TheDailyBanter.com

Newspapers Need A Bailout Too

By Ben Cohen

Some worrying news for journalists - Tribune may file for bankruptcy meaning more journalists may be laid off in the near future. With the corporate conglomerates already controlling the industry, this does not look good.

Will the government step in to save an industry that is supposed to keep them honest?

With the blogosphere on fire, journalists can take matters into their own hands and start publishing themselves, but running a site and writing is pretty difficult (take it from me). Is journalism in terminal decline? Not necessarily - with people like The Real News, Znet, and the Huffington Post growing quickly, it may be that the landscape is changing rather than dying.

Chris Hedges on the unnecessary death of news papers

By Ben Cohen

This article is relevant to any aspiring journalist who would love to have a serious career outside of the corporate media. Chris Hedges argues that serious journalism is a dying art, largely due to the mega corporate takeover of the newspaper industry, and the explosion of non-journalism on the web:

The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.

All these forces have combined to strangle newspapers. And the blood on the floor, this year alone, is disheartening. Some 6,000 journalists nationwide have lost their jobs, news pages are being radically cut back and newspaper stocks have tumbled. Advertising revenues are dramatically falling off with many papers seeing double-digit drops. McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, has seen its shares fall by 77 percent this year. Lee Enterprises Inc., which owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is down 84 percent. Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, is trading at nearly a 17-year low. The San Francisco Chronicle is now losing $1 million a week. Read more....

The Sorry State of International News Coverage

By Ben Cohen

A fascinating break down of what the corporate media covers internationally. Why do we see so much of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton? Because it is cheaper than providing real news from real journalists.

Time Magazine Advocates invading Burma

For Time magazine's World Editor Romesh Ratnesar, two failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren't enough to dissuade him from invading another country. In his ridiculous, irresponsible and downright idiotic article Is It Time to Invade Burma? Ratnesar argues the U.S military should take out the Burmese government for its incompetent handling of the humanitarian disaster.

The military junta in Burma is a disgusting government guilty of vicious crimes against its own people. No one wants to see them continue in power, and everything should be done to help the Burmese rid themselves of the regime.

But invading them unilaterally is not only illegal, but criminally stupid.

Corporate Journalism University Programs

By Ben Cohen

This should raise some alarm: ABC wants plans to open bureaus this autumn on the campuses of five universities across the United States. While I certainly agree with more money and funding for journalism, allowing one of the corporate conglomerates to teach their style of journalism to students is certainly worrying.

From AZcentral.com:

ABC plans to open a multimedia bureau at ASU in September that will give students the opportunity to produce content for ABC News' various digital and broadcast platforms, including “Good Morning America,” “World News with Charles Gibson,” and “Nightline.”Each ABC News campus bureau will have a team of paid student staffers as well as a bureau chief. Representatives from the college and ABC News will oversee the operations.

Does anyone remember Charles Gibson's pathetic performance in the Clinton-Obama debate? ABC is hardly the benchmark for serious reporting, and no self respecting university should enlist their services. We really do not need another generation of news hacks destroying the profession.

Hack Watch: A.B. Stoddard part 2

by Ari Rutenberg

Just after noon today I saw a segment on MSNBC in which The Hill's A.B. Stoddard was interviewed about Reverend Wright.  She was appalling.  As has been previously reported on The Daily Banter, she is a  hack .  Her palpably false indignation about the nature of Wright's comments over the last few days was the archetypal example for all of the punditocracy to follow.   The fact that she, a wealthy white woman who lives in a rarefied world, responds to Wright this way shows that she is either simply pretending not to know about this type of powerful. grandiose oratory and deeply and justifiably angry sermons in the black community (like so many in Washington are) or she genuinely does not know about it and is frightened of this. 

It is difficult to believe that an educated woman like A.B. Stoddard does not know about this type of thing.  What is much easier to believe is that she is pretending in order to justify sweeping this very serious issue under the table.  This neglect of the race issue by the predominantly white establishment has existed since the early 80's when people stopped paying attention to how racist our government was (and is) in order to justify stopping the discussion on race due to their increasing level of discomfort with the increasingly visible anger from the black community.  A.B. Stoddard's comments today only serve to further that neglect.

The willful ignorance and malicious obfuscation of the main stream media

by Ari Rutenberg

The American media, already not much more than a shill for the corporate and political elites with little spine or stomach for genuine confrontation with power, has now abandoned its obligation as the representatives of the fourth estate.  They have, in their search for 'ratings' and 'content', or perhaps in complicity with those who seek to prolong the Iraq war, completely overlooked one of the most significant veteran's protests since the Vietnam war. 

The Consequences of Speaking Truth to Power

By Ben Cohen

Speaking truth to power is not easy in America. In fact, it is almost suicidal. In todays job market, you must sign your life over to a corporation and forget any thoughts that could be deemed too independant if you want to make a decent living. Speaking out could cost you your job, making the price too high to pay.

Chez Pazienza was a senior news producer for CNN untill the company discovered he wrote a blog expressing his own opinion. Pazienza was consequently fired, and deprived of his living. Educated, articulate, Pazienza decided to fight back. Here is his story:

By Chez Pazienza.

Maybe this was always the way it had to be.

When I was 19, I broke into the offices of WVUM -- the radio station at the University of Miami -- live, during an installment of my weekly radio show. I raided a file cabinet and my crew and I proceeded to read the minutes of that week's executive board meeting on the air, paying special attention to a recurring topic of conversation among my apparently exasperated supervisors -- a series of incidents which, collectively, were referred to as "The Chez Situation."

Resistance to Iraq War Grows in U.S

By Ben Cohen

Those who battle against their governments complicity in war, corporate corruption and environmental crimes are cast as extremists, not representative of the majority and a burden to society. It is often hard to understand what protesters are protesting about, given the scant attention paid to them and the massive distortions in the media. Despite their growing occurrences in the U.S, the focus is usually on the disruption they cause, rather than the cause of the disruption. However, with the emergence of the internet, protesters have been able to promote their cause from their own perspective. The videos and websites are often raw and amateurish, but a hugely valuable resource in understanding a movement that grows larger by the day.

The Olympia Port Militarization Resistance (OlyPMR) is a group attempting to end their community’s participation in the illegal occupation of Iraq by stopping the US military’s use of the Port of Olympia. Here's a video of their resistance movement, with footage you certainly won't see in the mainstream media:

LA Times: CNN corrupt, incompetent, and self-serving

When one of America's major, corporate owned media outlets allows direct and clear criticism of another of those outlets, one (such as I, who did not see the debate) must wonder what level of incompetence CNN has risen to given the previous manner in which they have conducted themselves since the departure of Bernard Shaw in 2001.  It is a shame, and I believe a crime, to conduct business in such a way when they stakes are literally life and death.

From the LA Times:

CNN: Corrupt News Network
A self-serving agenda was set for the Republican presidential debates.

by Tim Rutten
December 1, 2007

THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a "debate," what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.