Remember Farenheit 451, François Truffaut’s classic movie about a future world where the job of the Fire Department is to burn books? These days they’re not burning books they’re digitizing them. The reason is because if they don’t they will disintegrate before our eyes. And when they do, there goes our history. Only problem is the digital media they use is obsolete long before the books disappear. And human memory is appallingly short. So whatever it is you cherish, better enjoy it while it lasts. Oops, there goes another terrabyte…
The Internet Archive
DeepspeedMedia.com | Feb 13
This video features Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and his colleagues Robert Miller, director of books, and Alexis Rossi, director of web collections. On a mission to create universal access to all knowledge, the Internet Archive’s staff have built the world’s largest online library, offering 10 petabytes of archived websites, books, movies, music, and television broadcasts. The video includes a tour of the Internet Archive’s headquarters in San Francisco, the book scanning center, and the book storage facilities in Richmond, California.
Political reporter and Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Ricks offers a candid and accurate assessment of Fox News’s absurd excuse for journalism…
Thomas Ricks on Fox News
Thomas Ricks | Fox News | 26 Nov 12
________________________________________________________________________________ Thomas E. Ricks writes on defense topics. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.
It’s easy to be a bit paranoid about the evil news media warping our senses and manipulating our minds to achieve their nefarious ends. Rupert Murdock and his chubby Fox News chief Roger Ailes come to mind. You could be excused if you shunned such harsh views. After all, the media also brought us Walter Cronkite and Harry Reasoner didn’t it? Well, they’re not with us any more but Ailes and his gang are. And the news media today is not what it was in the ’50s. A good look at how our view of world events is shaped by the media is probably worthwhile…
How the Media Manipulates the World into War
James Corbett | YouTube | 1 Jan 12
____________________________________________________________________________ The Corbett Report (corbettreport.com) is an independent, listener-supported alternative news source. It operates on the principle of open source intelligence and provides podcasts, interviews, articles and videos about breaking news and important issues from 9/11 Truth and false flag terror to the Big Brother police state, eugenics, geopolitics, the central banking fraud and more. James Corbett is an independent journalist who has been living and working in Japan since 2004. He has been writing and producing The Corbett Report, an online multi-media news and information source, since 2007.
Ah yes, good old Fox “News” does it again. Not content to rest on their fake ‘fair and balanced’ pitch, Roger Ailes and his band of ‘fictioneers’ has taken on Russia. If ever there was compelling proof that watching Fox News is bad for your health, this is it…
One of the few values Rupert Murdoch and I share is the importance of a free press.
I’m sure we would both agree that it is an unimpeachable right, especially in a day and age when few pure freedoms still exist in this country. We recognize that, if we lose free expression in the media, we will have lost everything. And, perhaps most important, we understand that in the quest to protect this freedom, boundaries must be pushed.
The following article appears in this month’s Rolling Stone Magazine…
The Climate of Denial
Al Gore | Rolling Stone | 22 June 11
The first time I remember hearing the question “is it real?” was when I went as a young boy to see a traveling show put on by “professional wrestlers” one summer evening in the gym of the Forks River Elementary School in Elmwood, Tennessee.
The evidence that it was real was palpable: “They’re really hurting each other! That’s real blood! Look a’there! They can’t fake that!” On the other hand, there was clearly a script (or in today’s language, a “narrative”), with good guys to cheer and bad guys to boo.
But the most unusual and in some ways most interesting character in these dramas was the referee: Whenever the bad guy committed a gross and obvious violation of the “rules” — such as they were — like using a metal folding chair to smack the good guy in the head, the referee always seemed to be preoccupied with one of the cornermen, or looking the other way. Yet whenever the good guy — after absorbing more abuse and unfairness than any reasonable person could tolerate — committed the slightest infraction, the referee was all over him. The answer to the question “Is it real?” seemed connected to the question of whether the referee was somehow confused about his role: Was he too an entertainer?
This is a good clip from Chris Matthews program last night. The topic is the recent Rolling Stone article by Al Gore on the successful campaign by right-wing media elements to effectively kill any meaningful action on climate change (I will post the article here in separately). I enjoy Matthews for his candor and sincerity. With Keith Olbermann effectively silenced and most other commentators hedging their bets, about the only guy calling it the way it really is is Matthews. Listen to what he says about Limbaugh and Beck… (Note – the best part of this segment is toward the end)
I don’t watch Rachel Maddow regularly but every once in a while I catch a minute or two of her program and often that’s enough to hook me completely. Take this broadcast from Monday when she reveals some interesting information about the battle going on now in Wisconsin over Union rights versus budget woes…
This is a fascinating and insightful article which touches me personally. I find that the same phenomenon that threatens the news business in this country — the “dumbing down” of news broadcasts combined with the notion that value should be given away for free — also pervades the business world at large. These days it is increasingly difficult to justify quality and professionalism. We live in an era where the bottom line is the great imperative and experience is trumped by bargains. Empirical value takes a back seat to a conviction that cheaper is better and productivity always means more for less. Pretty soon all you wind up with is less…
At Media Companies, a Nation of Serfs
David Carr | NYTimes | 13 Feb 11
Some of the fizz, if not a great big bubble, seems to have returned to media, depending on how you define “media.”
There have been reports in The New York Times and elsewhere that Facebook is now valued at $50 billion, and The Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter had been in low-level talks with both Google and Facebook, with some estimates putting the value of the company at $10 billion. Tumblr, the short-form blogging service, is storming along a similar, if more demure path, while Quora, a site built on user-generated questions and answers, seems to be on its way. And at the beginning of last week, The Huffington Post agreed to be sold for $315 million to AOL.
The funny thing about all these frothy millions and billions piling up? Most of the value was created by people working free.
Asked what most viewers and observers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”
Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.
“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”
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