being told to avoid another public space.

6. Chilling Effect

These ruthless attacks and harassment go beyond personal disagreements. The language used in these attacks are often deliberately chosen from the pool of women-focused, racial, or gender-identity based slurs. This affects not only the person targeted but also the bystanders, creating a chilling effect for women thinking of participating in public life. In an article on Mother Jones, Jaclyn Friedman, the executive director for Women, Action and the Media, says "The idea that a social-media network should be entirely neutral is a myth, [n]eutral platforms are only neutral for straight white dudes. These companies need to make a decision: Do I want to be making a money off of a platform where abusers and harassers feel more comfortable than the abused and harassed?"

The irony is that while those flinging these insults or participating in harassment cry free speech as a justification, they limit others in their ability to speak freely.

Rushbridger's blog can be found in its entirety here.

He writes "The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like "when".

We are not there yet, but it may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources. Most reporting – indeed, most human life in 2013 – leaves too much of a digital fingerprint. Those colleagues who denigrate Snowden or say reporters should trust the state to know best (many of them in the UK, oddly, on the right) may one day have a cruel awakening. One day it will be their reporting, their cause, under attack"

Ecuador's new media laws pose some creative thoughts about what democratic communications looks like.

Despite the virulent attacks launched by some US-based media companies, a closer inspection of the laws reveals serious thought and attention about how a people-based media system might work and attempts to address many flaws in the markets-based model.

Sally Burch provides this analysis in Truthout.org:

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On June 25, 2013, Ecuador's new Organic Communications Law came into force, after more than four years of debates and delays. Attacked by the mainstream press, both nationally and across the hemisphere, as a "gag" on freedom of expression, this new law in fact reflects in essence the proposals developed over more than two decades by movements supporting the democratization of communications, guarantees for diversity and plurality, and the need to regulate the media in the public interest.

As this small Latin American country has come onto the global radar due to whistle-blower Edward Snowden's application for political asylum, and is now under attack from the media cartels because of a supposed "double standard" regarding freedom of expression, it is worthwhile to clarify the scope and origins of this new law.

Following in the footsteps traced by Argentina's Audiovisual Media Law, the Ecuadorian law, mandated by the 2008 Constitution that recognizes communication as a human right, goes further in that it covers communication in its multiple dimensions.

As expressed on the day of the parliamentary vote (June 14) by Mauro Andino, main proponent of the new law and National Assembly Member from the (governing) PAIS Movement, the spirit of this law both recognizes "the enormous value and the importance of freedom of expression formulated in international instruments of human rights," while it also adds to this "a series of opportunities and services in order for that freedom to really exist for everyone, so that it ceases to be a privilege enjoyed only by those better situated in our society."

Communications, a Public Service

One of the central elements of the new law is the definition of social communication as a public service (i.e., similar to health or education) that must be provided with responsibility and quality of content, irrespective of whether the media outlet is public or private. Although this might appear obvious, given that information is a crucial aspect of democracy, right-wing opposition parliamentarians have nonetheless declared this clause as one of the first they hope to challenge in the Constitutional Court.

The law prohibits prior censorship in the press while at the same time emphasizing ultimate media liability for the content they publish (in compliance with international norms). In the interest of the universal principles of plurality and diversity, it establishes the redistribution of radio frequencies, with 33% for private media, 33% for public media and 34% for community media (to be applied gradually; at present 85% of such media are in private hands), and the elimination of monopolies in audiovisual media (with no more than one main radio station frequency concession in AM, one in FM and one in television to any one natural person or legal entity).

Other articles of the law encourage national cultural production, such as the obligation for 60% of daily broadcasting (in time slots apt for the broader public) to consist of nationally produced content, 10% of which must be from independent producers, while musical programs must include a minimum quota of 50% music produced, composed or performed in Ecuador. In countries that apply similar measures, such as Colombia, they have provided an enormous stimulus for cultural industries and artists.

Most of these proposals were initially put forward not by the government of Rafael Correa or the PAIS movement but by communications organizations and networks and social movements that for years have been fighting for the democratization of communications and recognition of the right to communicate as a universal human right. (1) The fact that the governing bodies finally came to recognize the legitimacy of these demands represents a major achievement for these movements.

Protecting Privacy and Media Workers' Rights

The Washington Post in its criticism of "double standards" in Ecuador points out that "Mr. Snowden should be particularly interested in Section 30 of the law, which bans the 'free circulation, especially by means of the communications media' of information 'protected under a reserve clause established by law'" - establishing fines as sanctions. While such clauses are standard legislation, the Post fails to mention that the clause 31 guarantees the protection of personal communications and their inviolability and secrecy, and the prohibition to record or register them, without the correspondents' consent or a court order. This is precisely the human right that the US has systematically violated.

The law defends the rights of press workers and their employment security; moreover, it stipulates that the hiring of workers in media of national scope should conform to "criteria of equity and equality between men and women, intercultural representativeness, equality of opportunity for disabled persons and intergenerational participation."

One innovation of the law is the obligation for private advertisers to allocate at least 10% of their annual advertising budget to local or regional media outlets, as a guarantee for media with a smaller broadcast range or lower print run, and those in rural areas, to share in advertising income.

Another is the prohibition of "media lynching," understood as "the dissemination of information that is expressly and recurrently designed to destroy the reputation of a natural person or legal entity or to impinge on their public credibility."

An aspect that is only marginally mentioned in the new legislation is that of digital frequencies - which have a great democratizing potential - although it does contemplate the need for an "equitable distribution of frequencies and signals made available through the digitalization of radio and television systems." However, the notion that this is largely a "technical" issue prevails, and therefore it has been left for the Telecommunications Law - in preparation - to deal with in detail.

Among the most polemical issues is the institutional framework. The new legal body creates a Council of Regulation and Development of Information and Communication, as a regulatory body; a Superintendence of Information and Communication, with powers of sanction; and a citizen Consultative Council, whose role is not yet clear and whose decisions are not binding.

Opposition groups predict the executive branch will wield "excessive power" within this structure, although, in fact, it is no more concentrated and has, in some aspects, fewer powers than under the previous law, adopted under the 1970s dictatorship (which, for example, empowered the government to close down a media outlet).

The fact is that under previous governments the mainstream media were used to creating their own rules and were rarely brought to answer for their practices or abuses. With a government that has resolved to bring order into this sector, new conflicts are likely to arise with the application of the law; and, predictably, these will be decried throughout the hemisphere as attacks on freedom of expression. When these outcries are heard, it would be worthwhile to seek out both sides of the story, which is not precisely what is usually to be found in the mainstream media when their interests are at stake.

Update 9/9/2013 - Here is a brief blog entry on the Stop Watching Us coalition meeting with Nancy Pelosi's SF District office on August 26th.

Stop Watching Us also met with Representative Mike Thompson in the North Bay. Read an account of that visit by Anna Givens in the North Bay Bohemian newspaper.

**

Talking About Spying with Nancy Pelosi's Office

When Edward Snowden's revelations about the scope and extent of NSA surveillance activities started breaking on the pages of the U.K. Guardian, it was a wake-up call for Internet freedom activists that many of our worst suspicions had come true.

As the flow of stories continued, both in the pages of Guardian and now in many other media outlets including the Washington Post, Der Speigel, the NY Times and Pro Publica, the American public grew more and more convinced of government over-reach and an overly loose interpretation of the Bill of Rights. These perceptions crossed partisan dividing lines and reached 75% of the population. Half a million people signed a petition at http://www.stopwatching.us demanding an end to the programs.

When Justin Amash, a libertarian-leaning Republican Congressman teamed up with Democrat John Conyers to amend an appropriations bill to remove funding for telephone metadata collection, it seemed like a moment when the will of the people was manifesting in DC across party lines. But when the votes were counted, Amash-Conyers came up a dozen votes short in the House. What shocked many was prominent Democrats, from the party usually identified with concerns about civil liberties, were essentially responsible for the defeat of the amendment. The nay-sayers included Democratic stalwarts like DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former whip Steny Hoyer, Texas Rep Sheila Jackson-Lee and, from one of the most left congressional districts in the country, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

What happened? Putting cynicism aside, Bay-Area-based media watchdog group Media Alliance, (a member of the national Stop Watching Us coalition), decided to find out. The best way to answer a question is to ask. So we asked for a meeting with Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco District Office on NSA surveillance. After a few rounds of messages, I received a call on August 15th. I was told the meeting was not going to happen in August. Short-staffed. I asked if the meeting could be scheduled in September. Short-staffed. I asked if any date was available for a meeting at any point in the future. I was told no date could be set, but I would be emailed Representative Pelosi's position paper on blanket surveillance.

Short-staffing can be a legitimate issue, (although as a tiny nonprofit organization, I would venture to say we deal with levels of short-staffing unknown to congressional offices). But on an issue of such popular interest and backed by a petition signed by over half a million people, the refusal was startling. It's an awkward analogy, but for a moment there I felt the quandary of the White House press corps: do I kick up a fuss and risk being blackballed forever? Media Alliance sent an email blast to 10,000 people the next day saying we had been refused the meeting. The meeting then got scheduled within a week.

By meeting day, a group was assembled that represented the breadth of the Stop Watching Us coalition: ACLU, EFF, Bill of Rights Defense Center, Hackers and Founders, and Restore the Fourth. We were meeting with Dan Bernal, Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff.

Did we get an answer to the question? Not really. And It wasn't because we didn't ask. Representative Pelosi was on the record voting not to reauthorize the Patriot Act in 2011, but seemed to see no direct contradiction between that vote and the Amash-Conyers vote.

The quickest way to describe the 45 minute meeting is as a tug of war between two ideas:

a) blanket surveillance is fundamentally unconstitutional and needs to stop

and

b) NSA surveillance programs need to be tweaked to rein in some level of over-reach.

The second position present in the room revolved around the discussion of vehicles (as in legislative vehicles). The vehicle focus was strangely lacking in urgency, considering that the issue has been in the headlines non-stop for months. It was as if we were casually sitting at a road dstop ebating the proper choice of vehicle to continue a leisurely journey to our destination.

I think most of us were saying “stop, we want to get off”.

A few things should be added. I appreciate the opportunity for dialogue and am glad to live in a country where I can struggle to make an appointment with legislative leaders – and succeed.

And I'd rather have a conversation where there is disagreement than no conversation at all.

But I am left with the feeling of a massive perceptual gap between the constitutional liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and a country where that is just a piece of quaint history no one takes seriously any more.

**

Update 8/21 - Nancy Pelosi's District Office has agreed to the requested meeting on Monday August 26th. MA thanks her and her staff for making this time available to discuss this important issue.

On Thursday August 15th, Nancy Pelosi's office informed the Media Alliance executive director that it wasn't possible to schedule a meeting to discuss blanket surveillance and the threats posed to individual privacy rights.

It is worth noting how bizarre this is. In my six years as MA's executive director, I have scheduled and attended lobbying meetings with virtually all of the Bay Area's congressional delegation, including Ms. Pelosi's office numerous times. Such requests are routine, and while sometimes they take a while to arrange, pro forma.

This is the first time I have ever been, simply, refused a meeting.

The meeting was requested on behalf of the stopwatching.us coalition, a grouping of major civil liberties organizations and tech companies, and includes thousands of people living in, and employed in, Ms. Pelosi's district. Stopwatching.us petition drive resulted in (at last count) 567,000 signatures. https://optin.stopwatching.us/

In my mind, this brings up serious issues of accountability and representation if it is no longer possible to express, in person, concerns regarding Ms. Pelosi's votes and activities in Washington DC as a Bay Area congressional representative.

If you live in Ms. Pelosi's district, please let her know this conduct is unacceptable and a shutdown is no way to address the concerns of Bay Area residents over her pro-NSA advocacy.

What's the cost of the so-called "free" services we use online every day? What do you gain and what do you give up when you accept the Terms and Conditions of your favorite app? And why should you care?

In this online discussion: documentary filmmakers, media activists and tech workers talk about what we give up and why it matters.

Brought to you by Active Voice and NAMAC.

A discussion on Democracy Now of channel guides in TV cable systems and how they can make alternative TV programs really, really hard to find. And what media activists are trying to do about it.

This short video from the Open Technology Institute features community broadband projects: Brooklyn, Detroit, and Dharmasala.

The recently-deceased maverick reporter was a questioner of presidents for generations.

Here she is in 2006, in conversation with Belva Davis, at Media Alliance's 30th anniversary birthday party at the Herbst Theater Green Room in San Francisco.

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Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, the two 16-year-old Chinese school girls who died in the Asiana Airlines crash this weekend, aren't around to experience the kind of knee-jerky modern racism toward Asians the tragedy inspired in both mainstream and social media.

They've been spared.

But 14-year-old Milena Clarke in Kentucky certainly has had an earful of the good old-fashioned kind face to face the last two years.

"Gook." "Nigger lover." "Chubby chink."

Straight from the Paula Deen lexicon, those were just some of the point-blank epithets Milena says her own basketball teammates at Russell Middle School in Russell, Kentucky spewed at her incessantly since the 6th grade.

M_Clarke.JPG
The toxic mix of bullying and racism isn't kid stuff. Milena, adopted as an infant from Kazakhstan, is nothing like the fictional Kazakh movie character, the jokey "Borat." Milena's features are more Asian, typical of the people from the country tucked between China and Russia in Central Asia. Indeed, Kazakhstan was the last of the Russian republics to declare independence in 1991. When Kentucky lawyer Terry Clarke and his family adopted Milena, he promised to help her never forget her ethnic roots.

He never figured her Asian-ness would bring out the intimidating racist taunts from her white teammates at Russell Middle School. Apparently ignorant of Jeremy Lin and Yao Ming, they'd harangue her about how "Asians can't play basketball."

"I'd say [to teammates] why are you saying that, and they'd just laugh and start talking about me more, and I couldn't do much about it," Milena said.

It's a real example of racism that may seem out of place in a diverse world when Asian Americans are common in urban enclaves like San Francisco or New York City.

But in Kentucky, Asians are just over one percent of the population of more than 4 million. As Asian Americans increasingly find themselves scattered throughout the U.S., they can often find themselves, like Milena, isolated and subjected to a fresh version of racism from a new generation.

When I talked to Milena this weekend, she said after two years, the impact of the racist taunting began to affect how she felt about herself.

"I just felt awful for being Asian because of them, because they were telling me how bad [Asians] were. It just really got to me," said Milena. "Everything they said made me think if I wasn't Asian, if I were white, it would be a lot less likely for this to happen."

What would be less likely, I asked?

"The harassment," she said.

Milena said along with the verbal abuse came actual physical abuse. Teammates would shove, push, and trip her. And not like the Miami Heat did in Game 7 of the NBA finals. This wasn't a game. It was an everyday occurrence.

Wasn't there ever a moment when there would be a time out? A break?

"No, not really," said Milena, who said she'd often pray that the taunting would stop.

It got to a point in 7th grade where after a practice, Milena finally had to tell her father.

"I went to the car and just broke down," she said.

Her father, an environmental lawyer, was angered. But first he reached out to the coach. And then to the school district. When nothing changed, he went to both the state and federal education departments. Finally, he sought legal help from AALDEF.

AALDEF, which has had success fighting racial bullying at South Philadelphia High School, is taking on the case. It has filed official complaints with both the Justice Department and the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education.

I put in a call to the Russell Independent School District, but Superintendent Sean Horne was unavailable for comment.

What's surprising to me is how long it took before Milena's family decided it was time to fight back. Indeed, for a while, the Clarkes took solace by having Milena, who at 5'-8" is a prized 8th grade center or power forward, play for one of the best travelling AAU teams in the area.

That team had mostly black players, which made the mostly white players on her school team call her "nigger lover."

That hurt Milena. But throughout it all, she said the most hurtful thing was when her school teammates went to the core of her being--her ethnic identity as a Central Asian from Russia.

"They said you speak Russian but you look Asian, you don't even know where you're from," Milena said. "That really hurt. Like the worst thing they could even say."

It hurts me as a parent to see someone like Milena go through this. It hurts even more to know that she's such an innocent, she didn't even know what the term "gook" meant.

That is until she went on the internet and got her definition.

This weekend she would have found much more.


Asiana Airlines Crash and the Internet's 21st Century Racism
If you thought the internet was colorblind and free of racism (it's all 1's and 0's, this digital world, right?), all it took was an Asian airline crash to prove that it doesn't take much to trigger a lot of suppressed racism.

After the Asiana Airlines crash, I was astonished to see so many examples of anti-Asian racism in both mainstream and social media (primarily on Twitter).

It remains one of the most underreported things about the crash of Asiana Flight 214.

And what was truly astonishing was how it became suddenly debatable whether an Asian slur was a slur at all. Even amongst Asian Americans.

Is racism really debatable?

Shouldn't we know it when we see it, like Milena Clarke?

Online, this headline was one of the most egregious examples:

Sun-Times Headline.jpgGet it? Fright 214. Asians often confuse "L"s and "R"s. I first thought it was a hoax. Who would be this blatant? Or maybe someone was playing around on the internet. Didn't matter really, it was still a racist thought.

Then Monday morning, Jim Kirk, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, apologized.

"There was nothing intentional on our part to play off any stereotypes," Kirk said. "If anybody was offended by that, we are sorry."

Thanks for the cop-out apology..."if anybody was offended"?

And if you weren't, party on?

The Flight/Fright pun is no different from the "chink in the armor" racist double entendre we saw during the media's Linsanity frenzy last year.

One can plead innocence, as a pun does let you have it both ways, but there's no doubt that racism is present.

The bigger question: where's the sensitivity to diversity? To Asian Americans? A diverse staff of editors would have known better. A staff sensitive to Asians and Asian Americans would have caught that.

That's the digital mainstream. Chicago Sun-Times.com.

The Twitterverse is like the Wild West. But I still didn't expect to see the flat-out racist tweets on the same day as the crash.

Here are some examples posted by the folks at ChangeLab:

miriam.png
devin.pngDismiss the communications on Twitter at your own peril. It's a real reflection of the way racism exists today.

In fact, the digital world can at times provide just enough anonymity to embolden racists who would otherwise suppress their racism and keep it to themselves.

In that way, the internet is how some people can use the digital cloak as if slipping on an all new "white hood," where it's still "no eyeholes necessary."

As I said, I find it equally disturbing that some Asian Americans are debating whether these slights--by the Sun-Times or on Twitter--are a big deal at all.

Considering that most Twitter users are between the ages of 18-29, they may not be aware of how this all fits into the history of racism toward Asians and Asian Americans.

In that sense, a pun created by using an "L" over an "R" vs. a racist tweet may seem like nothing, especially in a world where nothing lasts and everyone's on to the next thing.

But it does all add up.

I noticed people on Twitter who were sensitive to what was happening were mostly not Asian Americans; they were African Americans like "This Week in Blackness" host Elon James White (@elonjames), who called out the racist tweeters and their lame Asian driver jokes.

That made it important for non-Asian Americans to be "first responders." And when the two deaths of the Chinese school girls became known, the jokey racism they alerted us to was exposed for what it was--obscene.

At that point, there should be no debate. You take a stand. You speak up.

Or as b-baller Milena Clarke might say, you post-up and go for it.

It's called justice.

It's definitely on the long side, but we wanted to archive the historic FCC hearing on interstate calls from prisons - 11 years after Martha Wright filed her petition seeking relief from unmanageable calling rates.

Watch here - all of it or as much as you'd like:

A video statement by filmmaker Oliver Stone on the surveillance state, sponsored by the ACLU.

"The question is whether we control the government or the government controls us"

Even when we win, we don't win. A DC law firm is claiming the 2010 Verizon consent decree, much celebrated as a sterling example of the FCC's dedication to consumer protection, collected barely a 5th of customer overcharges.

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In recent years the Commission has repeatedly characterized its mission as one of “consumer protection”. One prominent example: back in 2010, the Enforcement Bureau claimed to have “ma[de] things right and put customers back in the driver’s seat” with respect to “mystery fees” that Verizon Wireless had apparently been improperly imposing on its customers for years. Then-Chairman Genachowski said that the Bureau’s successful negotiation of a consent decree with Verizon demonstrated to American consumers that “the FCC has got your back”. Then-Commissioner (now Acting Chairwoman) Clyburn said that the “voluntary contribution” Verizon agreed to pay the government – $25 million, over and above the $50+ million in unlawful charges to be refunded – “sends a clear message as to how important this is to us”.

You’d think that the 2010 Verizon consent decree was a massive triumph of Good over Evil, with all innocent victims made whole and the wrong-doer brought totally to its knees.

Um, not exactly, according to the folks at Smithwick & Belendiuk (S&B), a D.C. communications law firm.

Art Belendiuk, one of S&B’s namesakes, has filed a Petition for Investigation with the FCC’s Inspector General that casts the Verizon consent decree in an entirely different light. According to the S&B Petition, the $50 million or so that Verizon agreed to refund was about $250 million short of the amount that Verizon had actually collected in wrongful charges. S&B also alleges that Verizon knew that it was overcharging its customers but, in its submissions to the Bureau, denied doing so. And S&B claims that the Bureau itself undertook no independent audit of Verizon’s claims, and instead simply took Verizon’s word that the $52 million would cover refunds to all overcharged customers.

If S&B is correct in its charges, somebody’s got some ’splainin’ to do.

S&B’s claims are based on a raft of documents S&B managed to wrangle out of the Commission through Freedom of Information Act requests – and some litigation in U.S. District Court when the FCC’s initial responses to those requests were less than satisfactory, in S&B’s eyes. Whether the Petition will get any traction remains to be seen. Invoking the office of the FCC’s Inspector General is somewhat unorthodox (although, under the circumstances, completely understandable), and it’s far from clear whether the IG will be eager to grab for this particularly hot potato.

But if nothing else, the Petition reminds us all of a couple of things.

First, despite any claims the FCC might make to “transparency”, there remain aspects of the agency’s regulatory activities which are anything but transparent. Indeed, the difficulties (described in the Petition) that S&B ran into in trying to get hold of the underlying documents supposedly considered by the Bureau in its investigation of Verizon scream “stonewall”. An inclination to withhold such materials from the public seems curiously inconsistent with the fanciful notion that the Commission is a “consumer protection” agency.

Second, it’s usually a good idea to take self-congratulatory governmental press releases with more than a grain of salt. Yes, the Commission doubtless felt good about shaking $75 million out of Verizon – but if the Bureau knew or should have known that Verizon’s real refund exposure may have been six or more times greater than what Verizon was claiming, who really got the better of whom here? If S&B is correct (and we emphasize that at this point we have no idea whether or not it is), what does that say about the thoroughness of the Bureau’s processes and/or the honesty and candor of Verizon?

Ellen Goodman writes about KCSM-TV for the Rutgers University Institute for Information Policy and Law

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This delightful video shows Capuchin monkeys reacting to unfairness and inequity when one gets compensated with cucumber bits for doing a task and another with the much better pay rate of a grape. We can all relate.

From a TED Talk by scientist Frans De Waals:

An important speech by the Guardian reporter and columnist on the Snowden leaks, the ongoing surveillance stories in the Guardian and what the past few weeks have revealed about journalism.

A 20-minute video identifying the use of damsel in distress imagery in video games. Great for schools or the young girl in your life.

A discussion of Prism and activism by Alfredo Lopex of May First/PeopleLink

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Recent coverage and public discussion of the government's Internet and telephone spying leaves a major question unanswered: How, given what we know, does this trashing of privacy affect activists, particularly women and people of color?

The question is important because privacy is at the heart of a free and democratic society and, like much of this stunning news, it has been framed in a frivolous way by our media and politicians. Given the dangers of the world -- their argument goes -- is your right to talk to your friends, shop, or read texts without surveillance more important than protecting your life?

That kind of personal privacy is important but it isn't the main issue. In the constitution, privacy goes hand in hand with the "right of petition" -- the right to demonstrate, organize and speak out against the government and its policies. You have the right to meet, plan and organize without having the government looking over your shoulder (or tracking your calls and stealing your email) because all power in the government's hands can and eventually will be abused without strong "checks and balances".

While the Obama Administration is working over-time to cloud the facts in disinformative smoke and partial information, we now know enough to say that privacy in this country has been completely suspended.

The revelations of whistle-blower Edward Snowden, still tumbling out every day, show that for several years the government has been capturing all our on-line and telephone communications. The National Security Agency has forced telephone giant Verizon to give up records of all phone calls -- people, places and times -- under a court order so secret the telephone giant can't even confirm it. It's probable that several other phone companies (land and cell) have gotten the same order.

It also operates a program called PRISM that's part of a long-running and much larger data collection program. PRISM uses a library of search terms to filter, read and analyze information being gathered from storage devices at nine major Internet companies (at least). It's not saying how much data it actually collects but this September it's opening a data center in Utah whose purpose is to store all the data on the Internet (and probably phone lines) in this country and most of the world. Where are they going to get it?

Part of the muddle in this story is the plethora "non-admission admissions". The companies say they only give up information that's subpeonaed (admitting that they receive tens of thousands of government requests each year) and the NSA insists it only listens to a few hundred phone calls linked to ongoing investigations. The President has assured us that no investigation "targets" U.S. citizens.

All of this is a diversion. In order to figure out if a "foreigner" is involved in something illegal, the NSA has to pull all communications with that person. Have you written something to or received something from someone in another country? Are you sure that person isn't being investigated or is a friend or associate of someone who is? What about videos, photos and even posts on message boards? All of that is being captured and stored and probably read because that's the only way the NSA can determine if it's relevant to an investigation.

Even if it's not read, it's held in storage probably permanently. Can you be sure that your currently legal organizing won't be deemed "illegal or dangerous" in the future? What about your support of movements in other countries?

To compound the damaging impact of this stunning intrusion, it comes at a time of massive entry of women and people of color into Internet use. By the tens of millions, people who have traditionally been marginalized from the use of on-line communications have now taken a premier place at the table of Social Networking. We're encouraged to use these services by their convenience, accessible design and the fact that they're free. In fact, most Social Justice organizations and activists rely so heavily on Facebook, Twitter and other social media that it's assumed that such technology will be included in our outreach and communications work. And many, if not most, of us use Gmail. Those are the very services PRISM targets and, intentionally or not, we are among the targets.

So what do we do? We still have choices. Here's a link for "PRISM-free" software and services you can choose to use. Consider making a switch. In general, be conscious of the surveillance situation and plan your communications and outreach accordingly. Finally, let's stop viewing the Internet as just a tool and start treating it as a right we have built. Let's make one of our main activities the ongoing fight to reconquer our right to privacy as the implement of change it can be.

Alfredo Lopez is Leadership Committee Co-Chair of May First/People Link, the progressive Internet organization. He's also technology writer for the online publication This Can't Be Happening.

A Center for Public Integrity look at how industry funding impacts the telecom policy positions presented in DC by a prominent minority media access organization: The MMTC (Minority Media Telecommunications Council)

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When the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission pitched a plan to allow more media mergers earlier this year, he received support from a curious source: the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, once an ardent critic of industry consolidation.

Julius Genachowski wanted backing for a proposed loosening of a rule that bars the same company from owning a newspaper and a radio or television broadcast station in a top media market.

MMTC and its executive director, David Honig, have historically opposed relaxing ownership restrictions, saying they protect minority interests. Yet last week, the group released a key study arguing the opposite position.

So why the change of heart?

Critics say MMTC’s position may have something to do with its extensive industry funding. This includes more than $440,000 in luncheon sponsorships since 2010 from broadcast giants who favor the rule change.

In an 18-page response to questions for this article, Honig says the support does not influence the group’s positions.

“The most valuable asset that a nonprofit organization has is its integrity, and to imply that donations and fees influence our positions on issues is to suggest that we lack integrity, something we do not take lightly,” he wrote.

MMTC, which acts as a pro bono law firm on FCC issues for civil rights groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was vital if Genachowski was to get his plan approved.

Two previous attempts to change the rule were slapped down by the courts, in part because of concern that greater media consolidation would reduce the number of minority media owners.

MMTC offered to commission the study in February, after voicing its support for Genachowski’s proposal.

Once a shoestring operation dependent almost solely on the volunteer efforts of Honig, MMTC has evolved in recent years into a potent organization that exercises much influence on the commission through its ability to shape the positions of large civil rights organizations on relatively obscure FCC issues.

The media ownership rules passed in the 1970s stemmed in part from the FCC’s failure to take action against TV stations in the South that blacked out coverage of the civil rights movement. They were also inspired by the perceived failures of large media outlets to report on grievances of inner cities that led to the race riots of the late 1960s.

It was believed that restrictions on ownership would lead to greater competition, more locally focused programming and more opportunities for minority ownership.

Consolidation has long been favored by many large broadcasters and newspaper companies, which seek savings by combining advertising and newsroom operations.

After years of defending the rules, Honig, wrote in a blog post in December that the cross-ownership ban should be relaxed, citing concern in minority communities about the decline of newspapers.

What he didn't disclose was the hundreds of thousands of dollars his group had received from CBS Corp., radio giant Clear Channel Communications Inc., Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and the National Association of Broadcasters, an industry lobby group. All four have previously gone to court in an effort to end the ban. News Corp., which Los Angeles Times and a rule-change would clear the way for such a deal.

Clear Channel and News Corp. did not respond to questions for this article. Spokesmen for the NAB and CBS say their organization’s donations weren’t intended to change MMTC’s positions on cross-ownership or other matters.

Honig said the Center’s calculation of sponsorship totals — which were taken from MMTC materials — were “inaccurate.” He said the group may bump up the level of sponsorship of donors “for good will purposes.”

He did not provide alternate figures.

MMTC took in just under $2 million in 2011. Of that, $1.7 million was derived from sponsorships, donations and fees from companies, lobbyists, lawyers and religious broadcasters with interests before the FCC, according to an IRS filing.

“It is important to look at David’s source of funding to determine who David really represents,” says Mark Lloyd, a former associate general counsel and chief diversity officer at the FCC from 2009 until last year. “I think that would tell you a great deal.”

The MMTC ownership study, released last week, concluded the impact of greater consolidation in media ownership on women and minority ownership can’t be a “material justification for tightening or retaining the rules.”

Critics argue that other studies have shown that more media concentration harms small broadcasters, and that most women- and minority-owned broadcasting companies control just a few stations each.

Net neutrality position raises eyebrows

MMTC has also received support from telecommunications and cable firms and its position on broadband regulation and other issues has dovetailed with theirs.

“He’s making arguments that are no different than those made by the big companies and yet they’re presented as those of the civil rights community,” says Craig Aaron, the executive director of Free Press, a group that opposes media consolidation. “Those are his views, but it’s curious how often they’re in line with the filings of Comcast and AT&T.”

Honig says MMTC aims to promote equal opportunity in broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband and that its positions are often in conflict with those of its donors. He pointed to a letter accompanying the ownership study which noted there was "an indication that an especially extensive" cross-media merger could hurt minority ownership in smaller markets."

MMTC’s position on “network neutrality” early in President Barack Obama’s first term angered consumer groups and many technology companies that wanted the government to force Internet service providers to treat all traffic equally.

Proponents of an open Web were concerned that without strong network neutrality rules, broadband providers would be free to offer preferential treatment to deep-pocketed media outlets.

Honig sided with the Internet service providers, arguing that new rules would hurt the ability of cable and telecommunications companies to expand broadband in poor, minority neighborhoods.

"We think that closing the digital divide should be the top priority and that net neutrality should be second," he told the Los Angeles Times.

From 2009 through 2011 MMTC received at least $725,000 in contributions and sponsorships from network neutrality foes including Verizon, Time Warner, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, according to MMTC tax filings and sponsorship lists.

MMTC’s relationship with Verizon demonstrates the group’s various methods of obtaining industry revenue. In 2009, at the height of the net neutrality debate, Verizon made a direct $40,000 contribution to MMTC. From 2010 to 2013, MMTC documents list Verizon as funding at least $160,000 in MMTC conference sponsorships.

Additionally, MMTC worked with Verizon on a $189 million sale of wireless spectrum licenses to minority-owned Grain Management this year — a deal announced in conjunction with a larger $1.9 billion license sale to AT&T. A spokesman for Verizon says money paid to MMTC wasn’t intended to influence its policies but to support its mission of promoting inclusion in the industry.

Some saw Honig playing a key role in organizing traditional civil rights groups like the National Urban League and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to sign on to anti-network neutrality filings with the FCC.

Honig is “the nerve center for much of the action we've seen on the part of the civil rights groups,” blogged James Rucker, then the executive director of ColorOfChange.org, a technology-oriented civil rights group that supported network neutrality.

“In my opinion, Honig is leading many of the respected civil rights groups he is advising off of the digital cliff,” he added.

Rucker isn’t alone in the view that Honig uses his credibility with civil rights organizations and expertise in communications law to influence them to take positions on complex issues that primarily benefit industry players.

Honig “undermines trust in his organization’s legacy” when he urges groups to join his advocacy campaign and they later find out the issues aren’t quite what they expected, says Cheryl Leanza, co-chairwoman of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights’ media and telecommunications task force.

“He does a disservice to his past work when other organizations take his advice and they don’t know the consequences or implications of that advice.”

Leanza says her views are her own, not those of the LCCR.

Civil rights activist

Honig began his civil rights activism in the 1960s as a high school student, when he became a youth leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Rochester, New York.

He earned a law degree from Georgetown in 1983, and after the FCC under President Ronald Reagan suspended key minority broadcast ownership rules, he co-founded MMTC on a shoestring budget.

He mixed MMTC’s advocacy with litigation on behalf of civil rights groups. In the 1990s he led a high profile but unsuccessful legal battle representing the N.A.A.C.P. in its effort to prevent Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the parent of Fox Broadcasting Co. and the owner of a New York City television station, from gaining a waiver from the cross-ownership rule to buy the New York Post—the same rule Honig now favors eliminating.

In 1991, on behalf of LULAC, the N.A.A.C.P. and other civil rights groups, his legal work helped spur an FCC investigation and long-running legal fight with the country’s largest Christian television network, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN).

Known for its broadcasts of televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and network founders Paul and Jan Crouch, Honig accused TBN of setting up a sham minority corporation to win additional FCC broadcast licenses.

Honig helped spur the FCC to restore equal employment rules to the cable and broadcast industry in 2002 and pass a 2007 rule preventing advertisers from instructing their agencies not to place spots on radio stations with large black and Hispanic audiences.

By the late 1990s, Honig had also found a way to successfully fund MMTC. In 1998, MMTC began collecting fees from broadcasters in return for helping them sell stations to minority buyers — earning $450,000 that year alone by helping Clear Channel sell a Boston station for $5 million, according to a report in the trade newspaper Broadcasting & Cable. The story noted that Honig was able to begin paying himself a $41,125 salary.

The report also said that rival brokers were complaining that one MMTC client, CBS Corp., did not typically use brokers and had retained Honig “only to curry favor with the diversity-minded FCC.”

In 2002, the group added an annual “Access to Capital” fundraising luncheon, which helped net it $22,806. Honig’s compensation had risen to $161,000, according to tax filings.

By 2006, the luncheon had become so successful at attracting industry interest it had been expanded to two days and was addressed by three of the FCC’s five sitting commissioners — MMTC raised $291,334.

Station donations

Additionally, the non-profit MMTC began accepting donated broadcast properties.

In 2008, Mega Communications, a Spanish radio network owned by New York art collector Adam Lindemann, donated a Tampa Bay area AM station to MMTC. Honig says the station was used to train women and minorities. MMTC sold the station for $1.15 million last year to Christian broadcaster Salem Communications.

In 2010, Trinity Broadcasting Network donated 147 low-power television stations to MMTC. That year MMTC awarded TBN, along with Clear Channel, its “Extraordinary Service Award,” an annual prize given for those “who have far exceeded the call of duty in the service of the civil rights cause,” according to MMTC’s website.

The FCC soon reclaimed the licenses of many of the TBN stations, but in 2011 MMTC sold 78 of the stations for $390,000 to a Tennessee company run by broadcast entrepreneur Henry Luken, whose holdings include The Nashville Network and the male-oriented Tuff TV.

TBN declined to comment on the donation. Honig says MMTC did not solicit the donation from TBN, and that Luken has pledged to enact a training program for women and minorities as part of the deal.

By the time of the sale of the former TBN stations, MMTC had grown substantially. In 2011, the last year for which tax forms are available, it reported almost $2.8 million in net assets.

Honig’s salary had also increased to $212,072. His addresses included a waterfront home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore assessed at $856,700, according to Maryland property records.

Today its website lists eight lawyers, two researchers and a communications director. Its brokerage team includes three others, two of whom are former Clear Channel staffers. MMTC ranked as the seventh-largest broadcast broker in the U.S. in 2011, and has worked on deals valued at $1.8 billion over the past 15 years. Honig, 63, says he plans to semi-retire next year.

Comcast and AT&T

Among the group’s most generous donors is cable giant Comcast, which, according to MMTC documents has spent at least $375,000 on fundraising luncheons and conferences in Washington hosted by MMTC between 2009 and this year.

In addition to taking Comcast's side on Net Neutrality, Honig publicly hailed its 2011 buyout of NBC Universal.

Honig publicly hailed Comcast’s 2011 buyout of NBC Universal saying the $16.7 billion merger was “a win for all Americans, especially minority and low-income consumers who have largely been left out of the digital equation.” The deal required Comcast to expand broadband to low-income Americans and create 10 new television channels in partnership with minorities.

NBC Universal contributed $150,000 to MMTC in 2010, and retained MMTC’s brokerage arm to help it sell a Los Angeles TV station as required under terms of the deal.

“We supported MMTC's work for years prior to the NBC Universal transaction,” said Sena Fitzmaurice, a spokeswoman for Comcast, in an email response to questions about the relationship. “We support a wide variety of organizations and they don't always support all of our policy positions just as we don't always support all of their policy positions.”

MMTC also supported a failed attempt by AT&T to buy T-Mobile in 2011 for $39 billion, the group’s first endorsement of a media and telecom merger in its 25-year history. The combination would benefit minority broadband consumers by allowing AT&T to expand service to more than 97 percent of consumers, Honig wrote in a brief to the FCC.

Groups such as the National Hispanic Media Center and the Center for Media Justice disagreed, arguing that T-Mobile was the low-cost carrier and that its elimination would not only harm consumers but disproportionately affect minority customers.

In 2010 and 2011, AT&T and T-Mobile provided $240,000 in sponsorships to MMTC fundraising events, according to MMTC documents. A number of other civil rights groups such as the NAACP and Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation also backed the proposed merger and also received AT&T funding.

At the time the chairman of MMTC’s board, former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera, worked at law firm Wiley Rein, which represented T-Mobile in the merger. Julia Johnson, then MMTC’s treasurer and its current board president, runs a public relations firm whose clients have included AT&T, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Ari Fitzgerald, a communications lawyer at Hogan Lovells and secretary of the board at MMTC, has done FCC work for T-Mobile both before and after the failed merger proposal.

AT&T relayed questions about the relationship to Honig, who defends MMTC’s stance in the merger, citing AT&T’s record of hiring minority staff and suppliers. Johnson, Fitzgerald and Rivera recused themselves from voting on MMTC’s position on the merger, he said.

“MMTC’s officers and directors are highly skilled, experienced individuals, and they all serve pro bono,” said Honig, adding: “No MMTC officer or director would tolerate attempts at ‘purse-string advocacy.’”

Growing Entity

Long-time public interest lawyer and MMTC board member Andrew Schwartzman says a turning point for the group came when it entered telecom advocacy. He says Honig is “well-motivated” but on some telecom issues “misguided rather than improperly influenced.”

Schwartzman’s own organization, the Media Access Project, closed its doors last year due to a lack of funds. He does not see MMTC’s positions as being “dictated by specific corporate contributions.”

“I don’t see these as a sudden transactional relationship but something longstanding,” he added, in reference to the donations.

Alex Nogales, the director of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, is less forgiving.

"We're disappointed in David," said Nogales. "He's gotten a bit too chummy with the industry and he's tried to drag us into those machinations and I don't appreciate it."

He says he resigned his spot as a member of MMTC’s board because of concerns about its growing corporate ties.

Whether the MMTC’s cross-media ownership study will lead to a relaxation of media ownership rules is a matter that will be decided under its next chairman.

Either way, the MMTC is looking to remain a key player at the FCC under the new regime.

President Obama’s pick for the spot, Tom Wheeler, a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist, was endorsed by the group just hours after news of his selection was leaked to the media.

A short documentary film on the years of protests against military-training academy that has seeded a half a century of militaristic imperialism in Central and South America.

A blog on the distance between mainstream media anti-bullying campaigns and the "hatertainment" broadcast all too regularly from Emily Long at The Lamp in NYC.

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In the years since the issue of bullying has garnered national attention and increasing concern, most big media companies have created campaigns designed to prevent bullying or to otherwise give people an opportunity to speak against it and raise awareness.

MTV has A Thin Line, ABC Family has Delete Digital Drama, NBC airs anti-bullying spots via its public service campaign The More You Know, Nickelodeon has anti-bullying activities on The Big Help, and Cartoon Network has a Stop Bullying Speak Up campaign.

With efforts like these, it would seem as though big media has truly taken a step forward in reaching young people to stop the bullying epidemic.

That is, until you turn on the TV. On ABC’s The Bachelor, women snipe at each other as they compete for one man’s heart. All of these insults are captured on the Smack Tracker, thus cataloging an episode-by-episode breakdown of who said what about whom. In spin-off specials like The Bachelor: Women Tell All, snarky tweets from fans of the show are broadcast live, courting a dangerous game of one-upmanship as to which members of the viewing public can be the cruelest. All of this comes courtesy of the same company that puts stars from its scripted shows front-and-center in PSAs saying that it’s time to delete digital drama.

Tune into any one of The Real Housewives series on Bravo, and you’ll see more fighting and backstabbing. Check out Teen Mom or Jersey Shore on MTV for more of the same; perhaps you’ll also catch spots for A Thin Line. Watch E! or Access Hollywood for celebrity gossip, and ESPN for occasional glorification of athletes behaving badly. In the case of some of these shows, the connection to big media’s Astroturf anti-bullying campaigns might be harder to find, but they’re all there. Bravo is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns E! and Access Hollywood. Both ABC and ESPN are owned by The Walt Disney Company, whose Friends for Change celebrity ambassadors want you to become an ‘accountabili-buddy’ and report bullying.

Big media profits from shows that promote hateful messages disguised as entertainment, also called ‘hatertainment.’ Their various attempts at ending bullying are moot when their own networks glorify, normalize, and reward the same type of behavior that most of us recognize as bullying and destructive. We cannot count big media as an ally when these companies are responsible for messages that can be so harmful for kids: in a 2011 study, the Girl Scout Research Institute found that 78 percent of girls who watch reality television believe that “gossiping is a normal part of a relationship between girls,” while only 54 percent of girls who do not watch reality TV agree.

In far too many documentaries and news stories, the blame for bullying has fallen squarely on the shoulders of parents, teachers, and school administrators, who are frequently accused of not taking enough preventative action. Big media companies need to also be held accountable for their role in fostering bullying behavior, and we must teach the basic media literacy concept of media as construction and an industry with a bottom line.

When watching reality television, ask your kids about what might have been left out, or how producers decide which portions of footage to use for a show. Talk to them about news, and why there is an entire industry devoted to reporting on celebrity gossip. Perhaps most importantly, ask them how they feel when they watch these shows. Moderating screen time is also a good step, as is being a positive role model—adults are not immune to hatertainment. Much like second-hand smoke has an indirect but powerful effect on our family’s health, hateful media also pollute homes in ways that may not be immediately recognizable. Yes, big media companies are powerful, but the real power lies in our own ability to filter their product.

Emily Long is Director of Communications and Development for The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project), a nonprofit organization bringing critical media fluency education to youth, parents and educators in New York City. For more on this subject, click here.


Additional Resources on Media Literacy

Center for Social Media at American University is an excellent place to learn more about public media, and especially the fair use of media.

Media Education Foundation is a nonprofit organization producing media and study guides to help people of all ages increase their media literacy skills.

Media Education Lab at Temple University is a great place to start learning more about media literacy.

ParentingTeensOnline is a great resource aimed specifically for parents of adolescents.

The Smart Television Alliance is a group of national nonprofit organizations committed to improving what children see on television. (Disclaimer: this site is funded by Tivo.)

Common Sense Media is a nonprofit that rates current movies and television shows based on content appropriate for a given age group.

The Media Literacy Clearinghouse is Frank W. Baker’s treasure trove of resources about K-12 media literacy and state education standards.

A look at the sad state of of Internet service in the Sandy hurricane zone ... six months later:

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I'm sitting in a high ceiling parlor in an aged brownstone at the E.9th Street Block Association meeting. People are telling me, somewhat muting their anger, that some have had no phone service since Sandy, October 28th 2012 ---- over 6 months, over half a year. Some had their service restored over the last month, only being out for about 5 months.

I’m in a roomful of people in the middle of Manhattan, New York City, and I can't believe my ears. I've been a telecom analyst for 31 years and thought I’d heard everything before - but this?

Mayor Bloomberg, with claims that New York City is a world center for technology announced his new campaign, “We Are Made in NY” in 2013, stating we’re “strengthening the city as a global hub for innovation.”

Being out of service is only one of the Manhattenites’ problems. Almost all of those without Verizon service have continued to be billed for services that THEY DO NOT RECEIVE.

But over the last few weeks we find that other places throughout the tri-state areas, such as Fire Island in New York or Mantoloking in New Jersey are simply being abandoned and Verizon telling customers that they're not fixing the copper and they are being offered wireless services.

What’s the problem – how could this be happening in America?

The problem started when Sandy took out Verizon’s network equipment and network wiring, including the copper wiring. Verizon decided that it wouldn’t replace its copper infrastructure since it’s being replaced with fiber optics as part of their FiOS deployment; fiber carries phone, broadband, Internet and cable television service.

So folks were told to go to FiOS, Verizon's fiber optic solution, except that some residences on the block aren’t even wired with FiOS yet so, for many, FiOS isn’t even an option. Others were offered a wireless substitute.

One woman said that she was a Verizon DSL and phone service customer and both were out since Sandy. (DSL uses the copper wires to offer broadband and Internet.) Verizon sent her a wireless box to use -- but the box didn't have Internet broadband connectivity. So it was not a substitute.

Moreover, as I explained, if she did decide to get the Verizon Wireless ‘Home Fusion' box, which is a wireless service to replace wired broadband, it would cost her extra since wireless broadband service has bandwidth caps.

DSL on copper lines costs about $40 a month and doesn't have the same caps. Thus, using Verizon’s Home Fusion wireless Internet service could cost hundreds of dollars extra a month.

Some of the group’s stories were of small businesses that lost income as they depended on their phone and fax lines for orders.

Forget the storm damage to their homes and lives; this was an ongoing telecom nightmare.

While some customer service representatives were nice and attempted to be helpful, others were not sympathetic and threatened disconnection, which means in Verizon internal customer jargon that the resident’s phone account would be permanently terminated and the customer would have to pay additional fees for reconnection.

Customers electing not to pay for no service – odd as this sounds -- ran the risk of losing long held phone numbers, and could even end up in collections, thus harming their credit rating, to boot. Verizon expects its customers to continue to keep their accounts open and pay for services, just for the privilege of keeping their phone number, avoiding reconnection fees and protecting credit ratings while still not receiving service.

Worse, after being on hold for hours, over the course of a few months; and spending days on the phone to fix problems, Verizon repeatedly misled almost all of them about when service would be restored.

As I pointed out during the meeting, the customer service staff is simply reading scripts and following procedures set by the company. Reps have little, if any control, over what would happen to service. But, what is clear is that the reps were not trained to solve these customers’ problems. Customer service reps claimed to have submitted an internal company ‘trouble ticket’ to fix the problem, which was then never acted on or resolved.

And as the meeting continued, I asked questions:

“Why didn't you just leave Verizon?” Because a number of them had been told by Verizon that service would fixed soon. One woman even had the dates on a piece of paper, which she handed out.

Why didn’t they go to the cable company? Some had cable in the area and it had service problems as well. Some didn’t know that the cable company even offered phone as a stand alone service. They certainly don’t advertise it. And some hated the cable company more than the phone company, though by this time it was clear they’d be hard pressed to pick which one was worse.

Moreover, like anything else – some people prefer Pepsi, some prefer Coke – but in this case, there isn’t a choice. There aren’t any other providers. Private companies have total, unregulated control over the wires. Now phone and cable companies have created a monopoly for Internet and even stand alone, local telephone service.

Competitors? One woman said she was going to go to Vonage but when I explained that it still required a broadband connection she was pissed. “Why didn’t they say that in their advertisement?”

Another problem is that wireless reception in the city can be problematic. A number of the people spoke of not being able to use mobile phones in their apartments or that it just didn’t sound as good. “I have to stand by my window and hold it just right.”

The Regulators and Politicians -- Shame on You.

Where's the state public utility commission in all of this? Where is the Mayor’s Office or the other politicians? Under state law customers are supposed to have their service repaired, even after a disaster. Being without service for almost 6 months is unconscionable.

In April 2012, the State Attorney General petitioned the New York State Board of Public Service to ”modify the Verizon Service Quality Improvement Plan” as the State had relaxed its quality of service requirements, an abdication of regulatory oversight which allowed the company to provide “below standard service to 92% of customers”.

As the AG wrote:

“Despite receiving this substantial deregulation of its service quality requirements, Verizon nevertheless failed to meet four repair service measurements in 2011, the first year of the plan. Moreover, by limiting the scope of Verizon’s performance measurements to the 8% of all New York customers defined as Core, the Commission allowed the company to provide below standard service to 92% of its customers with impunity.”

In January 2013, the State, after reviewing the AG’s complaint, issued a notice for comments claiming that “We find that Verizon’s service quality performance needs to be improved going forward, and to propose modifications to the existing regulatory regime”. Verizon’s response: “No modification of the Commission’s current regulatory framework is… necessary to ensure the continuing provision of high quality service by Verizon New York” and “requiring Verizon to implement those changes would be both unlawful and bad public policy.” And in February, 2013, Verizon has also filed for a waiver of any quality of service issues surrounding Sandy.

I need to stress -- this isn't some rural area or some mountain top. This is NEW YORK CITY.

One thing is clear – No one is tracking the problems experienced by un-connected customers. Each customer ends up having to deal individually with the phone companies, engaging in months long series of conversations without getting any resolution.

Meanwhile, the union guys we spoke to said that Verizon is ‘declining to fix the copper’ and that they’ve cut back staff so far that it’s hard for them to do the normal work.

Although, this is could be construed as typical, uncaring phone company behavior –I was surprised it was still a problem for such an unusual length of time. WNYC radio ran a story and developed a map showing areas of Manhattan where customers that were either still out of service or having problems post-Sandy. But this coverage was generated by only one radio station collecting data for Manhattan. In February, 2013, Huffington Post also ran something about small businesses also being out of service because of Sandy.

All of this also brings up an interesting question – Verizon has a cable franchise to have 100% of New York City upgraded to FiOS by July 2014. Did Verizon claim that these areas were already properly upgraded even though it’s clear that the deployment is spotty at best?

Or is this more sinister? Is Verizon, instead of dealing with emergency outages, waiting to give these people a FiOS option in New York – and not repairing these customers’s lines which are copper

Stay Tuned -- This article and the unserved resident’s letter will be sent to every official until service is restored.

A Foreboding Glimpse into Your Future Communications Service.

I’ve written about AT&T and Verizon’s plans to turn half of the country into digital dead zones, -- where there are no requirements to fix phone lines or upgrade them. We’re not talking sparsely populated rural areas. I’m predicting that people throughout the entire U.S of A will be impacted by rogue telecom companies.

In state after state, Verizon, AT&T and Centurylink, working with the American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC) are attempting to remove any oversight by the public utility commissions—their goal is to eliminate requirements for quality of service, or worse, remove any obligations to provide service to people who have no communications carriers at all. Twenty six states have passed ALEC-based bills, gutting customer protections (though it varies in degree, state by state)

On the federal level, AT&T petitioned the FCC, using the same ALEC-based principles, to close down whole areas of their 22 state territories.

Besides this legislative maneuvering to eliminate government guarantees that everyone is able to communicate, Verizon and AT&T have announced that they are going to stop maintaining copper wire plant, even though AT&T’s entire 22 state U-Verse is based on copper wires;

Verizon has stopped upgrading FiOS – so entire areas of the country will not be upgraded All this denial of landline service has a subplot, which is to push customers onto purchasing exorbitantly, expensive, usage priced wireless services. What this means is that American’s ability to speak and communicate in the 21st Century will depend exclusively on how much money people have.

Fire Island, in New York, which got hit heavily by the storm, has been told that Verizon is going to abandon their copper wire plant, and will not deploy FiOS. Instead all of Fire Island will be forced to use wireless networks.

The irony in New York is that all of these wired customers received multiple rate increases for upgrades to the utility plant over the last two decades. In June 2009 the NY State Department of Public Service specifically points out that the ‘fiber optic’ services are being paid for by rate increases.

“We are always concerned about the impacts on ratepayers of any rate increase, especially in times of economic stress,” said Commission Chairman Garry Brown. “Nevertheless, there are certain increases in Verizon’s costs that have to be recognized. This is especially important given the magnitude of the company's capital investment program, including its massive deployment of fiber optics in New York. We encourage Verizon to make appropriate investments in New York, and these minor rate increases will allow those investments to continue.”

And, as we’ve written, almost every state had requirements to upgrade telecommunications networks as customers paid for these upgrades. In New Jersey, Verizon was required, by law, to have 100% of the state upgraded with a fiber optic service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions and completed by 2010. Two small communities, Greenwich and Stow Creek, complained and the State issued a ‘show cause order’ to explain why they were not upgraded, and why even their basic phone service had quality of service issues.

And in New Jersey, Verizon appears to be doing the same thing as Fire Island and has decided to not fix the Sandy damage of Mantoloking but give them a wireless substitute. They, too, never got FiOS or upgraded.

The writing is on the wall. What’s happening in New York City to these customers is a failure of the entire telecommunications regulatory system to care about customers. It’s going to get worse if the FCC and states continue to favor Verizon, AT&T et al over those they are supposed to be serving and who are paying for the companies capital investments.

Let these customers’ stories of people who are still waiting for service for six months be a clarion call to reverse direction and bring back real competition, quality of service requirements, and to make sure someone is not only watching but holding our communications companies responsible to their customers – you, your family and your business.

One day you may wake up to find your service not working. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

A sharp critique of President Obama's appointment of former telecom lobbyist Tom Wheeler as FCC Chair by former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson, who served from 1966-1973 and was appointed by Lyndon Johnson. From Canada's Real News Network.

Kaiser archivist Lincoln Cushing sends this story about KFOG and Kaiser: once an owner and now a sponsor. A little Bay Area radio history on the album rock station of many people's youths.

**

Radio listeners in the San Francisco Bay Area can tune into KFOG-FM every Friday evening beginning at 6 for Kaiser Permanente-sponsored Thrive Time, a commercial-free hour intended “to take the stress out of your Friday commute.” They can also enjoy “Acoustic Sunrise” on Sunday mornings for more Thriving goodness.

Thrive Time seems like a great new pop culture connection for Kaiser Permanente; in fact, the Health Plan’s link with KFOG (104.5) was first forged a half century ago.

Although Henry J. Kaiser’s longest-lasting legacy is Kaiser Permanente, he was at the helm of a giant complex of industries from the late 1930s until his death in 1967. That empire included the Kaiser Broadcasting Corporation, which developed a string of radio and TV stations starting in 1957 with KHVH-TV 13 and KHVH AM 1040 in Honolulu.


Kaiser Broadcasting studios in San Francisco.

The Hawaii stations were built from scratch at Henry J. Kaiser’s Hawaiian Village Hotel, thus the “HVH” in the call signs. The next year Kaiser Broadcasting dropped KHVH-TV to buy KULA-TV 4, which was an ABC affiliate and included extended island service through Maui’s KMVI-TV, channel 12.

Kaiser begins in SF Bay Area in 1963
Kaiser’s media ownership in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kaiser Permanente’s initial home base, began when the broadcasting corporation acquired the former KBAY radio station and renamed it KFOG.

On March 1, 1963, with its foghorn blaring, KFOG hit the airwaves with a soothing format consisting of soft middle-of-the road music during the day and periods of block programming at night aimed at particular audiences.


Pete Taylor, KFOG-FM, head disc jockey in the 1960s. Kaiser Permanente Heritage Resources Archives photo.

Dick Block was Kaiser Broadcasting’s vice president and general manager, and Pete Taylor was the head disc jockey. Taylor left for Boston in 1966 to work at Kaiser-owned WJIB-FM radio station, which had a format similar to KFOG’s and WCAS-AM, a “hyper-local” station serving the Boston-area communities of Watertown, Cambridge, Arlington, and Somerville.

In 1975 Kaiser Broadcasting sold KFOG and Boston radio station WJIB to General Electric. The sale of the two stations set a record, estimated at well over $2 million.

UHF approval broadens TV markets
In the early 1960s, Kaiser took advantage of a new wave of television broadcasting.

During the first decade of television, TV sets only received VHF (very-high frequency band) signals, and the existing airwaves became saturated with stations. The Federal Communications Commission recognized the problem and endorsed legislation to broaden TV broadcasting to include UHF (ultra-high frequency band).

“We have concluded that the public interest clearly requires expanded use of the 70 UHF channels for television broadcasting; receiver incompatibility is a major factor inhibiting such expanded use,” the FCC stated in a letter to the House of Representatives. “. . . we have earnestly recommended enactment of this legislation as being of utmost importance to the national welfare.”[i]

In 1962, Congress passed House Bill 8031, the All-Channel Receiver Act, which required TV manufacturers to equip new sets to receive UHF channels. UHF was a major breakthrough in expanding television access.

An internal Kaiser Broadcasting film explained the challenge – and opportunity – this way:

“In 1962 only 15 American cities have more than three TV stations . . . At Kaiser world headquarters the passage of the All-Channel Bill set a plan into motion that (will) result in one of the largest programs for the construction and operation of new TV stations in the history of the industry.”[ii]

Kaiser Broadcasting expands reach across nation
Under Dick Block, Kaiser Broadcasting’s first mainland television foray involved licenses for the newly-opened UHF market. The corporation started two UHF stations in 1965 – WKBD-TV in Detroit and WKBS-TV in Philadelphia.

In the next three years, Kaiser’s corporation added television stations in Los Angeles, KBSC, and Cleveland, WKBF, and radio and television stations in Boston, WKBG, and San Francisco, KBHK, channel 44, which originally carried the KHJK moniker that reflected Henry Kaiser’s initials.[iii]

Chicago came into the fold in 1974 when Field Communications partnered with Kaiser to create WFLD-TV. In most markets, Kaiser Broadcasting was among the first to start an independent station; the Bay Area was the exception. By this time the corporation’s holdings included seven TV stations - San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

When Kaiser Industries split up in 1977, all the media holdings were liquidated as part of what was described as “the largest voluntary corporate dismantling in U.S. history.”[iv]

Today, KFOG listeners can request via email a song that makes them feel good – in keeping with the Kaiser Permanente advertising “Thrive” campaign. The station selects one suggested song and plays it along with similar music during the commercial-free hours.

The Kaiser Broadcasting Corporation no longer exists, but the current Kaiser Permanente-KFOG connection restores a link established 50 years ago.

Enjoy this fun article on a pioneer in low-power formerly "pirate" radio from the Illinois Times.

*****

Mbanna Kantako is on a roll.

From his rental house just off North Grand Avenue in Enos Park, the 54-year-old blind man talks about the advent of spring and the need to till the soil. He speaks of pollution, the Great Spirit, expectations that people gain responsibility with age and the Boston Marathon bombing, not knowing how many people might be listening via a radio signal that covers just a tiny portion of the city.

“You know the government set this shit up,” he intones. “It’s the government. They the ones that did 9/11. They the ones that did the Oklahoma City bombing. You have every reason not to believe what the government says.”

The program segment Kantako calls Notes On The Devil’s News continues with a tape of Springfield police tasing a pregnant woman in the parking lot, a recent in-broad-daylight incident that police say was justified because the woman had inserted herself into a physical altercation between an officer and her boyfriend while a bystander videotaped everything. Then it’s back to the bombing.

“And you’re going to believe what happened in Boston?” he asks sarcastically at the conclusion of the tasing tape. “You’re out of your damn mind. For real, these devils have issues.”

Moving right along, Kantako delves robotic surgery, which some say is no improvement over work performed by human surgeons and might actually be worse in some circumstances.

“Ain’t no medicine better than the Lord,” Kantako says.

In the space of less than 15 minutes, Kantako covers all of this and more in stream-of-consciousness style. He doesn’t sound a bit winded. He’s been doing this more than quarter-century, and this broadcast last Saturday marks his 8,697th show “from the criminal enterprise that is Springfield, Illinois, located in the criminal enterprise that is the United States.” Or so says Kantako from the far end of your FM dial, much to the consternation of the Federal Communications Commission that wants him to get a license or shut up. The signal reaches barely a mile. By the time you travel south to city hall or the federal building or downtown law firms, it fades considerably. In more ways than one.

“Is he still around?” asks Bruce Stratton, an attorney and former Kantako nemesis who knew the man decades ago when he was still known by his birth name, Dewayne Readus. “I haven’t thought about him for years. Mostly, I remember that he was some kind of activist.”

Indeed.

Back in the day, Kantako was a fixture in the pages of the State Journal-Register and a leading figure in the long-since-demolished John Hay Homes, where the city’s black population was concentrated in a crumbling 600-unit public housing project. He had a zest for organizing, and if he didn’t always get his way, the activist who became a broadcaster certainly made a lot of noise.

Nearly 30 years ago, he pushed for the Springfield School District to bus children from the Hay Homes to school instead of making them walk. He was a controversial figure even within the projects, where he formed the John Hay Tenants Rights Association after resigning from the existing resident council over a spat about the busing issue. Some resident council leaders thought him too radical.

He fought against both sides in the late 1980s when the city, after being sued under the federal Voting Rights Act, reluctantly changed its form of government, establishing 10 wards and replacing commissioners with aldermen to help ensure black representation on the city council. He led marches to protest police brutality. He was a constant at Springfield Housing Authority board meetings when Stratton was board chairman.

“He would have banners and placards,” Stratton recalls. “There was one large one I wish I’d kept. It was a placard with a picture of me dressed up as some sort of banana republic dictator. It was really well done. In many ways, he was kind of the perfect activist and the perfect advocate. He could get a lot of attention and yet he was a really nice guy.”

Engaging. Charming. Pleasant. Not the sort of adjectives one would expect from a man whom Kantako painted as the enemy. But Stratton says that Kantako never got under his skin. He remembers off-the-record conversations outside the limelight when Kantako would outline plans for future protests and ask for thoughts.

“He just infuriated lots of people,” Stratton says. “I wasn’t among them. I liked the guy. I really did.”

Black, poor and blind

For an archetypical angry black man, Mbanna Kantako is a great conversationalist.

He easily recalls his childhood, saying he can remember the car ride up from Memphis where he was born to Springfield when he was less than three years old in the early 1960s. He has five brothers, ten sisters and no clue as to why his family ended up here.

“I think a lot of people really believe in that Lincoln stuff, and I think that might have been why,” he guesses. “Nobody in my family has ever made it clear why they chose Springfield. Maybe someone got paroled here. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it makes a lot of sense to stop here.”

Kantako was nine when he transferred from Springfield public schools to the Illinois School for the Visually Impaired in Jacksonville. He could still see, but just barely, owing to congenital glaucoma. But he knew black from white. His first day at the school for the blind, he befriended a student from Collinsville. Both Cardinals fans, they were swapping baseball cards at bedtime when he heard a staff member outside the room say that his new friend’s father wouldn’t appreciate his son being in the same room with a nigger.

“Nine years old, night time, you know – it was a hell of a thing to think about,” Kantako says. “I think I was about the nicest cat they’d probably ever met the next morning. I didn’t want to piss off nobody. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t run home.”

Kantako became an athlete at the Jacksonville school, setting a national record in the high jump by clearing five-foot-eight-inches with a two-step approach. He also wrestled at 112 pounds. Initially, he professes that there was nothing he liked about being a wrestler, having to spend hours in the gym while his friends goofed off. He is not convincing.

“It really helped me shape my attitude about different things,” he allows. “It had a big influence on me. … There’s a confidence I think it gives you. Once you get a joker in your hands, your hands are like your eyes. You can tell by grabbing a person by the wrist what’s going on – you grab them by the arm, you can tell, once you learn a few techniques. That was, in fact, my way of evening the playing field with the sighted world. OK, you can outrun me, you can definitely outdrive me, but let’s go to the ground. Let’s see what we can do down here.”

After graduation, Kantako returned to Springfield. He studied computers at Lincoln Land Community College, then switched to courses aimed at becoming a probation officer, a short-lived plan that ended, he says, when he was beaten by police and lost his remaining eyesight. He next tried communications, but the classes didn’t make sense.

“I went out there (to Lincoln Land) and they were trying to make me listen to Beethoven and shit,” he says. “I didn’t feel that was very important for me to be learning that stuff. That’s when I drifted away from school.”

He was young, living in the projects and very much sure of himself. He DJ’d at parties and rapped a bit: Reagan economics won’t you stand aside/Because there’s unemployed people trying to stay alive. His first brush with political activism was born from ulterior motive: One of his sisters had promised him $2 if he would attend a neighborhood meeting at the Hay Homes the night before a city council meeting. He doesn’t recall the issue.

“I’ll be honest with you: I went to get $2 so I could get me a beer,” Kantako recalls. “And she wouldn’t give me the $2 until the meeting was over. I was just agreeing with everything to get the meeting over – ‘Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea, that’s a good idea, sounds good to me.’ Finally, one of the older ladies there who was a real good friend of my mom said to me ‘Wayne, you know how to talk on the microphone, you-all go with us.’”

The thirsty young man agreed, having no intention of actually following through, but he was in the audience at the next day’s city council meeting. He says he went because he didn’t want his mother to find out that he hadn’t kept a promise. He didn’t plan on going back.

“I heard the way the mayor was talking to people – Mike Houston, he’s the same mayor today,” Kantako recalls. “He’s crazy. He was just talking down to these people like they was stupid and shit like that, you know. I guess that’s when my time in the gym kind of got to me. In the gym, you just don’t do that. You’ve got someone that’s on your level, bang with him. But he was just tossing up weak people. So I got up and said something to him. He started off the same way with me. So I just said, ‘First of all, I’m not your nigger.’”

For Kantako, it was a point of no return, even if Houston today says that he doesn’t recall ever talking to the man who became the face of black radicalism in Springfield. The mayor, however, does recall the man.

“He was against whatever we were doing,” Houston says.

Exactly right.

A proud rabble rouser

Springfield was deeply torn as Kantako turned radical during the Reagan Revolution.

The city gained national attention when a lawsuit filed under the federal Voting Rights Act, the first of its kind north of the Mason-Dixon Line, sought to change the form of government in a town where no black had been elected to the city council for 75 years. The case laid bare backroom dealings in a place where Democratic and Republican leaders agreed on who should run for mayor and how jobs should be filled. Blacks had no chance.

At first, Kantako tried working within the system, running for Democratic precinct committeeman. He lost, and badly. He says the election was rigged.

“I went over to the Democratic headquarters that night, Dick Durbin was there,” Kantako says. “He comes over to me and says ‘Are you ready to play?’ Me, being a little cocky fool, I said, ‘Play? Man, we got the votes. We don’t play with you motherfuckers.’ Shit, I got fifth place.”

After that, Kantako and others who supported his views began picketing polling places, urging blacks to boycott elections and passing out fliers headlined, “Have You Ever Felt More Like A Nigger?” The voting rights lawsuit, he decided, was a “pacification program.” The plaintiffs were educated black males, not anyone who represented the average Springfield black resident. And so Kantako became a thorn, intent on embarrassing the powers that be by any means necessary.

He came to relish city council meetings and led protestors from the Hay Homes to 26 consecutive council meetings, recalls Michael Townsend, a retired University of Illinois Springfield professor of social work.

“It was absolutely amazing that he could get anyone to go down there,” Townsend says. “Trying to organize anyone in public housing is practically an impossible task.”

Townsend recalls Kantako once sitting a four-year-old girl in the front row of a council meeting with a sign reading “Pat Ward Is A Big Fat Slob,” right in front of Ward, who served on the council as the city’s public safety commissioner. Kantako smiles at the memory.

“It became a game with us,” Kantako says. “We would ask (former Mayor Ossie) Langfelder if racism was a mortal or venal sin. … After awhile, it got to be fun to go down there and send the streets commissioner up, make him jump up and slam his shit down on the table. Boy, they would get so mad.”

The point, he says, was to prove that city fathers had clay feet.

“I wanted to show people that they weren’t like the Wizard of Oz – people go down there and they’re like, ‘These guys breathe fire and shit,’” Kantako says. “I wanted to show them that they’re not that tough.”

So far as Kantako was concerned, neither the plaintiffs nor the defendants in the voting rights lawsuit had the best interests of black people in mind and so he skewered both sides. His vitriol for James and Don Craven, the father-and-son legal team that handled the voting-rights case for the plaintiffs, matches his disdain for Houston.

The printer who created the fliers with the n-word had charged a considerable amount, Kantako says, and an old copying machine at the Craven law office represented a chance to save money in the future. A new machine was being delivered, with the vendor offering the Cravens a $100 discount if they turned in the old one, recalls Kantako, who initially supported the lawsuit and was attending meetings with the plaintiffs at the law office. He says that he and his supporters offered to buy the old machine for $100.

“They wouldn’t give us that machine for nothing in the world,” Kantako says. “That’s when the shit hit the fan, right there. I went from East Side activist family man to radical, all that shit. After that copying machine thing, we just broke off from everything.”

Don Craven says he doesn’t remember anything about a copying machine, nor does his father.

“Trust me on that,” Craven says. “But if it was that event that propelled him into his activist-radical days, I am proud to have been a part of it.”

Going live

The idea for a do-it-yourself radio station generated with Townsend, who suggested that Kantako start an underground newspaper.

“I can’t read, first of all, so I’m not very enthusiastic about it,” Kantako says. “Half the people I know can’t read, so that was just not viable.”

Given his experience as a DJ, Kantako decided a radio station would be better than a newspaper, so, with Townsend’s help, he got a mail-order transmitter for a few hundred bucks and plugged in. Some money for equipment came from the Catholic church, which had given a grant to the tenants rights association.

They could not have picked a better time than the fall of 1987.

With a substantial percentage of the city’s black population clustered in the Hay Homes, Kantako’s audience was within reach of the tiny transmitter. There were few, if any, radio stations that catered to a black audience, and certainly none that played uncensored songs by Ice T, NWA, Public Enemy and other then-controversial hip-hop groups that spiced messages of defiance with plenty of four-letter words. Over-the-air television with just a few stations was still dominant, and there was no Internet. And so Kantako’s pirate radio station became popular in the projects as much for jams that couldn’t be heard anywhere else as for the political proselytizing.

It wasn’t long before Kantako was in the headlines for a new reason.

Shortly after Kantako took to the airwaves, Springfield police complained to the Federal Communications Commission. They insisted they weren’t motivated by Kantako’s near-constant criticism and use of the word “pigs.” Rather, they were simply passing along complaints from citizens upset by naughty words.

“There were people in the Hay Homes complaining about him,” recalls former police chief Mike Walton, who now works for the Sangamon County sheriff’s office. “It’s his right to broadcast. He just shouldn’t use language that’s not acceptable to children.”

In 1989, police and an FCC official paid a visit and ordered him to unplug. He did, but only for a week. Then he sent a statement to the press and invited reporters to attend the reopening of his radio station.

“Mr. Readus will make a statement to the press and will respond to questions prior to his being taken into police custody,” reads the press release typed on tenants rights association stationary.

After speaking to reporters, Kantako went back on the air and called police, with a tape recorder rolling. Come and arrest me, he told an officer. He was put on hold, then told that local police didn’t have jurisdiction over violations of federal law. So he went to the federal building and tried to surrender himself, but no one was interested in locking him up. He has been daring authorities to arrest him ever since.

“On several occasions, I’ve tried to set them up, but they won’t go for it – ‘Nah, you have a nice day, sir,’” says Kantako, who dropped his birth name in the early 1990s and made it official by having a judge sign paperwork in 2003.

A letter campaign aimed at building support after his first confrontation with the FCC met with mixed results. The NAACP said no thanks, as did Bill Cosby. Noam Chomsky, however, provided advice and wrote a check for $50. The Catholic church held back the final check of a grant awarded to the tenants rights association after expressing concerns about illegal broadcasts.

But Kantako became a darling of the underground, with articles appearing in alternative newspapers as far away as Germany. Major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sent reporters to Springfield to write about the blind man who defied the FCC and proved an inspiration to other pirate radio broadcasters throughout the nation. Pump Up The Volume, a 1990 movie starring Christian Slater as a high school student who starts his own radio station, fueled interest, and there were mentions of Kantako in Playboy, Spin, Mother Jones and The Utne Reader. He even made mainstream airwaves with a segment on All Things Considered broadcast on National Public Radio. Dozens of people around the country wrote letters voicing support and asking Kantako for advice on how to set up pirate radio stations.

“He started a whole movement that’s never been acknowledged or recognized in Springfield,” Townsend said.

He has proven unstoppable. Federal agents seized his equipment in 2000 after air traffic controllers at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport said that his signals were reaching pilots who could, potentially, believe that Kantako was providing directions. No planes fell from the sky, however, and Kantako has refused to pay fines levied by the FCC.

Interest and controversy has faded with the advent of the Internet. Now, anyone with a laptop can say most anything they want, and the message goes considerably farther than a mile or so. But there are still sprouts of celebrity in unexpected places. In 2011, a Danish hip-hop group with anarchist appeal released Viva Kantako Destroy Sony, an album anchored by a track called “Mbanna Kantako Radio” that features clips from Kantako broadcasts.

While pirate radio might seem a throwback, Kantako isn’t about to quit. Perhaps he is stubborn – he and his wife were, after all, the last people to move out of the Hay Homes before they were demolished in 1997.

Has he made a difference?

That’s hard to measure, Stratton says. It is hard to point out a concrete accomplishment, the former housing authority board chairman says, but Kantako raised awareness about important issues.

“I think he was effective in that,” Stratton allows.

Kantako wouldn’t necessarily disagree. We’re better off than we were 25 years ago, he says – if nothing else, people today cannot hide from the truth, and he hopes that he has helped educate people.

“I think we’re better off because that gives us a chance to get our act together,” he states.

Kantako still gets threatening letters from the FCC, most recently in 2011. But he is most proud of a 2000 restraining order signed by former U.S. District Court Judge Jeanne Scott, who commanded him to get a license or get off the air. He has it framed, hanging at the entrance to his living room.

“It says I will ‘cause immediate and irreparable damage to the United States,’” Kantako says. “I thought that was so cool.”

Actor Ed Asner weighs in on the loss of public access in television in Los Angeles in this video by the Full Disclosure Network.

What connects Al-Jazeera and Chicago Public Media? This essay by Chicago Media Action Co-founder Scott Sanders connects dots between the uproar after CPM cancelled the Cornel/West show, the incoming Al-Jazeera America network and what all this means about the state of US public media.

**

Thousands of jubilant news professionals are tossing their hats into the air and their resumes into Al Jazeera’s inbox because Al Jazeera America, a new international cable news channel, is launching this summer. But while they celebrate, Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and Amy Goodman call for a democratic revolution to transform public media.

The new channel is the result of the $500 million sale of Current TV and its 40 million U.S. cable households to the Emir of Qatar, a fossil-fuel monarch who also controls a $100 billion “sovereign wealth fund”. Current TV co-founder Al Gore engineered the deal, and has been its main cheerleader in media interviews {39:30 - 42:30} lately. But Tony Burman, the previous head of Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera America’s model, cautions us to understand that the elite who fund the network also control it to their benefit: “My sense of Al Jazeera today is that it is becoming a more ‘top-down,’ centrally driven news operation than ever before. All news programs and most editorial decisions now come out of Qatar.”

That’s funny. Not too long ago, Tavis Smiley voiced something similar about another award-winning, public service news outlet -- WBEZ Chicago Public Media: “Something is wrong when even public media has become the playground of the 1%, when public media has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the 1% rather than speaking to the trouble and travail and tribulation of the 99.” Smiley was speaking at a media and democracy forum entitled “Poverty, Power, and the Public Airwaves: Post-election analysis and commentary from Tavis Smiley, Cornel West & Amy Goodman in Chicago". The event came about as a result of public opposition to WBEZ’s decision to cease airings of “Smiley & West”, perhaps the only program consistently advocating for the poor and marginalized on over 70 public radio stations. A few scattered stations had dropped the show previously. The controversy mushroomed when Smiley responded to WBEZ and CEO Torey Malatia in turn called the show “crap”.

WBEZ’s decisions forced “Smiley & West” onto two local commercial niche stations with a combined average audience one third smaller than WBEZ’s. How should this be interpreted by marginalized groups the station is supposed to serve? Smiley declared, “(I)t is easier for an African American to be president of the United States than it is to host a primetime radio program on Chicago Public Radio.” In classic Orwellian newspeak, WBEZ claimed it was acting in the interest of “inclusiveness”. (See also Steve Rendall, Feb. 2013 FAIR “Extra!”, [subscription required].) This type of thing is old news to WBEZ; Malatia was also in charge back in 2003 when Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting cited WBEZ for having no daytime weekday programs with non-white hosts. Similarly, how ought WBEZ’s purchase of WRTE-FM, the only low power Latino radio station in the Chicago area, be understood?

In fact, Congress founded both PBS and NPR via legislative acts in response to a famous 1967 Carnegie Commission report that called for broadcasting service to "provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard” and “help us see America whole in all its diversity.” Current TV spokespersons recently claimed that Al Jazeera would also follow that path, “Al Jazeera shares Current TV's mission to give voice to those who are not typically heard, to speak truth to power, to provide independent and diverse points of view.”

Al Jazeera and WBEZ are guided by lofty ideals, but only sometimes. What can be done to hold them to account to those ideals? I took a closer look at both WBEZ Chicago Public Media and Al Jazeera America and what I found confirms the need for an in-depth examination of the governance of U.S. public media -- and the need for a wide distribution of the findings.

How is Al Jazeera funded and controlled? Qatar is the host of immense natural gas reserves, much U.S. investment, and key forward U.S. military bases. It is best not to view Qatar as a country with a government, but instead as a royal family’s business interests and a massive guest worker program; the “sovereign wealth fund” includes the Treasury. Qatar provides very little public data on the finances and governance of the privately held corporate parent Al Jazeera Media Network and its 20 or so channels. Al Jazeera’s news channels air very few ads and that is a BIG problem for the U.S. cable distributors and Al Jazeera America -- even though these same cable companies pass domestic public tv through their wires without feeling the need to interrupt programming. Al Jazeera says “the plan is to work quickly toward a self-sustaining business model.” In a little-reported 2011 decree, the Emir said Al Jazeera Network, a public institution, would become Al Jazeera Media Network, “a private institution of public utility”. That year, its advisory "International Board of Visitors" consisted of a range of professional journalists and a few financial and political elites with media ties, but no representatives of working or low-income persons or other marginalized groups. The network’s current director-general is a member of the country's royal family and has no background in journalism.

What do those knowledgeable about news and propaganda think about the new Al Jazeera? Adel Iskandar, Georgetown University lecturer and co-author of the book “Al-jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism” said, “The Al Jazeera of 2010 is not the Al Jazeera of 2013… We’ve seen the departure of various people at the network who claim that it no longer practices independent journalism.” Former BBC reporter Ali Hashem resigned his post at Al Jazeera Arabic saying, “The Qataris… are forcing Al Jazeera to commit suicide.” Tellingly, Iraq invasion co-architect and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told David Frost on Al Jazeera English in September of 2011 that he was “delighted” by the new Al Jazeera.

Today’s Al Jazeera English is basically like some previous version of the mediocre and flawed CNN but with more emphasis on the global south. U.S embassy cables released by Wikileaks say the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar and officials from Washington have been using a variety of direct and indirect methods to increase Al Jazeera’s compliance. Perhaps surprising to advocates of impartial professional journalism, the primary tool to restrain critical reporting on the Qatar network is repeated monitoring and training.

In Maximilian C. Fortes’ in-depth article “Al Jazeera and U.S. Foreign Policy: What WikiLeaks' U.S. Embassy Cables Reveal about U.S. Pressure and Propaganda”, Fortes explains how journalism’s professional norms are used to block and obfuscate the truth: "When it comes to the substance of U.S. relations with Al Jazeera, the questions that should come to mind are: What does responsible mean? Responsible for what? Responsible to whom? What is balance, and how is the truth balanced when the idea itself implies that something else must be a lie? Why is balance important, when airing long-suppressed & regularly marginalized voices? What is objectivity, when one is subject to pressure and made to fear for his/her career? What is professionalism and why does it always seemingly resolve to a default position of not upsetting the status quo?" (For more concerning these questions, see also James E. Owens, master’s dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2008.)

Closer to home, WBEZ Chicago Public Media, like Al Jazeera, also relies on claims of professionalism to discipline journalists and police the politics it broadcasts.

In late September of 2012, deep in the election season, WBEZ cancelled “Smiley & West” without bothering to call Smiley to talk about it first. Station officials cited ratings as a cause but argued, “more importantly, the show had developed much more of an ‘advocacy’ identity” and on this point, station CEO Malatia compared “Smiley & West” to the Pacifica Radio program “Democracy Now!” -- a daily independent broadcast news and discussion show hosted by Amy Goodman that airs on over a thousand public and community stations. Malatia then also compared “Democracy Now!” to “The Rush Limbaugh Show”, a choice that lead to a sharp public response by the democratically-elected Pacifica radio governing board.

When WBEZ first announced the cancellation, I created the Facebook page, “Smiley & West dumped by WBEZ Chicago Public Media: Take Action." That page contributed to public pressure and discussion of the events. Smiley publicly addressed that discussion in his uncompromising open letter to Malatia. Smiley’s letter charged that there are systemic problems at U.S. public media’s core, particularly regarding problems with race and class exclusions on station governing boards. In the face of this growing public criticism, Malatia called the Smiley & West show, “crap.” The growing public debate won mainstream and independent news coverage, adding to interest in the November 8th forum at Northwestern University Law School's Thorne Auditorium. Over “a thooouusand” (as Amy Goodman might intone) attended. Including this writer.

In the lead up to the Chicago event, mainstream media provided space rarely accorded to question the politics shaping public media. For example, the Tribune Company-owned WGN-TV and WGN-AM interviewed Smiley. On WGN-AM, he stated: “There’s an orthodoxy even inside public radio. . . I've had to fight an uphill battle in public radio trying to. . . create a democratic space for some ideological diversity and some ethnic diversity." Similarly, in Current, the magazine for public media professionals, Smiley asked: "How can people organize to ensure that public media outlets like WBEZ are responsible, representative, and responsive?. . . How do we ensure that the public media treats our airwaves as the vital resource that they are?”

At the public forum, Smiley called Chicago “ground zero” in the fight for democratic accountability over public media. He also joined West and Goodman to call for grassroots action to democratically transform public media right now. "We ain't got but a couple of years. . . to let our voices be heard and I don't want us to wait too long to figure that out. . . Public media is going to have to be pushed. . . [Y]ou can get a conversation started about how we democratize and bring some diversity to public media."

Goodman made it clear that the role of an active public is necessary to win programming that challenges corporate and political power. "These are your public airwaves and you have a right to determine how they're used. . . What are you going to do about it?” Goodman also pointed out that corporate employed or funded professional stations depend on and enable their corporate backers. Later that same night on PBS Goodman stated, “I can’t think of a greater group of advocacy journalists than those in the corporate media."

"John Dewey [said] Show me a democracy that has a impoverished public life and I'll show you one that is dominated by oligarchs and plutocrats driven by profit maximization,” said Cornel West as he connected the problem of elite control of media to the crippling of democracy, “There's no way. . . we’ll ever be able to reinvigorate and rejuvenate our public life unless we have (as Socrates told us) Parrhesia. Parrhesia is fearless speech, plain speech, frank speech, unintimidated speech. . . There’s too much mendacity and lyin' going on in the corporate, truncated, multiplex.” West made it clear

that the fight over media is not merely over truth but over a fundamental recognition of the right of people outside of elite circles to shape media to defend their legitimacy as democratic actors and their material interests in social life: “We need a revolutionary change that shifts from the power of oligarchs to the power of everyday people. And you do that democratically, step by step."

The citation of John Dewey is strikingly appropriate. His scholarship recognized that participation in communication and education are necessary to create and keep a vibrant democratic commons. In Chicago, as elsewhere, the commons of public media and public education are besieged as never before by an epidemic of corporate engineered privatization. Part of that attack is to de-legitimize any role of regular people in shaping the media and education systems that they rely on. West and Goodman gave shout-outs to the Chicago Teachers Union and its President Karen Lewis, who was in attendance. The CTU is organized using direct democratic practices and pursues the return to public election of the Trustees of the Chicago Board of Education, a franchise lost over fifteen years ago.

In my observation, journalists at WBEZ rarely initiated discussion of public school governance. WBEZ coverage seemed to find the notion that regular people could participate in shaping public policies unthinkable (or insulting). In fact, the public also has no direct say in the selection of WBEZ Chicago Public Media’s Trustees.

The late comedian and social critic George Carlin argued that the singular reason that education and journalism suffers is that an educated critical populace is what the rich corporate elites simply do not want: “The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. . . they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. . . They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.”

The “Smiley & West” incident in Chicago created a ruckus in corporate and independent media and new public discussions emerged outside traditional media that put the public media establishment on notice. But the incident failed to create some kind of member or publicly elected WBEZ governing Board. Nor did we see the birth of a mass movement to create such a body or win the right to participate in shaping the media we need to defend other public treasures, like our schools. The fact that Smiley, West, and Goodman called for such a revolution was hardly noticed by the broader debate in alternative or mainstream media. But such a revolution is what is needed to create the public commons.

Almost every other model to "save journalism" fails to interrogate professional claims of impartiality and winds up reproducing the old chain of command that separates disadvantaged communities -- people of color, the poor and working classes, political dissidents, LGBT communities, and other groups -- from decision making. Synergizing community and other public media producers into a new, publicly controlled, radically reorganized, public media system could enable social justice movements to change social conditions for the better.

At the November 8th event, I asked a certain famous Chicago advocate for community controlled public education, reparations, the late Mayor Harold Washington, and fancy hats, if she thought most average people believe that the Trustees on the boards of large public media outlets are all friendly and nice -- like Big Bird. She said she wasn't sure. Had I asked her if she thinks the average person knows the rules by which these Trustees make decisions, she might have offered the same response. We need to expose those rules so that people understand the means by which the rich corporate class controls the development and content of public broadcast systems and in-progress digital public online networks. The shape, and politics, of those networks will be powerfully affected by the National Broadband Plan (NBP).

The force of federal law, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), mandates the NBP to provide for the transformation of the 20th-century U.S. public broadcasting system into a digital public media network, ubiquitous in access, promoting innovation, competition, and free expression, and supporting the growth of accountability journalism. Subsidies for a variety of anchor institutions and other community-based entities are actually crucial for reaching these NBP goals. But, with scarce exception (i.e. stations controlled by local tribal governments and the five Pacifica radio stations), the recipients of these Corporation for Public Broadcasting subsidies charged with the creation of those networks are not grassroots community anchor institutions and they are not led by the principles of direct democracy. The governing boards of the CPB stations will make the decisions and set the conditions under which community organizations get to participate in creating those necessary networks.

Increasing public knowledge of the political forces controlling development of publicly funded digital networks could offer advocates a pro-active opportunity to shift public and policy debate from a narrow focus on station budgets to a larger question: Should federal policy enable the same corporate and affluent sectors culpable for the recent economic crisis to also shape development of new public communication resources needed by communities disproportionately hurt by that crisis? Important research on public media policy is already out there (New America Foundation, Center for Social Media, Victor Pickard et al, Ellen P. Goodman and Anne Chen). But the fact is we also need research into the political relationships enabled by the new networks: will corporate connected elites again manage the money and make the decisions? Above all we need a social movement to raise hell and win the right to shape public media to meet the needs of regular people.

As our very good friend Tavis Smiley said in The Chicago Defender: "Now is the time to ask and answer the hard questions on how the public media space can better serve fellow citizens who have traditionally been politically, economically, socially, and culturally disenfranchised." The clock is ticking. We cannot -- we must not -- rely on the largesse of royalty and the “corporate, truncated multiplex” for the connections, communications, and news needed for a public commons and a living democracy.

_____

James Owens made invaluable contributions to this article.

Scott Sanders, a 2011 winner of the Nelson Algren Committee award, has co-founded a number of media activist organizations, including Chicago Media Action, and led efforts to constitute public community media centers with member-elected boards and to increase diversity on non-elected public media boards. He also led campaigns resulting in the only FCC fine of a major public TV station concerning commercialism. He has a number of years of experience working as a video documentarian and as a periodicals and technology librarian. Scott has produced social science research for MMTC, MAP, and, for the last four years, for the University of Chicago. He is responsible for the Trustee research in the CMA study “Chicago Tonight: Elites, Affluence, and Advertising” starting on p.18 here. He is the author or co-author of articles for Truthout, Extra!, Counterpunch, Z magazine, and a number of daily newspapers.

In memory of Jan and Robert Sanders.

A fun video about radio, where it's been and what LPFM means.

Coming soon ...

Author and journalist David Cay Johnston on cableco monopolies and how they distort economic development on Gigabit Nation

It probably looks like we're picking on Google, but after 38 states filed suit to protect user privacy after Google's Street View mapping project randomly scooped up passwords, email account info and other data, privacy advocates had reason to be concerned.

From NY Times coverage of the settlement:

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SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Tuesday acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people’s privacy during its Street View mapping project when it casually scooped up passwords, e-mail and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users.

In agreeing to settle a case brought by 38 states involving the project, the search company for the first time is required to aggressively police its own employees on privacy issues and to explicitly tell the public how to fend off privacy violations like this one.

While the settlement also included a tiny — for Google — fine of $7 million, privacy advocates and Google critics characterized the overall agreement as a breakthrough for a company they say has become a serial violator of privacy.

Complaints have led to multiple enforcement actions in recent years and a spate of worldwide investigations into the way the mapping project also collected the personal data of private computer users.

“Google puts innovation ahead of everything and resists asking permission,” said Scott Cleland, a consultant for Google’s competitors and a consumer watchdog whose blog maintains a close watch on Google’s privacy issues. “But the states are throwing down a marker that they are watching and there is a line the company shouldn’t cross.”

The agreement paves the way for a major privacy battle over Google Glass, the heavily promoted wearable computer in the form of glasses, Mr. Cleland said. “If you use Google Glass to record a couple whispering to each other in Starbucks, have you violated their privacy?” he asked. “Well, 38 states just said they have a problem with the unauthorized collection of people’s data.”

George Jepsen, the Connecticut attorney general who led the states’ investigation, said that he was hopeful the settlement would produce a new Google.

“This is the industry giant,” he said. “It is committing to change its corporate culture to encourage sensitivity to issues of personal data privacy.”

The applause was not universal, however. Consumer Watchdog, another privacy monitor and frequent Google critic, said that “asking Google to educate consumers about privacy is like asking the fox to teach the chickens how to ensure the security of their coop.”

Niki Fenwick, a Google spokeswoman, said on Tuesday that “we work hard to get privacy right at Google, but in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue.”

Last summer, the Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for bypassing privacy settings in the Safari browser, the largest civil penalty ever levied by the F.T.C. In 2011, Google agreed to be audited for 20 years by the F.T.C. after it admitted to using deceptive tactics when starting its Buzz social network. That agreement included several rather vague privacy provisions.

The new settlement, which requires Google to set up a privacy program within six months, is more specific. Among its requirements, Google must hold an annual privacy week event for employees. It also must make privacy certification programs available to select employees, provide refresher training for its lawyers overseeing new products and train its employees who deal with privacy matters.

Several provisions involve outreach. Google must create a video for YouTube explaining how people can easily encrypt their data on their wireless networks and run a daily online ad promoting it for two years. It must run educational ads in the biggest newspapers in the 38 participating states, which besides Connecticut also include New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Ohio and Texas.

“There are minimum benchmarks Google has to meet,” said Matthew Fitzsimmons, an assistant Connecticut attorney general who negotiated with the company. “This will impact how Google rolls out products and services in the future.”

Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the agreement was “a significant privacy decision by the state attorneys general,” adding that “it shows the ongoing importance of the states’ A.G.’s in protecting the privacy rights of Internet users.”

The Street View case arose out of Google’s deployment of special vehicles to photograph the houses and offices lining the world’s avenues and boulevards and lanes. For several years, the company also secretly collected personal information — e-mail, medical and financial records, passwords — as it cruised by. It was data-scooping from millions of unencrypted wireless networks.

A worldwide uproar and investigations in at least a dozen countries ensued. An Australian regulator, Stephen Conroy, called it “probably the single greatest breach in the history of privacy.” Google initially denied any data had been collected from unknowing individuals, then sought to play down what data had been collected and fought with regulators who wanted to examine it. Google said the data had been destroyed, although it turned out some had not been. Some data was purged, but Google is holding the rest until several private lawsuits are resolved.

The company blamed a rogue engineer for the operation. But the Federal Communications Commission said the engineer had worked with others and had tried to tell his superiors what he was doing. He was less a rogue than simply unsupervised, the agency said. The F.C.C. last spring fined Google $25,000 for obstructing its investigation.

In the last several years, Google has repeatedly said it was strengthening its privacy monitoring, adding layers of oversight and controls. For the states, however, those assurances were not quite enough.

“We obviously thought there was more they could do,” said Mr. Fitzsimmons, the assistant Connecticut attorney general. An executive committee of attorneys general will monitor Google for compliance. The $7 million fine is pocket change for Google, which has a net income of about $32 million a day.

“It is the public opprobrium, not the money, that counts in these cases,” said David Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University who formerly directed the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “And I think people were rightly unhappy with Google’s collecting the information in the first place and then Google’s lame explanation.”

Regulators in Germany pursued Google aggressively in the case, but closed their investigation in November without bringing charges. That seemed to end the matter until this week. Few outside observers expected the states’ efforts to amount to much.

The inquiry began in June 2010. Richard Blumenthal, then Connecticut’s attorney general, said his office would lead a multistate investigation into what he called “Google’s deeply disturbing invasion of personal privacy.” In December 2010, Mr. Blumenthal — about to become Connecticut’s junior senator — issued a civil investigative demand, equivalent to a subpoena, to get the data. Google never provided it. “That issue was resolved by their admission they had gathered the kinds of data we had alleged they were gathering,” said Mr. Jepsen, the attorney general.

In any case, he said, “what mattered was Google admitted they weren’t just taking pictures.”

Saturday: April 6 at 2:00pm at the Denver Sheraton with Nan Rubin, Danielle Chynoweth, Steve Ranieri, Sylvia Strobel and Tracy Rosenberg:

What do independent and community media makers need from their government? What kinds of policies will protect us and enable our work to reach people?

In this interactive workshop, led by independent and community media leaders, we will brainstorm solutions and work collaboratively on shaping a shared policy agenda. How can media makers work to own our infrastructure? What approaching opportunities do we need to prepare for now? If you care about the future of community media, you need to be part of this discussion.

More on NCMR: http://conference.freepress.net/session/it%E2%80%99s-our-time-community-media%E2%80%99s-new-policy-agenda-starts-now

Chris Mitchell on Democracy Now: How the telcos prevent affordable and accessible internet services to preserve the oligopoly.

The A/P Stylebook has removed homophobia as an approved word for the dislike, hatred and fear of gay and lesbian sexuality. Chuck Colbert reports for Press Pass Q.

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In a move that generated considerable pushback in LGBT media, the Associated Press announced recently that its stylebook would no longer use the word “homophobia” in political or social contexts.

The AP stylebook is one of the nation’s most influential and is widely used by newspapers, including LGBT outlets.

As AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn told Politico on Nov. 26, 2012, the term is “just off the mark” and “seems inaccurate.”

“It's ascribing a mental disability to someone, and suggests a knowledge that we don't have. It seems inaccurate,” said Minthorn. “Instead, we would use something more neutral: anti-gay, or some such, if we had reason to believe that was the case. We want to be precise and accurate and neutral in our phrasing.”

But the man who coined the term “homophobia” strongly disagreed, as the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Gazette noted.

“This is a major mistake and an injustice to gay people everywhere,” Dr. George Weinberg said, writing in an op-ed for New York-based Gay City News.

“Gay people must never forget that those who condemn them — and not they themselves — have an emotional problem. If you are condemned for being inferior, depraved, or dangerous and you aren’t, it is invaluable to know that the psychological problem is theirs, not yours,” he added. “In the case of homophobia, this was a hard-earned discovery and truth. It must never be forgotten.”

Weinberg, a Manhattan-based psychologist with a doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University, first used the word in his influential 1972 book “Society and the Healthy Homosexual.”

Some LGBT outlets simply reported news of the changes. For example, EDGE publications ran a story under the headline “AP’s new stylebook bans the word ‘homophobia.’” The Washington Blade ran a brief under the headline, “AP ban on ‘homophobia’ causes uproar.”

In commentaries, other LGBT media offered pointed critiques. Here is a sampling of the concerns:

The San Diego Gay and Lesbian News “will continue to use the words ‘homophobia,’ ‘homophobic’ and ‘homophobes’ as long as mistruths, lies, hatred, bias, discrimination and propaganda are used by anti-gay activists to demonize the LGBT community,” wrote Ken Williams, the newspaper’s editor in chief. “While those words may anger the Religious Right and the anti-gay activists, who have lobbied against their usage, the words do adequately describe the types of people who hold irrational and illogical hate or mistrust of LGBT people, or incite discrimination or violence against LGBT people, or remain adamantly against equality for all Americans even though those rights are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.”

The San Francisco-based Bay Area Reporter faulted AP’s equating homophobia with mental illness. “There are a lot of anti-gay people in this country who have an irrational fear of LGBTs. That doesn’t mean they have a mental illness [though some might), just as a person who’s afraid of spiders [arachnophobia) does not necessarily suffer from mental illness,” wrote Editor Cynthia Laird.

For veteran journalist Rex Wockner, the meaning of “homophobia” is clear enough, and its usage has a history. “The AP Stylebook gurus' inexplicable focus solely on the medical definition of the word 'phobia' is weird and ignores how the long-established word 'homophobia' is used in American English, as well as the definition of 'homophobia' in the official dictionary of the Associated Press — Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition — which says homophobia is fear or hatred of homosexuals.”

The Advocate and the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Gazette reported that they would continue to use “homophobia.” In fact, editors at all LGBT publications contacted by Press Pass Q said they, too, would continue to use the term, including Washington, D.C.-based Metro Weekly, South Florida Gay News, Philadelphia Gay News [PGN), Atlanta’s GA Voice, Dallas Voice, Gay City News, Windy City Times and the Washington Blade.

However, PGN publisher Mark Segal said, “The word would always be used as a news quote or as opinion by a columnist.”

“As for mental illness,” he quipped, “please refer to The Family Research Council.”

In a similar vein, a Q Syndicate editorial cartoon poked fun at AP’s nixing of homophobia: “What word are we using instead?” an Associated Press reporter asks his editor. “’Gaytred?’ Lesbianimus?’”

Why are so many editors sticking with “homophobia”?

“It is undeniable that ‘homophobia’ and ‘homophobic’ have entered our language as broader descriptors for people who are openly and avidly opposed to LGBT civil rights,” said GA Voice Editor Laura Douglas-Brown.

And why not use a more neutral term like “anti-gay” instead of “homophobia”?

“While they are similar in nature,” said Jason Parsley, editor of South Florida Gay News, “there are differences.

“For one thing, homophobia is a much more powerful word,” he explained, citing the case of Matthew Shepard. “The two men that tortured and killed him were not just anti-gay, they were homophobic. And there is no other word that accurately describes their action.”

Managing Editor Will O’Bryan said Metro Weekly “prefers ‘anti-gay,’ or something similar” but “is not willing to abandon the term [‘homophobia’] altogether.”

“There are times when ‘homophobia’ strikes us as accurate,” he explained. “We expect our readers to know that we’re not trying to offer a medical diagnosis, but that sometimes an irrational fear of gay people, or transgender people, is just too obvious to ignore. If the Westboro nuts, for example, hold a ‘God hates fags’ rally, that might actually be rational. They believe in a wrathful, gay-hating God who’s going to take out his anti-gay hatred on America, so they’re simply trying to sound the alarm. They’re following a sort of logical path, based on their beliefs. Then you’ve got somebody who might go out of his way to viciously beat some gay guy just for sharing the sidewalk. We’re okay calling that ‘homophobic,’ even without getting a note from the attacker’s therapist.”

And yet there is by no means full agreement that the AP’s decision is entirely off the mark.

“The AP’s finding on homophobia is not so troubling to me as it is to others,” said Bob Witeck, president of Witeck Communications, a public relations firm based in Washington, D.C. “I read the usage recommendations with care. As I understand the AP point of view, they are not banning the usage, but guiding their own writers about its proper application. I think the term ‘homophobia’ can be over-applied or generalized in ways that are not always helpful, and it can be a simplistic way to label some thoughts, words, and deeds as irrational when they may be rational in context.”

During a discussion on Sirius XM Radio’s “The Michelangelo Signorile Show,” some callers voiced similar concerns, arguing “homophobia” should be used sparingly.

But in a subsequent Huffington Post Gay Voice posting, Signorile weighed in on the politics of the AP’s decision.

“The problem with banning ‘homophobia’ after 40 years is how it plays out in the debate on the issue of gay rights,” he wrote. “Those who are anti-gay have been railing against the use of the word by journalists and others for years and are cheering the AP for banning it.”

National Lesbian and Gay Journalists president Michael Triplett told the Poynter organization for professional journalists, “The AP’s decision to discourage use of the term ‘homophobia’ has set off some interesting conversations among NLJGA members. The general sense is that the AP is probably correct in terms of the literalism of the word ‘homophobia’ and that is not the best way to describe anti-gay actions or motives. On the other hand, it leaves writers without a term — like racism or sexism — that describe anti-gay sentiment.” [Triplett passed away soon after this interview. See story, “Newly elected president of National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association dies,” below.)

The NLGJA stylebook defines homophobia as “fear, hatred or dislike of homosexuality, gay men and lesbians. Restrict to germane usage, such as in quotations or opinions. Use ‘LGBT right opponents’ or a similar phrase instead of ‘homophobes’ when describing people who disagree with LGBT rights activism.”

“At this point, I am not sure whether NLGJA will change its stylebook or not given the AP’s pronouncement,” Triplett said.

Triplett’s concerns are shared by Susan Horowitz, publisher and editor in chief of Between the Lines, based just outside Detroit. “I’m not ready to abandon the concept anymore than I would agree to no longer use anti-Semitism,” she said. “Both [‘homophobia’ and ‘anti-Semitism’] are succinct and powerful and capture the truth of the situation most of the time. It is interesting that it comes up right now. For me, [homophobia] is a powerful word that should be used with discretion. However, it is hardly true that we are in a post-homophobic period.”

For his part, Dallas Voice Editor John Wright said, “I think we should focus on whether AP is doing a good job covering LGBT issues and not get too hung up on whether [their reporters] are using one word or another."

Veteran journalist Lisa Keen of Keen News Service offered an assessment. “’Homophobia’ is not well-defined enou gh in our current cultural language that it is helpful to news reports for the general population. I would also argue that while we can report on things people do which are hostile to gay people, we can’t know for sure, and therefore cannot report, the inner motivations of those actions — whether it be fear, phobia, ignorance or subterfuge. To the extent possible, I think we should illustrate the person’s attitude about gays simply by reporting his or her statements, actions and affiliations.”

Nobody is surprised by now. But it does kind've make you wake up and take notice when FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's former Chief of Staff takes the job as counsel for Tribune Co, right after securing cross-ownership waivers from the agency.

Craig Aaron of Free Press writes about it at the Huffington Post.

********************

A lot of things don't work at the Federal Communications Commission. Consumer complaints disappear for years into seemingly bottomless file drawers. The wonky proceedings are hard to decipher if you're not a telecom lawyer. Even the website is clunky.

But at least one thing at the FCC always runs at full speed: the revolving door.

The latest FCC official to get a job in the industry he used to regulate is Edward Lazarus, Chairman Julius Genachowski's former chief of staff. The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday that Lazarus is the new general counsel of Tribune Co.

Now it just so happens that Tribune Co. -- which emerged from bankruptcy at the end of 2012 -- is at the center of a major dispute at the FCC over whether the agency will trash longstanding rules on how much media one company can own in a single market.

Tribune Co., which owns 12 daily newspapers and 23 TV stations, has long pushed the agency to remove any limits on media ownership.

The company operates both the major daily paper and broadcast outlets in Chicago and Los Angeles under waivers from the FCC, but those waivers won't automatically carry over if the properties are sold.

Numerous reports also indicate that Tribune would like to get out of the newspaper business altogether.

But the potential buyer with the deepest pockets -- News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch -- is prohibited from buying the flagship Chicago paper or the Los Angeles Times under current FCC rules because he already owns TV stations in those markets.

This is where the Tribune Co.'s desire to boost its sales price collides with the public interest. And where the FCC comes in.

We know media concentration raises the barriers for entry for new and diverse voices. Consolidation is bad for journalism -- and bad for business, too. (Exhibit A: Tribune Co.)

The idea of giving more power to the Fox News-backing, phone-hacking Murdoch is only the most obvious and immediate threat to a healthy media landscape.

But new rules now reportedly circulating among the five FCC commissioners for a vote will result in just that kind of big media giveaway. The FCC chairman has proposed lifting the ban in the top 20 markets on one company owning both the daily newspapers and a TV or radio station.

Now, who came up with the idea to deliver this priceless gift to Murdoch? Could it have been... Eddie Lazarus?

It was during his time as Genachowski's consigliere, after all, that the FCC decided to defend the previous administration's failed media ownership policies in court rather than scrap them altogether. The FCC lost that case.

Undeterred, and under Lazarus' guidance, the FCC continued to push against the Obama administration's stated policies -- and for more consolidation. The current proceeding was prepared when Lazarus was still at the agency and launched in December 2011, just a few days after Lazarus had announced his resignation but before he actually left the building.

Now one year later, just as his temporary ban on lobbying his old colleagues expires, Lazarus shows up near the top of Tribune Co., one of the companies that stands to benefit most from the FCC's proposed changes -- changes that Lazarus worked to put back on the table while he was still at the FCC.

What a coincidence.

Lazarus' new job may help explain why Chairman Genachowski seems so determined to buck not just President Obama (who opposed these exact same rules when the Republicans pushed them) but more than 60 members of Congress, the federal courts, every major civil rights organization and 99 percent of the public.

Or maybe it's all just one big fluke, and Lazarus is just another regulator cashing in at a company he was once supposed to regulate.

And that's how official Washington is sure to treat this news -- with a shrug.

Lazarus isn't the first to tread this path. Former FCC Commissioner Meredith Atwell Baker quit her job at the agency to become a Comcast-NBC lobbyist -- right after voting to approve the mega-merger that united those companies. Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell is now the cable industry's top lobbyist.

Other top advisers to the current FCC chairman now work for the National Association of Broadcasters, Google and Microsoft. It's rumored that both Genachowski and his Republican colleague, Commissioner Robert McDowell, are actively looking for their next gigs.

All of this is business as usual at the FCC -- and that's the problem. The corruption at the agency is so entrenched that selling out is the new normal. Too many people go to work for the FCC with the expectation of cashing in on their public service. The few who don't -- like former commissioners Michael Copps and Gloria Tristani -- are the exceptions.

You can't just blame the companies: They hire insiders like Lazarus because it gets results -- for them. But the deep-seated industry capture at places like the FCC is the biggest obstacle to making policies that would actually benefit the public.

That's why we need to start treating the hiring of people like Lazarus as the scandal it is. Until we slow the revolving door between government and industry, the public will always be left out in the cold

Upholding the public's right to know about government policies and actions and their underlying reasons is critical to democracy. And it is strongly tied to the right of journalists to do their job without risking government reprisal (such as the U.S. Justice Department's transgression against The Associated Press) and corporate attempts (such as "ag gag" laws) to muzzle them.

Sharing their experiences and perspectives on these issues will be: Larry Bush, San Francisco political ethics and open-government activist and journalist. Reese Erlich, award-winning journalist and author who chronicles the corporate media's complicity in Washington's saber-rattling. Peter Phillips, president, Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored. Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of the Media Alliance Josh Wolf, freelance videographer/journalist jailed for 226 days for refusing to comply with a federal subpoena for testimony and unedited video footage. And maybe you. Audience participation will be encouraged.

Location:
ILWU 34
801 2nd Street
San Francisco, CA
7:00pm

Sponsored By:
The event is being sponsored by the Labor Video Project, and is endorsed by the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter; the First Amendment Coalition; and MapLight (which tracks political money trails).

An interesting academic free speech case in Washington State now in the Court of Appeals pits tenured faculty free speech rights against employer rights. Here is a detailed summary of the case and what is at stake by the journalism professor who is the main plaintiff.

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WSU J-Professor Predicts U.S. Appeals Court Will Deny Faculty Right to Criticize Administrators

A journalism professor who filed a free-speech lawsuit against four administrators at Washington State University is predicting the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will deny university professors, as employees, the right to criticize administrators and their policies.

“If I am right, it means the balance of power at universities in Washington state and six other western states will be radically altered,” said David Demers, an associate professor of communication in The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at WSU. “The decision will undermine shared governance, a century-old principle in which professors share power with administrators when it comes to making decisions that affect university budgets and programs.”

Demers filed the lawsuit (Demers v. Austin, et al.) in 2010 when he was a tenured professor at WSU. He asserted that administrators associated with the Murrow program punished him in his annual reviews after he submitted a 7-Step Plan to improve the quality of the Murrow program and pledged to donate $100,000 of his own money if the university implemented it. The plan, which recommended a major restructuring of the program including the goal of seeking national accreditation, angered many administrators and faculty.

The four defendants, represented by the Washington state attorney general’s office, argued that tenured faculty like Demers, as employees, do not deserve free-speech protection. The AG’s legal position has unwittingly pitted the Murrow journalism program against two free-speech organizations. The American Association of University Professors and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression wrote a joint amicus curiae brief in support of plaintiff Demers.

“Win or lose, the legal position that faculty do not deserve First Amendment rights forever taints the good name of broadcaster Ed Murrow as well as the College that bears his name,” Demers said. “This could have been avoided if the state attorneys had fought the case on its merits. But administrative bureaucracies don’t always act on principle.”

In June 2011, a U.S. District Court judge in Spokane agreed with the defendants that faculty do not deserve free-speech protection. Judge Robert H. Whaley cited as precedent a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court case, Garcetti v. Ceballos, which held that public employees do not have First Amendment protection for speech connected to their jobs. Public employees only have protection when they speak as private citizens.

The high court left open the door of whether professors, as teachers or researchers, have more free speech protection than other government employees. However, the court did not address the issue of whether professors deserve protection when they speak in their service roles, which often involves criticizing administrators when it comes to making decisions that affect university budgets and programs.

Demers appealed the district court decision, arguing that faculty should not be punished for criticizing administrators.

But in Seattle on November 7, 2012, two of the three appeals court judges who heard oral arguments in the case expressed doubts about whether Demers’ 7-Step Plan was private speech, even though the cover letter identified him as a private citizen.

“I have trouble — speaking only for myself — treating that 7-Step Plan as cleanly private speech,” said William A. Fletcher. “I understand that Dr. Demers sets it up that way. On the other hand, it originates when he is a member of a committee. It's clearly undertaken in tight relationship to his job and the things that he cares about in his job. He is suggesting an important restructuring of two departments. I mean, I have trouble seeing that as purely private speech.”

Demers’ attorney, Judy Endejan of Graham & Dunn of Seattle, disagreed.

“Well, first of all, your honor, the question of whether it is part of his job duties, as this court has said in at least five cases, is a mixed question of fact and law that should be reserved for the trier of fact. In this case, the district court basically accepted all of the evidence that the university put forth and did not consider the evidence that Dr. Demers put forth ... . The 7-Step Plan as one component recommended a splitting of the mass comm[unication] and comm[unication] studies. The rest of it is not covered anywhere by any connection with his work in connection with the structure committee.”

“You know, I disagree with that,” Fletcher responded. “The 7-Step Plan ... is a thoughtful proposition for restructuring how journalism is taught, how the faculty is organized, how money is raised — all of that has to do with running of the institution in a very important way.”

Demers said the issue of shared governance never came up during the hearing.

“I’m not sure whether the judges are aware of the consequences of a ruling which denies professors free-speech protection when they offer alternative plans for structuring a university or when they criticize administrators. Such a decision will have tremendous adverse consequences for the balance of power at universities. No professor will feel secure in criticizing her or his university administrators.”

A ruling from the appeals court is expected in January or February 2013.

See the complete press release and letter from the Human Rights Defense Council below and attached:

********************

PRESS RELEASE

Human Rights Defense Center – For Immediate Release

December 19, 2012

Organizations Urge U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee to Reintroduce Private Prison Information Act

Washington, DC – Yesterday, a joint letter signed by 33 criminal justice, civil rights and public interest organizations was submitted to the office of U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, urging her to reintroduce the Private Prison Information Act.

The Private Prison Information Act (PPIA) would require for-profit prison companies that contract with the federal government to comply with public records requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the same extent as federal agencies. Currently, FOIA does not apply to private companies that contract with the federal government.

“We are deeply troubled by the secrecy with which the private corrections industry presently operates. Whereas the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and state departments of corrections are subject to disclosure statutes under the Freedom of Information Act and state-level public records laws, private prison firms that contract with public agencies generally are not,” the joint letter submitted to Rep. Jackson Lee noted. “This lack of public transparency is indefensible in light of the nearly $8 billion in federal contracts that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group (GEO) – the nation’s two largest private prisons firms – have been awarded since 2007.”

In fact, according to the U.S. Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Electronic Filing System, CCA has lobbied against the PPIA when it was introduced in previous Congressional sessions. Other allies of the private prison industry, including the Reason Foundation – which receives funding from CCA and GEO – have also opposed extending FOIA to private prison contractors.

Both CCA and the GEO Group receive over 40 percent of their revenue from federal contracts, which “makes them the perfect candidates for FOIA compliance” because “The private prison industry is fundamentally different in that no citizen can freely purchase incarceration services as a private individual. There is no natural market for incarceration services; the entire market would cease to exist without direct government intervention in the form of taxpayer-funded contracts to operate correctional facilities.”

The joint letter submitted to Rep. Jackson Lee was a cooperative project between UC Berkeley doctoral student Christopher Petrella and the Human Rights Defense Center. Signatories include the ACLU National Prison Project, Florida Justice Institute, In the Public Interest, Justice Policy Institute, National CURE, Prison Policy Initiative, Southern Center for Human Rights, Southern Poverty Law Center, Texas Civil Rights Project, Enlace and YouthBuild USA.

“The private prison industry operates in secrecy while being funded almost entirely with public taxpayer money,” noted Human Rights Defense Center associate director Alex Friedmann, who testified in support of the PPIA before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security in June 2008. “The public has a right to know how its money is being spent, and transparency and accountability demand that private prison corporations answer to the public by being subject to FOIA requests to the same extent as federal agencies. If they have nothing to hide from the public, they should not object – but they do, which speaks volumes.”

“Obligating private prison companies to comply with FOIA requirements applies a single standard for transparency in corrections reporting regardless of agency type,” added Christopher Petrella. “And because efforts to privatize federal detention facilities are on the rise – populations held in privately-operated facilities have grown by nearly 20 percent over the past year – the time is right to demand meaningful accountability in the private corrections industry.”

A copy of the joint letter to Rep. Jackson Lee is attached.
________________________
The Human Rights Defense Center. HRDC, founded in 1990 and based in Brattleboro, Vermont, is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting human rights in U.S. detention facilities. HRDC publishes Prison Legal News (PLN), a monthly magazine that includes reports, reviews and analysis of court rulings and news related to prisoners’ rights and criminal justice issues. PLN has almost 7,000 subscribers nationwide and operates a website www.prisonlegalnews.org) that includes a comprehensive database of prison and jail-related articles, news reports, court rulings, verdicts, settlements and related documents.

Christopher Petrella is a doctoral candidate in African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley where he is currently working on a manuscript entitled “Race, Markets, and the Rise of the Private Prison State.” His work on the private corrections industry has been cited by a number of national organizations and campaigns including Prison Legal News, the ACLU’s National Prison Project, Southern Poverty Law Center, Justice Policy Institute, Prison Policy Initiative, National Prison Divestment Campaign, and the Real Cost of Prisons. He’s also a frequent contributor to Truthout, Business Insider and Nation of Change.

For further information, please contact: Alex Friedmann, Associate Director
Human Rights Defense Center (615) 495-6568 afriedmann@prisonlegalnews.org
Christopher Petrella (860) 874-2990 christopherfrancispetrella@gmail.com

Human Rights Defense Center
DEDICATED TO PROTECTING HUMAN RIGHTS
P.O. Box 2420, West Brattleboro, VT 05303 (802) 257-1342
www.prisonlegalnews.org • www.humanrightsdefensecenter.org

***********

December 18, 2012

The Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee
U.S. House of Representatives
2160 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515

Re: Private Prison Information Act

Dear Representative Jackson Lee:

We, the undersigned not-for-profit criminal justice and public interest organizations, respectfully urge you to reintroduce the Private Prison Information Act (PPIA) during the 113th Congress. The bill, which would extend Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reporting obligations to private corrections companies that contract with federal agencies, is a critical first step in bringing transparency and accountability to the private prison industry.

We are deeply troubled by the secrecy with which the private corrections industry presently operates. Whereas the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and state departments of corrections are subject to disclosure statutes under the Freedom of Information Act and state-level public records laws, private prison firms that contract with public agencies generally are not. This lack of public transparency is indefensible in light of the nearly $8 billion in federal contracts that Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group (GEO)—the nation’s two largest private prisons firms—have been awarded since 2007.

If private prison companies like CCA and GEO would like to continue to enjoy taxpayer-funded federal contracts, then they should be required to adhere to disclosure laws equivalent to those governing their public counterparts—including FOIA.

Though five separate iterations of the Private Prison Information Act have been introduced in Congress since 2005, each bill has died as a result of vigorous lobbying efforts on behalf of the private corrections industry. According to documentation maintained by the U.S. Senate’s Lobbying Disclosure Electronic Filing System, Corrections Corporation of America has spent over $7 million lobbying against the passage of various Private Prison Information Acts since 2005. They claim that the bill violates their “trade secret” FOIA exemption.
But why should private prison contractors, which are paid exclusively with taxpayer funds, be any less accountable to taxpayers than public corrections agencies such as the Bureau of Prisons? We contend that because the private prison industry relies entirely on taxpayer support, the public has a right to access information pertaining to its operations.

There is little evidence that taxpayers currently have access to the type of information that would allow them to evaluate the performance of private corrections firms in comparison to the public sector. Though the private prison industry routinely cites its record on measures of efficiency and safety relative to public agencies, it nonetheless refuses to disclose the very information required to substantiate its most basic claims of success.

Disclosure statutes providing the public with access to information pertaining to the operations of private prisons is vital if reasonable comparisons are to be made between the private and public sectors.

The time to reintroduce and pass this bill is now. Privately-operated federal facilities have grown 600 percent faster than state-level contract facilities since 2010, and now represent the single most quickly-growing corrections sector. Moreover, business from federal customers like the Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement now accounts for a greater percentage of revenue among private prison companies than ever before.

In the past, critics of the Private Prison Information Act have argued that its passage would set a “dangerous precedent” for FOIA overreach. In his 2007 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Mike Flynn, the Director of Government Affairs for the Reason Foundation, testified that applying FOIA to private prison companies could open the “floodgates” to any other federal contractor and, by extension, their contractors and suppliers. “Thousands of individuals, small and large businesses, provide services to the government and products to the government at great efficiency for the taxpayers [and] all of that could be opened up to the FOIA process,” he claimed. He did not mention that Reason Foundation receives funding from private prison companies, including CCA and GEO.

We squarely reject these unfounded assumptions. The Private Prison Information Act should be applied narrowly and judiciously. It is unlikely that the Private Prison Information Act, if enacted, would unwittingly extend FOIA provisions to other private companies because private prison firms hold an exceptional market position relative to other private companies. To our knowledge, no other type of private industry is contracted by the public sector solely to perform an essential governmental function such as incarceration.

That private corrections firms are supported exclusively by public agencies and enjoy the benefits of operating within an artificial government contract-driven market makes them the perfect candidates for FOIA compliance. In most economic sectors there is a free market analogue for many kinds of services that governments typically provide. A field such as education, for example, has a robust market of existing non-profit and for-profit organizations and agencies willing to sell/provide services to a market of potential buyers that includes both individuals and governments.

This is not the case with private corrections firms.

The private prison industry is fundamentally different in that no citizen can freely purchase incarceration services as a private individual. There is no natural market for incarceration services; the entire market would cease to exist without direct government intervention in the form of taxpayer-funded contracts to operate correctional facilities.

We, the undersigned, argue that because private prison firms are ultimately functionaries of the state, they must come under the same FOIA requirements as their public counterparts. We therefore urge you to reintroduce the Private Prison Information Act this Congressional session and are willing to support your efforts. Should you have questions or require additional information, please feel free to contact either Christopher Petrella at 860-341-1684 or cpetrella@post.harvard.edu, or Human Rights Defense Center associate director Alex Friedmann at 615-495-6568 or afriedmann@prisonlegalnews.org.

Respectfully,

ACLU National Prison Project
Center for Media Justice
Center for Prison Education
Enlace
FedCURE
Florida Justice Institute
Florida Reentry Resources & Information (FreeRein)
Grassroots Leadership
Human Rights Defense Center
In the Public Interest
Justice Policy Institute
Justice Strategies
Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition
Media Alliance
National CURE
National Immigrant Justice Center
Partnership for Safety and Justice
Prison Policy Initiative
Private Corrections Institute
Private Corrections Working Group
Southern Center for Human Rights
Southern Poverty Law Center
Texas Civil Rights Project
Texas Jail Project
The Center for Church and Prison
The Fortune Society (David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy)
The Real Cost of Prisons Project
The Sentencing Project
The Workplace Project/Centro de Derechos Laborales
Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform
Voters Legislative Transparency Project
YouthBuild USA, Inc.

A blog from MA board member Samantha Calamari on education, the internet, what we are gaining and what are we losing?

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The Quality of Massive Open Online Education: How Free is It?

The Movement to MOOCs
The manner in which we seek and receive information is transforming at a rapid rate. So fast, in fact, we can’t even see it change before our eyes. Since I last wrote back in early 2011, the concept of oneline is becoming more mainstream across educational institutions and content providers. Access and cost were key factors in bridging the divide to those who, because of economic status, lacked resources such as equipment and internet connectivity. In that moment, schools were exploring ways to offer their students more efficient means of accessing course work. Now, a mere 22 months later, the focus on an internal student body has shifted to a global student body.

Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs are the latest wave in the online education “tsunami” and they might just be the biggest wave of all. Not just because of its size but because of its ripples. The idea behind MOOCs is to provide free online courses from accredited universities and colleges to anyone, anywhere. The subject matter can range from Computational Investing (Georgia Institute for Technology) to Introduction to Guitar (Berklee College of Music). The course can be asynchronous (not time or place dependent) or synchronous (specific time and place dependent). They can be self-paced or run for the equivalency of a college semester.

So far in this movement, three main platforms have led in the delivery. There is Edx which host courses from Harvard, MIT, University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Texas system, Udacity which works with individual professors to build out their online courses, and Coursera, the largest reaching of all the three, with 33 institutional partners and over 206 courses offered. Since Coursera’s beginnings in April 2012 (a mere 8 months from the time of writing this article), they claim to have reached an audience of 1.3 million students. That number grows in the hundreds and thousands every day.

Endless Positives for the Potential Student
When presented with the availability of free classes from some of the worlds’ most prestigious universities, the benefits can seem endless. First off, there is the cost or lack thereof. The claim across the MOOC world is that the “open” part of Massive Open Online Courses means that no monies are exchanged between the students and the platform or institution. So free really does mean free.

Secondly, students can access the content anytime from anywhere. While there are still issues around the “digital divide” (67.9 million people do not have internet access according to Harrison Weber’s “Our Digital Divide: Not everyone is as lucky as you to be reading this article”, The New Web, July 23, 2012) as discussed in my previous article, there is no argument that the internet is widely available and the global population is connected. But now the conversation has shifted to not who has access but where and when there is access. In the case of MOOCs, the freedom of accessing information when and where it is convenient for an entire population is making the accessibility a reality.

In addition to these two basic advantages, MOOC students will have career development opportunities they may not otherwise have. One can not only take a course to increase their skill base (or simply for personal growth and interest) but some platforms are beginning to explore “opt-in” options which connects students to potential employers. Because this is a new model, the impact has yet to be felt but if a course directly links the students with employers, the need for the other middle man (aka higher education) becomes moot.

Furthermore, students will have access to courses at global universities with direct links to professors and fellow classmates with whom they would not otherwise have connections. The expansion of this educational community suddenly becomes vast. Imagine the potential of global networks, think tanks and general peer building once this snowball starts rolling.

MOOCs Glass Ceiling
As we rattle off the list of MOOCs’ potential positives, we begin to run up against their limitations. In a venture that is so new and uncharted, there are many layers that have yet to be uncovered or explored at all. The first is the confines of a delivery platform for a mass audience. A major challenge that MOOCs pose is not just how information is fed to a student but how the student interacts with that information and then assessed on their comprehension of that information. In other words, how do you grade a class of 20,000 people? Currently, there are various experiments around peer assessment and autograding models but thus far, it remains a quagmire in the world of assessing the masses.

Another mind-bending obstacle is replicating in-class academic rigor in an online space. How can you capture a dynamic lecture or an unpredictable lab experiment or simply the happy accidents in the confines of a short online video offering? The answer is is that you can’t. There is no way to capture the magic of what happens in a classroom. But as educators are exploring creative alternatives to how to offer content, they are creating new norms in how we interact with this online world and with it, new magic and happy accidents are discovered.

We are all skeptical when we hear the word “free”. Could it really be? What’s the catch? In the online world, there are many catches, loopholes and scams. We all feel vulnerable when it comes to online identity and exposure. In the case of MOOCs, the course information in the form of lectures, quizzes, readings (some books are required for purchase) is actually free of cost (not time, perhaps the next commodity frontier)…for the student. The course is not free for the institutions who produce it. Additional institutional resources and funding is required to develop and design a comprehensive course offering, digging into the pockets of schools whose wallets may already be tapped.

Furthermore, we must also consider the impact on the institutions that offer the courses which students may now take through a MOOC. This may not decrease the student population (and tuition) at private higher-educational universities per say but public community colleges may see a drastic dip in enrollment in courses that are similar to those offered online for free. There are still many issues around accreditation that need to be addressed but once they are, the infrastructure of community colleges may be at risk. For example, if you are a single mom of two taking nursing classes online, are you more likely to take a basic 101 course online for free or for a price?

The Evolving Landscape
The possibilities and obstacles raised above are mostly hypothetical because of MOOCs’ unpredictable nature in this their infantile moments. Some in education welcome and embrace the potential that MOOCs offer and relish the future they could bring to our online learning environments. Others are skeptical and fearful as to what this new movement’s effect could be. The impact on the quality of education and the institutions who provide it is completely unknown in this moment and that is scary. I think both sides’ perspectives are right on. However, because we are at a “we do know what we don’t know” crossroads, the best (and really only) thing to do is jump in feet first and hope there is a Swimming 101 MOOC out there for us to take.

*****


Samantha Calamari is a video producer, curriculum/course designer, and DJ. She currently works at Brown University in Providence, RI as an Instructional Technologists and is assisting in the development of Brown’s first MOOCs.

From a Gawker,com Blog Entry by Barry Pechetsky

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Alex Myers is an Australian exchange student currently studying journalism at SUNY Oswego, part of New York's state university system. Last month he was given a class assignment to produce a profile on a public figure. He chose Oswego men's hockey coach Ed Gosek and began in the standard manner: he reached out to Gosek's colleagues in the sport.

Here's the email he sent to three coaches at other schools:

My name is Alex Myers, I work for the Office of Public Affairs at SUNY Oswego.
I am currently writing a profile on Oswego State Hockey head coach Ed Gosek and was hoping to get a rival coaches view on Mr Gosek.

If you have time would you mind answering the following questions.

1. How do you find Mr Gosek to coach against?
2. Have you had any interactions with Mr Gosek off the ice? If so how did you find him?
3. What is your rivalry like between your school and Oswego State?

Be as forthcoming as you like, what you say about Mr Gosek does not have to be positive.

Thank you, Alex Myers.

One recipient, Cornell head coach Mike Schafer, wrote back within the hour:

My interactions with ed gosek have all been off ice as we are div 1. He is one of the best guys in college hockey. Your last line of saying your comments don't need to be positive is offensive. Mike schafer

Myers quickly responded, apologizing for any offense caused by his last line. "I was simply letting you know that this piece I am writing is not a 'puff' piece about Mr Gosek," he told Schafer. While clumsily handled, this is good! We don't want our journalism students succumbing to the temptations of the rote love letter profile. Those are easier to report, easier to write, and mind-numbingly boring. Not that anyone should set out to "get" a Division III hockey coach, but it's fine to let potential interviewees know they shouldn't be afraid to go negative.

The next day, Myers was suspended indefinitely, pending a judicial hearing. Nonprofit civil liberties group The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has all the documents, and they're infuriating. In a letter from Oswego President Deborah Stanley, Myers was told he would have to remove all of his belongings from his dorm and move out by the next day. He was not to enter the campus or any of its buildings, or he would be subject to arrest. The university police were copied on the letter.

Myers was charged with two counts. The first, a general charge encompassing "dishonesty," stemmed from Myers identifying himself as an employee of the Office of Public Affairs, where he was interning, even though that job had nothing to do with the class assignment. No question, he fucked up there.

The second charge is unfathomable. The university cites the section of its code of conduct that covers "harassment, intimidation, stalking, domestic violence, or creating a hostile environment through discrimination or bias toward any individual or group." Most chilling, the section also covers "invasion of privacy." For doing research for a profile of a public figure. I know college kids like to call any authority figures "fascist," but man, Oswego, you're not exactly making your university a place where ideas can be exchanged freely.

This one has a happy(?) ending. After FIRE got involved, Oswego dropped the harassment charge. And at a disciplinary hearing last week, Myers was spared a suspension. Instead he has to write a story for the school newspaper and/or his journalism class "sharing what he has learned from this experience," and write letters of apology to Gosek and the coaches he contacted. He's doing it, because he wants this all to go away, and because you just can't fight Big Academia.

A video clip from Democracy Now with David Rohde telling the story of the two New York's - and how the one never featured in the mainstream media is coping - and not coping - with the catastrophe.

This paper from the Orissa State Volunteers and Social Workers Association' (OSVSWA) talks about conditions in rural India and the sore need for community news coverage.

If you'd like to find out more or support their work, here is their website.
http://www.osvswa.org/

(From the intro - report is attached below)

What we found here in working in rural part of Orissa State in India since last 3 decades through our various community governance and development interventions is that the democratic ideals are often only just that in rural India, because of low literacy, lack of standards among rural news media and lack of rural coverage by urban media.

Concerning to community journalism, appropriate capacity of the different stakeholders at community level is required to mitigate the problems. Currently the media is far from the rural communities to capture, cover and disseminate the issues and problems of rural communities. In Indian context, media is becoming more capital intensive and market oriented, which creates the space for capitalists and moneyed persons to own and control media. As a result, media is the puppet in the hands of influential groups and meets the dimension of interests of the elite and privileged groups. As the media is in the hands of the powerful persons and serves their interest, it is difficult to create a space for community needs and ground realities and amplifying voices against the injustice and vested interests. If so, in some cases, it might be difficult to survive. Money has a critical role in determining the dissemination of news which ignores the serving of real and fact based news. Given the context, serious news related to community issues finds no due space to be inserted. Drawing the conclusion, enabling factors are completely lacking for which the mission of community journalism has failed to grow at very basic level. The factors analyzed above have not created an appropriate environment for facilitation of journalism as a profession in real sense, and the professionalism in the sector has not grown satisfactory in Orissa / India. On the other hand, the journalism has been and to a large extent seems as a means to achieve political clout / to be a fixer in the ponder circle / to get social status. With ambit of such intention and attitude, the community journalism fails in true sense. Finally, the media in the context of India and Orissa are elitist biased.

Based on the practical issue stated above, we consulted with some of the eminent professors of Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issue of University of Kentucky (USA), Journalism and Mass Communication Department of Manipal University (India) and Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of Berhampur University (Orissa) to work collaboratively on a project “Advancing Community Journalism and Promoting Community Journalists in the Rural and Tribal Areas (indigenous) of Orissa, India”.

Jackie Wright, formerly Public Affairs Manager for CW Bay Area and now an independent publicist, wrote an impassioned latter to Bay Area independent media after only the Oakland Tribune covered a speech by former ambassador Andrew Young in Oakland.

Here is the note she sent:

*******************

Dear Journalists,

Thank you for your coverage of Ambassador Andrew Young. Please send me links or clips to your coverage when you complete your story and/or any links to advance stories or mentions.

As you know over 1,000 people gathered in Oakland on Saturday to hear Ambassador Young, who was incredible for his age. After a long day of travel the previous night, meeting with Reverend Jesse Jackson, journalists, and the clergy just before he made his presentation, he was absolutely brilliant especially for a man in his eighties.

Your Independent coverage is very significant in that except for the Oakland Tribune, no other corporate media was present to cover the story. No broadcast TV Stations and no major newspapers in San Francisco.

In light of the impact of corporate media on society as described in Dr. Kang's "Trojan Horses of Race"--that basically says TV news perpetuates and creates prejudice against racial minorities, your reports stand to counter unbalanced reports. If only one side of Oakland is reported---the shootings and negative, be assured we are all robbed of truth and information to make informed decisions.

If you don't read the entire report, at least take a moment to read the first two paragraphs of the synopsis--that includes---

"These implicit biases have been demonstrated to have real-world consequence - in how we interpret actions, perform on exams, interact with others, and even shoot a gun. The first half of this Article imports this remarkable science into the law reviews and sets out a broad intellectual agenda to explore its implications.....

Troubling is what's on the local news. Sensationalistic crime stories are disproportionately shown: If it bleeds, it leads. Racial minorities are repeatedly featured as violent criminals. Consumption of these images, the social cognition research suggests, exacerbates our implicit biases against racial minorities."

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=627381

If Ambassador Andrew Young's Lecture is overlooked, what else in communities of color considered significant will be considered unimportant.

Women, Asians, Blacks, Latinos in newsrooms can trace their presence in corporate media back to the work of Ambassador Young and the Civil Rights Movement. Although much lip service is given, corporate media do not hold diversity as a priority. Across the nation, we are close to being in a state of condition found in the early 70's. The few reporters/editors of color that remain have a difficult time standing up to the floodgates or racism within the newsroom and without, as they try to do their jobs.

THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR COVERAGE OF THE HISTORIC LECTURE.

Please send me links to any of your story posts as soon as you get a moment.

"Freedom of the Press" is essential to our democracy.

Anything less than fair and balanced free press puts America in chains.

Thanks for your on-going hard work to keep America free.

Best regards,


Jackie Wright
Wright Enterprises
"Yes W.E. Can" since...
Before President Barack Obama
www.wrightnow.biz

A feature article in the East Bay Express alternative newsweekly on a proposed sit/lie ordinance in the City of Berkeley has aroused the ire of low-income advocates. 

The long free-form op-ed by music/cultural writer Rachel Swan was titled "Unfounded Fears: Why the controversy over a Berkeley measure that would would ban sitting on sidewalks is overblown".

Homeless advocates point to the extensive quotations from John Caner, CEO of the Berkeley Downtown Association, the portrayal of homelessness as a recreational activity pursued by choice by "crazy" people, and the lack of contextualization including economic framing of the increased poverty and desperation in America over the past few years and references to the track records of similar ordinances in 2 CA beach towns, Santa Monica and Santa Cruz rather then the ordinance recently passed across the Bay in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, which is generally acknowledged to have been ineffective.

The piece also provides some questionable quotes without verification of the contents including a quote from Dr. Davida Coady of Options Recovery arguing that the City of Berkeley has the resources, and the largesse, to assist each homeless resident, an assertion somewhat belied by the fact that the city has no shelter facilities open during the day at all whatsoever.

 Here's the link to the article. Comments follow. 

Rehman Malik strikes again

ISLAMABAD, Sept 21: The violence on Friday kept the nation spellbound and hooked to their television sets but despite the rampage it was a very quiet day for many.

The reason for this was the blocked phone service. Cellphones had fallen silent across Pakistan on early Friday morning cutting off nearly half of the 100 million users from the world at the behest of the interior ministry.

Even angrier than the inconvenienced citizens were the telecom industry leaders – they claimed that the blockade across 15 cities caused a loss of over Rs450 million, as the duration of the blockade was longer than last time.

This is not the first time that cellphones services have been shut off to prevent mischief, terrorist activities and violence. On ‘Chaand Raat’ before Eidul Fitr and in Quetta on Aug 14, the ministry of interior under Rehman Malik had ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to impose a similar blockade. The problems it posed for the ordinary people on Friday were no less than on other occasions.

Dr Farhana Niazi, a physician working at a leading private hospital, was on her way back home when she got caught in the middle of a small mob. Scared she pulled out her phone to call home for help but to no avail.

The 29 years old had a frightening 10 minutes till she managed to escape unhurt.

Similarly, Ghazala Saleem, a software engineer by profession, waited in her office for her father to pick her up.

“He called from home to say he was on his way but he got stuck enroute till six in the evening,” she said. Ms Saleem and her family had no idea where her father was for four hours. “My ailing mother fainted from all the worry and fear,” she added.

Countless such stories were the order of the day across the country.

But the anger in the telecom industry was no less.

“Closing down the mobile phone services is becoming an ‘extortion’ tactic of the federal government. It also shows their lack of regard for international investors and multinational companies,” asserted a senior executive vice president of a mobile phone company. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

His words were echoed by others.

“The government left over 50 million subscribers in trouble while the estimated financial loss is over Rs450 million,” said a senior official of a mobile phone company.

He added that around 100 million active users of mobile phone companies are using the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) network across Pakistan.“ Half of these mobile users are urban; and on Friday even some rural areas were denied the service till the evening,” he said.

Even essential services suffered because of the blockade. Doctors were out of touch with hospitals on a day that expected to see more than the usual medical emergencies.

“A number of senior physicians could not be consulted on the phone and a few surgical procedures had to be delayed,” one medical officer at the Pims hospital told Dawn.

Another sector badly hit by the closure was security firms.

Major (retd) Sheryar Khan, a senior official of a private security company, told Dawn that “most of our private guards deployed at residences in different parts of city are connected through mobile phones and we found it difficult to manage routine duties and tasks.”According to the data shared by an official of a national mobile phone company the mobile phone services were down in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawlapindi, Peshawar, Faisalabad, Multan, Quetta, and a number of cities in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, along the Grand Trunk Road. “We started shutting down the service early Friday morning since the entire exercise takes time and it’s easier to do it at night when the phone traffic is less,” a network supervisor of one company told Dawn.

Industry insiders fear that the damage is not limited to the duration of the blockade as the frequent use of this tactic will in the long run impact profits; morale; and investor confidence.

“We are planning to approach the Chief Justice of Pakistan over the high-handedness of the federal government,” said an official of a multinational mobile company.

An industry analyst said that telecom sector’s contribution to Pakistan’s GDP declined in the financial year 2010-11 due to a drop in profits and that such measures would hit it further.

“Eventually, the government will be affected as investors will be less enthusiastic about the upcoming 3G licences auction,” he said.

What has angered the citizens and telecom officials more is that the measure did not help control the mayhem on Friday. The violence still went out of control at a number of spots in different cities.

This is why security operatives are no less disgusted with the interior ministry than the telecom officials.

One security agency official told Dawn: “Our job also became more troublesome. We could not get in touch with each other except those of us who were on wireless communication.”

He then narrated a story from Oct 12, 1999, when the military coup happened.

“The 111 Brigade had taken over the national telecommunication grid and we were considering jamming the cellphone communication also.”

But he added that the military leadership immediately realised that this would be a mistake because the officers were using mobile phones to communicate with each other as federal government installations were being secured.

“Shutting down the mobile phone service means that you are shutting your own eyes and ears. Communication is the backbone of swift intelligence operations in such crisis and rioting,” the official said.

But the question then remains – who is allowing Interior Minister Rehman Malik to get away with the same mistake again and again?

Pretty rare that we post Fox News clips on the MA site, but here is a great story from Houston on Pacifica Radio's Prison Show that has been airing in Houston Texas for 32 years.

The ever-imperiled public broadcasting subsidies that are constantly under attack are the subject of this report in Current Magazine, which summarizes an independent report commissioned by the CPB which predicts the collapse of the public broadcasting system if federal grants are significantly reduced or eliminated. What do you think?



*****

CPB’s financial analysis on alternative funding sources for public broadcasting, prepared by consultants at Booz & Co. and delivered to Congress in June, has had little impact on lawmakers’ views about continuation of CPB’s annual federal appropriation to date, CPB staff reported during a Sept. 10 board meeting in Washington, D.C.

In the report, analysts for Booz examined a range of options for replacing CPB’s federal aid — from selling commercial advertising to tapping spectrum auction proceeds or selling pay-channel subscriptions, among others. They concluded that withdrawal of federal aid would have a “cascading debilitating effect,” starting first with stations serving rural areas and ultimately leading to collapse of the public broadcasting system.

The dire predictions haven’t made much difference in swaying lawmakers on Capitol Hill, CPB’s government affairs staff reported to the board. “I think it’s fair to say that in the past two-and-a-half months there’s been a little change in the conversation regarding funding for public broadcasting, and the idea of commercials,” said Michael Levy, CPB executive vice president. CPB staff have been meeting with key Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate appropriations committees to discuss why a purely commercial model for public broadcasting is not a viable option.

The Booz analysis predicted that public TV could earn more revenue from commercial advertising sales than it now does from underwriting, but the switch to ads would prompt a large portion of those who provide private support to the field – individual donors, foundations and underwriters — to withdraw their support, resulting in a net revenue loss.

Lawmakers requested the report in December 2011 when they approved CPB’s fiscal 2014 advance appropriation for $445 million. The 181-page document was prepared by Booz & Co. Levy and Tim Isgitt, CPB senior v.p. of government affairs, noted that members of Congress from both sides of the aisle were impressed with the report’s level of detail and its impartiality regarding the contentious issue.

However, “there’s a continued and pervasive feeling on the Hill that public broadcasting needs to go on its own,” Isgitt said, noting that some Republican staffers have negative opinions embedded so deep that “you’re not going to change their minds.”

CPB President Pat Harrison said that by scrutinizing the alternatives to federal funding in a non-polemical manner, the report has succeeded in changing the tone of the discussion by demonstrating that support of public broadcasting must also come with support for federal funding.

The remaining leaders of public broadcasting’s national organizations — the Association of Public Television Stations, PBS and NPR —also addressed the importance of federal funding at the meeting.

On Capitol Hill, “we’re trying to understand what’s on people’s minds, why they oppose federal funding,” said APTS President Pat Butler. “It’s important that we understand the nature of the opposition, and where we might find common ground. We are beginning to have some converts without making concessions. We have no interest in selling our birthright in the interest of making converts.”

PBS President Paula Kerger said federal dollars are “seed money” for important projects such as the anti-dropout American Graduate. “That isn’t just nice stuff, it’s essential work for laying the foundation for our country’s future,” she said. “If we don’t have an educated citizenry, there’s no hope for future competitiveness in the global marketplace.”

And Gary Knell, NPR president, criticized language in the House Labor, Health and Human Services subcommittee bill that would prohibit pubradio stations from using federal money in fiscal 2013 “to pay dues to, acquire programs from, or otherwise support National Public Radio.”

“Congress is saying basically, we’re going to micromanage how local radio stations choose the programs they air,” Knell said. “Marketplace and the BBC are okay for federal funding but not Morning Edition and All Things Considered. That’s patently ridiculous, and we should call it what it is.”

The CPB Board later unanimously approved a resolution to “strongly affirm the important and irreplaceable role that federal funding plays in allowing public radio and television stations to help their communities thrive through the provision of a wide variety of high quality content and essential community services. ”

First they came for the Simpsons and now they want SpongeBob Squarepants. The Ukraine is considering a move to censor several children's shows after a new study from a conservative commission labeled the shows "a real threat" to the country's youth.

The Ukraine's National Expert Commission for Protecting Public Morality released the report, which attacks several U.S. and international programs as detrimental to the country.

Psychologist Irina Medvédeva is quoted in the study, alleging that children aged 3 to 5 years old, "pull faces and make jokes in front of adults they don't know, laugh out loud and repeat nonsense phrases in a brazen manner," after viewing the shows.

The Ukrainian paper Ukraínskaya Pravda reported on Thursday that some of the shows under fire include "Family Guy," "Futurama," "Pokemon," "The Simpsons" and "Teletubbies," which the report says are, "projects aimed at the destruction of the family, and the promotion of drugs and other vices."

The Wall Street Journal reported that the study results first appeared on "fringe Catholic website Family Under the Protection of the Holy Virgin."

While the accusations sound a bit silly, a 2011 study by a University of Virginia professor claimed that watching just nine minutes of SpongeBob could adversely affect the attention span and learning abilities of 4-year-olds.

The Ukrainian commission had previously attempted to ban other shows, including "The Simpsons."

Some of the accusations leveled against the programming in the study:
SpongeBob Squarepants: "gay"
Teletubbies: "Deliberately aims to create subnormal (men), who spend all day in front of the television with their mouths open swallowing all types of information," and promotes the "psychology of losers."
Shrek: "containing sadism"
South Park: "reincarnation propaganda"
Japanese Anime: "A clear example of sexist propaganda"
The study concluded that the programming represents "a large-scale experiment on Ukrainian children" to "create criminals and perverts."

From a press release issued by the National Hispanic Media Coalition:

"A pilot study released by the National Hispanic Media Coalition ("NHMC") and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center ("CSRC") found that listeners subjected to hate speech targeting vulnerable groups experienced an increase in the production of a stress-related hormone that could, over time, have a significant negative impact on the listener's health. Findings suggest that increased production of this hormone occurs regardless of listeners' race, ethnicity, nativity, or ideological alignment with the speaker, suggesting that hate speech may harm not only its targets, but all that hear it as well.

For the study, "Using Biological Markers To Measure Stress In Listeners Of Commercial Talk Radio," researchers collected readings of various biological data (known as "biomarkers") from live subjects before and after they listened to a 23-minute segment of The Savage Nation, a nationally-syndicated commercial talk radio show hosted by Michael Savage. The segment was chosen due to the prevalence of hate speech targeting vulnerable groups in the clip. After analyzing changes in the biomarkers, researchers observed a statistically significant correlation between changes in clinical anxiety and the production of salivary cortisol, a hormone that when chronically elevated could potentially influence the onset or development of pathophysiological processes or diseases such as cancer or chronic inflammatory diseases. The report recommends further research with a larger sample size and a control group.

"The findings that we release today reinforce something that we have known all along - that hate speech can be harmful to the people that listen to it. While the impact of hate speech against targeted groups, such as Latinos, has always been easy to imagine, this study demonstrates that the harm is not isolated to targeted groups and that it could, in fact, even harm the physical health of those that are ideologically aligned with the haters. For years people have told us to just turn the channel if we don't like what we're hearing, but today we are reminded why that measure is wholly inadequate," said Alex Nogales, NHMC's President & CEO.

The study was conducted by researchers at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center with support from the National Hispanic Media Coalition through a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation"

Nine Nobel Peace Laureates including Archbishop Tutu, Rigoberta Menchu, Jody Williams and Oscar Arias Sanchez objected to NBC's "Stars Earn Stripes" celebrity war games.

In a reak-life reality-bites-back moment, the peace prize winners joined the growing uproar (groups like Peace Action West have already initiated on-line petitions) in saying the show glorifies war and armed violence and promotes
"war-o-tainment".

You can sign a petition here: http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6405

A deconstruction of the myths floated in AT&T's happy rural America commercial by the Center for Rural Strategies Edyael Casperalta in a guest blog for Albuquerque's Media Literacy Project. Very worth reading!

*****


This AT&T commercial opens with a wide shot of uninhabited, undeveloped, and empty green fields divided by a freeway of large moving trucks and cars. “This is Genco Services, McAllen, Texas” states the narrator, as his voice continues on we move into a shot of a single Longhorn steer. As someone who was raised in this very area of the country, this commercial literally made me laugh. I have never seen a Longhorn in McAllen. McAllen, located in southern Texas just north of the US-Mexico border, is intensely urban with constant border crossings by individuals seeking its international destination-shopping stores. As a result of so much activity, McAllen appears much larger than the 130,000 or so that live there every day, and is definitely much larger than this commercial would let us know.

The techniques of persuasion at play in this commercial include Symbols—the steer and the open spaces all symbolize farm imagery. Those symbols are then juxtaposed with the town name of McAllen—making McAllen appear to be much smaller and less urban than it is in reality. This process is called Card Stacking, leading the viewer to a desired conclusion about McAllen and about rural communities. To be more clear, if the viewer didn’t have any other reference about McAllen, the commercial would embed into their head that this desolate place is actually in “the middle of nowhere” as described by the ad. No buildings insight; no other movement except the Genco Services (GIS) trucks carrying heavy rental equipment facilitated by the implied ubiquitous and omnipotent AT&T network which is “always headed somewhere.” Implicit in this comment is also the technique of persuasion, New—in this case, it is new technology to the rescue of rural communities.

Interestingly, AT&T also utilizes Diversion in this ad. The story is of high tech in rural communities, not for rural communities. The tracking technology is for people who want to know where their things (tank trunks) are that have been sent into the wilderness (plowed ground). Many of us are comfortable with the idea of our shipment having an electronic tag so it does not get lost or waylaid. At one point a worker says that the AT&T digital tag is the “bell on the cat.” Bells on cats let you know where your cat is, but mostly they are a warning system to tell birds to fly to safety. Here, rural is the unknown and potentially dangerous. This technology will provide harbor and let us master rural for our own gain. It is a modern Hansel and Gretel tale, where we can send our loved ones, or beloved objects, into the woods, and they will leave a trail of digital bread crumbs that will get them to their destination and bring them back home safely.

While the commercial does not represent rural as backward, dumb, or mean—which are old and tired stereotypes, there are many untold stories to unpack. AT&T’s careless misrepresentation of McAllen as a remote area seems to be part of the company’s strategy to convince the public that it is in fact interested in rural areas and in closing the digital divide. This message has been in the works for a while. Last year, AT&T asked the Federal Communications Commission to allow it to purchase T-Mobile, a major telecommunications network, and its competitor, for $39 billion. One of the reasons cited for the buy out of its competitor was to “to expand 4G LTE deployment to an additional 46.5 million Americans, including in rural, smaller communities.” Media advocates and public interests groups successfully worked arduously to expose the merger for the media take over it was, and both the Department of Justice and the FCC both denied the proposed transaction establishing it would be against the public interest.

Beyond AT&T, we must deconstruct all the lip service that telecommunications corporations use to get the public’s support – “give us what we want, and we’ll extend service to you.” According to at 2010 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, only half of rural residents have broadband in the home. The figure is even more dismal in Native communities, with less than 10% penetration rate. So, when a renowned telecommunications provider advertises connectivity in remote areas, we are moved to believe. As residents living in remote areas, we want a solution. We need a solution. While we can feel warm and fuzzy with 30 seconds of a supposedly genuine recognition of the challenges in accessing wireless and high-speed Internet services, we must look at these promises critically. What is this commercial really selling us? How are the places and images being manipulated? And while the provider appeals to our needs, why is it trying to stop other options we have as a consumers? Because it is not just about buying out a major competitor, hoarding resources, or hiking up prices, but about how these power companies are actively undermining the efforts of communities to own their telecommunications infrastructure and taking away the power of state entities to regulate them. I imagine that a community-owned, municipal, or local non-profit provider would advertise their wireless, high-tech, high-speed service not as the technology passing through or risking the wilderness, but as essential infrastructure that helps build a community and stays for the long haul.

An incisive look at how anti-piracy proposals threaten computer users privacy and freedom.

San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Adam Hill has been using his elected position to bully advertisers and supporters of CalCoastNews (CCN) in a campaign to cripple the website.

In several instances, Hill’s own emails, obtained by CCN, have led to cancellations of contracts with businesses advertising on the news website. Hill sent emails to advertisers claiming that CCN reporters have committed crimes. That has been followed by a flurry of emails from Hill to county residents asking that they not support CCN advertisers.

“To claim and solicit donations to a phony site with phony stories is a crime,” Hill said in an email to an advertiser that linked the statement to a veterans site. “Those families and fellow veterans we urge all of you to no longer support any advertisers on the calcoastnews.com site, how many other stories are false, fake and imposters.”

CCN editor Bill Loving, a longtime reporter, editor and professor of journalism, defended CCN and its news staff saying that CCN does not pay sources or perpetrate frauds on the public.

“I teach reporting and media law and ethics. I would not be associated with CalCoastNews if it engaged in those practices,” Loving said. “CalCoastNews works to bring stories to people that otherwise would go unreported. It does good work.”

Sites like CalCoastNews are important for the health of democracy, because journalists tell people what they need to know so they can make informed choices, said Loving.

“It is a trust that we hold and I would not be a party to anything that would undermine CalCoastNews’ credibility or rob people of their confidence in the work of journalists,” he said.

Hill’s campaign against CCN began after he claimed to have heard CCN was planning to report on a proposed homeless service center, which his girlfriend would lead. Hill and a supporter threatened CCN reporters that they would get the Tribune to write negative stories about CCN if the website covered homeless services in any way but a positive manner.

Hill’s threats intensified after CCN reported that Hill cut off the microphone of a person speaking at a supervisor meeting because he did not like what she was saying. CCN also reported when Hill made a call to a Pismo Beach resident who had written a letter to the editor. In the call, Hill pretended to be his political opponent in the last county election.

Hill has “found” postings on the internet and forwarded them to recipients around the county, sometimes within minutes of their creation. The postings contain false claims that CCN has paid sources or deceived the public.

Hill sent an email to Loving referring him to a link with one of the posts. Loving sent a reply thanking Hill and letting him know that he would be in contact with the poster in order to hear his evidence of wrongdoing or get an apology for the statement.

“Requests have been put forward to get the identity of this person whose post Mr. Hill is spreading around,” Loving said. “It’s taking a while to reach him because the author of the post doesn’t seem to exist.”

Hill has threatened persons who are affiliated with the news site, warning them that if they continued to promote or contribute content to the site, they would lose jobs and reputations.

Tribune columnist Bill Morem repeated some of the false assertions being spread by Hill in a front-page column discussing a CCN story about a man caught up in new regulations controlling homeless persons.

The man claimed to have been a decorated veteran. CalCoastNews quoted and paraphrased the man’s claims, attributing the words to him, as all journalistic organizations do.

Morem inaccurately claimed that CCN not investigating the man’s veteran status had led to a federal fraud investigation. His only source to the false allegations was a man who claimed to be a decorated veteran named Steven Williams.

Morem said he did not verify his source was a veteran, was injured in combat, or even that the man’s name was Steven Williams. He also failed to call CCN for a comment or check to verify that CCN had not retracted its story as he had stated in his article.

Among those who have received threatening messages from Hill is Dave Congalton, host of a popular daily talk radio show, Home Town Radio,on 920KVEC.

“You need to take responsibility for promoting someone who has no ethics and gets paid to do hit pieces (yes, we have proof of this),” Hill wrote in a May 30 email to Congalton. Hill strongly suggested that Congalton no longer have CCN reporters as guests on his show.

Hill repeatedly warned that he planned to “go after” CCN after the June election.

Voters in the 3rd District handily returned Hill, a former Cal Poly English teacher, to office in June for a second four-year term. Congalton also received an email from Hill that referred to a file on CalCoastNews being kept by county officials.

“Oh, my, my, after the file I just read about your beloved protege (CCN reporter Karen Velie), I think you will be doing more than ‘distancing’ yourself,” Hill wrote. “Probably you’ll have to hold a press conference to apologize to the entire community. Wow.”

CalCoastNews filed a request under the California Public Records Act to get a copy of the alleged “file.” San Luis Obispo County Council Warren Jensen told reporters that the county does not have a file on CalCoastNews or its reporters.

“He (Hill) did say that he may have referred to such a file in an email, but that any such remarks were not intended to be taken literally,” Jensen said in a July 6 email to CalCoastNews.

Several of Hill’s manufactured claims have been repeated by public officials, many of whom have received email from Hill in which he falsely claims CalCoastNews is paid to write untrue stories and then splits the proceeds with sources who agree to lie.

The claims are not true, Loving said. Loving stepped in as editor after the death of George Ramos, who was the site’s first editor.

“George was a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and a well-respected member of the community. Does anyone think that he would condone that sort of behavior,” Loving said. “Does anyone think I would sully his reputation and memory by allowing anything like that to be done on the CalCoastNews site? I do not.

“Mr. Hill is opening a door to a lawsuit from anyone who has been a CalCoastNews source. Saying that someone takes money to lie is a statement that is defamatory. As Mr. Hill appears to be operating through his county position, this could have the county sitting at the defense table at any number of lawsuits,” Loving said.

Loving has taught media law for more than 20 years, was an adjunct at the University of Oklahoma School of Law and is coauthor of a widely used media law textbook that is in its 13th edition.

Oceano Community Services District Board President Matt Guerrero repeated some of Hill’s claims during a board meeting. He publicly retracted his statement two weeks later, but his comment had been repeated dozens of times on public access television as the meeting was rebroadcast.

CalCoastNews’ Karen Velie has asked Hill several times to correct all untrue statements and to stop sending out the libelous emails.

Hill responded with an email: “LOL.”

In February, CCN first started covering the issue of more aggressive ticketing of the homeless.

In April, attorneys Saro Rizzo and Stew Jenkins filed a lawsuit claiming the city’s aggressive homeless ticketing program is unconstitutional. A few weeks ago, a San Luis Obispo County Superior Court judge granted a preliminary injunction barring police from ticketing homeless people who sleep in their vehicles because it appears to be an unconstitutional way of dealing with the homeless. Both Hill, Torres and the city of San Luis Obispo have promoted the aggressive ticketing as an important aspect of the safe parking program.

Torres requires the handful of homeless permitted to utilize the parking program in which they are allowed to live in their cars, to sign over 70 percent of their income to her department, something Torres also requires of most of those who stay for more than a few weeks in the homeless shelter she runs. In addition, homeless services then charges the client $12.50 monthly in administrative fees.

Torres contends her safe parking program is modeled on Santa Barbara’s homeless parking plan, which also requires participants to enroll in case management and that the monies are used to get people into housing.

And while Santa Barbara’s program includes case management, it does not include the requirement to sign over income and subsidy checks, said Nancy Kapp, Santa Barbara’s Homeless Outreach coordinator and case manager.

“These people are living on $1,000 a month and you don’t take money from these people,” Kapp said. “It is highway robbery and wrong. You don’t give something and ask for something, you give it unconditionally.”

In some areas of the state, homeless services require as much as 50 percent of a shelter resident’s income be placed into an account to be used to get into housing, something that generally takes no more than 100 days. Several programs CCN contacted said monies are generally returned within a day of dropping out of the program.

At a San Luis Obispo City Council meeting earlier this year, Torres said it generally takes one to two years for her staff to get someone doling out 70 percent of their income into low-cost housing. Local homeless people contend very few ever get into housing and it can take almost a year to get monies returned.

Several local attorneys contend several of Torres’ programs result in unconstitutional treatment and criminalization of homelessness.

As of June 1, San Luis Obispo homeless services started enforcing a variety of rules for the homeless to follow including agreeing to searches of their persons and vehicles upon demand and not being seen within an eighth of a mile of the Prado Day Center between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m. If a homeless person fails to follow Torres’ rules, she bars them from services such as meals and a place to shower often for months at a time, according to the program’s rules and dozens of citations CCN staff have viewed.

“To deprive someone of public benefits when they are doing something perfectly legal is a violation of due process and cruel and unusual punishment,” San Luis Obispo based attorney Stew Jenkins said.

In an article about the prohibition of services, CCN accurately reported a homeless man had been deprived of services after his bike was spotted on Prado Road, but the man exaggerated his status by claiming he was a decorated veteran with several medals.

CCN issued an update correcting the story after the man admitted he was not a decorated veteran.

After that correction, Hill and the Tribune began making untrue claims that CalCoastNews was under investigation from federal officials for fraud. The Tribune went on to repeat Hill’s false claims that CCN received public donations to pay the man for making his false claim of being a veteran.

Hill has also threatened radio personalities who have hosted CCN’s reporters on their shows with a denial of access to public officials. Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Tony Cippola said Sheriff Ian Parkinson has a policy of not allowing CCN the same access as other local media.

“The sheriff has a policy that says I cannot do phone interviews with CalCoastNews reporters,” Cippola said.

Two years ago, CCN Senior Correspondent Daniel Blackburn was warned by then Public Information Officer Rob Bryn that if Blackburn covered a story reflecting negatively on Ian Parkinson, CCN’s access to information would be limited. At the time, then-CCN editor Ramos told Bryn that he had vetted CCN’s stories and he stood behind them.

Several county agencies, including the San Luis Obispo District Attorney’s office, have refused to provide CCN press releases or interviews following investigative reporting by the news site of questionable acts and omissions within those departments.

California case law has consistently supported the rights of all media to have the same access to government, to prevent public officials from manipulating the media with threats of cutting off information.

At the June 21st Guggenheim Securities Symposium, the CEO of Verizon laid out aggressive plans to move customers off of copper phone lines and into Fios service and not necessarily voluntarily. 

Regulatory schemes like SB 1161 are perfectly designed to allow Verizon to increasingly escape from any regulation at all as they morph from a telecommunications company to an Internet services provider.

Here are some excerpts from his speech. The full transcript is below.

"We have got some work to do in New York and New Jersey there that are frankly pretty backward compared to the rest of those states, so we have got some work to do there. But the vision I have is we are going into the copper plant areas and every place we have FiOS, we are going to kill the copper. We are just going to take it out of service and we are going to move those services onto FiOs. We have got parallel networks in way too many places now, so that is a pot of gold in my view.

And then in other areas that are more rural and more sparsely populated, we've got LTE built that will handle all of those services  and so we are going to cut the copper off there. We are going to do it over wireless. So I am going to be really shrinking the amount of copper we have out there and then I can focus the investment on that to improve the performance of it. So there are lots of opportunities there and FiOS is continuing to do very well so we can grow the top line through FiOS and we can leverage the cost efficiencies on the network side. So margins can improve"

 *****

After 30 years, the killer of Asian American icon Vincent Chin told me in an exclusive interview that the murder known as a hate crime, wasn't about race, nor does he ever even remember hitting Chin with a baseball bat.

Incredible as that sounds, there is one thing Ronald Ebens is clear about.

Ebens, who was convicted of second degree murder but spent no time in prison for the act, is sorry for the beating death of Vincent Chin on June 19, 1982, in Detroit--even though for many Asian Americans, he can't say sorry enough.

For years, Ebens has been allowed to live his life quietly as a free man.

With the arrival of the 30th anniversary this month--and after writing about the case for years--I felt the need to hear Ebens express his sorrow with my own ears, so that I could put the case behind me.

So I called him up. And he talked to me.

On the phone, Ebens, a retired auto worker, said killing Chin was "the only wrong thing I ever done in my life."

Though he received probation and a fine, and never served any time for the murder, Ebens says he's prayed many times for forgiveness over the years. His contrition sounded genuine over the phone.

"It's absolutely true, I'm sorry it happened and if there's any way to undo it, I'd do it," said Ebens, 72. "Nobody feels good about somebody's life being taken, okay? You just never get over it. . .Anybody who hurts somebody else, if you're a human being, you're sorry, you know."

Ebens said he'd take back that night if he could "a thousand times," and that after all these years, he can't put the memory out of his mind. "Are you kidding? It changed my whole life," said Ebens. "It's something you never get rid of. When something like that happens, if you're any kind of a person at all, you never get over it. Never."

Ebens' life has indeed changed. As a consequence of the Chin murder, Ebens said he lost his job, his family, and has scraped by from one low-wage job to the next to make ends meet. Ultimately, he remarried and sought refuge in Nevada, where he's been retired eight years, owns a home and lives paycheck to paycheck on Social Security. His current living situation makes recovery of any part of the millions of dollars awarded to Chin's heirs in civil proceedings highly unlikely.

The civil award, with interest, has grown to around $8 million.

"It was ridiculous then, it's ridiculous now," Ebens said with defiance.

His life hasn't been easy the last 30 years. But at least, he's alive. He watches a lot of TV, he said, like "America's Got Talent."

"They've got good judges," he said.

Sort of like the judges he got in his case?  Like Judge Charles Kaufman, the Michigan judge who sentenced him to probation without notifying Chin's attorneys, virtually assuring Ebens would never serve time for the murder?

Ebens didn't want to comment on that.

For all the time he spends in front of the television, Ebens said he has never seen either of the two documentaries that have been made on the case, and said he made a mistake speaking to one of the filmmakers. Even for this column, Ebens showed his reluctance to be interviewed.

But he finally consented to let me use all his statements because I told him I would be fair. I'm not interested in further demonizing Ronald Ebens. I just wanted to hear how he deals with being the killer of Vincent Chin.

For three decades, the Chin case has been a driving force that has informed the passion among activists for Asian American civil rights. Some still feel there was no justice even after the long legal ordeal that included: 1) the state murder prosecution, where Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, were allowed to plea bargain to second degree murder, given 3 years' probation and fined $3,720; 2) the first federal prosecution on civil rights charges that ended in a 25-year sentence for Ebens; 3) the subsequent appeal by Ebens to the Sixth Circuit, which was granted; 4) the second federal trial that was moved from Detroit to Cincinnati and ended in Ebens' acquittal.

Add it all up, and it seems a far cry from justice. One man dead. Perps go free. I thought that maybe Ebens could help me understand how he got justice and not Vincent Chin.

I asked him about his side of the story, which was a key dispute in the court testimony about how it all started at the Fancy Pants strip club.

"It should never have happened," said Ebens. "[And] it had nothing to do with the auto industry or Asians or anything else. Never did, never will. I could have cared less about that. That's the biggest fallacy of the whole thing."

That night at the club, after some harsh words were exchanged, Ebens said Chin stood up and came around to the other side of the stage. "He sucker-punched me and knocked me off my chair. That's how it started. I didn't even know he was coming," Ebens said.

Chin's friends testified that Ebens made racial remarks, mistaking Chin to be Japanese. And then when Chin got into a shoving match, Ebens threw a chair at him but struck Nitz instead.

But Ebens' version that there was no racial animosity or epithets is actually supported by testimony from Chin's friend, Jimmy Choi, who apologized to Ebens for Chin's behavior that included Chin throwing a chair and injuring Nitz.

What about the baseball bat and how Ebens and Nitz followed Chin to a nearby McDonald's?

Ebens said when all parties were asked to leave the strip club, they were out in the street. It's undisputed that Chin egged Ebens to fight on.

"The first thing he said to me is 'You want to fight some more?'" Ebens recalled. "Five against two is not good odds," said Ebens, who declined to fight.

Then later, when Chin and his friends left,  Ebens' stepson went to get a baseball bat from his car.(Ironically, it was a Jackie Robinson model).  Ebens said he took it away from Nitz because he didn't want anyone taking it from him and using it on them.

But then Ebens said his anger got the best of him and he drove with Nitz to find Chin, finally spotting him at the nearby McDonald's.

"That's how it went down," Ebens said. "If he hadn't sucker punched me in the bar...nothing would have ever happened. They forced the issue. And from there after the anger built up, that's where things went to hell."

Ebens calls it "the gospel truth."

But he says he's cautious speaking now because he doesn't want to be seen as shifting the blame. "I'm as much to blame," he sadly admitted. "I should've been smart enough to just call it a day. After they started to disperse, [it was time to] get in the car and go home."

At the McDonald's where the blow that led to Chin's death actually occurred, Ebens' memory is more selective. To this day, he even wonders about hitting Chin with the bat. "I went over that a hundred, maybe 1,000 times in my mind the last 30 years. It doesn't make sense of any kind that I would swing a bat at his head when my stepson is right behind him. That makes no sense at all."

And then he quickly added, almost wistfully, "I don't know what happened."

Another time in the interview, he admitted his memory may be deficient. "That was really a traumatic thing, " he told me about his testimony. "I hardly remember even being on the stand."

He admitted that everyone had too much to drink that night. But he's not claiming innocence.

"No," Ebens said. "I took my shot in court. I pleaded guilty to what I did, regardless of how it occurred or whatever. A kid died, OK. And I feel bad about it. I still do."

Ebens told me he has Asian friends where he lives, though he didn't indicate if he shares his past with them. When he thinks about Chin, he said no images come to mind.

"It just makes me sick to my stomach, that's all," he said, thinking about all the lives that were wrecked, both Chin's and his own.

By the end of our conversation, Ebens still wasn't sure he wanted me to tell his story. "It will only alienate people," he said. "Why bother? I just want to be left alone and live my life."

But I told him I wouldn't judge. I would just listen, and use his words. I told him it was important in the Asian American community's healing process to hear a little more from him than a one line, "I'm sorry."

He ultimately agreed. One line doesn't adequately explain another human being's feelings and actions. I told him I would paint a fuller picture.

So now that we've heard what Ebens has to say 30 years later. I don't know from a phone conversation if he's telling me the truth. Nor do I know if I'm ready to forgive him. But I heard from him. And now that I have, I can deal with how the justice system failed Vincent Chin, and continue to help in the fight that it never happens again.

The 2012-2013 Northern California press list has 1,110 media contacts at print, broadcast, ethnic, hyperlocal news and alternative outlets. Add a Media How-To Guide for everything you need to do guerilla publicity with limited time and money and get coverage for hard-to-cover stories. 

From the AFP Wire:

Perfume ads, beer billboards, movie posters: everywhere you look, women’s sexualized bodies are on display. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that both men and women see images of sexy women’s bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people.

Sexual objectification has been well studied, but most of the research is about looking at the effects of this objectification. “What’s unclear is, we don’t actually know whether people at a basic level recognize sexualized females or sexualized males as objects,” says Philippe Bernard of Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. Bernard cowrote the new paper with Sarah Gervais, Jill Allen, Sophie Campomizzi, and Olivier Klein.

Psychological research has worked out that our brains see people and objects in different ways. For example, while we’re good at recognizing a whole face, just part of a face is a bit baffling. On the other hand, recognizing part of a chair is just as easy as recognizing a whole chair.

One way that psychologists have found to test whether something is seen as an object is by turning it upside down. Pictures of people present a recognition problem when they’re turned upside down, but pictures of objects don’t have that problem. So Bernard and his colleagues used a test where they presented pictures of men and women in sexualized poses, wearing underwear. Each participant watched the pictures appear one by one on a computer screen. Some of the pictures were right side up and some were upside down. After each picture, there was a second of black screen, then the participant was shown two images. They were supposed to choose the one that matched the one they had just seen.

People recognized right-side-up men better than upside-down men, suggesting that they were seeing the sexualized men as people. But the women in underwear weren’t any harder to recognize when they were upside down—which is consistent with the idea that people see sexy women as objects. There was no difference between male and female participants.

We see sexualized women every day on billboards, buildings, and the sides of buses and this study suggests that we think of these images as if they were objects, not people. “What is motivating this study is to understand to what extent people are perceiving these as human or not,” Bernard says. The next step, he says, is to study how seeing all these images influences how people treat real women.

Coverage from documentry.org:

Lee Storey, an attorney in the area of water rights and a documentary filmmaker, learned today that her documentary film Smile ‘Til It Hurts: The Up With People Story has been considered a for-profit endeavor in the eyes of the US Tax Court. She is therefore forgiven the outstanding amount owed to the IRS from her 2006-2008 Federal tax returns. This ruling sets a precedent for documentary filmmakers to come, hopefully causing future auditors to uphold a standard for upcoming productions and burgeoning filmmakers who find themselves in similar situations.

Back in March, Storey participated in one of IDA’s Doc U educational panels, entitled The Business Side of Documentary Filmmaking. During the panel, Storey detailed her ongoing legal struggles against the IRS' claim that "attorneys cannot also be filmmakers." After working on her film for five years, the IRS stated that her filmmaking was more a "hobby" than a viable means of income. The IRS claimed that she owed them around $300,000 in back income taxes from the three years that she spent making her film.

But as of today, April 19, the United States Tax Court filed its findings of fact and opinion, which clears Storey on all counts. "The primary issue," the judge stated, "is whether [Storey], a law firm partner and full-time attorney, was involved in the trade or business of film production under section 162 during the years at issue. We hold that she was engaged in the trade or business of film production during each of the years at issue and that she was engaged in this business for profit."

Michael C. Donaldson and Christopher L. Perez, the two attorneys from Donaldson + Callif, LLP who filed an amicus brief on Storey's behalf, were delighted with the outcome of the case. "Even if it takes six years, the making of a documentary, in spite of educational and public good, is also a business," said Donaldson. "The win is particularly important because the issue has rarely been addressed by a court in such a direct fashion."

"It's such an important decision," said Perez after the results of the case were announced. "Yes, documentary filmmakers are beneficial to society because their films educate and expose. But so many documentarians rely on their filmmaking to make a living—and they should be treated as such."

This short talks about community/municipal/coop options for high speed internet and wireless communication services from the Institute for Local Self0-Reliance. Their complete report can be found at http://www.ilsr.org/broadband-speed-light/

Religious and ideological websites can carry three times more malware threats than pornography sites, according to research from security firm Symantec. The firm’s annual Internet Security Threat Report also found that threats to mobile devices continue to grow, almost exclusively for Google’s Android mobile OS.

Internet security reports from companies that also sell anti-virus solutions should be taken with a pinch of salt, given the potential of conflict of interest, but Symantec’s authoritative findings are nevertheless interesting.

Symantec found that the average number of security threats on religious sites was around 115, while adult sites only carried around 25 threats per site--a particularly notable discrepancy considering that there are vastly more pornographic sites than religious ones. Also, only 2.4 percent of adult sites were found to be infected with malware, compared to 20 percent of blogs.

Symantec's 2011 List of Most Dangerous Web SitesWhy religious sites you might ask? “We hypothesize that this is because pornographic website owners already make money from the Internet and, as a result, have a vested interest in keeping their sites malware-free--it’s not good for repeat business,” said the report.

Malware on the Increase
Symantec measured an increase of more than 81 percent in malware in 2011 over 2010, while the number of malware variants increased by 41 percent. On the flip side, spam volumes have decreased from 88.5 percent of all email in 2010 to 75.1 percent in 2011--thanks to law enforcement action which shut down the Rustock worldwide botnet that was responsible for sending out large amounts of spam.

Android smartphone users should also be weary of malware, as Symantec says mobile vulnerabilities, almost exclusive to Google’s open mobile OS, increased by more than 93 percent. The report found more than half of all Android threats collect device data or track users’ activities.

A quarter of the mobile threats identified were designed to make money by sending premium SMS messages from infected phones, which could be even more lucrative than stealing your credit card details.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a report on Wednesday that 10 countries stood out as censors for barring international media, putting "dictatorial controls" on domestic media and imposing other restrictions.

The other countries on the list are Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Belarus.

The report by the committee, based in New York, was released to mark World Press Freedom Day on Thursday.

Many of the countries on this year's list also were on the committee's last list, published in 2006.

"In the name of stability or development, these regimes suppress independent reporting, amplify propaganda and use technology to control rather than empower their own citizens," said Joel Simon, the CPJ's executive director.

"Journalists are seen as a threat and often pay a high price for their reporting," he added. "But because the internet and trade have made information global, domestic censorship affects people everywhere."

In making its list, the CPJ said its staff evaluated the countries on 15 benchmarks. They include blocking of websites, restrictions on electronic recording, absence of privately owned or independent media, and restrictions on journalists' movements.

The report said of Eritrea, which is run with an iron hand by President Isaias Afewerki, that "no foreign reporters are granted access ... and all domestic media are controlled by the government."

It said North Korea, Syria and Iran were "three nations where vast restrictions on information have enormous implications for geopolitical and nuclear stability".

North Korea has tested nuclear weapons, Iran is believed to be working to develop them and Syria reportedly has had nuclear ambitions.

North Korea, which topped the 2006 list, "remains an extraordinarily secretive place", the report said. It noted, though, that there had been "some tiny cracks" in its censorship, including the opening of an Associated Press bureau in the capital this year.

It said censorship had "intensified significantly in Syria and Iran in response to political unrest". Syria has banned foreign reporters from the country and limited local reporters from moving freely as it uses its military and police to put down a civilian uprising. Iran, meanwhile, has blocked websites and imprisoned journalists to limit publication and broadcast of information, the report said.

The report gave these reasons for including the other countries:

• In Equatorial Guinea, all media are directly or indirectly controlled by the president.

• Uzbekistan has "no independent press and journalists contributing to foreign outlets are subject to harassment and prosecution".

• In Burma, reforms "have not extended" to rigid censorship laws.

• Saudi Arabia "has tightened restrictions in response to political unrest".

• In Cuba, the Communist party controls all domestic media.

• In Belarus, recent crackdowns have sent "remnants of independent media underground".

In 2006, the top 10 censored countries were North Korea, Burma, Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Eritrea, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria and Belarus.

The ALA list of the top 10 books targeted for removal from schools and libraries is out for 2011. 7 out of the 10 books were written by women.

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
Offensive language; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

2. The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
Nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
Anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence

4. My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
Nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group

6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Nudity; offensive language; religious viewpoint

7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Insensitivity; nudity; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit

8. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
Nudity; offensive language; sexually explicit

9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
Drugs; offensive language; sexually explicit

10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Offensive language; racism

Last week, I spoke at a state Senate hearing against SB 1611, a bill that would eliminate many consumer rights afforded to our state’s most vulnerable citizens.

A sizeable group of advocates opposed the bill, ranging from consumer rights agencies, labor unions, rural networks, and broadband and media advocates. Our comments emphasized the need for Universal Lifeline service and protections for low-income and rural residents whose access to digital networks is already limited.

In support were lobbyists from every major telecommunications company in the state. They argued that further deregulation of the telecom companies is good for business, and therefore good for the consumer.

If I didn’t know better, I might have been convinced by their testimony. They were extremely well dressed, articulate and spoke with such conviction. They convinced the Senate committee they spoke the truth, and the bill moved on. That’s how the game is played.

The problem is it’s a game played on a grossly uneven playing field.
The Los Angeles Times published an excellent article recently about AT&T’s moneyed sway over California politics (“AT&T Donations Flow to California Legislators,” April 22). Shane Goldmacher and Anthony Yor carefully detail the rise of AT&T in California politics:

“It (AT&T) forges relationships on the putting green, in luxury suites and in Capitol hallways. It gives officials free tickets to Lady Gaga concerts. It takes lawmakers on trips around the globe and all-expenses-paid retreats in wine country. It dispenses millions in political donations and employs an army of lobbyists. It has spent more than $14,000 a day on political advocacy since 2005, when it merged with SBC into its current form.

“A handful of labor unions and trade groups have spent more on a combination of lobbying and direct political giving, but state records show that in the last seven years, no single corporation has spent as much trying to influence lawmakers as AT&T. At the same time, a tide of consumer protections has ebbed and the company has been unshackled from the watchful eye of state regulators.”

As to the contention that deregulating powerful telecom companies is good for the consumer: AT&T was the principal force behind the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006, which enacted statewide video franchising. Phone companies such as AT&T and Verizon were allowed to enter the video market without having to negotiate with cities directly. Cities lost an enormous amount of power to negotiate benefits for their municipality and for the Public, Educational and Government access centers therein.

A report published by The Benton Foundation in April 2011 (“Analysis of Recent PEG Access Center Closures, Funding Cutbacks and Related Threats”) details the impact of that legislation on community media centers similar to Davis Media Access.

The study found that more than 100 centers have closed or endured severe cuts. Hundreds more face similar cutbacks or may be forced to cease operations in the near future, and that this has occurred primarily as a result of state franchising laws. The report concluded “Without question, the Cable Act’s goal of advancing the First Amendment through public participation in PEG Access is now in serious danger.”

Years ago when I started working in community media, I would have said my work was about free speech, not consumer rights. Today the two are inextricably linked, and it’s a pitched battle. If you’d like more information, visit our allies at The Utility Reform Network (http://turn.org ). I’ll continue to track and write about similar legislation.

— Autumn Labbé-Renault is executive director for Davis Media Access, an organization providing access to, and advocacy for, local media. She writes this column monthly.

In August 2011, 35 ACLU affiliates filed over 380 public records requests with state and local law enforcement agencies to ask about their policies, procedures and practices for tracking cell phones.

200 law enforcement districts responded and the responses have documented the extent of warrantless location tracking via cell phones and text messages.

Sign a petition to support warrant requirements for cell phone tracking (Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, H.R. 2168 and S.1212)

Take a law enforcement course in how to do cell phone tracking. 

Here is a brief synopsis of the findings:

"The ACLU received over 5,500 pages of documents from over 200 local law enforcement agencies regarding cell phone tracking. The responses show that while cell phone tracking is routine, few agencies consistently obtain warrants. Importantly, however, some agencies do obtain warrants, showing that law enforcement agencies can protect Americans' privacy while also meeting law enforcement needs.

The government responses varied widely, and many agencies did not respond at all. The documents included statements of policy, memos, police requests to cell phone companies (sometimes in the form of a subpoena or warrant), and invoices and manuals from cell phone companies explaining their procedures and prices for turning over the location data.

The overwhelming majority of the over 200 law enforcement agencies that provided documents engaged in at least some cell phone tracking — and many track cell phones quite frequently. Most law enforcement agencies explained that they track cell phones to investigate crimes. Some said they tracked cell phones only in emergencies, for example to locate a missing person. Only 10 said they have never tracked cell phones.

Many law enforcement agencies track cell phones quite frequently. The practice is so common that cell phone companies have manuals for police explaining what data the companies store, how much they charge police to access that data, and what officers need to do to get it.

Most law enforcement agencies do not obtain a warrant to track cell phones, but some do, and the legal standards used vary widely. Some police departments protect privacy by obtaining a warrant based upon probable cause when tracking cell phones. 

Unfortunately, other departments do not always demonstrate probable cause and obtain a warrant when tracking cell phones. 

Police use various methods to track cell phones. Most commonly, law enforcement agencies obtain cell phone records about one person from a cell phone carrier. However, some police departments, like in Gilbert, Ariz., have purchased their own cell phone tracking technology. 

LOS ANGELES (March 26, 2012) -- The nation's dominant provider of radio audience metrics has agreed to settle a consumer protection lawsuit jointly pursued by the State of California and the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco over a listenership measurement scheme said to discriminate against radio stations with predominantly African American and Hispanic audiences.  California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen A. Trutanich and San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera alleged that Arbitron Inc.'s implementation of "Portable People Meters" to measure radio station listenership in California beginning in 2008 violated the state's Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Law and Unruh Civil Rights Act by dramatically undercounting minority audiences, causing sharp declines in advertising rates and revenue for many broadcasters.  

In deploying its new system relying on electronic metering devices to replace personal listenership diaries, Arbitron's listener selection methodology inadequately reflected the diversity of broadcast audiences in California markets, according to the complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court.  The result was that of 18 stations serving minority audiences in California, 16 experienced ratings decreases in excess of 30 percent under the PPM ratings scheme.  One Spanish language radio station that had previously enjoyed a number one ranking in the Los Angeles market saw its ratings plummet by more than 50 percent under Arbitron's PPM ratings for September 2008, unfairly reducing the station's ranking to third in the overall market.  Arbitron's PPM methodology has in the past been criticized by minority broadcasters and the Media Ratings Council, the independent industry body that accredits media ratings systems.

Under the terms of the settlement filed today, Arbitron will take multiple steps to ensure that its ratings are accurate and do not unfairly disadvantage minority radio stations in California.  Arbitron has agreed to implement address based recruitment, increase cell phone sampling, incorporate country of origin as a standard demographic characteristic, and work to achieve full Media Ratings Council accreditation in the state.  The Columbia, Md.-based media research firm has also agreed to pay a total of $400,000 to the plaintiffs: $150,000 each to the State of California and City of Los Angeles, and $100,000 to the City and County of San Francisco.  

"This settlement ensures that California's diverse audiences will be fully counted by Arbitron's ratings systems and that broadcasters serving these communities will have the opportunity to compete fairly in the marketplace," said Attorney General Harris. "I am pleased that Arbitron will be revising its practices in the state and thank my partners in this effort, City Attorneys Carmen Trutanich and Dennis Herrera."

"Through this settlement, Arbitron has agreed to take important steps to ensure that minority radio stations are reasonably treated in order that they may fairly compete in the California marketplace," said Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen A. Trutanich. "In a City as diverse as Los Angeles, it is important that all of our residents and our businesses be equally represented and able to compete in our field of commerce. Only then will all Californians have a voice."

"Assuring the integrity of broadcast rating methodologies is essential to protect media outlets that serve California's diverse communities," said San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera.  "These measures set all-important ad rates and revenue, and largely determine the success or failure of media outlets in a competitive industry.  I'm grateful for the hard work and expertise of my co-counsel in this case, Attorney General Kamala Harris and L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich.  I am also appreciative of Arbitron and its legal team for their cooperative approach and willingness to negotiate with us in good faith."

The case is the People of the State of California v. Arbitron, Inc., San Francisco Superior Court case no. 519349.

Nuestra Palabras, a Houston-based alliance of writers, artists and activists (with a show on Pacifica Radio's KPFT) brought a caravan of 1,000 banned books into Arizona. 

Tony Diaz, a co-founder of Nuestra Palabras, discusses the Arizona book ban on Latino Studies texts and the Libro Traficantes caravan in the video below. 

We hate spectrum. What could be more geeky-obscure and headache-inducing than the ins and outs of the bands? But it's important. Especially right now. 

Expert public interest telecom attorney Harold Feld with Public Knowledge lays out the Verizon/Cox/Spectrum deal blog-style so we all get it and the bad deal it is for consumers.

(Yes it's insanely long. And yes, you should read it). Click on the link or continue below.

http://tales-of-the-sausage-factory.wetmachine.com/my-insanely-long-field-guide-to-the-verizonspectrumcocox-deal/

***

My Insanely Long Field Guide To The Verizon/SpectrumCo/Cox Deal.

5:00 on Wednesdays (or whenever you feel like it on your computer), Free Speech TV brings the occupy movement to the occupy the media movement. Watch the latest episodes!

Two men facing charges in connection with the takeover of a former bank are slated for a preliminary hearing Tuesday. Their attorneys say the men are photojournalists and were working in that capacity when the alleged violations took place.

Alex Darocy, Bradley Stuart Allen and nine other people are charged with two felony counts of vandalism and conspiracy, and two misdemeanor counts of trespassing. The charges stem from the takeover of the building at 75 River St. late last year. In that incident, a group claiming to be acting "anonymously and autonomously" but in solidarity with Occupy Santa Cruz remained in the building for nearly three days before leaving peacefully.

Darocy and Allen, who pleaded not guilty to the charges last month, are photojournalists who have done work for a number of outlets, including Santa Cruz Indymedia, according to defense attorneys George Gigarjian and Ben Rice.

Allen has worked as a freelance photojournalist covering social issues for more than a decade, Rice said. His attendance of Occupy protests in Santa Cruz were in the capacity of a photojournalist, with the sole purpose of documenting events through his photography, he said.

Likewise, Girgarjian says his client was documenting a news event.

"Alex is an established photojournalist and we're in the position that he was there in that capacity," Gigarjian said of the charges.

Rice has reached out to the National Press Photographers Association, of which Allen is a member.

Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the organization, said he has been dealing with similar situations around the country as dozens of journalists have been swept up in mass arrests at protests.

"I think the normal tension between the police and the press has been exacerbated by the Occupy movement," he said, adding that the organization is hoping the court will dismiss these charges.

Gigarjian and Rice opted to split off their defendants from the nine other defendants for the purpose of the preliminary hearing. The rest of the defendants are scheduled to begin their hearing in April.

A Fair Chance at Jobs Campaign has been blanketing Ohio and other states with ads pitting legal immigrants against the native-born unemployed. 

The campaign only admits to links to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (the "bad" FAIR) which provides no disclosure of individual or institutional supporters on its website at  fairchanceatjobs.com. The main Federation for American Immigration Reform website at www.fairus.org  posts annual reports as well as 990 forms, but redacts donor/supporter names for the 5 million in grants and $958,000 in contributions recorded.

Mike D of the Beastie Boys has authored a shareholder's initiative to AT&T for a proxy vote to allow AT&T shareholders to vote for an internal policy to support an open Internet. Similar shareholder proposals were filed at Verizon and Sprint after the Securities and Exchange Commission cleared the way. Future of Music Coalition's Greg Capobianco blogged about it.

Mike D and AT&T Shareholders Push for Open Internet Policies

[This post is by FMC contributor Greg Capobianco]

It’s time for a proxy party. Get excited. Seriously.

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) broke from its previous line of decisions and announced that telecommunications companies could no longer exclude proposals about net neutrality from shareholder proxy votes. The upshot is that those who own shares of telcos like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint will have the opportunity to vote for the enforcement of an internal, self-regulating policy to support an open internet.

Specifically, the resolution would recommend that the companies “publicly commit to operate its wireless broadband network consistent with network neutrality principles.” Since the FCC’s Open Internet Order only applied to fixed-line providers and not mobile, this is kind of a big deal. It’s also interesting when you take into account recent Congressional efforts to strip the FCC’s authority to provide even the most basic consumer protections online.

Why should you care? Because musicians need to be able to compete on a level playing field online. Without basic rules for Internet Service Providers, we could see a world where independent artists, entrepreneurs and innovators could have their content slowed down — or worse, blocked outright — based on an ISP’s business or political preferences.

But back to the SEC decision. Internal enforcement through a shareholder vote is an alternative way to advance the principles of net neutrality without having anything to do with Congress, the FCC, or even the courts (which is where the latest challenge to the Open Internet Order is playing out). Still, it’s an approach that the telcos have been resistant to.

This might all sound wonky, but there’s another cool music connection.

Three AT&T investors in particular helped spearhead this initiative: the inimitable Mike D of the Beastie Boys, his filmmaker wife, Tamra Davis, as well as John Silva of Silva Artist Management. Together, they joined with Trillium Asset Management, a socially responsible investment firm, to ensure that the proposal made it onto shareholders’ proxy statements. We happen to share a friend with Trillium in Farnum Brown, who is a member of Future of Music Coalition’s Board of Directors.

“To the best of my knowledge this is the first net neutrality shareholder resolution to make it onto a publicly held company’s annual proxy ballot,” Farnum tells us. “While there is a balance to achieve, the management of these companies shouldn’t be able to prevent shareholders from raising important policy questions.”

Mike D et al. weren’t alone in asking the SEC for help in getting the resolution to a vote. Last year, Democratic Senators Al Franken of Minnesota and Ron Wyden of Oregon asked the SEC to change its mind after issuing its latest denial. This year, Franken again penned a letter to SEC Chair Mary Schapiro asking that the Commission decide differently. (Franken is a longtime champion of internet openness; check out his keynote at the 2009 Future of Music Policy Summit.)

One of the most important reasons why the telcos’ request for a no-action letter (essentially, permission from the SEC to exclude the net neutrality resolution) was rejected this year is because the SEC now considers net neutrality to be a “significant policy consideration.” Why it wasn’t significant last year, or the year before, is a mystery to us.

Farnum has a few insights. “I think it just took a while being in the air,” he says. “It’s something that more and more people are talking about.”

We’ve thought net neutrality has been a big deal since 2007, when we launched our Rock the Net campaign with thousands of artists and independent labels from every conceivable genre and background. We’re psyched that this chord is still ringing loud and clear.

Although it’s plausible that the telcos will challenge the SEC’s determination in court, Farnum doesn’t foresee a delay in the vote. “We expect to be on the ballot,” he says. “We are interested in engaging in this discussion.”

If past is prologue, AT&T’s annual shareholder meeting will be on the last Friday in April. Of course, even with the resolution up for a vote, a positive outcome is by no means assured. Similarly, it wouldn’t be surprising if the AT&T board recommends that shareholders vote against this proposal, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Regardless of outcome, we applaud Farnum and associates for being heroic and nudging telecommunications companies towards policies that benefit all users, and not just the few.

The entire column is printed here for your reading pleasure along with a sampling of the many replies across the web, with an emphasis on those who entertained us the most.

***

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

One example mentioned recently by a reader: As cited in an Adam Liptak article on the Supreme Court, a court spokeswoman said Clarence Thomas had “misunderstood” a financial disclosure form when he failed to report his wife’s earnings from the Heritage Foundation. The reader thought it not likely that Mr. Thomas “misunderstood,” and instead that he simply chose not to report the information.

Another example: on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:

“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”

That approach is what one reader was getting at in a recent message to the public editor. He wrote:

“My question is what role the paper’s hard-news coverage should play with regard to false statements – by candidates or by others. In general, the Times sets its documentation of falsehoods in articles apart from its primary coverage. If the newspaper’s overarching goal is truth, oughtn’t the truth be embedded in its principal stories? In other words, if a candidate repeatedly utters an outright falsehood (I leave aside ambiguous implications), shouldn’t the Times’s coverage nail it right at the point where the article quotes it?”

This message was typical of mail from some readers who, fed up with the distortions and evasions that are common in public life, look to The Times to set the record straight. They worry less about reporters imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true.

Is that the prevailing view? And if so, how can The Times do this in a way that is objective and fair? Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another? Are there other problems that The Times would face that I haven’t mentioned here?

Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign debates, The Times has employed a separate fact-check sidebar to assess the validity of the candidates’ statements. Do you like this feature, or would you rather it be incorporated into regular reporting? How should The Times continue a function like this when we move to the general campaign and there’s less time spent in debates and more time on the road?

***

Some replies:

Random commenter: If you actually did this, you would reclaim the purpose of print media

The Atlantic

Jonathan Weiler in Huffington Post

UK Guardian

Dana Mittenbacher in Socialistworker.org

The Best of 2011 from the Public News Service

Microsoft has recently been at the center of a whirlwind of controversy over a new app that critics allege is downright racist. On January 3, the company was granted a patent for technology related to its “Pedestrian Route Production” application, a tool that that the company says would navigate the user “safely through neighborhoods with violent crime statistics below a certain threshold.”

While the patent makes no explicit references to race, the project has been unofficially dubbed the “Avoid Ghetto App” by various online news sites. Microsoft, for its part, has been silent throughout the ordeal, and declined to comment on the matter to Colorlines.com. But intentions aside, the fact that the app was so quickly racialized begs the larger question of how and why technology perpetuates systemic racism, and why consumers should care.

“Almost the moment this patent got granted, [this app] got racialized so that ‘violent crime’ became ‘mugging’, which became ‘black and Latino people’, which became ‘ghetto,’ ” says Sarah Chinn, a professor of English at the City University of New York and author of the book “Technology and the Logic of American Racism.” Chinn has been among Microsoft’s most vocal critics.

Microsoft’s app has stirred so much discussion, Chinn says, because the United States is a “very racist country. When you say the words ‘violent crime’, in the public imagination that turns into ‘dangerous urban black man or Latino man.’ “

Others disagree. Industry analyst Rob Enderline told NPR last week that Microsoft’s project is just a matter of technology trying to make life easier for users. “It’s part of an overall effort to make navigation systems more intelligent so they keep you out of danger, whether you’re driving or you’re on foot,” Enderle told NPR.

Yet even if that’s the case, it’s based on the widely held misconception that violent crime is more likely to hit random strangers. In fact, the opposite is true. The vast majority of violent crime happens to people who know each other. For instance, 75 percent of rapes are committed by someone the survivor already knows, according to statistics provided by San Francisco Women Against Rape. The majority of murders are committed by members of ones own racial group. Missouri has the nation’s highest black homicide rate, and when the Violent Prevention Center looked at statistics from 2009, it found that—whenever the relationship could be identified—76 percent of black murder victims were killed by someone they knew.

In Washington, D.C. and New York City, robberies are on the decline.

Huffington Post’s Black Voices points out that the FBI’s 2010 crime report revealed that whites were arrested more often for violent crimes that year than any other race.

But, according to Chinn, the myth that black men in particular are more likely to perpetrate violent crime against white strangers resonates so strongly because it’s become an indelible part of America’s racial identity.

“This is a myth that’s been with us since the days of Reconstruction,” Chinn told Colorlines.com, calling the period an era of “terrorism against black people.” Chinn noted that whites unconsciously knew that they were the perpetrators of violence against black people, particularly sexual violence against black women. Thus the myth of dangerous black men evolved as way to justify racist violence against black communities.

The logic, Chinn says, was “you’re violent so we have to criminalize you, we have to put you in jail, we have to stop-and-frisk you, and we have to move out of your neighborhoods.”

Microsoft’s new technology is just the latest in a series of scientific parallels with the past.

The problem isn’t the technology itself, but what people imagine the technology will do. So while DNA and finger printing may on the surface be seemingly race-neutral technologies that only offer specific information about someone’s body, they’re quickly used to reinforce people’s preconceived ideas about race. “Once they enter the public discourse in the United States it’s all about how can we identify [people of color] and prove that they are not as good as white people, or prove that segregation is justified,” says Chinn.

Chinn does not expect that Microsoft will market the app as it is now, but will fold it into its next generation of mapping technology. ”It’s really about why we should be afraid of certain neighborhoods and certain kinds of people. People take these technologies and they use them to ‘prove’ things that they actually already believe about people of various racialized groups.”

Oakland Tribune reporter Doug Oakley got a late-night visit from the Berkeley Police Department's public information officer demanding a retraction of a story filed at 11:00pm that evening. 

The police chief Michael Meehan dispatched the officer to address what he called a misquote of his cmments earlier that evening, apparently demanding that the reporter have the story corrected at a little before 1:00 in the morning.

The sleeping reporter and his wife were unsettled by the late night visit and Meehan, under attack for attempted censorship, intimidation and harassment has apologized and cited exhaustion as the reason for an error in judgment.

Open Letter from John Santos: NARAS Oblivious to the Obivious – Feb. 18, 2012 The epic and historical blunder committed last April by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences was etched into the archives last week by the conspicuous absence of the 31 categories they pulled from Grammy consideration, and the musically vacuous telecast they promoted (at $800,000 per 30 second commercial) as the best that American music has to offer. We hope that sooner than later, NARAS will understand that pretending to not know what all the fuss is about, infinite procrastination, and two tons of lip service are not solutions to their unethical practices and offensive actions. They obviously have no idea that undermining and eliminating a huge portion of the most culturally diverse and creative music in our country is a form of violence against communities that historically have had to deal with this kind of mentality for much too long. Thanks to the ill-advised and totally disrespectful suggestions of a handful of uninformed individuals, hundreds of thousands of musicians, music industry workers of all kinds, students, teachers, and fans of the 31 eliminated categories have been negatively affected. This is far from acceptable. It would have been fairly simple for NARAS to avoid this huge problem had they handled the delicate prospect of eliminating categories in an ethical and fair manner, as opposed to the secret committee of trustees who made the short sighted recommendations. It’s still a pretty easy fix if that was their intention. But they are unwilling to officially admit their mistake and saving face has become their priority. Not to mention they are so beholding to the entities that provide the big money for them, making CEO Neil Portnow’s 1.4 million dollar yearly salary possible among other extravagances. If as they claim, they were concerned about relatively low numbers of entries in certain categories, they clearly should have consulted members and non-members from within the threatened categories and the communities they represent. NARAS easily could have informed the local governors, chapters and members that decisions of such major impact were being considered, in order to get valuable input and suggestions from those for whom they supposedly advocate. Two of the most disturbing aspects of this travesty are 1.) NARAS announced changes in policy regarding minimum entries required to have a category after dropping categories that did not meet the new requirements, and 2.) They did so in April of 2011, seven months after the beginning of the eligibility year. Those actions were either totally thoughtless, or chillingly calculated, as they dealt a severe blow to all the musicians and independent labels in the eliminated categories that released projects after September 30th, 2010, or planned to release projects through the 2011 eligibility year, and they undermined the chances of reversing the decision. Over 23,000 signatures, most of which were gathered nationally in the last few days before the February 12, 2012 CBS telecast, were dropped off at the NARAS headquarters in Los Angeles on Thursday, February 9, 2012 and the only comment NARAS president Neil Portnow could muster was “It seems they lack general support.” That bit of brilliance from the president of a non-profit organization that is supposed to honor excellence in American music and advocate for us, the membership. NARAS should lose that position and invest the 1.4 million every year into sensitivity training for administration and staff, and for outreach into the eliminated communities to truly enrich the organization and the Grammys. This is ultimately a battle for the rights of youth as well as to honor our ancestors. It would be easy to say “Farm those mother-truckers – they’ve never had our backs and never had other intentions than extreme profits all along – why would I want to be associated with them at all?” But they are sending a terrible message to youth and to the world – that only the most commercial art is worth recognizing. They are aligning themselves with the worst aspects of our society, not only in that they have no tolerance, but they also have no idea what the terms diversity and mutual respect mean. As they slice off a huge chunk of non-commercial music and continue to dumb down the images and representations of music that the vast majority of Americans will see, they are applauded by the big music industry and most pop artists who through their silence on the issue are strongly complicit. Their killer capitalist instincts do not allow them to celebrate all American music of historical importance. They are on a mission to completely dominate the musical horizon, not only economically, but even in terms of recognition and honor. This is a complex issue and it goes beyond questions of race. But neither can the racist implications of what has been done be swept under the rug as they have been traditionally. Racism is pervasive. It is firmly imbedded in the psyche of most Americans of all colors despite centuries of claims to the contrary. Most of us do not understand the subliminal power of internalized racism. Hiding racism behind profits is lesson #1 in the capitalism-gone-berzerk handbook. But the folks who perpetuate it are always in denial and actually think they are slick, not realizing that they are trying to hide an elephant behind a fire hydrant. For example, Rap has got to be one of the industry’s worst nightmares. Ten or twelve years ago, LL Cool J was one of several Rappers who boycotted the Grammys for their lack of inclusion. They knocked the door down and firmly planted Rap and Hip Hop in the Grammys and in mainstream America. The only thing worse for the folks who tried to deny them would be if Latin Jazz, Native American, Blues, Instrumental Rock, Contemporary Jazz, R&B, World Music, Zydeco, Cajun, Hawaiian, Polka, and all the categories they recently deemed unworthy, continued cutting into the mega billions pie. The fact that greed trumps racism does not negate the existence of racism. NARAS’ dastardly action is right in step with the greed that has so completely inundated and contaminated every aspect of our society. This type of thinking and movement to deny equal access is not new, but those who invent and benefit by it used to be concerned about their actions being clandestine, for fear of their obvious evil being exposed. Not any more – It’s been in our faces since George W was propped up as leader of the free world, with the inability to speak in complete sentences and the clear goal to grease the wheels for only the most right wing economic and military elements. Everything from war crimes to the boldfaced rip-off of our own citizens in every way imaginable from housing to healthcare, education and social security has been exposed with hardly a slap on the wrist handed to anyone. So it is not totally surprising that in this atmosphere, this decree by NARAS raises its ugly head with unmitigated support by the folks at the top of the economic ladder and those who have been brainwashed by that power machine. They cannot be allowed to stomp on us like this and go unchallenged, as history shows clearly that they will not stop disrespecting us until we who defend equality and human rights stop them. Let it also be clear that we stand united with all the eliminated categories and with Herbie Hancock, Eddie Palmieri, Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, the Reverend Jess Jackson, Cornel West, Bill Cosby, Chick Corea, Stanley Clark, Pete Escovedo, Larry Vuckovich, Oscar Hernandez, Dr. John Calloway, Larry Harlow, David Amram, Wayne Wallace, Bobby Sanabria, Randall Kline, Clayton Leander, Bobby Matos, Ramon and Tony Banda, Rene Camacho, Professor Dartanyan Brown, Mark Levine, Dr. Ben Lapidus, Dr. Chris Washburne, Sandy Cressman, Gary Eisenberg, San Francisco Supervisors Eric Mars and John Avalos, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Presente.org, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the National Institute for Latino Policy, Democracy Now, Urban Music Presents, and so many other musical, academic and community leaders as well as with hundreds of thousands of musicians, fans, supporters and industry workers in opposing this disastrous decision by NARAS. We’ve met with them, written and re-written proposals at their request, and jumped through hoop after hoop and they’ve stonewalled us every time. 1000 thanks to all of you who have spread the word. Please continue to forward this urgent and viral movement to get NARAS moving once again, in the right direction. Check in regularly with GrammyWatch.org to keep abreast of what’s happening, as related stories are emerging daily. Keep writing to the NARAS brass at the addresses found on GrammyWatch.org. It is only the constant and growing public pressure and outcry that has gotten their attention and that of NARAS supporters. Know that everything works out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end. http://www.grammywatch.org for updates, addresses, and info, and please let Grammy broadcaster CBS know your thoughts directly with the link below, . . . . CBS comment form: http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.php In solidarity . . . . js 2/18/12 John Santos Five-time Grammy nominee, educator, composer, producer, percussionist, bandleader, US Artist Fontanals Fellow, 25 year NARAS member

"My FCC" lets users set up a personalized page to manage their interactions with the sprawling agency. The  open source content-sharing effort allows users to create full "dashboards of widgets to share with friends and colleagues".

All are encouraged to provide feedback and suggestions on where we go from here.

Life with Archie #16, with featured the marriage of gay character Kevin Keller, has sold out,.

The issue was the target of a boycott threat aimed at Toys R Us by the American Family Association's One Million Moms project,  which threatened that its members would stop shopping there unless the store removed the issue from its shelves. Unfortunately for AFA, it looks as though customers did the store's work for them.  

Archie Comics, the home to some of the world’s most recognizable characters --  including Archie, Jughead, Betty and Veronica, Josie and the Pussycats and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch -- is proud to announce that the company has sold out of LIFE WITH ARCHIE #16.

“Kevin will always be a major part of Riverdale, and we’re overjoyed, honored and humbled by the response to this issue,” said Jon Goldwater, Co-CEO of Archie Comics. “Our fans have come out full force to support Kevin. He is, without a doubt, the most important new character in Archie history. He’s here to stay.”

Earlier this week, Goldwater released a statement about the boycott threat.  

“We stand by Life with Archie #16. As I’ve said before, Riverdale is a safe, welcoming place that does not judge anyone. It’s an idealized version of America that will hopefully become reality someday. We’re sorry the American Family Association/OneMillionMoms.com feels so negatively about our product, but they have every right to their opinion, just like we have the right to stand by ours. Kevin Keller will forever be a part of Riverdale, and he will live a happy, long life free of prejudice, hate and narrow-minded people.“

Spot.us, a crowd sourcing funding model for investigative journalism began life as a Knight Foundation digital challenge. Some years later, it becomes a part of the public broadcasting system by merging with the Public Insight Network, a project of American Public Media. The producer and distributer of Marketplace, APM operates the Public Insight Network as a 130,000-person database of people who make themselves available as sources to respond to journalistic queries that are looking for individuals with certain experiences, characteristics or areas of expertise.

The crowdsourcing project of PIN held some promise for countering the often default journalistic position of consulting a narrow band of authoritative experts over and over again. However it is not clear how often PIN-generated sources are used and how often they appear in significant roles in the final stories that are generated by PIN-posting writers and editors. The PIN website featured 2 stories featuring sources from PIN, one on a November 2012 vote on gay marriage in Minnesota and another on the lifting of a Sunday hunting ban in Pennsylvania. Current queries from reporters requested Iraq vets to opine on their job hunting results and working class men to comment on their declining salaries.

Spot.us provided (usually) microdonations from donors, who clicked on the website to express a desire to support independent, investigative journalism and could select from an assortment of story pitches from journalists to directly support with donations, often in the $5-$25 range, although some donated larger amounts. Spot.us also developed surveys for advertisers and on the completion of a survey, site visitors got a small amount of free bonus bucks to donate to the story of their choice. Most Spot.us pitches ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars and took 1-6 months on the site to attract the desired level of support. Spot.us cites 6.000 donors and 2,500 multiple donors.

With crowd sourced funding joining crowd sourced expertise, the question now is whether content creation  will be the next journalistic piece to dabble with a crowd sourcing model. Best of 3 potential writers voted on with a click?

Anything is possible within a framework of enormous change.

Commissioners in attendance: the retiring Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn. Panelists include:  Watch the video.

• Eric Celeste
  Editor-in-Chief, Alternative Weekly Creative Loafing
• Sage Crump
  Art is Change, Black Voices for Internet Freedom
• Heather Gray
  President of Radio Free Georgia Broadcasting Foundation WRFG
• Mo Ivory
  Director Political and Community Outreach, CBS Radio
• Hank Klibanoff
  Former Managing Editor at AJC, Journalism professor at Emory University
• Shawn McIntosh
  Public Editor for the Atlanta Journal Constitution
• Denene Millner
  Former political reporter, creator of the blog Mybrownbaby.com
• Ed Price
  Research Director-Interactive Media Technology Center at Georgia Tech
• Joe Torres
  Author-News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media
• John Weatherford
  COO Public Broadcasting Atlanta

15 candidates in their 20's and 30's, running as the Pirate Party, shocked Germany by winning 8.9% of the vote and all 15 legislative seats in Berlin on an Internet Freedom Platform. The party closely overlaps with the Chaos Computer Club, a Berlin hackers collective. The party's lead candidate commented for the NY Times: "The very fact that these other parties are now asking themselves how we won these votes is already progress"

More coverage from the NY Times:
BERLIN — With laptops open like shields against the encroaching cameramen, the young men resembled Peter Pan’s Lost Boys more than Captain Hook’s buccaneers when they were introduced Monday as Berlin’s newest legislators: They are the members of the Pirate Party.

Asked if they were just some chaotic troop of troublemakers, Christopher Lauer, newly voted in as a state lawmaker for the district of Pankow, replied with no lack of confidence, “You ought to wait for the first session in the house of representatives.”

By winning 8.9 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election in this city-state, these political pirates surpassed — blew away, really — every expectation for what was supposed to be a fringe, one-issue party promoting Internet freedom. The Pirates so outstripped expectations that all 15 candidates on their list won seats — seats are doled out based in part on votes for a party rather than for an individual. Normally parties list far more candidates than could ever make it, because if they win more than they nominate, the seat must remain unfilled.        

These men in their 20s and 30s, who turned up at the imposing former Prussian state parliament building, some wearing hooded sweatshirts, and one a T-shirt of the comic book hero Captain America, were no longer merely madcap campaigners and gadflies. They had become the people’s elected representatives.        

The question that members of Germany’s political establishment are now asking after the insurgent party stormed the statehouse is this: Are the Pirates merely the punch line to a joke, a focus of protest, a reflection of electoral disgust with all established political parties — or an exciting experiment in a new form of online democracy?        

“They are absolutely not a joke party,” said Christoph Bieber <http://nrwschool.de/xd/public/content/index.html?pid=726> , a professor of political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. While there was certainly an element of protest in the unexpectedly large share of the votes the Pirates won, they were filling a real need for voters outside the political mainstream who felt unrepresented. “In the Internet, they have really found an underexploited theme that the other political parties are not dealing with,” Mr. Bieber said.        

The state election in Berlin on Sunday was full of surprising results. The pro-business Free Democrats, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition partners in the federal Parliament, crashed and burned, again, receiving less than 2 percent of the vote. That is well below the 5 percent needed to remain in the statehouse. The Green Party continued to build on its recent successes and may well become one of the governing parties in Berlin.        

While issues like online privacy and data protection may seem incredibly narrow, even irrelevant, to older voters, for young people who often spend half their waking hours online, much of it on social networking sites where they share their most intimate moments, it is anything but a small issue. And the Pirates’ call for complete transparency in politics resonates powerfully with a generation disillusioned by the American case for war in Iraq and galvanized by WikiLeaks’ promise to put an end to secrecy.        

The Pirates’ surprisingly strong showing came as further evidence of voter dissatisfaction in Germany with the established parties, and what many see as their inability to look beyond self-interest and focus instead on the needs of their constituents. The Pirates have promised to use online tools to give party members unprecedented power to propose policies and determine stances, in what they call “liquid democracy,” a form of participation that goes beyond simply voting in elections.       

The party has broadened its initial platform, which focused on file sharing, censorship and data protection to include other social issues, advocating the Internet as a tool to empower the electorate and engage it in the political — and legislative — process.

 “Today’s cadre of politicians is missing out on asking some very relevant questions about the future,” said Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party, which he started in Sweden in 2006. He was celebrating with his German colleagues at Sunday night’s election party in a room filled with disco balls and disassembled mannequins in the Kreuzberg nightclub Ritter Butzke <http://www.ritterbutzke.de/> . Thanks to the interactive nature of the Internet, “you don’t have to take these laws being read to you,” he said. “You can stand up, stand tall and write the laws yourself.”

Mr. Falkvinge summed up the significance of the Berlin election for the nascent movement in terms members would understand: “German Pirates have the high score now.”

Sebastian Schneider, who asked to be called Schmiddie “or no one will know who you’re talking about,” a member of the party and one of the people celebrating Sunday night, said that there was no other party he could envision voting for.        

“In my opinion, the Greens are a conservative party by now,” Mr. Schneider said. “They were not quite sure if they wanted to join the dark side of the force or not,” by which he said that he meant forming a coalition to govern Berlin with Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democrats.      

There were plenty of young people, many with dreadlocks or beards and a few with both, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and sipping beer. Others wore jackets with CCC written on the back, short for the Chaos Computer Club, a hackers’ collective that got its start in Berlin and has an overlap in membership with the Pirates. A stand-up comedian working in classic Berlin cabaret style poked fun at the influx of tourists and the recent rent increases that became major issues in the election campaign, saying: “There are no more buildings to occupy. Next we’ll have to start occupying five-star hotels.”        

Mayor Klaus Wowereit of Berlin, whose Social Democrats won the most votes on Sunday, assuring him a third term as the city’s mayor, may have paid the young party the highest compliment of all, taking it seriously enough to attack the day after the election. He raised a prickly problem for young men who spend their evenings writing computer code: There were next to no women in their group.        

“Gender politics has not arrived for the Pirates yet, and that is not a step forward but a step backward,” Mr. Wowereit told reporters Monday.   

Indeed, at Monday’s news conference only young, white men sat at the conference table representing the party. Mr. Lauer, himself wearing a sports jacket, said that the mostly scruffy people were “not a representative slice of this society,” and that it was a problem that the party was working on.        

The Pirates could be disarmingly honest, and were unfailingly polite to security guards, cameramen and anyone else they came across. Transparency in politics means “also being able to admit when we don’t know something,” said Andreas Baum, the party’s lead candidate in the election.        

Asked what kind of real change a small party in a state legislature could really bring about, Mr. Baum replied, “The very fact that these other parties are now asking themselves how we won these votes is already progress.”    

Watch the video of the DC Launch of Black Voices for Internet Freedom.

Get more information at blacknetfreedom.org

Public-access television has always had a low-budget, amateur reputation. Yet Rod Laughridge's alternative news program "Newsroom on Access SF" was anything but that. Though San Francisco's public-access station had its share of offbeat shows —- like the risqué DeeDeeTV, hosted by self-described "pop culture diva" Dee Dee Russell — "Newsroom" took itself seriously. Its mission, as described on its website, was to "bring community-based, community reported and produced independent news and interviews from a grassroots viewpoint — unhindered, uncensored and unaltered." 

 The show, which ran for five years on Channel 29, followed a professional news format with high production values. Anchors reported headlines from behind a studio desk as video streams played in the background. Local news segments on topics like the plight of renters and live reports from homeless shelters were interspersed with commentary by the likes of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Angela Davis, and international news from Al-Jazeera. During its run, "Newsroom" was nominated for an Emmy and won several Western Access Video Excellence (WAVE) awards. "It was a full-blown news show," Laughridge recalls.

Unfortunately, "Newsroom" became a casualty of a ripple effect brought on by the passage of a bill that slashed the public-access operating budget across California. This resulted in a new provider, the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), which had no prior experience operating public TV, taking over SF's two public-access channels. BAVC closed the production studio where "Newsroom" and other shows were produced and instituted a different model that did away with the traditional three-camera set-up. Laughridge notes that, in the old days, staff members assisted public-access producers with editing. Now "you have to pay for [BAVC's] classes to do that. There's a conflict right there," he says. These changes to the public-access model effectively "killed the idea of community" in community television, Laughridge says.

The loss of an award-winning program like "Newsroom," which provided a viable, community-based alternative to network TV news, symbolizes one of the clearest examples of what has transpired as a result of the public-access crisis. As the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) noted in its 2011 media review, "State and local changes have reduced the funding and, in some cases, the prominence on the cable dial of public, educational and government channels (PEG) at a time when the need for local programming is especially urgent."

The Perils of PEG Centers

The public-access crisis in California was brought about by the 2006 passage of the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act (DIVCA), a bill that was heavily lobbied for by Comcast and AT&T. According to the telecommunications industry, DIVCA was supposed to create jobs, increase competition and serve the public interest. Its actual effect was the exact opposite — cable companies eliminated jobs and ultimately faced less competition from the defunding of community television stations. As of 2009, similar bills had been passed in 25 states, with similar results.

Since the mid-2000s, more than 100 PEG stations across the country have disappeared; cities like San Francisco and Seattle have cut as much as 85 percent of the PEG operations budget. City funding for public access has been entirely eliminated in Denver and Dallas; at least 45 such stations have closed in California since 2006-12 in Los Angeles, the nation's No. 3 media market, alone. As many as 400 PEG stations in Wisconsin, Florida, Missouri, Iowa, Georgia and Ohio are facing extinction as well.

Moreover, according to a 2010 study by the Benton Foundation, these cuts have disproportionately affected minority communities. Adding insult to injury, AT&T and other cable providers have employed what's known as "channel-slamming": listing all public-access channels on a single channel or making them accessible only in submenus, which makes finding them difficult for viewers.

A bill currently before the House of Representatives called the Community Access Preservation, or CAP, Act, could prevent hundreds of funding-challenged PEG stations nationwide from going belly up. The bill limits channel-slamming and would amend an FCC ruling that PEG support may be used only for facilities and equipment, and not for operating expenses. Even if the CAP Act passes, it "won't solve all of public-access TV's problems," says Media Alliance executive director Tracy Rosenberg. For one thing, the CAP Act falls short of mandating a higher percentage of cable franchise fees — an estimated $10 million to $12 million in SF — for PEG operators. Increasing this revenue, however, could allow PEG stations not only to survive, but to thrive.

An Open-Source Solution?

One possible solution for financially challenged PEG stations is the development of open-source or user-modifiable software — a model currently being developed in Denver, San Francisco and several other cities. In just its second year of operating SF Commons — SF's public-access station — BAVC is already attracting wider attention. In June 2011, the organization was singled out for praise by the FCC, which called SF Commons one of the "most promising templates for the future of public-access centers."

Open source offers built-in internet connectivity and is less financially constraining than the old public-access model, requiring less equipment and less staff. Instead of reels of videotape or DVDs, programs are saved as MPEG files. Editing workstations aren't bulky analog machines but svelte Macintosh computers equipped with Final Cut Pro editing software.

Yet open source isn't a perfect solution. In the short-term, moving to an open-source model for public access may actually widen the gap affecting underserved and less technologically literate demographics. "Seniors, disabled, low-income adults," Rosenberg charges, "[are] being left off the train."

Adapting open source to a public-access medium also limits the potential of users to acquire skills needed for some television jobs and puts more emphasis on offsite production, which in turn reduces the level of interaction between programmers. "They want you to edit at home," Laughridge says. "There's the digital divide right there: Not everyone has a computer or camera."

Virtual Community vs. Actual Community

Laughridge is one of several veteran public-access programmers who complain about displacement under BAVC.

Ellison Horne, a former president of The San Francisco Community Television Corporation (SFCTC)'s board of directors, says BAVC made an "aggressive move toward a virtual studio as opposed to what we had before, which was a community media center." This resulted, he says, in a lack of community engagement.

Since BAVC's takeover of Channel 29, "a very different culture has emerged" in San Francisco public access, says documentary filmmaker Kevin Epps, who began his career in public access. That culture is more conservative, tech-savvy, youth-oriented and, in Horne's words, "elitist."

Steve Zeltzer, a labor activist and public-access producer, charges the BAVC takeover has resulted in "the privatization of public access."

Ken Johnson, who worked for a stint as a producer-director at local station KQED after getting his start on Channel 29, credits public-access TV with helping him stay off the streets and out of jail. Johnson says he often rounded up street people as volunteers to help him produce his show on veterans' issues. But volunteers are no longer welcome under BAVC's operatorship.

Instead of a community-supportive environment, Johnson says, "They have this robotic thing when you do it like that, you lose something."

BAVC staff are quick to characterize the problems with public-access programmers as simply a case of the old guard being resistant to change. "You had a lot of producers used to doing the same routine for X amount of years," says Andy Kawanami, SF Commons' community manager. He concedes the transition to open source wasn't completely smooth, but says things "have settled down quite a bit" since.

Former BAVC executive director Ken Ikeda has been quoted as saying, "We've learned the hard way what innovation in isolation can cost an organization." And Jen Gilomen, BAVC's director of public Media Strategies, admits "we've lost some people" in the transition. However, she says, the economic reality means "the whole model had to change."

Making Open Source Work for Everybody

A considerable learning curve is involved in adapting open source to public-access television, says Tony Shawcross, Executive Director of Denver Open Media (DOM). After taking over Denver's PEG channel in 2005, DOM underwent a period of trial-and-error, discovering what worked and what didn't. In 2008, DOM received a $400,000 Knight Foundation grant which allowed it to revise its model to make it more community- and user-friendly.

"We had to go through that process in order to learn what it took to make the tools work for others," he says. Overall, Shawcross says DOM isn't reaching as wide a constituency as its predecessor, but, he adds, "You can't just talk about diversity and our model without also talking about money. Dollar-for-dollar, I'd say DOM is doing better in reaching disadvantaged communities, but we'd be doing much better if we had $500,000 annually to invest in serving the communities who are most in need."

BAVC, Shawcross says, is "one of the few success stories in public access." However, he says, BAVC "are very focused on their own needs, and the development work they're doing in open source is not focused on benefitting the rest of the community as much as it would if that were a true priority for them."

BAVC is "one of the few success stories in public access," Shawcross says, but it's "very focused on their own needs, and the development work they're doing in open source is not focused on benefiting the rest of the community as much as it would if that were a true priority for them."

Currently, BAVC has no initiatives "specific to diversity," says Gilomen. Yet BAVC has made forays into community outreach via the Neighborhood News Network (n3), three partnership pilot programs with nonprofit centers utilizing these centers' media production facilities. Ultimately, the FCC notes, n3 "will link PEG channels to 15 community sites throughout the city, using an existing fiber network." After airing on SF Commons, these programs will be accessible to viewers as one of BAVC's online channels.

Although they've made for good PR copy on BAVC's website, the three n3 programs have thus far resulted in a total of just 77 minutes of actual on-air programming. "We need more money to expand these programs," Gilomen says, which she hopes "will seed news bureaus."

With a single-camera studio set-up, n3's no-frills production values lag behind the standard set by "Newsroom." At times, the content resembles infomercials for BAVC's community partner organizations. In the Mission District's n3 pilot episode, anchor Naya Buric, a BAVC intern, repeatedly stumbles over her words, at one point misidentifying n3 as "neighborhood network news." When asked what difference n3 will make to the community, guest Jean Morris touts the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts' programming, yet fails to mention any issues of substance affecting the neighborhood, such as gentrification and gang violence. The Bayview-Hunters Point pilot show, meanwhile, features members of the Boys and Girls Club, aged 9-12, covering the club's own Junior Giants program. The South of Market pilot fares a little better, with segments on redevelopment, a fire at a single-room occupancy hotel and the availability of bathrooms for SF's homeless population. It remains to be seen whether n3 programs can fill the role "Newsroom" used to play, much less consistently cover topics of serious concern to neighborhood residents. Willie Ratcliffe, publisher of independent African-American newspaper SF BayView, recognizes the n3 program in Bayview-Hunters Point as a positive development for a handful of young people. However, he says, "I don't see where it's gonna do too much" to address the "burning issue [of] economic survival," nor the police brutality, health issues and environmental concerns Bayview residents face daily. In his view, the smiling African-American faces pictured on BAVC's website are "just being used, really," he says.

The Hope of Digital Integration

Two years after launching SF Commons, the station is still very much a work in progress. The lack of a consistent program schedule, some producers say, makes it difficult to build a regular audience. But Gilomen says this concern will be addressed in the coming months as BAVC rolls out a new set of web-based tools allowing producers to self-schedule their programs and archive content online. Besides eliminating the need for physical DVDs, this makes it possible for public-access stations in other markets to air SF Commons' content.

However, the true test of BAVC's public-access stewardship is yet to come. SF Commons features prominently in a SF Department of Technology (SFDOT) broadband inclusion initiative, which, if successful, could form the 21st century model for public access in America.

In addition to the operating budget of $170,000 for two PEG channels from SFDOT, BAVC is also the recipient of $2 million in technology grants specifically tied to broadband initiatives aimed at increasing digital literacy. But while the potential for using digitally integrated public-access and broadband services to close the digital divide exists on paper, these services haven't been implemented in a concrete, tangible way — with measurable results — yet.

SFDOT policy analyst Brian Roberts uses buzzwords like "digital inclusion" and "affordable access" in describing the city's B-TOP program, which envisions the creation of a "public broadband space" (PBS) incorporating public access as one of its components. The idea of a PBS is "having access to training and technology people couldn't afford in their homes," Roberts explains. But, he says, "we're not sure where that's going to go."

The B-TOP program relies on federal grants and matching funds for its S10 million budget. So far it's created a handful of new bureaucratic positions, doled out tens of thousands of dollars to BAVC for equipment purchases, started a digital media skills training course at City College of San Francisco and held several community outreach events. Yet it's had little to no impact on improving access in SF's most technologically underserved neighborhoods, which is what it's supposed to do. According to SFDOT's most recent report on sustainable broadband adoption, the program is only 1 percent complete at this time. SFDOT has failed to meet its baseline goals for new subscribers receiving discounted broadband service; currently there are "zero" households and "zero" businesses participating, which it blames on "implementation delays."

In other words, despite the FCC's flowery praise for BAVC and SFDOT's collaborative efforts, the vision of a fiber-optic network broadcasting hyperlocalized content over public-access airwaves isn't crystal clear.

An Upside Down Model?

While SFDOT and BAVC wait for the sustainable broadband initiative to take shape,  a cadre of veteran video producers are attempting to fashion their own template for public access's immediate future.

Instead of relying on technology grants based around not-quite-there-yet initiatives, this model would pool the existing resources of several cities in Contra Costa County, each of whom receive PEG funding from cable operators, to create a countywide community media center. Instead of just under $200,000 in operating expenses, the center's budget could be closer to $2 million, enough to run a top-notch PEG center with high-quality production values. This center would be run not by outside operators, but by the producers themselves, fulfilling one of the FCC's recommendations for high-performing PEGS: "the ceding of editorial control to producers."

Could a super-PEG center serving the needs of an entire county, rather than an aggregation of smaller PEGS tied to specific cities, be a way to ensure the future of public access while preserving its vibrant culture?

Sam Gold, the man behind the effort, thinks so. He's assembled a team consisting of several former SF public-access producers and is actively pursuing getting the necessary approval from various city councils. He calls the effort "an upside down model," since he's invested $40,000 of his own money into equipment. In his mind, they key question is to whether the center can be established on public space, which would alleviate the biggest operating cost, that of renting a facility. If successful, Gold's model could be replicated in other markets, offering a third option to the public-access crisis besides ceasing operations or acquiescing to the imperfections of open source. "Wonder if we can get the old 'Newsroom' crew back together?" Gold ponders during a lunch with Laughridge and several other public-access veterans. Laughridge just looks at him and smiles.

You often get what you pay for. At&T, Verizon and Comcast certainly did. Take a look at these lobbying expenses totals. 

Telecom Lobbying Expenses

2009

Verizon Communications

$17,680,000.00

AT&T

$14,729,673.00

Comcast Corporation

$12,590,000.00

2010

Verizon Communications

$16,750,000.00

AT&T

$15,395,078.00

Comcast Corporation

$12,937,000.00

In another moment of disconnect between community media and the public media machine, WDAV announced they would begin independently syndicating "World of Opera" with host Lisa Simeone. 

National Public Radio dropped the program due to Simeone's involvement with the Occupy DC protest. 

Brett Zongker provides a good summary of events on the Huffington Post.

******

WASHINGTON -- NPR will no longer distribute the member station-produced program "World of Opera" to about 60 stations across the country because the show host helped organize an ongoing Washington protest, a network official said Friday evening.

Instead, North Carolina-based classical music station WDAV, which produces the show, said it will distribute the nationally syndicated program on its own beginning Nov. 11. The station said it plans to keep Lisa Simeone as host and has said her involvement in a political protest does not affect her job as a music program host.

NPR spokeswoman Dana Davis Rehm said the network disagrees with the station on the role of program hosts but respects its position.

"Our view is it's a potential conflict of interest for any journalist or any individual who plays a public role on behalf of NPR to take an active part in a political movement or advocacy campaign," she told The Associated Press. "Doing so has the potential to compromise our reputation as an organization that strives to be impartial and unbiased."

Rehm said any host with NPR attached to their title is a public figure representing the network as a whole. But she said "reasonable people can have different views about this." She said the negotiations with WDAV were civil and amicable.

NPR's ethics code states that "NPR journalists may not participate in marches and rallies" involving issues NPR covers. The code notes that some provisions may not apply to outside contributors. It uses a freelancer who primarily contributes arts coverage as an example.

Rehm said the network didn't need to cite the code in its decision to drop the show because its position on hosts' political activities was "even more fundamental."

Simeone, who lives in Baltimore, is a freelancer who has worked in radio and television for 25 years. She has hosted music shows and documentaries. She was fired Wednesday as the host of a radio documentary program, "Soundprint," because she helped organize an anti-war demonstration that also protested Wall Street and what participants call corporate greed.

"Soundprint" is heard on about 35 NPR affiliates and is produced by Maryland-based Soundprint Media Center Inc. Its president said the company had adopted NPR's code of ethics as its own.

"World of Opera" is the only radio show in the nation devoted to broadcasting full-length operas from around the world, according to WDAV.

The Davidson, N.C.-based station will use the same distribution process as NPR and hopes to retain all the stations that have aired the program, spokeswoman Lisa Gray said. The network is assisting with the change in distribution, and it won't affect the listener's experience.

"We think it's really important to classical music that we continue to produce the show and make it available," Gray told the AP. "That's our primary concern, that we continue to be able to provide this programming to listeners and stations across the country."

WDAV had previously said it has a different mission than NPR and seeks to provide arts and cultural programming nationally and internationally, rather than news.

NPR had previously produced and distributed "World of Opera" in house until January 2010 when production was shifted to WDAV. The show has been in production for more than 20 years. It has featured performances from U.S. opera companies including Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Glimmerglass and New York City Opera, as well as operas from Paris, Vienna and elsewhere.

This video from keepusconnected.org explains and clearly demonstrates AT&T's failure to deliver basic functionality for public, educational and government (PEG) access channels on its U-Verse system. A  petition challenging the discriminatory treatment is pending at the FCC. 

This podcast is a compilation of stories on phones and prisons culled from the Main Street Project (partners in the Media Justice Grassroots Network) at a Phone Justice Policy Day event in Minneapolis. 

(*Note* - Ozcat Radio is one of the community stations assisted in getting on the air by our friends at Common Frequency (www.commonfrequency.org)

The founder of Vallejo Ozcat, the community-based FM radio station, made a disturbing discovery Saturday morning -- racist epithets scrawled on his son's vehicle and the business' mailbox and doorway.

The graffiti involved liberal use of the "N" word, and included "N---- radio station" written on a Suburban and "No N----" across the mailbox slot in the 1100 block of Georgia Street. A sign written on the back of a flier and stuck near the door contained another epithet.

The tagging occurred between 3 and 7 a.m. Saturday, said David Martin, who is African-American.

"This saddens my heart. We are not a black or white radio station, but a community radio station," Martin said. "I'm shocked."

An Ozcat radio board member said an emergency board meeting would take place today to discuss the incident and what should be done. The station will not be intimidated, said the board member, who gave only her DJ name -- Golden Lady.

DJ Damon Williams said the tagging was probably done by someone with no knowledge of the radio station's mission or the people behind it.

Martin said the station had not been targeted by racist taggers before and he has no idea who is behind them.

The tagging, Martin stressed, would not discourage him from the radio station's mission of presenting a full range of musical styles and celebrating the community's diversity. "This gives me the strength to push on," he said.

The station plays a diverse array of musical types and styles representing many cultures and styles. The station also gives local musicians and art groups a venue.

The Vallejo Police Department received a report on the Ozcat radio graffiti and would be looking into it, Lt. Lee Horton said.

"Obviously, we'll do whatever we can to catch them," Horton said. "We'll do our best."

Horton added that other parts of Vallejo were hit with graffiti Friday night.

Formerly broadcast only on the Internet, Ozcat was granted full programming rights by the FCC and secured the call letters KZCT and a place on the dial at 89.5.

2010 strife at listener-sponsored KPFA Radio in Berkeley is dying down after the National Labor Relations Board dismissed 3 complaints and former host Aimee Allison lost an arbitration hearing on the voluntary and involuntary layoffs last fall. KPFA has improved its financial position by over $350,000, reduced its operating deficit by 85% and has increased listener support donations by 3.5% since October of 2010. 

The advice memo issued by the National Labor Relations Board in April of 2011 can be referenced below.  Two additional complaints were similarly withdrawn after facing dismissal.

Arbitration hearings for former host Aimee Allison ended with the layoff for financial exigency upheld by the CWA arbitrator.

KPFA, which was perched on an abyss, after two consecutive years of more than $550,000 losses in addition to the 14-month disappearance of a $375,000 donation check received in October of 2008 and not recovered until December of 2009, has made a substantial financial rebound in 2011. Listener donations increased by 3.5%, overall revenue by 1.4% and  operating deficits reduced by 85% in only 10 months.

AT&T complained that a panel of independent academics in the PUC's merger impact hearing threatened to "taint" the proceeding with their uninformed opinions. 

The panel opened the first of 3 public workshops throughout the state in the month of July where panelists will discuss various aspects of the proposed merger of AT&T with T-Mobile. 

The workshop on Friday July 8th began with the panel on economic impact, which featured Santa Clara University School of Law professor Allen Hammond, Stanford professors Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School, Roger Noll, a professor emeritus of economics at Stanford University, and George Ford of Washington's Phoenix Center for Economic Policy.

The day followed with 4 industry panels discussing back-haul service agreements, data roaming services and spectrum availability. All 3industry panels featured one representative each from AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Cricket.

Michelle Quinn reported in Politico on the letter sent by AT&T to presiding judge Jessica Hecht and PUC commissioner Catherine Sandoval, and the letter is available here.

For a transcript and video archive of the July 8th workshops, including the panel AT&T tried to kill, go here.  MA's brief comment can be found on pages 221-223 of the transcript.

Political reporter Rollin Post, whose career spanned both mainstream and public broadcasting, passed on October 3rd at the age of 82. 

Information regarding memorial services can be found here. 

Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs passes at 56 of pancreatic cancer, leaving a legacy of digital innovation and a rapidly-changing information society. 

Macbooks, i-phones, i-pods and i-pods have changed lives, transforming the simple tasks of writing, making a phone call and listening to a song in ways that could not have been predicted.

As with all change, gaps have sprung up between the so-called "early adopters" of innovative technology and those who lag far behind, reinforcing the divides that strafe society across socio-economic differences.

And many things, including journalism, cafe communities and the long-lost art of letter writing will never be the same.

We won't add any more to the outpouring on the web. There is more than any person could possibly read. But while paying tribute, lets not forget to keep having honest conversations about the impact of the digital society, including issues of equity, loss of privacy, and effects on on localism, news reporting and in-person community-building.

This video records the opening moments of the Fruitvale march that marked the release of Oscar Grant's killer Johannes Mehserle from prison. 

*Note - Two weeks later, the public did attend the next meeting and the PUC voted 3-2 to proceed with an extensive investigation of the impacts of the merger of Californians. 

****

I was out-gunned 30-1.

On May 26th, I went to the California Public Utilities Commission to encourage them to perform a thorough investigation of the impact of the AT&T / T-Mobile merger on California consumers.

As a public interest advocate, I’m used to being the underdog. Despite sending lots of last-minute emails asking people to come, I didn’t expect a huge amount of folks would be able to dispense with work and family and rush over to the commission meeting.

But I didn’t expect it to be this bad.

Speaker after speaker encouraged the commission not to delay the merger, which would magically deliver 4G everywhere, end all dropped calls, deliver high-speed broadband nationwide, and help bring the US economy out of recession.

There didn’t seem to be much this merger wouldn’t fix.

Somewhat to my shock, several people I recognized as leaders of organizations that serve lower-income populations, had come to make comments encouraging automatic approval of the merger with no investigation.

Then came my one minute to provide an alternative point of view.

* I said that duopolies rarely result in lower prices for consumers.

* I mentioned the December 2010 Consumer Reports study ranking AT&T as the lowest-ranked wireless carrier in customer satisfaction

* I asked them to substantiate the miraculous claims of merger proponents, or at least to provide some evidence for them.

Afterwards I spoke to a few people. One of them was a young woman representing a chamber of commerce in Fresno. I asked her if she really thought the merger would bring such amazing benefits to the local small businesses she represents.

She answered that she liked what I had to say about the merger.

The upshot of the day’s hearing was a 5-0 vote to open an investigative proceeding and not automatically approve the merger.

As I sat waiting for the result, only a few feet away from the president of AT&T California, Ken McNeeley, I had some time to think about what I had just participated in.

* My DC friends tell me the ratio of telecom lobbying efforts compared to public interest lobbying efforts is  661-1.

* AT&T spent 15 million dollars lobbying in 2010. That is 60x the annual budget of my organization (when it’s doing well).

* Small businesses, which often suffer as much from non-competitive markets as low-income consumers do, are represented by those who say that what is good for AT&T is good for everybody. Is it really?

I came out of the May 26th hearing with the result I hoped for.

The Public Utilities Commission agreed they owed it to the people of California to engage in an informational proceeding on the merger’s impact.

On this day, the odds were overcome.

But the public needs more than a minute at a dais. And David needs a fighting chance to debate AT&T’s Goliath on a fair platform that doesn’t put community organizations between a rock and hard place.

There is more to come. On June 9th, the commission will discuss the scope of the proceeding and no doubt, there will be battles to make it larger or smaller.

I really hope for better odds than 30-1.

****

For more on the AT&T merger and astroturf lobbying, see this article by Nicole Duran in The Deal magazine: "Divide, Buy and Conquer".

Hyperlocal online news startup, Bay Citizen, will have a 14-person bargaining unit for editorial workers with the Pacific Media Workers Guild after the union won a card check election 7-5-2.

The Labor Relations Board certified the election on July 12th and contract negotiations will begin soon. 

The Bay Citizen has a local work force of 30 people. The new bargaining unit will cover 14 editorial employees, less than 50% of the total employee count.

Bay Citizen president and CEO Lisa Frazier is reported to earn a salary of $400,000 per year. Annual reader memberships cost $50-$149 per year and the site includes PG&E, Wells Fargo Bank, Visa, Yahoo, New Republic Bank and Canon in a list of corporate sponsors.

The Guild issued this press release on July 20th:

 ***

The Bay Citizen Becomes First Start-Up News Website to Unionize

New model in journalism leads way in workplace democracy

San Francisco, July 20, 2011 – Journalists at the nonprofit news website The Bay Citizen have voted to affiliate with the Pacific Media Workers Guild, Local 39521 of The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America.

“We believe The Bay Citizen, as one of the pioneering exponents of new civic journalism, should also be a leading example in the area of workplace democracy,” The Bay Citizen’s editorial staff wrote in a letter to TBC President and CEO Lisa Frazier ahead of filing cards with the National Labor Relations Board.

The majority of the organization's editorial staff signed union cards seeking to be represented by the Guild on May 26th, the one-year anniversary of The Bay Citizen's launch. Voting was conducted June 27 at The Bay Citizen's San Francisco headquarters and by mail-in ballot. NLRB officials counted the votes on Tuesday, July 12.

Two votes out of the 14 cast are being challenged. The remaining ballot count resulted in a 7-5 win to form the union. The two challenged votes have not been opened, however the Guild is certain that whether these two voters are included in the unit or not, the concluding tally will remain in favor of forming a unit. The Guild is asking the NLRB to count all votes cast.

Bernie Lunzer, international president of The Newspaper Guild in Washington, D.C., said the result marks an historic advance for media workers, as traditional newsrooms shrink and the industry struggles to find new models to stay competitive in the online era.

“The future of quality journalism depends on reporters and editors shaping the vision of innovative new media organizations. By voting to be represented by the Guild, employees at The Bay Citizen have given themselves this voice," Lunzer said.

Support came from unionized journalists at The New York Times and KGO radio, which have agreements to obtain local news content from The Bay Citizen.

“For more than a year, journalists from The Bay Citizen have provided important coverage for the pages and website of The New York Times, and these talented journalists are an asset to the Guild at an important time, ” wrote Grant Glickson, New York Times Staff Assistant and Unit Chairperson.

Bay Citizen staff members are committed to the success of the organization and expect their new Guild unit to work in partnership with management to create a contract appropriate for their nonprofit startup.

The Bay Citizen was founded in 2010 as a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to fact-based, independent reporting on civic and community issues in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its newsroom of award-winning journalists covers Bay Area civic and cultural news topics that are under-reported today. TBC also partners widely with independent media organizations and produces the Bay Area pages of the The New York Times.

The Bay Citizen unit joins one of the premier affiliates of TNG-CWA. Formed after a series of recent mergers, the San Francisco-based Pacific Media Workers Guild (known as the California Media Workers Guild until a name change in January) represents about 2,000 news workers, freelancers, court interpreters and union staffs throughout California and Hawaii. News units include the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Bay Area News Group-East Bay, Bay City News Service, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Sacramento Bee, Fresno Bee, Modesto Bee, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Hawaii Herald-Tribune and Maui News. The Guild also includes the California Federation of Interpreters, print shops and union staffs at AFSCME Local 3299, the ILWU and California Labor Federation.

###

This is me, at the edge of town. We've got most things you need in Stamping Ground — or at least near here. Except for real broadband.

It’s a wonder anyone in the rural U.S. bothers to have an Internet connection – certainly anyone living more than 10 minutes from a town of any reasonable size.

Not only are the available options painfully slow – though the satellite ISPs tout their wares with phrases such as “blisteringly fast” – they are expensive and the “service providers” (their words, not mine) do everything in their power to keep you in their talons once they have you signed up.

For $50 a month I have only once reached a download speed of more than 260 kbs. Their explanation? It’s because I’m bundled with an evil TV service provider that restricts the amount of bandwidth it allocates to me. However, if I were to sign a new stand-alone contract with the ISP and pay for a new installation of the latest equipment and a more-expensive plan, then my service would miraculously improve.

Or so they tell me. It must be a joke, right? Why would any company allow another to tarnish its name by downgrading its service — all the while working in partnership with it?

The providers of cable, satellite and landline services have apparently borrowed a leaf from the same manual used by the companies that own the cargo ships. That’s the page where it tells you how to divide your world – in this case the U.S. – into spheres of influence but still maintain the illusion of competition. It’s horrifying.

Appalled by the obstructionist attitudes I encountered as I tried to work through my problems, and the possible damage to his reputation, the small businessman who’d installed my new TV service organized a three-way phone hook-up with my ISP (Company A) to see if we could find a solution. Could I keep my old account and equipment while they sent out an installer with the new gear? No, I’d have to sign a new contract. Well I might as well cancel all together. 

My place, the house broadband forgot. The ISP rep, all helpful and condescending – why do these people all assume you’re not as smart as they? – said something like, “Don’t do that, sir; I appreciate your problem and I’ll switch you through to someone who may be able to help.” 

In a flash we found ourselves talking to a sales rep with another company, one that advertises itself as Company A’s chief and fiercest competitor. I kid you not and I’ll swear to it in court if it comes to that. In response to our incredulous question, Company B’s salesman said: “We are a sister company, sir.”

How did things get to this state and why is the U.S. so far behind in communications technology (29th in the world and slipping) – especially in what is available to people who live outside city limits? It’s not that the country around Stamping Ground, Kentucky, is sparsely populated. Nor is there any resistance to the idea of affordable access to truly high-speed Internet for all Americans, regardless of where they live. (Note to ISPs: 1Mbs is not high speed. That is considered slow everywhere except in your advertising. South Korea is already testing a 1Gbs network that will be up and running next year.)

Nor does U.S. Internet service come all that cheap. Daily Infographic this year published a statistical map* crediting the U.S. with an average speed of 4.8Mbs at an average cost of $3.33 per Megabit; Japan is shown at 61Mbs and $0.27 per Mb. 

I’d dispute the U.S. figures because my guess is that only major population centers figured in the calculations. My average speed is far less and my cost far more than is quoted for the U.S., and I’m willing to bet there are many people in the same slow and leaking boat. Government surveys indicate that something less than half of all Americans enjoy access to truly high-speed Internet service and, of those who do, less than half receive service qualifying as true broadband, despite the ISPs’ claims.

What’s to be done about it? If the government did what is being done in Australia and ran fiber-optic cable wherever wireless doesn’t reach and launched a few satellites better able to handle Internet communications, then things might improve.

And it’d certainly give the flagging economy a boost. The network could be sold to private interests once it was up and running – with a stipulation that service must be maintained in rural areas – or kept as an income generator for Social Security and Medicare. 

Of course there’d be the usual howls of  “socialism” and the big corporations would argue that they do things better and more efficiently than government. Maybe they can, but they don’t. Service to clients and country comes at best a very poor fourth after executive bonuses, profits and “responsibilities to our shareholders.”

(I note that the CEO of one service – which may or may not be the one I cancelled due to high cost and lousy service – has been awarded a year’s compensation just a McDonald’s or two shy of $33 million.)

We are ankle deep in politicians’ crocodile tears shed over business, competition from cheap foreign labor and the plight of the struggling middle-class (forget the poor; they’re always complaining). But part of the remedy is staring them in the face. And not only would a national, hybrid high-speed wireless/fiber-optic/satellite network make rural businesses more competitive, it would do wonders for health and emergency services, traffic lights, schools and the 1001 other things we now depend on in our increasingly complex world.

But shoot, what do I know? I’m just some grudge-ridden malcontent living way out in the boondocks – all of 20 minutes from the State Capital, 15 minutes from a county seat and 35 minutes from the State’s second-largest city. No doubt I get what I deserve.

Here is a letter advocating for the passage of the largely AT&T sponsored DIVA legislation (Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act) - AB2987 - from the AT&T union representative CWA. The letter stated several benefits to the passage of the law, which changed the state from local cable franchising to a statewide franchise, an action which has raised cable rates for consumers, reduced competition and caused the closure of more than 20 public access centers in the state since 2007. AT&T laid off more than tens of thousands employees in the 24-month period after the legislation was passed.

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April 6, 2006

The Honorable Fabian Nunez, Speaker of the Assembly - Capital Building Room 2117 - Sacramento CA 95814

Dear Speaker Nunuz,

The Communication Workers of America strongly supports Assembly Bill 2987, the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006.

(snipped)

AT&T announced last week they would be investing over one billion dollars in digital infrastructure in CA. AB 2987 will insure that this investment will be made and will result in union jobs both to upgrade the current infrastructure and to keep that infrastructure appropriately serviced in the future.

AB 2987 will introduce competition into the cable industry, thus providing consumers with a choice of cable providers. We are well aware that when competition exists, the price of cable services drops dramatically. Consumers win when communication services become more available and affordable in California.

It is not often that one piece of legislation can cut costs to the consumer, provide greater access and create good middle class jobs all in one action. That is why we strongly support AB 2987, and thank you for your leadership.

Sincerely,

Tony Bixler, Vice-President CWA - District 9

 In an uncharacteristic bit of theater, the Social Science Research Council has released a new report on Media Piracy in Emerging Economies with a Consumers Dilemma. Come from a higher-income country? No free report for you!

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From the Social Science Research Council Blog:

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Not  unexpectedly, our Consumers Dilemma license for the report has generated some controversy.  To recap, the CD license creates different paths to acquiring the report: first, we have an IP address geolocator that sends visitors from high income countries toward an $8 paywall when they download the report;  all other resolvable IP addresses get free access.

Criticism so far has taken two general forms:

1)  That we are being unfair in constraining access in high-income countries by setting an $8 pay wall.  This  divides further into what I’ll call a ‘CC left’ position, which thinks the report should be Creative Commons-licensed (and therefore free to everyone), and a ‘Grumpy Right’ position which appears to just resent being asked to pay $8 when others are getting it for free.

2) The view that the license is cheap theater unworthy of the scientific purpose of the study.  Since this complaint is underspecified so far, I’ll assume it includes 1 but is mostly about the commercial reader license, which gets read as juvenile sticking it to the man.

Maybe some clarification is in order here. The reader is faced with a dilemma: pay the legal price, acquire it through pirate channels, or don’t bother with it.  In most of the countries we’ve studied in this report, the results of this calculation with respect to DVDs, music, and software are strikingly consistent.  Media goods are highly desired, exorbitantly priced with respect to local incomes, and freely available through pirate channels.   High rates of piracy and tiny legal markets are the result. We’ve written 400+ pages about this dysfunctional form of globalization and its causes.

The resulting consumers dilemma is a ubiquitous experience in medium and low-income countries but one that confronts the American or European reader much less frequently and with much less intensity.  The global market is made for those consumers.  It is priced and distributed for them. 

The Consumers Dilemma license is a way of reversing that equation and, in the most minor ways,  requiring an explicit engagement with it.  Among the surreal aspects, that simple choice can subject you to crushing civil and criminal penalties, but you can rest easy knowing that only very rare, arbitrary examples will be made (and none in our case).  Now that’s theater.  Our license has a theatrical side, to be sure, but it also stays true to the experiences  documented in the report.  Those experiences–the personal choices and the market and price structure that informs them–are the report’s primary subject.

(* Go here if the resolution of your dilemma is to pay the $8 for the report).

Two new videos: 1 from Reel Grrls in Seattle on this year's Academy Awards spectacle and another from Albuquerque's Media Literacy Project on overpriced vocational schools that exploit young job seekers. 

The Greenlining Institute presents “Mapping Our Future: Drawing Lines that Matter!” – a 5 minute video about California Redistricting in 2011 and what’s at stake for communities of color. Redistricting - the process of re-drawing state election districts - is one of the most important political processes happening in 2011. It will determine whether your community has a voice in government for the next 10 years!  This is your chance to get involved.

As part of the Greenlinging Institute's state-wide civic engagement campaign to ensure that California's low-income communities and communities of color are heard as decisions are being made, you are invited to join in on one of the upcoming community meetings. More information available via the Greenlining Institute Facebook page.

The Media Freedom Foundation's 2011 Censored is out with the 25 most under-reported stories of 2010. Please support the work of Project Censored and buy a copy today!

MA member Jonathan Nack recorded this video of the foreclosure protest that disrupted the annual Wells Fargo Shareholders Meeting for over an hour earlier this month. 

KPFA Radio, has received complaints from 3 Berkeley City Council members and 6 workers on two different incidents of problematic coverage in a week on the daily hour-long statewide broadcast of the Pacifica Evening News. 

The first complaint was from by Berkeley City Council members Linda Maio, Kriss Worthington and Laurie Capitelli on a story on a council resolution asking all parties involved in the station's contentious November layoff of 2 employees to negotiate in good faith with each other.

Councilmember Linda Maio asked for an on-air correction on February 10th: (excerpted)

Below is a transcript of Aileen Alfandary's characterization of the Council's vote and, by extension, the Council's sentiments.... The Council, in its vote, did not take sides. My vote was not "prompted" by the layoffs. Kriss's wasn't, Laurie's wasn't. Kriss, you will recall, wanted to add more specific language that we were neutral. We thought that went without saying but I can see now it was well advised. I will do what I can, through messages to my own friend and constituent lists, to correctly convey my own position.

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli added on February 11th: (excerpted)

I strongly concur with Linda's concerns. The council vote was a message to all sides in the dispute to move forward with mediation hopefully starting with fresh eyes and a true desire to get past the events of the last several months.

A second complaint was filed on February 10th by six workers about a news feature  on an FPPC volation by one of the station's unpaid staff members. The "open letter" stated: (excerpted) Airing a personal attack to bolster a station turf war is unacceptable. There are too many authentic and important news stories stories waiting to be told.

Media Alliance is not aware of any direct response to either complaint from the KPFA news department.

MA's director sits on the KPFA and Pacifica Foundation board of directors.

The Alliance for Community Media's former director of Information and Organizing Services Rob McCausland provides these illuminating maps in a survey of the landscape of community television across the United States, 

Cablecasting Meetings of Local Governments: Cities of More Than 100,000 Residents

Mapping United States Educational Access Television Providers

Nonprofit and Government-Managed Community Access Channels

Get a visceral feel at the range of what we stand to lose if we don't protect the hard-earned channels, facilities and equipments that cable companies were forced to give back to local communities. 

Like the B-52's? Metallica? The White Stripes?

You might have never heard of them if not for KUSF, the venerable San Francisco college radio station that first played their music.

College radio is part of the diverse package of community media voices around the country that with spit-and-glue budgets, volunteer energy and a handful of overworked staff, keep bits of the television and radio waves open to the public, while training millions of young people in technology and how to use it.

These do-it-yourself outlets, which have survived for decades with an open door policy, often feature unique and eclectic formats inspired by the passions and talents of the surrounding community. At the University of San Francisco for the past thirty years, that has often meant the city's flourishing and influential music scene, one of the most vital in the country.

KUSF hasn't gone unnoticed. Besides a lofty alumni list of musical talent that later became household names, KUSF also broadcast public affairs programming in 9 different languages, weekly broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera and other random niches rarely served by larger broadcasters, and received commendations from a hit parade of local and national institutions including the United States Senate, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, American Women in Radio and Television, The National Association of College Broadcasters, The United Way, the San Francisco Weekly, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and SF mayors Willie Brown, Jr. and Dianne Feinstein,

Sounds like a community media success story.

But KUSF broadcast for the last time on January 18, 2011. Howard Ryan, a former DJ, describes the events of that day:

"I turned around to see Trista Bernasconi, KUSF Program Director, standing in the doorway of the studio. She asked me to step outside, and looked upset. I went over and she told me: This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. The station has been sold, and I have to turn the transmitter off. I looked behind me into Studio A and the signal was already gone as my record continued to play silently on Turntable One."

I could end this story in the most conventional of ways: large corporation buys scrappy but financially challenged community institution and adds it to growing pile of investments. We've all seen that play out. Corporate media consolidation is not an untold tale.

But what happened to KUSF and Rice University station KTRU and about two dozen other college radio stations in the last decade wasn't a corporate takeover. Their licenses were absorbed into public media or NPR, assisted by the public media financial leveraging firm Public Radio Capital.

Public Radio Capital has been around for about a decade, an initiative arising from the Station Resource Group. A planning document left up on the net drew my attention with a sentence it contained:

"With virtually all FM channels in well-populated areas already assigned, the only option is to obtain outlets from those who already have them, including commercial, religious, and educational broadcasters outside the public radio system."

Educational broadcasters outside the public radio system include a large variety of college-based and community-based stations that criss-cross the country, including the 5-station and 150-affiliate Pacifica Radio Network.

Every year, the public and community media family sing kumbaya at annual conferences like the National Federation for Community Broadcasters or the bi-annual National Conference on Media Reform, where independent, alternative, community-based and public interest media are saluted for their roles as antidotes to the lack of credibility of the commercial and corporately-owned networks, the cable giants and the radio empires of Clear Channel, Infinity and Entercom.

Seemingly united around shared values of localism and diversity, one hates to think that behind the solidarity is a plan for the long-term absorption of all licenses outside the master ship.

At this time, when public media financing is facing serious challenges in Washington, and all hands on deck are needed to help preserve what little public interest media we have, perhaps we need to redefine the private financing needs as Community Radio Capital and the challenge as leveraging the financial resources to keep educational and community-based broadcasters, NPR-affiliated or not, right where they are, servicing their unique neighborhoods and developing formats and programming priorities that are as varied and diverse as the local places they inhabit.

After all, if there's a million channels and they're all playing the same thing all day, what have we gained?

Somebody's got to take a chance with the B-52's.

(Media Alliance webinars coming soon! We were ready to announce the lineup and then feel victim to capitalist acquisition as our platform of choice was swallowed up by Salesforce. We're researching other open source options).

The latest buzz in education is the growth of online learning communities to address educational access. Through online offerings, education can be more affordable and have the capability to reach communities that otherwise couldn’t access quality institutions. Concurrently, as more students and educators move towards online learning as an alternative, issues of equality are emerging. The question arises, how can online learning close the educational access gap if there is still a great digital divide in low-income communities in the US and around the world.

Increased Enrollment: 

There is no doubt that instructional online learning is increasing. In their 2010 Class Differences: Online Education in the United States report, I. Elaine Allen, Ph.D. and Jeff Seaman, Ph.D. (Babson College) show that “twenty-one percent growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the less than two percent growth of the overall higher education student population.” This growth proves that the option for online learning is becoming more mainstream and a serious consideration when making decisions about one’s education.

The report also states, “Three-quarters of institutions report the economic downturn has increased demand for online courses and programs.” Implying that online learning could have a positive impact on the economy by offering alternative ways for people to return to school, improve their skill base, and in turn feed these higher-level skills back into the workplace. However, who are the students able to take advantage of this opportunity? Is the population most gravely impacted by the economy unable to access these online courses and programs.

Access and connectivity:

According to the International Telecommunication Union, the proportion of households with Internet access at home in the US in 2009 was: 68.89% (rural 63.40%, urban 70.01%). While this percentage is high, it still means that 30% of the population cannot access online learning opportunities in their homes which is where most of these type of opportunities occur.

The majority of online learning platforms require a computer with a fast processor and newer operating system. In addition there is the issue of Internet access. Often there is also some type of video component to accompany a course, which requires a stronger connection to stream content as well as multi-media plugins like Flash, Java, etc. In some cases, platforms offer materials in downloadable form but this still requires online access and downloading the materials to a personal computer. There may also be software that requires downloading as well, or operating systems that are not compatible.

This is all to say that online learning platforms require much more than just having access to a computer. It usually means a sweep of your system to insure you have the correct software and plug-ins, a high-speed connection, and a high performing machine. So, even if people have computers they may not have machines that can handle what online courses require.

Confidence:

In addition, if exposure to computer use is limited, experience and skill levels are also limited. Therefore, confidence in seeking online learning opportunities can be low. Imagine how someone with limited computer skills would react if they saw a list of system requirements that included PHP 4.3.0 or higher or MySQL 3.23.0 or greater. Even a fairly tech savvy person can find those types of requirements intimidating. So, how can educators and content providers expect a population who has little-to-no experience with computers to embrace online learning offerings?

Addressing access:

Currently, there is a pilot program in US public schools attempting to address the issues of access and confidence among students and their parents. The Connected Learning program is currently rolling out its first stage in New York and Los Angeles. The program provides desktop computers for a number of 6^th grade students to improve the classroom to home connection. The computers come equipped with a number of software programs and offer a medium speed Internet connection for free (a broadband connection is also available at a discounted monthly price). After the two-year pilot program, teachers will be encouraged to continue to integrate the software and online connection into classroom and home learning environments.

“This as an opportunity to not only bridge the digital divide, but also support teachers to extend learning beyond the four walls of the classroom,” says Daniel Storchan, Ed-Tech Consultancy Director at AUSSIE Digital School Solution, Professional Development provider and grant partner. “There is a huge paradigm shift happening today in which educators are now recognizing the need to equip young people with the tools to successfully navigate online spaces as responsible digital citizens.”

By the end of a two-year period, the grant partners in New York City will work in 100 middle schools and there will be computers in 18,500 households which did not have them before. Beyond reaching the program’s 6th graders, parents and siblings will also have access to a resource that could bring education into their homes.

This is a small step towards closing the digital divide but one that will provide a  window into advantages and hurdles in introducing new technology and equipment to a population that has otherwise had limited exposure.

Conclusion:

As a solution to tackling access to education for an entire population, online learning has a long road ahead. But there are strategic steps that educational and content providers can take now to begin to widen the spectrum of participants.

When developing online learning systems and products, content should be short and sweet, have small file sizes and downloading options. There should be limited system requirements and no need to download or update any software.

The emphasis should be placed on the quality of content and not the bells and whistles of the platform. Simplicity will be the key ingredient in bridging the digital divide and one that will ensure a sustainable and effective approach to creating accessible educational tools for all.

As the situation in Japan goes from bad to worse, Pacifica Radio provided a comprehensive look at our energy future in the wake of Fukushima.

Listen to the 5-station collaborative coverage from the community radio network. 

(Abby Martin is a Bay Area based citizen journalist and filmmaker - and sometimes Media Alliance volunteer).

Naomi Wolf's book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, argues that there are ten steps common to every state that has made the transition into fascism. One step is the targeting of key individuals or demographics: artists, academics, activists, civil servants, gays, Jews; the public blacklisting of those who don't tow the party line. Another move towards fascism is the control over the press—all dictatorships and would-be dictators target journalists and make sweeping media reforms to increase their control and their ability to censor information.

Her book conveys the inklings of fascism here in America, but in a globalized society, the West sets the tone for policy and culture that influences the rest of the world. As Orwellian rhetoric becomes commonplace-- wars are being waged to maintain "peace" and draconian bills that curtail civil liberties are being litigated as "patriotic"—countries worldwide have been enacting Wolf's ten steps, some with more haste than others.

After decades of post-Soviet, post-Holocaust political and economic strife, Hungary is starting to embody Orwell's dystopian portrayal. This April, Fidesz, Hungary's center-right conservative party, won 2/3rds control over Parliament, putting the conservative party in power for the first time since World War II. Moreover, Fidesz now controls 22 out of the 23 major cities in the country. This complete takeover by one party is significant, because the Hungarian Constitution can be effectively changed with a 2/3rds majority in Parliament, an advantage now regularly enacted by the new party in power.

In the hundred days following the election, sweeping measures were passed by the Parliament that curtail Hungarians' freedoms. The reforms include an installation of a "media presidium", drastic legislation against journalistic independence and an attempt to control the content coming from the last remaining independent art centers and theatres. The government is taking these actions under the new mantra of "re-nationalization", an effort where judicial law is compromised and the consolidation of power is increased under nationalist rhetoric. This new mantra is conveyed in a government manifesto that is now required by law to be displayed in every public sphere across the country.

Another indication of Hungary's shift to the right is Jobbik, a right wing nationalist party known for their anti-Semitic and anti-gay speech that won an unprecedented 47 seats into Parliament. The growing influence of prominent extreme right political players is in part a backlash from the Socialist Party's failures which resulted in a disenfranchised, fragmented left. In 2008, Hungary experienced an economic collapse and was subsequently bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. Amid their economic struggle, Hungarians became disillusioned with Socialism, leading to the eventual takeover of the center and far right. Presently, under Fidesz's reign, the public live in an unpredictable political climate in which Jobbik's bigoted ideology could gain momentum among alienated Hungarians that feel unrepresented by the current government. Already, an anonymously published list of many prominent Jewish, Bolshevik and Homosexual Hungarian political and cultural figures has been circulated, bolstering a climate of demonization that is reminiscent of McCarthy's Communist era blacklisting. The targeting and slandering of different groups and demographics of the population are essential tools for a would-be dictatorship to propagate the fear required for a compliant culture.

In an attempt to eliminate society's free expression, the Cultural Committee of the government has recommended the "removal of independent theatres and contemporary moving art companies from the roll of accredited artistic organizations". Fidesz has refused to disperse 1/3 of the money already allocated for the independent theater and art sector, resulting in cancellations of major festivals and closure of numerous art centers. A complete cessation of government funds would not only threaten thousands of jobs but would also significantly threaten Hungary's celebrated culture and heritage.

The art organizations that remain are receiving "content recommendations" from government, requiring that the art reflect kindly on the nation. This is particularly alarming given the crucial role of independent art and media in times of political and societal despair. In every country, such outlets have served an essential role in society by reflecting a cultural climate and shaping people's greater understanding of the world in which they live. Forums for dialogue and independent expression naturally breed dissent against the status quo, which likely explains the harsh crackdown on the art and media sector since Hungary's abrupt political transition. Many are disagreeing with the suppression—there have already been multiple high profile resignations attributed to the government's intrusion in this field.

Fidesz's latest assault on the arts is focused on the internationally acclaimed National Theatre of Hungary and its award winning art director, Robert Alfoldi. Members of Parliament have pronounced the Theatre "dangerous, anti-national and anti-Hungarian" for its plans to host a Romanian holiday concert, and are calling for the immediate resignation of Alfoldi for his "betrayal". On December 1st, Jobbik held a rally outside of the National Theatre building with the purpose of instigating Alfoldi's expulsion. If Alfoldi is dismissed early from his term without legal basis, his removal would signify a dangerous precedent in which leaders from any cultural institution can be dismissed simply because of the ruling party's ideals.

At the same time, an even more controversial piece of legislation passed under Fidesz is the new "Media Constitution" or Bill T/363, which set up the framework to regulate Hungary media on a day-to-day basis for the next nine years or longer. According to Dr. Karol Jakubowicz, an international expert in broadcasting and a member of the Kosovo Independent Media Commission, Bill T/393 creates a registration system that would construct potential legal and political barriers to new content entering the media landscape in conjunction with providing Hungary's government the ability to take increased action against existing providers of "vaguely unwanted content".

Another aspect of the bill prohibits the incitation to hatred against nations, ethnic, religious, minority or majority groups. According to Jakubowicz, the vague restriction of "inciting hatred" is a slippery slope that would undoubtedly lead to similar sanctions of unintentional insult or inadvertent incitement to hatred from media outlets that are simply capable of insult and exclusion.

Jakubowicz writes that Bill T/363 "require[s] instituting a system of surveillance, supervision and possible repression that are unacceptable in a democratic society... placing Hungary alongside authoritarian countries seeking to control all forms of social communication."

The moves by the Fidesz government to alter the constitution, as well as to control modes of communication and social networks in the country, amount to a current political setting that has unsettling similarities to Germany's rise to fascism. Dictatorships and developing fascist states have always expelled nationalist rhetoric and Party propaganda justifying the takeover of free society—the Nazi Party in Germany believed propaganda was a vital tool in achieving their goals, and produced it under the Orwellian "Ministry of Public Enlightenment".

In the Nazi Party manifesto, the first point demanded the "union of all Germans in a Great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples." Similar propaganda is emerging in Hungary in the guise of the Fidesz Party's manifesto, The Hungarian National Assembly of National Cooperation, which states that Hungary has "regained the right and power of self-determination". Frighteningly, Fidesz's political declaration is now mandated to be prominently displayed and framed in most public spaces across the country.

The manifesto further declares that a Hungarian revolution took place in April's elections in which "Hungarians decided to create a new system: The National Cooperation System. With this historical act the Hungarian nation obliged the incoming National Assembly and Government to take the helm at this endeavor, resolute, uncompromising and with deliberation, and control the construction of the National Cooperation System in Hungary."

The document also explains that this "new social contract" will "bring together the diverse Hungarian nation," creating a future based on the societal pillars of "work, home, family, health and order." Hungary's nationalist rhetoric is all too similar to the coded words ringing from previous regimes that sought to homogenize the face and values of the nations they ruled.

In Nazi Germany, journalists, writers, and actors were required to tow the official Party line on world events, and had to get their work pre-approved by the state before disseminating it to the public. In Hungary, artists are receiving "content recommendations" from the government, and the new Hungarian Media Constitution requires that all media shall provide "appropriate information" that is "factual, timely and balanced"--all factors that are determined by Fidesz.

Nazism and Communism still scar Hungary's past. The country's regression to its dark history should be watched closely by the international community, especially the European Union (EU). Hungary's 2004 membership into the EU symbolized an agreement to operate under an ethical code of political and societal conduct established by the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Charter prohibits discrimination and enshrines the freedom of expression, thought, and religion for all EU citizens.

Already, Fidesz has set up a legal framework restricting free expression, and has created a climate of fear that impinges upon Hungarians' fundamental rights protected by the EU Charter. If international attention and criticism are not received in time, Hungary could continue down an authoritarian road similar to the Nazis—eventually condemning, incarcerating or even killing those who do not uphold the principles of the Party.

Abby Martin is a freelance writer, citizen journalist, activist and artist living in Oakland, CA. You can find more of her writing at www.MediaRoots.org and view her artwork at www.AbbyMartin.org

Sometimes you might get it.

For most of the past year, public interest groups worried about the future of the Internet have pushed for action on net neutrality by the Federal Communications Commission. In response to that call, Chairman Julius Genachowski moved in the spring to reclassify broadband services, proposing a light regulatory protocol as a "third way".

After that didn't exactly take off, the chair convened meetings with industry including AT&T, Skype, Verizon and Google, meetings that broke down after Google and Verizon announced a deal that would introduce paid content prioritization. In the ensuing uproar, the issue once again rose to the level of a burning public debate with right-wing accusations of "Obamacare for the Internet" competing with public interest laments about slow lanes on the Internet to come for alternative news, independent artists and musicians, and community groups.

A stalemate was waiting to be broken. The chairman jumped into the breach once again (apparently hoping the 3rd time would be the charm) and announced the release of an order to be voted on December 21st. The order passed Tuesday on a 3-2 vote, but is not promising with some restraints on network management practices for wired systems, but a far less strict protocol for mobile and wireless networks and little control of paid prioritization marketing schemes.

The Federal Communications Commission is a five-person commission, with two Republican commissioners who were opposed to any action whatsoever and two Democratic commissioners who were expected to push for stronger regulations, which left the Chairman (a Democrat supported by a Democratic president) as the tiebreaking vote.

So what are we to make of this order?

Genachowski's order does attempt to impose some teeth to enforce the equal treatment of data on wired connections. The arbitrary jamming of Bit Torrent uploads that was chronicled by Robb Topolsky and led to sanctions on Comcast in 2008 would not be permitted. At least in the eyes of the FCC. But their legal authority to enforce sanctions without reclassifying is shaky at best, and may not hold up to a court challenge.

So your laptop is theoretically on neutral territory when you have it plugged into a wall. Take it on the road, however, and you're in a different ballpark. The order skimps on extending neutrality protections to mobile Internet usage so traveling laptops, smart phones and tablet devices like the ipad are largely exempted from rules assuring the equal treatment of all data and all applications of your choice.

Some of you may be thinking that in 10 years, it is likely the majority of Internet traffic will be on one mobile platform or another. You wouldn't be wrong.

We may be regulating the Internet equivalent of the Pony Express.

The other big elephant in the living room is the threat of paid content prioritization. Is that an imaginary threat?

Not if you listened to the CEO of the UK's Virgin Internet, who had this to say way back in 2008:

In an interview with the Royal Television Society's Television magazine, far from covering up their intentions, Virgin Media's new incoming CEO Neil Berkett - who joined the Virgin Media Board just a few days ago - has launched an attack on the ideas and principles behind net neutrality. "This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks," he said, adding that Virgin is already in the process of doing deals to speed up the traffic of certain media providers and that he has promised to put any website or service that won't pay Virgin a premium to reach its customers into the "Internet bus lane."

While you probably wouldn't get any American telecom CEO to be quite so blunt, it stands to reason the profit model is not wildly different in the United Kingdom than it is here at home.

We don't simply have to rely on telegraphs from abroad; Comcast, always the first to leap off any bridge, recently started charging a recurring fee for the transmission of Netflix streaming videos by their third party provider Level Three Communications. Thomas Stortz, the legal officer for Level Three had this to say:

With this action, Comcast is preventing competing content from ever being delivered to Comcast's subscribers at all, unless Comcast's unilaterally determined toll is paid - even though Comcast's subscribers requested the content. With this action, Comcast demonstrates the risk of a 'closed' Internet, where a retail broadband Internet access provider decides whether and how their subscribers interact with content.

Level Three will pay the fees and then presumably increase what they charge Netflix and then Netflix will increase what it charges consumers and life will go on with a $5 month surcharge, but if you think about the competitive implications after Comcast merges with NBC, then the true horror of paid prioritization comes into focus. It will be cheaper, easier, faster to access NBC content on Comcast internet connections because ..... no fees.

After every major content provider scuttles to sign a preferred content deal with one or another major Internet service provider, God help the consumer trying to locate some not-so-preferred content.

The Internet slow lane might become a pretty lonely place.

This is a conservative estimate of the wide-scale plunder that includes monies garnered from hidden rate hikes, depreciation allowances, write-offs and other schemes. Ironically, in 2009, the FCC's National Broadband plan claimed it will cost about $350 billion to fully upgrade America's infrastructure.

The principal consequence of the great broadband con is not only that Americans are stuck with an inferior and overpriced communications system, but the nation's global economic competitiveness has been undermined.

In a June 2010 report, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranked the U.S. 15th on broadband subscribers with 24.6 percent penetration; the consulting group, Strategy Analytics, is even more pessimistic, ranking the U.S. 20th with a "broadband" penetration rate of 67 percent compared to South Korea (95 percent), Netherlands (85 percent) and Canada (76 percent). Making matters worse, Strategy Analytics projects the U.S. ranking falling to 23rd by year-end 2010.

But these are just overall statistics. Today, people in Japan, Korea, Europe and other countries get broadband services that are 100-mbps services in both directions for what we pay for inferior, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber line (ADSL), while in Hong Kong companies have started to offer 1-gigabit speeds.*

Part of the reason for this is these countries have sunk more fiber optical cable into the ground and connected more homes to the next-generation grid. According to the OECD, the U.S. ranks 11th with only 5 percent fiber penetration, compared to Japan (54 percent), Korea (49 percent) and European OECD countries (11 percent).

Another reason for the woeful state of U.S. broadband is that we have one of the slowest networks in the world. According to the technology company, Akamai, the U.S. ranked 22nd globally in average connection datarate speed, averaging only 3.8-mbps in Q-4 2009. In comparison, Korea's average datarate was nearly three-times faster (11.7-mbps), Hong Kong more then double (8.6-mbps) and Japan was at 7.6-mbps. A surprise to many, Romania had an average rate of 7.2-mbps and Latvia clocked at 6.2-mbps.

Screwed

Grand cons regularly screw Americans. Millions bet the lottery that never pays off; millions go to Las Vegas and Atlantic City hoping for the big score and leave with empty pockets; and millions bet big-time on a housing run-up and lost big, big time. Hustlers offer a zillion get-rich schemes over TV and the Internet that people accepted either out of naivety, greed or desperation. But one of the greatest -- and little reported -- scams perpetuated on the American public is the broadband con.

The scam was simple. Starting in 1991, Verizon, Qwest and what became AT&T offered each state -- in true "Godfather" style -- a deal they couldn't refuse: Deregulate us and we'll give you Al Gore's future. They argued that if state Public Utility Commission (PUCs) awarded them higher rates and stopped examining their books, they would upgrade the then-current telecommunications infrastructure, the analog Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) of aging copper wiring, into high-speed and two-way digital optical fiber networks.

State regulators, like state politicians, are seduced by the sound of empty promises -- especially when sizable campaign contributions and other perks come their way. Hey, what are a few extra bucks charged to the customer every month for pie-in-the-sky promises? And who cares about massive tax breaks, accelerated depreciation allowances and enormous tax write-offs? The promises sound good on election day and nobody, least of all the voter, reads the fine print.

The broadband con has been played out across the country. In California, Pacific Bell (now part of AT&T) claimed it would spend $16 billion and have 5.5 million homes wired by 2000. Instead, after a merger with SBC in 1997 (renamed AT&T in 2005), it secured state deregulation and simply stopped building out the fiber-based broadband infrastructure. On the East Coast, things were pretty much the same. Bell Atlantic, which covered New Jersey to Virginia and is now part of Verizon, claimed it would spend $11 billion and have 8.7 million homes wires by 2000. And in Connecticut, SNET (now also part of AT&T) promised to spend $4.5 billion and have the entire state rewired by 2007. In the mid-West, the story was similar. Ameritech (now part of AT&T and which controlled five states, including Illinois and Ohio) claimed they would have 6 million homes wired by 2000. For Ohio, Ameritech claimed it would rewire every school, library and hospital with fiber by 2000. None of these promises have been realized.

Over the last two decades, the telcos have engaged in a lot of sleight-of-hand tricks to make Americans believe that broadband was real and their service was the world's best. In 1996 the Internet hit and everyone wanted to go online. This migration to the World Wide Web was led, not by AT&T and Verizon, but by thousands of small and larger ISPs from AOL and Prodigy to over 9,500 small ISPs.

By 1998, not only did the telephone companies mostly stop building out their networks, but instead of rolling out the next-generation "info superhighway," they pulled a bait-and-switch and rolled backward, offering customers ADSL service, a watered-down "broadband" connection that runs on good old copper wire.

Another trick used by telecoms has been to submit to federal and state regulators falsified cost models, often lying to regulators and the public. For example, the great lie was voiced in 1991 when the telecom boldly announced the new broadband age based on technologies that they claimed capable of delivering 45-mbps bi-directional services, but the technologies didn't exist and couldn't work out at the cost models submitted. When pushed, the phone companies presented self-produced, self-funded or self-serving "research" by shill think-tanks to buttress their claim for higher rates.

Now, nearly two decades after Gore announced the Info Superhighway and the telcos secured deregulation to build out the next-generation communications infrastructure, the nation's two largest phone companies, Verizon and AT&T, have begun to seriously deploy fiber services. In 2004 and with much fanfare, Verizon introduced FiOS, a fiber-to-the-home service. Today, it claims only 3.6 million subscribers and new subscriptions have stalled.

AT&T, which originally promised to launch its advances service, U-verse, in 2006 in 15 markets, got it running in 2007 but in only 11 markets -- and then not through an entire market. As of the end of Q-2, 2010, it claimed 2.5 million subscribers. Sadly, the telecoms have only 6 million full broadband fiber subscribers as of 2010. What happened to the other 94 million households they promised to sign-up?

Americans have paid and paid again billions of dollars for an imaginary upgrade to create a fiber optic future. The estimate of $320 billion has already been collected which means that every household has paid almost $3,000 to upgrade the phone networks. The question no wants to really address is simple: What have Americans gotten for the telecom broadband rip-off?

Playing the con

In order to understand how the broadband con works, it is useful to examine how it has played out in one state and extrapolate this to the other 49 states. In this case, we will examine New Jersey as representative of a nationwide policy.

New Jersey state law requires that by 2010, 100 percent of the state is to be rewired with 45-mbps, bi-directional service. To meet this goal, Verizon collected approximately $13 billion in approved rate increases, tax break and other incentives related to upgrading the Public Switched Telephone Networks. To cover its tracks, Verizon submitted false statements year after year, claiming that it was close to fulfilling its obligations. For example, in its 2000 Annual Report, it claimed that 52 percent of the state could receive "45-mbps in both directions or higher."

Based on such false claims, Verizon has benefited for significant pricing increases for essentially inexpensive computerized services. For example, Call Waiting and Call Forwarding cost less then $.01 cent to offer yet the company charges $4-$7 for such features. In addition, fees for inside wiring went up to $7.00 from $1.25.

The company also benefited from more invisible perks. It secured massive write-offs on its network even though it wasn't being replaced; it actually secured a write-off of over 105 percent above the amount of construction. These write-offs helped save it billions in taxes. These factors have helped significantly heighten the company's Return on Equity, the standard measurement of profits, jump from 12-14 percent before deregulation to 30-40 percent.

But all this gets complicated as they are no longer required to submit full New Jersey annual or quarterly reports and the FCC's filing requirements stopped in 2007. So, in 2009, Verizon, New Jersey outlined financials showed a "net income" loss of $194 million dollars, and a $160 million "tax benefit" and a series of "affiliate transactions," meaning transferring expenses to the utility but without showing monies flowing back.

Verizon's New Jersey coverage is for approximately 3.2 million households, which represents about 3 percent of total U.S. households. Extrapolating from New Jersey, we estimate that Americans have been bilked of at least $320 billion since deregulation went into effect in the mid-'90s.

Digital Houdini

Federal and state regulators ignore the great telecom rip-off -- politicians simply get too many contributions from too many lobbyists to worry about their constituents' phone bills. Telephone companies have orchestrated a massive digital Houdini act in which they present an image of an essential service that offers customers more for less.

After almost 20 years of telecom deregulation, the American communications infrastructure is in shambles. The FCC's broadband plans are now in play. While much debate has taken place over the future of net neutrality, particularly in light of the Google-Verizon proposal to maintain Internet net neutrality on wireline distribution and end it on wireless communications, little attention has been paid to the never-ending rate hikes, failure to deliver on previous promises, poor state of fiber deployment, and into who pocketed the missing $320 billion in over charges.

In 1967, James Coburn stared in a wonderful satire, The President's Analyst, about the corrupting power of a secretive TPC, the phone company. The film pits the Central Enquiries Agency (CEA) against the Federal Bureau of Regulation (FBR), an all-male agency consisting of J. Edgar Hoover look-alikes all under five-foot-six-inches tall. In the intervening four decades, but especially since the break-up of AT&T in 1984 and deregulation starting in 1993, the power of the telecommunications companies, including the cable industry, has both increasingly grown and become increasingly invisible. <br> <br>

A century ago, giant corporate trusts dominated America's economic landscape. A century later, they are back in full force and even greater control over the nation's economic life and political culture.

(For more detailed analyses of the great broadband rip-off, visit www.teletruth.com.)

David Rosen is a regular contributor to CounterPunch, Z-magazine and Brooklyn Rail and is author of 'Sex Scandals America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming' and 'Off-Hollywood: The Making & Marketing of Independent Films.' He can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com. Bruce Kushnick, the founder of New Networks Institute, is a telecommunications industry analyst who regularly reports for Harvard Nieman’s Watchdog. He can be reached at bruce@newnetworks.com.

Filmmaker Jeff Kaufman made this short film on behalf of Americans Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who have been detained in Tehran's Evin Prison for 474 days. Watch the film!

Bauer's fiancee Sarah Shourd was released on bail a month ago, citing humanitarian health-related concerns.  Free The Hikers, the friends and family advocacy effort, is a fiscally-sponsored project of Media Alliance.

Soon all Oakland Police will be outfitted with a video camera, and they may not have to tell you they’re using it.

In September 2010, the Oakland Police Department began testing a small video camera about the size of a cell phone worn on the uniform’s lapel. 20 officers participated in the testing period, a mix of officers from the traffic, crime reduction and patrol teams. OPD officer Holly Joshi reported that the initial testing went well and the cameras will be incorporated into OPD patrols in December 2010.

Currently 19 officers wear the cameras. OPD allows officers to turn the cameras on whenever they wish and requires the cameras be activated during car stops, walking stops, probation searches, parole searches, and search warrants. The cameras can record up to 4 hours of footage, and officers are unable to change the footage captured. Once downloaded to the server, the system administrator has sole access, and footage is stored for 5 years. The cameras will be paid for using leftover funding for the in-car camera system that was never fully integrated into the department.

Police usage of cameras presents a few interesting questions. It comes on the heels of the Mehserle trial for the murder of Oscar Grant, and at a time when the states of Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts made moves towards preventing citizens from recording on-duty police officers.

It also raises questions about the purported objectivity of video. Camera angles, when the camera is turned on and off, and how the viewers interpret what they see taking place within the frame all impact the determination of what “really” happened.

According to a KTVU article about San Jose’s testing of a similar device, Chief of Police Rob Davis said one benefit of cameras is their ability to provide evidence and save Internal Affairs the time and cost of pursuing complaints hinged on one person’s word against another.

As a citizen of Oakland, and someone who believes deeply in media literacy, I wonder about the embedded asumption that this kind of video is objective evidence. While video footage is likely to provide additional information, this could also eventually boil down to one person’s video against anothers.

                                                                                                                              I’d like to be able to assume that all police officers are driven by the “protect and serve” mantra, but situations are much more complicated, and abuse of authority happens. What does it mean to give authority the potential to support alleged abuse with footage shot literally from their perspective and automatically assumed to be objective? Does this serve to heighten the power differential between police officers and citizens who may not have the means to video tape police interactions?

Technology continues to move forward. It’s not unreasonable that cameras will be a standard law enforcement tool: the same way police use radio. My questions lie in the assumptions made about the technology. For example, when a communication via radio dispatch is unclear, I assume clarification is requested before action is taken. What’s the video equivalent of that request for clarification?

Perhaps it’s in the policies the department establishes about usage of that footage as evidence. Lets take a scenario in which a police interaction with a person escalates. The officer - sensing the escalation - turns on the camera as the person becomes angry. The officer restrains the person and the video is used as justification for the restraint in response to the complaint filed. Yes the video may show a situation in which an officer was justified in the use of restraint, but what happened before the camera was turned on? Did the person come running at the police officer unprovoked? Did the officer approach the person without cause? What had been the police’s interactions with this person during the last week, last month, last year? Now this “one person’s word against another secenario” is one person’s word against another who has a video that may or may not represent the context of the incident.

To date, it appears that the Oakland Police Department has set a date for full incorporation of the camera program, but has no policy regarding the ethical usage of the resulting footage or had any discussions about how video may not always be the gold standard in objectivity.

As we grow increasingly dependent on the Internet for everything from soup to nuts: employment and educational opportunities, staying in touch with friends and family, and accessing critical news and information, the question of how this essential network operates has never been more important. Does it work in the interests of the people who rely on it? Or does it work more and more in the interests of the large telecom companies who deploy the wires and deliver the bits and bytes?

Broadband for the People, a campaign of the Media Action Grassroots Network, (http://www.mag-net.org) a nationwide coalition of community organizations working together for media change, calls for the full adoption, affordability, and openness of broadband networks. Without these 3 central principals underpinning our communication system, the tremendous power the Internet holds for creativity, economic expansion, civil rights and civic engagement will never be recognized. And the social divides that rack this country with poverty, racism and limited opportunity for many, will carry over, unchanged, into the digital realm - "the digital divide". We didn't get anywhere as a country by vowing to electrify 2/3 of our homes and leave the other 1/3 in the dark. And similarly, we can't settle for anything short of full adoption, full affordability and full openness.

It's a big challenge to get from here to there. For many years, the US has been stuck at about 70% connectivity - with the lagging 30% heavily concentrated in rural communities, poor communities, communities of color and limited English-fluency households. We've also stayed well shy of the top ten countries in the world on most measures of the available speed and reliability of our connections. One can say, without exaggerating, that the performance of our vendors, the large telecom companies that dominate the marketplace, has been firmly mediocre. There's a lot of room for people and neighborhood organizations to take on the challenge of making this situation better for ourselves. Here are some ways we can begin:

-- Share Resources - Multiple technologies exist for allowing groups of people to share connectivity that might be unaffordable to them in solitude. While many large telecoms frown on such arrangements, not all do (including the few hardy independent ISP's that have survived) and in these days of financial distress, we all need to find ways to meet basic needs with dwindling resources. If four families banding together can share expenses, that is four less families in the dark. One example of a local initiative is Oakland's 510pen.

-- Institutionalize Digital Literacy - Libraries and other community centers have been providing "computers" for years - and this has been a valuable service, especially in economically challenged communities. But after years of these programs, a stubborn digital divide remains. It is naïve to expect that the mere provision of a computer converts a non-user to a fully engaged digital citizen.

How to find things online, how to stay safe from cyber-theft and online harassment, understand copyright and digital property rights, fix things when they break, identify reliable and less-reliable sources of information, and locate culturally, geographically and linguistically appropriate content is not always obvious. All of our residents need local and accessible resources to help late adopters come on board to the benefits that Internet access, whether via computer or smart phones, can offer. Broadband for the People is working on a digital literacy toolkit for local organizations to work from in taking on the challenge of working for full digital adoption in their neighborhoods.

-- Fight for Internet Openness and Affordability Like We Mean It - Public policy often seems arcane to people's real-life struggles and nowhere is that more true than in the world of telecommunications policy. Who can even read an FCC Request for Information, much less reply to all 67 pages of it? But there are two important public policy fights that we cannot sit out if we believe that 1/3 in the dark is too many.

The first is to re-organize the Universal Service Fund (most of you will recognize part of it as the "Lifeline" telephone service fee) so it applies to broadband Internet connections as well as telephones.

The second is an open Internet - which means the equal treatment of all kinds of data and all kinds of applications - by pipes that are neutral and do not discriminate. An Internet that redlines is an Internet that cannot deliver the promise of equal opportunity to all. Net neutrality is not negotiable.

So the next time you get a request to sign a petition or go to a hearing, don't just send it to the circular file. We only have one chance for a people's Internet - and the time is now.

A day-long comedy of errors began Monday morning when the Yes Men, supported by Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch, pre-empted Chevron's enormous new "We Agree" ad campaign with a satirical version of their own. The activists' version highlights Chevron's environmental and social abuses - the same abuses they say Chevron is attempting to “greenwash.”

“Chevron's super-expensive fake street art is a cynical attempt to gloss over the human rights abuses and environmental degradation that is the legacy of Chevron's operations in Ecuador, Nigeria, Burma and throughout the world,” said Ginger Cassady, a campaigner at Rainforest Action Network. “They must think we're stupid.”

“They say we're 'interrupting the dialogue,'” said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men, referring to Chevron's terse condemnation. “What dialogue? Chevron's ad campaign is an insulting, confusing monologue - with many tens of millions of dollars behind it.”

The activists' pre-emptive campaign began early Monday with a press release from a spoof Chevron domain which launched the fake “We Agree” campaign hours before the real Chevron could launch its ads. The fake "We Agree" site  featured four “improved” advertisements, complete with downloadable PDF files to be used in on-the-street postering.

Nine hours later, after producing its own “We Agree” press release,  the real Chevron decried the hoax in a predictably curt and humorless manner.  Mere moments later, the counter-campaign issued a much better denial on Chevron's laying out Chevron's principal arguments in its Ecuador case. “We have binding agreements with the Ecuadorian Government exempting us from any liabilities whatsoever, granted in exchange for a $40 million cleanup of some wells by Texaco in the 1990s,” the spoof press release crowed, absurdly yet accurately.

Throughout the day, a sort of slow vaudeville unfolded on the web, as a number of outlets, from industry mouthpieces to the AFP and even a watchdog group, produced accidental mash-ups of “real” and fake information.

First, Fast Company fell for the hoax then related their duping with humor. An outlet called “Environmental Leader,” quoted indiscriminately from both real and fake press releases, before quietly removing the fake parts a few hours later. 

Shortly after that, Energy Digital, an online source providing “news and information for Energy Executives” (capitalization theirs), quoted extensively from the fake release to describe Chevron's campaign, then mentioned that the campaign had “already been spoofed.” They didn't realize they'd just fallen for that very same spoof.

Even the AFP found itself duped and described with glee the hoax “that appeared to have fooled some news outlets,” before going on to quote “the real firm” at length. (The “real firm” wasn't.)

“If you really want to snooker the media, it's pretty hard for them to resist,” said Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men. “We cobbled together some fake releases with string and thumbtacks and chewing gum, and we fooled the most respectable outlets.”

“Chevron is doing what we did, a million times over, with a ginormous budget - and it never reveals its subterfuge,” said Bichlbaum. “No wonder the media's full of lies.”

“Yesterday's spoof was a comedy of errors, but what's happening in Ecuador is no joke,” said Mitch Anderson, a campaigner at Amazon Watch. “While Chevron spends tens of millions every year to greenwash their image and fool the media, Ecuadorians continue to die from their toxic legacy."

Yesterday's hoax is just the beginning for the activists. “Stay tuned,” said RAN's Cassady. “There's a lot more to come in the days ahead. We're going to keep Chevron scrambling. 

###

The Yes Men work to expose corporate crimes, mainly through humor.

The case arose when the company did not want corporate information in the hands of government agencies to become publicly available through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Individuals are protected from that possibility when the documents involve their personal privacy, according to Denniston. 

Information about AT&T's billing practices are on hand at the FCC after a now-resolved investigation. Rival telecommunications companies sought the records, and AT&T protested. A federal appeals court said that AT&T is entitled to the same personal privacy rules that protect individuals, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Sensationalism is rampant in our consolidated news system, where scandal, celebrity gossip and violence (or the threat of looming violence) lead the headlines. Ever wonder why this is all we see and read and hear?

It isn’t simply that scandal and violence are all that’s happening in our communities; in fact, it’s the only news that companies want to cover. And they make it expressly clear to their reporters.

Take a look at the “if it bleeds, it leads” approach expressed with chilling precision in the submission guidelines of the self-described “backbone of the world’s information system” – the Associated Press. On their website, the nation’s oldest news wire describes their mission “…to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability, and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed.”

Sounds great. The problem is the AP’s editorial submission guidelines are doomed to produce mind-numbing, paranoia-inducing stories that are neither informed nor newsworthy. For example, here are AP Minnesota’s guidelines for journalists looking to pitch stories:

AP Members Want:
• Train wrecks, airplane crashes, drownings, fatal auto accidents (if there are multiple victims or unusual circumstances) and unusual accidental deaths;
• Meetings where action of regional or statewide interest is taken or where a prominent person speaks;
• Riots, demonstrations, strikes;
• Major fires (involves loss of life, public disruption or destruction of a structure/site known statewide), explosions, oil or other chemical spills.--Unusual bank robberies (exceptionally violent, hostages taken, serial robber, etc.);
• Weather news, including ice and hail storms, heavy snows, damaging rains and floods, record heat and cold, tornadoes; and,
• Human interest stories. The odd, the offbeat, the heart-warming.

Don’t Share:

• Non-fatal auto or boating accidents;
• Motor vehicle chases, unless major damage or loss of life occurs;
• Routine city council, school board or other public meetings, unless an issue being discussed at other meetings around the state -- such as state budget cuts -- is discussed;
• Bomb threats (unless a MAJOR public disruption results), petty crimes, minor drug busts, minor or non-fatal fires;
• Suicides or obituaries unless the person is known regionally or statewide or unusual circumstances are involved; and,
• Publicity handouts, including local pageant winners, fund-raisers and charity events.

The guidelines for AP Ohio, largely the same, had this gem of an addition:

Yes: Single-victim murders that involve unusual circumstances, a prominent person or happen outside the metropolitan areas, where murders are common. Offer stories on the incident, arrests, formal charges and verdicts only, except in high-profile cases of statewide interest when changes in dates, venue or charges occur.

No: Routine one-victim murders in big cities, where murders are more common.

Read: no news coverage of low-income people and people of color being killed in urban areas. Tough luck if your brother/mother/son/daughter gets murdered in the city. Bor-ing. And pay no attention to those city council meetings – you know, where decisions are made about our communities; they’re not worth the column inches.

It’s no secret that the news – especially local news -- often leaves something to be desired. We rarely see coverage of stories that truly matter to our communities, or in-depth reporting that gets to the bottom of an issue, instead of just skimming the surface. And these AP guidelines offer an alarming glimpse into the mentality of our media system.

I think it’s high time we develop our own vision for what we want our news outlets to cover. After all, the news is supposed to be a public good, keeping us informed and engaged.

What might this vision look like? Here’s a start:

We Want:
• Coverage and analysis of local elections, state legislative issues and regional business, education and environmental news;
• Journalism that holds our leaders in government and business accountable;
• News that is as diverse as our country;
• Reporting that prevents wars, economic collapse and environmental disasters, not just covers them after the fact;
• Journalism that empowers communities and promotes personal agency;
• Coverage of issues that are important to women and people of color;
• Hard-hitting investigative journalism and original reporting on issues of community relevance; and,
• In-depth reporting on local issues that is accurate, credible and verifiable.

Don’t Share:

• He-said-she-said journalism (or "balanced reporting") that covers both sides without getting at the truth;
• Horserace election coverage that is more enamored with polls and controversies than real issues;
• Fawning interviews with people in power;
• Press releases transcribed as news;
• Gratuitous blood and gore;
• Oddball human interest stories that teach us nothing useful about the world;
• Coverage that reinforces negative stereotypes;
• Time-wasting in-depth coverage of local weather conditions;
• Celebrity news and gossip; and,
• “News” shilling the latest consumer craze.

To be clear, I’m not asking the AP and others to water down their reporting to shield us from negative news. I just want quality reporting that reflects what’s truly happening in our communities, not the junk news reporters are told to sniff out.

I’m interested to know what you want to see in your local news. If you were to create editorial guidelines for your local newspaper or TV station, what would they include? Use the comment section on the original article to share your thoughts.

Paper Tiger Television explores the social impact of stereotypes in the reality TV genre. With Jennifer Pozner of WIMN and and interview with NY Reality TV school founder Robert Galinsky that reveals how actors get trained to act "real" for television. 

Watch it!

Our friends at KBCS- Seattle, Reclaim The Media and the Prometheus Radio Project present an hour-long program of interviews and feature stories from the Detroit radical media conference that preceded the Social Forum. Listen here.

Fresno community group leaders have joined forces to ask the area's most popular talk radio station, KMJ, to make changes to their programming. According to spokesperson, Les Kimber, the group Citizens for Civility and Accountability in Media (CCAM) was formed in October 2009 out of concern about what is broadcast daily on their local radio station.

KMJ is Fresno’s only 24-hour talk radio station. The station has approximately 80,000 listeners out of the one million residents in its broadcast range across the Central Valley. In March, KMJ expanded its reach by acquiring an FM frequency.

CCAM sent a letter to KMJ in November of last year requesting that the station negotiate "changes in programming that will allow for reasoned discussion and countervailing opinion". The letter was met with a response shortly after from General Manager Patty Hixson, claiming the group was incorrect in their assessment of the station and suggesting they change the channel. CCAM has yet to receive a response to their follow up letter.

                                                                                                                              On May 20th, CCAM held a press conference at the Holiday Inn in Fresno to address their concerns about KMJ to the public. Approximately fifty people attended. News organizations present included KFCF, the California Advocate, KNXT TV, KFTV (Univision) and KMJ. The conveners of CCAM explained why they think KMJ’s current programming is harmful and nonresponsive to the needs of the community.

                                                                                                                           Vickie Fouts, CCAM convener and director of the Uprooting Racism Project complains that corporate media did not cover the story adequately. According to Fouts, the Fresno Bee did not attend the press conference but ran a short piece that reflected KMJ's misunderstanding of their motives. She stated, "They didn’t think we, a local group, were news worthy but a Limbaugh rant against us was".

                                                                                                                         Despite the lack of response from management, a few KMJ DJs caught wind of the press conference and spoke about it on their shows that day. Rush Limbaugh, whose national show is syndicated on KMJ, told listeners, "A typical ACORN type group, a typical Obama type group, is demanding that KMJ remove all conservatives because they incite violence. It's begun." Local DJ Ray Appleton covered the press conference on his show later that day. He said Limbaugh's remarks set off a flurry of calls to KMJ from angry listeners. Appleton also claimed the station gets these types of complaints on a regular basis and normally he wouldn't address them at all.

                                                                                                                         CCAM maintains they are not asking the station to remove DJs nor calling for censorship. What the group wants is for KMJ to take their powerful position in the community seriously. Richard Stone, the Vice President of the Fresno Center for Non-Violence stated at the press conference, "As a licensee of public air space, KMJ has a responsibility to serve the public welfare by not structuring its programs in a way that fuels extreme disrespect and intolerance. In allowing little or no room for reasoned disagreement, while demeaning those who offer dissent, KMJ's chosen line-up of commentators has created a profoundly undemocratic and potentially dangerous presence in our community."

                                                                                                                           KMJ DJ Chris Daniels spoke about CCAM's requests on his May 20th show as well. He claimed he is first and foremost an entertainer whose job is to make money. Daniels' first caller defended the group’s point that KMJ DJs promote violence. He asked that at least one of the 24 hours of programming on KMJ broadcast something different. Daniels responded "You're literally asking us to cut our profits in order to provide something that we are not in any way obligated to provide."

                                                                                                                       Kimber points out that a large part of KMJ's success is due to their relationship with the public institution, California State Fresno. As the "Home of the Bulldogs," KMJ has the exclusive rights to broadcast CSU sports games. As diversity is a key component of the university's mission statement, Kimber points out "It is a major contradiction for KMJ on the one hand to be the exclusive home of the CSUF Bulldogs and on the other hand be the home of biased daily programming that offers no diversity."

                                                                                                                         CCAM named various examples of what they consider to be hate speech broadcasted on KMJ at their press conference as well as on their website. Examples range from DJ Inga Barks agreeing with a caller who said delivering food to the earthquake victims in Haiti is "like trying to feed a pack of rats" to DJ Ray Appleton suggesting that Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, should be given a reception with a .45 handgun the next time he visits Fresno.

                                                                                                                                A common theme among speakers at the press conference was fear for President Obama's life when DJs like Mark Levin advocate doing "whatever is necessary to stop Obama from destroying our country." Kimber stated, "Not unlike what is happening today, Dr. King was constantly demonized by his opponents which created an atmosphere of hate and violence that convinced his assassin James Earl Ray he would be doing the country a favor by killing Dr. King."

                                                                                                                       CCAM is not alone in their fight against hate speech in the media. This past month a coalition of over 30 organizations requested the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigate the extent of hate speech and its effects. Led by the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), the groups claim many radio and cable television programs “masquerading as news” are using hate as a profit model. They are asking the FCC “to examine the extent and effects of hate speech in media, including the likely link between hate speech and hate crimes, and to explore non-regulatory ways to counteract negative impacts.”

                                                                                                                         Since the press conference, CCAM has received a slew of negative messages from KMJ listeners. Kimber says some of the messages are irrational and threatening, proving their point that KMJ may incite people to act violently. Multiple attempts were made to contact KMJ management for comment with no success.

                                                                                                                        Kimber claims the community KMJ serves is very diverse and not overwhelmingly conservative. He urges other concerned community members to sign their petition to KMJ asking that their programming reflect the diversity of the area it serves. In addition people can write letters to KMJ and other news organizations.

                                                                                                                       Kimber says, "Our main objective is to enlighten folks about the negative impact the constant hate messages have in our area."

                                                                                                                             For more information visit:

http://www.FresnoStopHate.org

http://www.NHMC.org

The results came up quite short of recommending assertive action by the city to deliver Internet access to all.

A video from the Oakland City Council Meeting where the summary was presented.

The full report from Tellus Ventures, the consultant hired to do a comprehensive study is below, available as a PDF file.

National Public Radio's ombudsman has released a report headlined "Where Are The Women?".

Elsewhere, it seems. 

The article, published April 2, 2010, examines 104 shows between April 13, 2009 and January 9, 2010, and documents 2,502 male sources and 877 female sources, a discrepancy of 74% to 26%.

This is a slight improvement over previous studies: in 1991, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found the female source rate to be 19%. In 2003, the same organization reported it at 21%.

Read the full report here.

MA teamed with the LA Media Reform group to travel down to Orange County and the Inland Empire and speak to Dems who aren't supporting net neutrality. 

Using the 3rd Annual LA Media Justice Summit as our organizing platform, a week later on April 6th, a team of intrepid media reformers went out to visit Representative Joe Baca- San Bernardino and Representative Loretta Sanchez-Garden Grove to say net neutrality now.

The visits were good conversations and left us hopeful that our Internet future may be bright.

If we've inspired *you* to pay a visit to your representatives and make sure they are on board with net neutrality: here's a handy guide to legislative visits:

This weekend is the 95th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Lucine Kasbarian writes on media coverage of recent Turkish tantrums.  

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Recent articles in the mainstream media would have us believe that governments around the world somehow question the factuality of the 1915 Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides committed by Turkey. These articles would also have us believe that the Turkish government’s latest temper tantrums over these genocides are justified. Turkey, of course, just recalled its ambassadors to protest the passage of resolutions by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee and the Swedish Parliament that acknowledged Turkish culpability for these genocides.

Despite what today’s mainstream media are declaring, the evidence proving the 1915 genocides is overwhelming. And formal resolutions affirming these unpunished crimes against humanity made appearances around the world long before 2010. Regardless of what pro-Turkish apologists would have us believe, the issue has never been about whether the Turkish regime carried out genocide. Rather, it has always been about when Turkey would be punished and deliver reparations and restitution to the rightful, indigenous inhabitants.

Powerful media elites would have us believe that the mainstream media universe has been devoid of criticism for Turkey’s unpunished crimes because such voices are either non-existent, marginal, irrelevant, fabricated or some combination thereof.

What the media elites fail to tell us is that when these critical voices -- from victim ethnic groups or elsewhere -- come forward to submit letters, opinion pieces, or quotes, they are usually denied access.

Media elites also neglect to tell us that opinions that do not reflect the official narrative spun by Turkey -- not to mention Israel and the U.S. -- largely go unpublished. Authoritative voices that would discredit mainstream media’s official narrative of the genocide issue are removed from the elite’s “golden rolodex” -- the name given to describe the small group of establishment-approved “experts” who are most frequently quoted in news stories or asked to appear on television.

The absence of dissent in the mainstream media and in the halls of power does not mean that the victims of the genocides and their descendants are insignificant, apathetic or deceitful. No, we are alive, awake and infuriated.

The media are also telling us that we should sympathize with Turkey because it feels “humiliated” by accusations of genocide. Turkey uses this word to describe its anger that its national honor has somehow been injured by such accusations. Do Turkish, Israeli and American officials know what “humiliation” means to the survivors and descendants of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides who experienced debasement and degradation during the genocidal ordeals and are forced to endure denials and demeaning treatment right up to the present day?

And how did humiliation of the victims occur? By order of the Young Turk regime, unarmed civilian subjects -- Armenian, Assyrian and Greek men, women and children -- were raped in broad daylight, in front of their families and neighbors. The tortures and violations were beyond one’s wildest imagination. Innocents were skinned and burned alive. Their tongues and fingernails were torn out. Horseshoes were nailed to their feet. They were stripped naked and sent on death marches into the desert. Women’s breasts were cut off and their pregnant bellies bayoneted. Fetuses were thrown up into the air and impaled on swords and bayonets for sport. Men were tied to tree limbs that were bent towards one another. When the tree’s limbs were released, the men’s bodies were torn in half. Women were tied to horses and dragged to their deaths.

Those Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks who were not exterminated, enslaved in harems, or kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam were driven from their indigenous lands. Those who survived the death marches spent the rest of their lives in exile, uprooted from their culture and civilization, grieving for their slaughtered families and yearning for their ancestral homeland.

Media elites are giving voice to embroidered Turkish “humiliation” and not to the real humiliation of the victims, survivors and heirs who live with constant anguish in the face of torture, dispossession, contempt and indifference. Media elites are defending Turkey when it is the martyrs and their heirs who deserve mercy and compassion.

In spite of Turkey’s efforts to humiliate the victims at the time of the genocides -- and to prolong this humiliation up to the present day with cultural theft, trivialization and scape-goating -- the dignity of the victims and their descendants has, remarkably, remained intact.

Turkey’s genocidal crimes have gone unpunished. While continually profiting from the homes, farms, lands, properties, institutions and possessions confiscated in 1915, Turkey even accuses the victims and survivors of the crimes that it itself committed. And media elites portray ongoing survivor grievances as nuisances that impede “progress.”

It is the genocide deniers -- the rulers and lobbies of the U.S., Turkey, Israel, and Azerbaijan -- who are the ones impeding progress. Their denial, duplicity and audacity do not mean that the genocides’ victims and their heirs have been defeated. Denying the truth does not invalidate it. Fictional Turkish “reconciliation” initiatives foisted upon Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks will never take the place of genuine atonement and restitution, which are necessary for true progress to be made.

To these deniers and obstructionists we say: “Your tactics are transparent. The perpetrators, beneficiaries and enablers of the ongoing genocide against the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek peoples will be brought to justice. You can hide from the truth, but you can't hide the truth. We will persist, and the truth will prevail.”

In May of 2009, I became a public access television producer. Couldn’t have picked a worse time.

Not because I don’t enjoy hosting and co-producing Media News. It’s a great joy to interview guests and try to shed a little light on the issues closest to my heart including: net neutrality and the digital divide, coverage of turmoil abroad and at home, the loss of local public affairs coverage and the rise in citizen journalism. I feel privileged to bring voices that need to be heard onto my local TV dial.

The reason it was bad timing is that the nation’s more than 3,000 public access centers are on the verge of extinction. Yours may go next week, next month or next year, but their days are numbered due to statewide cable franchising.

Statewide cable franchising is a term designed to put just about anybody to sleep, but here is what it really means. In the good old days, your local cable oligopoly, be it Comcast, AT&T or Time Warner, was required to go from county to county and negotiate for the right to be the cable provider of choice. In exchange for this mini-monopoly (whose value has been somewhat, but not entirely, degraded by the entrance of satellite providers like Dish and DirecTV), cities and counties could ask for things. Some were more or less asleep at the wheel, but many of them negotiated lots of great amenities: channels for governmental meetings to be aired, educational channels for the local schools and public channels for the citizens-at-large, sometimes including fully-staffed production studios that trained thousands of people in media making and citizen journalism.

Then AT&T decided this wouldn’t do, and launched their massive lobbying machine at the spunky and seriously undermanned PEGs (public, educational and governmental channels). They went state-by-state, legislature-by-legislature, and made their case that ever-rising cable rates could only be stemmed by more competition in the marketplace. The way to get more competition in the marketplace? End all this tiresome local negotiating and allow the giants to negotiate with one entity for all their franchises in the entire state. In my state, California, the law that became AB 2987 – The Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act, assigned the Public Utilities Commission to that task. In the end, similar laws passed in 28 of the 50 states between 2004 and 2009.

The results are predictable. The laws and the outcomes vary from state to state, but essentially operational funds were gutted and channel-slamming, the act of layering multiple local PEG channels behind one menu so nobody will ever find them, became the rule. The lowest common denominator won out.

You can see why this might matter to me. But you might be wondering why this matters to you. After all, many of us are pretty overwhelmed with the amount of information we’re already sorting through and we may have never watched a public access television program.

But lets not forget a few things. In my state, only 66% of households have high speed Internet access in their homes. The other 34% don’t. Polls consistently show that more than 51% of American adults still cite the television as their primary source for news and information. There are a lot of people sitting around flipping their remotes looking for stuff to watch. And there’s not always much out there.

Even for those of us busily carting our laptops about, the Internet is a land of affinities. Sites emerge from Google searches you initiate or as links from places you already frequent and people you know. In some ways, it’s a bit of a closed circle.

I was once channel surfing with a friend late one night. All of a sudden she yelled out “that’s my hairdresser”. Turned out her hairdresser was a pesticides activist in her spare time and hosted a once-a-month program on the dangers of common household products. We weren’t looking for information on toxins in cosmetics. We started watching because we knew this person. And we stayed watching because we learned something: both about the subject and about someone who lived in our neighborhood.

That’s the importance of community media: the proximity that brings issues and people together that might never ordinarily bump into each other though they live side by side.

It is only mass communications that provides the opportunity for someone to stumble upon something unique when they tire of watching Inside Edition. Every time it happens, it’s a little miracle.

These are not miracles we can afford to lose and its not looking too good right now. There is a bill, H.R 3457, the Community Access Preservation Act in the House of Representatives, which will go a long ways toward blunting the most damaging effects of the statewide franchising laws. But it needs support. It’s not a partisan thing. Call or write your representative today and tell them “Hey, I want to be able to watch my county board of supervisors duke it out till all hours of the night. I want that working mom to be able to take GED prep courses on the TV around here. And I want my hairdresser to make the world just a little safer for teenage girls buying their first makeup products”.

It doesn’t totally compensate for those ever-rising cable television bills, but it helps.

And if you still have one, check out your local public access television channel. You won’t be sorry you did.

Media justice organizers at the Center for Media Justice (CMJ) and MAG-Net have recently produced a brilliant campaign plan ("The Campaign for universal broadband") to win three policies crucial for just and democratic communication: network neutrality, universal broadband and universal service fund reform. Considering the renewed struggle required to win these goals, and to protect them afterwards, two questions seem particularly important. First, to win media access rights, social justice movements need media access. So, how do we get the kind of access that can allow us to succeed? Second, as net neutrality and universal broadband are not ends in themselves, but rather the means to enable a just and democratic media system, who should produce that system? Open access to a media system controlled by the status quo will not provide the necessary means for disadvantaged communities and social justice movements to change power relations.

To win and protect the three central policies of the MAG-Net plan, media justice movements must have allies at radio and TV stations - the leading sources of news for most people, especially those without the Internet (Pew Center for People and the Press). Mainstream commercial channels will not provide that access as they are also agents defending corporate power and driving social justice movements to the margins. So, what about public media? The problem is that too often public broadcasting outlets have boards populated by elite and corporate representatives, who historically have used their power to filter out the very perspectives we seek to extend. However, a movement of active publics could restructure governance at public media and demand democratically elected boards. This change could enable representatives from diverse communities to make decisions about programming and provide new access for marginalized and oppressed social groups to shape and produce content, self-organize and build just social relationships.

So, like network neutrality and universal broadband, should social justice movements also consider control over public media to be a racial and economic justice issue? In the effort to constitute a just and a ubiquitous public media system, should a high priority be to demand direct, democratic community governance of publicly funded outlets, especially local NPR and PBS affiliates? Though flawed, badly funded and commercialized, CPB outlets are the material of an existing system that could - if under community control - be a new means for self-organization by diverse publics.

What do you think the priority is or should be for synergizing isolated community print, online, radio, PEG and other media producers into a new public system - creating a publicly controlled, radically reorganized, public media system that could enable social justice movements to change social conditions?

There are excellent reasons to conceive of network neutrality as a social justice issue. The Center for Media Justice made particularly important contributions to this understanding with their document "Network Neutrality, Universal Broadband, and Racial Justice," as did CMJ's Malkia Cyril and co-authors Joseph Torres and Chris Rabb with their statement, "The Internet Must Not Become a Segregated Community." Both works powerfully clarify that the Internet system envisioned by corporate and state officials would create first- and second-class Netizens. As the net neutrality struggle continues to demonstrate, diverse publics must communicate and act on their own behalf to establish and preserve a policy for digital technology based on equal access.

However, marginalized communities must not hope that a neutral Internet will build a media system to meet their needs. It is time to give up any remaining illusions of technological determinism. There is no political orientation inherent in technology - not even a neutral digital network. Only the creative labor of our communities and our movements can produce the spaces we need to collaboratively create new understandings of ourselves and our purposes; to communicate, coordinate and act. Lacking creative action by our communities and movements, universal broadband would only enable widespread access to a system dominated by the same corporate and racist forces that dominate the current system. After all, war and injustice continue irrespective of Facebook, Twitter and Digg. Though perhaps it seems obvious, it is crucial to remember that it was primarily the culture of the producers - not the users - that shaped the Internet medium (Castells, The Internet Galaxy, 2003).

Historically marginalized communities now, at this crucial juncture, could wield power as producers to shape the Internet into a new media network to increase equity in media access and political participation. Movements for media justice could struggle to develop the Internet as a platform where marginalized communities can speak to themselves and to wider audiences.

As the CMJ's statements on network neutrality and universal broadband remind us, social justice movements cannot simply trust professionals employed by either corporations or the state to decide which social groups get broadband access or what digital content we can access once online. That same critical logic applies to control over public media and public news production. Unfortunately, it is evident that professional journalists and their allies are organizing to create a revitalized public media system that they, state officials and corporate, elite, station trustees will largely control with little or no role for historically marginalized communities as decision makers or as content producers.

Professional news models of production are collapsing - or rather transforming. Professional journalists themselves are engaged in a desperate struggle to maintain their social position as elite interpreters of daily life through controlling access to the occupation of reporting. As professional journalists seek to reconstruct their gatekeeping authority over online news production, they are also rebuilding barriers to access that historically excluded people of color, the poor and working classes, political dissidents, LGBT communities, and other groups. In short, virtually every emerging model to "save journalism" presented by commercial - and public - media professionals (as well as some academics) reproduces old hierarchies that exclude disadvantaged communities from decision making.

For example, in December of 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held a workshop deep within the beltway titled "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?" These meetings attempted to make sure that journalism's future will be market based. Of course, when market forces shape news production they inevitably shape the content and the political meaning of news. Renowned journalist Edward R. Murrow acknowledged as much when he warned, if "news is to be regarded as a commodity, only acceptable when saleable, then I don't care what you call it - I say it isn't news" (Speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) convention, Chicago, 10/15/1958). Murrow's concern over corporate influence on news did not seem to be shared by the many FTC participants, who, instead, struggled to find ways that the government could help shore up the declining commodity value of news.

Even a workshop panel that explored noncommercial options, "Public- and Foundation-Funded Journalism," (starts at about the 1:18:00 mark here; transcript starts at page 23 here) raised little criticism of corporate influence on news production. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the panel also displayed some of the same exclusions that media activists have critiqued for years, namely a lack of diversity: seven white men, two white women, and one male of color. This translates to 90 percent white, 80 percent male. Lacking representatives from disenfranchised communities, and entertaining no questions from the audience, there was almost no consideration of the issues important to historically marginalized social groups. It was almost as if the panelists had never read the Carnegie Commission report that founded public broadcasting and were unaware of the central role it defined for such groups. The Carnegie report called for a system that will "bring into the home" people's "protests"; "provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard"; "increase our understanding of the world, of other nations and cultures, of the whole commonwealth of man"; and "help us to see America whole, in all its diversity."

This is not to say that the word "diversity" was missing from their vocabularies, but that they used the word in restricted ways. The panelists did support a greater diversity of audiences and content. Panelists also advocated for "technological diversity" and the need for government money to fund it, as well as the need for new productive relationships with software developers. But never did they consider the possibility that the diverse communities they view as audiences also have a legitimate role to play making decisions about public media. Nor did panelists consider opening up new productive relationships - and, thus, career paths - to historically marginalized communities.

There was a little critical discussion about the influence of powerful commercial or state funders, but there was virtually no discussion about the difficulty of making journalism accountable to diverse publics. Instead, some of the most powerful representatives of journalism on the panel argued that the old system simply "worked," and all that's needed is more public money for journalists and technology. The best kind of accountability, they claimed, was for journalists to govern themselves using professional ethics and a strong "firewall" between the newsroom and funding.

To most of us, a firewall is that impenetrable metal barrier that protects the driver and passengers in a car from a conflagration in the engine compartment. There is no such physical divide when it comes to news production, as evidenced by decades of academic research, the work of groups such as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and common experience. Instead of the mythical firewall, a more honest depiction should acknowledge a historic and ongoing social struggle among publishers, journalists, designers, and powerful sources to shape the news to their own vision. Lacking power, disadvantaged communities are largely excluded from this struggle.

Panelist Jon McTaggart, the senior vice president & COO of American Public Media (producer of NPR's MarketPlace), said, "I think that any serious news organization has a fire wall in place where organizational funding is certainly distinct from the activities of the journalists themselves."

NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller went farther and argued that firewalls truly do provide genuine accountability: "Advertising subsidizes the newspaper and all commercial media. You know, does that mean that newspapers have pulled their punches about those advertisers? Certainly not." Astoundingly, she even claimed that there has never been "any instance in the history, at least, of NPR where a story has been slanted or, you know, favorable to a foundation funder."

Eric Newton, vice president of the journalism program at the Knight Foundation, also argued that the old system successfully held commercial news media accountable. "It's about professional ethics. And one of the great things about the commercial newspaper industry is how many hundreds of major newspapers have fantastic codes of ethics that they do hold each other accountable for and the professional organizations and journalism schools do hold them accountable." He even made false and misleading claims that libraries and schools rely on professional ethics and self-governance to be accountable to their communities. Citizens in voting booths looking at their ballots may disagree. Publicly elected boards often govern public libraries and schools.

Even Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, did little to challenge the clearly self-serving assertions raised by news producers and industry representatives, but, instead, reinforced their frames and ideas. For example, his statement, "we have to know that the firewall is rock-solid" accepts that firewalls could actually be "rock-solid," that professional ethics and best practices could truly be a concrete substitute for public participation. Other statements he made further reinforced a conceptual division between expert professionals and the public, this time casting the FTC participants as legitimate decision makers over community needs: "[W]e need to figure out ... what do communities really need" so that "we" can "really engage the public." Who is this "we" that stands apart from the public, yet decides what that public truly needs?

As the only representative from a media activism movement on the panel, Silver should have defended public participation in the public media system. Instead, Silver's only suggestions for "structural change" were for better ombudsmen, a different appointment process for CPB board members and an abandonment of the appropriations process. But as none of these ideas expose professionals or officials to any meaningful consequences from diverse publics, these ideas would in fact continue to structure public media as a domain of elite control. These changes would, he said, help to insulate public media from too much politics - and on this point he has it all upside down. After all, limiting decision making over public media to officials and insiders is to ensure that it is their political culture that will shape the medium. Should not media justice and democracy activists instead increasingly expose public media to the politics of economic and racial justice and democratic participation?

We need a media system that is partial to justice and the health of our communities. The media justice community and its allies need to critically analyze proposals to remake public media - most importantly those from the Knight Foundation and from Schudson and Downie. Despite the claims of media professionals, industry reps, and some academics, we cannot leave the development of public media to their expertise alone. Professional journalists, corporations, and state officials seem poised to produce a system that represents the relationships they need - not what marginalized communities and social justice movements need. They will give us a marketplace of their ideas and call it just.

(This article was published 4/12/10 as an op-ed at the Editor & Publisher web site.)

We must first understand that the U.S. public media system has been purposefully and severely handicapped by the professional culture of journalism, and by corporate and government powers, and philanthropies, from the beginning. Only with this knowledge can we discover that the primary solution to this problem is not simply more money and technology for public media but rather the direct, democratic, community control of public media. Only with this knowledge can we take action to create a public media system that enables marginalized groups to speak to themselves and to wider audiences.

The ideal public service media system would be nonprofit, noncommercial, accountable and independent, available on multiple platforms, and require ubiquitous broadband and internet freedom. It would include public, educational and government access, community and low power radio, other community media centers, and community print and text, and have public and community media working together in new ways. Those who have historically subjugated U.S. public media have something else planned for us however. 

Professional control, corporate control, government control, and philanthropic control over public media in the U.S. together have created a system of social control and not one of social justice. I will offer governance models as solutions that I want you to keep in mind. I’ll focus on activism aimed at achieving community control over public media during two eras, 1920-1960 and 1960-present, and then upon today’s situation.

It is important to understand that by the time commercial radio gained dominance in the 1930s, journalists and publishers had won widespread acceptance of professional norms over independent news models. The journalists’ and publishers’ culture of “detached” “science” “without ideology” determined they would control media for generations.

It is crucial to recognize the racism in professional culture of the 1920’s and 30’s. Lagemann says the trustees of the Carnegie Corporation worried about and financed eugenics projects intended to help preserve the racial purity of American Society. They were convinced of the superiority of the white Anglo-Saxon “race” and were determined to preserve this nowhere more than in the “public profession of the law”. This is the same foundation that helped shape U.S. media at every key step and whose 1967 report led to the creation of U.S. public broadcasting.

The 1927 Radio Act created the Federal Radio Commission, which shoved educational stations around the dial as a cop would a vagrant, and slashed their power allotments. 128 educational stations in 1925 fell to 48 in 1930. Those left got daytime hours only.

NBC parent RCA, and CBS, in collusion with the Carnegie Corporation and J.P. Rockefeller, created the National Advisory Council on Radio Education in 1930, which advised educators to work with (surrender to?) the networks. Other educators formed the National Committee on Education by Radio, a vanguard attempting to establish a U.S. broadcasting system with the nonprofit and noncommercial sector dominant. The passage of the 1934 Radio Act was both a complete defeat of public media in the U.S. and an archetype for media governance extending to the present.

Another path was possible. In the mid-1930’s, the French government decreed each community with a state owned station would hold an annual meeting to elect a community council of program management. All persons who owned radio sets and had paid the use tax would be eligible to participate.

In 1946, pacifist Lewis Hill incorporated what became the independent Pacifica radio network, a pioneer in listener-supported radio. During the 1950’s however, the only new educational radio licenses authorized by the FCC were for itty-bitty ten-watt stations. No educators initially accepted the FCC’s 1948 invitation to request tv channels. In 1952, the FCC reserved 242 for education. By 1960, only 1/5th were in use.

Surprisingly, there was no grassroots struggle for public tv channels or funding for public tv or radio. The prime movers of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 were educational broadcasters, the Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, the Johnson administration, commercial networks, AT&T, media union officials, and some academics. Virtually 100% absent from the 1967 testimony in the House and Senate were diverse and marginalized groups advocating for civil rights, peace, the environment, the poor, and so on. Professionals and elites made a severely handicapped, small system that they could control. The handful of letters from the public in the legislative record show the people felt a government propaganda machine was being shoved down their throats. They were right.

From the start, public broadcasting was unambiguously part of the military-industrial complex. Carnegie Commission chairman James Killian was Kennedy’s chief intelligence advisor and held top posts at MIT, GM, and AT&T; Killian didn’t want public broadcasting to have independent, permanent funding. The first chair of the CPB was General Frank Pace, former army secretary, nuclear weapon technology pioneer, and head of General Dynamics. Yes, even Sesame Street co-founder Joan Ganz Cooney had worked at the US Information Agency, the government propaganda office.

Similar links occur at elite neo-liberal philanthropies, including major early public broadcasting funder the Ford Foundation. Its co-founder Henry Ford’s Nazi ties have been researched in depth elsewhere and its history of collaboration and interlock with the CIA is almost as well known. More obscured is the fact that the first head of the Ford Foundation’s Fund for Adult Education was the president of Shell Oil and that later, in 1965, Shell became public tv’s first “enhanced underwriter.” It is also important to point out that the Ford Foundation has been linked in the past by researchers to CIA and CIA-like projects including the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Student Association, and (along with the Carnegie Corporation) the CIA-founded African-American Institute, a group active on campuses in Africa.

In 1972, African Americans picketed outside a CPB board meeting because only 7 of 887 NPR station managers were black. In 1975, women’s groups, people of color, labor and others successfully fought Nixon’s nomination of conservative funder and John Birch pamphleteer Joseph Coors to the CPB. Nixon’s disdain for public broadcasting is widely understood, but less known is the fact that activists worked very hard in the 1970’s to correct public broadcasting’s serious shortcomings.

Filmmaker DeeDee Halleck and physicist Larry Hall organized The National Task Force for Public Broadcasting in the late 1970’s. They characterized public broadcasting as a system closed to creative staff, independent producers, and interested citizens. It assembled the powerful grass roots coalition missing from the 1967 deliberations. Its most significant victories were requirements for open meetings and access to records. Similar movements emerged in Boston, New York, St. Louis, and Washington D.C. and addressed lack of diversity on boards, neglect of local programming, censorship of controversial programming, under-representation of minorities in employment and programming, and insufficient citizen participation generally.

1978’s A Public Trust: The Report of the Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting called for public involvement in station governance, mixed boards with staff appointed and elected seats, and funding from spectrum fees. Congress and the FCC ignored these, its most important recommendations.

President Reagan and the Congress imposed major cuts to CPB. The Cable Act of 1984, befitting its Orwellian year, gave municipalities the right to request funding for public access channels but Aufderheide tells us that by 1990 only 17% of cable systems actually had public access channels. The unrelenting campaign by cable companies and municipalities against community television would have had far worse consequences were it not for activist organizing to save public access (PEG).

That’s where my personal story begins. I became an active community tv producer in Evanston, Illinois in the mid-eighties, co-creating a progressive news program. But the cable provider wanted to eliminate our access. My co-producer and I were banned — almost permanently. Instead of walking away, I organized for an independent democratic governance structure, akin to the models forged earlier in Canada and elsewhere, and helped carry the nonprofit Evanston Community Media Center through the legislative course — and we won. I know how that’s done. In the process, I was threatened with arrest several times and arrested for loitering.

Congress heard the complaints of independent producers in 1987 when it directed the CPB to establish the Independent Television Service to address the concerns of minorities and working people. Activism increased in the 1990’s in Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, and elsewhere. I led Chicago efforts, which included a large coalition to press for programming and structural reforms. We increased the diversity of Chicago public tv station WTTW’s trustees, but the lock local elites have on the station is formidable. An FCC warning concerning home shopping with my name on it was cited in an FCC fine levied against WTTW for airing commercials — the first and only such fine ever involving a large public tv station.

More recently, Chicago Media Action activists issued a study of WTTW’s nightly news show that swept out three elite news execs. And while co-panelist Cass Sunstein nodded in approval at a 2005 event, I told the entire public broadcasting system that it had failed on the run up to the Iraq invasion. We’ve sought wider distribution of “Democracy Now!”, and advocated for Chicago Access Network TV, low power radio, and other needs. A critical public radio fight holds the remaining key we need.

In 1999, the CPB insisted Pacifica radio centralize and be more secretive. Program hosts and the station manager at Berkeley’s KPFA were fired. A network gag rule was implemented. Listeners issued thousands of protests. In June 1999, activists who staged a sit-in at Pacifica’s offices were arrested and charged with trespassing. In July, a Pacifica veteran was physically removed by guards in the middle of a broadcast. Some 400 staged a sit-in. 53 were arrested. Next, some 10-15,000 rallied and a lawsuit was filed.

Pacifica ‘s struggle created a governance model of great importance. Today, 2/3 of each Pacifica station board is member elected using instant runoff voting and proportional representation. The remainder are staff appointed. The station boards select the national board. This structure is unique and, on this scale, unprecedented. But virtually no other models of direct action aimed at public media in the U.S. have been found — to date.

So the early movement to create community controlled public media in the U.S. failed miserably. Then the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation and U.S. government funded and shaped public media to their purposes. Since, corporations have dominated it. Now, some tell us that new funding and technology will fix it.

The rotary press, telegraph, radio, and tv were each proclaimed to be democratic when first introduced; it may be easy to speak in cyberspace, but it remains difficult to be heard. That fact will not change until we win the capacity to shape at least the public part of that system, as it is vulnerable to sustained local organizing in ways that commercial media is not.

To be very clear, social justice movements need a radically re-envisioned U.S. public service media system that would be almost unrecognizable alongside the current version. Public service media’s governance could resemble Pacifica’s, the French model, public access models, or the publicly elected boards of many public schools, public libraries, community colleges, and public utilities. Gale research says about 94% of Americans living in school districts elect their public school trustees. But 0% of Americans watching or listening to CPB funded outlets — except the five owned by Pacifica — have any direct say about the selection of public station trustees. 

Public media elites offer us a “partnership” in which they’re the parents and we’re the children, anxiously waiting with our bibs on for our media to be spoon fed to us. Unless we change this power relationship, we will remain subject to the arbitrary dominance of wealthy, racist, militarists shaping new technologies to sustain their power.

Democratic participation in civic and cultural media production only happens when the powerless can speak to themselves and to wider audiences. The oppressed and marginalized have a rare historic opportunity to wholly re-envision our public service media system. We could use it to create stories, produce culture, and change conditions.

Will we? 

- – - – -

Scott Sanders has co-founded a number of media activist organizations including Chicago Media Action, and led efforts to constitute public community media centers with member elected boards and to increase diversity on non-elected public media boards. He also led campaigns resulting in the only FCC fine of a major public tv station concerning commercialism. He is a video documentarian and periodicals and technology librarian producing research for MMTC, MAP, and the University of Chicago, and author of articles for Truthout, Counterpunch, Z magazine, FAIR Extra!, and a number of daily newspapers.

For part I of this series see: http://www.media-alliance.org/article.php?id=1908

MA started a new twice-monthly show on public access television on media democracy and media justice. Watch the videos! Hour-long version is in the works.

December 17, 2009 Subject: Citizen Journalism and Oakland Local Guest: Kwan Booth  Watch

December 3, 2009 Subject: Media Alliance and the Changing Nature of Media Advocacy Guest: Tracy Rosenberg, Media Alliance  Watch

November 19th, 2009 Subject: Net Neutrality and The Battle for an Open Internet Future Guest:Regina Costa, TURN  Watch

November 5th, 2009 Subject: Proposition 8, The Media and the LGBT Community Guest: Juan Barajas, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Watch 

October 15th, 2009 Subject: One Web Day Guest: Nathan James, Executive Director Onewebday.org Watch

October 1st, 2009 Subject: Media Coverage of ACORN Guest: Richard Hopson, ACORN Watch

September 17th, 2009 Subject: Community Radio and Media Democracy: KPFA Elections Guest: Henry Norr Watch

September 3rd, 2009 Subject: SF Hate Speech Resolution Guest: Aurora Grajeda, Hispanic/Latino Anti-Defamation Coalition Watch

August 20, 2009 Subject: The Loss of Public Affairs in Broadcast Television Guest: Jackie Wright Watch

August 6, 2009 Subject: The Allied Media Conference Guest: Shanina Shumate, TEMPO - Technological and Media Empowerment Project in Oakland Watch

July 30, 2009 Subject: Public Access in San Francisco Guest: Ron Vincent, City of San Francisco Watch

July 16, 2009 Subject: Media Coverage of Iranian Election Guest: Roshan Pourabdollah - United for Iran Northern California Watch

July 2, 2009 Subject: The Media and Male Body Image Guest: Tommy Morahan, San Francisco State University Watch

All shows produced by Lars Aaberg with assistance from Alfred Kielwasser and Oriana Saportas. Thanks to Arnel Valle and Chris Ferrejohn with SF Commons/Access and Howard Vicini.

Based upon comments delivered on June 24, 2010 at the U.S. Social Forum workshop, “Control of Public Media as a Social Justice Issue: Lessons from the U.S. and Latin America.”

Who produces media systems? Answering that question is the only way to understand the culture and politics that such systems will reproduce. If communities in struggle seek to survive and build movements for justice we must win two essential communicative capacities: the capacity to communicate with each other and the capacity to communicate our perspectives across society. No community can effectively reproduce culture or defend its material conditions if it lacks the abilities to communicate internally as well as to project their perspectives externally.

To enable communication between, and therefore strengthen, movements in the U.S. and the Global South we need movement-based media producers organized in a network. In order to participate in and co-produce that network we need to strengthen local movement-based media by increasing its relevance to local community life. Lastly, to communicate movement perspectives across society we need to claim the right to participate in governing local public media outlets. That means organizing to demand and win democratically elected boards at publicly supported television and radio stations, especially PBS and NPR stations in the U.S.

Today we see professional journalists poised to claim control over a technologically and financially rejuvenated multi-media public broadcasting system. Can a professionally controlled system provide the communicative capacity our movements so desperately need? Professional journalists are themselves in a life or death battle to save their jobs – and as they describe it, their job is to produce the quality journalism that democracy itself depends on. However, the fact that professional journalists turn to democracy activists to help them “save the news” (the name of FreePress’s project) shows that journalism depends on democracy –  the kind of democracy that unfolds from organized citizen’s actions. Journalism practitioners rarely acknowledge this fact, because it indicates that despite professional methods, training, and ethics, news production remains situated in politics and culture. I am going to briefly describe these political and cultural conditions and argue that professional journalists and administrators are not fit to control public media systems in the U.S. or elsewhere.

The culture of professionalism – its learned values, identities, and purposes – orients practitioners to serve the perceived needs of their profession; that is, to defend the interests and relationships the profession depends on.  The consequence, in the case of journalism, is that journalists produce news that accords representation to the social order that maintains journalists’ social position as professionals. A different culture of direct participation has emerged from peoples movements and community radio projects in Honduras, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Albuquerque, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Greece, and elsewhere. These social movements seek to transform the existing social order to promote human rights, self-government, sustainable and shared management of environments and resources, and respect for plurality. In the words of Sub-Commandante Marcos, these movements share a commitment to “Dignity,” which he defines as “a house that includes the Other and Ourselves . . . a world where many worlds fit.”  Unlike professional culture, cultures of direct participation orient members to serve community needs over individual careers and to share resources and responsibilities rather than accumulate personal prestige.

To understand the vital necessity for dispossessed communities to take decision making over media systems away from professional journalists and administrators it is also necessary to examine professionalism’s historical origins. Professionalism emerged in the US and Europe as a social response to the rise of industrial capitalism in the 19^th century. New divisions of labor and centralized production transformed agrarian and immigrant communities into an urban working class. For subsistence wages, unskilled workers endured menial factory labor under desperately inhumane working conditions. Professionalism emerged from the attempts by working class people to escape those conditions and the efforts of academic institutions to become the central means to attain middle-class wealth and social standing. Aspiring professionals modeled themselves on specialized workers, such as doctors, lawyers, chemists, who by the mid-1800s won increased prestige and income through formal training in scientific discourses and methods. They constituted new collective agency by creating associations of practitioners.

Professionalism was a social movement to adapt to, not resist, the division of labor imposed by the industrial revolution. Professionals who sought occupational and personal improvement tended to conceive of democracy as a system of individual rights in which freedom consists of opportunities for personal advancement up an established social ladder. Professionalized occupations construct their authority over social systems by using scientific and liberal discourses to claim the mantle of “objectivity” for themselves and represent non-professional cultures as partial or biased.  To access professionally controlled systems thus requires other cultures to portray themselves, their perspectives, and causes in a ‘professional’ manner. Professional culture thus demands uniformity while portraying itself as a form of pluralism.

The power of professional culture to re-orient adherents to conservative political practices is all the more compelling in the case of journalism, where many aspiring news workers enter the field seeking not to defend the status quo but to defend the capacity of the powerless to hold the powerful in check. Nonetheless, cultural values such as impartiality and objectivity pressure journalists and administrators to detach themselves from social justice movements and rationalize the profession’s exclusive claim on news production.

In contrast to the claims of some journalists and academics, journalism did not always exist in some form at all times of human history. Rather, it emerged from the historically specific conditions of 19^th century industrial capitalism, shaped by the period’s increased commercialization, complex production machinery, and division of labor – in this case the rise of specialized roles for reporters, writers, editors, and other news workers. Journalism properly speaking, the set of special occupations required to generate and distribute news content beginning in the era of the industrial press of the mid to late nineteenth century.

The project of professionalizing journalism was itself political. Beginning in the 1850s,journalists organized into associations to lobby government officials to establish programs of journalism in state universities. For example, press associations influenced the Illinois governor and legislature to create the journalism program at the University of Illinois. At the same time, publishers directly engaged private universities to found schools of journalism, often providing large endowments and dictating the framework for study.  Joseph Pulitzer accompanied his 1902 proposal for a college of journalism at Columbia University with a $2M endowment; the program opened in 1912 based on Pulitzer’s own pedagogies.  As journalism scholar James Carey describes them, such “schools of journalism . . . were less attempts to educate for a profession, than to call one into existence.” The attempts worked:  journalism gained social recognition as a profession between WWI and WWII.

Not only was the professionalization of journalism a political accomplishment, it was a means to political power. Professionalized news production enabled journalists to construct new social authority for themselves, new credibility for the news they produced, while increasing the commodity value of news for publishers. Institutions of news publishers and press associations relied on the discourse of professionalism to negotiate and claim power in their contestory but symbiotic relationship: Journalists relied on the monopoly power of the newspaper to establish and defend the authority of the profession  while news corporations used professionalism to control journalists.

Journalists’ new social authority thus depended not only on the power of news corporations but on the broader material relationships that enabled that corporate power. Intentionally or not, news professionals subsist in a symbiotic relationship with elites, officials, and corporate owners. These dependencies encourage journalists to use their gatekeeping and interpretive practices to reflect the needs of the powerful social forces that sustain the profession. There is ample evidence to support this point: Over the 100 years from 1900-2000, journalists spoke more while all sources spoke less, reports focused less on events and more on interpretation, and stories increasingly originated from official and PR entities.

While public perception of news credibility increased from the 1930s-1970s, it has fallen ever since, along with audiences. Creative human labor focused more on digital technologies that further fragmented the gate-keeping power of professional media managers. Journalists are now attempting to recreate their gate-keeping power in the online world. As Washington Post Senior Editor Leonard Downie explained it to Frontline:

This is just a new technology, a new technological form of citizen participation . . . But the important thing is: Label the professional stuff; label the stuff that’s not professional; and have certain filters, even for the non-professional stuff. So we don’t let people libel people online or use the wrong language online, a variety of ways in which you kind of police the citizen participation.

Professional journalists are now organizing to control the next generation of public media in the U.S. They continue to use the discourse of professionalism to rationalize their claims over the CPB system, depicting themselves as immune to influence by the corporate funders they depend on.  In a December 2009 Federal Trade Commission workshop on journalism and public media, NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller stated, “Advertising subsidizes the newspaper and all commercial media. You know, does that mean that newspapers have pulled their punches about those advertisers? Certainly not.” Astoundingly, she even claimed that there has never been “any instance in the history, at least, of NPR where a story has been slanted or, you know, favorable to a foundation funder.”

Others argue that professionalism already provides sufficient accountability. On the same FTC panel, the vice president of the Knight Foundation’s journalism program stated, “one of the great things about the commercial newspaper industry is how many hundreds of major newspapers have fantastic codes of ethics that they do hold each other accountable.” Note that he said they hold each other accountable – a reminder that professional journalism offers no mechanism for audiences to hold practitioners or publishers to account.

Sadly, some activist organizations, most prominently FreePress, have devoted themselves to helping professional journalists to control public media. Meanwhile, Social justice movements don’t have a dog in the fight. Fortunately, struggles in Latin American exemplify the power of social justice movements to lay claim to, and sometimes win, increased control over the means of communication. Latin American journalists and publishers followed the U.S. model for professionalization during the 1930s. However, through local struggles and with the aid of international funders, Latin American producers and activists created alternatives to professionalism.

Projects funded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the 1950s and 60s greatly expanded access to equipment and training and may have created temporary material support for journalists to ally with popular struggles against military dictatorships. Some journalists sacrificed their relationships with the powerful to cover the stories of the liberation movements, in the process entrusting their own lives and futures to the fate of those movements.

During the 1980s, UNESCO also provided funding for Latin American indigenous radio and video production. In Columbia, Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere, years of activism by indigenous communities and media reform and human rights groups yielded legislative reforms that recognized both the collective rights of indigenous peoples and the right to create and receive communication. In some of these cases, activists even won government funding for local- or indigenous-controlled media centers that then become the locus of new battles. La lucha continúa.

Struggles for community controlled media in Latin America express recognition that creating media is part of the process of creating cultural practices and shaping social life. Therefore, diverse communities must themselves participate in producing both media content and systems in order to survive. The culture of professionalism, with its values of expert control and technical perfection, refuses to acknowledge these facts, instead casting marginalized communities’ efforts to shape media as inappropriate attempts to bias the independence of the press. Professional culture obligates producers seeking professional credibility to ‘distance’ themselves from those they cover and to fulfill high production aesthetics that signify news commodity value.

The goal of social justice movements should not be state-of-the-art mastery over these techniques and technologies, but rather the creation of “citizens’ media” (in Clemencia Rodriguez’s terms): a new communication order that enables the powerless to shape media production, to use it to produce cultures of direct participation, and in so doing to constitute a new social force. To borrow from the ideals of filmmaker Garcia Espinoza, ‘any attempt to match the perfection of commercial journalism contradicts the implicit objective of a revolutionary journalism – that is, the call for an active and participatory audience.’  I can only add that active audiences are not only the goal of a democratic media system but the means to it as well.

James Owens is an organizer, media coordinator and researcher active in movements for human rights and against war. His master’s thesis researched the racial and economic politics of professional journalism. He authored “Chicago Tonight: Elites, Affluence, and Advertising” (Extra!), “Mumia Abu-Jamal: The ABC Hatchet Job” (CovertAction Quarterly)), and co-authored “Journalism” for the International Encyclopedia of Communication. He also co-founded peace and media organizations, including Chicago Media Action.

The nature of non-profit journalism invites ethical dilemmas.

Over the past few years, dozens of centers of investigative journalism and non-profit websites have been started using money from foundations, individual donors and membership fees. The latest trend is non-profit networks that share resources.

Collaboration is a good thing, but it can lead to tensions among collaborators.

How can such centers and networks, with their many types of journalists, agree on editorial standards and practices? How can non-profit enterprises be independent if they are closer to, and more dependent on, a small number of supporters? This puts power in the hands of donors.

To avoid the problems and scandals that have rocked mainstream media, the non-profit sector will have to be smarter about its ethics. But how?

A Growing Concern

Many of the journalists who have spent the last few years starting non-profit centers of journalism are increasingly concerned about emerging ethical issues.

Brant Houston, Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting at the University of Illinois, is a leading figure in the "new models" movement. In a recent article, Houston described the rise of domestic and international non-profit networks, such as the Investigative News Network.

He writes:

As newspapers and other journalism institutions falter, networks of investigative and alternative newsrooms are rising up, sharing resources and finding ways to more widely distribute their work...The result is they are working on stories ranging from homeland security to campus assaults to human trafficking.

Sounds positive. Exciting.

Yet Houston also knows that ethics should not be ignored. He thinks INN members need a thoughtful approach to a range of issues, from defining network membership to "questions on funding and supporters." The network has established a permanent membership and standards committee to deal with ethical concerns.

For Houston, investigative news networks, given their visibility and influence, "should represent the highest professional standards in reporting, editing, and ethical conduct. One idea is to have periodic reviews of networks by experienced investigative journalists."

Adopting a Code

Andy Hall is a leader in non-profit centers for investigative journalism. Hall is director of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Hall's center adopted the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists. But he is anxious to examine more specific issues that go beyond the general principles of the SPJ code.

In conversations with me, Hall categorized the issues into several kinds, which include:

> Agenda-setting and advocacy
> Conflicts of interest
> Fundraising

The issues of agenda-setting and advocacy challenge the new investigative centers because their journalists come from many traditions -- from impartial reporting, advocacy journalism and investigative journalism. In an eclectic newsroom, will objectivity and fairness be major values? How will editors draw the line between engaged reporting and partisan advocacy?

If non-profit journalists promote social reform, should the public worry about the agendas of these journalists or their funders? In non-profit journalism, even the attempt to define one's journalism as "non-partisan" can be contentious.

Multiple Conflicts

The potential for conflicts of interest in non-profit journalism is high because, as mentioned, the journalists are dependent on relatively few funders. The old adage that whoever pays the piper calls the tune is a warning for any form of journalism.

It is encouraging to see non-profit news sites support editorial independence. Andrew Donohue, editor of Voice of San Diego, said his site has not experienced problems with donors.

"Not everyone knows the rules of journalism, but if you're very clear and open with funders about your rules, you should be all right," he said in an interview with Poynter. "Funders don't have special access to reporters, don't control what stories get written and don't say how the stories are written."

I hope Donohue's good luck with donors continues.

For non-profits, the line between funder and journalist is a wandering boundary that is difficult to honor. For example, how should editors handle stories involving a non-profit's donor or its journalistic collaborator?

Take the Money and Run?

Consider questions about fundraising. Should non-profit newsrooms accept money from corporations, foundations, unions, or government? If you think foundations are appropriate funders, will you take money from any foundation? Does it matter if the funder is on the extreme left or right politically? Should newsrooms take the money and run?

Fundraising leads to questions of transparency. How open should non-profit organizations be about their sources of money? Already, there is disagreement. Many networks, like the INN, are committed to transparency. But not all.

For example, the Sam Adams Alliance wants to create a conservative non-profit network in the United States under the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. The Franklin Center states on its website that it supports transparency in government, but not transparency about its own donors. "The Franklin Center protects the identification of its generous donors and ensures anonymity of all contributions."

As a result, Houston said, one state group formed under the Franklin Center, the Illinois Statehouse News, "has been denied a spot in the Illinois capitol press bureau and is regarded with suspicion by the press."

What's to Be Done?

The nature of non-profit journalism means that new ethical policies and standards should be created and enforced. Adherence to these standards should be open to public scrutiny.

Leaders in the non-profit area need to start an intense round of discussions aiming to lay down ethical foundations for this form of journalism. The discussions should culminate in the articulation of principles and the development of manuals of best practice.

Given their expertise in online media, non-profit centers have a unique opportunity to introduce new and interactive means by which the public can comment on and monitor editorial decisions. Non-profit centers can be pioneers in media accountability and transparency.

If non-profit leaders do not take advantage of this historical opportunity to create an ethic, they will regret it. Today, many people support these experiments. But this support will dissipate if experimenters do not show a greater concern for ethics than some of their predecessors in mainstream news media.

Declining public confidence in news media will be extended to these new journalists on the block if non-profit leaders do not put transparent ethical policies into place.

This is a statement expressing our concern about the planned shutdown and rearrangement of public access television services in the City and County of San Francisco.

While we understand that statewide franchising has greatly reduced the available resources for operating public, educational and governmental (PEG) channels and that sustainability moving forward must be considered;

We are not convinced the current plans being developed by the new operator (The Bay Area Video Coalition) are an appropriate use of public resources and monies.

I – A $375,000 one-time financial contribution from Comcast was negotiated by Supervisor Mirkarimi to support PEG operations in 2010. What is the planned dispensation of these funds?

II– The projected use of public funds to demolish the existing studio are a waste of scarce public resources, which should be 100% dedicated to supporting existing public media infrastructure.

III- The current landlord at 1720 Market Street has expressed willingness to cut the facility rent by at least 45% (to under $10,000 month) for a multi-year occupancy. With funds clearly available to sustain the facility through 2010 and a community of dedicated volunteers, why the precipitous action to dismantle it less than 5 years after it was built out?

IV – The projected satellite facilities at community groups shift training and service burdens from a centralized licensed operator to already-stressed organizations who may well lack the staff time and technical expertise to serve the clients who will use them.

V – The projected relocation of primary studio facilities to 2727 Mariposa Street from 1720 Market Street provides inferior transportation access and inferior disability access, as anyone who has negotiated the 16 Fillmore line via wheelchair can attest

VI – From our public statement at the time of the contract award by the San Francisco Department of Technology:

* Training for potential producers from the local community must be held no less than monthly, open to all, and walk-in studio access must be provided on a consistent schedule

We are entirely unclear as to whether this standard of service will be met at the BAVC office. We do not believe it is negotiable for competent execution of a public access contract.

We want to state as we did in our earlier statement, the core values that are informing this statement:

* Public access content is supposed to originate in and meet the needs of local publics as determined by citizen-producers. The role of the public access operator is to provide training and technology resources to enable local content..

* Cable franchise owners derive massive benefit from using a public utility. Switching the public access funding model largely to user fees and philanthropy shifts the funding base from one of guaranteed corporate responsibility onto access users and public philanthropy.

***
On the matter of the Indybay posting on the Media News program (a 20-minute interview show that broadcasts twice a month – which began in July of 2009).

Media Alliance did not authorize, vet or have any foreknowledge of the post that appeared on December 14, 2009.

What we state for the record is that after issuing a press release announcing that some producers were to picket, MA participated in a conference call with BAVC at their request.

We were asked what role the fact that we had a program on the channel played in our action in issuing the release.

We stated MA has been advocating for San Francisco public access television for many years, including a leadership role in the 2003-2004 cable franchise renewal negotiations and that the program played no role.

The conversation was somewhat unpleasant, but MA does not believe the show was or is in any jeopardy.

Intrigued by an alert sent to us by Xalid Aghliyev at the Media Rights Institute in Azerbajian, we looked a little deeper and found this cautionary tale from Central Asia.

Reported by Al-Jazeera

An Azerbaijan court has jailed two opposition bloggers who posted a video on the internet of the president dressed as a donkey conducting a news conference.

Adnan Hajizade, 26, and Emin Milli, 30 were sentenced to two years and two and a half years in prison respectively on Wednesday after being convicted of hooliganism for a scuffle at a restaurant in Baku, the capital, Isakhan Ashurov, their lawyer, said.

The pair have been in custody since the incident in July, which they said was an unprovoked attack on them.

They assert that they were then arrested for political reasons due to their criticism of the oil-rich Caspian Sea government.

"This sentence is unjust and illegal," Ashurov said. "We plan to appeal the conviction and if we find no justice in Azerbaijan's judicial system, we will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg."

"There can be no greater honor than to be imprisoned for your ideals," Milli proclaimed after being sentenced.

Officials have said that the conviction is not related to the pair's criticism of the government.

Some human rights advocates have said that the prosecution is an attempt to silence criticism of the government.

"The court's ruling is political. It is aimed at intimidating new media on the internet and preventing the distribution of alternative opinions," Emin Huseynov, director of the Baku-based Institute for Reporter Freedom and Safety, said.

Ilham Aliyev, the president, succeeded his father six years ago.

Update: According to current reports: Dobbs is on his way out of CNN, possibly over to Fox News Channel. Lou Dobbs' brand of journalism is dangerous to Latinos in America -- and it's time to fight back.

On September 15th, the CNN anchor broadcast his radio show from the conference of anti-immigrant hate group FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Founded by a white nationalist, FAIR was linked earlier this year to vigilantes in Arizona who brutally murdered 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in their home.

The appearance at FAIR is just the latest example of Dobbs using his status as a CNN anchor to spread fear about Latinos and immigrants. It's time we said Basta, Enough is enough. Presente.org and dozens of partners across the country are demanding that CNN drop Dobbs from its network.

Dobbs' network CNN, calls itself "The Most Trusted Name in News." But Dobbs has shown that the only thing he can be trusted to do is spread dangerous, false myths about immigrants, give airtime to extremists, and use dehumanizing and disrespectful language towards immigrant communities.

For Dobbs, immigrants are “invaders” who threaten the health and safety of this country. He has blamed Latino immigrants for an alleged leprosy epidemic that was widely debunked, and insinuated high crime rates by falsely claiming illegal aliens make up a third of the prison population. Dobbs also regularly hosts extremist guests like FAIR, the Minutemen, and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who he called “a model for the whole country".

The Dobbs threat to Latinos is real. Here is how Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center described it:

“How dangerous is Lou Dobbs? The rise in hate crimes against Latinos coincides almost exactly with the time Dobbs has been propagating false conspiracy theories about Latinos on the air. He’s not urging people to go hurt and kill - but that is the effect of what he does.”

CNN should not provide Lou Dobbs a platform to spew hate thinly disguised as "news," and our community has the power to stop them.

More at: http://bastadobbs.com/action

From Cambofest 2009 - More links and pictures at http://cambofest.blogspot.com.  Coming in June 2010: Bangkok IndieFest!

The current ACORN scandal once again proves that independent analysis and honest journalism often takes a backseat to propaganda, bias and overt
double standards.

ACORN’s Chief Executive Officer, Bertha Lewis, hit the nail on the head when she stated that the current salvo against the organization stems from its
39-year history of "going after the rich and powerful". Needless to say, few
people are willing to acknowledge the role classism and racism play in
mainstream America. Radical conservatives work to maintain the economic and racial divides ripping the nation apart while an underpaid and under-resourced nonprofit sector tries to salve the wounds. Some Americans don’t seem to want liberty and justice for all, but just for a chosen few – often wealthy, white, heterosexual males.

Any person or group that threatens centuries of institutionalized, preferential
treatment can become a focal point of attack. This is the case with ACORN. It campaigns nationally for living wages, immigration justice, better public
schools, affordable housing, improved health care and community reinvestment, and fights against forced foreclosures and predatory lending practices,

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that predatory lending practices,
regressive taxation, a non-livable minimum wage, racial profiling, decaying
public schools and other economically discriminatory practices make life
harder for a lot of people.

Although Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae may not have been designed to increase homelessness, countless families of meager to moderate means lost their homes and savings thanks to gross misconduct by these agencies. But where was the call for an immediate end to government funding of these agencies? There wasn't one. If fact, exactly the opposite occurred. The government took billions of dollars from public funds to salvage two agencies that directly increased homelessness and poverty levels across the country.

Meanwhile, ACORN has faced accusations of mismanagement, and it has been quickly suggested that all government aid to the organization should be
eliminated. Banks, mortgage companies and car companies continue to be
rewarded for their mismanagement, while advocacy agencies are being
de-funded and put out of business. That’s a double standard.


While ACORN was working to keep families in their homes, Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae and unscrupulous banks were doing everything possible to profit from putting families out of their homes. While ACORN was working to eliminate regressive taxation, a thin sliver of affluent families and corporations had their tax burdens minimized. While ACORN was working to protect existing communities and schools, real estate speculators were busy destroying lower-income neighborhoods for a wave of condo redevelopment (in buildings often standing empty to this day).

Thinking people don’t want left-wing rhetoric or right-wing propaganda, just
the truth about what makes the people who live in this country healthier, safer, happier, better educated and more productive – and what doesn’t.
More and more people are getting their news from alternative sources
because they want more than passive coverage of distorted attacks on people
and organizations trying to make things better for many Americans who are
suffering.

ACORN isn’t the first victim of these attacks and won’t be the last. But the
lack of a vigorous response to this so-called scandal has been an affront to
accurate journalism and journalists everywhere.


Phavia Kujichagulia is the author of “Recognizing & Resolving Racism: A Resource and Reference Guide for Humane Beings”.

Finland has just passed a law making access to broadband a legal right for Finnish citizens.

When the law goes into effect in July 2010, every person in Finland, which has a population of around 5.3 million, will have the guaranteed right to a one-megabit broadband connection, says the Ministry of Transport and Communications (via Finland's YLE).

Finland is reportedly the first country in the world to enact a law that makes broadband access a right.

And the government isn't about to stop there. YLE reports.

The government had already decided to make a 100 Mb broadband connection a legal right by the end of 2015. On Wednesday, the Ministry announced the new goal as an intermediary step. Some variation will be allowed, if connectivity can be arranged through mobile phone networks

Wikipedia notes that in June 2007, the country had about 1.52 million broadband Internet connections (or around 287 per 1,000 residents, according to the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority). No word yet on how Finland's government plans to make up for the difference.

Working Class Studies - A report by the British Cabinet Office offers stark evidence of the disappearance of the working class from the journalism profession, and the study offers some relevant observations for American media as well. The report, Unleashing Aspirations, notes, among other things, that journalists born since 1970 predominantly come from middle class to upper middle class backgrounds. And journalism ranks third in the list of the most socially exclusive professions, just behind doctors and lawyers.

Between the 1958 and the 1970 birth cohorts, the biggest decline in social mobility occurred in the professions of journalism and accountancy. For example, journalists and broadcasters born in 1958 typically grew up in families with an income of around 6% above that of the average family; but this rose to 42% for the generation of journalists and broadcasters born in 1970.

The National Union of Journalists told the panel compiling the report that a 2002 Journalism Training Forum poll showed that fewer than 10 per cent of new journalists came from a working-class background and only three per cent came from homes headed by semi-skilled or unskilled workers.

One of the many troubling findings of the report, and the one most readily applicable to the profession here in the US, is that a prerequisite for entrance into a career in journalism is at least one internship experience, and that many, if not most, are unpaid. . . .

This study draws on some 170 interviews of non-adopters, community access providers, and other intermediaries conducted across the US in late 2009 and early 2010 and identifies a range of factors that make broadband services hard to acquire and even harder to maintain in such communities.

Sandra Guzman was quietly dismissed from her position as associate editor
last week for reasons that are being hotly debated by personnel inside the
company. An official statement from the New York Post, provided to the
Huffington Post, said that her job was terminated once the paper ended the
section she was editing.

"Sandra is no longer with The Post because the monthly in-paper insert,
Tempo, of which she was the editor, has been discontinued."

Employees at the paper -- which is one of media mogul's Rupert Murdoch's
crown jewels -- said the firing, which took place last Tuesday, seemed
retributive.

Guzman was the most high-profile Post employee to publicly speak out
against a cartoon that likened the author of the stimulus bill (whom
nearly everyone associated with President Barack Obama) with a rabid
primate. Drawn by famed cartoonist Sean Delonas, the illustration pictured
two befuddled policeman -- having just shot the chimp twice in the chest --
saying: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus
bill."

"I neither commissioned or approved it," Guzman wrote to a list of
journalist colleagues shortly thereafter. "I saw it in the paper yesterday
with the rest of the world. And, I have raised my objections to
management."

The remark from Guzman was a rare instance of dissension within the halls
of the paper making its way into the public domain. And sources at the
Post now say it cost her a job.

"I think ever since then, she has been on their shit list and they were
trying to look for a reason to get rid of her," said a Post employee who
was granted anonymity in exchange for speaking freely. The problem at the
Post is a revenue problem, the employee said. "My whole thing is, she is
not in charge of advertising. She is an associate editor. Whoever is in
accounting or advertising should have been held accountable."

Another longtime employee at the paper said Guzman had a sense that she
could lose her job over her remarks. "But it doesn't make it any less
painful."

"The irony there is that the newspaper isn't making money," said a
longtime employee at the paper. "They haven't for a while... There was
definitely room to keep her here without firing her. She could have been
offered another position."

Suzi Halpin, a spokesperson for the Post who works at Rubenstein
Communications, Inc., dismissed any allegations that Guzman's cartoon
criticism played a role in her dismissal.

"The statement from the paper explains the reason why Sandra is no longer
there," she said.

Post employees said that Guzman's firing also raised questions about
minority representation in top management. Guzman had been, until Tuesday,
the only woman of color on the paper's management staff. And according to
one of the longtime Post employees, there has been only one African-
American editor at the paper in the last decade.

"The hiring practices are really bad and have been for most of the time
I've been here," said the employee. "Since I've been here there have been
as many black editors as there have been black presidents of the United
States.."

Guzman's firing came shortly after Murdoch is said to have held a meeting
of leaders from a variety of ethnic communities to discuss ways to make
his various companies -- including The Post -- more diverse.

Guzman did not return a request for comment.

Recycling resources in the East Bay that are responsible and community-oriented. For analog TV's, old computers ... and more.

We knew the day was coming when we'd watch TV on our computers. And here we are. Three terrific documentaries available free and online. Enjoy!

Money Talks

"Exposes shady drug industry practices. Important for anyone who wants to understand how corporations are controlling their health" (Heather Gehlert, Alternet.

"Should be required viewing" (Meghann Matwichuk, American Library Assn)

Hummingbird

"Inspiring in it's message of hope amid horrific conditions" (East Bay News RI)

"Harrowing and heartbreaking" (Video Librarian)

Free For All

"Goddam brilliant" (Greg Palast)

"The doc is engrossing, even enraging"(Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)

Media Alliance is a 32 year-old media resource and advocacy center for media workers, non-profit organizations, and social justice activists. Our mission: justice, excellence, accountability, and diversity, in all aspects of the media to advance peace, justice, and social responsibility.

Here are some of our accomplishments in the last year:

For more information, or to join us:
Contact Media Alliance
1904 Franklin Street # 500
Oakland CA 94612
www.media-alliance.org
510-832-9000

Buy the book. 

In its 7 January 2002 cover story on media reform, the respected progressive periodical The Nation recognized Media Alliance in San Francisco (now Oakland) as one of several 'crucial organizations' for building media democracy in the US.

The seed from which this non-profit media advocacy group sprouted was the post-Watergate generation of journalists, against the backdrop of a high tide of liberal reformism in American politics. The tumult of the Vietnam war era had receded following the withdrawal of US troops, but the movements which it had engendered were impacting the State machinery. Lawmakers and courts were moving forward on environmental protection, reproductive rights, women's equality and other issues. Buoyed by the liberal zeitgeist but frustrated by the conservative disposition of mainstream media, about 50 journalists began meeting in 1975-6 to socialize and discuss media and political issues.  Larry Bensky describes his fellow founding members as journalists, especially freelancers, but also many employed in both corporate and alternative media, people dissatisfied with corporate media coverage of events in the Bay Area (like the Vietnam war and the anti-war movement), and hoping to change that.

After months of debate, the Alliance adopted a mandate to 'support, in all ways necessary, media workers faced with attacks on their human, constitutional, and professional rights and obligations' (Wolschon 1996).

By contrast with its more recent history, the original Media Alliance began as an
organization of 'insiders', albeit marginalized ones – people involved in news production - but hardly at its apex. Moreover, while critical of the performance of the corporate media, it was then the Alliance's main field of action – something potentially reformable, and from within. A not unusual view at the time; after all, hadn't Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post's celebrated investigative journalists, brought down the corrupt presidency of Richard Nixon?

As a geographical and cultural context, the vibrancy and creativity of the San Francisco Bay area has been fertile ground for movements and media activism. The Bay Area's assets include its rich cultural diversity, with large populations of Asian, Latin American and African as well as European descent, and its large and politically active gay community. (Gays have unquestionably contributed to the city's diversity and social liberalism, but relatively little directly to media activism. Tracy Rosenberg, now the MA Director, suggests that gays' economic and political success in the city grants them access to dominant media not available to other minorities; and moreover, their main battles are in the legal and political rather than media fields, over such issues as property rights, same-sex marriage, and employment discrimination.)

Notwithstanding the conservatism of city authorities in some respects (vis-à-vis
the homeless, for example: Edmondson 2000), the city is known for its relatively strong popular traditions of labor militancy, progressive politics, and cultural innovation. Venues like City Lights Bookstore still manifest the heritage of both the 1950s Beatnik poets, and the youthful counterculture's 'summer of love' a decade later. 'That whole people's cultural movement is still really strong here', contends Dorothy Kidd of the University of San Francisco, and in addition, the city is near the Hollywood 'dream  machines', with an infrastructure for film and video production. Moreover, she points out, nearby Silicon Valley has brought expertise and capital to build the computer, software and multi-media industries. (Among its many effects, the dot.com boom during the 1990s fueled enrolment in the Media Alliance's computing skills courses, which in turn helped cross-subsidize its advocacy work.) These rich media production capacities and oppositional popular traditions – the first and second 'circles' in the potential constituency for media democratization – have combined to increase awareness of, and activism against, the commercial media's 'blockade' of the distribution of diverse and progressive media. The density of media-savvy advocacy groups by the 1990s in the Bay Area has provided a fertile organizational ecology for networking. And the reputed mediocrity of the San Francisco daily papers (the Chronicle has nothing like the stature of the New York or Los Angeles Times), contrasted with the global image of the city, provide a paradox to mobilize around.

What is impressive and distinctive about Media Alliance itself? It is not so much institutionalized and permanent successes in the media field, which few progressive advocacy groups can claim in the past generation of neoliberal hegemony. Rather, what distinguishes the Media Alliance are two characteristics.

First, its sheer longevity, its organizational growth and survival. By contrast with industry and professional associations, which by definition have an economic base for their advocacy work, public interest groups organized around political ideas have a precarious existence. Moreover, compared to their industry counterparts in the media field, public interest advocacy groups have been more prone to dying off rather than adapting their mandates or merging with other groups in response to a shifting political environment (Mueller et al. 2004: 28, 52). Bucking this dismal tradition, Media Alliance has now survived three decades. A key to its initial growth and long-term survival has been its provision of exclusive or discounted services and benefits to its members, thus minimizing the 'free rider' problem facing many public interest groups. These benefits include(d) access to health and dental insurance (a significant draw in the US, where a profit-oriented medical system leaves millions of citizens uninsured), a credit union, a job-listing service, and discounts on journalism and computer skills classes and computer rentals.

With such incentives, membership  reached about 4,000 at one point in the
1990s; member fees, along with course tuition, enabled MA to generate 75 to 85 per cent of its half-million dollar average annual budget internally, with the rest deriving from external project grants and donations. (In the late 1990s, member- ship was restructured to distinguish between a basic category, and those paying more for access to MA's benefits and services.) In effect, that benefit-driven internal revenue stream has reduced MA's vulnerability to the vagaries of founda-tion funding, and has cross-subsidized MA's political work, enough to hire a staff of ten (four of them part-time) as of 2001, headed by an executive director accountable to a Board – a standard pattern for US non-profit advocacy groups, with the commendable (and, as became clear in 1996, fateful) exception that the Board is elected by the membership.

MA's second notable achievement is its linkage of different constituencies and tasks in concrete steps towards media democratization.  Over the years, it has provided a social as well as a political outlet for journalists; it has enjoyed the support both of freelance journalists and those employed by media corporations; it has combined training for the media with critique of the media; in later years, it has coalesced different ethnic communities in common cause; and it has worked in different venues and with a range of tactics, from nonviolent civil disobedience to interventions at policy hearings. It does not fit easily inside the strategic quadrants that we identified in Table 3.2. At the same time, as we shall see, there are still limits to how far such boundary-crossing can go.

The MA's roots in the muckraking, you-can-beat-city-hall optimism of 1970s
journalism are evident in the pages of MediaFile, the newsletter which MA has produced with only occasional interruptions since 1978. Its headlines in the first fifteen years read much like a progressive journalism review: political and ethical issues facing journalism (censorship, source confidentiality); critical analyses of corporate media coverage of city and state politics, of minority rights, of movements and their issues (nuclear disarmament and Central America in the 1980s, the 1991 Gulf War); occasional surveys of local, minority, independent, alternative, movement, gay, and ethnic media, ranging from the laudatory to the sympathetically critical; some attention to regulatory and legislative issues affecting news media (freedom of information versus national security, deregulation of radio and cable, even Unesco's NWICO debate); profiles of the winners of the annual Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement (MAMA) awards; financial, legal and techno-logical developments affecting Bay Area journalists and their rights, particularly freelancers, along with occasional professional advice.

The Alliance's campaigns during the 1980s were, for the most part, activities that progressive-minded journalists could endorse without compromising their occupational self-image as independent truth-seekers. During its very first year, MA voted overwhelmingly to support Newspaper Guild and Typographical Union workers, striking at the weekly  San Francisco Bay Guardian for guarantees against job losses due to the use of freelance material. Guardian editor and publisher Bruce Brugmann defeated the strike, but the solidarity effort defined MA as a political entity, united MA members, and attracted many of the strikers to its ranks (Wolschon 1996). (Interestingly, Brugmann and MA became allies vis-à-vis the corporate dailies in later years.) In 1994, MA staff, board and members again walked picket lines, this time in active support of striking workers at the two San Francisco dailies. As if to balance the ledger between freelancers and employees, MA successfully negotiated a contract with Pacific News Service in 1978, setting fees and freelance rights for PNS contributors – reputedly the first such agreement between a freelance group and a news organization.

In 1979, MA united in a long, hard legal battle on behalf of two of its own. As a
result of their 1976 investigative articles on a 1972 Chinatown murder, freelancer Lowell Bergman and Examiner reporter Raul Ramirez were sued for $30 million by a former district attorney  and two police detectives.  The  Examiner refused to provide the pair with legal counsel. MA members responded  with a defence committee which raised $60,000 in legal fees until the pair's exoneration in California Supreme Court in 1986. Commented Ramirez of the ordeal, 'Individuals are powerless; you have no idea how energizing, inspiring and encouraging it was to have a group of people standing behind you' (Wolschon 1996).

By contrast with such solidarity, a 1981 controversy over the journalistic ethics of MediaFile itself foreshadowed how bitter internal disputes could become. In a debate over a story on prisoners' rights, a letter to MediaFile by the story's two authors betrayed confidential, and potentially life-threatening, information that had been supplied to them by a source. The source, Eve Pell, happened to be then-president of the MA board. MediaFile readers responded with a stream of letters, some questioning the editor's judgement in publishing the exchange, culminating in his resignation and an apology from MA staff. MA's executive director later commented that the controversy was 'a shock', a case of 'devour [ing] your young' (Wolschon 1996).

Nevertheless, during the 1980s, a burgeoning Media Alliance moved quarters to historic Fort Mason overlooking the Bay, created internal committees, launched its JobFile system and computer classes, and published a directory of local news media, a valuable tool for community and advocacy groups. It initiated the annual MAMA awards, intended to recognize both social responsibility and outstanding achievement in Bay Area journalism. While they drained MA's resources until their abandonment after 1994, they could be seen as a means of attracting main-stream journalists' interest, and influencing media performance. Throughout its history, the Alliance has also hosted panels and forums relevant to journalism, from skills (for example, 'Writing and editing for online publications') to the politics of media (`Smoking out the truth: The CIA, drugs, and media coverage'). Presciently, the MA helped mount a Media and Democracy conference in 1992, with keynote speaker Ralph Nader, and analyses of campaign coverage (Wolschon 1996).

During the 1980s, MA's agenda was influenced by the political ascendancy of the 'great communicator', Ronald Reagan, and much of the US media's servility to his reactionary politics "On bended knee' was how journalist/author Mark Hertsgaard (1989) described the press's relationship with the administration). One of MA's major projects during the 1980s was the Propaganda Analysis Review Project, intended as a media education tool exploring the connection between politics and the manipulation of symbols and ideas. It produced several issues of a magazine, which eventually foundered from funding and mission difficulties; some of its originators feared that an exclusive focus on right-wing propaganda made the magazine itself a propagandist tool of the Left. A second project was the Central America Committee, whose purview later expanded to Latin America and the Caribbean. It undertook critical analyses of mainstream coverage of the region, including US intervention, produced a resource guide for journalists, and attempted with some success to expand the Bay Area media's breadth of opinion and reportage on the region.

So, on the one hand, MA has served the professional and career needs of its members and tried to influence mainstream journalism. On the other hand, it has sought to promote progressive political goals, in the face of North American journalism's waning but still hegemonic 'regime of objectivity' (Hackett and Zhao 1998). Striking a balance was a constant challenge during the first two decades. To be sure, many of MA's founding members, like liberals and rationalists generally, would deny any contradiction: journalism at its best – truth-telling (in the public interest) and democratic governance are mutually supportive. Tell the truth to the people, and it shall set them free. That's the view expressed in the Bay Guardian's summary (on 13 March 1996) of MA's mission: to seek 'excellence, ethics, diversity, and accountability in all aspects of the media, in the interest of peace, justice, and social responsibility' with the goal of a 'free and unfettered flow of information and ideas in order to achieve a democratic and just society'. An unpublished statement of purpose commits MA 'to bringing about a more humane and democratic society by protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the press; by fostering genuine diversity of media voices and perspectives; by holding the media accountable for their impact on society, their hiring practices, and the integrity of their products; by working together with other groups and individuals who share our goals; and by providing services, support, and a sense of community for media workers committed to these goals'. Founding member Ken McEldowney put it simply: 'This was not an organization of dispassionate reporters who sat on the sidelines and wrote stories in the form of Journalism 101. We were concerned about the content of news' (Wolschon 1996).

Even so, MA's direct engagement  in overtly political campaigns  has been
limited by its media-oriented mandate, its concern for political independence, and its tax status as a 'charitable  organization': Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code precludes attempting to influence legislation as a 'substantial part' of its activities,or participating  at all in campaign activity for or against political candidates. Rather, MA typically analyses biases and blind spots in media coverage of political issues and progressive constituencies – Asian-Americans, gays, refugees and immi-grants, the environment, Hispanics, community youth issues. In 1991 the MA served as an information clearing house for members on events related to coverage of the Persian Gulf War. The Alliance has also partnered with community groups to conduct joint projects, typically adding the 'media piece', such as skills training and strategic communications advice. Some collaborative projects have included tours to Cuba for American journalists (with Global Exchange, a human rights organization); a summer internship  and training program  for reporters  of color (with the Independent Press Association); media training on domestic violence (with community press and legal aid associations); co-sponsorship of events with the Society for Professional Journalists, the National Writers Union, the Film Arts Foundation, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, and many others. By contrast, MA's links with Bay Area organized labor (apart from journalists' unions) have been minimal, other than through the efforts of individual rank-and-file activists like writer David Bacon, who served on the MA board. Somewhat by contrast with Britain and Canada, the conservatism of American labor leadership, and the lower rate of unionization in the workforce, has argu- ably impeded American media activism in general; it has certainly contributed to its distinctive form, with a greater orientation towards the countercultural Left and minority group struggles for equality. Occasionally, MA has assisted other groups, and even helped launch them, by accepting tax-deductible funds on their behalf, saving them the tedious process of acquiring 501(c)(3) tax status. (One relatively recent example is the Bay Area Independent Media Center, which was centered on local community organizing rather than a major anti-globalization action.) Such fiscal sponsorship is 'a way to make friends and alliances', explains a former MA staffer.

While turf issues are more likely to arise than with non-media community groups, MA has also partnered with other media-related advocacy groups, especially where there is a history of mutual support and complementary expertise. San Francisco's rich organizational ecology has offered many such partners. One example is We Interrupt This Message, a national media strategy and training centre, which former MA staffer Kim Deterline helped launch in 1996. Others include the Independent Press Association, Community Press Consortium, Project Censored, the Center for Improvement and Integrity of Journalism, FAIR, the Public Media Center, and alternative media like Pacific News Service and the Bay Guardian.

By the 1990s, a decade of conservative hegemony had shifted the political environment to the right. By contrast with its apparent momentum in the 1960s and early 1970s, the US Left had fragmented into factions seemingly more intent on self- expression and identity-assertion than on coalition-building and broad societal transformation (Sanbonmatsu 2004). In the media field, corporate priorities and hypercommercialism were becoming more blatant and seemingly more difficult to challenge from within newsrooms, where the public service ethos was withering (Hallin 2000; McChesney 2004: 87). The post-Watergate generation of journalists, MA's original membership base, had aged; acquiring family responsibilities and career success, they no longer needed the professional and social support of MA (including its renowned 'great parties'). Parties aside, some felt that the organization was losing the fire in its belly and its sense of purpose.

Media Alliance was ripe for renewal. Its critical juncture came in 1996 initially disguised as chaos. In the first contested board election in MA history, seven petition-nominated candidates defeated a board-nominated slate after an acrimonious campaign. Led by Van Jones, a young African-American civil rights lawyer, the reformers promised to energize the Alliance by making it more accessible to the poor and minorities, only to run into a sea of troubles once in office: sour relations between MA's still divided board and staff, a high rate of staff burnout and turnover, and 'a perilous financial situation', according to a 1998 letter from Jones to the membership. After nearly two years of 'miserable frustration and floundering', a new executive director, appointed from within the ranks, took the helm. With an activist sensibility and a consensus approach to administration, Andrea Buffa is widely credited with helping to save MA from self-destruction, and to energize and build an activist-oriented staff. According to Jones, Buffa's leadership 'completed the coup' and 'made it possible for the organization to move in a different direction'. In Jones' view, 'an old boys' club' of 1960s/70s media professionals was transformed into one reflecting MA's younger activist members and more relevant to contemporary media realities – including online and alternative media, as well as 'the monopolization of all media by corporations as a dire problem for democracy'. For Jones, the old guard had failed to grasp how corporate  media had become 'an absolute barrier to any kind of social change, whether the issue be homelessness, police issues, whatever'.

Veteran and former members we interviewed are divided on MA's new direc-
tion. For some, the outcome was a rediscovery of MA's original sense of mission. For founding member and former MediaFile editor Larry Bensky, the shift was both generational and political. It enabled MA to tap the energies of the new hip-hop protest movement, for whom diversity is a serious issue.
For others, the organization has marginalized itself, its critiques no longer to be taken seriously. An editor at the Chronicle, and one of MA's founding members, says he drifted away from the organization a few years after it was formed because it had become 'more ideologically driven than craft driven', predictably supporting every radical demand, such as the release of controversially-convicted African American death row inmate Mumia Abu Jamma1. Some of these members blame Van Jones personally for an unnecessarily confrontational transition. Even Raul Ramirez, the journalist who had benefited from MA's legal defence fund, observed in MediaFile (March/April 2001) that his colleagues think of MA as having 'drifted much farther into the political world than they feel comfortable mingling with', and that MA is no longer the 'vehicle for the internal self-examination of mainstream media'. He attributes this distance to the traditional ethos of objectivity: `Don't get involved in the story, translated into, "You're not a part of the community."' The further that MA's advocacy extended beyond safeguarding the First Amendment and journalists' rights, the more reluctant that working reporters (and still more their superiors) became to associate with MA's campaigns.

The Alliance's projects, campaigns and tactics since 1996 reflect its more activist and outsider strategy. One indicator was MA's 1996 picketing of the New York Times' San Francisco bureau, as part of a national 'Melt the Media Snow Job' campaign to protest dominant media's lack of coverage of alleged links between the CIA and the drug trade. This classic outsider tactic earned the ire of some within the media, like the San Francisco Weekly, who might otherwise be sympathetic to MA critiques. In a similar vein, MA brought together media activists from around the country to San Francisco to protest at the 2000 convention  of the National Association of Broadcasters, the powerful corporate lobby group.

In 1998, MA campaigned  to expose perceived biases in media coverage of Proposition 227, a referendum initiative to abolish bilingual education in Cali- fornia, thus restricting Spanish-speakers' access to public education in their own language. (This policy was one of the alleged violations of language rights adjudicated by the People's Communication Charter's unofficial tribunal at The Hague in 1999: Media Development 1999.) The campaign's goal was to ensure that pro-bilingual voices were not shut out in the media. Andrea Buffa recalls regretfully the difficulty MA had in persuading mainstream media, notably National Public Radio, to participate in its public panels, which NPR
 officials considered 'biased' because they reflected majority expert opinion in favour of bilingual education. (The referendum passed, but its implementation was delayed by court challenges.)

Media Alliance did not altogether abandon its links with mainstream journalists – for example, it helped organize protests when the Chronicle removed one of its few progressive columnists from the op-ed pages in the political aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. But MA's new focus had clearly become training community groups and political activists how to tell their story more effectively, whether through creating their own media or framing messages for the corporate media (though as Buffa conceded, better coverage certainly cannot be guaranteed). Critiques of corporate media coverage were still offered, but were seemingly intended less to encourage mainstream journalists to do better, and more to persuade activists to identify, and strategize against, corporate media bias. It was, however, a landmark battle within the field of alternative media that re- energized the Alliance and encouraged its activists to start redefining it as part of a broader media democracy movement. The campaign centred on resistance to the Pacifica Foundation's crackdown on KPFA in Berkeley, one of the five stations in Pacifica's radio network. We cannot elaborate here the station's half- century history as America's  first listener-supported independent station, its distinctive programming with the stated intention of supporting peace, social justice, the labor movement and the arts, and its relatively democratic, partici patory and often conflict-laden structure (see Downing et al. 2001, Chapter 21). Instead, our story begins with a decision by Pacifica's  national board, which legally owned the station and was accountable to no other body. In 1995, the board began to develop and implement a plan to transform Pacifica's program- ming and operations, for reasons not fully and publicly explained: it may have been an effort to win broader audiences for public service radio, and to address the perceived problem of 'the stranglehold of ... stick-in-the-mud local program- mers' over Pacifica's output (Downing et al. 2001: 348). Opponents, though, saw it as a kind of corporate coup; for veteran MA member and KPFA broadcaster Larry Bensky, at stake was 'the survival of a unique institution dedicated towards speaking truth to power – free speech radio, non-corporate and democratically and locally controlled'.

Whatever its motives, the board's tactical tools included secrecy, central direc- tives, gag orders, firings and lockouts of staff, and a covert contract with a union- busting organization. Not surprisingly, such tactics met with resentment and resistance within the stations – and among listeners, especially in the Bay Area, where the station had deep roots, and where the confrontation became a crisis in 1998-9. Firings, demonstrations, sit-ins, even an on-air confrontation between a talk-show host and private security guards ensued. A sympathetic student of radical media sees the conflict as another example of the Left's 'self-devouring virus', with the board and local programmers locked into position by rival messianic drives, fed by a shared conviction that Pacifica was the single beacon of light in a broadcasting wilderness. Each side saw itself as a savior and its opposite as the most infuriating and illegitimate of obstacles to survival and success. (Downing  et al. 2001: 346, 349)

For Media Alliance, however, the issue was clearcut, and it 'jumped into the leadership role in the campaign', as Andrea Buffa put it, organizing everyone from nonprofit organizations to journalist groups to local politicians in a demand that the station be reopened. We did everything. We did civil disobedience at the station, we started a campsite in front of the station, it was operating 24 hours a day. We organized activities at the station every day. MA also helped organize a march of ten to fifteen thousand people, probably one of the largest protest rallies on a media issue in American history.

By contrast with the outcome at other Pacifica stations, in Berkeley the board
eventually backed down, the station remained on the air, and the staff stayed on their jobs. One could argue that the campaign was reactive, that at best it recap- tured ground previously held and made no new inroads into the corporate media monolith. But for MediaFile editor Ben Clarke, the campaign was a victory, even if it further marginalized MA in the eyes of some mainstream journalists. It 'made people more willing to take risks to defend media democracy' as embodied in workers' rights at a free radio station; and it produced 'a distinctly more engaged staff and membership, a greater visibility and reputation in the community'.

MA's new sense of purpose was illustrated not only by the Pacifica struggle, but also by other lifeworld-based projects to claim media space for subaltern groups. A particularly important one was the Raising Our Voices programme, initiated in 1999 to challenge media myths by offering training in media skills to the victims of those myths, particularly the poor and the homeless. According to executive director Jeff Perlstein, the programme, which ran for several years, was 'a strong example of the political agency and engagement that follows from people claiming their voice'.

Notwithstanding MA's new resolve to do battle with corporate media, however, the idea of structural media reform was not yet on MA's radar screen, Andrea Buffa told us in 1998. Although  MediaFile had kept members abreast of some communications policy issues since the late 1970s, MA had little tradition of actual intervention in state policy processes. But by 2001 Buffa and MA staffers were singing a different tune, however tentatively; and by 2003 'organizing local communities around media policy' was part of MA's public mission statement (Center for International Media Action 2003: 35). By the turn of the century, something resembling a self-defined media reform movement was emerging in America. Microradio activists had succeeded in persuading the FCC to legalize hundreds  of outlets, and it took the Republicans' electoral  sweep in 2000 to quash that near-victory. More and more activists were making the connection between bad communications legislation, bad media, and bad political outcomes on other issues.

Thus, in 2001, campaigning against corporate giant Clear Channel Communi-
cation, Media Alliance explicitly framed the issue as one of media democratiza- tion. The campaign centred on the firing of David Cook (`Davey D'), a popular and respected African-American radio talk show host at KMEL in Oakland, part of the 1,200-station radio empire amassed by Clear Channel after the 1996 Tele- communications Act's passage. Davey D's microphone had often been open for social justice groups, and many of them, with little prior interest in media politics, joined MA in the campaign,  including civil rights lawyers, the Latino Issues Forum, and youth groups organizing against the city government's plans for a super-jail in the Oakland area. While the immediate goal was Cook's reinstatement, Media Alliance linked the campaign to broader issues: Clear Channel's abuse of its prominent position in Bay Area radio broadcasting, the grave implications of media deregulation and consolidation, and the culture of media silence and complicity engendered by 9/1 I (Cook was fired a week after he interviewed Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against giving the Bush administration carte blanche to invade Afghanistan and launch a 'war against terror'). MA worked against post-9/ 11 chill in other ways too: a sign-on letter campaign in support of press freedom and diversity, and communications training for anti-war campus groups and for South Asian and other minorities being victimized by media hysteria.

Another campaign, around cable franchises, further enabled Media Alliance to combine community and policy concerns in 2002. The proposed merger of two of America's largest cable companies, AT&T and Comcast, meant that the new post-merger firm would be required legally to renegotiate the contracts with each of the 2,000 municipalities where the two pre-merger companies had franchises. Two Washington DC-based public interest organizations, the Consumer Federa- tion of America and the Center for Digital Democracy,  saw in the franchise transfer an opportunity to extract concessions from the cable companies. They identified 80 affected cities for intervention, and supplied logistical and informa- tional support for local advocacy groups, thus reducing their costs of mobilization. In San Francisco, Media Alliance organized a broad coalition that included local advocacy groups and school-based community centers in eight neighborhoods. Campaign goals included discounted cable rates for seniors and low-income residents, open access to the cable infrastructure for independent service providers, and more resources and channels for community access production and programming. As Jeff Perlstein explains, the campaign strategically presented an opportunity to encourage community activists to expand their repertoire, from alternative media production  to policy intervention. It was also a chance to educate the broader public, which is aware of cable TV but generally overlooks the implications of increasing cable company control  over broadband and high-speed internet. As the MA website explains, citing the American Civil Liberties Union, in a deregulated monopoly environment, "Not only will [cable] be allowed to charge whatever toll they want, they will be able to discriminate against other ISPs ... cable companies could engage in various forms of discrimination against consumers, from reviewing e-mails to extracting marketing data to slowing down transmission speeds to Web sites that compete against cable-affiliated products. 'An ISP controlled by a politically inclined CEO or board could use the network to promote political positions ...,' the ACLU said. 'It could block or slow access to the Web sites of rival candidates, or redirect users to the preferred candidate's site.'

What did the Pacifica, Davey D and cable transfer campaigns have in common? They all challenged threats to the ability of community activists to disseminate their messages publicly . As Ben Clarke observed, that threat may be the strongest stimulant for media-related activism.

In sum, Media Alliance's project for its first two decades was system change from within the media field – reforming corporate journalism, through defending media workers' rights, critiquing `bad' journalism and celebrating the 'good', and training aspiring journalists (including those with little interest in MA's politics). Since 1996, MA has found its main constituencies amongst those marginalized within the media field and the broader field of power, communities seeking racial and economic justice and an effective public voice. MA is rooted within the lifeworld, with a focus on media production and content, but also increasingly on media policy – an environing condition of media production.

In 2002, Jeff Perlstein explained the rationale behind this shift: In order to achieve systematic change, activist organizations must be willing to do policy work, political lobbying, and broader base-building at the grassroots level, and we have to figure out what the entry points are in the local media policy that can ripple up to national media policy.

He notes that some constituencies who have been 'making their own media' or
`accessing the mainstream media' have not been previously engaged in media policy reform. Accordingly, Media Alliance has been consciously attempting to link strategies: Those two pieces (alternative media and strategic communication) are really crucial, because what that does is build an understanding on a very gut level around what we mean by changing media policy. You're making your own media, and you find out well, all the great alternative media distribution networks still aren't really getting it out there quite enough just yet. There's still this (structural) barrier ... that we're hitting.

Since 2001, the policy focus has been evident in a steady stream of MediaFile features (on FCC proposals, media concentration, telecommunications politics, postal rates for independent magazines, and much else). As it has shifted emphasis away from working with mainstream media workers and towards training the marginalized to create their own media, MA is also paying more attention to the substance and processes of government media policies, mobilizing for interventions in regulatory processes (FCC hearings, industry conventions, cable franchise negotiations) from a public interest perspective. It appears that journalism's objectivity regime may have been a greater impediment to policy engagement than younger activists' distrust of the state and electoral politics.

With varying intensity and at different times, MA has worked within all four of the sectors identified in our schema. Its history illustrates the permeability of the boundaries between the different sectors of media democratization we sketched in Chapter 3, as well as the potential for a particular vector of media democratization– from subaltern communities in the lifeworld, via alternative media or media training, to interventions in media structure and policy. It also shows the integral links between media activism's trajectory, and the energies of broader political currents, particularly those of social movements.

In the next chapter, we consider a British media advocacy group launched at about the same time as MA, one that adopted a politically radical and policy-oriented mandate from the start.

San Francisco-Three time Associated Press, Emmy-nominated award winning journalist Jackie Wright faces media giant CBS in a court hearing, Thursday, August 27 in Federal Court in San Francisco. CBS Television, represented by Maureen E. McClain of Littler Mendelson, is trying to dismiss the case in which Wright alleges racism that led to her layoff in January 2007.

The public is invited to attend the hearing on Thursday, August 27 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom B, 15th Floor, 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, California. Because media are essential to the democratic process and there is a need for fair, balanced and representative media, the public should keep its eye on  Wright’s case and others involving media.

Wright, representing herself “Forma Pauperis”, contends her dismissal from CBS 5/CW Bay Area, goes beyond her personal loss of a job. The elimination of the public affairs manager position is indicative of a trend in media where minority professionals are being disproportionately eliminated and the “public interest” is not being served. Wright spoke to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in April on this issue.

Unity Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists issued separate news releases outlining the problem of the elimination of minority journalists from newsrooms.

Beyond The Odds pairs Youth Speaks poets with HIV+ young people to illuminate their perspectives about living with HIV. Check them out. It's a great project.