Glenn Greenwald Video

Thanks to Chris L, we put together a Glenn Greenwald reel for Izzy Award ceremony, with its world premiere on this blog.

P.O'd Travelers Mad as Hell...

and blogging about it, and getting results. (H/t to Kristin C.)

Big Media Hall of Shame

2008 contest for worst behaving, greediest or most freedom-abridging media/telecom corporation, according to 2008 video produced by media reform group Free Press.

Victims of web censorship

Inner City Press, a monitor of Wall St. and the U.N., temporarily delisted from Google News.

Wikileaks.org, which posts documents leaked by whistle-blowers inside repressive countries, institutions or corporations, ordered to be shut down (ineffectively) by a federal judge's order, after complaint from none other than a Cayman Islands bank! The judge removed his order after 10 days.

Why some politicans dislike "Trackers"

"Macaca": The video that helped end a political career. This obscure racial slur made by incumbent Senator George Allen (R-VA) -- and its posting on You Tube -- may well have decided that extremely close 2006 Senate race, and which party held the majority in the U.S. Senate.

Indy Journalists Detained/Arrested...

...at the site of the Republican National Convention in Minnesota last Sept.

DAYS BEFORE the beginning of the convention, members of the independent video group -- I witness -- were aggressively detained by St. Paul police, without a warrant.

During a street demonstration, Democracy Now! producer Nicole Salazar was roughly arrested, shoved into the pavement and bloodies, as she yelled out to the officer that she was PRESS, PRESS.

When Democracy Now! producer Amy Goodman went to inquire about two arrested producers, Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Amy herself was arrested...relatively peaceably. Amy was clearly a press person, credentials around her neck, being followed by a camera crew.

No space for these ads on My Space

CommonCause had trouble placing ads on My Space: This is the face of Big Media.

Google "Smart" Computers...

...placed a Kraft Foods ad on a neo-Nazi website, whiterevolution.com. (H/t to Chris L.) Was ad for white cheese spread or something?

Readers of "Alternative Weeklies"

...seem to be aging.

How to save journalism

In The Nation magazine, John Nichols and Robert McChesney put forward a $20 billion yearly "stimulus program" for journalism.
1) Eliminate postal rates for small periodicals.
2) Annual tax credit for people subscribing to dailies.
3) Fund student newspapers and broadcast stations in schools, colleges to connect young people and journalism.
4) Drastically expand funding of public and community broadcasting to $10 billion per year, equivalent on per capita basis, to what other democracies spend.

Blogger Access

Controversy over restrictions on bloggers, others, mainstream journalists at Minnesota state house.

Blogger Sam Stein, given access to White House, asks question of President Obama.

Jon Wiener...

...who writes about the chaining of "alternative weeklies," is a professor and indy journalist who has fought to unearth the FBI's covert campaign against John Lennon.

Report on "Alternative Weeklies"

Alternative weeklies, according to a 2007 report from Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Student Activism, Internet Era

In past decades, when college students "sat-in" or "occupied" a campus building in protest over this or that cause, their isolation inside the building gave their opponents an advantage in message control. A recent protest at the New School in NY City showed, according to an analyst at MediaChannel, that the Internet has totally changed the situation.

Website of "New School in Exile."

Internet Pioneer Kevin Kelly...

...is writing his new book "in public."

Mark Finkelstein

Mark blogs for Newsbusters, a conservative media criticism site, here.

And he has his own blog on political and media topics with posts like this.

Giant company on trial

Journalism and law students at University of Montana covering the trial of W.R. Grace.

Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks

Business Week on bloggers who are making it -- as of summer 2007.

What Journalists Can Learn from Jon Stewart

Philadelphia Daily News staffer and blogger Will Bunch on Jon Stewart's lambasting of CNBC's inaccurate reporting and lessons journalists can learn -- such as "great research trumps good access to the powerful." (H/t Josh M.)

Unsolicited tobacco company docs

Unsolicited, the University of California received incriminating internal documents showing Brown and Williamson tobacco company knew of the addictive effect of cigarettes/nicotine. For years, the company tried to prevent the documents from being made public, but the library prevailed. CBS News caved in 1995 when threatened with a lawsuit (see the movie The Insider) over some of this material.

Sean Penn's speech censored in Asia

Capitalist (Murdoch) and communist (China) TV networks censor Oscar speeches and images/references to gay rights, as HuffingtonPost journalist shows.

Why didn't any MSM reporter ask this Q?

Chris L. makes a strong point in his blog -- that an indy/gadfly/blogger who used a post-game news conference to question the Univ of Conn basketball coach about his $1.5 million state salary (at a time of salary cuts for others) generated a good bit of mainstream media coverage . . .after the expected MSM rumbling and ridicule aimed at the outsider. Never would have happened but for the gadfly in the room posing the difficult question.