Here’s how Harpers bid adieu to 2005:

” The U.S. Congress officially ratified President George W.
Bush’s election victory after a two-hour debate over voting irregularities in Ohio. Terri Schiavo, Johnnie Cochran, Frank Perdue, Mitch Hedberg, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, and the pope died, as did the man who wrote the theme song to “Gidget.” An Australian tortoise named Harriet turned 175. General Motors was spending more for health care than for steel, and an increasing number of Americans were heating their homes with corn. El Salvadoran police arrested 21 people for operating a smuggling operation and seized 24 tons of contraband cheese. NASA announced that it wanted to return to the moon.”

FINAL THOUGHT ON 2005 FROM ROBERT FISK

”My year began with a massive explosion in Beirut, just400 metres from me, as a bomb killed the ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri. It continued on 7 July when a bomb blew up two trains back from me on the Piccadilly line. Oh, the dangerous world we live in now. I suppose we all have to make our personal choices these days. Mine is that I am not going to allow 11 September 2001 to change my world. Bush may believe that 19 Arab murderers changed his world. But I’m not going to let them change mine. I hope I’m right.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11416.htm

IN MEMORIUM:HARRY MAGDOFF

”Harry Magdoff, co-editor of Monthly Review since 1969 and one of the world’s leading political economists, died on New Year’s Day, 2006 at his home in Vermont. He kept the journal to the socialist principles and theoretical and pedagogical standards of its late founders, Paul M. Sweezy, who died in February 2004, and Leo Huberman.” (via Portside.”

STILL ALIVE

I hope, with your help, I will be dissecting away in the year to come. Your support and help in getting this blog better known is welcome. Thank you to the New York Times today for finally recognizing that Mediachannel is here—6 years on:

“Answering Back to the News Media, Using the Internet”

We had a half hour conversation in which I explained who so many people are critical of the media, and why blogs play an important role in critiquing coverage that deserves critiquing. I also condemned execessive partisan ship and called for more focus on distorted corporate media practices. Here’s what survived in print:

“Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org and a former producer at ABC News and CNN, said that while the active participation by so many readers was healthy for democracy and journalism, it had allowed partisanship to mask itself as media criticism and had given rise to a new level of vitriol.

“It’s now O.K. to demonize the messenger,” he said. “This has led to a very uncivil discourse in which it seems to be O.K. to shout down, discredit, delegitimize and denigrate the people who are reporting stories and to pick at their methodology and ascribe motives to them that are often unfair.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/02/business/media/02source.html?pagewanted=2&8dpc

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