Margaret Sanger

Sanger is proof that media heroes are sometimes flawed. This article from Women's E-News discusses her flirtation with racist (eugenics-oriented) arguments in support of birth control.

Dinner with Amy Goodman

In the early 1900s, the socialist Appeal to Reason newspaper offered yachts, fruit farms and motorcycles as premiums to bring in revenue and subscriptions. Democracy Now! offers Dinner and a Show with Amy Goodman.

After meeting Amy at a dinner party, Regis and his sidekick acknowledge that their Regis and Kelly TV show is about "nothing."

Today's Upton Sinclair -- Is It Steve Colbert?

Stephen Colbert accepted the challenge of experiencing difficult working conditions. Here he is doing farm labor.

Students today carry on Ida B. Wells' legacy

In last dozen years, Northwestern University journalism students and their professor have been instrumental in proving the innocence of many prisoners in Illinois, several of whom had been sentenced to death. Their investigative journalism sparked the ending of the death penalty in Illinois

Lynching prompted the classic Billie Holiday song,"Strange Fruit," which she recorded in 1939 over the objections of her record company: "Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." The song's lyrics were inspired by this photograph. Time magazine denounced the song as "musical propaganda."

Journalists Re-fight Old Battles

Sometimes journalism can help expose a problem -- like the jailing of people simply for being in debt -- thereby leading to reform. But other journalists -- years or generations later -- may have to keep exposing the issue...as these investigative journalists for the big mainstream daily in Minneapolis recently did.

"It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found."

I.F. Stone pointed out that some reforms don't happen except through the work of generations of journalists and democracy activists:

“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it.”

Early Indy Newspapers -- Not Very Reader-Friendly

See crowded layout of William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist publication, The Liberator, here and here. Not exactly HuffingtonPost. No half-naked actors. Cady Stanton's/Anthony's feminist publication, The Revolution, was almost as dense.

Content was king (or queen) back then.

Did you hear that sports blog are ruining sports journalism?

That was argued by traditional sports newspaper journalist Buzz Bissinger in a loud 2008 debate with Will Leitch, the founder of Deadspin.com, a sometimes out-of-bounds sports blog/website.

Formulaic News

Independent outlets sometimes offer not just different substance, but different forms of presentation. Mainstream TV news reports, which are often formulaic and cliched, are lampooned in this video from the BBC's Charlie Brooker. 

Ida B. Wells High School, San Francisco

How many newspaper editors who ignored or apologized for racist lynchings have schools named after them? Ida B. Wells High School is in San Francisco (just across the park from the famous "painted ladies" Victorian mansions.)

AOL's Journalistic Values

Soon after AOL announced its merger with HuffingtonPost in February, 2011 the Boston Globe published leaked AOL documents offering a glimpse into that company's journalistic approach -- not one that Arianna Huffington would endorse. (H/t to former indy media student Leah T, for summarizing the Globe piece.)

Internet Hoax

Question: Are younger educated people who were raised on the Internet LESS likely to be taken in by hoax emails such as Obama as "radical Muslim" than Jon Stewart's 80-year-old aunt?

Miss Representation

A 2011 documentary about sexism in media. 

Interracial Marriages -- Language Gap

Interesting article from Voices on NY.

Is our media system failing U.S. democracy?

A 2008 academic study compared the level of public knowledge about current events in Denmark, Finland, England and the U.S. It found that the countries with TV/radio dominated by public broadcasting -- Denmark and Finland -- were the best informed. Our country, dominated by corporate commercial media, was the least informed. The study's authors suggest that differing media systems play a role in those results.

A 2003 study of U.S. public knowledge of facts related to the Iraq War found that misperceptions were greatest among those whose primary info source was Fox News -- and least among those whose primary info source was public broadcasting. (A Pew poll taken in Aug. 2010 found that almost 1 in 5 Americans believed President Obama to be a Muslim; only 34% knew he is a Christian. 43% chose "don't know.")

Night(mare) in Tunisia for Longtime Dictator

Tunisia is a Mediterranean country in North Africa.  Back in 2007, Tunisian citizen-journalists and bloggers had documented the tourism/shopping sprees of the dictator's wife aboard the presidential plane to Europe and global fashion capitals. (H/t Global Voices)

In 2010, the TuniLeaks website was set up to post (WikiLeaks-released) U.S. Embassy and State Department documents candidly describing the Tunisia dictatorship.

Fascinating photo of dictator Ben Ali visiting the hospital bed of the desperate young man who set himself on fire in Dec. 2010 -- the young man didn't live long enough to learn that his act led to the overthrow of Ben Ali after nonviolent protests.

Amid the protests, Tunisian rapper El General put out this widely-circulated music video attacking Ben Ali and urging folks to join the protests. El General was arrested for it. Soon after, the dictator fled. (H/t to Steve Zunes.)

Dizzy Gillespie performs his classic jazz tune "Night in Tunisia," first recorded in 1944.

Mexico's "Yo Soy 132" Youth Movement

This Net-savvy movement didn't alter the outcome of Mexico's July, 2012 presidential election (the candidate allegedly being "imposed" by the two dominant TV networks won), but the student activists had impact.  Al Jazeera English reports on the historic presidential debate set up by Yo Soy 132 -- and this YouTube video ignited the movement.

Global Voices Online

Global Voices is a community of more than 500 bloggers and translators around the world who publish reports from blogs and citizen media, emphasizing "voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media."

This 2011 post features short videos from a competition on gender equality in the Ukraine.

This 2010 post features a public protest by a brave professor and blogger in China, offering himself as a slave.

Blogging and video for human rights

Vancouver Film School students created an inspiring video, "Iran, A Nation of Bloggers," and put it online months before the tech-fueled protests over Iran's disputed 2009 election.

Launched in 1992 with the help of musician Peter Gabriel, the nonprofit Witness.org began distributing video cameras in hopes of minimizing human rights abuses. Their slogan: "See it. Film it. Change it."
 

President Caught on Video: "Get Lost, You A*#hole"

Then-President of France Nicolas Sarkozy caught on video in 2008 calling a disgruntled citizen an "idiot" or "a**hole" (depending on translation). French politicians are having difficulty tolerating the scrutiny from new more aggressive online media (including online video) -- especially compared to deferential coverage they're accustomed to from traditional media.

One of our former presidents -- then governor of Texas -- caught on video.

Police murder of 28-year-old sparks Egypt uprising

In June, 2010, Khaled Said was beaten to death by police in public for the crime of Internet use and, apparently, exposing police corruption. His martyrdom inspired protests and Internet organizing that led to the uprising six months later that ended the Mubarak dictatorship. Middle East-based Google exec and activist Wael Ghonim set up the powerful Facebook page "We Are All Khaled Said." That's one Google executive at least who didn't "do evil.")

Egyptian bloggers/Net activists paved the way for uprising

With the Mubarak dictatorship in control of all major media in Egypt, brave Egyptian "citizen journalists" risked imprisonment and torture to blog or tweet about human rights abuses. Here's renowned Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas interviewed on BBC. Over the years, Abbas was harassed, censored and assaulted by authorities -- and was briefly detained during the uprising early in 2011.

P.S. Sharif Abdel Kouddous covered the 18-day uprising last year for Democracy Now!, and he was the central character in an HBO documentary about the Egyptian revolution. For his work in Egypt, he received last year's Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media.

Amatuer Videographer. . .

. . . vividly (and inadvertently) captures a bomb explosion in Syria.

Upworthy?

Upworthy.com is big on social/political advocacy that can be made more viral or shareable through clever headlines and visuals or video, like this one on gay rights and this one on advertising/media impact on girls.

News vs. Advertising

As a U.S. newspaper publisher said many decades ago: "News is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising.”

The WikiLeaks Controversy

Blogger Glenn Greenwald (a WikiLeaks supporter) explains independent journalism to CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin. WikiLeaks website is here. This leaked video (with more than 13 million YouTube views) shows the killing of employees of the Reuters news agency and wounding of children by US attack helicopters in Iraq. Photo above was taken last August when I visited the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where WikiLeaks' founder currently resides.

Local Nonprofit Watchdog News Sites

As dailies have shrunk, local online nonprofit news sites have sprouted, such as the well-funded VoiceofSanDiego.org and the professionally-staffed MinnPost.com ("a thoughtful approach to news"). Across the country, local watchdog outlets try to survive, reports Jodi Enda in American Journalism Review.

Glenn Greenwald & Amy Goodman: Winners of Inaugural Izzy Award (2009)

Soon after accepting their Izzy Awards in Ithaca, NY in March 2009, Greenwald and Goodman spoke about independent media on public TV's Bill Moyers' Journal.

News 21: Student Journalism, Multimedia Presentation

News 21 is a well-funded student journalism outlet (launched by two big foundations) that emphasizes in-depth reporting and multimedia presentation. Journalists at participating campuses investigated broad areas: for example, Univ of Southern California(USC)/money in politics;Syracuse/Latinos in Pennsylvania; UC Berkeley/food safety.