Wisconsin Media Reform Tour Schedule
In just two weeks, I will be flying to Wisconsin to remind folks that We the People own the broadcast airwaves! Click here for the Schedule of Events.
No More Cheney Plame Games!
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has been making the rounds promoting a new book intended to rewrite the history of his role in the most failed and corrupt presidency, possibly ever.
Here are the facts: the Bush White House outed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson with the help of its close ally, the mainstream news media. Shame on them all.
This story is covered in its entirety in the documentary Broadcast Blues. Here's a 52 second clip:
Here are the facts: the Bush White House outed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson with the help of its close ally, the mainstream news media. Shame on them all.
This story is covered in its entirety in the documentary Broadcast Blues. Here's a 52 second clip:
Fairness Doctrine Demise Gives Rise to the Public Interest
August 25, 2011
But shed no tears: the FCC also made it clear that the broadcasters'
obligations to the "Public Interest" are alive and well!
It's Radio, Stupid! (Or is it Stupid Radio?)
July 26, 2011
Why has the Tea Party flourished? Why are people in the US grossly misinformed? Why can just a few run our country off the cliff?
The Right Wing hijacked Radio fifteen years ago; the effects are just now being completely felt.
Compare these maps representing numbers and sizes of "Conservative",
"Right Wing" radio stations and "Liberal" radio stations across the USA:
"Right Wing" radio stations and "Liberal" radio stations across the USA:
Then look at a map of the 2010 Midterm Election Results:
About 50 million Americans listen to Right Wing Talk Radio.
Now here's the SCARY part:
Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have far more reach on Radio than Fox News.
You won't believe it until you
See These Charts!
Now here's the SCARY part:
Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have far more reach on Radio than Fox News.
You won't believe it until you
See These Charts!
Radio is still the country's number one source of news and information,
but fewer than 10% of the country is able to hear any progressive talk radio.
Those who do tend to vote for more Democrats than those who do not.
How did this happen?
Media Reform Victory: People Win, Corporations Lose!
July 11, 2011
The Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia handed the
public a huge victory last Thursday, and giant corporations a rare loss,
in their decision [PDF]
on a case that (ironically enough, given the subject matter) most of
the public knew nothing about, but one which has the potential to
benefit real people with better quality news and information for decades
to come.
The case, Prometheus Radio Project v FCC, pitted "Citizen
Petitioners" who seek more persons owning local media outlets to ensure
diversity in viewpoints and news coverage, versus "Deregulatory
Petitioners" who want fewer persons (spell that "corporations") to own
local media outlets, and the publicly-owned broadcast airwaves that go
with them, in order to enhance their profits.
At stake were the rules determining how many local TV and radio
stations one company can own in a single market; whether a newspaper
owner can also own a TV or radio station in the same town; and how
broadcast ownership by minorities and women should be handled.
The Deregulators challenged the FCC's constitutional and legal
authority to set rules and restrictions on ownership of broadcast
spectrum licenses, while the Citizen Petitioners sought to protect the
FCC's authority, even while challenging a number of new rules the agency
speciously attempted to enact without appropriate public input.
Six attorneys representing Free Press, Media Alliance, The United
Church of Christ, and Prometheus Radio Project went up against 48
lawyers representing such corporate behemoths as Clear Channel, CBS,
Belo, FOX, Cox, Sinclair, Tribune, and Gannett, and groups including the
National Association of Broadcasters, plus another 8 attorneys for the
FCC and 5 more from the US Department of Justice. The case became a
classic David v. Goliath struggle.
The good news this time around, at least for the moment, David finally won one...
The case dealt with current ownership rules, as determined by the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC). There are a myriad of rules, among them these, which now allow
that one party may own no more than:
- two TV stations and six radio stations in the same market (or one and seven);
- three TV stations in large markets where 18 or more stations exist;
- up to eight radio stations in the same town.
The FCC is tasked with making sure the broadcast media --- via the
limited broadcast spectrum which is owned by we, the people --- serves
the public interest. Every four years, as required by the 1996
Telecommunications Act, the FCC must revisit the issue of public
interest in media ownership (the "Quadrennial Review.")
In 2003, the FCC Commissioners held public hearings on media
ownership, then essentially ignored what the public told them. The FCC,
chaired at the time by Republican Michael Powell, next laid out a group
of rules that put more broadcast media stations into fewer hands. The
public rose in protest (as covered in my 2009 documentary, Broadcast Blues.)
After Powell's hearings, Prometheus Radio went to court to challenge
the new rules. They won a Third Circuit Court ruling which found that
the FCC had not properly listened to the public and would need to start
from scratch.
So, four years later, from October 2006 to November 2007, the FCC,
this time under Republican chair Kevin Martin, once again held a series
of public hearings on media ownership, but in some cases, as the court
find this time around, they offered the public as little as 10 calendar
days notice before the meetings. Worse, as revealed during the trial,
the FCC actually buried studies with findings which undercut
their own advisement for relaxation of ownership rules. (An Inspector
General's report even found that the FCC had a research strategy
specifically designed to justify their preconceived goal: the repeal of
the newspaper-media cross-ownership rule.)
Then Martin, on November 13, 2007, just four days after the final public hearing, issued an Op-Ed in the New York Times
which outlined the newspaper/broadcast ownership rules he was
considering. Until then, neither the public --- nor even fellow FCC
commissioners --- knew what rules he was considering.
Déjà vu. Hold public hearings, then ignore the public. Just as Powell had done four years earlier.
L A Times Whitewash of Clarence Thomas
July 5, 2011
Sigh.
Did anyone read the puff piece David G. Savage wrote about Clarence Thomas for the L.A. Times last Saturday?
Savage writes that what defines Thomas' career is his tendency to go solo on his opinions, "a tendency that was almost certainly reinforced by his
bitter and ugly confirmation fight in the Senate..."
Uh huh. Opinions Thomas has written from the highest bench in our nation, opinions which Savage noted include prisoners having no
constitutional right to be protected from beatings by guards and teenagers
and students having no free-speech rights at all, stem from Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment, which were later proven to be more correct than false.
What Savage neglected to say - at all - is that Thomas' ethics are once again in question, so much so that the very rules about how Supreme Court Justices may conduct themselves are now under scrutiny. A bill called the "Supreme Court Transparency and Disclosure Act of 2011" (HR 862) is pending in the House of Representatives. In addition, a movement to impeach Thomas is gaining steam. You'd think an L.A. Times piece about Justice Thomas which was syndicated in many other papers nationwide would at least mention those facts.
It would be enlightening for readers to remember that Thomas neglected to disclose his wife Ginni's $680,000 income from the Heritage Foundation. (That was reported in January by L.A. Times writer Kim Geiger.) But how many connected those dots from reading the Savage piece? I, for one, would like to see mention of all relevant facts in one story.
What's keenly interesting is that both a Google search and an internal site search of the L.A.Times reveals the paper has never reported on how Thomas' friend, Harlan Crow, gave Thomas' wife, Ginny, $500,000 to form a Tea Party group to oppose President Obama's healthcare reform law. (An earlier piece co-written by Savage and Kathleen Hennessey does raise the topic, but does not cite the fact that Crow, a personal friend of Thomas, is the funder.) Crow is also reported to have given millions to a pet museum project of Thomas, as well as use of his private jet. Nor is it reported that Ginny engages in lobbying activities about healthcare issues without filing required disclosures.
So maybe you'd like to tell us "the rest of the story," David?
New York Times Issues PARTIAL Correction on Breitbart
July 1, 2011
As reported today in Bradblog.com, the New York Times public editor, responding to criticism from Brad Friedman, Media Matters and others about inaccuracies in last weekend's Jeremy W Peters' puff piece on Andrew Breitbart, has issued a partial correction, this about a videotape that Peters said showed NAACP members applauding former USDA official Shirley Sherrod when she talked about at first being reluctant to help a white farmer many years ago. (That Breitbart story, which blatantly misrepresented Sherrod's comments, forced Sherrod to resign her post. Sherrod has sued Breitbart for damaging her reputation.) New York Times Reporter Peters apparently didn't look at the video before reporting that tidbit, as it, in reality, showed no such thing. (Apparently words now go directly from the mouth of Andrew Breitbart directly onto the pages of the paper of record.)
But the Times has still not corrected its long ago misstatement that ACORN advised Breitbart protege James O'Keefe and his hidden camera partner Hannah Giles on how to evade taxes and conceal child prostitution. In point of fact, the video shows the opposite. Read the full story over at BradBlog.com .
But here's the takeaway: It was the New York Times misreporting that eventually brought the group ACORN down for no good reason, other than engaging in a political hatchet job.
What does the Times hope to gain? Access? An answer to cries of the "liberal" media?
It can't compare to what they've lost: credibilty, at a time when we need REAL journalism the most.
NYTimes on Breitbart: STILL getting the ACORN story wrong!
June 28, 2011
Wow. Little did I know as I followed Ryan Clayton with a camera as he confronted Andrew Breitbart at the recent NetRoots Nation conference in Minneapolis that New York Times Reporter Jeremy W. Peters was also there, doing an "expose" on the conservative provocateur.
(That's me, behind Ryan Clayton, in this Ben Garvin NYTimes photo, camera in hand.)
But in what has become a disturbing pattern at the so called "Paper of Record," the New York Times reporter then writes a puff piece about Breitbart which downplays his underhanded role in mis-portraying liberals in order to destroy them.
The Times writes,
This would be a great story if this were a fairy tale, but this is the New York Times, which until recent years actually checked facts and reported news."Some of his reader-generated scoops have reverberated all the way to the halls of the United States Capitol, like the Weiner photos and undercover video he released of Acorn workers offering advice on how to evade taxes and conceal child prostitution. After the videos went viral Congress ended grants to Acorn, and federal agencies severed ties with the group. "
Peters did get part of the story correct: after the sham videos hit the halls of Congress, Acorn was regarded as a pariah, and the group which strove to register more voters later disbanded. (I can still hear GOP cheers echoing all the way to California.)
But here's the important part of the story, the part the New York Times left out, the part my colleague, investigative reporter Brad Friedman, has been hammering for more than a year, as he does again today on BradBlog.com:
"... after telling the ACORN worker that her pimp (not O'Keefe!) had beaten her and stolen her money, the sympathetic worker tries to offer advise on how to hide the money from the pimp, not from the government!
You want all the facts on this? Read Brad Friedman's reporting on this, he owns this story.
The other frequently cited piece of misinformation concerns the ACORN worker who advised that Hannah use the IRS code for "performance artist" when filing her taxes, since there is no code for "prostitute" on those forms. As in all of the offices, the workers were explaining how Giles had to report her income and pay her taxes --- rather than evade them --- even if her income was from prostitution."
But here's my point: there is a reason that I am so passionate about calling out the tactics of Andrew Breitbart and his minions. The man is perpetuating a fraud - not just on the American people , but on our very democracy. I am talking about someone who calls himself a journalist who worked to set up the ACORN organization with a hidden camera (like a Candid Camera/ Borat comedy,) asked honest employees bogus questions, then edited the video to mislead viewers and lawmakers, all for political gain. It doesn't matter if it being done on the "Right" or the "Left," it is wrong.
Despite the comment in Peters' article that people today tend to "select facts" they agree with, at the end of the day, nobody wants to be lied to. If people fully understood the lies they are being spoon fed by the Right Wing Media, I think they would be quick to seek out honest, trustworthy reporting.
But, as I reported more than a year ago, the New York Times fails that test. They failed it with Judith Miller, they failed it with ACORN, they failed it with Breitbart. The "Paper of Record" just doesn't seem big enough to correct the record.
Thank God for bloggers, but not all of them are as accurate as Friedman, either.
So let me say this to all who have a microphone on Radio or TV, and to all those who are paid to write for print publications: We the People need you to do the hard job of real reporting. We need real facts to make real decisions.
Just because some may enjoy it, please don't make our democracy into a sideshow. We are counting on you.
Continued Interest in Breitbart: (Not sure why...)
June 25, 2011
More than a week after 100ProofPolitics' Ryan Clayton went after Andrew Breitbart at Netroots Nation in Minneapolis, I am still getting requests for information and clarification about the exchange. The latest came from Radioactive Gavin, who had me on his radio show =Making Waves= on KDVS out of Davis, California.
Lots of fun! !!! Listen here on the Common Frequency website:
From Gavin's description:
"Common Frequency's newest Board member, journalist Sue Wilson,
was the guest for today's =Making Waves= on KDVS. We talked about an
aggressive progressive named Ryan Clayton confronting Andrew Breitbart,
the conservative provocateur, at the Netroots Nation conference last
Friday. Sue was there.
Sue says Breitbart "is trying to run away from the monsters he's created." He is being sued by one of his victims,
but his attacks on NPR, ACORN and Rep. Weiner are all considered
successes. And she also debunks the myth of the focus group-tested meme
that "the liberal media" controls American thinking.
Plus, we discussed the questionable judgment of CNN devoting so much
airtime to Erick Erickson, another incendiary partisan allowed to, as
David Brock of Media Matters
says "disable journalism".
Normally I devote my attention to local,
independent public media but I think what's really important here is
the outrage Sue speaks to, about what Breitbart represents in terms of
the crumbling standards for information dissemination in our democracy.
And stay tuned because we wrapped the show with a clip from Wilson's documentary Broadcast Blues,
a dramatic story of two journalists who were fired by a Fox affiliate
for refusing to lie about a story on Monsanto the station preferred to
silence. Sue took the film on an 11-city tour through Florida, encouraging more citizens to demand public interest obligations from broadcasters.
Listen HERE.
PLUS!
In case you missed it, Radio or Not's own Nicole Sandler scored an interview with none other than Breitbart protege James O'Keefe . He told Nicole he just seeks the truth. This is the guy who pretends to be a journalist but uses Borat tactics of asking crazy questions using hidden cameras, then maliciously edits the answers so they don't resemble the actual interview, but instead furthers his own skewed agenda. The guy I wrote about here who pretended he dressed as a pimp to walk into an ACORN office (that lie was debunked by Brad Friedman over at BradBlog.com.)
(That's O'Keefe, in his pimp get-up, on the left. A journalist he is NOT.)
"If the shoe fits, wear it. If the truth hurts, bear it!" ~Sue
Breitbart Ambush: Fair or Foul?
June 18, 2011
The internet has lit up with stories about the exchange between "Conservative" blogger Andrew Breitbart and Progressive Blogger Ryan Clayton. Public opinion is critical of Clayton's questioning of Breitbart, saying that it is less than objectiive journalism.
But consider that Clayton asked straightforward questions, and clearly has a camera visible when so doing. Consider also that Clayton released the entire uncut video so that viewers may clearly see the entire exchange. Contrast that with the work of Breitbart protege James O'Keefe, who sets up interviews under false pretenses, uses hidden cameras, and edits video to substantially change the meaning of his interviewees answers.
This may not be great investigative journalism, but at least it is transparent. Perhaps Breitbart and his minions could learn from this? (Doubtful.)
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