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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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:
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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.
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
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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.
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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.
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:
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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."
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.
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