Free Press

Tastes Almost Like Free Speech

Posted by on August 22, 2007 at 7:06 pm. 2 Comments :
Free Speech ZoneAlmost like the real thing.

We live in a substitute society. Our consumer culture has produced numerous products that are only meant to emulate other products that, for one reason or another, we seek to avoid. There is mock meat and faux fur and sodas sweetened sans sugar. Now, courtesy of BushCo, we have fake free speech.

In response to litigation, the White House was forced to reveal the existence of a secret manual used to manage the public events of the President. Many of the tactics outlined in the Presidential Advance Manual are well known to activists, but now, for the first time, we can see the actual policy from the Oval Office handlers.

The Washington Post reports that:

“A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of “deterring potential protestors” from President Bush’s public appearances around the country.”

“Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by “rally squads” stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.”

The White House doesn’t view these measures as suppression of lawful dissent. They believe that they are in compliance with the spirit of free speech if they…

“designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route.”

The primary goals of the directives in the manual are not to protect the President or to maintain civil order, but to shield the President from the unpleasant reality that he is universally despised, and to prevent the media from witnessing, and potentially reporting, any outbreak of democratic redress of grievances. It goes so far as to say that if demonstrators are unlikely to be noticed by the press, they should be ignored. That instruction makes perfect sense for the administration because, if protesters are not observed by the media, they will be ignored by the nation.

Despite our cultural acceptance of fakes and knockoffs, there really is no substitute for free speech and other Constitutional liberties. And while a designated free speech zone may have the appearance and texture real freedom, the aroma has the stench of a cowardly administration that is afraid of its own constituents. In other words, it still tastes like chicken.

C-SPAN: As Fair And Balanced As Fox News?

Posted by on August 9, 2007 at 4:40 pm. 1 Comments :

According to C-SPAN’s website, the network is…

“…a private, non-profit company, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a public service. Our mission is to provide public access to the political process. C-SPAN receives no government funding; operations are funded by fees paid by cable and satellite affiliates who carry C-SPAN programming.”

That sounds like a pretty even-handed organization that is well suited to serve the public interest. But a little digging beneath the surface tells a different story. For instance, the cable and satellite affiliates that fund the network’s operations are predominately assets of the largest media and Telco corporations in the world. Companies like AT&T and Time Warner. It would be naive to presume that they have no agenda to promote.

In 2005, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) conducted a study that showed the network…

“…skewing rightward, favoring Republican and right-of-center interview subjects by considerable margins over Democratic and left-of-center guests. The study also found that women, people of color and public interest viewpoints were substantially underrepresented.”

For a recent example of the network’s bias, take a look a the schedule this week for coverage of two partisan political events. In Chicago, the YearlyKos conference for Democratic bloggers and activists was held August 2-5. The conservative Young America’s Foundation held their National Conservative Student Conference from July 30 – August 3, in Washington, DC. Here is a chart of C-SPAN’s coverage of these events (from their calendar):

Program Title # Airings
YearlyKos Conference Programs:
Media & 2006 Campaign 4
Political Issues & Current Events 2
Young Americas Foundation Conference Programs:
Campaign 2008 2
U.S. Healthcare System 3
Energy Independence 2
Using the New Media 2
Future of the Young Conservative Movement 2
Origins of Planned Parenthood 1

The tally so far is 2 YearlyKos programs with a combined total of 6 airings. That’s compared to 6 Young Americas programs with a combined total of 12 airings. So the conservative conference got twice as many time slots for 3 times as many panels as the progressive conference. The only way this can be described as fair and balanced is if C-SPAN uses the same twisted dictionary as Fox News.

Another recent example of bias is the interview with Kevin Leffler, director of the two year old crockumentary “‘Shooting Michael Moore.” For some reason C-SPAN felt compelled to give a platform to this undistinguished and outdated film but has not bothered to host the filmmakers responsible for the just-released “No End in Sight.”

Feel free to let C-SPAN’s Viewer Services know that you would like for them to schedule progressive events and guest bookings with at least the same frequency as they do for conservative programs. Or is that too much to ask the stepchild of Time Warner and AT&T?

Pearl Jam Censored At Lollapalooza By AT&T

Posted by on August 9, 2007 at 11:25 am. NO Comments :

If we really needed proof that the Big Telcos are lying through their teeth when they celebrate themselves as defenders of free speech and open access, we couldn’t do better than this. AT&T, the sole provider for the webcast of Pearl Jam’s performance at Lollapalooza, and noted opponent of Network Neutrality, cut out politically charged portions of the band’s performance. I’ll let them tell it via their website:

After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the “Blue Room” Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast:

  • “George Bush, leave this world alone.” (the second time it was sung); and
  • “George Bush find yourself another home.”

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the internet are now being debated under the umbrella of “NetNeutrality.” Check out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this issue. [Ed: Save the Internet has clips of both versions of the song here]

Most telecommunications companies oppose “net neutrality” and argue that the public can trust them not to censor.

And if you can’t trust a giant, multinational, consolidated, communications conglomerate like Ma Bell, who can you trust? AT&T has shown that they cannot be relied upon to manage vital national resources like the Internet. They want to own it and constrain its use to the sole purpose of enriching themselves and shaping public opinion to their liking.


 
 
Don’t let them do it because, as Pearl Jam says…

This Is Not For You!
“And you dare say it belongs to you…to you…
This is not for you
This is not for you
This is not for you
Oh, never was for you…fuck you…”

First Amendment Repealed For Students

Posted by on July 30, 2007 at 3:04 pm. NO Comments :

A report in the Chronicle of Higher Education states that the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the former editors of the student newspaper at Kansas State University in a First Amendment case:

“The students asserted that the university had violated their First Amendment rights by removing their faculty adviser from the newspaper staff following criticism of the Collegian’s coverage of minority issues.

The judges ruled that the plaintiffs’ status as graduates made their claims moot because, as alumni, they are not subject to censorship by the university.”

What an atrocious ruling. How can a First Amendment violation be wiped away just because the victim’s academic status has changed? There was still a violation. This ruling would effectively repeal the First Amendment for students because in almost every case the student will have graduated before the case comes to trial. Knowing that, the university would be able to censor students with impunity.

Would this ruling extend to victims of racial discrimination who graduate before the court rules? Would it extend to employees of a company whose rights were violated if they no longer worked for the company when the trial took place? Would every violation of the Constitution be rendered moot just because the relationship between the victim and the violator had changed?

This ruling by a three member panel of the 10th Circuit is nothing but an unconstitutional constriction of long-held civil liberties. It is an attempt to repeal the Bill of Rights. It must be struck down by the full court, or the Supreme Court, without ambiguity.

Happy Birthday: Freedom of Information Act Is 41 Today

Posted by on July 4, 2007 at 3:47 pm. NO Comments :

July 4, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Its purpose was to ensure the public’s right to access information from the federal government. For the first time, the government would bear the burden for certifying why requested information should not be released, and any refusal to release information could be challenged in court.

The FOIA was nearly stillborn as Johnson was bitterly opposed to the legislation. His press secretary, Bill Moyers, described LBJ as having to be:

“…dragged kicking and screaming to the signing ceremony. He hated the very idea of the Freedom of Information Act; hated the thought of journalists rummaging in government closets and opening government files; hated them challenging the official view of reality.”

In 41 years, the presidential impression of the FOIA has actually declined. the Bush administration has been cited as the most secretive in history. Moyers enumerates many examples in a speech he gave before the Society of Professional Journalists. BushCo intelligence agencies have also been busy re-classifying tens of thousands of documents that were previously available for years.

With regard to actual compliance, Bush and his Secret Society associates have assembled a disgraceful record of non-performance. The Knight Open Government Survey published by the National Security Archive of George Washington University, finds systematic failures in tracking, processing, and reporting on FOIA requests. In January 2007, the Archive itself filed FOIA requests with the 87 leading federal agencies to identify the ten oldest pending requests in each agency. Fifty seven of the agencies responded. Out of more than 500 pending requests, only twenty were still within the 20 day period agencies have to respond. All ten of the State Department’s oldest were more than 15 years old. The survey also found that agencies misrepresented their FOIA backlogs to Congress as well as discrepancies between this year’s audit and previous audits.

Any sense of surprise at this administration’s obsession with obfuscation and deceit should have worn off long ago. There are just too many examples to list. But on this holiday celebrating freedom, perhaps the best example occurred just a couple of days ago when Bush issued his payoff (commutation) to Scooter Libby. This is another transparent effort by the crime bosses in the White House to buy the silence of a compromised accomplice. Despite this brazen abuse of executive authority, the Congress still seems incapable of demanding accountability:

“Bipartisan Congressional efforts to solve some of the problems exposed in the Archive’s “ten oldest” audits have stalled in the Senate, with Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona personally holding S. 849 from an up-or-down vote. The bill would impose penalties for agency delay, mandate accurate and timely tracking and reporting of FOIA requests…”

Sometimes it only takes one corrupted soul to throw a roadblock in front of a whole nation, but the result is the same.

As we celebrate that other anniversary that everybody seems to be talking about today, we should take a moment to recognize this 41st birthday of legislation that was enacted in the best spirit of this country’s principles. James Madison seems prescient in his statement back in 1822:

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”

Happy 41st, Freedom of Information Act.
See my salute to FOIA’s 40th.

A New Pentagon Papers

Posted by on June 27, 2007 at 12:36 pm. NO Comments :

A few days ago, I wrote an article warning of the danger of allowing the government and/or media to avert our attention to important matters through the Art of Misdirection. In it I alluded to the compelling notion of some patriotic Americans exposing the crimes of the Bush Administration in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg did when he brought us the Pentagon Papers. Apparently Ellsberg agrees with me:

“The equivalent of the Pentagon Papers exist in safes all over Washington, not only in the Pentagon, but in the CIA, the State Department and elsewhere. My message is to them: Take the risk, reveal the truth under the lies of your own bosses and your superiors, obey your oath to the Constitution, which every one of those officials took, not to the commander in chief, but to the Constitution of the United States.”

This comment was made at a panel at the annual convention of Unitarian Universalists last weekend. The panel, “The Pentagon Papers Then and Now,” was moderated by Amy Goodman and included Ellsberg, Sen. Mike Gravel, and Rev. Robert West. There is a video of the session at the link above. Watch it. These are three of the principles involved in the Pentagon Papers affair and they relate some fascinating details about an honest-to-goodness spy caper.

After 35 years, most people should be aware of the basic story of how Ellsberg copied secret Defense Department documents and got the New York Times and others to publish them (if not, click here). Less well known is the story of how the Papers moved from the DoD to the public. It wasn’t easy.

Ellsberg was turned down dozens of times before the Papers were published. President Nixon obtained a restraining order halting the presses at the New York Times (the first time in U.S. history that presses were stopped by federal court order). Sen. Mike Gravel wore a colostomy bag as he attempted to read the Papers into the Congressional Record via filibuster. When a quorum could not be held, Gravel convened the Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds, which he chaired, and read the papers into the record from there.

This is a tale of true American heroism. These people risked their freedom, perhaps their lives, to save the lives of so many more; to insure that Americans, and the world, were informed; to defend the ideals of Democracy. We need more like them.

Let me repeat: We need more like them. I do not say this as a plaintive yearning for a bygone era of dedicated public servants. I say it as an appeal to recruit soldiers of conscience to save more lives; to inform more people; to further defend what is today an ailing Democracy. Daniel Ellsberg heeded the call. Sen. Gravel heeded the call. For all the ridicule Gravel endures in his quixotic bid for the Democratic nomination, he deserves some credit for his courageous participation in these historic matters. I guarantee that you will not look upon him the same after you learn what did 35 years ago to advance peace and liberty.

And now it’s our turn. As Ellsberg said, “The equivalent of the Pentagon Papers exist in safes all over Washington…” Let’s find them. Let’s publish them. Let’s free them and ourselves – again.

FCC Chief Fucks Up

Posted by on June 5, 2007 at 6:47 pm. NO Comments :

The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin, had some choice words in response to a court ruling yesterday. The case before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York concerned whether the FCC can regulate and penalize broadcasters for spontaneous profanities aired during live television programs. The court ruled that…

“The FCC’s decision is devoid of any evidence that suggests a fleeting expletive is harmful, let alone established that this harm is serious enough to warrant government regulation. The order provides no reasoned analysis of the purported ‘problem’ it is seeking to address from which this court can conclude such regulation of speech is reasonable.”

Chairman Martin was less than pleased (PDF) with the court’s conclusion…

“I completely disagree with the Court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families. I find it hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that “shit” and “fuck” are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.”

Martin, however, doesn’t seem to have a problem with saying “shit” and “fuck” on the Internet, which children have also been known to use from time to time.

The Daily Show To The Media: Be More Honest

Posted by on May 23, 2007 at 10:13 am. NO Comments :

In October of 2004, I wrote an essay entitled, “The Real Fake News.” It was premised on my observation that Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, commonly labeled “fake” news, provided more accurate representations of news events more often (and more compellingly) than the so-called “real” news. And conversely, the “real” news was rampant with plagiarists, fabricators, and shills of both the ideological and paid-for variety.

Since that time, The Daily Show’s popularity and reputation has grown and it continues to embarrass its establishment media elders. Its success is still largely misunderstood by most analysts. The most egregious error is made by those who view the program as political satire. While politics is a part of the recipe, it is not the main ingredient. TDS is, first and foremost, media satire.

Rachel Smolkin, managing editor of the American Journalism Review, has written an article that explores, “What the Mainstream Media Can Learn from Jon Stewart.” To some degree she grasps the conceptual territory covered by TDS, correctly holding that…

“Much of the allure of Stewart’s show lies in its brutal satire of the media. He and his correspondents mimic the stylized performance of network anchors and correspondents. He exposes their gullibility. He derides their contrivances.”

Smolkin could take it a little further by noting that even when politicians are being skewered, it is within the framework of how they are covered by television newscasts. The very structure of the newscasts themselves is often targeted by Stewart’s drollery. A particularly fertile subject is the disintegrating concept of “balance” as currently practiced. Smolkin quotes USC’s Annenberg School for Communication associate dean, Martin Kaplan, who poignantly articulates the problem with modern journalism:

“Every issue can be portrayed as a controversy between two opposite sides, and the journalist is fearful of saying that one side has it right, and the other side does not. It leaves the reader or viewer in the position of having to weigh competing truth claims, often without enough information to decide that one side is manifestly right, and the other side is trying to muddy the water with propaganda.”

Hub Brown, chair of the communications department at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, puts it even more succinctly:

“The truth itself doesn’t respect point of view. The truth is never balanced.”

How true. The truth always takes its own side, and without the slightest hint of partisanship. But, for some reason, reporters are reluctant to acknowledge truthfulness for fear of being branded as partisan. How did the media get so twisted as to believe that accepting reality as it is has come to be regarded as an expression of partiality? This is the attitude that is mocked by Stewart’s offspring, Stephen Colbert, when he declares that, “truth has a well-known liberal bias.”

To the extent that TDS has transended this problem, it is a beacon for the very reporters it is ridiculing. But rather than expect them to decipher the correct interpretation of these signals, I’ll let Smolkin sum it up for them:

“…the lesson of “The Daily Show” is not that reporters should try to be funny, but that they should try to be honest.”

Adoption of that simple advisory would produce a wholesale transformation of American media. If I could implement just one revision of contemporary journalistic practice it would be to liberate reporters from the absurd notion that they are proscribed from differentiating truth from fiction when covering controversial issues. In fact, I consider such differentiation to be an obligation of ethical journalism. The surreal irony is that this approach is understood and practiced by fake reporters on a comedy program, but not by their ostensibly real counterparts. We can only hope that this lesson will eventually seep through.

To YouTube Or Not To YouTube

Posted by on May 15, 2007 at 3:27 pm. NO Comments :

As a follow up to my article yesterday on press freedom which reported the Pentagon’s order barring soldiers from using YouTube, MySpace, and other social networks, there were a couple of notable stories published today:

DoD Flip-Flop: YouTube Banned, But Watch It.
“One day after the Pentagon banned US military personnel worldwide from accessing the wildly popular YouTube Web site via DoD computers and networks, the weekly electronic newsletter of the US-led Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) today makes a banner appeal for US forces and others to watch MNF-I’s new YouTube channel.”

Warner Blasts Pentagon Internet Move.
“There is nothing more important to the men and women of the armed forces than to have that connection to home,” said [Sen. John] Warner, who served in the U.S. Navy. “I will be looking into it today.”

Talk about your mixed messages.

The Fear Of Censorship

Posted by on May 15, 2007 at 4:56 am. 6 Comments :

John Roberts has been CNN’s senior national correspondent and its anchor of the awkwardly-named This Week at War (sounds like a VH1 Top 20 Countdown). He was recently named a new co-host of CNN’s American Morning. In his former position at CBS he served as the network’s White House correspondent and was embedded with Marines during the invasion of Iraq. Now, in an interview with Broadcasting & Cable, this experienced and connected professional speaks out about the handling of the coverage of the war in Iraq and, despite his participation, he has some rather unflattering critiques of what transpired.

In the article, Roberts concedes that the media was unprepared to properly cover events on the ground and should have been more vigilant in the run-up to the war. But by far the more notable observation that Roberts imparts is one that reflects on current coverage:

“If we showed people the full extent of what we see every day in Iraq, we would either have no one watching us because they couldn’t stand to see the pictures, or we would get so many letters of complaint that some organization would come down on us to stop.”

With current polls showing that two thirds of the American public are already opposed to the war in Iraq, the notion that we have not yet reached the nadir of our disapproval is somewhat unsettling. Especially if the reason is that, as Roberts contends, the “full extent” of what the press sees every day has been withheld from us by a media establishment that is afraid of mail and of losing viewers. And I get no consolation from Roberts’ informing me that things are much worse than I ever imagined.

Indeed, the pictures that are presently darkening our TV screens with bloodshed, blasts, and blackened smoke, are enough to sow depression in the most optimistic amongst us. But that is not sufficient reason for responsible journalists to soft-peddle even a harsh reality. In an open democratic society, citizens need to be fully informed because, contrary to the monarchal delusions of President Bush, we are the deciders. If exposure to the truth produces more dissatisfaction, it is not up to editors and programmers to shield us from our own tender sensitivities. That is not the way to cultivate an informed electorate. That is not the way to promote Democracy.

The public’s appetite for this war has steadily declined over the past four years and would likely have declined further and faster had the news been presented impartially and honestly. In fact, we might never have gone to war in the first place if the vigilance of which Roberts spoke had been practiced at the outset by a conscientious and ethical press corps.

There are two problems (at least) with Roberts’ statement above. One is that he gives too much weight to the notion that Americans don’t have the stomach to manage the nation as our Constitution requires. The other is that his fear that “some organization” would put a stop to honest, unfettered reporting, resulted in that fear becoming manifest. The fear of censorship produced censorship and the people were deprived of knowledge. The only organization that profited from this suppression is an administration that was predisposed to execute a war of aggression and preferred to avoid the pesky interference of the will of the people.

To paraphrase Roberts:

If we, the people, show the full extent of what we see and feel every day about Iraq, they would know that we are watching, and they would get so many letters of complaint that our organization of citizens would come down on them to stop suppressing the truth; stop embracing unscrupulous pseudo-leaders; and stop this god-awful war.

This practice of Nanny Journalism is all too common in American media. They think we can’t handle the truth. But it’s funny (by which I mean pathetic) that they keep coming back after the fact to confess their mea culpas.