06
Jul
The Summer Of Censors
WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE
DISSECTING IN BRAZIL
PURGING VOTERS (AGAIN)
Just back … Lots to catch up without marking W’s B-Day today. I will skip the usual news review except to pass along the reports that John Kerry will name his running mate later this morning. A new Gallop Poll claims 61% of white Americans like Bush; only 12% of blacks. What follows are a few stories of note, my own report on a quickie sojourn to Brazil, and just a few of your letters.
CENSORING SADDAM’s "TRIAL"
Writing in the Independent (and Counterpunch) Robert Fisk exposes censorship in the coverage of the Saddam trial:
There was a new US bombing of what is called a "safe house" for terrorists in Iraq. Residents in Fallujah say only civilians were killed and vow revenge. If there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before the US invasion; there is now.
CENSORING MOORE’s F-911
AP reports: "The president of a company that owns movie theaters in Iowa and Nebraska is refusing to show director Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. R.L. Fridley, owner of Des Moines-based Fridley Theatres, says the controversial documentary incites terrorism. ‘Our country is in a war against an enemy who would destroy our way of life, our culture and kill our people,’ Fridley wrote in an e-mail message to company managers. ‘I believe this film emboldens [the enemy] and divides our country even more.’”
Michael Moore.com features all of his good news. For example, "More people saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in one weekend than all the people who saw Bowling for Columbine in 9 months."
CENSORING A LABOR SHOW
Mary Ellen Churchill sends along this item: "It looks like the City of St. Peters, Mo. is trying to censor (cancel) our TV shows. (Green Time, Labor Beat, Labor on the Job, Working in America). They rejected 4 shows just this week for language. The words they found objectionable were hard to find and all were used in context, which means that these programs were neither obscene or indecent … According to Larry Duncan, producer of Labor Beat, and Steve Zeltzer producer of Labor on the Job, these words, used in context are acceptable and St. Peters is trying to cancel all of our shows because of their political content. They can’t reject our shows because of our anti-war, anti-foreign policy, Israel/Palestine content so they are nit picking about language."
In other media news, The Guardian reports: "BBC News is to set up a corrections website and a weekly feedback program on which editors will be forced to justify their decisions … State-backed Arabic news channel al-Jazeera is planning to become a private company and considering a stock market listing … Interested in knowing more about the cabal that controls cable? Check out this article from the Center for Digital Democracy … Looking for “a culture of integrity?" Check out the writings of my friend Ravi, a very talented musician, who also muses and opinionizes.
BACK FROM BRAZIL
I had been here once before in 1992 for the UN’s Earth Summit in Rio, an exciting global event attended by tens of thousands but boycotted by Bush Senior. Despite that, it was an oasis of hope in a more hopeful time with hundreds of governments and NGO’s descending on these United States of Brasil, a country bigger in size than our own. I was filming indigenous peoples then from all over the world who gathered to affirm the importance of cultural survival within the framework of planetary survival.
It was colorful, energized and profoundly moving to see so many people from so many regions of Brazil and everywhere else sharing agendas and commitments for environmental sustainabilility. Many promises were made; not that many were implemented.
Now I am back, but this time, concerned about our own survival in this time of war, terror, and cynicism. For me, it feels like it’s another week and another event. I have been to so many events, conferences and forums over the last year, in the US, South Africa, Germany, Indonesia, Switzerland, Indonesia and now San Paulo. Who else would go to Brazil for the weekend? (Although flying here may have been faster than driving to the Hamptons.) Sometimes I joke that I would go to the opening of an envelope if there was an opportunity to promote Mediachannel and find people to work with.
WORLD CULTURAL FORUM
This conclave is called the World Cultural Forum. The idea was hatched at the World Economic Forum in Davos when it was proposed that the pro-Globalization Forum, which has its annual meeting in the Swiss Alps, and its antithesis, the World Social Forum that is organized around anti-globalization struggles needed a cultural counterpart. The great Gilberto Gil, now the Minister of Culture in the progressive administration of Worker’s Party leader Lula liked the idea. A half-year later, this World Cultural Forum erupted in the conference center next door to a humongous Holiday Inn in sunny San Paolo. I am sure that this is not the type of convention the founders of the Holiday Inn envisioned hosting.
Ten thousand people have trouped through the panels and a cultural expo. Some hundred thousand have taken part in various shows and events associated with it. There are people here from 60 countries, but not that many from the USA. It is a bit chaotic. The organizers who invited me to speak and show my film made ariline reservations but never bought the ticket. They forgot to send someone to meet me at the airport. Snags like these were common.
While I was sweating the small stuff, a more important gathering awaited. It turned out to be an uncommon mix of tribal people and intellectuals, political musicians and political missionaries. There are Amazonian Indians here along with UNESCO functionaries from Paris and a rich calendar of music and dance. Someone is drumming outside my window as I write. The sounds of Samba and musical fusions of African and Brazilian heritage have given this Forum a distinctive soundtrack.
At the same time, beyond the drum circle, the view from my window is of an overdeveloped city in an underdeveloped country, traffic clogged and polluted, pockets of wealth in a sea of poverty. Seventeen million are said to call the San Paolo area their home. Even when they have no homes!
BRAZILIANS JEER THEIR MEDIA
My own presentation was very well received and so was the work in progress of my WMD film. When one speaker at an earlier session denounced Brazilian television for its failure to cover the many forms of indigenous cultural expression on display at the forum, there was applause. There is as much anger here with the mainstream media as there is in the US. There is a lesson in this for those who think that just dumping the Bush gang will open up the media. It hasn’t happened here in Brazil, years after the election of militant factor worker turned president. In many ways, I heard several people call on the NGOs and activists here to make media issues matter in their work.
Ironically, America’s media moguls admire Brazil because one company, TV Globo, has had a dominant market share of the kind they so yearn for. Its news operation was at one point the fourth in the world after the three top US networks. They are the ten ton gorilla on the block in Brazil.
It was surprising to me that Globo welcomed me into their studios for an interview after Fernanda, the Brazilian woman who makes DVDs for me in New York called them to tell them I was coming. She must have done a great sales job. They sent a car for me to zip me over to their vast studio complex. The drive at eight at night ran into the kind of traffic we associate with the freeways in LA. Nothing moving, a mess for as far as they eye could wonder. It was hardly a zip.
It took forever for me to be ushered into their immense newsroom with a zillion monitors and TV sets wall flickering at once. Bill Hinchberger, an American journalist living here, a sometime contributor to Media Channel came with me. He had never penetrated Globo’s inner sanctum before. (You can keep in touch with what’s happening here through his website: www.BrazilMax.com. He calls it “the hip gringo’s guide to Brazil.")
The Globo journalists were pleased to meet an American who was challenging American TV. We traded stories on the coverage of the war. I asked if they had any footage to share, but they confided that they relied on CNN, and supplemented it with interviews and debates. They were very professional in their approach and warm as people. I was grateful for their interest, whatever the critique others may have of their on-air product. It looks like a glimpse of my film WMD has now been on the air in Brazil before folks in Berkeley have seen it.
AND THEN THERE WAS SOLANAS
The closing plenary of the Forum heard many speakers insist that cultures and cultural rights need to be protected and respected. The presentations were low key until the man in white came along — white short, white pants, white hair. He was the biggest cultural luminary I heard up until then. His name: Fernando Solanas, a world class Argentinian filmmaker known for the Hour of the Furnaces about the military dictatorship in Argentina.
His latest film exposes the way corrupt politicians and international banks and agencies teamed up to strip-mine Argentina of much of its wealth. It is about what he calls "social genocide." It is the Fahrenheit 9/11 of Latin America. The avaricious elites he condemns left 60% or the people living below the poverty line as they stole the country’s wealth and drove it into bankruptcy. I saw his movie at the Tribeca Film Festival and it was riveting.
So was Solanas in person. Where others read texts or spoke quietly, he seized the mic with the charisma of Castro, bellowing rage at media corporations that have captured public spaces and that "make viewers believe in lies and accept neo-liberal ideas." He called them evil, and that was just for starters. He detailed the way media functions as a tool of big business whose programming ignores the reality and history of Latin America.
"Globalization has not multiplied the voices of the discarded — just the opposite," he declared with a clarity that many in the audience cheered. He blasted the 3-4 major media companies that he says control 90% of the world’s broadcasts. He accused them of censoring news and refusing to show Latin American movies.
RELYING ON CNN: "A MORTAL SIN"
"When we want to know what what is happening in Latin America, we have to watch CNN," he said with disgust. "This is a mortal sin." He demanded regulations in the public interests, not in the interest of advertisers and the market. He called for "more democracy" in the media to fulfill the demands of citizens. He spoke so loudly that he probably could be heard next door in Argentina. And he should be!
His talk was mesmerizing, and many stood in an ovation after he spoke of the need to non-violently "transform our reality … whatever it takes." He said it in the way Malcolm X once used the mantra "by any means necessary" to charge up a crowd. He insisted "another media world is possible," and can be made possible "come hell or high water."
NO SE HABLA INGLES
Afterwards I approached Solanas to tell him how much his work and speech moved me and about Media Channel and WMD, but, alas, my High School Spanish was not up to the task, and there was no one there to translate. So I had to leave it with a handshake and materials thrust into his hands in a language he probably detests. I fear nothing will come of it, but it was inspiring to be in the presence of a fire that also fires me up.
Fortunately, I did meet some other Brazilians who were turned on to my work and offered to help. Brazil is alive with all sorts of cultural energy. Thanks to Fernando Fialho, a new friend and kind of Cultural Mayor of Sao Paulo, I visited the impressive facilities of a vast cultural and athletic complex run by SESC in the Pompeii neighborhood. It offered classes, photo labs, performance spaces, theaters and swimming pools, sports facilities, and free internet access. Throughout the city 300,000 people avail themselves of SESC programs every week. This institution has also now offered to premiere my film in their beautiful state of the art cinema in the city. All I have to do now is find a way to finish it, and get it translated into Portuguese … I will add that to my endless To Do list.
LOVING LULA
The people of Brazil that I spoke with are optimistic in a way that my friends back home are not. Their President is seen as a solution — not a problem. They seem to have faith (if some dissapoinment) in the man they elected with 61% of their votes. He is known by all as Lula. He keeps saying he "does not have the power of God to make miracles" when people say that they want him to move faster. He is up against structural problems in the economy, and deeply institutionalized inequalities compounded by the legacy of a poor educational system and gaps in every sector of the society. Brazil is menaced by crime, drug running and many other problems that are not easily dispensed of with a wave of his wand. His approval ratings are already going down as sectors of the press are getting hostile, rather than explain all this.
I am sure he has made mistakes including appointing people he shouldn’t. I am sure there are contradictions in his policies and party. At the same time, what a difference from what we have!
The cynical view was expressed in a recent New York Times Sunday piece which praised him for his honesty and sincerity but poured on the skepticism by describing him as "the lead character in another common fable: the dreamer who runs into the cul-de-sacs of reality." The piece heaped on the negativity in the guise of a friendly "objectivity." Perhaps that was because Lula is critical of many US policies. During our July 4th weekend, he was talking about Vietnam’s victory as a parallel to what is happening in Iraq.
BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
Of course, the wags of the NY Times can’t bother themselves to investigate who and what interest groups backed by what US fostered policies are blocking and sabotaging Lula’s hopes and plans for change. This is par for the course in our media.
As David Domke puts it in the new issue of Harvard’s Nieman Reports, "The Bush Administration benefited from a US news media that gave it the benefit of the doubt in a manner unprecedented in the post Vietnam, post-Watergate era. The typically inquisitive approach or journalists towards government was dropped …"
Yet, judging by the applause Solanas received at the Forum, many folks here want another type of media and know who their enemies are. All I could think of was how great it would be if we had a man like Lula in charge. Is that world possible? I would like to hope so even as I am reminded of the late Signore Gramsci’s call for "pessimism of the intelligence and optimism of the will."
Whenever I leave the United States, I realize how underdeveloped our country is.
ANOTHER HERO
Peter Pan reports in the Washington Post: "Chinese military and security officials are forcing the elderly physician who exposed the government’s coverup of the SARS epidemic to attend intense indoctrination classes and are interrogating him about a letter he wrote in February denouncing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, according to sources familiar with the situation. The officials have detained Jiang Yanyong, 72, a semi-retired surgeon in the People’s Liberation Army, in a room under 24-hour supervision, and they have threatened to keep him until he ‘changes his thinking’ and ‘raises his level of understanding’ about the Tiananmen crackdown, said one of the sources, who described the classes as ‘brainwashing sessions.’"
YOUR LETTERS: ON MICHAEL’S MOVIE
Gary L. Gehman from Philadelphia asks: "Why are the icons of the Liberal media - and by this I do mean the more liberal and ‘balanced’ of those corporate entities: ABC News, Knight Ridder, et. al. - so critical of Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9-11? Why are they spending so many valuable TV minutes and column inches arguing the merits of his arguments? I submit that it’s because he is doing what they absolutely cannot allow: connecting the dots. Each of his reports, the Saudi flights, the Unocal pipeline, everything in the movie is a matter of record; albeit frequently buried deep inside section A. Those stories are allowable as long as they are told disconnected from context, away from any sense of Big Picture. Fit them into a mosaic that identfies unmistakably a cruel, opportunistic elite feeding off the corpses of ordinary proles and you commit the worst crime of Journalism. Revealing the Awful Truth … The man’s a monster."
Jackie Newberry from Houston writes: "This story was buried on page 25 of the Houston Chronicle while Marlon Brandon took up the majority of page 1 Friday."
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — American soldiers who defeated the Iraqi regime 15 months ago received virtually none of the critical spare parts they needed to keep their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles running. They ran chronically short of food, water and ammunition. Their radios often failed them. Their medics had to forage for medical supplies, artillery gunners had to cannibalize parts from captured Iraqi guns, and intelligence units provided little useful information about the enemy. (From LA Times)
CONVENTIONS JUST "EXPENSIVE THEATER"
Bart Laws: "Sorry to have to take issue with you, but the major party conventions aren’t news, and they aren’t politics — they’re just expensive theater put on solely as propaganda. I support the networks decision to limit their coverage. Nothing real happens at the conventions, and we are subjected to more than enough political advertising as it is. Regarding grammar: media may be construed as a collective noun, and hence treated as grammatically singular. So you aren’t wrong on that one. Keep on blogging,"
PMacdonald writes from the Mother Country: "There was a fantastic 2 hour special on Iraq on channel 4 on monday (I think) … it featured an interview with Blair that was an absolutely classic! … I think the interview is still available on the channel 4 website … not sure about the rest of the ’special’ … You should commend channel 4 for their great report (if a little one sided to the anti-war camp … but what’s wrong with that eh! brings balance to the airwaves) …"
From Mr. D in Barcelona: "It’s always interesting to pay attention to language whenever dealing with the media (and I don’t mean remembering whether ‘media’ is singular or plural). The NYT makes a point in reporting ‘Although Mr. Hussein can speak a halting English, he refused to speak anything but Arabic.’ Interesting choice by Mr Hussein, IF his interlocutor addressed him in English or anything but Arabic. Did he? … But the observations from the Times don’t stop there: ‘His [Saddam’s] military guards for an extended period were reservists from Puerto Rico, who were instructed to speak only Spanish in his presence.’ This is a curious follow-up to the last sentence. What is the connection between these two sentences? That the guards weren’t allowed to speak English to Saddam because he might understand them? What WERE they saying that they didn’t want him to hear? And then how did they know he didn’t understand Spanish?"
HERE WE GO AGAIN
I was watching CNN in Brazil and comparing it with BBC. Most notable difference was on the coverage of Brando. BBC mentioned his support for Native Americans and the Black Panthers. CNN didn’t. But a story on CNN by Susan Candiotti about the re-emerging voter purge in Florida was very well done. As I searched for more info, I came across this item from the Tampa Tribune:
List Of Felons Made Public
By Garrett Therolf
TALLAHASSEE: Florida’s error-prone list of 47,763 suspected felons who could be tossed from voter rolls before November’s presidential election contains nearly three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans. Almost half are racial minorities. Although activists have speculated for months that most of the voters on the controversial list are likely Democrats, precise numbers were difficult to calculate because state law forbade releasing copies to the public. That law, however, was overturned Thursday by a Leon County judge at the request of CNN and several other news organizations, including The Tampa Tribune …"
This topic, as investigated by Greg Palast, is a centerpiece of my film COUNTING ON DEMOCRACY … I would like to get it back into circulation … See Globalvision.org for more details.
NOTE!
"Nonfiction Films Turn a Corner … The record-breaking success of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 may mark a turning point in the acceptance of documentaries by audiences as entertainment and by movie distributors as potential profit centers." This could be good news for my film WMD. It screens Saturday at the Dallas Video Festival.
I am back in the saddle. Let me hear from you. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org
