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Monday, October 31
This Week in Media
by
Arron Wings
on Mon 31 Oct 2005 11:00 AM CST
 This Week in Media
This
week has been a busy one for media watchers. The transition to
Digital TV continued to occupy committees in the House and Senate and
AARP has joined the groups with an interest in the outcome. Video
News Releases and Broadcast flags continue to be topics of interest and
a new attempt at limiting advertising by non-profits surfaced.
There is a must read from USAToday that is a great overview of the
issues and action so far.
For all
things media I recommend the folks at FreePress where they live the
motto “media is the issue.” They now have a weekly 5-minute audio
summary of media news.
And last
but not least our friends from Sinclair Broadcasting received another
mention in the media, this time in Le Monde in Paris. This
article covers most of the issues including:
Swing State Influence
In the
past decade, Sinclair Broadcast Group has quietly taken advantage of
the deregulation process orchestrated by the Federal Communication
Commission (FCC) to become the largest owner of US television outlets,
with 62 stations in 39 markets and access to at least 24% of US
viewers, including those in key swing states such as Ohio, Florida,
Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Though Sinclair
lacks outlets in high-profile Democratic cities such as New York, Los
Angeles and Chicago, it has taken over one or two stations in mid-size
cities where it can influence voters without much national scrutiny.
The Point
The most
prominent News Central segment is The Point, a nightly editorial hosted
by Hyman that Sinclair forces its stations to broadcast. Hyman, 47, is
a Navy man and former intelligence officer who carries a prisoner of
war/missing in action bracelet, engraved with the name of a US war
casualty from the Persian Gulf, to remind himself of the cost of
freedom. He wears many hats at Sinclair, from vice-president to head of
lobbying. In his spare time he is also vice president of the Centre for
Science-Based Public Policy in Annapolis, not far from Sinclair’s
headquarters. The research findings published by this think-tank, which
has received more than $650,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998, include
assertions that “the mercury levels found in fish have no adverse
effects on human health” and that air pollution “cannot be a major
cause of asthma.”
Weather
The
meteorology staff of eight to 10 on-air personalities works from
Sinclair’s offices in Hunt Valley, in Maryland, where they keep stacks
of atlases, study regional maps, and practice pronouncing the names of
places they have never been to. Each member does weather reports, as
well as editing, operating the camera, selecting graphics, and
distributing the segments, for three to five cities a day. There is a
real economy in this, as Hyman explains: “It takes just a few minutes a
day to put together a weather segment. That’s why meteorologists are
always the ones doing public affairs work for TV stations, going to
county fairs and school events. We said, what if instead we had
meteorologists doing weather all day long? Viewers don’t care if the
weather man is in a studio in Oklahoma City, or in College Park, or
here.” The Sinclair meteorologist who showed us the system, James
Wieland, added: “A lot of people are surprised that we’re not even
there.”
(Click here to read the entire article)
Saturday, October 29
Economic Priorities Moving U.S. in Wrong Direction
by
Trish Nelson
on Sat 29 Oct 2005 11:00 AM CDT
 Economic Priorities Moving U.S. in Wrong Direction
MinutemanMedia
by Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel
Every autumn, as the leaves change color, we get a vivid new picture of the trends that pull us apart as a country. After almost three decades of incrementally widening disparities of wealth and income, we’ve entered a new version of economic apartheid, American-style. Let’s call it Inequality 2.0.
The United States is now the third most unequal industrialized society after Russia and Mexico.
The U.S. Census reports that since 2001, the ranks of our nation’s poor have grown by 4 million, and the number of people without health insurance has swelled by 10 percent to over 45 million.
Over 50 percent of 2004 total income went to the top fifth of households, and the biggest gains to the top 5 percent and 1 percent. The average CEO now takes home a paycheck 431 times that of their average worker.
2004 saw a dramatic increase in the number of billionaires. According to “Forbes” magazine, there are now 374 of them. In the early 1980s, the average net worth of the individuals on the Forbes 400 list was $400 million. Today, the average net worth is $2.8 billion. Wal-Mart’s Walton family now has 771,287 times more than the median U.S. household.
Does inequality matter? Concentrations of wealth and power pose a danger to our democratic system. The corruption of politics by big money might explain why for the last five years the president and Congress have been more interested in repealing the federal estate tax, paid only by multi-millionaires, than in reinforcing levees along the Gulf Coast.
Now, to pay for hurricane reconstruction and the war in Iraq, Congress is considering cuts in programs that help poor people, such as Medicaid and Food Stamps. They have not yet considered fairer ways of reducing the deficit like reversing special tax breaks for the rich, such as the recent cuts in capital gains and dividend taxes.
Public policies in trade, taxes, wages and social spending can make a difference in mitigating national and global trends toward prolonged inequality. But our priorities are moving us in the wrong direction.
(click here to read the entire article)
Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel are co-authors of the new book, “Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity” (The New Press).
Friday, October 28
COOL has been Killed
by
Caroline Vernon
on Fri 28 Oct 2005 04:00 PM CDT
 Politics and Money to Blame for Killing Consumer-Friendly Food Labeling Program.
This is completely unacceptable!
Note:
The only silver lining is that the Larry Craig provision to exempt
factory farms from Superfund and Emergency Planning and Community Right
to Know Act (EPCRA) failed once again.
Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Director of Public Citizen’s Food Program.
The long
battle over country-of-origin labeling (COOL) has reached a
disappointing finish, with a decision last night by the House-Senate
Conference Committee on the agriculture appropriations bill (H.R. 2744)
to wave a white flag of surrender to the food and grocery industries.
The committee effectively killed a mandatory program that would require
labels on foods sold in grocery stores to state where and how the food
was raised or produced.
As is
typical of this Congress, this final move was made behind closed doors.
Even though Public Citizen tried to attend this so-called public
meeting, no one who was standing in line to attend the meeting was
allowed to enter the room. Despite polls showing that consumers
overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, lawmakers have killed the
idea through budgetary gimmicks because they favor a weaker, voluntary
labeling program. A mandatory program would not have cost the
government any money; that cost would have been borne by the food
industry.
As outlined in the recent Public Citizen report Tabled Labels, available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/COOL.pdf,
big agribusiness used millions of dollars in lobbying expenditures and
campaign contributions, and a network of Washington insiders with close
connections to the Bush administration and Congress, to thwart COOL.
This latest effort to kill COOL was led by U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla
(R-Texas), who has received more than $167,000 from COOL opponents in
the past three election cycles, making him their top beneficiary. The
Food Marketing Institute, which represents the grocery industry, and
the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which represents the meat
industry, have been the biggest opponents of mandatory COOL. It is
apparent that our elected lawmakers’ main concern is to protect
industry, not consumers.
While
the appropriations bill delays mandatory COOL for meat to September
2008, this move effectively kills the program because this new
implementation date is beyond the expiration date - 2007 - of the 2002
Farm Bill that originally mandated it.
Rules
for voluntary COOL are already in effect, yet most consumers are not
getting information about where their food was produced. For nearly
four years, Congress has stalled on this issue. Most people can earn a
college degree in four years, but apparently it’s not enough time for
Congress to institute a simple program that would have been useful to
every consumer in the United States. Congress has failed us again.
Public
Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based
in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org.
Thursday, October 27
Exxon Mobil Posts Highest Profit In Company History
by
Chad Thompson
on Thu 27 Oct 2005 12:34 PM CDT
 Exxon Mobil Posts Highest Profit In Company History
Good Grief.
Exxon
Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, on
Thursday said quarterly profit surged 75 percent to nearly $10 billion,
raking in a bonanza from record oil prices.
The
profit was the highest in the company's history, surpassing the record
it set in the 2004 fourth quarter. Revenue jumped 32 percent to just
over $100 billion.
For some reason, the standard "supply and demand" argument seems to wear a little thin.
Something to note: the big reason for higher gas prices lately
has been "lack of refining capacity", to the point of the Bush
administration wants to make refinery construction "easier":
"It
ought to be clear to everybody that this country needs to build more
refining capacity to be able to deal with the issues of tight supply,"
Bush said at a White House news conference. He pledged to support
legislation aimed at making it easier to expand refineries and build
new ones
Despite all of this supposed red tape - the cost of building a new refinery in Gary, Ind. clocked in at a profit-busting $100 million:
The
total construction cost of a refinery with a production capacity of
200,000 bbl/day in Gary, Indiana, completed in 2001 was $100 million.
It is proposed that a similar refinery with a production capacity of
300,000 bbl/day be built in Los Angeles, California, for completion in
2003. For the additional information given below, make an order of
magnitude estimate of the cost of the proposed plant.
So - for the "reasons" given for this high price crunch - can someone
do the math for me? What is $10 Billion minus $100 million?
Tuesday, October 25
ROSA PARKS: The Woman Who “Sat Down” For What She Believed In
by
Linda Thieman
on Tue 25 Oct 2005 05:37 PM CDT
 ROSA PARKS: The Woman Who “Sat Down” For What She Believed In
by Molly Regan
[Editor's note: Back before
Molly Regan became a regular poster with Blog for Iowa, she wrote this
tribute to her hero, Rosa Parks, for us. Rosa Parks died yesterday at the age of 92. In her honor, we are rerunning Molly's original article.]
On December 1, 1955,
in Montgomery, Alabama, Seamstress Rosa Parks got on a bus and sat
down. When she was told by a white man to move to the back of the
bus, she refused, and was subsequently arrested. "Our
mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it," wrote Parks in
her book, Quiet Strength,
(Zondervan Publishing House, 1994). "I kept thinking about my mother
and my grandparents, and how strong they were. I knew there was a
possibility of being mistreated, but an opportunity was being given to
me to do what I had asked of others."
This defiant act of courage
set off a flurry of incidents which resulted in violence and death over
the next 10 years, and eventually led to the passage of the CIVIL
RIGHTS ACT in 1965. For you see, Rosa Parks was a black woman who
was not allowed in the Alabama of 1955 to ride on public transportation
with the same human dignity that most of us today take for
granted.
This
small woman had in the past not been an overtly outspoken person
regarding the shamefulness of segregation. But, on that
December day 49 years ago, she defied the law and in her quiet way
paved a path for others to follow. This woman from a different
place and time is my hero. She exemplifies the tenacity of a fed
up spirit who knew it was then that she needed to fulfill her
destiny. I and millions of others are eternally
grateful. We salute you, Rosa Parks.
No Pass, No Play
by
Chad Thompson
on Tue 25 Oct 2005 12:42 PM CDT
 No Pass, No Play
While
this might not seem like an outwardly political post (it does let me
use that "failing paper" icon in context, however!) - this caught my eye as being something rather troublesome in terms of the relationship between athletics and academics in our public schools.
Dozens
of current athletes in Iowa's public high schools would be sidelined
under new academic eligibility rules, an informal Des Moines Register
survey shows.
In
some high schools, athletics officials estimate as many as 25 percent
of their fall athletes are failing one course. Under tougher
eligibility policies expected to go into effect next fall, athletes
failing one or more courses would be unable to participate in sporting
events.
....
"We are concerned that students will decrease the amount of courses
they are willing to carry and may stick to the minimum . . . losing out
on a stronger academic course load" if the new rules go into effect,
[Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School Principal Mary] Wilcynski said.
A
question for any commenters: is it unreasonable to require that
students pass classes in order to participate in extracurricular
activities?
I
understand the need for 'balance' in the lives of students and in their
curriculum - but a failing grade - to me - signifies that the notion of
'balance' is lost and needs to be restored.
Resisting Hillary: Never Again Will Cindy Sheehan Support a Pro-war Democrat
by
Linda Thieman
on Tue 25 Oct 2005 08:00 AM CDT
 Resisting Hillary: Never Again Will Cindy Sheehan Support a Pro-war Democrat
by Cindy Sheehan (pictured above), AlterNet.org
How can those who want the occupation of Iraq to end support Hillary Clinton's higher political aspirations? They can't.
I would
love to support Hillary for President if she would come out against the
travesty in Iraq. But I don't think she can speak out against the
occupation, because she supports it.
I will not make the mistake of supporting another pro-war Democrat for president again, as I won't support a pro-war Republican.
This country wants this occupation to end. The world wants the occupation to end. People in Iraq want this occupation to end.
Senator
Clinton: taking the peace road would not prove you are weak. Instead,
it would prove that you are the strongest and wisest candidate. As a
mom, as an American, as a patriot: I implore you to have the strength
and courage to lead the fight for peace....
Senator Clinton: come out against this occupation of Iraq. Not because
it is the politically expedient thing to do but because it is the
humane thing to do. If you want to make Casey's sacrifice count, bring
the rest of his buddies home alive.
(Read the complete article here.)
Monday, October 24
Digital TV is Coming
by
Arron Wings
on Mon 24 Oct 2005 11:00 AM CDT
 Digital TV is Coming
Digital TV is coming and an important question is “what is it going to
bring with it?” Will it bring an expanded requirement to serve
the public interest, or an expanded ability for greater profits?
There was action in House and Senate committees this week with no clear
winners and losers.
At issue is everything from when will compliance be mandated to how will cable companies be required to handle “must
carries,” and how to allocate uses for bandwidth that will become
available in the transition. Additional issues are a) how much publicly-supported consumer education will be available, b) how much subsidy for the purchase of DTV converter boxes for users
that still have analog sets, c) do we create a Digital Opportunity Investment Trust to promote public interest, and d) do we allow the industry to use “broadcast flags” to prevent recording and copying at home.
Many groups are lobbying hard to influence the future of media in this
country. The players are everyone from the industry (profits),
John McCain (emergency response on unused bandwith), American Library
Association (against broadcast flags), SMART Coalition (for consumer
education and converter boxes), and progressive and media reform groups
(affordable broadband).
The transition from analog to digital signals for broadcast TV is a
great opportunity to shape our future. Get informed and be ready
for grassroots action as these proposals begin to take shape over the
next few months.
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