“A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger
to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in
arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the
abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise
opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees
fit. A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not
hesitate to lie to other states.”
Vaclav Havel 1936-2011
My uncle Chris Atkins is a great satirist who just posted this alternative version of "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" on Facebook. I thought it was spot on and wanted to share it beyond the confines of that social network. Consider this my digital holiday greeting card for you all - hope you enjoy it. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like April( sung to the tune "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas") It’s beginning to look a lot like April
I may come unglued
There are sandals on shoppers’ feet
No one has used the heat
And everybody’s in a cranky mood
It’s beginning to look a lot like April
Steamy sweaty stores
But the ugliest sight to see
Is the soaring mercury
Feels like Bangalore.A pair of shorts and a tee shirt and new Birkenstocks
Is the wish of Barney and Ben
Look at the forecast on weather dot com
Buy some skorts for Janice and Jen
Did Fox just say there’s no such thing as climate change again?It’s beginning to look a lot like April
Everywhere you go
There’s a plant in the living room
That looks like it’s going to bloom
I sure would like to see a little snow
It’s beginning to look a lot like April
Fifty-five’s the low
Glad the kiddies are out of school
We’ll do Christmas by the pool
And we’ll dream of snow
On Tuesday the New York Times reported that Comcast/NBC would be announcing a range of new partnerships with local nonprofit journalism blogs and radio stations. At Free Press, we pushed during the Comcast/NBC merger debate to ensure that Comcast was forced to commit to more local news on NBC owned and operated stations. This voluntary nonprofit journalism partnership model was one of their attempts to circumvent FCC regulation. While it holds some promise, the devil is in the details.
I have written about my concerns related to the details of these deals, and about Comcast’s questionable history around free speech before:
Nonprofit News and the Comcast/NBC Merger
Trusting Comcast to Fund Independent News?
Here is a quick round-up of some of the articles I read this weekend that continue the discussion about press, police and the First Amendment. Some were published this weekend, others I just finally got around to reading. Did you see others? Add them in the comments section. Enough is enough: End the arrests of journalists documenting police activity in public places Harvard Law and Policy Review By Jonathan Peters U.N. Envoy: U.S. Isn't Protecting Occupy Protesters' Rights Huffington Post By Dan Froomkin Yasha Levine Released from Jail, Exposes LAPD's Appalling Treatment The Exiled By Yasha Levine 30 Journalists Arrested Covering Occupy Movement Care2 By Kristina Chew NYPD Gives Fox News Special Protection The Daily Beast By Kelly Knaub
This is a round up of a few articles published in the fall of 2011 that address the future of journalism and technology as it intersected with Occupy Wall Street. The journalist arrests and press suppression in New York and the SOPA debate in DC came just as Occupy Wall Street recognized its two month anniversary with events across the nation.
Read together these posts create a productive discussion. (This was orriginally published on my Posterous blog and I'm slowly moving posts over here to Tumblr)
“I’m tracking these journalist arrests because I’m concerned about the state of the First Amendment, and our willingness as a public and a democracy to defend it. These arrests are a symptom of a larger debate about how we understand the First Amendment in a digital age, as the institutions that traditionally embodied those freedoms shift and change. As more and more of our speech moves online and over mobile networks, and as our press is distributed across vast human and technological networks, we need to contend with new kinds of First Amendment issues."
A Guide to the Occupy Wall Street API, Or Why the Nerdiest Way to Think About OWS Is So Useful - http://bit.ly/s06gYM
"What an API does, in essence, is make it easy for the information a service contains to be integrated with the wider Internet. So, to make the metaphor here clear, Occupy Wall Street today can be seen like the early days of Twitter.com. Nearly everyone accessed Twitter information through clients developed by people outside the Twitter HQ. These co-developers made Twitter vastly more useful by adding their own ideas to the basic functionality of the social network. These developers don't have to take in all of OWS data or use all of the strategies developed at OWS. Instead, they can choose the most useful information streams for their own individual applications (i.e. occupations, memes, websites, essays, policy papers)." "But for the Monday night raid at Zuccotti Park, and indeed for much of the Occupation, Storify has come into its own as the social news curation tool par excellence. In fact, thanks to the media blackout Monday night, some of the most important news outlets in the country would not have had a story if not for Storify. "All news is social now," says Storify CEO and co-founder Burt Herman. Whoever's on the ground is the reporter, and whoever's curating on the Web is the editor. It doesn't matter who is whom. "We always talk about quoting from the original sources, from politicians, companies and everybody else, but now the journalists who are normally reporting are the sources."" "The disruption of journalism thanks to the “democracy of distribution” (as Om has called it) is also one of the reasons why laws like the Stop Online Piracy Act are a real danger. What if a site like WikiLeaks or a citizen-journalism service is accused of using copyrighted material in a news report? Their site could be removed from the internet and shut down by payment companies (as WikiLeaks has been) without even a court hearing to prove their guilt. Freedom of the press becomes a lot more important when everyone is the press — or rather, when the internet itself becomes the press.
So what does the world look like when journalism is everywhere? We are beginning to find out. And while it may be a frightening prospect if you are a traditional media company, there is a lot to be optimistic about if you are just interested in the news. A world where everyone is a journalist may be a bit more chaotic and a bit more complicated than the one we are used to, but it will also be a bit more free, and that is clearly a good thing." "This might be a good time to mention that Tim Pool is clearly an activist and supporter of Occupy Wall Street as well as a reporter of it. If you believe those things can’t possibly go together, fine, I know where you’re coming from. But don’t expect me to freak out or even care that you wouldn’t call Pool a journalist. As I’ve said before, we should focus less on “who’s a journalist” and more on valid acts of journalism. When we can recognize the act, the “who” becomes easier: anyone committing the act!
When young people ask me what they should do if they want to become a journalist, here is what I normally tell them: the most important thing is not to go to J-school, or start a blog, or get a newspaper to hire you (though all those things are good!) but to get yourself into a “journalistic situation.” A journalistic situation is when a live community is depending on you for regular reports about some unfolding thing that clearly matters to them. If you really want to be a journalist the best experience you can have is to be depended on by people who need you as their eyes and ears, their interviewer, their man or woman in the field. Tim Pool: he’s in a journalistic situation, classically so. And I bet he’s learning a lot from it."
Image as interest: How the Pepper Spray Cop could change the trajectory of Occupy Wall Street - http://bit.ly/ttaNJv
by Megan Garber
"The image — and its subsequent meme-ification — marked the moment when the Occupy movement expanded its purview: It moved beyond its concern with economic justice to espouse, simply, justice. It became as much about inequality as a kind of Platonic concern as it is about income inequality as a practical one. It became, in other words, something more than a political movement.
It’s the image that demands, in trending topic terms, attention. ... And it also demands participation. A key feature of the Epiphanator, the mechanism of press-mediated storytelling that defined our sense of the world for so long, is its impulse to organize time itself into discrete artifacts. Journalists tend to be obsessed with beginnings and, even more importantly, endings."
.......
What would you add? What did you read this week that struck a nerve?
On Tuesday, Craig Aaron, CEO of Free Press, will be speaking at the University of Denver, where Free Press is being honored with the 2011 "Anvil of Freedom Award." Craig is speaking at lunchtime as part of a day-long symposium. Here are the details: What: Journalism in the Public Interest
When: Tuesday, Oct. 11, 9:30 a.m.—4:30 p.m.
Where: The Cable Center, 2000 Buchtel Boulevard, Denver
More information is available at estlow.org. On Wednesday, Craig is headed to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where his focus will be on "covert consolidation," a problem that's plaguing local network news in Colorado. TV stations that are supposed to compete over the public airwaves instead are combining their newsrooms and getting rid of reporters. They're skirting FCC rules to maximize their profits, and the result is far less information about what's happening in your community. He’ll talk about the state of local news and much more. Here are the details: What: Covert Consolidation of Local TV News
When: Wednesday, Oct. 12, 11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Where: University of Colorado Boulder, Fleming 156, Kittredge Loop Drive, Boulder Both of these events are free and open to the public.
Below are some resources for journalists who get arrested, intimidated or assaulted while covering #Occupy protests around the country. This is a growing list, so please contact me on Twitter @jcstearns if you want to add anything the list.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (VA)
Legal Defense Hotline: 1-800-336-4243
National Lawyers Guild (NY)
Phone: (212) 679-5100
Citizen Media Law Project and the Online Media Legal Network (MA)
A Citizen's Guide to Reporting on #OccupyWallStreet
Phone: (617) 495-7547
Society for Professional Journalists - Legal Defense Fund (IN)
Phone: (317) 927-8000
New Media Rights (CA)
Phone: (619) 591-8870
Committee to Protect Journalists (NY)
Journalist Assistance Program: http://www.cpj.org/campaigns/assistance
Phone: (212) 465-1004, ext. 114, 118
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Cell Phone Guide for Occupy Wall Street Protesters (and Everyone Else)
FAQ: What Are the Rights of Reporters Covering Protests?
Published in the Nation magazine
FCC CHAIRMAN JULIUS GENACHOWSKI AND COMMISSIONER MICHAEL COPPS TO ATTEND EVENT ON “THE INFORMATION NEEDS OF COMMUNITIES” IN PHOENIX, ARIZONA
Washington, DC – On October 3, 2011, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski will attend a field event on the recommendations of the recently released staff-level report on the current state of the media landscape. The report, titled “Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age” was delivered to the FCC in June 2011.
The report describes tremendous innovation in the media landscape but also identifies critical gaps, including a shortage of local news reporting. The report also offers recommendations for government, nonprofit players and entrepreneurs. At this event, Chairman Genachowski and Commissioner Copps will hear from journalists, academics, businesses, and the public about innovating and strengthening news and information-gathering and reporting to meet citizen needs. To read the report, visit www.fcc.gov/infoneedsreport.
WHEN: Monday, October 3, 2011 9:00AM-11:30AM Pacific Time
WHO: Julius Genachowski, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission Michael J. Copps, Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission Steven Waldman, Chair, FCC Working Group on the Information Needs of Communities William Lake, Chief of FCC Media Bureau
PANELISTS: Jonathan Blake, Senior Counsel, Covington & Burling, LLC, , on behalf of Barrington, Belo, Dispatch, Gannett, Hearst, Post-Newsweek, and Raycom Susan Crawford, Professor, Cardozo Law School Kevin Davis, CEO and Executive Director, Investigative News Network Greg Dawson, Vice President of News, NBC San Diego Leonard Downie, Jr., Weil Family Professor of Journalism, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University Paul Giguere, President and CEO, National Association of Public Affairs Networks Retha Hill, Executive Director of the Digital Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University Jason Klein, President and CEO, Newspaper National Network Craig Parshall, SVP and General Counsel, National Religious Broadcasters Nicol Turner Lee, Vice President and Director, Media and Technology Institute for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Laura Walker, President and CEO, New York Public Radio (WNYC) Coriell Wright, Policy Counsel, Free Press
WHERE: Arizona State University Floor 6, Channel Eight, Arizona PBS Studio A Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication 555 N. Central Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85004
ONLINE: The event will be webcast on www.fcc.gov/live. Audience members watching online may submit questions to panelists by e-mailing livequestions@fcc.gov or on Twitter using the hashtag #FCCLIVE.
This is a great quote from Newt Minow's Vast Wasteland speech - one that has received very little focus but which is worth revisiting because of the troubling blurring lines between journalism and commercialism and pay-for-play news in broadcast TV right now: "Tell your sponsors to be less concerned with costs per thousand and more concerned with understanding per millions. And remind your stockholders that an investment in broadcasting is buying a share in public responsibility. The networks can start this industry on the road to freedom from the dictatorship of numbers."
I was at a wedding two weeks ago and heard a poem by Carl Sandburg that I had never heard before. It got me thinking about the poem that was read at my wedding. Both are below.
I Love You by Carl Sandburg
I love you.
I love you for what you are,
but I love you yet more for what you are going to be. I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires, that they may be great, rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so
hazardously little. A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall. But the most beautiful rose is one, hardly more
than a bud, wherein the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working for larger and finer growth. Not always shall you be
what you are now. You are going forward toward something great. I am on the way with you
and . . I love you.
Ode to the Present
by Pablo Neruda This
present moment,
smooth
as a wooden slab,
this
immaculate hour,
this day
pure
as a new cup
from the past--
no spider web
exists--
with our fingers,
we caress
the present; we cut it
according to our magnitude
we guide
the unfolding of its blossoms.
It is living,
alive--
it contains
nothing
from the unrepairable past,
from the lost past,
it is our
infant,
growing at
this very moment, adorned with
sand, eating from
our hands.
Grab it.
Don't let it slip away.
Don't lose it in dreams
or words.
Clutch it.
Tie it,
and order it
to obey you.
Make it a road,
a bell,
a machine,
a kiss, a book,
a caress.
Take a saw to its delicious
wooden
perfume.
And make a chair;
braid its
back;
test it.
Or then, build
a staircase! Yes, a
staircase.
Climb
into
the present,
step
by step,
press your feet
onto the resinous wood
of this moment,
going up,
going up,
not very high,
just so
you repair
the leaky roof.
Don't go all the way to heaven.
Reach
for apples,
not the clouds.
Let them
fluff through the sky,
skimming passage,
into the past. You
are
your present,
your own apple.
Pick it from
your tree.
Raise it
in your hand.
It's gleaming,
rich with stars.
Claim it.
Take a luxurious bite
out of the present,
and whistle along the road
of your destiny.
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