Telegraph article on deserters

January 13, 2005

The UK paper Telegraph posted a story late last week saying "5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq." A search of Google shows a few articles from last year, even covering President Bush speaking on the topic, but very little is said about it in the mainstream press. There has been pretty widespread coverage of the casualties of the invasion of Iraq, but few mentions of the deserters who according to this article seem to be nearly five times as numerous.

CNN Does RSS

January 10, 2005

Dan Gillmor links to the new RSS feeds on CNN. It's a great site. It's ironic that some have called them out on the My Yahoo links when those doing the complaining also have their own product linked from the very page where the criticism is posted.

CNN wants to change but not really

January 6, 2005

In canceling Crossfire CNN's chief explained that they are going to do more "roll-up-your-sleeves storytelling". That is all well and good. Now surf on over to the CNN/Netscape home page and you'll see the image at the right. So there is a major roll up your sleeves story about election problems in Ohio with a forum titled "Dems Going Too Far?" So a major media outlet wants to get a conversation going and instead of asking a question about the election problems in Ohio chooses to focus on the means by which the minority party in the American government is attempting to raise a critical issue. Roll up your sleeves and jump into the mud instead of roll-up-your-sleeves storytelling.

Less lethal???

October 22, 2004

The Boston police department says they take full responsibility for the death of a 21 year-old college student who died after being shot in the face by a police officer. At the same time they are vowing to bring to justice the hooligans who they say are created the situation. People should be reminded what happened here. A police officer, charged with keeping the peace, aimed a gun at someone's head and pulled the trigger. Everyone should be outraged by the continuing use of misnomers like non-leathal projectiles. The police in our police state have run amok by a false sense that less discrimination needs to be used when using these modern projectiles.

Local media

October 19, 2004

As I mentioned yesterday I attended a speech last night called Fighting for Air. The talk used radio as a example of what has happened with consolidation of media ownership and the potential dangers of the monoculture that is promoted by consolidation of media. With anecdotes including Minot, North Dakota where Clear Channel Communications' lack of staffing at all the local stations prevented emergency broadcasts from going out when a train carrying 10,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia derailed and residents could not be warned to stay inside away from the toxic cloud.

Fighting For Air: How Big Media Drowns Out Local Voices

October 18, 2004

If you're going to be in Las Vegas this evening it is worth taking a look at the lecture Fighting For Air: How Big Media Drowns Out Local Voices at the Barrick Museum on the UNLV campus. The lecture by Eric Klinenberg, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at New York University will be at 7:30 tonight.

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