a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

What to Watch (or not) in 2007

It’s been a year of navel-gazing for journalists. As William Powers recently noted in National Journal, “These days, almost everything in the media seems to be about the media”–and 2007 is shaping up to be another year of upheaval and overload. So what should we be keeping an eye on other than our collective bellybuttons? Here’s a quick roundup.

Feeling masochistic? Then tune into Fox News Channel’s forthcoming “Daily Show” knockoff. As yet untitled, the pilot show is being produced by the co-creator of “24,” and co-hosted by comedians Kurt Long (late of the Sci Fi Channel’s “Scare Tactics”) and Susan Yeagley (most recently featured in VH1’s “Best Week Ever” series).

But take heart: A new option for frustrated news-lovers may soon be available: The Real News, a viewer-funded, 24-7 progressive online news channel. Find out more at www.iwtnews.com.

Yet such alternatives may be short-lived if the telecom industry has anything to say about it: it’s been lobbying Congress nonstop for the right to charge Web site proprietors extra to use their proposed high-speed lines. Tune into the issue by visiting www.savetheinternet.com. With the defeat of HR5252, the net neutrality fight will heat up again as the new Congress goes into session. A free and open Internet is the best chance for original and independent programming to flourish, but as Jeannine Kenney, senior policy analyst at Consumers Union, warns, “Industry will be back with their money and phony grassroots groups.”

Bored at the box office? Take a gander at the Media that Matters Film Festival, www.mediathatmattersfest.org, a juried online showcase of short films on diverse topics that “spark debate and action in 8 minutes or less.” Selections from the most recent festival include shorts on Congolese women’s reproductive health fights, a battle over the rising cost of water in Michigan, and the importance of asparagus, among others.

Or maybe this is the year to step down your media consumption and make some news of your own: digital audio and video gadgets are getting cheaper and better by the month. Check out www.newassignment.net for the latest scoop on innovations in citizen journalism.

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

The Best of the Ethnic Media

Forget about the Pulitzer Prize. On Nov. 14, the most recent addition to the world of journalism awards ignored old standards like the New York Times and the Washington Post, instead honoring the work of such reporters as Dennis Romero of Tu Ciudad in Los Angeles and Ray Hanania of Ynet-News.com/Yedioth Ahronoth in Orland Park, Ill.

Romero and Hanania are two of the 19 winners from New America Media’s (NAM) first National Ethnic Media Awards. NAM is the country’s first and largest national network of ethnic news organizations and runs its own newswire service, funneling content to and from its 700 media partners. According to NAM, there are more than 2,500 ethnic media outlets across the country, from newspapers to TV broadcasts.

The NAM award winners reflected the diversity of these media outlets, honoring reporters who work for print publications like the Nguoi Viet Daily News and Little India and broadcast outlets like New Tang Dynasty TV.

“Hurricane Katrina and immigration rights dominated news in ethnic media over the last year,” says awards coordinator Sandip Roy. “Each of these complex stories reflects ethnic media’s unique role as an advocacy voice, as well as a vital source of news and information for their audiences.”

Joining the awards ceremony was Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.). The cynical might suspect that it was more than the great reporting that brought the Senator to the event.

As the Nov. 4 Washington Post reported, “While general-market newspapers and broadcast networks are profitable, their well-heeled audience is steadily shrinking. These ethnic media– whose readers, viewers and listeners are often recent immigrants of lower income and limited interest to advertisers– say their current worth may be small but their potential is immense.”

And NAM knows it. The next day, the organization held its first national professional development seminar, including a training session on “The Future of the Ethnic Vote in American Politics.”

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

The Two Faces of Keith Olbermann

“The leading terrorist group in this world right now is al-Qaeda,” says MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, “but the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party.”

Olbermann is on a roll, delivering a series of “Special Comments” that have hoisted ratings for his cable news show “Countdown” by nearly 70 percent since late August. The cable news host has certainly raised the stakes with these commentaries, which break sharply from the quick-change routines of typical cable news. No tickers or blinking graphics distract viewers from Olbermann’s impassioned and hard-hitting anti-Bush regime diatribes, delivered head-on into the camera.

Viewers are hooked: tens of thousands have watched the commentaries on YouTube. An October 8 LA Times article notes that “Olbermann has become a hero to Bush opponents.” And yet a number of female commentators aren’t as enamored of the self-aggrandizing host. Take his reporting on a recent celebrity dust-up; the tagline for the segment: “A Slut and Battery.”

“Keith Olbermann stays classy by reporting that Paris Hilton has ‘had worse things happen to her face’ than being punched,” blogs Jessica Valenti of Feministing. com on October 11. “And you know exactly what he means.”

Rebecca Traister, a columnist for Salon.com’s “Broadsheet,” put it this way via e-mail: “I don’t like Paris Hilton any more than the next sentient human, but Olbermann’s segment on her was depressing, mostly because it demonstrated that trashing women for being sexual is still OK no matter what your professional or journalistic sensibilities are supposed to be. It was low, it was offensive, and it was pathetic.”

This latest gaffe piles on to a mountain of other insulting references the host has made to women. He seems to have it in for blondes in particular, calling colleague Rita Cosby “dumber than a suitcase of rocks,” and smashing an Ann Coulter doll to pieces on air.

Now, we are not making the argument that Ann Coulter is a decent human being. But Olbermann, given the high standards you’re setting for others, we expect more from you.

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

Media Pundit or Media Critic?

In his new book, Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, Jeff Cohen, founder of the preeminent media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), offers readers an insider’s look at the soulless world of corporate media.

Cohen’s book, a fun read, bucks the dryness of most media criticism. It’s chock full of stories about his interactions with TV pundits (you’ll find yourself cheering at some of the transcripts), examinations of the corporate media’s self-interest, and his own struggles to work in and outside the system at the same time.

Starting in the ’80s, Cohen and FAIR fought tirelessly to fact-check the corporate and right-wing media. After initially reluctant guest appearances on CNN’s “Crossfire,” he eventually embraced his role as an on-air personality. His mission: balancing out the din of the right-wing and centrist pundits on cable news with strong and true progressive voices.

“For two decades, I’ve been preoccupied with one issue above all others: that both ends of the political spectrum get their say in the media,” Cohen writes. “The issue haunted me at FAIR. It haunted my TV career. It haunts my dreams. One reason (among many) that I worked so hard to retire George W. Bush in 2004 was my nightmare that a defeated John Kerry would be hired by cable news to represent ‘the left’ day after day on a TV debate show.”

In 1995, after being considered for one of Crossfire’s new co-hosts and then shunted aside for a less progressive voice, Cohen joined Fox News’ “News Watch” as a regular guest. He then embarked to MSNBC, where his work for Phil Donahue was spiked over post-9/11 fears that the show was too liberal and antiwar.

While the influence of the Internet is steadily growing, cable news and their offspring (CNBC and CNN Headline News) continue to be the places where political messaging is shaped. Cohen’s book reminds us that a battle still needs to be fought on the television airwaves and, through his victories and mistakes, he shows how to confront the challenges we face.

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

Sound Byte Science

In July, Bush’s veto of a bill on stem-cell funding stirred up a flurry of high-profile science news stories. For the most part, however, science gets the shaft: on average, science stories make up only two percent of network news coverage. And, according to a recent book by Chronicle of Higher Education writer Vincent Kiernan, the sliver of information that does reach the larger public may be narrowed yet further by the entrenched practices of science journalism.

In Embargoed Science, Kiernan examines how a handful of elite journals generate both buzz and scientific consensus by enforcing an “embargo” on findings— providing journalists with advance access to journal articles under the condition that they not report on them until a specified date. Many journals also apply the “Ingelfinger Rule,” pioneered by New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) editor Franz Ingelfinger in 1969. This policy decrees that “a given journal will not publish a scientific paper that has already been disseminated, particularly through the popular press.”

While journal editors say that the rule helps to limit coverage of findings that aren’t appropriately peer-reviewed, Kiernan notes that such practices just reinforce the already-disproportionate influence of major publications like NEJM, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Science, and Nature. Embargoes are as much about marketing as about research integrity— the cozy relationship between beat journalists and journal editors means that those journals end up as the source for the bulk of popular science stories In practice, this means that important scientific breakthroughs may take longer to reach the public, and that scientists are left with “few options for cooperating with reporters who learn about research through independent channels.”

Critics of the system say that it restricts the free flow of information and influences which stories rise to the top. By providing “information subsidies,” and artificial time pegs, science journals bias the news in much the same way that the White House slants coverage by restricting access to political heavyweights.

While eliminating embargos might make journalists have to scramble, the end result would be more original, honest reporting. “The embargo,” he concludes, “should go.”

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

Swiftboating Murtha

After becoming media darlings in 2004 for their public relations assassination of Sen. John Kerry, the group Vets for the Truth (formerly known as Vietnam Vets for

the Truth) has turned its attention to “swiftboating” a new target–Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.). Murtha, a Democrat known for hawkishness (and the first Vietnam veteran elected to the House), made waves last November when he called for the redeployment of troops from Iraq, and again in early 2006 when he claimed that there was a cover-up of the massacre in Haditha. Conservatives swung into action.

“Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” said former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

Building on the “Kerry Lied,” theme, the online attacks have moved from the now-defunct Murthalied.com to the current BootMurtha.com, where the mission is to “bring Murtha’s outrageous lies to the attention of the voters of the Twelfth Congressional District of Pennsylvania.”

Murthalied.com was the brainchild of Amanda P. Doss, the woman behind Operation Street Corner, a site dedicated to, “The Vietnam Veterans’ Grassroots Campaign Against John Kerry and Jane Fonda, traitors to our country.” Sean-Paul Kelly, editor of the blog, The Agonist, first investigated Doss’ involvement, and then publicly posted her e-mail (which Kelly said was widely available). Doss received many negative responses, and Murthalied.com quickly disappeared. Doss then joined forces with John “Proud to Be Swiftboating” Bailey of VFTT at Boot Murtha. Bailey defines swiftboating in his own special way: “Exposing the lies, deceit, and fraud of self-glorifying public officials or candidates for public office who exaggerate their military service by lying about their feats of heroism and combat wounds.”

As of July 13, the Web site had raised $6,223 in their quest to reach $7,750 by July 14 in order to mail all the veterans in Murtha’s district. To learn more about the Murtha Swiftboating, see blogger Taylor Marsh’s detailed post at The Patriot Project.

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

What She Said

This month, we invited Jennifer L. Pozner, executive director of Women In Media & News, to tell us about the organization’s new project: WIMN’s Voices: A Group Blog on Women, Media, AND….

The next time some pundit blames the underrepresentation of women writers in corporate and independent media on a supposed lack of available talent, check out the dynamic and insightful writing at WIMN’s Voices.

WIMN’s Voices creates critical space for media monitoring and analysis by, for and about women. Through this diverse online community, dozens of leading women journalists, media critics, scholars and activists (including In These Times Senior Editors Lakshmi Chaudhry and Silja J.A. Talvi) analyze coverage of women in relation to specific news beats. From war to health, race to humor, international politics to pop culture and beyond, the blog illustrates that all issues can be reported as women’s issues.

In the blog’s first month, WIMN’s Voices writers were invited to discuss their posts in outlets as varied as ABC News Now, WomenseNews.org and Clamor. Here’s a taste of a few recent entries:

• Andi Zeisler on Newsweek’s mea-culpa to single women: To celebrate the 20th anniversary of telling unmarried women over 30 (that they were) less likely to marry than to die at the hands of terrorists by 40 …“Marriage by the Numbers” revisits several of Newsweek’s original subjects [from 1986] and finds–whaddya know?– that eight out of 11 (of the original 14) future cat ladies are in fact happily married after all …
• Sonali Kolhatkar on media coverage of Afghanistan: Mainstream and right-wing commentators expressed horror at the barbarism of a country we supposedly “liberated” (after an Afghan man faced the death penalty for converting to Christianity) … Meanwhile, the institutionalized misogyny of Afghanistan’s judiciary has escaped the notice of the media …
• Makani Themba Nixon on gender and race in the latest X-Men film:
  The comic book Storm’s cold blooded, self assured fearlessness conjures up more of a Grace Jones than the cowering, wimpy character [Halle] Berry brings to the screen … Storm’s character was a bright spot in the relentless denigration of Black women in media … The movie series has stripped Storm of her power and the storyline of all its potency …

Let the Sunshine In

Congresspedia.com, “the citizen’s encyclopedia on Congress,” is a new clearinghouse for everything you want to know—and want everyone else to know— about our elected officials. Built with Wiki software, it allows users to collaboratively add and remove information, and includes oversight from an editor.

Congresspedia’s users can update policymaker’s profiles, contact information and bios, and contribute to such sections as “Meet the Cash Constituents” and “Controversy.” It launched on April 26, the same day that its sponsor, the Sunlight Foundation, opened its doors. The foundation’s mission is to give citizens “the power to root out corruption in Congress.” As of mid-May, the top pages for visitors have included—hold your breath—Duke Cunningham and Tom DeLay, as well as potential presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

The nonpartisan Wiki is housed at SourceWatch.org, which is sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy. SourceWatch similarly allows citizens to create and update its directory of people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda, including public relations firms, think tanks and more. The number of daily visitors to the site has jumped to 48,000—up from the 28,000 daily visitors before the launch of Congresspedia.

Military Malarkey

“The American public will need to accept that certain information warfare tactics may not seem, on the surface, to be consistent with a global free press,” according to Simon Worden, the former head of the Pentagon’s controversial and short-lived Office of Strategic Influence.

Worden is a key character in “Mind Games,” the cover story of the May/June issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. In it, Assistant Editor Daniel Schulman outlines a series of recent efforts to foster “information warriors” in Iraq. One telling directive from 2003, the Information Operations Roadmap, called for “greater synergy” between public affairs, military information operations and psyops. As a result of this blurring, Shulman reports, misinformation designed to affect combat conditions now also regularly makes its way into news outlets.

“Increasingly,” Schulman writes, “the information environment has become the battlefield in a war that knows no boundaries.”

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

TxtPower

Wondering what tools progressives can use to increase political engagement in ’06? Check your pocket. The Pew Research Center for The People & The Press reports that 66 percent of American adults now have cell phones, and 32 percent of those between 18 and 29 say they “couldn’t live” without them.

According to MobileActive.org, a group that tracks cell-phone activism around the globe, “Mobile phones have emerged as a campaign organizing tool across traditional socio-economic and cultural boundaries.” Callers have used text-messaging to sign petitions, coordinate seemingly spontaneous gatherings (known as “smartmobs”) and engage in citizen journalism. In San Francisco, Mobilevoter.org is working with the Chinese American Voter Education Committee to launch a cell-phone assisted voter registration drive, And FrontlineSMS.com helps NGOs reach out to targeted communities in developing countries. Check out the Mobile Messaging Awards at 160characters.org in late May for a glimpse at emerging text message applications.

Our So-Called News

Just when you thought television news couldn’t get any worse, information has surfaced that there’s a good chance you haven’t been watching the news at all.

The Center for Media and Democracy has identified 77 television newsrooms over a ten-month period that have broadcast Video News Releases (VNRs) produced by such corporate types as General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One—without disclosure to the viewers.

According to the group’s report, “In each case, these 77 television stations actively disguised the sponsored content to make it appear to be their own reporting. In almost all cases, stations failed to balance the clients’ messages with independently-gathered footage or basic journalistic research.” Combined, these 77 television stations reach more than half the U.S. population.

In an effort to clamp down on fake news, the media reform organization Free Press has started an online petition to demand that the Federal Communications Commission strengthen disclosure requirements and penalize news outlets that violates such regulations. To sign the petition, go to http://action.freepress.net/campaign/fakenews. To read the full report, go to www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary. 

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

Calling One Wingnut

Mike Stark’s battle with Bill O’Reilly started last October when he called O’Reilly’s daily radio show to tell listeners to visit the “true no spin zone”: watchdog group Media Matters for America. O’Reilly, who has long vilified Media Matters, immediately cut Stark off, pronouncing, “We got another nut on the air.” He threatened to trace the call and pay Stark a visit at his home.

In late January, Stark launched Calling All Wingnuts a combination blog and organizing Web site that provides tools for progressives to counter misinformation spouted on the radio airwaves.

Stark and his volunteers, dubbed the “Wingnut Spinners,” soon began a new call-in campaign after O’Reilly called for the firing of his MSNBC competitor Keith Olberman on the air. After calling in—to a call-in show—“Spinners” began receiving return calls from Fox News’ security department, which threatened legal trouble for their alleged “harassment” of O’Reilly.

Olbermann has since picked up this story on his nightly show, “Countdown,” and has begun to rake O’Reilly over the coals. So far, O’Reilly has not sicced Fox security on Olbermann.

Reaching Out to Local Media

Stark has also offered his tips on talking back to conservatives to the Roots Project, a new effort to influence Congressional members where they live by contacting the media that serve their districts. The first outreach campaign harnessed blog readers living in Kansas, Maine and Nebraska to write letters to the editors of papers in those regions, urging local senators to investigate the illegal NSA wiretaps.

Jane Hamsher is coordinating the Roots Project through her blog firedoglake. She says organizing calls into local conservative radio shows is the next frontier.

The Roots Project also hopes to engage and showcase regional progressive bloggers. “We don’t want it to be outside agitation,” says Hamsher. “We don’t want to send 1,000 people from California pouncing on West Virginia. Our ability to drive traffic through to a West Virginia blog and have them be the point person—that’s where we can be the most effective.”