Tag: free press

Why wait for the Daily Show for Fake News?

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This goes back a ways. Between vacation for Passover and the net neutrality fight, this fell a bit by the wayside. But it is still an important issue.

Back on April 6, my friends over at Free Press, working with the Center for Media and Democracy, have issued a rather stunning report on how local television stations rebroadcast “video news releases” — press releases created by corporations — as real news. For example, a “news story” about a new drug treatment may, in fact, an advertisement created by the drug company and packaged to look like a news report.

Free Press subsequently hosted a “blogger briefing” call, which you can listen to here. FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstien spoke. And I attended wearing my blogger hat.

My thoughts on this most recent disclosure of how pathetic our news media has become below.

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A Quick Update on Sessions Bill

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My good buddies at Free Press have have created a page on the Sessions bill. As I mentioned last time, that’s the bill that would make it illegal for municipalities to provide new broadband, cable or telecom networks that compete with any private offerings.

As Free Press discovered, Mr. Sessions has about $500K in SBC stock options. Understandable that he might get upset if SBC had to _gasp_ compete for a living.

So take a minute to visit the Free Press site. Among other things, it has a simple way for you to tell your Congresscritter that you, unlike Mr. Sessions, would like to see competition in the broadband market.

Live from St. Louis- Kickin' Media Butt In Mo.

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For the next few days, I’ll be blogging live from Free Press’ media reform conference in St. Louis. Sell out crowd of 2200 academics, activists, and random folks getting together to discuss the media reform movement and how to move forward.

Right now, I’m in the “Academic Brain Trust” pre-session. 120 people getting in early to figure out how to get academics involved in this despite the fact that university departments make it impossible to do anything that relates to the real world, particularly if you don’t have tenure.

I expect I will try to do daily wrap ups rather than bug everyone hourly now that we have RSS feeds.

Stay tuned . . .

A Win in Florida

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According to my friends at Free Press, the forces of municipal broadband won a major victory in Florida. Following a nasty legislative fight in the heart of Bell South territory, the Republican dominated legislature saw fit to impose only one condition on municipal broadband — annual reports.

Score since PA: Public interest- 3, Incumbents-0, Tie-1 (WV, where positive legislation was neutralized)

Stay tuned . . . .

My Muni Report

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Well, not mine exclusively, but I did write a good deal of it. Connecting the Public: The Truth About Municipal Broadband Takes on the telco/cable noise machine and explains why municipal broadband systems are a good thing and why states should not buy into the anti-muni argument.

It’s one of three papers a bunch of us released today. Ben Scott and Frannie Welling at Free Press also did a paper directly taking on the telco “fact sheets” that claim muni systems failed. And the Florida Municipal Electric Association released a study showing that municipal broadband systems really do increase economic development as compared to similarly situated towns in Florida (remember, Florida is one of the states considering an anti-muni bill). You can read all those reports here. And, if you feel like writing something to your state or federal legislator about this, you can print out the letter we did back in February, put your own name on it, and mail it off.

Stay tuned . . .

Tales of the Sausage Factory: Fight to keep the muni option open!

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I’m not saying that every municipality should have its own broadband network. I’m just saying every muni should have the _right_ to deploy the option. So Media Access Project and Free Press have put together a way for you to tell your state legislator and federal representative that they work for you, not their ILEC contributors, and that you, as a voter, don’t think you should have to kiss ILEC patootie to get broadband.

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