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?

***

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

****

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: