Thursday, December 01, 2005

A Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use [unmediated] 10:24:32 PM    comment []

Two Benton Headlines: IF OLD JOURNALISM DIES... [SOURCE: The Village Voice, AUTHOR: Sydney H. Schanberg] [Commentary] Chattering oracles are telling us that newspapers will die soon, as the Internet takes over. But the puzzlement is, where will the new digital providers of information get their fresh news? serious journalism is labor-intensive and time-consuming and therefore requires large amounts of money and health benefits and pensions. The blogosphere has plenty of time, but as yet none of the other items. So if and when newspapers fade into darkness, as the all-seeing oracles foretell, what will happen? Perhaps, in a future time of airborne pigs, altruism will suddenly infuse our culture, and money will descend, like manna, on the Internet to pay for the reporters to do the intensive journalism needed as a check on abusive power. And if altruism or labor-friendly corporate ideologies don't magically appear? The oracles are mostly silent on that eventuality. BUSH'S WAR ON THE PRESS [SOURCE: Free Press, AUTHOR: John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney] [Commentary] With its unprecedented campaign to undermine and, where possible, eliminate independent journalism, the Bush Administration has demonstrated astonishing contempt for the Constitution and considerable fear of an informed public. Over the past five years the Administrations has: 1) corrupting public broadcasting, 2) issued fake video news segments, 3) paid off pundits, 4) turned press conferences into charades, 5) gutted the Freedom of Information Act, 6) obscured coverage of the war in Iraq, and 7) pushed for more consolidated media ownership. The Bush Administration attack on the foundations of self-government demands a response of similar caliber. Under pressure from media-reform activists Congress has begun to push back, with a strong bipartisan vote in the Senate Commerce Committee to limit the ability of federal agencies to produce covert video news segments and to investigate Defense Department spending on propaganda initiatives. But until the Administration is held accountable by Congress for all its assaults on journalism, and until standards are developed to assure that such abuses will not be repeated by future administrations, freedom of the press will exist in name only, with all that suggests for our polity. 10:22:05 PM    comment []

Code Name of the Week: Cornerstone: Domestic Military Intelligence Is Back, William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security, at Washington Post blogs. According to a classified Standing Joint Force Headquarters-North document on "intelligence sharing" dated July 20, 2005, and obtained exclusively by this washingtonpost.com blogger, collection of intelligence on U.S. persons is allowed by military intelligence units if there is a reason to believe the U.S. person is:  • "Connected to international terrorist activities; • Connected to international narcotics; • Connected to foreign intelligence; • A threat to DoD installations, property, or persons; or, • The subject of authorized counterintelligence." In other words, some military gumshoe or over-zealous commander just has to decide that someone is "a threat to" the military.  Under well-worn intelligence oversight rules, military intelligence units are restricted from collecting information concerning "U.S. persons," but the post 9/11 reality is these restrictions are increasingly meaningless.  What is more, the post 9/11 redefinition of "counter-intelligence" opens the way for the military to conduct domestic surveillance. 10:22:01 PM    comment []

Michael Moore interview at BuzzFlash from 2002. 10:21:52 PM    comment []