Why don't we have public TV like this in U.S.?

Weeks before the Iraq invasion, Jeremy Paxman of BBC's "Newsnight" and skeptical British citizens literally cross-examined Prime Minister Tony Blair about evidence/reasons/legality behind the invasion -- an interview that became part of last year's official Iraq inquiry in Britain. (Here's another tough Paxman interview of Blair having nothing to do with Iraq.)

In our country, bullying from politicians + lack of insulated funding = embarrassing timidity at so-called "public television"...as evidenced by PBS surgically removing Tina Fey's swipes at Sarah Palin from a broadcast a year ago.

Country by country comparisons of spending on public broadcasting in this study (at page 31.)

MIT's Annual Biz Plan Competition now allows...

...1-minute YouTube videos to complement written and in-person pitches(H/t public radio's Marketplace)

Maya "twittering" behind...

...Obama's back.

And Kera seems to have scooped outlets like L.A. Times and Huffington Post on the Miley Cyrus video supporting Occupy Wall Street worldwide.

USA and Fast Internet

USA is behind other countries when it comes to broadband access (15th place) and Internet speed(23rd place).

There's a digital divide in our country whereby middle-class kids like my daughters grew up with Web-accessed computers in the home, while kids in rural areas and inner cities don't have computers or fast Internet.

In 2009, big Internet providers such as Verizon, Comcast, AT&T
DID NOT APPLY for any of the billions in stimulus grants for building out broadband infrastructure, according to the Wall St. Journal, because recipients of our tax money had to agree to respect Net Neutrality or Internet Non-discrimination.

In August 2010, Keith Olbermann did a segment about Net Neutrality on his now-defunct show on MSNBC. Olbermann exited MSNBC as it was being taken over by Net Neut-foe Comcast. (I was asked to appear on a talk-radio show on a big city station to analyze Oblermann's exit from MSNBC; when I suggested a link to the Comcast takeover and criticized Comcast's opposition to Net Neutrality, a producer asked me during a commercial break to stop the "Comcast-bashing" because "they're our biggest sponsor.")

ABC News is gathering photos...

...from various sources about Occupy Wall Street, and maintaining an ongoing slideshow, including photos from arrests today. H/t Julianne)

Blogger puts video distortions into MSM

Andrew Breitbart, a former Drudge Report staffer, runs BigGovernment.com. In July 2010, the Obama White House fired US Dept of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod soon after BigGovernment posted a 100-second video excerpt purporting to show that, during a speech to the NAACP, Sherrod had boasted about discriminating against a white farmer while she was a federal employee during the Obama administration. Actually -- and Breitbart corrected the error -- she was describing events in the 1980s when she was Georgia field director for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit that had grown out of the civil rights movement to help Black farmers.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, a fuller version of the speech showed that Sherrod told the story to illustrate how she had overcome her racial hostility toward whites and ultimately helped the white farmer save his farm.

Months earlier, other selectively-edited tapes distributed by BigGovernment.com (played repeatedly on Fox News and elsewhere) helped put the anti-poverty group ACORN out of business. Rachel Maddow dissects the distorted presentation that doomed ACORN. (Fox News had goaded others in media for not doing enough ACORN-smearing.)

It wasn't just Fox News that promoted BigGovernment.com's misleading ACORN story. The Public Editor of the paper of record, the New York Times, went to absurd lengths to defend his paper's coverage.

Beware Drudge "Exclusive"

Perhaps Matt Drudge should stick to aggregating content from elsewhere (with revved-up headlines) rather than "report" -- as demonstrated by this 1999 "world exclusive," which helped push the story into some mainstream outlets.

And as demonstrated by his 2007 "exclusive" in which he accused CNN reporter Michael Ware of "heckling" Republican senators during a news conference in Iraq and "laughing and mocking their comments." Drudge's evidence-free charge -- based on an anonymous "official" -- was picked up by rightwing blogs and the Washington Times.

Prof Cohen at...

...Occupy Wall Street, listening in on "think tank" discussion about Media Portrayals of Occupy Wall Street.

For "How Movies Romanticize Journalism"...

...see blog post with five choices from Isabel B.

Can bloggers/columnists with strong views...

. . .still engage in independent journalism? Here is some critical commentary from the conservative National Review Online within hours of John McCain selecting Sarah Palin as his running-mate in April 2008.

2008: Mayhill Fowler of HuffingtonPost 'Off the Bus'

Mayhill Fowler says she didn't hide that she was recording ex-President Clinton's angry words about a Vanity Fair reporter, while he greeted voters in public as he campaigned for his wife in June 2008. BUT Clinton obviously did not know Fowler was a HuffPost "citizen journalist." Should she have ID'd herself? (She clearly got a more honest take from Clinton than if he'd known she was a journalist.)

Shouldn't public figures know nowadays that anything said -- especially rants (or racism) -- in public will be recorded and on record forever? Exhibits A and B.

Mayhill Fowler's earlier reporting scoop that launched "Bittergate" uproar.

Blogger takes ethical step

Here's an apparent example of a blogger acting professionally and ethically as per SPJ Code of Ethics. Blogger Ken Krayeske -- who gained fame locally by questioning University of Connecticut's basketball coach about his huge taxpayer-paid salary -- announced in Oct. 2009 that he wouldn't be covering Hartford City Hall because his girlfriend had a job there.

Sexism in media

Trailer for new documentary Miss Representation.

Mac Miller

Indie music success hitting big THIS WEEK, reports blogger Julianne. Billboard even put Miller on its cover.

Net Neutrality and VideoJournalist Under Attack

Sen. Al Franken posted Tuesday on HuffPost (h/t Erin): "Net Neutrality is Under Attack...Again."

Net neutrality isn't a government takeover of the Internet, as many of my Republican colleagues have alleged. It isn't even a change from what we have now. Net neutrality has been in place since the very beginning of the Internet...it's what each and every one of us experiences every time we use the Internet. Right now, an e-mail from a friend arrives in your inbox just as quickly and reliably as an advertisement from Amazon.com. Consumers can go online and make a reservation at a small fishing lodge in Ely, Minnesota just as quickly as they can at the Hilton.

But many Republicans want to change that so that the large corporations they represent can increase their profit margins at the expense of small businesses and consumers.

Nikki posted video of a peaceable video guy getting shot at (rubber bullet or something) by Oakland police.

Women Musicians Build Followings...

...through Facebook, reports Laura Sydell for NPR.

Malcolm Gladwell: "Stop going to journalism programs"

Author/journalist Malcolm Galdwell ("Tipping Point," "Blink," "Outliers")gave this advice to young journalists in a 2009 Time interview:

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

Gena blogged about a Nation piece by Michael Tracey about journalism degrees. Tracey wrote:

"...if you take a full major’s worth of journalism classes, that’s about twelve (or however many) less classes in the humanities that could’ve equipped you with an intellectual framework from which to approach your work."

YouTube stars get big bucks

What the Buck? Michael Buckley earned over $100k in a year from his YouTube video-rants about celebs, plus a development deal from HBO, as reported three years ago in the New York Times .

IMHO, YouTube star Lisa Donovan or "LisaNova" has real talent for sketch comedy. Like Tina Fey, she likes to play Sarah Palin, including in this famous McCain/Palin rap.

Cory Williams and his smpFilms hit the bigtime with "Hey Little Sparta" (aka "The Mean Kitty Song" -- more than 55 million views, roughly 20 million of them in the last 6 months). He told the NYT in 2008 that he was earning over $200k per year, partly from (ugh!) product placements within his videos.

My 14-year-old daughter's favorite YouTube star, "PhillyD" of The Philip DeFranco Show, offers his take on current events, tech and celeb news. Should I be monitoring my daughter's online activities better?

Become a YouTube Star and appear in a hugely popular music video with Weezer or the earlier one from Barenaked Ladies.

"Where the hell is Matt?" became so popular, the guy has had his travels paid by corporate sponsors for years.

Tracking journalists arrested...

...while covering Occupy events -- a project of Josh Stearns at the media reform group Free Press.

Google and Yahoo in China

In response to demands from authorities in China, Google agreed in June 2010 to quit automatically switching its users in China to Google's uncensored Hong Kong search site. But there's a tab users can easily click to be switched. Is it safe to hit that tab?

AFTER Yahoo provided info to China's government that led to the imprisoning of two Chinese dissidents in 2002 and 2004, the families of the victims sued Yahoo. As a result, Yahoo announced in 2008 that it was establishing a fund for people jailed in China for posting human rights views online. Too little, too late?

First Amendment Restored For Now...

in Nashville.