"Everything I wrote, I believed instinctively, was to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, seemed a matter of adjacent data."
"The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital."
"The New York Times commented that Kerry didn't make any hint about possible government involvement in health care programs because that position has, in their words, "no political support." Well, according to the most recent polls, 80% of the population thinks that the government ought to guarantee health care for everyone, and furthermore regard it as a moral obligation. That tells you something about people's values. But there's "no political support."
Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry is opposed, the financial institutions are opposed, the insurance industry is opposed, so there's "no political support." It doesn't matter if 80% of the population regard it as a moral obligation: That doesn't count as political support. It tells you something about the elite conception. You're supposed to vote for the image they're projecting. That's not surprising really. Just ask yourself, "Who runs the elections?"
The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste."
WORLD VIEW: MARKETING NEWS AND OTHER SICK STUFF
Patients undergoing cardiac surgery can now look forward to hearing new age music and calming voices while under the knife. Doctors at prominent hospitals are increasingly recommending the use of guided imagery tapes, which are played through earphones while patients are under anesthesia. A calm female voice beckons patients to "feel new strength flowing through you, through arteries that are wider and more open . . . than before."
To assure patients that their doctors are reliable, the voice coos that medical devices "will be removed by wise and sure hands at just the right time, when your body is ready, no sooner, no later." While there is no real evidence yet that the tapes have any effect, they are marketed as a way of improving patients' recovery. Audio samples of these tapes can be found on the Ohio-based Health Journeys website, including affirmations for other conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, depression, and menopause. (Wall Street Journal, 2/10/04)
* * * *
The photo developing departments at several national chain stores routinely censor customer orders. A Walgreen's in Ohio, for example, removed a photo of a shirtless man wearing a nipple ring from customer Calvin Johnson's roll--and threw away the negatives.
An assistant manager told Johnson that film developers are under no obligation to print photos they deem offensive, "If someone doesn't approve of the subject matter," he said, "each employee has the right [to discard photos] as they see it."
CVS, Eckerds, and Rite-Aid have similar policies. Wal-Mart's policy is even more sweeping: if employees come across any photographs containing nudity of any kind--kids in a bathtub, for instance--they are required to call the police. (Clevescene.com, 4/14/04)
::::::::
DIEBOLD & ELECTRONIC VOTING
Today I got bored with myself and posted a few links about electronic voting up at Deebold.com (a domain I registered a while back). One noteworthy item is a video excerpt of MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," which does a hard-hitting roundup of voting inaccuracies in last week's election. Several counties in Florida and Ohio, for example, had more votes than voters! See http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/diebold/ (aka deebold.com)
.....
TIRED JAPANESE BUSINESSMEN
Neato photo archive of overworked Japnese business men sleeping (or passed out) on trains, sidewalks, and even staircases.
_____________________________
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FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
ACTION ALERT:
60 Minutes: Shelving a Story to Boost Bush?
CBS puts Niger expose on hold as boss endorses Republicans
September 28, 2004
In an outrageous politicization of journalism, CBS announced it would not air a report on forged documents that the Bush administration used to sell the Iraq war until after the November 2 election (New York Times, 9/25/04). A network spokesperson issued a statement declaring, "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election."
The 60 Minutes segment was ready to air on September 8, but was bumped in favor of the now infamous report that relied on supposed National Guard memos whose authenticity CBS now says it cannot confirm. The furor over the Guard memos has created a situation where CBS executives say "the network can now not credibly air a report questioning how the Bush administration could have gotten taken in by phony documents" (Newsweek online, 9/22/04).
Of course, what's really inappropriate here is CBS allowing its PR problems to suppress a news report on an important issue until after it no longer matters. The shelved 60 Minutes story deals with the origins of documents purportedly showing that Iraq under Saddam Hussein tried to obtain uranium from Niger-- documents that turned out to be forgeries. The story, according to the Newsweek online report, asks "tough questions about how the White House came to embrace the fraudulent documents and why administration officials chose to include a 16-word reference to the questionable uranium purchase in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech."
Though such questions are clearly relevant to a presidential campaign that largely revolves around Bush's decision to invade Iraq, CBS intends to keep the answers to itself until the election has passed. Could there be more than the embarrassment over the Guard story behind this decision?
Sumner Redstone, CEO of CBS's parent company Viacom, made an unusual
political statement at a gathering of corporate leaders in Hong Kong (Asian Wall Street Journal, 9/24/04):
"I don't want to denigrate Kerry... but from a Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal. Because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on. The Democrats are not bad people.... But from a Viacom standpoint, we believe the election of a Republican administration is better for our company."
Redstone repeated these sentiments in an interview with Time (10/4/04):
"There has been comment upon my contribution to Democrats like Senator Kerry. Senator Kerry is a good man. I've known him for many years. But it happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one."
According to a write-up by Forbes (9/23/04)-- the sponsor of the conference where Redstone issued his endorsement of Bush-- the CEO asserted that "he never gets involved in any aspects of the network's news coverage." But that claim, hard to believe when made by any media industry chief executive, seems particularly dubious given Forbes' report that "Redstone said he has been talking daily to top CBS officials and to Viacom board members about the controversy" over the Guard memos.
It is journalistically indefensible for CBS to withhold a story due to embarrassment incurred by another, unrelated piece. It is particularly unacceptable when the shelving of a story benefits a candidate that CBS's boss has just publicly endorsed. If CBS wants to restore trust in its news judgment, it can begin by applying journalistic standards, not political calculations, to the decision on when to air its report on the origin of the forged Niger documents.
ACTION: Please contact 60 Minutes and urge them to stand up for journalistic principle by airing the report on the Niger forgeries. And call Viacom and CBS executives and tell them to allow 60 Minutes to report the news without political interference.
CONTACT:
CBS
60 Minutes
524 West 57th St.
New York, NY 10019
mailto:60m@cbsnews.com
Phone: (212) 975-3247
Sumner Redstone, Chairman, Viacom
(212) 258-6000
Les Moonves, Chairman of CBS; co-President & co-CEO, Viacom
(323) 575-2345
As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if
you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.
As you well know, president Hugo Chaves won the recall vote in Venezuela on the 15th. I find it fascinating to read the coverage of the event from different media sources. Please keep in mind that this is the same president we tried to pretend was legitimately ousted in a US backed military coup just a few years ago.
One article is from the Economist: Even the title (Chávez wins, his opponents cry foul) is pure propaganda given that they say foul play was not an option in the article. Look at the language they use, they iteration of his military past, the focus on the negative.
"Furthermore, the president has remained popular among Venezuela’s poorest, despite the way his policies have impoverished the country. Since he was first elected six years ago, Venezuelans’ average income has fallen by around a quarter. The recent surge in oil prices has showered the government in oil revenues, allowing Mr Chávez to introduce some populist social programmes that may have swung him the vote. But these handouts are unlikely to compensate fully for years of steep economic decline, nor for roaring inflation (around 30% last year)."
Now compare that with the Counterpunch article:
"what Chavez is attempting is nothing more or less than the creation of a radical, social-democracy in Venezuela that seeks to empower the lowest strata of society....Just under a million children from the shanty-towns and the poorest villages now obtain a free education; 1.2 million illiterate adults have been taught to read and write; secondary education has been made available to 250,000 children whose social status excluded them from this privilege during the ancien regime; three new university campuses were functioning by 2003 and six more are due to be completed by 2006."
"Five Questions with Noam Chomsky" interview from Counterpunch.
The man does not make sound bites easy but here is an attmept:
"I have to admit that I have an irrational dislike of the word "trope," and other postmodern affectations. "
"business was well aware that high-tech industry could not survive in a competitive free enterprise economy, and "government must be the savior," as the business press explained. Such considerations converged on the decision to focus on military rather than social spending. "
Regarding Bush's National Security Strategy:
"Typical was the reaction of Madeleine Albright, also in Foreign Affairs. Like others, she criticized the Bush planners. She added, correctly, that every president has a similar strategy, but doesn't smash people in the face with it, antagonizing even allies. Rather, he keeps it in his back pocket to use when needed. She knew of course that the "Clinton doctrine" was even more extreme than the NSS, declaring that the US would resort to force unilaterally if necessary to ensure access to markets and resources, without even the pretexts of "self-defense" conjured up by Bush propagandists and their acolytes. But Clinton presented the doctrine quietly, and was careful to carry out his crimes, which were many, in ways that would be acceptable to allies and could be justified or concealed by elite opinion, including the media."
“CLARIFICATION: It has come to the editor's attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission.”
This is a great article on two Kentucky newspapers' recent apology for never covering the Civil Rights movemnt in the 60's. All the protests were never mentioned so as to "make the problem go away." Of course, there are paralells and of course, he highlights them.
A friend who works in media had some interesting information about ways that corporations get their messages presented in a news format. Yes, this is prime, DL type shit:
There are 2 levels of deceipt involved in this lucrative business. First: The companies make slick "news style" pieces that the news shows run as though it was news. This is partly due to the fact that many of these local news stations do not have the budget, equipment, or trained personnel to make a slick piece - so they are happy to have something to spice up their show - or just look professional. These video companies hire former news employees and pay them twice as much, so the pieces look and sound like the something you would see on the network news-they are very well crafted.
But then here's the really interesting part. These corporations want to know how often their pieces are actually making air, so they encode the footage and hire Nielson who does the ratings for the networks to track how often the footage shows up on any News broadcast. Then another company puts together a reel of all the times the pieces aired and gives it to the corporation. Now even though the news companies often air these pieces in their entirety the one thing they often don't do is name the company who is providing the spokesperson. But that is the what these companies really crave more than anything - they go through the whole process so that their company will receive name recognition and validity from being in a news environment. So the video company who made the piece originally then puts the name of the company into the piece in the same style as the rest of the news show, and gives it back to the corporation as though that was how it aired on National TV. Basically the person that you hire to fool the public is also fooling you.
The other thing that makes it even more complicated is that often these pieces are really helpful, informative pieces. They might be about various ways to protect yourself and your home from fire, or how to lower the chances of an elderly person having an automobile accident. The news stations don't make these pieces because they are too busy making pieces about the latest double homicide or the color of the terror alert. So in some ways these are helpful, informative pieces which because of the media bias toward sensationalism would not ordinarily be produced. This wouldn't be the case if the media had not abdicated their role as a source of information in our society. But since the media to a certain extent has given up that role, there is a way in which these companies are filling a void. Keep in mind however that they are always filling this void from their own point of view, and there are subtle ways this comes out. For example a Pfizer spokesperson talking about medication problems will not say,
"Perhaps the medication should be discontinued." He will say,"Perhaps this medication should be switched to a different medication."
Pixies article that sucks! But it’s about the Pixies... The author apparently didn’t even go to see their last tour because he would have seen the “Pixies sell out” shirts. Pixies-bashing is the latest craze among hipsters and I for one am appalled.
Stayfree Interview with Public Enemy's Chuck D and Hank Shocklee
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/20/public_enemy.html
The Center for American Progress today launched a comprehensive Claims vs. Facts database.
The database documents statements from conservatives like President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Members of Congress and Fox News personalities, and compares those statements to the facts. Each fact is sourced, and in many cases includes a web link directly to that source.
it is really funny to contrast this
with this
I'm organizing a panel for the NYC Grassroots Media Conference, February 27-29 at the New School.
My panel is on using pranks and parody for social change (details TBA). Speakers will include: Carrie Moyer and Sue Schaffner from Dyke Action Machine, who you may remember from the Illegal Art Exhibit; Jonah Peretti (Nike sweatshop prankster and co-creator of BlackPeopleLoveUs.com); and the Yes Men, whose projects include masquerading as members of the WTO and promoting the benfits of slavery at world trade conferences. Stay Free! will also be tabling throughout the conference so be sure to drop by and say hi.
This is a GREAT article from a Canadian newspaper on the American media situation. It goes really well with that Fox News article I sent out a while back. If you only read one article in this spam, read this one. Please note that it is not in the editorial section.
Plus, note to all you ad/internet/TV hos out there (Lady Lulu especially): why not jump on the bandwagon of this new network they're talking about?
Are the U.S. airwaves about to lean to the left?
Incredible article, even as unsurprising as these facts are:
Fact-Free News
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A23
Ever worry that millions of your fellow Americans are walking around knowing
things that you don't? That your prospects for advancement may depend on
your mastery of such arcana as who won the Iraqi war or where exactly Europe
is?
Then don't watch Fox News. The more you watch, the more you'll get things
wrong.
Researchers from the Program on International Policy Attitudes (a joint
project of several academic centers, some of them based at the University of
Maryland) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm, have
spent the better part of the year tracking the public's misperceptions of
major news events and polling people to find out just where they go to get
things so balled up. This month they released their findings, which go a
long way toward explaining why there's so little common ground in American
politics today: People are proceeding from radically different sets of
facts, some so different that they're altogether fiction.
In a series of polls from May through September, the researchers discovered
that large minorities of Americans entertained some highly fanciful beliefs
about the facts of the Iraqi war. Fully 48 percent of Americans believed
that the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working
relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Another 22 percent thought
that we had found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And 25 percent
said that most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against
Saddam Hussein. Sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of
these bits of dubious knowledge; 8 percent believed all three.
The researchers then asked where the respondents most commonly went to get
their news. The fair and balanced folks at Fox, the survey concludes, were
"the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions." Eighty percent
of Fox viewers believed at least one of these un-facts; 45 percent believed
all three. Over at CBS, 71 percent of viewers fell for one of these
mistakes, but just 15 percent bought into the full trifecta. And in the
daintier precincts of PBS viewers and NPR listeners, just 23 percent adhered
to one of these misperceptions, while a scant 4 percent entertained all
three.
Now, this could just be pre-sorting by ideology: Conservatives watch
O'Reilly, liberals look at Lehrer, and everyone finds his belief system
confirmed. But the Knowledge Network nudniks took that into account, and
found that even among people of like mind, where they got their news still
shaped their sense of the real. Among respondents who said they would vote
for George W. Bush in next year's presidential race, for instance, more than
three-quarters of the Fox watchers thought we'd uncovered a working
relationship between Hussein and al Qaeda, while just half of those who
watch PBS believed this to be the case.
Misperceptions can also be the result of inattention, of course. If you nod
off for just a nanosecond in the middle of Tom Brokaw intoning, "U.S.
inspectors did not find weapons of mass destruction today," you could think
we'd just uncovered Hussein's nuclear arsenal. So the wily researchers also
controlled for intensity of viewership, and concluded that, "in the case of
those who primarily watched Fox News, greater attention to news modestly
increases the likelihood of misperceptions." Particularly when that news
includes hyping every false lead in Iraq as the certain prelude to
uncovering a massive WMD cache.
One question inevitably raised by these findings is whether Fox News is
failing or succeeding. Over at CBS, the news that 71 percent of viewers hold
one of these mistaken notions should be cause for concern, but whether such
should be the case at Fox because 80 percent of their viewers are similarly
mistaken is not at all clear. Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the other guys
at Fox have long demonstrated a clearer commitment to changing public policy
than to reporting it, and an even clearer commitment to reporting it in such
a way as to change it.
Take a wild flight of fancy with me and assume for just a moment that one
major goal over at Fox is to ensure Bush's reelection. Surely, anyone who
believes that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were in cahoots, that we've found
the WMD and that Bush is revered among the peoples of the world -- all of
these known facts to nearly half the Fox viewers -- is a good bet to be a
Bush voter in next year's contest. By this standard -- moving votes into
Bush's column and keeping them there -- Fox has to be judged a stunning
success. It's not so hot on conveying information as such, but mere
empiricism must seem so terribly vulgar to such creatures of refinement as
Murdoch and Ailes.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company