CITIZEN JOURNALISM SITE FOLDS IN HOLLAND

The Dutch website Skoeps, which invites citizens to submit pictures and video clips of breaking news, will shut down after failing to find a sustainable business model, its owners said on Friday. Such ‘citizen journalism’ sites have become increasingly popular in recent years and have been seen as a possible challenge to the more established publishers. Many media companies, such as broadcasters CNN and BBC, also ask viewers to submit photos or videos as local people armed with cameras on their mobile phones are often the first on the scene when a major event develops. ‘The ambition of the news site was partially successful, but Skoeps did not succeed in developing a financially healthy perspective,’ the owners, publisher PCM Uitgevers and investment company Talpa Media, said in a statement. Skoeps - the name is a play on the English word ‘scoop’ - received 1,000 to 1,500 submissions per month, the companies said. (Reuters)

THE ROLE OF “THE ELDERS IN POLITICS”—FORMER POLS KEEP A HAND IN

THE RIGHT ON CHRIS MATTHEWS

In the Clinton years, Clinton fans loathed Chris Matthews, locating him firmly inside the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. In the Bush years, Matthews is whacked regularly by the left and by the right. On Monday, the MRC’s Geoff Dickens noticed, Matthews sounded just like another disgruntled member of MoveOn.org as he interviewed John Murtha. Matthews presumed the Democrats are too conservative: “Why are the Democrats so conservative on this war?” | |

More See & Hear the Bias

[This item is adopted from a Wednesday posting, by the MRC’s Tim Graham, on
our NewsBusters blog: newsbusters.org ]

LETTERS: MACY WYNTER ON OBAMA AND WRIGHT

What we are witnessing between Obama and Reverend Wright is not a tragedy, but a rite of passage, a maturing of black America away from the vision of its elders. When Obama repudiated Reverend Wright, what he said reverberated in the hearts of millions. He was saying that we no longer want to view America through the lens of pain. We no longer want to nurse that chip on our shoulder, to put our hurt first. We don’t want to walk through our lives as a representative of The Black Community any more than a white person expects to always be seen as a representative of the White Community. We want to look in the mirror and see a kid with a skateboard, a kid with a guitar, a kid with a Filipina girlfriend – whatever – and not first and foremost, see A Black Man Standing On The Shoulders Of MLK. Isn’t it high time we looked at the “Plymouth Rock Landed on Us,” comeback in a new light? What it really signifies is that we’ve been here since Plymouth Rock. We’re as American as any white person; we’ve been here as long. No fence-jumping, border-hopping, no Ellis Island or refugee flotillas, we’re as American as any Yankee Doodle Bostonian with roots back to Alexander Hamilton. And, we are ready to be seen as Americans first. We can be Black and Republican, we can be black and hate basketball and rap, Black and want nothing to do with chicken and waffles, grits or soul food. If we don’t get a job we applied for, we’re ready to recognize that the other applicant might just be more qualified, and not automatically view the disappointment through the lens of racial discrimination. We are ready to be seen just as people.

Yes, we got this far through the leadership of the Jesse Jacksons, the Malcoms, the Sharptons and Abernathies, and the Reverend Wrights, but not only because of them. We got here, as well, because times have just changed.

There’s a saying that you know you’ve been a good parent when the kids break your heart. When they move out, move on, look back and telephone only when appropriate, not call every day, not require direct guidance with every decision. Every parent of older children fondly remembers the days when you could heal any wound with a kiss and a hug, when the kids believed you could make it rain and make their favorite show magically appear on TV. But honestly, you’re never sure you’ve been a good parent until the kids go on and make their own mark, until they no longer constantly look to you for a thumbs up.

Journalists often offer politicians an opportunity to dig themselves out of verbal missteps, for example, Hillary Clinton saying she would “obliterate Iran” if it attacked Israel. Surely, given the chance, she’d tone down the rhetoric and say that she really meant she would contain, or perhaps counter-attack, the rogue nation.

Not Hillary. On Sunday TV, she stood squarely behind her “obliteration” fantasy, saying that she had been “very clear” about what she meant. OK, people. No embargos, no bombing airstrips or military installations. Hillary said that if Iran misbehaves on her watch, the nation will cease to exist at America’s hand. Top that one, George Bush.

Indeed, if Bush had said such a thing, we’d be terrified. Americans know that Bush subscribes to an interpretation of the Bible which claims that a worldwide military clash between Islam and Christianity is inevitable, and that speeding history towards such a cataclysm is only the fulfillment of divine prophesy. Thus, if words like “obliterate” crossed his lips, we’d cry World War Three and hide in the basement.

Not so Hillary. She’s your average politician, so she just talks. She says whatever it takes to get elected. We know this, so we’re not particularly bothered by her silly hyperbole…

I AM NOT VOTING WRITES BRANDON VEZMAR:

I think these bleak thoughts today as I try to come to terms with the fact that I won’t be casting a vote in the presidential primary of my state of residence, Indiana. It isn’t easy to admit that I won’t be voting, but I can’t take part in this farce. We’ve been lied to in a way that boggles the imagination. We’ve been infected with a virus that causes us to believe our vote changes our situation. Our vote does not matter within the present system. At the very best we can only achieve a delay of the inevitable, a postponement of our own destruction and a more prolonged state of disease.

I’m talking about you and I, the working class. We live in a system that is only prolonging our sad march to death. Why have the Democrats not proposed universal, single-payer health care? Why have they authorized further actions of war towards Iran? Why are they not putting forth suitable proposals to deal with the energy crisis, the food crisis, this crisis, that crisis? Why are both Hillary and Obama’s campaigns staffed with members of the same family that gave birth to the morass of greed and enslavement that is the sub-prime lending crisis? Our pseudo heroes have been co-opted, my friends, by the infectious greed that is ours as Americans, and by voting for members of the two party/one party system we are co-opted, too, and we vote for our own murders.

DAVE HOUDER ON ME

I am a regular reader of your News Dissector blog. While I agree with much of what you observe I think at times you tread a fine line.

It’s something I’ve noticed most in environmentalists. One side of the line is clearly mindful environmentalism, and the other, down right fatalism.

One is productive and forward thinking, the other is, well…’I told you so’-ism.

When you site FinancialArmageddon.com’s “Recession Chic” post you are crossing over to the dark side.

Sarah Jessica Parker is not putting bright face on the gloomy economic outlook, it’s not commentary, she’s looking to hawk cheaply made dress and reap the rewards of wacked out trade deals at the expense of indigenous peoples, and the goodly women and children of developing (Asian) nations who show promise at the helm of a Husqvarna Viking…(and by promise, I mean the ability to ‘hold it’ for hours on end.)

What I’m saying is, you spun a BS photo op. So, now the waters are fouled not only with more advertising for unsustainable systems and products, but also a pretty manky world view.

All the same…thanks for what you’re doing.

LETTER: Bradley Laing writes:

”Danny, i think I’m irrational.

i look at mean spirited right wing websites ragging on liberal hollywood, and what boggles my mind is that they seem to live in an intellectual world where what they are doing is re-living their college days sneering at wacky liberals on campus—while ignoring the actual behavior of the mass audience.

If 39 million people watch the Academy Awards, they insist there is a decline= and fall of some sort, ignoring what any network executive could have told them: when there were only five broadcast channels 1978, instead of 60 cable channels in most homes in 2008, there were more people to watch the Academy Awards as their “least offensive” choice that night.

Incredibly, someone on the “libertas website” attacked “Juno” by suggesting the film should have portrayed a single mother as someone who died of a drug overdose for making “a bad moral choice.’

Right, if the kid gets an abortion, it’s liberal. If the kid carries the pregnancy to term with parental support and gives it away, it’s also liberal.

Conservative is a movie meant to scare people into not fucking outside of wedlock. And people will pay $7.50 to see it, also!

I take these guys seriously, as though their complaints somehow amounted to wanting something different on the movie screens…and they don’t.

I am truly irrational.

HUMOR: THE BOROWITZ REPORT ON GAS BAG HOLIDAYS

Obama Proposes Gas-bag Holiday
Prominent Gas-bags Oppose Plan

After a week in which a chorus of television pundits talked about the Rev. Wright controversy ad nauseam, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama introduced a proposal today to silence such repetitious discussions.

“I am proposing a gas-bag holiday,” Sen. Obama told a capacity crowd in Indianapolis. “Under my plan, all gas-bags would go on vacation until the second week of November.”

Some observers called the Illinois senator’s plan a shrewd one since, in addition to the pundits, it seemed guaranteed to sideline the Rev, Wright himself for the next four months.

But within minutes of floating the idea of the gas-bag holiday, Sen. Obama came under fire from several prominent gas-bags, including MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

“This whole gas-bag holiday thing raises two important questions: how much has the Rev. Wright controversy hurt Barack Obama?” he said. “Also, how much has the Rev. Wright controversy hurt Barack Obama?”

WATCH: YouTube - “‘Charlie Rose’ by Samuel Beckett”

PALESTINIAN CHILDREN

Stopped in last night at a UN photo exhibit or Palestinian children sponsored by UNRWA, the agency that works with 4.4 million refugees providing educational and other programs, The program has been going for nearly 60 years and is short of funds and pressed by continuing crisis especially in Gaza where unemployment and poverty has doubled and is now the at one of the highest levels in the world .

They have issued an emergency appeal and set up a Friends of UNWRA organization led by former US Ambassador Richard Murphy. I met UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who called the situation “unacceptable” A good choice of words but the similar things have been said for decades with little action. On the way up to the reception in an excruciatlingly slow elevator, I quipped to an Ambassador who was riding with me, that the elevator was moving at the pace of the Middle East peace progress. I thought I was clever. The Ambassador was smarter. He said: “At least it is moving,” he said.

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