Apple's Steve Jobs Praised Indy Media

In his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford, Steve Jobs praised The Whole Earth Catalog, an independent publication that had a big influence on him.

Obama Appoints Corporate Lobbyist to Head the FCC

The Federal Communications Commission is supposed to protect the public interest by regulating the media and telecommunications industries, but Obama has just appointed a former top lobbyist for the cable TV and cell phone industries as his FCC chair. Thank you, Mr. President, for change we can believe in.

Boston Bombing/ Media Meltdown

Memo to Journalism Students: This is what you should NOT do.  (H/t Karly)   Here's Mother Jones doing what it does very well: correcting mainstream media errors. (H/t Megan)

Rush to Misjudgement on Boston Marathon Story

Democracy Now! reports.

Public Access TV Channels . . .

...have offered diverse and local voices, launched careers, and led to Saturday Night Live spoofs from Mike Myers -- such as "Wayne's World" and "Coffee Talk with Linda Richman."

Why don't we have independent public TV like this in US?

Weeks before the Iraq invasion, the BBC's Jeremy Paxman and skeptical British citizens literally cross-examined Prime Minister Tony Blair about evidence/reasons/legality behind the invasion -- an interview whose transcript and Blair's comments became part of Britain's official Iraq inquiry in 2011. (Here's another tough Paxman interview of Blair . . . having nothing to do with Iraq.)

In our country, bullying from politicians + lack of insulated funding = embarrassing timidity at so-called "public television"...as evidenced by PBS surgically removing Tina Fey's comedic swipes at Sarah Palin from a broadcast in November 2010.

Country by country comparisons of spending on public broadcasting here. 

My column on media and militarism . . .

. . . generated nearly 1,000 comments on Huffington Post and a positive tweet from perhaps the greatest female tennis player ever.

Are we losing fast, open Internet in USA?

In recent studies, USA was behind other countries when it comes to access to broadband (15th place) and Internet speed  (23rd place).

There's a digital divide in our country whereby upper-middle-class kids grow up with fast Web-accessed computers at home, while kids in some rural areas and inner cities don't have fast Internet, or even computers.

In 2009, big Internet providers such as Verizon, Comcast, AT&T DID NOT APPLY for any of the billions in federal stimulus grants for expanding broadband infrastructure, according to the Wall St. Journal, because recipients of our tax money had to agree to respect Net Neutrality or Internet non-discrimination.

In August 2010, Keith Olbermann did a segment about Net Neutrality on his soon-to-end MSNBC show. Olbermann exited MSNBC as it was being taken over by Comcast, which lobbies against Net Neut. (Here's Jon Stewart's Net Neutrality segment from the same period.)

P.S. In January 2011, I was asked to appear on a talk-radio show on a big city station to analyze Oblermann's exit from MSNBC; when I suggested a link to the Comcast takeover and criticized Comcast's opposition to Net Neutrality, a producer asked me during a commercial break to stop the "Comcast-bashing" because "they're our biggest sponsor."

Did this blog inject distortions into mainstream media?

The late Andrew Breitbart, a former Drudge Report staffer, ran BigGovernment.com. In July 2010, the Obama White House fired US Dept of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod soon after BigGovernment posted a 100-second video excerpt purporting to show that, during a speech to the NAACP, Sherrod had boasted about discriminating against a white farmer while she was a federal employee during the Obama administration. Actually, as Breitbart later corrected, Sherrod was describing events in the 1980s when she was Georgia field director for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit that had grown out of the civil rights movement to help Black farmers. More importantly, a fuller version of the speech aired by CNN indicated that Sherrod told the story to illustrate how she had overcome her racial hostility toward whites and ultimately helped the white farmer save his farm.

Months earlier, other selectively-edited tapes distributed by BigGovernment.com (played repeatedly on Fox News and elsewhere) helped put the anti-poverty group ACORN out of business. Rachel Maddow dissects the distorted presentation that doomed ACORN. (Fox News had goaded others in media for not doing enough ACORN-smearing.)

It wasn't just Fox News that promoted BigGovernment.com's misleading ACORN story. The Public Editor of the paper of record, the New York Times, went to absurd lengths to defend his paper's inaccurate coverage

When Drudge posts "Exclusive," readers beware

Perhaps Matt Drudge should stick to aggregating content from elsewhere (often with revved-up headlines) rather than "report" -- as demonstrated by this 1999 "world exclusive," which helped push the story into some mainstream outlets.

And as demonstrated by his 2007 "exclusive" in which he accused CNN reporter Michael Ware of "heckling" Republican senators during a news conference in Iraq and "laughing and mocking their comments." Drudge's evidence-free charge -- based on an anonymous "official" -- was picked up by rightwing blogs and the Washington Times.

What I Learned in Denver . . .

 . . . at this weekend's National Conference on Media Reform: I've seen the media activism future and it's in the hands of young women and girls who are creatively challenging the sexism/sexualization (and ultimately, I hope, hyper-commercialism) of mainstream corporate media. For example, the activist youth group SPARK. Check out their "Seventeen/Teen Vogue Challenge" at their blog or one of their leaders (age 16 I think) explaining that challenge at  41:30 of this video of the final plenary session in Denver.  

Can bloggers/columnists with strong views . . .

. . . still engage in independent commentary -- as opposed to partisan propaganda? Here is some critical commentary from the conservative National Review Online within hours of John McCain selecting Sarah Palin as his running-mate in April 2008.

Undercover video-taping of farm animal abuse...

...has prompted food libel laws in a dozen states, aimed at protecting powerful agribusiness interests that apparently have much to hide. Here's a video report from U.C. Berkeley News21 students.

Election 2008: Mayhill Fowler's Citizen Journalism for HuffPost's "Off the Bus" Project

Mayhill Fowler says she didn't hide that she was recording ex-President Clinton's angry words ("sleazy" . . . "slimy" . . . "dishonest" . . . "scumbag") about a Vanity Fair reporter, while he greeted voters in public as he campaigned for his wife in June 2008. BUT Clinton obviously did not know Fowler was a HuffPost "citizen journalist." Should she have ID'd herself? (She clearly got a more honest take from Clinton than if he'd known she was a journalist.)

Shouldn't public figures know nowadays that anything said in public -- especially rants (or racism) -- will be recorded and available forever? Exhibits A and B.

Mayhill Fowler's earlier reporting scoop that launched "Bittergate" uproar. The Bittergate of 2012 campaign: "47%-gate." 

I.C. grad Kate Sheppard

Kate will soon be a guest speaker in class, discussing her career in independent media, including at Mother Jones.

Blogger Takes Ethical Action

Here's an example of a blogger acting professionally and ethically. Blogger Ken Krayeske -- who gained fame by questioning University of Connecticut's basketball coach about his huge taxpayer-paid salary -- announced in Oct. 2009 that he wouldn't be covering Hartford City Hall because his girlfriend had a job there. If he'd disclosed the relationship and kept covering City Hall, that  might have been sufficient from an ethical standpoint.

Jon Stewart's mock interview of Rupert Murdoch

Jon Stewart gently asks questions of Murdoch about "Murdochopoly." The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is even more deferential to Murdoch and other media moguls than Stewart.  (Remember: Many years ago, Murdoch famously said: "Monopoly is a terrible thing, until you have it.")

Indy musicians build following . . .

. . . through Facebook, reported NPR's Laura Sydell in 2010. The report discusses cellist Zoe Keating and singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.

Early You Tube Stars Get Big Bucks

What the Buck? Here's Michael Buckley's "My You Tube Story." According to a Dec, 2008 New York Times report, Buckley earned over $100k in the previous year (plus an HBO development deal) from his YouTube video-rants about celebs.

YouTube star Lisa Donovan or ""Lisa Nova"has talent for sketch comedy and parodies. Like Tina Fey, she liked to play Sarah Palin, including in this famous McCain/Palin rap. Now she heads a company that promotes hundreds of YouTube video producers.

Cory Williams and his smpFilms hit the bigtime with "Hey Little Sparta" (aka "The Mean Kitty Song" -- almost 70 million views). He told the NYT in 2008 that he was earning over $200k per year, partly from (ugh!) product placements in his videos.

For years, my 16-year-old daughter's favorite YouTube star and main source of daily news has been Philly D (of "The Philip DeFranco Show"), who offers his take on current events and celeb news. Should I have been monitoring my daughter's online activities better?

Become a YouTube Star and appear in a hugely popular music video with Weezer or the earlier one from Barenaked Ladies.

"Where the Hell is Matt?" became so popular, the guy has had his world travels paid by corporate sponsors for years.

Web Censorship/Persecution in China

After Yahoo provided info to China's government that led to the imprisoning of two Chinese dissidents in 2002 and 2004, the families of victims (Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao) sued Yahoo. As a result, Yahoo announced in 2008 that it was establishing a fund for people jailed in China for posting human rights views online. Too little, too late?

In response to demands from China's government, Google agreed in June 2010 to quit automatically switching its users in China to Google's uncensored Hong Kong search site. But there's a tab users can click to be switched. Should Chinese citizens feel safe to hit that tab?