Well Connected
Submitted by Laura Miller on
A new project by the Center for Public Integrity takes a close look at the telecommunications industry and its regulatory body, the Federal Communications Commission.
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Media
The Media Monopoly
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"A majority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intends to
ratify a sweeping plan to weaken or eliminate rules that limit the size
and power of media companies," media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting writes. Among other things, the changes would allow a company to own a newspaper and
a TV station in the same market, and would significantly increase the number
of TV stations one company can own. The FCC is scheduled to vote June 2 on the proposal.
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Defense Contractor 'Re-establishes' Iraq's Media
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"US efforts to re-establish Iraq's media hit a milestone last week as defense contractor Scientific Applications International (SAI) rolled out the country's first post-Saddam newspaper and original TV news program," PR Week reports. "The 30-minute nightly news show, staffed by Iraqi journalists formerly in exile, reportedly addresses concerns about electricity, water, and lawlessness in the region. The twice-weekly newspaper, al Sabah ("the Dawn"), began printing on Thursday with an initial run
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Two Wars In Iraq
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"There must have been two wars in Iraq. There was the war I saw and wrote about as a print journalist embedded with a tank company of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized). Then there was the war that many Americans saw, or wanted to see, on TV," writes Ron Martz , a former Marine and military-affairs reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I saw and wrote about a war that was confusing and chaotic, as are all wars. It was a war in which plans and missions changed almost daily - and on one occasion changed three times in an hour.
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Press Not Ready to Cover Our Own Gaza
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Now that the feel-good, flag-waving part of war is over, the real culprits, the commercial-broadcast media, are going to pack up and leave," says longtime war correspondent Chris Hedges. "What they've done is a huge disservice to the nation. They have no sense of responsibility to continue reporting as the story gets more complicated and difficult to report." The result, he fears, is that "we'll see Iraq in terms of flare-ups and incidents, without any context or sense of what's happening or why. That makes it difficult for us to have informed judgments."
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Big Media Have No Incentive Not To Please Party In Power
Submitted by Laura Miller on
The proposal to change the FCC's media ownership regulations "may be summarized as a plan to let the bigger fish eat more of the smaller fish," the New York Times Paul Krugman writes. Krugman warns of the danger of quid pro quos between the administration and big media.
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The Blair Affair
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The New York Times has published a detailed account of the deceptions perpetrated by African-American reporter Jayson Blair, who plagiarized other journalists' work and fabricated details of stories about topics including the DC sniper and the war in Iraq. The Blair scandal has prompted speculation that affirmative action got him special newsroom treatment on account of his race.
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The War, As Told To Us
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Washington has constructed a simple, heroic narrative of freedom and asked us to ignore the much messier human devastation and tragedies of this war," novelist Diana Abu-Jaber writes in the Washington Post of the U.S. war on Iraq. "There are angry outbursts against America across the Middle East, and most Americans have almost no idea why. ... Our news programming has been instrumental in the marketing of this war. ...
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Salam Pax Back in Iraq
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
At the beginning of the war, an anonymous Iraqi calling himself "Salam Pax" was weblogging from Baghdad. The postings stopped for several weeks, but now he is back online, with a backlog of street-level stories about the war and its aftermath. "War sucks big time," he says. "Don't let yourself ever be talked into having one waged in the name of your freedom.
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Campus Ink Tanks
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
At the Jesse Helms Center in North Carolina, more than a dozen earnest college students gathered for training in how to start their own conservative newspapers and opinion journals and how to pick fights with lefty bogeymen on the faculty and in student government. "By the end of the day, the student journalists were fired up for battle," writes John Johnson, "determined not only to change the tenor of notoriously liberal campus dialogues, but also, in the long run, to alter the basic makeup of the nation's professional news outlets. ...
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