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Be the Media
Camera, lights, mike-in-the-face. Hey Bill Moyers, what are you doing at a left-wing, partisan media conference?
That was how Fox News producer Porter Barry tried to ambush television's most venerable voice of sanity this past weekend, after Moyers spoke eloquently -- "Journalism can only exist in a vibrant, democratic culture" -- at the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis.
But Moyers would have none of it. By standing his ground, reframing the "gotcha" idiocy of the encounter (a bully-boy, "say yes or we'll crucify you" summons to appear on Bill O'Reilly's show) and turning it into a dialogue for which Barry was unprepared, he managed to shove the ambush oh so figuratively back down Barry's throat. What goes around comes around, guys. As the producer retreated, he himself was filmed and peppered with questions by a reporter for the American News Project.
Be the media! This was a real-time demo of the core imperative of the four-day conference: that it's up to us to turn things around. The flailing and desperate corporate media have prostrated themselves ever more irredeemably before the altar of organized money and, in their compromised allegiance, purvey not actual "news" any longer but a simplistic military-industrial patriotism to a country sick of war and hungry for truth. They're not going to change; they're just going to keep staggering, so it seems, toward total irrelevance.
The serendipitous poke in the eye to Fox News notwithstanding, the message of the conference was not part of the zero-sum paradigm of left vs. right and Whose Ideology Is Better? What's at stake -- i.e., human survival -- is far bigger than that.
And perhaps no presentation at the conference demonstrated this with more urgency than the screening of "Body of War," a documentary by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue that, in its unblinking honesty, scrapes the platitudes away from "the most sanitized war ever," as Donahue put it.
Allard, yea. Allen, yea. Baucus, yea . . .
The film, which portrays the day-to-day struggle of Iraq war vet Thomas Young, who became paralyzed from the chest down after he took a bullet above the collarbone in Sadr City in 2004, begins filling in what I call the hole, or responsibility void, at the center of the Iraq war and every war.
It begins with the slow intonation of the Oct. 11, 2002 vote that authorized the use of military force against Iraq: Bayh, yea. Bennett, yea. Biden, yea. This vote, indeed, serves as the backdrop, the canvas, on which the film unfolds. We cut away from the names and suddenly here's Thomas Young in his wheelchair, sitting at his computer, typing a letter to a paraplegic Q&A Web site. He's getting married. He wants to know how to avoid having an accidental bowel movement when he's in his tux.
Brownback, yea. Bunning, yea. Burns, yea.
"The vet's choice," says Young, who has become an anti-war activist, "is to tell the truth and be called a traitor or internalize and self-destruct."
The thought could have served as a catchphrase for the whole conference, sponsored by the organization Free Press (freepress.net), which 3,500 people attended this year. What I felt not only during but between the breakout sessions was an intense concentration of . . . intelligent passion, you might say -- creative determination not to self-destruct and not to let this country self-destruct. This may be what a movement feels like, or what the future feels like.
"Every day that Cheney and Bush do not bomb Iran . . . is because of that greater force -- all of us working together," said Amy Goodman of Democracy Now.
While there was plenty of urgent anger at the failings of the corporate media, and plenty of incisive analysis of the government-friendly propaganda they push and call news, what I felt was not despair but an extraordinary sense of purpose. Upheaval is in the air. Maybe it's partly because of what has happened this year in the Democratic primaries.
On Saturday, as the conference was in full flower, Hillary Clinton conceded to Barack Obama. "What happened today is that someone paid a price at last for supporting the Iraq war," said author Naomi Klein.
Carper, yea. Cleland, yea. Clinton, yea. . . . Lott, yea. Lugar, yea. McCain, yea.
The accountability is just beginning. But, as Klein noted, weapons companies have given more money to Democrats than Republicans this year. The old system, even with a President Obama at the helm, is geared to perpetuate inequality and generate conflict. A new media is forming, on the Internet and in our hearts, that will be beholden not to the interests of oil and war but to a just, sustainable future.
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18 Comments so far
Show AllFree Press has been doing good work.
I highly recommend attending one of their media conferences if you get a chance. I also highly recommend creating your own media outlet and begin broadcasting.
The internet allows a more democratic media landscape compared to the monopoly media outlets.
from the article:
"The vet's choice," says Young, who has become an anti-war activist, "is to tell the truth and be called a traitor or internalize and self-destruct."
for a volunteer wounded in combat to be called a traitor by the likes of chickenhawks shrub, cheney, rove, o'reilly etc., is enough to make a cat laugh.
please do not, for our sakes as well as your own, "internalize and self-destruct." rather, live long, prosper, and TEACH.
People really can "be the media" today and make a difference. What politicians say can be captured digitally, posted on YouTube all all other such places, juxtaposed with things that have contradicted what they just got finished saying, proven to be fools, knaves, and liars.
Some say to this, "Well, mainstream media ignores it," and if they can, indeed they will. But things can be posted showing the mainstream media ignoring it. Videos can be posted directed at specific mainstream media personalities saying, "Why did you ignore this?"
We don't have to just watch this election and be fed up and frustrated.
McCain is particularly vulnerable to this sort of thing since he is an old style politician who operates under the assumption that if he says something all he has to do is indignantly deny that he said, or meant, that and it will blow over.
A lot of the issues that will be raised will be silly and not really germain to prevailing conditions and situations, but they should be done anyway. The Republicans are incredibly vulnerable to this what with President Junior's absymal track record. Showing them saying the kinds of things they say and pointing out the lies and smears could possibly rid the U.S. of their entire subculture and ideology - a worthy goal if ever there was one.
I'd like to see a lot of creative people (me included, if I can get off my keester and get going) produce online agitprop of all sorts. For once it could have a big-time effect. The YouTube/Facebook world didn't exist as it does now in the last election.
Remember, the Shah if Iran was brought down with audio cassettes. As crazily creative as Americans can be with the new digital video capabilities, we ought to do better than than.
Maybe I'm just having a temporary and uncharacteristic fit of hopefulness which surely shall pass, but I'd say it's worth the sure-be-entertaining effort.
I tried to watch the Olberman piece last night online (I do not have cable or satellite dish)as I watch Bill Moyers religiously. It was "unavailble". Hmmmm, I wonder why?
Quite naturally, the coverage on the O'Reilly Factor of the National Conference on Media Reform was an excersize in using smear tactics and misrepresentations in order to discount both the speakers and the attendees of the conference. I note many of the problems with his segment on my blog: http://chriscommons.blogspot.com/
I would LOVE to see a debate set up between Naomi Klein and Bill O'Reilly...LIVE and on neutral territory. Hell, even between Moyers and O'Reilly. Get Don King to promote it and give it a prime-time audience. Bill Moyers did a great job in defending himself against the ambush and the reporter from the American News project turned the tables on Porter Barry brilliantly.
I would also encourage all of you to visit the freepress.net if you have not watched Naomi Klein's speech. She consistantly hits the nail right on the head and, in my opinion, is one of the more important authors/thinkers of our time.
This was a pretty funny video about Hillary. Worth a laugh or two...
http://www.minimovie.com/film-128295-Welcome%20Back,%20Clinton
for a volunteer wounded in combat to be called a traitor by the likes of chickenhawks shrub, cheney, rove, o'reilly etc., is enough to make a cat laugh.
Amen!
Though Young and I don't agree on some things, he's earned the right.....the above collection of bravehearts you mentioned made darn sure they were never in a position to earn the same right.
Jello Biafra has a spoken word album of the same title and it urges likewise, except that it came out at the start of the Bush crime family nightmare. Perhaps it is well past due that the progressive community take a cue from punk rock and adopt a D.I.Y. ethos. Computers and the Internet has made it a lot easier. You just have to produce content that will rise above the noise.
until the creatures who control the multinationals are brought to justice, such talk as this article is just pissing in the wind.
Dittos kloro.
As for Obama, the glitter is already gone.
Veteran Thomas Young seems to have figured it out. Vets are supposed to be loyal to the military, not the USA as a land and people.
SF writer Robt. Heinlein, a US Naval Academy grad, hypothesized a nation in which military service, presumably including combat, was required for full citizenship, including the vote. I suggest that while draftees tend to keep some idea of citizen responsibility, volunteers give their souls to the military and usually don't reclaim them when they get out. And in an age where the US military is committing mass capital felonies throughout the world, it makes sense that either these people be disqualified, or those in prison (like Charles Manson) be qualified.
I was a volunteer at the first one in Madison, WI.
Let's face it: on balance there has been no change for the better in five years.
About the same number of people don't even bother to tune in the news.
About the same number that do, get their world shaped for them by corporate media. They live corporate lives.
About the same number of young people in public school learn to not be media literate and of those that are even interested in civic affairs, the overwhelming majority of them have their thoughts bounded by the corporate framework.
You simply cannot have the kind of civic culture that Bill Moyers wants when your youth are socialized in the corporate enviroment of a public school. When they leave school where do you think they are going to go on the web? Dailykos? Give me a break, they are on myspace, facebook, ebay and yahoo. This is because schools socialize kids a) not to care about civic responsibility and b) to the extent that they do socialize kids about this vitally important part of their lives, they reinforce the corporate social order.
And there is little understanding of this elemental fact among the Bill Moyers at these conferences. They are, wrongly, emphasizing the supply side, rather than focusing on the demand side.
There already is plenty of excellent media out there: commondreams, Amy Goodman, Robert Parry, Cockburn and St. Clair, John Pilger, The Nation, In These Times, The Progressive, local stations like WORT in Madison, Free Speech TV, truthout, truthdig, Seymour Hersh, Scott Ritter, and on and on, and so much that I don't have time to list.
You just have to WANT to find it. Most people don't want to. That habit, that desire, that commitment, needs to be nurtured in the public school when they are young. It is not.
Did anything actually happen at this conference except for a few "good vibes?"
Does anyone have a plan to break up the media conglomerates?
Anything else is just chatter.
This will all take care of itself. The purpose of corporate media is to get people to buy their advertiser's products and if nobody can afford to buy anything then the economy will collapse and with it will go the U.S. military and corporate media! So just put your feet up and puff on that Cuban!
You're right Kloro, but even bringing those foul creatures to justice is not going to change a system and deathstyle that needs overhauling. It's an entire way of life that has to change.
it's cool....that's the problem...all this shit is cool...
we gave up on truth because it wasn't cool
hip down with the street..truth it's boring..it's an irritation..it's hard to be cool whilst telling the truth...no-one wants to do it ..every-one wants to be cool..
be cool it's the new truth...every-one wants to be cool right?
arghhhh...
it's cool that sells air time..it's cool that gets peoples attention..
don't listen to him he's not wearing the right top with those trainers...right?
i'm down with that..
every-one wants to be able to define their own truth..it's really cool if you can do that!
every-one wants to be the one telling the truth...it's really cool to be "the one"
hey..do you like my truth..? if you like my image.. your gonna love my truth!
up the creek without a paddle..
The internet can be a great way for ordinary people to express themselves to a larger audience - as long as they are not blocked or censored by the supposedly progressive media outlet they are trying to post to. I'm putting this up here in the hope that by using a public computer CommonDreams will not automatically block my posts as they have been doing - without explaination, despite both e-mail and phone request for an explaination - for about two months. They have displayed a level of arrogance and contempt for their public that I would expect of a Fox News.
I really would like an explaination as to why my comments have been blocked for the past two months, when nothing I have posted has been any more inflamatory or profane (probably less so than many) than is typical for this genre?
How about it?
The great waterfalls of the world start with only one drop of water meeting with many other drops of water. This waterfall is just beginning.
Be part of the waterfall.
Write your concerns to your local newspapers. Eventually they have to give voice to the majority of thought. Yes, it does happen.
Learn how to write a letter to the Editor. Remember this is your local newspaper…no foul language, be polite, and write your concerns. Make it short and sweet. Make it work. We are the waterfall.