Understanding Our Economic Crisis
Nick Gillespie narrates this video sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, and Reason.tv that clearly shows our current economic situation.
While it seems most available information focuses attention upon the segments of the economy that appear to be responsible for this mess few possess the willingness to look upon the economy as a whole.
Here I wish to look upon the economy as a whole.
Money used to be things, commodities, that could be traded for anything else because everyone recognized and accepted their value. Precious metals eventually became the commodity of choice to use as money but throughout history almost any other thing you can imagine became used as money someplace sometime.
The concept of money, commodities with universally recognized value, is really straight forward and simple. If people harvest or produce something lacking a widespread market then trading it for something else of equal value with a widespread market opens up new trade opportunities for them.
Trade became so dependent upon money that local bullies, Priest-Kings with armies, reserved the right to issue money for themselves and with this monoply in hand controlled trade. You would think that this control over money allows Priest-King with armies to do or have anything but it was not enough.
To get more out of money, Priest-Kings came up with the idea of debasement. Since the local bullies controlled the money they changed the precious metal content of money whenever they wished.
For example, the Roman denarius originally contained about 4.5 grams of nearly pure silver. Under the Claudio-Julian Emperors the denarius contained about 4 grams of silver.
Nero reduced the silver content of the denarius to 3.8 grams. By the second half of the third century the denarius contained only about 2% silver and was replaced.
Under Diocletian (c. December 22, 244 – December 3, 311) taxes increased and extra coins were minted to pay for the military expansion intended to secure the empire. The resulting inflation debased the money and the empire’s mercenaries ended up sacking Rome for payment.
More recently, the U.S. dime was 90% silver until 1964. Starting in 1965 it no longer has any silver in it.
The Invention of Paper Money
The Chinese, inventors of the printing press, also invented paper money. During the reign of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and heir to the Mongol Empire, paper money became their predominant medium of trade.
The unbacked currency of Toghan Temur (r. 1333-70) produced a hyperinflationary spiral and the Han-Chinese people revolted due to the dynasty’s oppressive security state. The Mongols lost most of China to the Ming rebels in 1368 and fled to their homeland Mongolia.
The Great Debasement
In 1544, Henry VIII of England , King and head of the Church of England, reduced the silver in minted coins by about 50% and repeated this to a lesser extent the following year. The resulting long term inflation crisis threatened landowners’ wealth which pushed them to institute enclosure.
The enclosure movement essentially completed the destruction of the medieval peasant community and manorial serfdom in England. Capitalism and wage labor developed to replace manorial serfdom.
Eventually English colonies in North America rebelled against new laws prohibiting them from issuing their own money and requiring them to borrow money at interest from the Bank of England. The rebellious colonies also rejected the possibility of rule by Priest-Kings and attempted to preserve these gains for future generations with the Bill of Rights.
The following 8 minute segment from the movie Zeitgeist:Addendum provides an excellent overview of what happened next.
The financial services industry, like all powerful industries before them, demanded increasingly “handout-minded” Presidents and Representatives who inevitably mortgaged the country’s future in order to win reelection. Elections today are won with money provided directly by the financial services industry, indirectly through their lobbies and spent by their political action committees.
William K. Black most recently brought this issue to national attention.
The United States of America, founded by slave owners on stolen land, securing its empire with professionalized armed forces and mercenaries, now practices money debasement through quantitative easing.
This, along with the loss of rights to the encroaching security state, seems no different than the end phase experienced by other empires. If this were all there is, then we could all expect to go on to establishing new societies in the future.
The things that are different this time involve the global exhaustion of nonrenewable resources and world wide climate change in the face of unprecedented population levels. Without a doubt these issues complicate matters a great deal.
If you have ever thought about becoming independent from reliance upon an employer, now would be a good time to act. If you have never thought about it, now would be a good time to start thinking about it.
Personally, nothing within the boundaries of the law seems as feasible as establishing an online business. How long that remains feasible is anybody’s guess but by the time that becomes unfeasible we will be experiencing the total collapse of industrialized civilization.
And that will be the subject of another atticle.
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Reporter vs Expert – Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting
There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).
If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.
I’ll be frank; you want to be the expert.
Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc… experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.
Most Bloggers Are Reporters
The thing with expertise is that it requires something – experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).
There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts – there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.
Don’t Replicate Your Teacher
If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a “guru” (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.
The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry – the Internet marketing industry – not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.
Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche – Internet marketing – and rarely have any key points of differentiation.
How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things – email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it – making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) – your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.
If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.
Report on Your Process, Not Others
The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.
It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion – your stories – and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.
Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.
You Are Already An Expert
Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.
Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of…well fear.
Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.
Reporting Is A Stepping Stone
If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from “scratch”, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.
Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.
Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.
To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:
FREE Yaro Starak Video
10 Blog Traffic Tips
In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.
Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.
It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.
Top 10 Tips
10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.
9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.
You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.
8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).
7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.
Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.
6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.
This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.
5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.
4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.
To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.
3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!
2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.
How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.
1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.
I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.
This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.
To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:
FREE Yaro Starak Video
Bailout Local Media First
Reclaim the Media board: Daniel, Julie, Jonathan, Susan, Sabrina, Karen and Jan
DeeDee Halleck, media activist, founder of Paper Tiger Television, co-founder of the Deep Dish Satellite Network, the first grass roots community television network, Professor Emerita in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego has a full profile on Wikipedia.
Bailouts for the Media Moguls?
Comments on the Nichols/McChesney March Nation Article
Thinking Outside the (Newspaper) Box
DeeDee Halleck, April 4, 2009
John Nichols and Robert McChesney have written a widely posted Nation article searching for answers to the current emergencies in the newspaper business. (“The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers“) They recognize the crisis as an opportunity to rethink public media in general and their suggestions for remedy are at least a provocative starter for the needed reassessment and creative activism. They suggest the government pump in $60 billion over the next three years, a price tag that is similar to, though less, than the handouts to AIG and the US banks.
However, it’s hard to believe that anyone could seriously want to salvage the “print-fitted” U.S. corporate news. In their article, the media reformers are trying to prop up the bankrupt “fourth estate” with proposals for salvation, requesting that Congress help the media corporations– well, at least the ones that own newspapers–by subsidizing delivery by the U.S. Post Office and even free delivery for some periodicals. They would also bequeath to readers limited tax exemptions for newspaper purchase. How this would work is a bit fuzzy and their definition of journalism is more Washington Post and New York Times than the Indypendent, the NYC based Indymedia weekly, let alone community radio and public access TV. Missing in the article is any discussion of the popular tabloids. I doubt if Nichols and McChesney consider the NY Post or even the New York Daily News as capital “J” Journalism. It may have been a long time since either Nichols nor McChesney rode a subway, so perhaps they don’t have a clue as to what the masses read. The authors must read the NY Times with their croissants.
Subsidies
The papers they would subsidize are replete with advertising. Why should U.S. taxpayers subsidize the delivery of ANY ads? Their proposal does put a tepid limit on subsidies to “ad-supported” news –only ones which have 50% or less ads. We are already paying for ads in the cost of promoted goods. The postal service is burdened with the weight of the ads sent as catalogues and all the other junk mail that has flourished with “bulk” rate subsidies. Junk mail is just that– the “bulk” of postal business today.
I’m surprised that these media reformers have undertaken such a rush to resuscitate their own often blasted past targets. They agonize that without newspapers, “Politicians and administrators will work increasingly without independent scrutiny and without public accountability.” They admit that the U.S. press has sadly missed that sort of independent scrutiny for decades, but there is a lingering belief that journalism (with a capital J!) is usually “on the case.” How does New York Times’ war-monger Judith Miller fits into that ideal? Certainly it wasn’t just “bad apple” Miller who lead the war chorus. The Times wasn’t “reporting” about Iraq prior to the invasion, but actively orchestrating the battle cries–as they were soon to follow with their treatment of the Iran “threat”.
Where are the Nichols and McChesney of their New Press 2005 book, Tragedy and Farce: how the American media sell wars, spin elections, and destroy democracy? One longs for a systemic critique, not a band-aid and a pat. They have good impulses, but they are compromised and essentially brought down by their allegiance to established professional hierarchies and by their inability to acknowledge (even their own!) critique of corporate media. There is no recognition of the on-going process of “manufacturing consent”, so brilliantly laid out by Herman and Chomsky. Instead there is almost an apology– similar to the Times’ own mea culpa vis a vis Judith Miller. Nichols and McChesney say: “The news media blew the coverage of the Iraq invasion”. “They missed the past decade of corporate scandals.” (My emphases) It’s as though these are just some mistakes–aberrations that could be rectified by some additional resources and a few more good reporters. They call for the system to create “far superior” journalism. There is an abiding faith in the system itself.
Journalism Education
The Nation article proposes that there be subsidies for journalism education. Why feather the nests of the mainstream journalism schools? An interesting survey would be to find out how many of the winners of, for example, the Polk Journalism Awards, have actually attended those stodgy bureaucrat factories. The heroic journalists who come to mind didn’t hatch in those halls. Amy Goodman studied anthropology. Seymour Hersh and Studs Turkel went to law school. Naomi Klein attended the London School of Economics. Robert Fisk was a literature major. Even deceased mainstream ABC anchor Peter Jennings didn’t attend journalism school. He never even finished a BA, saying he “lasted about 10 minutes” in college. Polk award winner Jeremy Scahill cut his teeth at the Catholic Worker. Scahill once said that journalism schools produce only lemmings. His solution is to declare journalism a trade and insure that young people learn out in the field, apprenticing as he did with Amy Goodman. He claims to have learned more from his work cataloging Amy’s piles of news clippings than he would in any college classroom.
The U.S. junior high schools and high schools don’t need journalism classes, but courses that encourage young people to take an interest in history, economics, political science and yes, literature. In terms of the media, U.S. schools need CRITICAL media education, so that students learn to critique not only the New York Post, but The Nation and Hulu and the twittering prose of Face Book. Scandinavia has a long tradition of requiring media analysis even in primary schools. “Tell me kids, why is Teletubbies sponsored by Kelloggs?” Our high school students, many of whom are members of My Space, need to be taught to understand how data mining works. Those cute Face Book questionnaires and attitude surveys are conceived by marketers who are building profiles, for their next round of “push” ads.
Public, Educational and Government Access
McChesney and Nichols suggest that there be government support for school newspapers and low power radio. Great. There are high schools where radio and internet reporting is happening right now. Students and community organizations have had access to technical and training support for coverage of local (and national) issues in the often dismissed world of PEG channels. PEG (Public, Government and Educational) access in many communities are required by local governments as a payment for use of the local “right of way.” This has resulted in media centers in several thousand municipalities where communities can have access to cameras, computers and channels, all maintained by the cable operator. PEG has done admirable work in a providing opportunities for gaining technical proficiency, moreover, in providing an authentic “public sphere” for creating and exchanging information and opinion. The impressive PEG infrastructure is currently threatened by the heavily funded lobbying of ATT and Verizon. These corporations are seeking to get state legislatures to enact laws which gut the local regulations that require cable corporations to provide access. McChesney and Nichols’ Free Press has not foregrounded this battle, preferring to highlight the sexier struggle for “net neutrality”. However, recently after a bit of prodding, Free Press helped by urging their list serve members to make FCC comments in support of PEG. This is part of an inquiry by the FCC into how cable corporations have been “slamming” access channels by moving them into hard to find digital “closets” not easily accessible to channel switching remotes. .
The struggle for an open internet can’t be limited to “neutrality”. Sure, the preferential use of speed and access by internet providers should not be allowed, but as technology enables telecommunication companies to pursue video distribution, we are moving closer to the convergence of these technologies, as any owner of an I-phone can attest. That means that the battles for PEG and the net all have the same protagonists, and all of these companies should be required to provide space and resources for the public. Enacting regulations which require support for public communication across all platforms should be part and parcel of the internet governance fight. Our airwaves and our “rights of way” enable these technologies and there has to be a public “pay back.” Timber cutting and resource mining in national forests must compensate the public. Why not “rent” for our sky?
Nichols and McChesney speak of the need to protect public media from government interference, but PEG activists and administrators have developed concrete examples of how public media can be shielded from government and corporate interference. Many of the cable franchises now in place are far more effective than the “safeguards” at PBS, CPB and NPR. In terms of media regulation, PEG is a pretty good model, although in many cities and towns PEG is underfunded and neglected. However, in those cities where PEG has flourished with comprehensive contracts with the cable corporations, such as Tucson, Cambridge, Burlington, Portland and many, many more, public communication via access channels provides many of the things right now that Nichols and McChesney want “public broadcasting” to do in the future.
“Quality”
The Nation article has confusing proscriptions for a future “public media”. McChesney and Nichols state: “Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism. We understand that this is a controversial position.” But then they go on to say they don’t endorse “government support”. They then argue for expanding funding for public broadcasting, and argue that in their proposed future, “no state or region would be without quality local, state, and national or international journalism.” They do not outline how the programming would be protected from government (and corporate) interference, nor do they define what “quality” is, any more than they delineate the “vibrant democracy” that they say was the goal of Jefferson and Madison. That the views of women and non-landholders weren’t part of that “vibrant” consensus in our early Republic is not mentioned in McChesney and Nichols’ enthusiastic statements about the press.
That quest for “quality” is one of the ruses which mainstream journalism, from the NYTimes to public broadcasting, has used to maintain their status quo. The position is succinctly put in the quote by James Carey in the McChesney/Nichols article. Carey asks for “journalists to be restored to their proper [sic!] role as orchestrators of the conversation of a democratic culture.” Is “orchestration” what we need for a “vibrant democracy”? A different critic, Communication Professor Herbert Schiller, in the first Paper Tiger TV program (critiquing The New York Times in 1981) saw that role as being “the steering mechanism of the ruling class.”
Nichols and McChesney are right that this is an opportune time to re-think the structures of U.S. media, and public broadcasting is a good place to start, but there are other more general problems than the need for multi-year consistent funding. Pouring money into the “public broadcasting” that now exists will only strengthen the elitism that has evolved from these convoluted, bureaucratic structures. The whole structure of PBS and CPB is designed to squelch any “vibrant democracy.” While Nichols and McChesney warn about government involvement, they don’t mention the gorilla in the room– transnational agribusiness and the oil and insurance corporations. The subservient accommodation by PBS to corporate interests was recently clarified in the treatment given a Front Line program on health care which was initiated by Washinton Post reporter T.R. Reid, entitled “Health Care Around America”. Although originally designed to critique profit-oriented health care insurance, PBS officials demanded major changes and any reference to profit oriented insurance being a “problem” was deleted. The script was changed to actually promote the insurance companies, much to the dismay of Mr. Reid, who tried, unsuccessfully, to have his name and his interviews taken off the show. The whole thrust of the program became diametrically contrary to the original intention of the correspondent. This is just par for the PBS course. Corporate funding (though only a fraction of the whole budget) is the power component not only for specific program selection, but for the operation of the whole system, and when the views expressed are in opposition to the corporate mind-set, those views are censored, not the corporation.
The boards of directors of the public television channels across the country are self-perpetuating elite representatives of corporate and mainstream interests. For a brief time in the 1970s there was a movement to have elected boards.
Rather than change the make-up of the powerful who run these channels, the response to local and national activism was to set up “advisory boards” of “community” members. Most of those advisory boards have long since disbanded, realizing early on that they functioned only as public relations props and that they had no real clout to effect programming direction or station management. A new reassessment would have to take on the democratic restructuring of public television. Serious democratizing of the public broadcasting system must be a prerequisite for receiving any funding from Congress, or from any sort of fee based mechanism such as that which is the basis of the BBC.
Reconfiguring the funding in ways that are independent of party politics and corporate PR could help to make our public media true expressions of the lively issues and arts that exist in our country. Funding for public media can have strong prerequisites– ones that foster independence, creativity and promote collaborations. The example of ITVS– the Independent Television Service, founded by the lobbying efforts of independent producers in the 70s and 80s, has pioneered various ways (with a small budget) to support serious creative programming on public television. Democracy Now! is an example of new journalism that uses a hybrid mix of everything including camcorder/internet activists and cell phones to provide a daily program of hard hitting investigation and commentary by historians, lawyers, politicians, artists and those directly effected by wars and injustice. On no other outlet do we hear so often from the victims of global warring (and global warming). Because of the burgeoning “do it yourself” media sphere, there is great potential for cooperation between the many sectors of public expression: public television, public access, community radio, ipods, community projections and the internet. Each of these entities has infrastructure that can expand and develop with creative interchange that is open to sharing.
‘The division between “professionals” and “amateurs” is exploited by such programs as the popular American Idol, in which a few talented “amateurs” vie for a “starring role.” But the whole notion of “professional” media is constantly challenged by the millions of YouTube posters, eye-witness news gatherers, hip-hop DJs and the whole world of bloggers. The explosion of popular video and audio creation, combined with supportive infrastructure for distribution and exchange of this material can herald an era of public art and dialogue not seen since the WPA.
Communities of Location and Interest
Just as local food has become a rallying cry, local information, as Nichols and McChesney note, is what we want. Local media was consistently the overwhelming demand at the many community hearings that the FCC conducted over the past few years. In part, this was a tremendous reaction to the deregulation of radio and the swift consolidation of hundreds of broadcasting outlets. Let’s hope that era of Clear Channel gobbling up local radio stations is over. The need for “local” is great in both the commercial and public arena in both television and radio. One has to look far and wide to find a public TV station (or even an NPR station) that does any local news. In the Northeast, WAMC FM out of Albany, NY has gobbled up local frequencies and is heard from Vermont to Connecticut, from Plattsburgh to Utica, from Pennsylvania to New Hampshire. Instead of local information this “mega channel” provides a hodge podge of “regional” programs squeezed in between the franchised NPR programs and their endless pitching for money.
I can recall when local radio would broadcast the menu for school lunches. Reviving that practice might improve the diet for a generation of youngsters. Parents might be scandalized in they could listen to the listing of catsup and potato chip meals that dominate school cafeterias. Local farmers can provide schools and colleges with fruits and veggies that are healthy and don’t require carbon-spewing cross-country/world shipping. In a similar mode, local independent producers, youth, professors, musicians, elders, activists and immigrants can provide information, history, entertainment and art that is relevant and “home grown.” At the same time we can exchange with international colleagues and friends. When information can travel freely (and neutrally!), community can be defined by interest and passion, and not limited by geography.
* * * * * Local Media Resources * * * * *
Prometheus Radio Project
A small group of radio activists founded this non-profit organization by a in 1998. Prometheus builds, supports, and advocates for community radio stations which empower participatory community voices and movements for social change. To that end, they demystify technologies, the political process that governs access to our media system, and the effects of media on our lives and our communities.
They primarily focus on building a large community of LPFM (low power radio) stations and listeners. They hope that this community will grow into a powerful force working toward the democratic media future we envision. Toward that end, Prometheus supports community groups at every stage of the process of building community radio stations, facilitate public participation in the FCC regulatory process, and sponsor events promoting awareness and support of media democracy and LPFM radio.
Prometheus Radio Project
P.O. Box 42158
Philadelphia, PA 19101
Phone: 215-727-9620
Fax: 206-202-1556
Email: Info (at) Prometheus (dot) org
Reclaim the Media
Reclaim the Media, based in Seattle since 2002, conducts grassroots organizing for social change through media justice. They are dedicated to pursuing a more just society by transforming our media system and expanding the communications rights of ordinary people through grassroots organizing, education, networking and advocacy. Reclaim the Media envisions an authentic, just democracy characterized by media systems that inform and empower citizens, reflect our diverse cultures, and secure communications rights for everyone. They advocate for a free and diverse press, community access to communications tools and technology, and media policy that serves the public interest. Three broad themes guide Reclaim the Media projects:
• Work to change media policy at the local and federal level, so that the structure of our media favors the public interest, rather than a powerful elite.
• Teach media literacy education because we all need to understand how news can be shaped by journalistic habits and by powerful commercial and political interests.
• Support community media because we cannot entrust our history, our cultures and our democracy to the consolidated media empires alone.
Reclaim the Media
P.O. Box 22754
Seattle, WA 98122-0754
206-709-0558
Email: Info (at) reclaimthemedia (dot) org
Waves of Change
Waves of Change is an online survey of community media from around the world: radio, television, theater, murals, comics and the Internet as forms of resistance to homogenous commercial culture. Waves of Change celebrates the energy and success of community expression while looking at problems of sustainability, difficult interactions with political power, the stressful and sometimes dangerous lives of media activists and the ever-present potential of co-option by commercial interests.
Deep Dish TV
For 22 years Deep Dish TV has been a laboratory for new, democratic and empowering ways to make and distribute video. It is a hub linking thousands of artists, independent videomakers, programmers and social activists. The network has produced and distributed over 300 hours of television series that challenge the suppression of awareness, the corruption of language, and the perversion of logic that characterizes so much of corporate media.
With humor, passion, creative flair and very low budgets, Deep Dish TV artists and producers have developed provocative video series exploring issues that profoundly impact our lives.
At the heart of the Deep Dish TV network have been the public access television stations, and now the public interest channels on the satellite networks:Free Speech TV on the Dish Network and LinkTV on DirecTv.
Deep Dish TV
339 Lafayette Street
New York NY 10012
tel: 212-473-8933
fax: 212-420-8223
e-mail: deepdish@igc.org
Paper Tiger Television
Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) has been creating fun, funky, hard-hitting, investigative, compelling and truly alternative media since 1981! The programs produced at PTTV have inspired media-savvy community productions and activism around the world. Our archive includes shows that provide critical analysis of media, educate about the communications industry and highlight issues that are absent from mainstream information sources.
Through the distribution of their short documentary programs, media literacy/video production workshops, community screenings and grassroots advocacy, PTTV works to expose and challenge the corporate control of media. Because of the bias and misrepresentation of issues in mainstream media it is critical to include diverse perspectives in the process of making media. PTTV strives to increase awareness of how media can be used to affect social change. A public that can strategically and creatively use the media is necessary for a more equitable and healthy democracy.
Paper Tiger Television
339 Lafayette St.
New York, NY 10012
3rd Floor
tel: 212-420-9045
email:info (at) papertiger (dot) org
William K Black American Hero
William K. Black wrote about the Prompt Corrective Action Law in Huffington Post on February 23, 2009 in an article titled Why Is Geithner Continuing Paulson’s Policy of Violating the Law?
The Bill Moyers interview of April 3, 2009 catapulted both William K. Black and the Prompt Corrective Action Law into national awareness. I urge everyone to watch this interview as many times as individually necessary to fully understand the discussion.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
William K. Black began writing for Huffington Post on February 10, 2009 with an article titled The Audacity of Dopes where he says
Geithner’s gifts to the bankers that caused the crisis include: a unnecessary taxpayer bailout of “risk capital,” a massive coverup of their banks’ insolvency, gutting the proposed limits on executive compensation, and devising a “guarantee” mechanism designed to hide the expenses of the unprincipled bailouts from the American public.
to convey the extent of the fraud perpetrated at U.S. taxpayer expense. He goes on to indicate how this became possible due to the current structure of the financial services industry. In fact if we do not move to change things the fraud will continue because
Remember, executive compensation is not “merely” a fairness issue. Executive compensation and the compensation systems used for appraisers, accountants, and rating agencies were designed, and served, to create the perverse incentives and ethical rot that caused the ongoing financial crises by producing a “Gresham’s dynamic” in which fraudulent and abusive lending and accounting practices drove good practices out of the marketplace.
that forestalls efforts to redeem the status quo. We are faced with the very real possiblity that the state is irrevocably corrupt and that legal approaches alone will never win justice.
The concept of “control fraud” introduced by William K. Black, see e.g. When Fragile becomes Friable: Endemic Control Fraud as a Cause of Economic Stagnation and Collapse (pdf),
Individual “control frauds” cause greater losses than all other forms of property crime combined. They are financial super-predators. Control frauds are crimes led by the head of state or CEO that use the nation or company as a fraud vehicle. Waves of “control fraud” can cause economic collapses, damage and discredit key institutions vital to good political governance, and erode trust…
Economic theory about fraud is underdeveloped, core neo-classical theories imply that major frauds are trivial, economists are not taught about fraud and fraud mechanisms, and neo-classical economists minimize the incidence and importance of fraud for reasons of self-interest, class and ideology.
Neo-classical economics’ understanding of fraud is so weak that its policy prescriptions, if adopted wholly, produce strongly criminogenic environments that cause waves of control fraud. Neo-classical policies simultaneously make control fraud easier and more lucrative, dramatically reduce the risk of detection and prosecution by maximizing “systems capacity” problems, and encourage crime by making it easier for fraudsters to “neutralize” the social and psychological constraints against deceit and fraud. Thus the paradox: neo-classical economic triumphs produce tragedy…
which indicates why money should be handled as any other public utility instead of for the benefit of a handful of banksters.
Until that time in the indefinite future when we can trust government it behooves each and every individual to limit their exposure to the financial services industry and end dependency upon any business susceptible to their corruption.
This means you need to have control over your income. Control over your income only happens when you run your own business.
I will explore more benefits of creating an online business in future articles.
Loading ...