I AM BLOGGING FROM BOSTON.

Please see yesterday’s entries. I will be updating as of often as possible. Here is my entry for the 26th of July (the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution)

DOING DEMOCRACY NOW

AS POLITICS HEATS UP, COVERAGE SHRINKS

AL JAZEERA”S COMPLAINT

9:46 AM: I am writing this morning from the computer room at Cambridge Community TV, the public access center that is hosting Amy Goodman and her Democracy Now show. You have to be impressed with what she and her coalition of the more than willing have achieved. They are doing a daily radio and TV show, now heard on more than 200 radio stations and public access outlets and on Free Speech TV and Link. Without exaggerating its audience size, the reach is impressive and growing.

I showed up in time to see Jesse Jackson and entourage leaving. He had a few nice words for me in the hall, after discussing voting rights issues that still plague electoral systems throughout the country. He has now lobbied his way on to the convention rostrum. He sat here in awe watching his own powerful convention speech from l988.

“The Reverend” won hearts and minds then even as the Dems lost the election. He is still at it. He has an op-ed in the Boston Globe today and has just placed at the top of the heap in a poll on the leaders African Americans admire most. But in these years he has gone from insider to outsider with his prot駩s like Al Sharpton now in the main ring of the circus here and newcomers like Illinois Senatorial candidate, black moderate Barrack Obama considered the “next big thing.” Jesse has put on a few pounds but lost none of his clarity and passion.

ON THE AIR WITH AMYP

My own discussion with Amy revolved around the schmooze convention of journalists posing as a news assignment. Even as journalists outnumber Delegates 3-1, it seems as if they have accepted a lesser role as the networks cut back in their airtime and make politics matter less with the full encouragement of their bottom line oriented networks. Read this from USA Today and weep:

PRIME-TIME COVERAGE GETS SCARCER THIS YEAR

“More people than ever will have easy access to a mountain of information from a variety of media — newspapers, radio, television and the Internet.

“But millions more Americans still turn to the networks for news than go to other sources and for people who can’t afford pay TV or Internet access, news and images of the party conventions will be scarce. Here’s a look at planned coverage. 1) Broadcast TV. ABC, CBS and NBC each plan to air just three hours — spread over four nights — of the Democratic convention during the evenings. But PBS’ The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer will broadcast at least three hours of convention coverage each evening.

‘Doesn’t a broadcast license still carry a public responsibility?'’ to air important news events over free airwaves, asks Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He argues that the networks, ‘’by taking themselves out of it, are substantially affecting interest in the conventions.'’ 2) Cable news networks will offer coverage throughout the days and evenings. C-Span will offer gavel-to-gavel coverage. CNN, CNBC, Fox News, MSNBC and Telemundo will all have substantial presences. Non-traditional news outlets such as MTV, Comedy Central and ESPN2 will also produce shows from the conventions. 3) The Internet. Information will be pouring onto the Internet via AOL, Yahoo and

Web sites managed by media giants; lone ‘’bloggers'’ who post their opinions on Web logs, or diaries; the presidential campaigns and both major political parties.4) Newspapers. The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, USA TODAY and newspapers large and small have constructed mini-newsrooms in a pavilion outside the convention center. 5) Radio. National Public Radio will broadcast for three hours from the convention each evening.

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20040726/6395454s.htm

MEMO TO ANCHORS: TIME FOR A STRIKE!

See The NY Times story on all the news anchors bitching about the lack of airtime they have been given. These are the same people who had endless time to lionize Ronald Reagan.(His son will speak at the convention on Wednesday.) if they had any guts, they would strike in unison and challenge their media overlords.

AL JAZEERA BANNER REMOVED

Al Jazeera reports: “Organizers at the Democratic Party convention in United States have removed Al Jazeera’s logotype banner from its skybox without assigning reasons.

Al Jazeera’s skybox is one of the several that media organizations use as broadcast booths to cover the upcoming convention in Boston to confirm John Kerry’s nomination as George Bush’s presidential challenger in November.

“We found that the banner disappeared for some reason,” Al Jazeera’s Washington bureau chief Hafiz al-Mirazi said.

“We contacted the Democratic National Convention and the people who are organizing the convention. And then they said it has been removed, maybe for lack of enough space or something like that, although they approved originally the sign and everything on it. And every time we get different answers.”

“And finally, they said, ‘Sorry, we cannot put it back.” And it’s the only news organization sign that was taken,” al-Mirazi pointed out. In place of Al Jazeera’s logotype will be a banner reading “Strong for America.”

And this the DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION! Incidentally the new democratic (sic) government of Iraq has threatened to follow Saddam’s lead and kick Al Jazeera and Al Aribiya out.

TAKE YOUR PAD AND SHOVE IT

AP reports that “Teresa Heinz Kerry urged home-state delegates to the Democratic National Convention to restore a more civil tone to politics, then minutes later told a journalist to “shove it.”

“We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics,” the wife of Democratic candidate Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) told fellow Pennsylvanians on Sunday night at a Massachusetts Statehouse reception.

Minutes later, Colin McNickle, editorial page editor of the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, questioned her on what she meant by the term “un-American,” according to a tape of the encounter recorded by Pittsburgh station WTAE-TV.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14390-2004Jul26.html

AFFLECK: SINGLE AND SINGLED OUT

I wrote yesterday on a Rock the Vote event. Don Hazen was with me and adds on Alternet that “the panel also included two other people from MTV, Amber Tamblyn and Gideon Yago, and vice mayor of Cambridge, Mass Marjorie Decker, all of whom had interesting things to say, though the real wisdom came from the young people in the audience. They asked tough questions about the failed Leave No Child Behind Act, and how oppressive mandated testing was discouraging students. Another young 16-year old described how a local restaurant owner was harassing students, calling them Osama bin Laden’s daughters, and asked them, “Why do you look so sad? Was it because Saddam Hussein was captured?”

“Ben Affleck had a nice response to that was his account of visiting the troops in Iraq. He had to take a flight from Kuwait to Bahrain, and he ended up being the only person on the plane who wasn’t an Arab in headdress. Affleck said he ended up being singled out and was the only one searched on the plane, to which he responded, “No you don’t understand, I am trying to stop terrorism.”

DEBATING THE BOSTON SOCIAL FORUM

I was at the Boston Social Forum briefly. Organizers claim that 5000 activists showed up. It cost $150,000 to stage it. Activists are debating its impact. Dee Dee Halleck, the veteran TV activist/producer noted “there was scant evidence of representation by disenfranchised peoples at the Boston Social Forum. Although there were people of color scattered here and here, the crowd was pretty white, even though my daily route to the forum location at the UMass campus passed through one of the largest black urban communities in the United States.

“I am sure there was “good will” and the “best of intentions” on the part of the organizing committee for this event, but I hope that in retrospect, and in preparation for similar events to come there is some serious rethinking of how to “do the right thing” in the future.

“The most often heard comment was a question, “Where is the food?” I was positioned at a table near the door of one of the display lobbies and literally everyone who entered the door would grasp for my attention, not to discuss the videos we were screening or the flyers we were handing out, but to entreat me more information, “Where can we get something to eat?” The answer, sadly, was only one place.

Brian Drolet of Free Speech TV responded: “Hurrah to Dee Dee for truth telling. What are these social forums really about? What kind of a world do we want to change to, and how, really, are we going to get there? By pandering to the “anybody but Bush” tsunami - kissing the backside of the Dems, no matter how bad it tastes? And while Kerry et al are building a Guantanamo cage for the demonstrators to self-imprison themselves, some of our best alternative journalists have moved from inside the alternative media tent to inside the convention hall. Remember that good old Union song “Which Side on You on Boys, Which Side are You On. I empathize with Dee Dee’s anger with the lack of food at the conference, but it seems like the lack of political oxygen is a greater concern.”

WARNING OF VIRUS THREAT

EJC reports “Internet security company Sophos has warned that “a file posing asphotographic evidence that Osama Bin Laden has killed himself is in factinfected by the Hackarmy Trojan horse”. The virus was attached to amessage on more than 30,000 message boards. It read that two journalistsat CNN discovered Bin Laden’s hanged body but that the news was notdisclosed as verification of the dead body’s identity were underway andso jumping on the bandwagon of the ‘latest news’.

“Hackers and virus writers will try all kinds of tricks to entice people into downloadingtheir malicious code,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultantfor Sophos . “It seems this time that the hacker has focused on thepublic’s morbid curiosity and appetite for news on the war againstterror “read the Sophos annoucement. ”

http://www.dmeurope.com

That”s it for now. See Democracy Now”s site if you want the text of my most informal “remarks.” Amy”s fans have to tell her to take a break and look after her voice and throat. I am worried about her cough? I am beginning to sound like my father with whom I am staying. Fortunately Globalvision has no media truck to protect from the terror danger, as bogus a warning as I have ever heard?.

Keep your letters coming. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org