Countdown To Mediachannel’s Survival, Obama Pledges More Money For Job Creation
January 31st, 2010 - by: danny
Welcome to a new month, February 2010. Will it be our last month online? It’s your call. Thanks to everyone who has written and sent donations in response to our appeal which we will leave up on the site.. We are following up on your suggestions to the degree we can. If you want us to keep going, think about who you can reach out to, and how you can help. We realize that many of you have economic problems, too, and don’t have fund raising experience. We can only do the best we can.
OBAMA SEEKS MORE MONEY FOR JOB CREATION
MORE WEAPONS SALES OVERSEAS
MARKING THE ANNIVERSARY OF MEDIACHANNEL.ORG
I spent Saturday on a déjàvu all over again mission speaking at an anti-war conference at MIT in Cambridge where I took part in anti-war protests back in the days of the Vietnam war. I spoke there many times then, railing at the Institutes complicity in the war. When all these years later, I was invited back, I felt like I had to go.
The auditorium was crowded – one student from Connecticut said she had never been at as large an anti-war gathering – and the speakers were alternatively lucid and angry about what most saw as a betrayal by the Obama Administration and a continued march to more wars worldwide under the deceptive banner of the war on terror. The room overflowed with analysis but I sensed a deeper paralysis when it came to what we can do about an imperial agenda with a liberal face.
Some of the discourse seemed academic—one very brilliant scholar, Peter Dale Scott took Noam Chomsky to task for being dismissive towards 911 conspiracy theories but Noam–whose office was a few buildings away, may have been traveling and wasn’t there to respond. It is an issue that deserves a debate, not just a rejoinder. I was glad to see the 911 truthers engaged in the anti-war discourse and broadening their focus beyond analysis of how Building 7 imploded etc….There are many legitimate questions about what happened that day, and the events that led up to it.
Although I am not one to speak, the participants skewed older and seemed well practiced in oppositional activism for decades. Sometimes too much analysis can lead to paralysis. The event was at a university but it wasn’t overflowing with students
The most emotional aspects of the event involved Haiti and the appeal of an Haitian social worker for help in sending mental health professionals to his country to help people confront a traumatic series of dislocating, life changing and ending events.
The day after the conference, the news seemed to be flowing from the policies that were denounced a day earlier.
Before we get into the news of empire building, here’s the latest on the Administration’s response to the economic decline. During the State of The Union Address, the president announced plans for a new $30 billion dollar jobs bills. Many critics saw it as one more inadequate measure given the persistence and deepening of unemployment. It looks like someone in the White House finally realized that what Paul Krugman and others have been saying is on target.
AP: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Sunday endorsed spending an additional $100 billion to attack painfully high unemployment as it prepared to send Congress a $3.8 trillion budget that would provide billions more to pull the country out of the Great Recession while increasing taxes on the wealthy and imposing a spending freeze on many government programs.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration believed “somewhere in the $100 billion range” would be the appropriate amount for a new jobs measure made up of a business tax credit to encourage hiring, increased infrastructure spending and money from the government’s bailout fund to get banks to increase loans to struggling small businesses.
That price tag would be below a $174 billion bill passed by the House in December but higher than an $83 billion proposal that surfaced last week in the Senate.
Preparing For The Next War
NYT: The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, officials said.
Washington Post: The “new defenses” are being sold to allies.
U.S. steps up weapon sales to Mideast allies: The Obama administration is quietly working with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to speed up arms sales and rapidly upgrade defenses for oil terminals and other key infrastructure in a bid to thwart future military attacks by Iran,
WAPO: China Talking Tough With US – New Chill in Relationship
China’s indignant reaction to the announcement of U.S. plans to sell weapons to Taiwan appears to be in keeping with a new triumphalist attitude from Beijing that is worrying governments and analysts across the globe.
From the Copenhagen climate change conference to Internet freedom to China’s border with India, China observers have noticed a tough tone emanating from its government, its representatives and influential analysts from its state-funded think tanks.
Calling in U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman on Saturday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said the United States would be responsible for “serious repercussions” if it did not reverse the decision to sell Taiwan $6.4 billion worth of helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, minesweepers and communications gear. The reaction came even though China has known for months about the planned deal, U.S. officials said.
Scott Schneider Offers Different Perspectives on Tony Blair’s Testimony on Iraq War
Chris Floyd properly calls out Blair’s war crimes, which cannot be diminished by the verbal diarrhea regurgitated at the Chilcott circus:
Other views – with less invective but that also go to the heart of the matter are offered here:
• Comment: Blair the eternal world policeman
If the world power alignment were fairer, Blair would definitely have been indicted and found guilty of war crimes, like most of the Bush Junta. A Nuremberg type trial by impartial nations might have even ordered some perpetrators to be executed. Alas, as is the case throughout most of history justice is the will of the stronger and will not prevail here. Blair may think twice about traveling to certain countries, but does anyone really expect him to be pursued more aggressively than America pursues Roman Polanski?
Standing justice on its head, perverting it is the way the power elite operate. Some are already so conditioned to this madness that they have completely given up. Can you blame them when Obama is given a Nobel Peace Prize just before he increases troop deployment to Afghanistan and finds a few new helpless countries to threaten?
The Anglo-American alliance for Global Empire by some measures makes Rome look tame. The overall methodology is the same, however: Perpetual War for Perpetual “Peace”.
HAITI FLIGHTS TO CONTINUE
Before the Earthquake
NYT: The White House said Sunday it will resume a U.S. military airlift of Haitians seriously injured in the earthquake — some with devastating burns, head and spinal chord trauma amputations and other wounds — to American hospitals. The humanitarian effort was suspended five days ago following complaints from the state of Florida that its hospitals were overwhelmed.
IN MEMORIAM: RESPECTED FILM EDITOR DIES IN NEW YORK ACCIDENT
NEW YORK — An award-winning film editor who worked on many of Errol Morris’ documentaries, including “The Fog of War,” was struck and killed by a getaway car speeding from a Manhattan drugstore robbery, police and her mother said on Saturday.
Karen Schmeer was crossing Broadway at West 90th Street on the Upper West Side on Friday when she was struck by a car driven by two suspects in the theft of over-the-counter medication from a CVS drugstore a few blocks away, police said.
Her mother, Eleanor DuBois Schmeer, confirmed the film editor’s death. Schmeer was an editor for Morris’ documentaries as well as other works, including “Sergio,” which won a best-editing award last year at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie is about Sergio de Mello, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights killed in a 2003 explosion at U.N. headquarters in Iraq.
“She was just extremely loved by many, many friends,” said Schmeer’s mother, from her home in Portland, Ore., where her daughter was born.
Morris wrote on his Twitter feed that Schmeer’s death was a “senseless tragedy.”
Daily News (NY): Cyber Theft Rocks Crolumbia University
A break-in at Columbia University has put personal information – including Social Security numbers – of 1,400 students and alumni at risk, officials said Sunday.
Three laptops carrying the vital information were swiped from a locked campus office Jan. 18.
University officials e-mailed the 1,400 current and prospective students, graduates and employees to notify them that their info had been boosted. The school will pay for fraud prevention services, spokesman Robert Hornsby said.
“It’s scary to think someone is walking around with important information of mine,” said Caitlin Brown, 19, a freshman.
said.
See the whole Post / →
Daily Financial Capsule: Paulson Blasts Russia, Why Are We Really In Haiti? TARP This
January 31st, 2010 - by: danny
Times Online (UK)Goldman Goniffs
Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts.
Bankers in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) told The Times yesterday they understood that Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman bankers outside Britain were set to receive some of the bank’s biggest-ever payouts. “This is Lloyd thumbing his nose at Obama,” said a banker at one of Goldman’s rival
Move Your Money? You betcha! Also … VOTE
• Move Your Politicians by Simon Johnson — MIT Professor and co-author of 13 Bankers
“… As early as this fall’s primaries, expect to hear people ask politicians in debates and through various kinds of interactions: (1) where do you, personally, keep and borrow money, and (2), in all relevant cases, where did you put public money when it was up to you?
These questions strike to the heart of democratic responses against overly concentrated financial power throughout US history — a topic we take up in Chapter 1 of 13 Bankers.
In the 1830s showdown between elected officials and big banks, President Andrew Jackson went toe-to-toe with Nicolas Biddle of the Second Bank of the United States. Both sides won several rounds and finally it came down to this — could Jackson really move the money of the US government away from the Second Bank? He could and did. And despite being threatened — by bankers, naturally — with dire consequences, the US had a very good 19th century. [More here →]
• Bloomberg: Paulson Says Russia Urged China to Dump Fannie, Freddie Bonds By Michael McKee and Alex Nicholson
Russia urged China to dump its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said.
Paulson learned of the “disruptive scheme” while attending the Beijing Summer Olympics, according to his memoir, “On The Brink.”
The Russians made a “top-level approach” to the Chinese “that together they might sell big chunks of their GSE holdings to force the U.S. to use its emergency authorities to prop up these companies,” Paulson said, referring to the acronym for government sponsored entities. The Chinese declined, he said. [More here →]
Tarp This
• The Hill: Report: TARP benefits have fallen far short By Silla Brush The $700 billion bailout program for the financial industry has so far done little to boost bank lending, aid small businesses or reduce home foreclosures, a top government watchdog said in a report.
• Boston Review: The Big Bank Theory: How Government Helps Financial Giants Get Richer By Dean Baker
Wall Street bankers, along with the rest of the players in the financial industry, like to think of themselves as swashbuckling capitalists. They battle cutthroat competition with one hand and oppressive government bureaucracy with the other. In reality, the financial industry is deeply dependent on the government. Far from the rugged, go-it-alone types they wish they were, they are more like well-dressed, coddled adolescents. And this is true in good times and bad.
The industry’s dependency takes five main forms:
• an explicit safety net provided by government deposit insurance;
• an implicit safety net provided by “too big to fail”;
• a special privilege of being the only untaxed casino;
• an open invitation to raid state and local governments for fees;
• a right to change contract terms after the fact. [More here →]
• US Haiti Embassy 5th Largest
• The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti
Guardian: Why The West Owes Haiti A Bailout
• Las Vegas: Most foreclosures of any city in 2009
• Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows
• Oliver Stone Says Banksters “Enabled” Hitler and the Nazis
See the whole Post / →
Marching Down Memory Lane As We Celebrate Mediachannel’s Anniverary: “BLOGOTHON”
January 31st, 2010 - by: danny
Today is February 1. On this day, in the year of our Lord 2000, we inaugurated Mediachannel.org at a launch party in Manhattan. Prominent journalists came out to discuss the media crisis we saw ourselves responding to. The late news anchor, Walter Cronkite, who had agreed to serve as an advisor couldn’t make it but sent a video in solidarity. The room was packed. We had commitments from major funders including support from Leonardo Mondedori, now deceased, the visionary Italian publisher, who saw the US media a threat to world culture and wanted to help us change it.
That is when this adventure began and because it may be ending at month’s end. Since I have been at the helm, for better or worse, for all this time, I wanted to share some of our “greatest hits” and memories for the record – if there is is “a record.”
We live in a culture of instant change, technological breakthroughs and ever changing fads and fashions. We are amazed that we lasted as long as we have—although it is still possible for some last minute intervention or infusion of cash that can keep us alive.
We have been on life support so long that we know it won’t take much. Unfortunately, we are in dire economic times where it seems that most of our most ardent supporters are the least able to help. If what we do moves you at all, now is the time to show it.
I wanted to mark the occasion with selections from an unfinished and unpublished book I called BLOGOTHON, about the work I do and what I hoped to accomplish.
INTRODUCTION
It is 5:55 A.M. in midtown Manhattan and a slightly overweight, often bedraggled figure is slowly lumbering in the dark from bedroom to living room in a loft he endearingly refers to as his ‘museum of pre-revolutionary culture.’ He reaches for the cable remote. Where is it? Under the couch again, next to a book he’s been searching for? It is here somewhere. It always is. He yawns, scratches, and stretches. It’s just about six in the morning; time for the day’s first media fix.
Click.
The actor James Earl Jones is pumping phone service for a company called Verizon, a made up name if there ever was one. When his spiel ends, CNN’s news day get underway begins with a tease/capsule of the morning’s four big stories.
Roll the open.
Sound the news music.
Cut to the perky anchor.
Today’s news sounds just like yesterday’s. More killings in Iraq in an unending body count. Then that tall basketball player and his short lawyer start walking into the courtroom building again – what are they wearing today? She’s brisk; he’s loping with none of the energy that we see when he drives that Laker ball to the basket. That question again: was that fling in the night consensual or not?
Then, there are quick shots of fallen CEOs testifying in another court somewhere, and, finally, in “culture” news, Madonna is unveiling her new children’s book.
So much for news. Cut to a commercial urging viewers to tell their doctor to prescribe a purple pill.
Next up: chirpy Chad with more weather “reports” than anyone needs. His technology moves more maps and clouds more quickly than ever. And now he has that Doppler radar and whooshing animations all tracking the big storm. There always is one somewhere on the planet menacing some part of the planet. How cool and meteorological of CNN to provide constant updates. The more extreme the weather, the more face time Chad gets. Chad does not tell us that he gets most of his information directly from the government bigger weather computer.
At this point, our protagonist’s fingers do the walking, changing channels again. Off we go down the dial to the BBC, click, MSNBC, click, and then there’s Fox. This is his daily breakfast of headlines, and “breaking” and not so breaking news. Most of these stories will be “updated” and repackaged for recycling by dishy blondes and white men in suits throughout the day.
This is television, but when watched closely you see it’s a mostly non-visual environment. Chatter and opinions are pervasive; footage and real storytelling rare. The former is cheap, the latter costs money to shoot and edit.
Today, there are reporters offering stand-ups from Baghdad rooftops to anchors hidden behind set-piece desks. There’s an overheated Imus on MSNBC scowling and grousing about the dummies he has on his show, and over at Fox, a quartet of character-based “friends” prattle on with the jock posing as analyst, the comedian adding colorful commentary, and the anchorwoman back from her seventh pregnancy and the Judge opining on subjects that have nothing to with the law. A black news reader interrupts with more F&B – “fair and balanced” news illustrated by still graphics with the latest comings and goings of President Bush a constant highlight.
Over at BBC World, there is a dryer, more serious tone with stories from old outposts of Empire. This morning it is Sri Lanka with stuffy experts who do a context-fill, usually with an upper-class Oxford accent. After about nine minutes it’s on to business news and then the latest cricket scores and football results.
And so, TV-obsessed Americans imbibe the news of the new day. The majority watch local news for traffic jams, fatality counts and gossip. Some years ago a local news study found about half these local “newscasts “carry no news at all.
As you probably guessed the ‘he’ in this story is me, bogging before breakfast, Danny Schechter, “your news dissector,” reporting for duty daily without a salute. Most days, I am surrounded as well by crumpled up newspapers, unread magazines stained with coffee or cereal and other edibles that enable me to kickstart my brain into gear for another day of media watching, and media making.
Some time ago, in the last century and in what now seems to be a personal universe that is far, far way, I was dubbed the News Dissector, a nom de media guerre that gives my compulsive media addiction a vocational role and maybe even a the aura of a higher calling.
Dissecting is usually associated with the frog world, not the news world, but there it is: the aspiration to slice below the surface of current events and pick away at the sinews of what passes for journalism.
On September 11, literally as the twin towers collapsed, I started writing what I thought would be a column focused on news coverage; it quickly turned into a blog because it was updated so often as events changed. For some readers, that blog became a slog since my daily posts, rants and raves often hit the 3000 word mark. Not all of it of course was original scribbling, since I quoted and digested others liberally and directed readers to a wide range of diverse sources. While others read the morning paper, I was and still am, in effect, writing/editing/aggregating my own, with links and resources to boot.
Blogging is made possible by computer software packages that makes updating and linking easy. It enables writers to keep “posting” with factoids or more elaborated ideas. Most bloggers are not professional journalists at all. And most blogs are platforms for opinion and anecdotes and resumes and literary personal travelogues. It’s a medium well designed for an A.D.D culture where anybody and everybody has something to say, and can now say it in a national on-line rorshach and outlet for non-linear outrage and ideas, free associations, raves and rants.
The Blogosphere as it has been called is all of these and more and less. That corner of it that I inhabit is a partisan charged dueling society with a clear right brain and left brain, a center for dissent, dissection and discussion.
When I started just a few years ago, blogging was just emerging inside a media system with more channels than choices, more sources than voices. The whole phenomenon is a reaction against and an improvement on an elite run media system in which professionals dominate the reporting of news and the rest of us consumed it.
Those days are going, if not gone, with waves of people telling their own stories and offering their own take on the stories of others. It represents a vast democratization, a modern reincarnation of Mao’s dicta to let a thousand flowers bloom. His motive was to flush out critics and then destroy them. Today’s citizen journalists are in part out to improve and in some cases supplant a media world that has lost credibility and is in desperate need of being shaken up from below.
At first the paragons of the mainstream media dismissed blogging, challenging its credibility on the grounds of questionable accuracy. But as the accuracy of major news outlets themselves began being questioned, they decided to join in. Today many newspapers offer blogs or encourage staffers to blog;
CNN even has introduced its version of “citizen journalism. As is often the cases,, oppositional ideas which begin on the media’s margins are often brought inside and co-opted.
Years earlier as a radio newscaster, I had developed an ‘anyone can do it but few do’ dissecting methodology in which I compared and contrasted news sources – something few journalists do. In those years during the Vietnam War, our media took sides against “enemy forces.” The enemy was always making claims or alleging crimes; the US government was invariably stating facts or insisting or explaining. During the Watergate follies, the Nixon Administration was often taken far more seriously than its critics until that house of cards collapsed.
As I followed the TV news every day, I came to see how it was driven by institutionally established routines and patterns of coverage. Formats ruled, with news reports called “packages” cut to pre-assigned time limitations. Formulas designed by consultants structured the presentations, which were built around the state of the sets and promoted with graphic branding liners, special music, flashy animations, and look-alike- sound-alike themes. It’s all designed to be modular and interchangeable. News language aspires to be perceived as authoritative and objective, stressing terms like fairness and balance. It isn’t.
And yet when I looked at stories more closely as they flew across the TV screen or as they paraded across the front pages, I could see structural biases and an ideological orientation. I saw who was worthy of being quoted and who wasn’t. I could tell which sources had legitimacy and which did not. I could detect the ways that conventional views colored the news while other views were marginalized. I could sniff out the point of view that was often buried in the ‘on the one hand and on the other hand’ paradigms of reporting.
In the years that followed, I moved from being a media critic to a media maker and then a media “heavy” as an on-air personality, TV reporter, and then producer. I moved from blasting network TV from the outside to trying to change it or at least influence it from the inside. I came to know and like people in the industry and learn from them. And yet at the same time, I felt estranged. I sensed that I didn’t really belong because I wasn’t an insider and didn’t aspire to become one.
Part of the reason for that has to do with class. Back in the thirties, forties and fifties, newsmen (and then women) often came from the working class – like I did. They were suspicious of big shots, lived in regular neighborhoods, drank at bars with locals, and covered stories without pretensions or an identification with the kinds of power that came with the transition of news from a racket or a craft into a profession and a business.
This is not to suggest that there was ever a “golden age” of news, but with corporatization, media concentration, and journalists aspiring to upward mobility trading in their Thom McAnn’s for Bruno Magli’s, the media world began to change.
As media structures changed so did its zeitgeist. Soon entertainment values were in command. Celebrity chasing became a national pastime. Being risk-adverse was in; muckraking perspectives out. As the gap between those at the top of the media business and those that toiled in its boiler rooms widened, the sense of media with a mission diluted.
I joined the media to spotlight the problems of the world and discovered that the media was one of those problems. It was a problem that media, for obvious reasons, had little interest in drawing attention to.
I found myself running up against gatekeepers who wanted to do what everyone else was doing. Small stories interested them more than big ones. As far as they were concerned, no one cared about a lot of the issues that moved me – human rights, fights for freedom and social justice. Individually, they might express a concern, but as decision-makers, they avoided being too controversial and shied away from rocking the boat. TV programmers would tell me how much they admired me, but then explained that the programs I wanted to cover were, well, “not for us.” It soon became clear they were not for anyone.
Change was in the air while substance was often off the air. Foreign bureaus were closing and documentaries were being shuttled off to cable outlets with small audiences. “Reality-based” shows replaced programs that tackled more uncomfortable realities, such as world poverty or AIDS or wars in places like Bosnia or Burundi. I left a network show for a company that promoted a “global vision.”
My salary went down as my work became both more interesting and problematic. We became like the pioneers in the “wild west” who didn’t eat unless they killed some game. We were small businessmen in an age of increasingly mega cartels. We had some successes, but far more frustrations, often having to raise the money to do a show, fight to get it on the air, and struggle to pay ourselves.
We soon learned how high the deck was stacked against us and our idealistic enterprise. It was then we realized that the more important problem was right in front of our eyes – the media itself. We formed Mediachannel.org and four years later we are still going, not strong, but going. It is there that my blog/newscast appears every day. Thousands subscribe to it on e-mail; many others check it out on the web site…”
That was written SIX years ago. I will be sharing more writing from Mediachannel this month. And then…….????
We managed to survive since then but here we are perched again on the edge of an abyss. This may be our last month online unless something good happens. We are taking initiatives and reaching out but these are grim times with many other “causes” that may be more urgent.
Some readers are sending in useful suggestions. We appreciate all of your ideas.
Recently, my friend, Danny Goldberg, the music executive and manger–and former CEO of Air America, wrote an incisive article explaining how it is that wealthy people on the right invest large amounts of money over years in media that serves their ideological agendas while people of means in the liberal-left world do not. He wrote on Alternet, which has a cool, new look:
“Conservatives believe in doing whatever it takes to promote their ideas. Richard Viguerie, viewed as one of the architects of the modern conservative movement, wrote a book in 2004 called America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media To Take Power, in which he explains how the right wing used talk radio among other tools. Viguerie stresses that conservatives understand that ideological change does not usually occur overnight; that it takes patience and long-term thinking to build a movement.”
That’s what they believe. What do we believe?
If you can help, now is the time to do so. Click here to support independent journalism here or checks to: The Global Center, 575 8th Avenue # 2200, NY NY 10018. Mark for Mediachannel.org
Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
The Known Universe Scientifically Rendered For All to See
After hovering over Mount Everest and the gorges that plunge to the Ganges, you are pulled through the Earth’s atmosphere to glimpse the inky black of space over Tibet’s high desert. So begins The Known Universe, a new film produced by the American Museum of Natural History that is part of a new exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City.
See the whole Post / →
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About Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter is an Emmy award winning journalist, television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs and speaks about media issues.
His latest film is PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time.
Mr. Schechter is NOT the Godfather of Soul.
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