Miasma in the House of Bite Me
Grassroots journalism & current events, cyberculture, technology, privacy, with a little new criticism, feminism, postmodernism, radical pedagogy, & new media theory thrown in.
Just say no to supersized media. In Atlanta, at the last "unsanctioned" FCC hearing organized by dissident commissioners, Big Media gets small support. [Salon.com]
...Atlanta is a fragmented and disconnected city where pods of commerce are linked by highways choked with people driving SUVs and talking to themselves, cellphone wires dangling from their ears. It is not a city where we often get together to talk about the future of our democracy.
But on Wednesday, May 21, some Atlantans did just that at an unsanctioned Federal Communications Commission hearing attended by two dissident FCC commissioners, members of the alternative press, local activists, and 600 very worried U.S. citizens. The attendees assembled to register their opposition to the tsunami of media consolidation -- and subsequent loss of real news reporting -- they fear the regulatory commission's June 2 rule change will unleash.
[...]
Copps and Adelstein began the proceedings on an ominous note: "We are on the eve of the most sweeping and potentially most destructive overhaul of ownership laws in the history of American broadcast -- and most people have no idea what's about to happen to them and their media," Adelstein said.
"The FCC is about to supersize the media," he said, explaining that the rule changes will allow existing Big Media corporations to get even bigger, at the expense of the American people.
"America needs to wrap its arms around the issue of who's going to control the media, while there's time. It's a question of who's going to control the public interest," Copps warned.
But when asked how the American people can prevent the loosening of media cross-ownership restrictions, Adelstein said that the chances of stopping the FCC on June 2 are very slim. What's more, he added, once companies merge, the FCC cannot make them unmerge; only an act of Congress can do that.
yeah yeah, I know I'm breaking my permalinks, but I can't get the folks at Radio to figure out why the program won't recognize the old files.
I'm thinking of switching the whole bit to moveable, but that would be a job and a half, eh?
Miasma
Friday, June 14, 2002
Bush Distances Himself From Attorney General
This is more like what I was expecting to see, the kind of stuff I went into on that previous post about the PR people, handlers, spin doctors, and the odd nature of the announcement made from Moscow, of all places.
Makes it seem as if Ashcroft's copy of his statement wasn't exactly "cleared" through the kind of channels Karen Hughes would put it through. Maybe Wolfowitz or Rove signed off on it, told Bush about it second hand.
And god knows, Ashcroft can play the wild-eyed panic fanatic in nearly any speech, he looks so much the part--that hard, mean edge in his eyes. I'm not saying it is always there, cuz I don't think it is where his singing and stuff comes from. As much as I really despise this guy and what he is doing to this country & the constitution, I have to acknowledge he is a complex person, a complex and awful person. He is what Eric Hoffer calls, in his classic book, _The True Believer_, which is why he will always be a bad politician. His eyes carry the gleam of fanaticism, whether hard in condemnation, or softer, for what is blessed.
Washington, D.C.--As Bush angrily backpedals away from Attorney General John Ashcroft's statements Monday about the supposed dirty- bomb plot of former Chicago thug Abdullah al Muhajir (a/k/a Jose Padilla), Washington officials are nervously watching the nation's top lawman and wondering what's next.beans Yesterday everyone here had their maps out to see whether their homes were in the range of the radioactive plume of the bomb the attorney general claims was going to be set off. Ground zero was near the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, extending across parts of the Capitol lawn, the Archives, the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, and on into Union station. J. Edgar Hoover's memorial FBI building seems to be out of the high-risk zone, and, of course, the CIA is across the river in Langley, Virginia.
According to press reports, the White House thinks Ashcroft made too much of Padilla, who has not been charged with a crime. The government attorneys apparently could not get an indictment out of a New York grand jury and, rather than let him go, handed Padilla off to the military. According to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking from Quatar, he might never be tried.
By this morning, there were charges flying around the capital that Bush had known about the Muhajir case for at least a month, and that Ashcroft released the information hurriedly only to divert attention from Intelligence Committee inquiries into the FBI and CIA handling of 9-11. The White House has been desperately trying to stay clear of accusations that the intelligence agencies knew about terrorist threats well before 9-11.
Up to now Bush has been letting FBI director Robert Mueller take the heat within the Intelligence Committee investigations, where the members of Congress and Spook officialdom are close buds and everything can be kept under a lid. But now Bush is having to push away from Ashcroft. Even though he's high in the polls, Bush can't afford bad press, because crucial elections determining control of Congress are coming up in the fall. So this is serious politics. If Ashcroft should go, then Bush is in danger of losing the Christian conservatives who form a small but important part of his administration and are among the most ferocious grassroots political campaigners.
"The information was available earlier. Why was it not announced?" asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who has proposed setting up a commission to investigate 9-11--a move Bush strenuously opposes. "I'm very concerned about rumors that there might not be much to it," said Intelligence Committee member Dianne Feinstein. One anonymous Republican senator told the Washington Times, "Did it have to be done [Monday]? Why didn't they do something earlier?" And John McCain said, "He [Padilla] cannot be kept without some legal rights, the rights of a citizen, indefinitely," adding, "I think there's going to have to be an explanation why he should not have the rights of a citizen. People who are a clear and present danger to the country have been held, and there's a rationale for that. They've got to make the case, that's all."