Independent journalists in Chicago broke open the police shooting . . .

. . . of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, leading to the indictment of the officer. Journalists Jamie Kalven and Brandon Smith doggedly pursued the story, using freedom of information requests -- after some mainstream news outlets in Chicago had accepted the official prevarication that the victim had lunged at police and was shot in self-defense. The police dashcam video was finally released on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, thanks to the work of Smith -- and yet he was barred from the news conference about the video that he forced the release of. Kalven had forced release of the autopsy, which had cast doubt on the official story months earlier.

Many suspect that the suppression of the video from the public for more than a year was intended to help Mayor Rahm Emanuel win a very contested election earlier this year.

Student blog posts

Anne deployed a quite appropriate quote from Harry Potter series in discussing Mayhill Fowler and "Bittergate."

“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” – Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (17. 197)

I blame Rachel for getting me back into the PewDiePie timesuck. His time-sucking of so many others has made him a millionaire or something.

Why can't we have public TV like this in the USA?

Weeks before the 2003 U.S./British invasion of Iraq, the BBC's Jeremy Paxman and skeptical British citizens literally cross-examined Prime Minister Tony Blair about evidence/reasons/legality behind the invasion -- an interview whose transcript and Blair's comments became part of Britain's official Iraq inquiry in 2011. (Here's another tough Paxman interview of Blair . . . unrelated to Iraq. And here, Paxman interviews Russell Brand in Oct. 2013.) 

In our country, pressure from politicians + lack of insulated funding = embarrassing timidity at so-called "public television"...as evidenced by PBS surgically removing Tina Fey's comedic swipes at Sarah Palin from a broadcast in November 2010.

Country by country comparisons of taxpayer spending on public broadcasting here.

In Feb, a mini-scandal blew up over corporate underwriting of U.S. public TV and I was interviewed on the topic by The Real News Network. Here's a "Family Guy" take on PBS sponsorship and content. (H/t former student Miranda M)

We need fast, open Internet in USA -- where Net was invented

In the opening scene of the Outfoxed documentary, media scholar Robert McChesney explains how big media corporations (acting almost like gangsters) have made media policy behind closed doors, dividing the cake among themselves. If the FCC were doing its job, it might pose gentle but probing questions of gangsta Murdoch and "Murdochopoly," as Jon Stewart did in 2013. (Years ago, Murdoch famously said: "Monopoly is a terrible thing, until you have it.")

The USA, where the Internet was invented, lags behind other countries in Internet speed. Here's one recent ranking. In 2009, big Internet providers such as Verizon, Comcast, AT&T DID NOT APPLY for any of the billions in federal stimulus grants for expanding broadband infrastructure, according to the Wall St. Journal, because recipients of our tax money had to agree to respect Net Neutrality.

On HBO in June, "investigative comic" John Oliver offered a powerful commentary in support of Net Neutrality, generating so many comments to the FCC that it crashed the Commission's website. Months of public pressure sparked President Obama in November 2014 to speak clearly that his FCC should protect Net Neut. 

PS "Survey Shows Satire News Programs Inform People Better Than Actual News on Net Neutrality," reports Dan Van Winkle in summarizing a University of Delaware survey. Respondents said they learned more about Net Neutrality from John Oliver, Colbert and Jon Stewart's Daily Show than from newspapers, online news or TV news. (H/t Chelsea T)

PPS In January 2011, I was asked to appear on a talk-radio show on a big city station to analyze Keith 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."  

PPPS  In 2010, a Daily Show segment on Net Neutrality lampooned Google for cutting a deal with Verizon that would subvert Net Neut. 

POC at IC and campus activism nationwide sparks backlash

An overview column in The Guardian of current campus activism around racial issues. Protests have provoked angry reactions.

Mainstream Media Promote Breitbart Video Distortions

The late Andrew Breitbart, a former assistant to Matt Drudge, ran BigGovernment.com and other websites (now found at Breitbart.com). In July 2010, the Obama White House forced U.S. Dept of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod to quit after BigGovernment posted a100-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 in the Obama administration. Actually, as Breitbart later semi-corrected, Sherrod 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 who had long been discriminated against by the U.S. Dept of Agriculture. More importantly, a fuller version of the speech (first aired by CNN) showed that Sherrod had told the story to illustrate how she had overcome her racial animus toward whites and ultimately helped the white farmer save his farm.

Ten months earlier, in 2009, other selectively-edited tapes distributed by Breitbart's website (featuring James O'Keefe and 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. 

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

O'Keefe recently released a highly-edited video of a Cornell University assistant dean. Not what I would call solid journalism.

Drudge "Exclusives" -- Readers Beware

Perhaps Matt Drudge should stick to aggregating content from others (often with revved-up headlines) rather than "report" -- as demonstrated by this 1999 "World Exclusive," which helped push a hoax into mainstream media.

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. Video of the news conference indicated that Ware hadn't opened his mouth.