....LMB: "Media Bastard Roundup"....

July 24, 2002

Bastards, fools, and jerks.

Publisher Apologizes for Headline- publisher of New Jersey tabloid The Trentonian apologizes for the rude title his paper gave an article about a fire at a psychiatric hospital: "Roasted Nuts".

Reporters Plunge into Their Own Stories- the story of a local TV news reporter who intentionally drove car into a river to do a "news story" informing viewers how to escape from their car if they drive into a river.

Audits of Media Time and Space Find Many Ad Units Are Displaced- I just like the title of this one. I'm sure these problems will be taken care of once Stephen Hawking's ad agency opens its doors.

President is Keeping His Messages Front and Center- interesting piece about the verbatim repetition of key political phrases by the Bush administration (e.g. "no child left behind," "responsible leadership," "kill em all, and let God sort em out." Okay, he doesn't say that last one. In public). While modern politicians are known for "staying on message"-- choosing a theme for the day and refusing to deviate from it by even the tiniest bit-- Bush's team seems to be taking it to new levels. One example of this is the new administration ploy of sticking Bush in front of a backdrop adorned with the day's slogan.

The article also argues that such repetitive slogans are effective, and cite Bush's use of the slogans as the cause of John McCain's withdrawl from the Republican primaries in South Carolina. But if memory serves, McCain largely withdrew due to a sneaky anti-McCain smear campaign. It was never directly traced back to the Bush campaign, but...

PR Watch has come out with their latest issue, and they have posted some of its articles on their site, all on the theme of corporate attempts to sell the government and the public on the idea of "corporate social responsibility." Y'know, the idea that big corporations like Enron, Adelphia, WorldCom, and AOL-Time Warner can reofrm themselves and don't need government regulation to function properly in society.

PR Watch articles:
Rio+10, Environment Zero
Ketchum (the UN's PR Firm) Tackles Corporate Responsibility
Corporate Social Responsibility and the Crisis of Globalization

And don't forget to check out the new Corporate Responsibility Newswire Service. Actually, do forget. It's hideously boring, just a bunch of self-serving press releases from our favorite corporate citizens.

Posted by Jake at 09:40 PM
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Lying Media Bastards is both a radio show and website. The show airs Mondays 2-4pm PST on KillRadio.org, and couples excellent music with angry news commentary. And the website, well, you're looking at it.

Both projects focus on our media-marinated world, political lies, corporate tyranny, and the folks fighting the good fight against these monsters.

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Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

Posted by Jake at 04:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Jake's first attempt at homemade Mongolican barbecue:

Failure.

What went right: correctly guessing several key seasonings- lemon, ginger, soy, garlic, chili.

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Result: not entirely edible.

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