j_b

what straw men? I fail to see any straw men in what prole said for he described very well what has been JayB's rhetoric.

It isn't an excuse but the understanding that control of the means to convey information to the public is part of the commons because of its critical importance toward enabling democratic participation of citizenry to the political process. It being called CABLE is a in great part a misnomer as shown by satellite dish reception, or the fact that hardwired cable isn't even the most desirable technology: generalization of wireless would be much cheaper and free us from wired cable monopolies, which explains in part why wired cable monopolies are fighting tooth and nail against community sponsored wireless.

Drowning Out the Noise Machine by Megan Tady Journalism is breaking my heart. Or should I say, “journalism.” Hate-mongering media extremists have captured our news networks and are using the public’s platform – our airwaves – to pick off progressive leaders like Van Jones and misinform the American people. Nothing new there, of course. But it’s especially outrageous that the same networks that didn’t challenge the rush to war with Iraq and Afghanistan now host right-wing talking heads suspicious of healthcare reform who help spread absurd lies about “death panels.” Fox news anchors prompt “tea party” crowds to cheer on camera to dramatize a reporter’s live feed, and CNN routinely airs a program with Lou Dobbs that vilely attacks immigrants night after night. In the meantime, “moderate” voices in the media are mostly silent and fail to properly cover this insanity or simply tell the truth on the nightly news. Print media routinely report on TV’s faux news segments, adding legitimacy to propaganda. New target: media diversity and localism Since their success ousting Van Jones—who was President Obama’s Special Adviser for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality—media hacks like Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly are turning their attention to another “enemy of America”—media diversity and localism. Yes, you read that correctly. They’re now targeting Mark Lloyd, the FCC’s new chief diversity officer, by claiming that Lloyd has a secret plan to take over the airwaves. Lloyd’s real goal: making sure that that news actually reflects the issues that affect local communities. It’s the kind of overhaul we drastically need in a country dominated by a media elite. This goal is actually the cornerstone of communications policy in the United States. The Communication Act of 1934 mandates the FCC to promote localism, diversity and competition in media. What’s new here is that the FCC is finally willing to pursue this policy. According to Media Matters, Beck has targeted Lloyd in at least 10 Fox News programs since August 14. Early this month, he asked his Twitter followers to “[f]ind everything you can” about Lloyd. This smear campaign is supposed to make us think that more voices in the media, more coverage of the local issues we care about, is actually bad for us. “They’re trying to do this back-door route with diversity… to shut you up by shutting us down,” Limbaugh told his listeners. People like Limbaugh want us to think Lloyd is part of a plot to kick conservatives off the air, even though conservative talk radio accounts for 91 percent of all talk radio programming produced by the five largest media companies. Print media have latched onto this “story” like a barnacle. Too serious to ignore If Bill O’Reilly has ever said anything true, it is this sentence from a mid-September broadcast: “Fox News and talk radio are now setting the [national] conversation.” Civil rights and public interest groups across the country are now pushing back. The organization ColorofChange.org has started a campaign to get advertisers to abandon Beck’s show. Nearly 300,000 people have signed a letter to advertisers, and 62 companies have now pulled their business. Dozens of mostly Latino organizations have joined a campaign at BastaDobbs.com, which calls on CNN to get rid of Dobbs. And more than fifty groups have signed a letter to the FCC asking the agency to stand in support of Lloyd and media diversity and localism. (Full disclosure: The letter was produced by Free Press, the nonprofit organization where I work.) But these efforts aren’t enough. We need an all-out grassroots movement to create systemic change in our media system. Here’s how you can fight back: 1. Increase your support of independent media and public media to extend the reach of news outlets offering true investigative reporting and thoughtful discourse. 2. Help secure Net Neutrality to safeguard Internet freedom. We can’t let corporations control the only platform on which everyone’s voices can be heard equally. 3. Become the media: join local news ventures in your community. 4. Call on Congress and Obama to adopt a national journalism strategy and offer policies that create new ownership structures, a journalism jobs program and increased funding for new public media. The answer isn’t censoring people like Beck–it’s more speech, more voices and more opportunity. If we can’t take away Beck’s megaphone, we’ll have to drown it out.

adding 'histrionically' to your sentence isn't going to give it any greater meaning. here is your problem, you appear to think that porn watching and playing video games (and whatever other procrastinating) on the internet amounts to being informed. Democracy is much older than the phonograph so you better update your would-be demeaning imagery. I am not expecting warmongers and fearmongers to agree that corporate media propaganda is the antithesis of democracy. After all what would they be left with if they couldn't manipulate the public into buying their snake oil.

independent/public media are a "gaggle of leftists"? why do you keep thinking your rhetorical fallacies will go unnoticed? hmm, nope. You'll find that an informed public being essential to democracy is a widely shared concept and definitely not an obsolete, moth-eaten vision despite your irrational hatred of what the 60's brought to western democracies. For all your attempts at appearing as a tolerant, freedom loving type, the vision that emerges from your rhetoric is very bleak.

Faulty logic. Having the fox in charge of the hen house doesn't imply that we don't need a hen house or rules to decide who gets to patrol the hen house.

what are you trying to say? that it takes longer than a ~decade for monopolies to evolve in completely new economic sectors like internet based activities? is that supposed to be a revelation?

Beside snipers, the Finns also have among the best performing education system in the world: "The Finnish education system is an egalitarian Nordic system, with no tuition fees for full-time students. Attendance is compulsory for nine years starting at age seven, and free meals are served to pupils at primary and secondary levels, where the pupils go to their local school. In the OECD's international assessment of student performance, PISA, Finland has consistently been among the highest scorers worldwide; in 2006 Finnish 15-year-olds came first in science and second in mathematics and reading literacy, in 2003 Finnish came first in reading literacy, mathematics, and science, while placing second in problem solving. In tertiary education, the World Economic Forum ranks Finland #1 in the world in enrollment and quality and #2 in maths and science education." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland

classic anti-intellectual demagoguery. If you were better informed, you'd know that independent/public productions and media are immensely popular where they are properly funded. I'll just let you ponder the example of the BBC. as if it was needed to prove that today, corporations control politicians and policy. We have seen 100's of examples over the last few years and I have yet to read you contest any of it. Until then, you denial that corporate power is unchecked is mildly amusing, if not tragic.

and Perhaps, some day you'll explain to us how you get to prohibition, banning and manufacturing obedience when people are talking about diversity and independence. Especially since loss of freedom occurs as surely through corporate hegemony as it would though direct government control as is very apparent today (fact that you have yet to acknowledge). You seem to operate in a manichean world where there is no alternative to corporate and/or government oppression. The claim in bold is fascinating, and I hope that you'll expand on it at length. Choose your favorite corporate hegemon (Starbucks?) and take it from there. shouldn't you first explain "how you get to prohibition, banning and manufacturing obedience when people are talking about diversity and independence". Because handing out assignments is fine but you shouldn't forget to turn in your copy as well when requested.

Diversity is part of the mission of the FCC: "The Nation's media regulations must promote competition and diversity and facilitate the transition to digital modes of delivery" what is it that so difficult to understand about promoting diversity in media coverage? or are you just splitting hair? I am guessing the later.

alright, well this hardly sounds insane - good luck getting the funding though, as you know pbs makes the conservos insane That was before they got what they wanted (even if they still like to rant about "big government": "A new study of news and public affairs programming on PBS stations has found that the voice of business is much louder than all others -- a troubling finding for a broadcast system established to "provide a voice for groups that may otherwise be unheard." Four years after Congressional leaders failed to "zero out" public TV, the study suggests that the cost of survival has been increasing commercialism, a persistent elite bias and the marginalization of many of the groups in society that the system was intended to serve." http://www.fair.org/press-releases/pbs-release.html (and matters have gotten worse since the study) why? government broke up radio, RCA, prevented ITT from buying ABC, broke up movie studios from theater chains, ... all in order to maintain diversity and independence of the media from corporate interests. Concentration across multiple media is a lot worse today than it ever was. What has changed that we shouldn't break up monopolies that control public discourse and most cultural production? it doesn't have to be and is likely the result of underfunding. Many public TV channels in other countries produce quality programming.

It sounds like you were on Giant's Tears. The first pitch is 10+ or .10 A0 (reason for the 2 closely placed bolts). Stellar climbing but the 30+ year old 1/4 inchers are likely scarier today. You were about one pitch away from the blue crack pitch on Dreamer when you bailed.

The most amazing part of that rhetorical trick is that it seems to work: rattle the big government puppet when people question corporate control of our lives and somehow, corporate over-reach becomes acceptable? wtf ...

and Perhaps, some day you'll explain to us how you get to prohibition, banning and manufacturing obedience when people are talking about diversity and independence. Especially since loss of freedom occurs as surely through corporate hegemony as it would though direct government control as is very apparent today (fact that you have yet to acknowledge). You seem to operate in a manichean world where there is no alternative to corporate and/or government oppression.

i do want to understand your argument - are you just saying you want the goverment to pick up the tab for more cspan/pbs type channels and have some democratic body for determining their content? The array of public media could clearly be expanded either through entire channels or time slots on private channel in exchange for free use of the broadcast band. If the brits can afford 8 BBC channels, I wager we can do a little better than we are currently especially since PBS is quite stogy and something racier should be available for the younger crowd. No need for additional institutions to decide content, just make sure journos and producers are truly independent.

then don't buy from those corporations, silly. everyone knows it's the consumer who's in charge. I can't tell if you are being serious but I very rarely watch TV news. In fact, I have been boycotting most things corporate for decades. Yet corporate power has never been greater, which points to some short-coming in your reasoning: people will keep watching TV so you have to make good TV to reach them. classic.

It's more than a bit strange that these corporate media oligopolies have seemed to have so little interest in using the uncheckable array of powers at their disposal to manipulate the public into consuming enough of the print media that they generate to allow the said media outlets to stay in business. Seems like if they can subvert the "public interest" at will and subvert it to their own ends that'd be job one. You are confusing medium and content. Nobody is going to be able to change the fact that print media is becoming obsolete because other media have taken its market share (and the complementary media to print media, the internet, isn't really profitable) and, to a lesser extent because it lost credibility with the very population likely to keep buying print media (people serious about news). Murdoch may still purchase newspapers but it is probably not with the goal of making them very profitable, as shown by the ~40 million dollars he has sunk in the New York Post over the last few decades, but rather with the idea of cornering his competitors such as the NYT.

Enough straw men for many cornfields in the last page. I still fail to see how providing all the relevant information so that the public is informed is a nebulous concept. The news of the day (including all the relevant facts) and the important issues that analysts should discuss in any given period is a very tangible concept and not very subjective. Nobody wants to take Murdoch's free speech away but many want to take away his ability to manipulate the flow of information over so much bandwith. Wealth shouldn't confer such a disproportionate ability to model public discourse. It is imo a basic tenet of representative democracy. I find it rather amazing and quite sad that people would willingly settle for corporations to determine what citizen should and shouldn't know.

Fell free to simply write "as usual". The per you like to add in each and every reply might make you feel like a thoughtful and reflective academic, but it also makes you appear an intellectual poseur. another content free post ...

The public interest isn't nebulous. It is to be informed so that democracy be possible and it is best served by diversity of speech and ownership, not by media consolidation and oligopolies that serve only the interest of corporations as can be observed routinely in today's media. Are you suggesting that private motives, those of Mr Murdoch for example, don't supersede the public interest today?

You are lying as per usual. I never said I wanted government control over free speech. I said that I wanted government to apply existing anti-trust laws and to prevent consolidations, as they were before Reagan came around, to promote diversity and prevent the corporate media from controlling the flow of information as well as framing the issues. Besides gratuitous affirmations (usually false), you certainly don't contribute much to these discussions.

False accusations as per usual. Do you expect anyone reading spray regularly to not notice that you are a liar?

Jefferson was well aware of what corporations could do if given the chance: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." You are mistaken about me: even if my cultural upbringing is different, I don't think average folks are necessarily more sheepish than cultural elites. In fact, it seems to me that in most cultures, common folks have a much reasonable picture of reality.

The control of the flow of information and mass culture by corporate oligopolies would be at the very top of his list IMO. THE major invention of the 20th century was TV. Nothing has done more to change the way so many people perceive reality.