The City has a Digital Inclusion Task Force that is working on a real plan to bridge the technological divide. We are talking here about free or affordable computers, training, and tech support. These cost money, and without dedicated resources, the plan will be only a book in a shelf.
Where will the money come from?
A new report released by Media Alliance and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance may provide an answer. The report conducts a preliminary financial analysis of the expenses and income generated by a truly-municipal wireless system—a system owned by the City, not Earthlink and Google.
The results? We can have our cake and eat it too. We can have a good municipally-owned system AND generate money to fund the digital inclusion programs that the City so sorely needs. We estimate an average revenue of $2 million a year for 10 years, and this is after covering expenses to install, run, and upgrade the network.
Conversely, if we continue down the Earthlink/Google path, what do we get? You may get a clue by reading the SF Chronicle. Google is getting impatient. Its spokesperson calls a request for free computers and a share in revenues “unreasonable.”
The good news? Google’s impatience shows that the City is paying attention to some of our community demands and is negotiating in earnest.
The better news? Thanks to Supervisor McGoldrick’s insistence, the City’s Budget Analyst has agreed to study to financial feasibility of a wireless network paid for and owned by the city. Expect a report back in December, more or less at the same time as the Earthlink/Google negotiations will wrap up.
-- Sydney Levy
New York Times
September 27, 2006
'Neutrality' Is New Challenge for Internet Pioneer
By JOHN MARKOFF
SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE was a software programmer working at the CERN physics research laboratory in Switzerland in the 1980’s when he proposed the idea of a project based on hypertext — linking documents with software pointers.
The World Wide Web went online in 1991 and rapidly grew beyond the physics community. In 1994, Sir Tim founded the World Wide Web Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to promote open standards on the Internet. Earlier this year, he began speaking out in favor of “Net neutrality.” The term describes one side in the debate in the United States over whether Internet service providers should be able to control the order in which they route packets of data — or even be able to reject those packets — or whether they should be required to be neutral on the matter. For example, in some cases I.S.P.’s have restricted the routing of services provided by competitors like Internet phone calls.
He answered questions earlier this month by telephone from Cambridge, Mass.
Q. Why did you decide to speak out on Net neutrality?
A. I have had an opinion on Net neutrality since I mentioned it in a book — effectively, but not by that name — a long time ago. It’s not a new opinion and it’s one thing that is shared by such a huge majority, if you like an unwritten assumption of the entire Internet culture. Someone actually thought to challenge it.
Q. Do you think you would be able to invent the Web today, given the barriers that are emerging?
A. You have to imagine the Net without the Web. I think I would be able to invent it today, but if we lose Net neutrality, then imagine a world in which it’s much more difficult to invent the Web.
Q. Is your view that the anti-Net neutrality infrastructure actually threatens political democracy? Does it go beyond just the technical structure of the Internet?
A. Net neutrality is one of those principles, social principles, certainly now much more than a technical principle, which is very fundamental. When you break it, then it really depends how far you let things go. But certainly I think that the neutrality of the Net is a medium essential for democracy, yes — if there is democracy and the way people inform themselves is to go onto the Web.
Q. So there are political consequences. Are there are also economic consequences? If so, what are they?
A. I think the people who talk about dismantling — threatening — Net neutrality don’t appreciate how important it has been for us to have an independent market for productivity and for applications on the Internet.
Now, if we compare what you can get into your home with earliest modems, it’s maybe 1,000 times as fast. So that market has been very competitive, very successful.
And I think we wouldn’t have seen this explosion in the exciting, tremendous diversity of the kind of things you see on the Web now. So in the future, obviously, we expect to see many more things. We expect to see, very importantly, television streaming over the Internet, which is going to make a very exciting market in television content and maybe entertainment, maybe educational ideas.
The people deploying these things rely on the fact that the Internet is sitting there waiting to carry whatever they can dream up.
Q. You wrote, at one point, that in the beginning, the data packets weren’t inspected. Now I see that many modern routers do packet inspection as a matter of course. Does this make it too late? Is packet inspection by itself a threat to Net neutrality?
A. No, I think there’s been some muddying the waters. Of course, if you’re carrying high-resolution video, then you have to treat those packets, for example, differently from packets for chat sessions.
So routers have to be smarter, and they are, to provide this very high functionality that we’re asking of them now. Sometimes this involves looking inside the packet. And unfortunately we’re also getting to the point where routers have to be able to protect themselves against malicious denial-of-service attacks and so on.
Meanwhile, the government is asking people to put snooping apparatus in routers, so there are all kinds of reasons why routers are starting to become smarter.
That is not an excuse for changing the terms of service of the Internet. The fundamental thing about the Internet is that I connect to the Internet with a certain quality of service — whether it is video- or audio-capable or whatever. If you’ve connected with the same form of service, then you and I can connect at that level. So if we have both paid for bidirectional, high-definition television, then you and I will also be able to exchange television broadcasts across the Internet. We shouldn’t have to negotiate. So the fundamental thing we’re talking about here is the deal between the user of the Internet and their Internet service provider.
Q. You’ve spoken about the concept of a Dark Net, which would balkanize the Internet. Do you have a nightmare scenario?
A. In the long term, I’m optimistic because I think even if the United States ends up faltering in its quest for Net neutrality, I think the rest of the world will be horrified, and there will be very strong pressure from other countries who will become a world separate from the U.S., where the Net is neutral. If things go wrong in the States, then I think the result could be that the United States would then have a less-competitive market where content providers could provide a limited selection of all the same old movies to their customers because they have a captive market.
Meanwhile, in other countries, you’d get a much more dynamic and much more competitive market for television over the Internet. So that you’d end up finding that the U.S. would then fall behind and become less competitive until they saw what was going on and fixed it. I just hope we don’t have to go through a dark period, a little dark ages while people experiment with dropping Net neutrality and then, perhaps, put it back.
Q. There are a couple of intriguing technologies on the horizon, and I’ve wondered whether they will play a positive role in this debate. One is new wireless broadband technologies, which may compete for the Internet-to-the-home market. The power line is also a potential avenue of the Internet into the consumer marketplace.
A. I think anything that opens up the competition is clearly going to affect the systems that are more closed. I don’t know personally how much hope to put into things like power lines. And in a way, the Internet architecture does cry out against any form of restriction to it because it would just weaken it. And so it could be O.K. if there’s an alternative way of getting the bits.
Q. Do you have a view about the behavior of the telephone companies in this debate? Is this simply traditional monopolist behavior, or is it more subtle? Have you talked to them to understand their motivations?
A. I have tried, when I’ve had the opportunity to find out, to understand their motivations, but I can’t speak for them. So all I can do is guess. But my guess is that it’s not that this is a nefarious planned plot to take over the Internet by a bunch of people who hate it. What I imagine is that it is simply the culture of companies, which have been using a particular business model for a very long time. So I think there is a clash of corporate cultures.
Q. What do you make of justifications involving quality of service, which would give certain types of Internet data, like voice and video, right of way over other kinds of data?
A. They say, “It will cost us an awful lot of money for this quality of service, and therefore we will have to disband neutrality.” They’re not actually logical. Some people say perhaps we ought to be able to charge more for this very special high-bandwidth connectivity. Of course that’s fine, charge more. Nobody is suggesting that you shouldn’t be able to charge more for a video-capable Internet connection. That’s no reason not to make it anything but neutral.
As described in the Bay Guardian's editorial below, KQED's Board is asking members to vote themselves out of any future voting process, ending 50 years of member voting and eliminating the little remaining "public" input that exists in "public broadcasting." Media Alliance opposes this move to eliminate one of the last remaining "checks" on the "balance" of the most powerful public TV/Radio combo in the United States.
Read the Bay Guardian's editorial below, contact the stationl to express your concern and stay tuned for more ways to get involved:
Member Services email: member@kqed.org, tel: (415) 553-2150
SF Bay Guardian Editorial
September 27, 2006
San Francisco's venerable public radio and television outlet, is trying to summarily abandon internal democracy. The station's management is sending out letters this week asking its 190,000 members to vote on a bylaws change that would eliminate direct election of board members and shift complete control of the station's operations to a self-appointed board. The proposal would also strip members of the right to vote on future changes to the bylaws.
This is a horrible idea and KQED members should reject it.
The bylaws change, KQED spokesperson Yoon Lee told us, comes in the wake of a May merger between KQED and San Jose's public station, KTEH, and is aimed at simplifying operations at the stations. Besides, she said, elections are expensive: KQED spends roughly $250,000 each time it chooses new board members.
Of course, the United States could save huge sums of money by canceling congressional elections and letting the House and Senate choose their own members, but that idea wouldn't get too far. Neither should the idea of the people — who pay for the programming, pay for the staff, pay for the salaries of the station executives, and pay for the elections — being cut out of the process.
For half a century, KQED has had a tradition of membership participation. It's been awkward and stilted at times (the board appoints its own slate of candidates, and it's tough for outside candidates to get on the ballot and get elected). But critics of station management have won seats on the board now and then, and their input has been tremendously healthy for the organization.
KQED has always needed independent watchdogs. For years, the station has poured money into bad projects and wasted cash on overpaid executives — at the expense of its primary mission, which is (and ought to be) to provide quality local programming. There's no KQED TV news show (although there used to be). Other than Michael Krasny on the radio, there's precious little in the way of local public affairs shows.
That's the kind of thing rebel board members like Henry Kroll and Sasha Futran used to bring up and force onto the agenda. They also made the case for letting the members — and the public — have access to the details of KQED's finances.
Lee says that none of the other big stations in the Public Broadcasting Service system have elected boards, but this is San Francisco, a city that takes its publicly supported institutions seriously and demands accountability. And locally, the direction of member-sponsored broadcasting is just the opposite: KPFA has gone to great lengths to elect a community-based board.
This is the last chance members will ever have to halt the corporatization of KQED. Most members just throw their ballots out; this time, it's worth taking a minute to vote no on the new bylaws.
--- SFBG
House Members Call On FCC Inspector General To Investigate Hidden Studies On Media Consolidation
34 Democrats Want Answers On Why Report Showing Negative Impacts Of Media Consolidation Went Missing As Agency Sought To Weaken Ownership Diversity
Washington, DC -- A group of 34 House Democrats today called on Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Inspector General Kent R. Nilsson to conduct an investigation into the recent revelation that the agency hid two studies on media consolidation from the public after the results of those studies didn't support the Bush administration's goal of further weakening the limits on media ownership. One of the studies illustrates the negative impact media consolidation has on the American public's ability to receive local and diverse news coverage, while the other demonstrates the marked decrease in the diversity of radio station ownership in America.
Led by Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Congressman David Price (D-NC), Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Congressman Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the House Democrats asked for Nilsson to recommend possible disciplinary action against agency officials for apparent suppressing the studies from public consumption at a time when the FCC is working to further consolidate media ownership.
"If one or both of these reports were suppressed because they did not support official FCC policy, such actions could not only constitute fraud, but could also run counter to the FCC's stated goals of transparency and public involvement in its media ownership proceedings," the 34 House Democrats wrote in a letter sent today to Nilsson. "We believe that a full accounting of the circumstances surrounding the possible suppression of these reports is essential if the FCC is to be perceived as acting in good faith on media ownership issues by Congress and the American people."
The first study in question concluded that, "locally owned television broadcast stations air more local news than network owned-and-operated and non-locally owned stations, even adjusting for the number of stations owned by the corporate parent." This finding ran contrary to what FCC officials were publicly saying in 2002 and 2003 as the agency worked to change media ownership rules to allow just a handful of individuals and corporations to own all of the media outlets in the country, which would have resulted in less locally owned media outlets. The FCC's media ownership rule changes were found illegal by a federal court in 2003. Three years later, the agency is now once again undertaking the issue of media ownership.
"The FCC does not want to play fairly when it comes to media ownership. By apparently suppressing information that showed the clear negative impacts of media consolidation, the FCC sought to limit the information the American people and Congress had to counter the administration's agenda of reducing media ownership diversity," said Hinchey, who is the founder and chairman of the Future of American Media Caucus. "Just as this White House did in the lead up to the war in Iraq, if information supports its desired outcome then the administration will release it to the public, but if information contradicts the administration's desired outcome then it is shelved and barred from public consumption. This is not how a democracy is supposed to function. The information and knowledge this country has, the better off it will be."
Price said, "If these allegations of suppressed studies are true, they are part of a disturbing pattern of the Bush administration twisting the facts to further its own policy objectives. Good public policy is supposed to reflect what is best for the American people. If the FCC can't be trusted to present the results of its own studies to the public, how can it be trusted to act in the public's interest when it comes to the ownership of our airwaves?"
The second study in question found that between 1996 and early 2003, the number of commercial radio stations increased by 5.9 percent, yet the number of station owners fell by an extraordinary 35 percent. The House Democrats noted that the report on the sharp decline in diverse radio station ownership was produced and hidden from the public at the exact time the FCC was working to loosen the ownership rules for newspapers and television stations. By hiding the report from the public, the House Democrats argue that the FCC was able to better advance its media consolidation agenda.
"The suppression of these studies is extremely disturbing. FCC Chairman Martin should personally oversee an investigation into the alleged cover-up, account for any other studies that may have been suppressed, take appropriate disciplinary action against the wrongdoers, and establish procedures to ensure this never happens again. The FCC, like every other agency of government, is accountable to the people," said Baldwin.
Brown added, "If these allegations are true, the FCC undermined its own credibility and breached the public trust. Whether the goal was to deflect criticism or protect the interests of multinational media conglomerates, the FCC cannot suppress information at the expense of Americans. I hope the Inspector General will conduct an expeditious, thorough investigation of these allegations so that those responsible can be held accountable."
By Jeffrey Chester
The Nation (web), October 2, 2006
Despite growing opposition, Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens appears determined to pass his telecom giveaway bill this year. If Stevens and his pals in the telecom and cable industries prevail, expect the free flow of online content to be replaced by corporate infotainment like Anheuser-Busch's lowbrow broadband Bud-TV.
Stevens is using his considerable political clout to get at least sixty senators to agree to bring the flawed measure to the floor. Stevens has acknowledged that his rewrite of the 1934 Communications Act now faces an uphill battle, primarily due to the controversy generated by public-interest groups over network neutrality, the guiding principle of the Internet, which guarantees all users have equal access to content and services.
Over the summer, Savetheinternet.com, Common Cause, USPIRG and many others worked to firm up support for network neutrality rules. As a result, six senators have come out in favor of Internet freedom--Vermont Independent Jim Jeffords and five Democrats (New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman, Minnesota's Mark Dayton, Iowa's Tom Harkin, Massachusetts's Edward Kennedy and New York's Chuck Schumer). There is also growing corporate and academic support for network neutrality--from Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft to the mainstream American Electronics Association.
The intense battle over the Internet's openness, Stevens acknowledged, "may well lead to total defeat [of the telecommunications bill] this year after nineteen months of work." But Stevens, long accustomed to wielding immense power due to his seniority (he's president pro tem of the Senate, as well as chair of the Commerce Committee and a key appropriations subcommittee), doesn't plan to give up easily. It remains highly likely that some kind of backroom deal will be struck during the lame-duck session after the November elections. Stevens and his pro-big media Senate allies might also attach key parts of his bill in "must-pass legislation" such as in budget or national security laws.
The Stevens bill not only proposes to scuttle network neutrality rules but also undermines key policies designed to insure community influence over how broadband networks serve the public interest--including the ability of American soldiers stationed overseas to phone home. In a section titled "War on Terror," instead of legislation that insures maximum freedom of expression, the telecom rewrite thinks first about protecting corporate cash flow. Lawmakers could have ordered the FCC to insure that members of the military have unlimited free calls, but the Stevens bill actually prohibits the FCC from regulating any rates to do so. It simply requires the federal government to promote a "reduction of such costs" by cutting taxes or fees on phone service.
Stevens's talking points are actually being scripted--and paid for--by phone industry lobbyists. On Monday the Senator's Commerce Committee released a "bipartisan poll," which purported to show the public cared little for network neutrality. All the public really wants the Senate to do, the survey results suggested, was to support the Stevens bill as it's currently written. But neither the poll nor the press release issued by Stevens revealed, as the Wall Street Journal did today, that Verizon had paid for the study. The role of Verizon is not surprising, given that the poll was developed by the Glover Park Group lobbying shop (along with Public Opinion Strategies). Glover Park--which is run by such high-level Democratic Party advisers as Howard Wolfson, Joe Lockhart and Carter Eskew--has been helping Verizon in its efforts to scuttle broadband policy safeguards since 2005.
The GOP--including the White House--is still pushing hard to kill network neutrality. For example, at a hearing last week before Stevens's committee on his renomination for another term, FCC chair Kevin Martin came out in defense of the big cable and phone companies. The FCC chair said he thought it was fine for Verizon and others to begin charging extra fees to those content providers that want to be placed on faster Internet lanes. Martin, who was largely given an "easy ride" by senators from both parties in a recent hearing, said that without the ability to charge more, phone and cable companies wouldn't be able to offer the public new "products" such as broadband video. (The fact that Democrats aren't trying to oppose Martin's renomination--given his support for further ownership consolidation and opposition to net neutrality--illustrates the Democrats' weakness on public-interest and telecom issues.)
Such steadfast support from Stevens, Martin and others for their plans to transform the Internet sent an affirmative message to both the phone and cable lobbies. Two days after a recent Commerce Committee hearing, a BellSouth executive told a technology gathering that his industry's planned "innovative" pricing schemes for broadband would give those that could afford it preferential Internet treatment.
The broadband content most likely to benefit from the new "pay us the most to get the best service" Internet will be online programming from our biggest advertisers and media conglomerates. Take, for example, the recent announcement about the new online entertainment channel network called Bud.TV, in which Anheuser-Busch plans to use high-speed and interactive video to attract a new generation of steady beer drinkers. One Bud.TV show already in production--which will likely be able to enjoy the fruits of non-network-neutrality US Internet--is called "Replaced by a Chimp." According to an Anheuser-Busch executive, for each show they will "grab a profession, such as a waiter, or a bartender or a trial attorney and replace those people with a chimp, and film the reaction of the consumers who happen to be in the same environment as the chimp...at the end of the show, the consumer will vote on whether the chimp should stay and continue on the job."
Such dumbing-down of broadband is more likely in the absence of network neutrality rules. Expect media conglomerates and advertisers to flood our broadband networks with chimps selling beer and ketchup-colored clowns pushing fast food. Such deep-pocketed interests will be able to pay Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner to deliver their content with better video, faster processing and overall greater visibility, crowding out the unique programming that the Internet has been able to deliver to niche audiences. Given the "triple play" plans of the cable and phone industry, such digital favoritism will find its way not just via our personal computers but on digital television and cellphones as well.
It will take intense, continued pressure on both parties to effectively kill the Stevens bill this session. If such opposition is successful, a major new organizing effort must begin in January 2007 to develop a new media law that actually promotes the public interest in the digital media era.
Consumers should view the new announcement about Bud.TV as a kind of "early warning" alert. Without safeguards to insure the Internet evolves as an open, democratic network, our media system will continue to drive public culture down-market--as the late media scholar Neal Postman wrote, "amusing ourselves to death."
But regardless of what happens, perhaps we should recommend to the folks at Bud beer their first guest for "Replaced by a Chimp." I nominate the senior Senator from Alaska.
Check out this clip of Senator Boxer surprising FCC Chairman Kevin Martin at his re-confirmation hearing on 9/12, by pulling out a buried FCC report that documents the significantly greater broadcasting of local news content by locally-owned TV and radio outlets. Hmmmmm....why was it buried?
These are not shocking findings to most people, but the confirmed link between local ownership and local content clearly deals a blow to Martin's proposed loosening of ownership limits (and the deregulation agenda of his predecessor and his boss, President Bush). Since the FCC is charged with fostering increased localism and diversity in any rulemakings, these findings suggest that new rules allowing massive media corporations to swallow up even more local outlets is against the FCC's mandate.
Send a public comment to the FCC to stop big media and Chairman Martin's proposed rule changes: http://tinyurl.com/gzv8u
TV NEWSDAY
SEP. 12, 2006, 12:26 PM ET
During FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s re-nomination hearing, Senator says commission has surpressed a 2004 study that showed locally-owned TV stations air more local news.
By Harry A. Jessell
hajessell@tvnewsday.com
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) used FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s re-nomination hearing this morning to accuse the agency of suppressing a two-year-old agency study that she said finds that locally-owned TV stations produce more local news.
“I think there’s work that has been done and it has been stifled,” Boxer told Martin during questioning before the Senate Commerce Committee. “I don’t know who stifled it.”
Boxer said that she had obtained (and would submit into the hearing record) a “draft report” by FCC staff dated June 17, 2004“Do Local Owner Do More Localism? Some Evidence from Local Broadcast News.”
According to the study, Boxer said, locally owned stations produced five-and-a-half minutes more local news for each half-hour newscast, including more than three minutes of “on-location news.”
She then quoted a portion of the study: “In the course of a year, this means locally-owned stations produce 33 more hours of regional newsnews that is directly relevant and important to viewers.”
“Now this is a matter or national security, for God’s sake,” Boxer said. “This is important information about issues that are key to the people…. So, I don’t understand who deep-sixed this thing. I’m going to get to the bottom of it and find out if any commissioners saw this.”
Martin said that he had never seen the study, noting that he was not chairman at the time the study was dated.
Martin promised Boxer that he would read the study and make sure that it is incorporated into a long overdue localism study that Martin predecessor, Michael Powell, had initiated.
Boxer and other Democrats on the Commerce Committee oppose Martin’s initiative to ease local ownership rules to permit greater media concentration.
Copyright 2006 TV Newsday, Inc. All rights reserved.
This article can be found online at: http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2006/09/12/daily.7/.
September 11, 2006
by Greg Palast
It's true. It's weird. It's nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against … Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo.
Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a "critical national security structure" in Louisiana.
On August 22, for LinkTV and Democracy Now! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. It's been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POW's (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere. One resident, Pamela Lewis said, “It is a prison set-up" -- except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes.
To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nation's second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth.
So we filmed it. Without Big Brother's authorization. Uh, oh. Apparently, the broadcast of these stinking smokestacks tipped off Osama that, if his assassins pose as poor Black folk, they can get a cramped Airstream right next to a "critical infrastructure" asset.
So now Matt and I have a "criminal complaint" lodged against us with the feds.
The positive side for me as a journalist is that I get to see our terror-busters in action. I should note that it took the Maxwell Smarts at Homeland Security a full two weeks to hunt us down.
Frankly, we were a bit scared that, given the charges, we wouldn't be allowed on a plane into New York last night. But what scared us more is that we were allowed on the plane.
Once I was traced, I had a bit of an other-worldly conversation with my would-be captors. Detective Frank Pananepinto of Homeland Security told us, "This is a 'Critical Infrastructure' … and they get nervous about unauthorized filming of their property.
Well, me too, Detective. In fact, I'm very nervous that this potential chemical blast-site can be mapped in extreme detail at this Google Map location
What also makes me nervous is that the Bush Terror Terriers have kindly indicated on the Internet that this unprotected critical infrastructure can be targeted -- I mean located -- at 30º 29' 11" N Latitude and 91º 11' 39" W Longitude.
After I assured Detective Pananepinto, "I can swear to you that I'm not part of Al Qaeda," he confirmed that, "Louisiana is still part of the United States," subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser.
Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations. [See "A Well-Designed Disaster: the Untold Story of the Exxon Valdez."]
So I rang America's top petroleum pusher-men and asked their media relations honcho in Houston, Marc Boudreaux, a simple question. "Do you want us to go to jail or not? Is it Exxon's position that reporters should go to jail?" Because, all my dumb-ass jokes aside, that is what's at stake. And Exxon knew we were journalists because we showed our press credential to the Exxon guards at the refinery entrance.
The Exxon man was coy: "Well, we'll see what we can find out…. Obviously it's important to national security that we have supplies from that refinery in the event of an emergency."
Really? According to the documents our team uncovered from the offices of Exxon's lawyer, Mr. James Baker, the oil industry is more than happy to see a limit on worldwide crude production. Indeed, the current squeeze has jacked the price of oil from $24 a barrel to $64 and refined products have jumped yet higher -- resulting in a record-busting profit for Exxon of nearly $1 billion per week.
So this silly "criminal complaint" has nothing to do with stopping Al Qaeda or keeping the oil flowing. It has everything to do with obstructing news reports in a way that no one would have dared attempt before the September 11 attack.
Dectective Pananepinto, in justifying our impending bust, said, "If you remember, a lot of people were killed on 9/11."
Yes, Detective, I remember that very well: my office was in the World Trade Center. Lucky for me, I was out of town that day. It was not a lucky day for 3,000 others.
Yes, I remember "a lot" of people were killed. So I have this suggestion, Detective -- and you can pass it on to Mr. Bush: Go and find the people who killed them.
It's been five years and the Bush regime has not done that. Instead, the War on Terror is reduced to taking off our shoes in airports, hoping we can bomb Muslims into loving America and chasing journalists around the bayou. Meanwhile, King Abdullah, the Gambino of oil, whose princelings funded the murderers, gets a free ride in the President's golf cart at the Crawford ranch.
I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, Matt and I look pretty good in orange.
*******
A personal request to readers. Many have written to ask what can be done to protect Matt and me from becoming unwilling guests of the State.
First, this ain't no foolin' around: Matt and I are facing these nutty charges. So spread the info. We believe that getting the word out is the best defense.
Second, call Homeland Security and turn us in. They seem to have trouble finding us. If you get a reward, you may choose to donate it to the Palast Investigative Fund, a 501(c)(3) educational foundation which supports our work and pays our legal fees.
Third, ask your local library to order our book, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf? Homeland Security now reserves the right to read over your shoulder at the library; therefore, the more our agents are forced to read this subversive material, the more likely we can convince them to come in out of the cold. All kidding aside, we do ask you to request your library order the book: not everyone can afford to purchase this hardbound edition.
Our thanks to Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! and the folks at LinkTV for broadcasting our report from New Orleans and the Exxon refinery. And to Gil Noble, host of the ABC Television's Like It Is, our Courage in Journalism award for broadcasting our report on his network's New York affiliate. Catch Gil on WABC every Sunday at noon.
In response to a deluge of requests for a copy of the New Orleans documentary, we are preparing a DVD which you may order at http://www.gregpalast.com/premiums.htm
Columnist Leonard Baynes of the St. John's University School of Law says that to remedy racially-stereotyped reporting of events such as the 2005 Katrina disaster, the Federal Communications Commission should implement policies to increase the number of minorities who own and are employed by broadcast stations...
During Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, viewers saw pictures of poor, helpless Black people. However, two pictures appearing side-by-side on Yahoo's website were particularly telling of the racial divide in media coverage.
One picture caption described a solitary black man wading through waist-high water with a bag of groceries as "looting" whereas the other picture showed a white couple in similar circumstances and the caption described them as "finding" groceries. The media meanwhile described the Superdome where mostly-black hurricane survivors huddled as unsafe, and as a place where murders, rapes, and robberies were rampant. Later, the New Orleans Times Picayune investigated the public safety issues and found the crime that took place in the Superdome was exaggerated. This biased coverage was directly responsible for the National Guard being ordered to "shoot to kill" those whom they perceived as breaking the law during the hurricane.
A recent study by two Pennsylvania researchers, Oscar Gandy, Jr. and Chul-Joo Lee analyzed photographs appearing in the New York Times and Washington Post after the onslaught of Katrina; they found that the photographs showed a distorted picture of New Orleans with almost all black victims and virtually no black rescuers. Given that the City of New Orleans is disproportionately black, it is surprising to see so few black heroes. The choice of photographs may reinforce stereotypes of black helplessness.
Katrina crystallized and highlighted the current stereotypical media coverage of people of color. However, the news media have historically misrepresented or failed to cover minorities. In 1968 the Kerner Commission and the U.S. Civil Rights Commission blamed the media's lack of diversity for the social unrest of the 1960s.
Today, the broadcast news notoriouslym overreport black-on-white violent crime stories. Given racially segregated housing patterns, most crime is racially segregated. Even though crime decreased in the 1990s, coverage of crime increased 721%. In 2000, broadcast crime reporting dropped 39 percent, but still remains the third most covered topic in network news. Broadcasters often sensationalize stories with white victims or occurring in rich neighborhoods.
The FCC can remedy this stereotypical reporting by increasing diversity in the ranks of broadcast owners, managers, and employees. However, since 2002, the FCC has failed its public interest mandate and ignored issues of racial diversity. When the FCC rendered its media ownership decision in 2003, the Wall Street Journal reported that diversity was only a last minute consideration. The FCC failed to acknowledge eleven minority ownership proposals, leading the Appellate Court to partly reverse the FCC's 2003 ownership decision.
In 2003, then-FCC Chairman Powell appointed a Diversity Committee that ultimately devised several innovative race-neutral proposals that would increase media diversity. Noting that these proposals would help remedy the underrepresentation of minorities, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, at a recent conference at St. John's Law School, admonished the FCC for its failure to take action. In its most recent media ownership order, the FCC again has failed to sufficiently address these issues, even on a subject as urgent as requiring multilingual communications in emergencies like Hurricane Katrina.
The FCC must implement policies to increase the number of minorities who own and are employed by broadcast stations. Only 3.9 percent of all broadcast stations are owned by minorities, and only 5.2 percent of the general managers of local broadcast stations are minorities.
Between 1995 and 2005, minority employees virtually disappeared from radio news; and those remaining, according to the Minority Media Communications Council work solely in minority radio. Even though minorities are better represented among television news reporters, they often are powerless to influence media coverage. In its current media ownership proceedings, the FCC should initiate bold remedies to make broadcast media and coverage more reflective of society.
Minority absences and racial misrepresentations in the media are serious concerns because they imperil our democracy. First, minorities have few avenues for robust discussion of issues important to their communities. Second, negative representations of minorities are broadcast without critical analysis and often without the presentation of the opposing viewpoints. As a consequence negative perceptions are continually reinforced and become more tightly woven into the fabric of U.S. society.
More diversity in the newsroom and in media ownership can counter these negative representations by creating more opportunities for diverse voices to emerge. Only the FCC has the power to address this woeful imbalance in media ownership and employment and the concomitant effect on balanced coverage. So far, the FCC has failed to act.
Leonard M. Baynes is Professor of Law and Director of the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John's University School of Law.