Thursday, May 1, 2003

More On Media QUOTE OF THE DAY "You can only go halfway into the darkest forest; then you are coming out the other side." - - Chinese proverb MAY 1st IN HISTORY: 1971 -- Beginning of 5 days of anti-Vietnam War May Day protests in Washington, D.C., resulting in over 14,000 arrests - the largest mass civil disobedience in US history. Protesters attempt to blockade government; 5,000 District police, 1,500 National Guard & 8,000 Federal troops start rounding people up: 7,000 arrested first day. Another source says: "20,000 National Guard & police, 10,000 paratroopers" SPECIAL NEW YORK CITY FREE EVENT FRIDAY NIGHT: "Memory Matters: A Graduate Club" proudly presents a screening and discussion of "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election and the Florida Vote Theft Scandal." Friday, May 2nd, The Student Events Building, 5 Washington Place, Room 407, 6:00-10:00pm Distinguished Speakers: ***R.D.G Kelley--Chair of NYU's History Department ***Gabriel Torres--Voter Education and Registration ***Nicole Wills--Activist, Writer, and Founding Member of the San Francisco "Diggers" ***Marjorie Harris-Smikle of "National Action. This event is FREE and OPEN to the public. A reception will run in conjunction with the discussion. ***Non-NYU guests must bring Gov't issued photo I.D. in order to access the building.*** RHINO HERE: In a bit of a follow up to yesterday's blog on the FCC rules, I learned something new and kinda disgusting today. Then again, just one more UG! outrage in the ongoing saga of America's coup d'etat. Am I the only one who didn't know that the Chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell, is General & Secretary of State Colin Powell's son? As the writer of the article linked below states, "In the outrage that followed the Floridian scandal and George Bush Jr.'s appointment by the Supreme Court to the Oval Office, many in the media missed an equally alarming familial maneuver. In one of his first bureaucratic decisions as president, Bush named Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. That the son of one of the nation's most decorated and politically entrenched former military officers should be given control of the agency that regulates the domestic news and entertainment networks˜indeed the whole telecommunications industry˜ is something that is more imaginable in, well, Iraq." Prime Time Payola Is Clear Channel buying political favors with pro-war fanaticism? By Stephen Marshall, In These Times, 4/4/03 http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=148_0_1_0_M Speaking of blatant thumb-nosing in decision making on the control of media, how might the U.S. Government most effectively piss off millions of Muslims in Iraq & across the world. Why just launch an Arabic language TV news channel and let a bunch of Christian fundamentalists run it. Who thought this one up? Grace News By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman The U.S. government this week launched its Arabic language satellite TV news station for Muslim Iraq. It is being produced in a studio -- Grace Digital Media -- controlled by fundamentalist Christians who are rabidly pro-Israel. That's Grace as in "by the Grace of God."... http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2003/000150.html Then there's CSN the Chicken Shit Network, otherwise know as MSNBC who fired Phil Donahue when the war started for being one of the only anti-war news commentators on the tri-letter run TV news services. Within days of the beginning of the bombing, MSNBC was trying to outfox FOX news. So here's a news bit about former MSNBC host & current (maybe still current) journalist, Ashleigh Banfield, having criticized the big news outlets for sanitizing their war coverage, and she gets bawled out in public. NBC's Banfield chided over criticisms NBC News president Neal Shapiro has taken correspondent Ashleigh Banfield to the woodshed for a speech in which she criticized the networks for portraying the Iraqi war as ``glorious and wonderful.'' Banfield delivered her remarks Thursday at Kansas State University. ....Banfield had criticized NBC in the speech for closing its bureau in Kabul, Afghanistan, a statement that the network said was untrue. Sources said Shapiro ``bawled her out'' for what were perceived as criticisms over the war coverage of all of the networks, including NBC and MSNBC.... http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-television-banfield.html And the ongoing war on the blogosphere by major media outlets continues. Online Journalism Review has an informative update on latest blog closures. Journalists debate closure of another blog by Mark Glaser, Online Journalism Review, Tuesday, April 29, 2003 A journalist working for a major media company decides to start a personal Weblog in his spare time. His blog becomes popular (or not). His association with the media company is stated, but discreetly. He has the usual disclaimer: This Weblog is the opinion of Joe Journo, and not the company he works for. But what does the company think? If it's CNN, Time magazine or the Hartford Courant, it doesn't think -- it acts, killing the Weblog for reasons stated (and unstated)... http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1051593413.php Robert Fisk is a veteran of covering news from the Middle East. This story seems close to his heart. Did the United State murder journalists? By Robert Fisk, UK Independent, 5/1/03 What is a journalist's life worth? I ask this question for a number of reasons, some of them - frankly - quite revolting. Two days ago, I went to visit one of my colleagues wounded in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Samia Nakhoul is a Reuters correspondent, a young woman reporter who is married to another colleague, the Financial Times correspondent in Beirut. Part of an American tank shell was embedded in her brain - a millimetre difference in entry point and she would have been half paralysed - after an M1A1 Abrams tank fired a round at the Reuters office in Baghdad, in the Palestine Hotel, last week. Samia, a brave and honourable lady who has reported the cruelty of the Lebanese civil war at first hand for many years, was almost destroyed as a human being by that tank crew... http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_28-4-2003_pg4_6 So the shrub gang is announcing that the war is over. As a friend suggested recently, they don't seem to realize that this is more like the beginning of the 3rd inning. 7:50:33 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - The war is over (except for Iraq) The war is over (except for Iraq) As Bush prepares to announce an end to hostilities today, more Iraqis are killed by American troops By Phil Reeves in Fallujah, Iraq, UK Independent, 01 May 2003 President George Bush will declare tonight the war in Iraq is all but over. But his speech, far out at sea - aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which is heading back from the Gulf - will not convince many Iraqis. For the people of Fallujah - where two men in their twenties, Sa'aleh al-Jumaili, and Ghanam al-Jumaili, were killed yesterday - the war with the American and British occupiers seems to be just beginning. Hatred is taking hold here, and throughout Iraq. It was sown this week by US troops who fired into a demonstration, shooting dead 13 people, and sealed by soldiers who blasted into a crowd again yesterday, killing two more. This on the day that General Tommy Franks declared the main combat phase of the operation was over. Hatred was present in the taunts of the youths goading the American troops face-to-face, calling them "babies" and waving a banner that said "Sooner or later, US killers, we'll kick you out". And it was there in the burning eyes of the man outside Fallujah General Hospital, who began bellowing about the "lies of the Western press" and the wickedness of the American occupation after we arrived to see the bloodied victims of the latest US shooting. In a country that has lost some 2,500 civilians in the conflict, with at least 10,000 of its soldiers, resentment runs high. Still today, 40,000 of Baghdad's five million citizens rely on the Red Cross for water... READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=402030 "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. 7:18:22 AM    comment

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