An articulate young man tells Geraldo Rivera and the Fox News crew to get the hell out of Baltimore because they are never there to report on the awful conditions in that area or when there are peaceful protests and demonstrations to try and get things improved. They only come when there is upheaval and then just to deplore the violence and paint the residents when they are in a bad light.
[Read more…]
I have long used the word oligarchy to describe America because I think it accurately captures the reality of the current state of politics where a small coterie of wealthy individuals and families control the country and make all the major decisions on economic and military issues. The so-called people’s elected representatives are merely the people in front of the curtain, there to entertain us and distract us from the fact that we really have no say except on a limited set of social issues that the oligarchy does not really care that much about as long as the stability they need to maintain their own lifestyles is maintained.
[Read more…]
If one wanted to see evidence of the shallowness of the US news media and its incestuous relationship with politicians and the way reporters (I use the term loosely) get gooey-eyed when they meet film and TV stars, you need look no further than the annual White House Correspondents Dinner that took place last Saturday. I am amazed that the event didn’t shrivel up and die after the brutal roasting it got in 2006 from Stephen Colbert when the organizers made the mistake of inviting him to give the keynote speech and instead of the usual pandering they expected to get, he took the opportunity to tell them to their faces that they were nothing better than star-struck stenographers who suck up to the powerful and famous. Incidentally, there is a new documentary titled Nerd Prom that gives an inside look at this event, if you have the stomach for it.
[Read more…]
Elise Hu is a reporter for NPR in their Seoul bureau. Like many reporters, she gets angry responses to stories from people who disagree with something or other but this one was a doozy where the person was simply outraged that she did not know the difference in meaning between two words that I suspect many of us (and this includes me) see as pretty much synonymous.
[Read more…]
South African-born comedian Trevor Noah has been announced as the new host of The Daily Show when Jon Stewart leaves later this year. I was surprised by this move since he is a newcomer to the show having just joined in November of last year. It is also interesting that Noah is, after John Oliver of Last Week Tonight, the second foreign-born host of a political show.
[Read more…]
Conan O’Brien has a zany sense of humor and on a recent visit to Cuba he tried to figure out if he had what it takes to work at CNN during what news networks love to refer to as a ‘breaking news event’ where the host has to spend a lot of time on camera and maintain interest in the audience even though little has happened since the first event and hardly anything newsworthy is occurring.
[Read more…]
The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to approve chair Tom Wheeler’s proposal to reclassify broadband under Title II of the federal Communications Act., which means they can be treated as common carriers like landline phone service, which means that they are subject to FCC regulation and must treat all users equally and cannot give preferential faster service to companies that pay them more. This is what has come to be known as ‘net neutrality’.
[Read more…]
As is often the case, when a single thread of a boastful egomaniac’s credibility gets pulled, the whole fabric starts to get unraveled pretty quickly as people start looking more closely at all their statements. This is happening with lightning speed with Fox News bloviator Bill O’Reilly.
[Read more…]
The new media group First Look Media formed by former eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar that hired a group of first-rate independent-minded journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras, Dan Froomkin, and Pater Mass has run into trouble, with charges of extremely poor behavior by upper management being made by departed staffers. The original plan was to create a set of digital magazines serving diverse needs and I had great hopes for this venture as providing a much needed alternative to the government-corporate friendly establishment media.
[Read more…]