THE LAST OF THE NEWS DISSECTOR BLOGS FOR NOW
May 28th, 2010 - by: danny
THE LAST OF THE NEWS DISSECTOR BLOGS FOR NOW
June 1: RT INTERVIEW ON ISRAEL’S MEDIA WAR TO SILENCE OPPONENTS OF GAZA SIEGE
LISTEN: This week’s NEWS DISSECTOR RADIO SHOW PODCAST on the economy and a sex scandal.
I knew it would come to this sometime. Nothing lasts forever. And even though we want to keep Mediachannel alive as long as we can, and even as we shutter our Globalvision office this weekend and go virtual, it will be either a road to further marginalization or perhaps a new way forward to free us from crushing overhead.
As Murray Kempton once wrote, ‘We were only part of our time.’
This is the second time I have put the New Dissector to rest. Back in 1977, when I left WBCN Radio as a full timer, I went “straight” only to find that everyone still called me by by media nom’d guerre, news dissector anyway. Somehow the “brand” stuck. When I began reusing it with this blog, it felt like the right thing to do.
And I have given it my best, day in and day out for ll years. In that period, I won many frends and collected many enemies, some of whom just can’t transcend their angry resentment and bitterness to knock a man when they think he’s down. Actually I am not. I ready to for a new challenge.
A Luta Continua. La Lutte Continue. Onward.
As I wrote earlier, there is a time for everything. My brother, Bill, is a Thoreau scholar and sent me what the one of America’s greatest writes had to say when he left Walden Pond. I hope you don’t mind my running it again.
“Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours…”
And so I have. I know how volatile and unstable gut-free media institutions can be. I worked at a number of local TV stations. CNN was a big leap out of Boston and into Big media before joining ABC News for 8 years. All of those jobs came to an end, either when the management pulled the plug or I did.
What a blessing to have had your own company to pursue the issues you care deeply about, to try to marry money and meaning.
Globalvision is still an idea whose time has not yet come and may still be coming. We need global networks. We need more collaboration and sharing across borders and boundaries. We need to work with the world, not on it in a spirit of mutual solidarity. We always need more media diversity and international cooperation. We need to work on projects that help illuminate the times as Edward R. Murrow pointed out:
“I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry’s program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is–an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.”
We didn’t achieve all of our dreams, but wow, what we did achieve was pretty amazing:
Eyewitnesses to the end of White Rule in Africa, to traveling with Nelson Mandela and the Dali Lama, to working with some of the greatest musicians and artists in the world, to investigating weapons of mass deception, deceptive elections, the prospects of reconciliation, promoting human rights, unmaking financial crisis, and now, exposing crime on Wall Street.
We used our skills to try to promote the values we believe in – equality, peace, racial, gender and social justice, human rights, and economic fairness, on and on.
I am grateful to have adventured to more than 65 countries. I have been exposed a wide range of cultural expressions and inspiration. We worked with people we respected and were often trusted with unusual access.
And we were able, until the financial crisis caught up with us, to make a living doing what we love while also promoting change.
Not every project worked. Not everyone we worked along side were happy with our ideas, drive and style. We had many disappointments and a few betrayals from people we trusted and cared about.
Life is like that. You never know what will happen unless and until you try. Nothing comes to a dreamer but a dream as the cliche goes…
I am sure we could have done it better than we did. But it is what it is. On balance, we have good reasons to be proud or our achievements, and who can forecast what will come next? I worked on the inside for a major media company and did not regret leaving. All is so often unpredictable, and flux. Luck and opportunity are rare but there. When the far better endowed Bill Moyers went, we knew our time was coming.
To all who worked with us, we salute you with abiding appreciation even if your experience was not always what you wanted it to be.
To all who funded us or encouraged us, we say thank you.
To our families who put up with us, to the relationships we lost and the new friends we met, namaste.
We couldn’t please everyone and most of the time, we didn’t even please ourselves. Trust me, no one is more self critical than I am. It’s hard to keep pushing the rock up the hill and then have to get out of the way when it come rolling down, heading for your head.
If you think running a media company with different values is easy, or playing at capitalism without capital try it. Many have and are long gone.
I was especially blessed to have so many readers and colleagues who respected our work, and wished us well. There were the inevitable cynics who sniped at us from their angry caves of self-righteous anonymity. Thanks for the opportunity to learn about what happens to people who descend this way and good luck to you, too.
CLINTON, ALMA MATER, THY NAME WE SING
Last night, I had a taste of the world I came from — the working class Bronx.
I went to a reunion of many classes at DeWitt Clinton High School, a boys school when I went there but now happily mixed.
Some of the guys who I worked with on the student newspaper were there along with a loud chorus of younger students graduating into a much tougher world than the one that awaited us.
The Bronx accents were thick but the optimism was infectious. Our time there was a half a century ago but it felt like yesterday. It always does.
I went back to Clinton for a a auto-biopic, ‘A Work In Progress,’ that I made with editor/producer Marie Sullivan and where I spoke about that school and our faculty advisor, Lou Simon, who inspired me to try journalism for a career. There are a few clips from the film on Google Video.
Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, as another song has it, is only a day away.
I am still schlepping stuff home from what is now a mostly empty office. As my business partner for all these years, Rory O’Connor, quipped: “It took us 23 years to build and we had to tear it out in a week.” Read his take: Moving & Moving On: It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue
And so we did with special thanks to:
Angela, Pat, Nilese, Glenn, Sean, Scott, the two Celines, Stan, Allene, the mighty Margaux, Salome, William, Michael and far too many others to list for helping us pack up to move on. You know who you are and the difference you made.
Again, much deserved props to the techno-wizardry of David DeGraw, founder member of AmpredStatus.com and author of, ‘The Economic Elite versus the People of the United States of America,’ for all of his talented and dedicated work in getting Mediachannel done and out to you 5 days per week plus creating the new Globalvision.org site, coming online very soon.
And, to my dissecrtix, the talented Cherie Welch, who came out of the blue, and who brought a whole new ray of sunshine and aesthetic to the blog, which she frequently edited and produced in the middle of the night — and I still haven’t met her, vis-à-vis.
It has been said, ‘Welcome frustration for it means things are about to change.’
THE BIGGER THEY ARE, THE HARDER THE FALL
Associated Press: NYC adviser to Snipes, Stallone, other celebrities is charged in $30 million fraud case by LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) – A financial adviser to celebrities including Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone was arrested Thursday on charges that he carried out a $30 million fraud on his clients, using some of their money to purchase a lavish Manhattan apartment.
Kenneth Starr, 65, of Manhattan was charged with wire fraud, investment adviser fraud and money laundering and was awaiting an initial court appearance in federal court in Manhattan.
Also arrested in the probe was former New York City Council President Andrew Stein, who was charged with making false statements in a filing with the Internal Revenue Service and making false statements to a federal officer. [More here →]
Here’s another passionate send off from journalist Hartley Pleshaw in Massachusetts.
Dear Danny:
At this sad time for all of us who care about alternative journalism, I won’t dwell yet again on the tragic death of Globalvision. You already know how those of us who love and care about it feel about its sad demise. Suffice to say, there will be a huge, gaping hole in the lives of all of us who scan our emails every morning to see and hear what you have to say. It will be a very hard habit to break. I’m afraid that there will be no rehab programs or 12-step solutions for us Globalvision addicts; maybe, that’s just as well. Maybe our permanent withdrawal symptoms won’t be cured until Globalvision, or something like it, reappears in our lives–and maybe, just maybe, that’s as it should be. This is one addiction from which withdrawal won’t feel easier or better with the passage of time–which, in this case, should be seen as a sign of health, not sickness.
The sickness is evident enough, elsewhere. But, we’ve been down that road so many times before, and will be again. For now, if I can, I’d like to end things on a positive note.
On behalf of all your readers, listeners and film goers, I want to thank you for devoting the last forty years of your life to caring about how the rest of us get our information–which, of course, is simply another way of saying that you cared about the rest of us. No, you didn’t do charity work in the traditional sense, but your refusal to play the traditional media game when it would have personally benefited you speaks for itself. Unlike so many others, you didn’t give up, sell out or burn out. Everything you said or did had a social purpose or meaning.
Unlike so many idealists or self-proclaimed rebels of years past, you didn’t come to do good, only to stay to do well. While times and circumstances changed (as they always do), you remained professionally and–far more importantly–morally consistent. I will let others debate whether such an institution as Globalvision could have ever survived in today’s world, or whether it, or something like it, can ever rise again. But there is no debate about this: you did your part, every day of your working life. For my part, I have been privileged to have been a witness to your work almost from the beginning. (Sadly, I missed your LSE years, to say nothing of your noble work at Clinton High.) From WBCN in 1970 to now, you’ve been there for all of us who were lucky and aware enough to appreciate what you were doing. Globalvision may have ended, but that appreciation never will.
And so, let me say it for us all: Thank you, Danny Schechter, for all you’ve done. (A shout-out to Rory and all your colleagues, too.) Maybe a noble, heroic and self-sacrificing career isn’t something you can literally take to the bank (alas), but you can certainly take it to your heart and soul.
Yours in Eternal Appreciation, Your Friend, Hartley Pleshaw
No Wonder Phil Ochs Sang: “I Ain’t Marching anymore.
**MEDIA ADVISORY — MEDIA ADVISORY — MEDIA ADVISORY**
6TH ANNUAL NATIONAL MEMORIAL DAY PARADE PRESENTED BY BOEING
Washington, D.C. — Join nearly 300,000 Americans in honoring those who have served and sacrificed in the sixth annual National Memorial Day Parade. Marching bands, veterans units, and uniformed military personnel from around the country will march down Constitution Avenue in the largest Memorial Day parade in the nation.
The parade will feature a special tribute to the U.S. Marine Corps and will be led by Grand Marshal General Peter Pace, the only Marine to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Military supporters Gary Sinise and Joe Mantegna will once again join the parade, along with former Marine drill instructor and actor R. Lee Ermey. Also participating is R.V. Burgin, the Marine Corps veteran portrayed in the HBO miniseries, The Pacific and Anthony Kearns of the famed Irish Tenors, singing Amazing Grace.
How about a tribute to two-time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler USMC, Retired?
OUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS:
Globalvision is going virtual. We are closing our offices at 575 8th Avenue at the end of this month. Our new postal address will be: P.O. Box 677, New York, NY 10035. Our company started operating in a shared space in Soho in l987, then opened what was described as a “loft-hovel” in Little Italy, then moved to classier digs near Union Square. From there, it was up to a real HQ in the heart of Times Square, and then, after our building was gentrified into posh condos, to this outpost in the noisy belly of the Garment District. Soon, in our latest incarnation, we will receive mail in Harlem and then go covert, perhaps to one of those secret locations Dick Cheney boasted about.
Yes, we have, for decades, been globalvisioning downtown, uptown and midtown—all around the town (and world) really. Now, we enter the “post office” and postoffice phase in a new zip code.
Follow me on Twitter (Dissectorevents) and Facebook. We also have a PLUNDER movie page on Facebook, the PLUNDER web site and a new Globalvision.org web site.
Write: dissector@mediachannel.org
CAUTION: You may not want to play this out loud at work as it contains a graphic word. h/t to Facebook friend and activist Linda Saloff.
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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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