Media Watch
This week’s FCC action should bring us a major victory for Internet neutrality. It’s an important victory, without which the online world that we’ve come to take almost as for granted as the air we breathe would risk being radically constrained. But it might never have happened without an unlikely political coalition a decade ago, a story that should remind us how even those divided by passionately felt issues can sometimes find powerful common ground.
“When it comes to protecting Internet freedom, the Christian Coalition and MoveOn respectfully agree,” read the New York Times ad. MoveOn was the largest progressive organization in America, and the Christian Coalition a key group for conservative religious activists. They’d been on the other side of myriad issues, but never teamed up on anything before.
There are only two nations beginning with a vowel and containing in adjectival form five letters: IRAQI and OMANI. The United States has neither worried about slowing down a nuclear weapons program in Oman nor sought to concoct reasons for a war on Oman. Iraq is of course a different story.
When, three weeks ago, Rolling Stone published a horrific story about University of Virginia's rampant and systemic rape culture enabled by its own administration's complicity, we may have expected that their editors had braced themselves for the backlash that would inevitably ensue. After all, as anybody familiar with rape advocacy – or, even more likely, is or is close to a survivor of sexual assault – knows, whenever a rape is denounced, forces beyond the victim's imagination surge to bombard her and her advocates with all sorts of accusations, doubts and demonization attempts. The survivor's life is scrutinized; their past, their lifestyle, their sexual history, all are reviewed and questioned, in search of character failings that might undermine her story. That story, her account of the violence she underwent, most of all, is probed and prodded endlessly; any discrepancy, however random, is immediately raised against her as 'proof' that the whole thing never happened.
The world turned its eye to Ferguson Missouri in August after police shot an unarmed black teenager in front of witnesses. The protests that followed were met with a militarized response, including Pentagon surplus mine-resistant vehicles topped with snipers, tear-gas, assault rifles and policemen in camouflage body armor. There were conflicting claims of force being used by the protestors which proved difficult to verify. During the nine days of turmoil 24 journalists became casualties.
The list of journalists threatened, beaten, gassed, shot with wooden bullets and/or arrested was begun by Runa Sandvik of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Additional research by the Columbus Free Press identified more affected journalists. Although many of the journalists had the support of their publications individually, no American mainstream media outlet took on the issue comprehensively or editorially beyond the support of their own employees or those arrested with them.
The State of Israel's propaganda machine soared to new heights this morning as Google News featured a Google Plus post strait from the State of Israel in its news aggregate feed about the the war in Gaza.
The post was rapped in a hash tag that gives us a glimpse into what is motivating Israel's aggressive military campaign in Gaza – #terrortunnels. Each war gives us a new language of spin, as each side in a conflict try to win the battle for “hearts and minds,” through the use of propaganda. #terrortunnels is fast becoming this war's meme. And it was this meme that greeted me this morning in my Google news feed, presented as news.
“Israel 10 hours ago - Google+ Who builds Hamas' terror tunnels? The children of Gaza. Hamas uses child laborers to build their terror tunnels because, “much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies”. According to Hamas officials, at least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels. #humanshields #hamasterrorists #israelunderfire #terrortunnels
Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing creates a moral frequency that vast numbers of people are eager to hear. We don’t want our lives, communities, country and world continually damaged by the deadening silences of fear and conformity.
I’ve met many whistleblowers over the years, and they’ve been extraordinarily ordinary. None were applying for halos or sainthood. All experienced anguish before deciding that continuous inaction had a price that was too high. All suffered negative consequences as well as relief after they spoke up and took action. All made the world better with their courage.
Whistleblowers don’t sign up to be whistleblowers. Almost always, they begin their work as true believers in the system that conscience later compels them to challenge.
“Benghazi” is one of those kneejerk labels that rightwing folks slap on a story they don’t actually understand but have determined the “right” answer to anyway. It’s a hot button, not an argument, like the “IRS scandal,” which the right is finally beginning to admit it got wrong because it ignored the law as written.