A Happy NEWS Year from Your News Dissector and MediaChannel

December 31st, 2008 - by: danny

A BLOG TO READ: THE NEWS FOR NEW YEARS DAY FROM THE GEEZE

“Let old Acquaintence Be Forgotten.”

OLD LANG SYNE and One Man’s View

NOW, A NEWS DISSECTOR’s TAKE

We are all ready to say goodbye to 2008, the kind of year we all want to throw a shoe at. It was the last year of the Bush Debacle, the first full year of the great recession, a year of economic collapse and moral failure, of financial scandals and the some of the biggest rip-offs in American history.

Somehow, the presidential election that involved so many for so long and consumed so much passion, hope and airtime seems to have paled in significance in the face of terror in Mumbai and now Gaza, in the face of so many unsolved problems that are only getting worse, as if the world is going in reverse.

The wreckage surrounds us: was our political system ennobled by Obama’s election or degraded still further by the antics of a governor in Illinois or Alaska? Has “change” come to America or are the same often hidden forces still in effective control manipulating our democracy, deforming our foreign policy, debasing the Constitution and controlling our media?

You want to feel hopeful on New Year’s Eve when you “ring out the old and bring in the new,” but somehow that sense of possibility seems more distant than ever. How strange that the Israel Defense (Offense?) Minister is named Barak and our President-elect is Barack? The former criminalizes himself by what he says about the war on Gaza and the later diminishes himself by what he doesn’t.

Of course, the big media story is that the media is itself slipping away in credibility and importance, a trend I noted some years back in my book, ‘The Death of Media,’ (Melville House).

Their business model is shot, the NY Times is remortgaging its building, the Chicago Trib is in bankruptcy, and the Miami Herald is for sale. The word of the year that is not even here is cutbacks. The networks have all slashed their news staffs and news is turning into a talk show.

The veterans in the business know it. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and NBC News dropped by Globalvision the other day for an interview for a film we are making on the Obama campaign. Here’s what he told me:

“I think what’s happened is since you have 24 hour chatter, and unfortunately or rather fortunately for me, you know I’m a part of that, it does detract from one’s ability to go out and report. Also, the whole structure of the media business now has changed. And I would summarize it this way. Talk is cheap and reporting is expensive. In other words if my new organization or any other news organization wants to have me chattering either in print or online or on TV, I can do that from home.

If I’m going to go to Baghdad or even out to Iowa and meet, that’s expensive. So if talk is cheap and reporting is expensive as the profits from news gathering kind of evaporate and dead tree media starts to move off stage with very very serious economic consequences (newspapers) yeah start to move into America’s past they’ll still be around but not as dominate. And once print recedes and you have this new model, it’s very alarming because if talk is cheap and reporting is expensive, who’s going to gather the news that everybody else just chews over all the time.”

So much of the MSM news coverage seems as awful as the news itself. At the same time, even as our company, now 21, faces its toughest survival challenge, and even though its hard to see how we can survive when so many big companies cannot, I still find the work I am trying to do satisfying and meaningful. I have been so fortunate to find a colleague willing to work with me in improving this blog and a talented group of staffers and interns to help us produce the few projects we have, often at a great sacrifice but with consciousness and commitment. Without them, we would be lost.

And then there is you (or us), the readers and visitors to Mediachannel, the folks that see my films and write to me, and those of you with the means and generosity to recognize the value of our work, and support us when you as much as you can. (TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO MAKE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO THE GLOBAL CENTER FOR MEDIACHANNEL.ORG!) You make this work worth doing even if I have (smile) from time to time suffered the outrageous vicissitudes (ie. putdowns) from those superior beings who seemingly lack the capacity to share a nice word, or just take it all for granted.

We persevere, sometimes in a manner that’s too rushed or too sloppy or too flip. Mediachannel has been around since l999 and in Internet years, like dog years, that’s almost a lifetime. We are still evolving and hoping to sustain ourselves for however long we have left, confident that what we do matters and committed to bringing you stories and analysis of importance that are not covered properly to your attention.

Sometimes I am amazed that Rory O’Connor, David DeGraw, and now Cherie Welch, as well as many, many others have stayed with us, “working for praise,” as a Business Week article has it, The New Economy—and Our Sad Story, but working nonetheless in what I see as the public interest.

We wish you and our independent media colleagues, affiliates, friends and allies around the world that old happy new year or news year as we say it, and hope the sentiment is reciprocated as we limp and march and whine our way out of the horror of 2008. You are often wrong when you say, ‘things can’t get worseÃ¢â‚¬Â¦’ but let us pray, what do you say?

Today, I was on a media wrap-up of the year interview — where else but on Canadian TV in a year of frequent appearances on overseas broadcasters save The Real News, INN, Democracy Now and Link in these United States. I let whoever was watching have it with both barrels which may be why news outlets here at home rarely call me. (The producers like what I had to say.)

One last thing, on this morn of the eve of New Years, a word of anniversary congratulations to the people of Cuba who are marking the 50th anniversary of their Revolucion, (Jan 1, 1959) a New Year’s event if there every was one, and an achievement of survival if only because of all the attempts including invasion and assassinations that sought to bring them down, most plotted in the this land of hope and glory. (An interesting story I was told in Cuba many years ago was that the first act of the people of Havana was to tear down the parking meters which had been imposed by the Batista government in league with the mafia. Free Parking was their first demand!) Here’s a story on the great cars the Cubans keep running. I once asked about their mechanics–and was told the correct title is ‘magicians.’ Cubanos have a great sense of humor and irony.

The human rights situation there may not be to my liking but the progress that’s been made in a still difficult struggle cannot be underestimated especially when compared to its Caribbean neighbors like Haiti. One can only hope that an Obama administration normalizes relations, ends the counter-productive embargo and builds a new era of cooperation.

Viva a true Cuba and US libre. Viva el ano proximo.

For you are a jolly good fellow (fellowette?)….

Danny Schechter
News Dissector
December 31, 2008

The News Dissector