Be The Media

BE THE MEDIA's David Mathison presenting at "Sharing the News: Reaching Students, Training Citizens" (6/28/2008)

On Saturday, June 28 , the New England News Forum will present a unique, one-day workshop entitled "Sharing the News: Fresh Approaches to Reaching Students and Training Citizens."

The colloquium is aimed at updating teachers, advisors, professors, editors, bloggers, and citizen journalists on cutting edge methods of promulgating the news.

It will take place from 9AM to 4PM in the Alumni Library in the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. A detailed program and information on registration for the event can be found here.

David Mathison, compiler of BE THE MEDIA, will open the session at 9:30AM. His fellow speakers include:

• Doug McGill, former foreign correspondent and business writer for The New York Times and current teacher at Carleton College
• Wayne Sutton, community content manager for MyNC.com, a hyper-local news website produced by WNCN, Channel 17, the NBC television affiliate serving Raleigh-Durham, NC
• Leonard Witt, professor at Kennesaw State University; head of the Representative Journalism Project
• Howard Schneider, former editor of Newsday, the Long Island daily; founding dean of the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University, Long Island
• Helen Smith, executive director of the New England Scholastic Press Association

An article from the Daily News Tribune summarizing the workshop can be found here.

Register today and we will see you on Saturday!

Want to learn more about becoming a citizen journalist?
See chapter 14 (We Media) of BE THE MEDIA:

BE THE MEDIA to co-sponsor NewsTools 2008 at Yahoo!

Journalism's ideals meet Silicon Valley's tools in a three-day, conceptual mashup for journalists, technologists, and entrepreneurs.

The organizing question is "What can we create at the intersection of journalism and technology to support the well-being of democracy?"

BE THE MEDIA is a co-sponsor of the conference, providing stipends to a handful of journalism and communications students in a "BE THE MEDIA Fellows" program.

The NewsTools unconference is facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin. Participants create their own agenda - inventing, sharing, and pursuing ideas, projects, systems, or solutions for sustaining journalism that matters in a connected world.

JOURNALISM THAT MATTERS is a think tank for the future of journalism that hosts conversations with a purpose. According to their site, "The point is to recommit journalism to what is fundamental for connecting news with its audience so that it serves and sustains us."

Want to learn more about becoming a citizen journalist?
See chapter 14 (We Media) of BE THE MEDIA:

We Media Miami: February 26-28, 2008

We Media connects individuals and organizations from across industries who believe the power of media, communication and human ingenuity should be applied to innovate in business AND to make the world better through media.

Overview here. Register here. See you there.

Josh Wolf refuses to testify, jailed for contempt

Josh Wolf is an independent journalist and blogger. He was held in contempt of court and jailed on August 1st for refusing to testify and turn over unpublished material to a Federal Grand Jury investigating a July, 2005, anti-G8 demonstration. SF Weekly has a pretty balanced article about his case here.

His friends and family have created a wiki page here to update the public on Josh's case. Please donate to Josh's legal fund. All funds raised will go to legal costs, his prison commissary fund and other basic necessities.

You can get more information here: http://joshwolf.net/grandjury/

First 'Crossfire' ... Now axe 'Reliable Sources'

By Christian Christensen in CommonDreams.org:

"The news that CNN is planning to axe "Crossfire" - discussed in a wonderful piece by Frank Rich - is long overdue. For those of us interested in seeing an end to vacuous punditry masquerading as serious journalism, CNN's "Reliable Sources" should be next on the chopping block.

The real problem with "Reliable Sources" is that it purports to be "critical" about the news business, all the while acting as a veiled cheerleader for a corporate media system that has surrendered to the Bush administration over everything from WMDs in Iraq to social security. The genius of the program is that it manages to give the impression of critique while staying completely milquetoast: the guests say how reporting was bad, how editors failed and generally give the news media a black eye. The logic of the system, however, is never questioned: critiques are almost always at the individual, not the systemic level. It is pre-packaged and commodified dissent."

All the President's newsmen

By Frank Rich in the New York Times:

"But perhaps the most fascinating Williams TV appearance took place in December 2003, the same month that he was first contracted by the government to receive his payoffs. At a time when no one in television news could get an interview with Dick Cheney, Mr. Williams, of all "journalists," was rewarded with an extended sit-down with the vice president for the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a nationwide owner of local stations affiliated with all the major networks. In that chat, Mr. Cheney criticized the press for its coverage of Halliburton and denounced "cheap shot journalism" in which "the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective."

This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.)

Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of "objective" news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry."

CBS vs. WMD

From Salon.com, by Eric Boehlert:

"Monday saw the long-awaited verdict for "60 Minutes Wednesday" and its famous on-air star Dan Rather, who was part of the airing of a poorly sourced report about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Then on Wednesday came word that the exhaustive search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had come to an official and quiet close, without any proof to support Bush's claim of an ominous stockpile. Both reports painted unpleasant portraits of the central parties involved and raised serious questions about their professional judgment. Which one garnered more press coverage? The one about the guy who reads the news on TV."

"The Times' restraint certainly undercuts a wider accusation, which surrounds the CBS debacle, that the mainstream media has a liberal bias and is out to get the Bush White House. "You could make the argument that the Times leans to the left," says Royhab in Toledo. "And you would think they might put [the WMD story] on Page 1 as a major administration failure."

Instead the Times, like so many others this week, chose to dwell on the scandal story about a newsroom, not the war room."

Pundits race to the bottom

by Eric Alterman in The Nation:

"The Williams episode also raises the question of how many other conservative propagandists are on the receiving end of administration payola. We know that local TV stations have shown the administration's fake news reports, distributed by CNN and featuring Karen Ryan, to promote its lousy new Medicare law. The Office of National Drug Control Policy used the same tactic to help stations fool viewers with illegal "covert propaganda" programs, according to the GAO. The revelation of these tactics forced CNN to change its policies to disallow their use. Good for them. And good for them for canning Crossfire. But what, for goodness' sake, Mr. Klein, about Novak?"

Reuters says US workers in 1 day byline strike

From Dow Jones News Wire:

"Reuters Group PLC's U.S. journalists, working without a contract for nearly two years, are holding a one-day byline strike Thursday to protest demands for economic concessions in current contract talks as well as management moves to export editorial jobs to low-wage countries.

In a press release Thursday, the Newspaper Guild of New York said the action was taken by more than 350 editorial employees.

The union said Reuters became the first major news organization to try to cover Wall Street from India last year when editorial managers started replacing their work force in the U.S. and London with "cheaper, far less experienced journalists in Bangalore."

Media manipulation: Armstrong Williams payoff tip of iceberg

From Pacific News Service:

"There can be no defense of syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams' disgraceful grab of public money from the Education Department to tout President Bush's No Child Left Behind law while posing as an objective journalist. But focusing on one man's ethics disaster misses the larger and more important story of the Bush administration's pattern of placing propaganda in U.S. news media.

Williams' contract was part of a $1 million Education Dept. deal with public relations giant Ketchum that produced "video news releases" designed to look like news reports. Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services hired Ketchum to produce videos touting the administration's controversial Medicare plans, also disguised as news segments. Many stations aired the spots with no explanation to viewers that they were watching government propaganda. The Government Accounting Office called the use of taxpayer money for the project illegal, but did not require that the money be repaid."

If Congressional Democrats are as outraged as they say they are about William's media machinations, they will demand that Williams repay the money, (he says he won't), that Bush prohibit government agencies from paying journalists for faking news about their programs, and ferret out any other journalists that have shilled for government agencies."