BARRY DILLER”S LATEST MEDIA PLAY

IWantMedia.com reports: “Barry Diller says his company is close to announcing a new Internet news product, but he declines to give details. A blog? No, Diller says. Earlier: Michael Wolff talked with Diller about a news project.

http://today.reuters.com/summit/summitarticle.aspx?type=summitNews&summit=MediaMarketingSummit06&storyid=2006-11-28T013603Z_01_N27223467_RTRUKOC_0_US-MEDIA-SUMMIT-IAC-ONLINE.xml

http://www.valleywag.com/tech/top/michael-wolff-reconciles-with-the-internet-214256.php

NEW BOOK ON MEDIA AND THE WAR
ttp://www.fordham.edu/campus_resources/public_affairs/inside_fordham/november_27_2006/in_focus_faculty_and/professor_decries_wa_24500.asp

HOLOCAUST VIDEOS NOW IN BERLIN

”Berlin’s Free University is to allow access to a giant video archive containing thousands of interviews with Holocaust survivors, the university said on Saturday.

Starting early December it will permit students, teachers and researchers direct online access to the information stored in the data bank of the University of Southern California (USC). The archive contains 120,000 hours of interviews with 52,000 Holocaust survivors videotaped by movie director Steven Spielberg after filming Schindler’s List in 1993.

Spielberg launched his Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation in 1994 to preserve the testimony of the survivors for future generations. The project is now part of USC. The film material has since been digitalized and the testimony by men and women from 57 countries who are speaking 32 languages has been linked with keywords.

http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=34635
- DP, Expatica Germany

SUPPORT MEDIA BILL OF RIGHTS

I referenced a City Council resolution that passed in Seattle on media issues. Here is the text:

A RESOLUTION supporting a Bill of Media Rights.

WHEREAS, a free and vibrant media, comprised of diverse voices and opinions, is the lifeblood of American democracy and the engine of growth for its culture and economy; and

WHEREAS, in recent years, unprecedented corporate consolidation in the U.S. has dramatically reduced the number of voices represented in the mass media; and

WHEREAS, most of America’s news and entertainment content is commercially produced, distributed, and controlled by a small number of large media conglomerates in whose interest it is to minimize
competition and maximize corporate profits at the expense of competition meant to better serve the public interest; and

WHEREAS, the U. S. Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protects the public’s right regarding the media to “an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail” and calls for “suitable access to social, political,
esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences” and that “it is the right of viewers and listeners, not the right of broadcasters, which is paramount”; and

WHEREAS, when civic policies place media conglomerates’ commercial interests over the public’s Constitutional rights, it places America’s democracy, culture, and economy at risk; and

WHEREAS, public policymakers have a duty to ensure that present and future generations are free to express themselves and access the free expression of others in the mass media using the latest technologies;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SEATTLE:

Section 1. The Seattle City Council joins the broad coalition of consumer, public interest, media reform, organized labor, and other groups representing millions of Americans in supporting the Media
Bill of Rights, as summarized in Section 2, below, and will strive to reflect such principle in its deliberations.

Section 2. The American public has the right to access media in an uninhibited marketplace of ideas.

Section 3. The American public has the right to use the public airways in order to best serve the public interest.

Section 4. The American public has the right to media that reflects and responds to local interests.

Adopted by the City Council the 28th day of November, 2006.

Now who will introduce similar resolutions at their town and city councils?