The most memorable reporting I've encountered on the conflict in Iraq was delivered in the form of confetti exploding out of a cardboard tube. I had just begun working at the MIT Media Lab in March 2006 when Alyssa Wright, a lab student, got me to participate in a project called "Cherry Blossoms." I strapped on a backpack with a pair of vertical tubes sticking out of the top; they were connected to a detonation device linked to a Global Positioning System receiver. A microprocessor in the backpack contained a program that mapped the coördinates of the city of Baghdad onto those for the city of Cambridge; it also held a database of the locations of all the civilian deaths of 2005. If I went into a part of Cambridge that corresponded to a place in Iraq where civilians had died in a bombing, the detonator was triggered.
When the backpack exploded on a clear, crisp afternoon at the Media Lab, handfuls of confetti shot out of the cardboard tubes into the air, then fell slowly to earth. On each streamer of paper was written the name of an Iraqi civilian casualty. I had reported on the war (although not from Baghdad) since 2003 and was aware of persistent controversy over the numbers of Iraqi civilian dead as reported by the U.S. government and by other sources. But it wasn't until the moment of this fake explosion that the scale and horrible suddenness of the slaughter in Baghdad became vivid and tangible to me. Alyssa described her project as an upgrade to traditional journalism. "The upgrade is empathy," she said, with the severe humility that comes when you suspect you are on to something but are still uncertain you aren't being ridiculous in some way.
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I came across an article a few days ago written by John Hockenberry, an award-winning journalist who once worked for NBC’s Dateline and is now a fellow at MIT’s Media Lab. Titled “You Don’t Understand Our Audience”: What I learned about network television at Dateline NBC, this article is a relentless, burning indictment of everything that’s wrong with the mainstream media today. In a future era, when historians look back on our time and ask how so many people could have been deceived into supporting the disastrous, nightmarish war in Iraq and ignoring so many other pressing issues, Hockenberry’s article will be Exhibit A.
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Try as they might, Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock can only make so many flicks. If it seems like those are the only two documentary filmmakers who stir the pot on a regular basis, perhaps it’s time to give Films For Action a look.
Lawrence resident Tim Hjersted fired up FFA four years ago as a forum to present activist-minded films to local audiences. FFA’s website (filmsforaction.org) has since become an exhaustive resource to watch entire films that would never make it to mainstream theaters or DVD shelves. This year, Hjersted hopes to partner with the Solidarity! Revolutionary Center & Radical Library to develop a lending library. He also has aspirations to branch out nationally by releasing the FFA name under a non-commercial creative commons license and helping other cities launch similar projects.
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The United States is ranked 36th in the world in terms of press freedom, up from 48th last year, according to a report released Wednesday by Reporters Sans Frontieres.
The US is tied with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan in the 36th spot. Iceland, Luxembourg, and Norway are tied for first. Iran, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea are all featured among the ten lowest-ranked countries.
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Media Accountability Day, October 1, marked the annual release of the news stories that were not covered by the corporate-mainstream media in the US. The list, just announced by Project Censored at Sonoma State University in California, includes the twenty-five most important uncovered news stories of the year selected by over 200 academics.
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Two cups of McDonald’s iced coffee (BUY!) sit on a Fox TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product placement (BUY!) to chase down your morning news. The funny thing is, the coffee is not actually real. The Las Vegas Sun comments on a growing trend in news stations across the country.
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The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.
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If we could, we’d stick their photos up in a national “Nauseam.” They’re the media corporations, CEOs and politicians who top this year’s “Media Hall of Shame,” and their antics over the past year make us sick. Free Press unveiled the top contenders of the Hall of Shame on June 7 in Minneapolis during the National Conference for Media Reform. Media giants Viacom, AT&T, Comcast and Verizon elbowed each other for the top spot as Worst Corporation. It was difficult to choose, considering each company was the best of the worst America has to offer in media, democracy and our right to free speech. To see who took the prize in other categories,
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After airing a five-minute segment on the recent controversy surrounding racy photos of a teenage Disney star, longtime Nightline anchor Cynthia McFadden left the viewing audience with these words to ponder: “Just another distraction to keep our minds away from the things that really matter.” With grim resignation, McFadden did her best to project the image of a grizzled industry vet, powerless to stem the tide of increasingly trivial programming at a time when serious journalism is paramount. She was Cronkite or Murrow, staring not into the camera, but into the future – and quietly lamenting what it held. It was stoic defeat, a helpless shrug. And in that one, brief spectacle, McFadden managed to encapsulate the plight of American culture today. We recognize the debasement of standards, we see the signs of intellectual decay. Yet we do nothing. And our inaction is our complicity. Each time we shrug helplessly in the face of diminished expectation, we are greasing the slope of an already rapid collective decline.
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Like most Americans in their mid-twenties, I am a child of the computer age. That I did not immediately jump on the Facebook wagon is not due to an innate dislike of technology or an irrational fear of the web, but merely because I graduated from college before Facebook became a university fad. I was, like an ever-decreasing number of people, happily oblivious to this social networking website. But then something troubling happened: my wedding photos appeared on Facebook.
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Scientists ordered to lie by Bush administration; Pentagon suspends its illegal retired military analyst program; Rumsfeld's propaganda; Federal Elections Commission paralyzed; Seattle now U.S. leader in Green building + more.
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This year, American voters will select a new President, 535 House Representatives, and 35 Senators. The winners will determine the duration of the war in Iraq, the fate of universal health care coverage and policies on issues from climate change to immigration, torture to fair trade. Citizens are not the only ones with stakes in the outcome. The Big Media companies that provide most Americans with their news and information...
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After having their plans rejected once by British planning institutions, a small group of families has been granted permission to build a small ecovillage in the Welsh countryside. The tiny village, to be called Lammas, is planned to cover a 74 acre site of pasture and woodland.
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The New York Times has exposed a secret Pentagon campaign to infiltrate the media with pro-war propaganda.
The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of "military analysts" to spread favorable views of the war via the news. Many of these propaganda pundits didn't reveal that they were working from Pentagon scripts or lobbying for companies seeking to cash in on major military contracts.
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Well if you've been a regular visitor to this website or many of our film screenings, the fact that traditional journalism *is* out of touch with reality... isn't exactly news. However, it is encouraging to see that a majority of American's are similarly discontent with the state of our media today, and the field is ripe for a mass movement to reform the news industry in this country. Here are a few highlights from the poll:
*32% said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).
*75% believe the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.
*69% believe media companies are becoming too large and powerful to allow for competition.
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