Terrorists? Our future enemy? Children have the same joyous spirit all over the world!
Foreign media experts on 11/9 media fallout
Arts & Culture
3/30/2008 5:41:00 PM
KUWAIT, March 30 (KUNA) -- Visiting foreign media experts affirmed here Sunday that the September 11, 2001 events had brought negative reflections on mass media.
They made the affirmation during a two-day forum organized by the Foundation of Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain's Prize for Poetic Creativity under the rubric "The Role of Media in Arab-Western Dialogue", which kicked off here earlier in the day.
The ideal way to fight thoughts prepared in advance, which are delivered to the public opinion through mass media, is to enable the public to form a special and free perception over events, according to Virginie Sandrock, a French media and international relations expert.
The September 11, 2001 events have contributed to forming a public opinion towards the Middle East and to triggering off further tensions, she said.
Since the incidents, the US has been using mass media to prevail on the public opinion that terrorist acts constitute forms of wars, she added.
Restrictions have been imposed on the press freedom and the Internet due to the US-led fight against terrorism.
[...] Restrictions have been imposed on the press freedom and the Internet due to the US-led fight against terrorism.
For his part, Michael Binyon, a journalist with the British newspaper "The Times", dismissed possible control by some governments over mass media, saying that journalists are not judges, politicians or UN staff whose jobs are to seek solutions to political problems or to develop inter-state relations.[...]
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1895527&Language=en
March 31, 2008
Media Makes Enemies
January 6, 2008
2007 Top 10 Censored Stories
Your tax d
ollars are being spent to make George W. Bush look pretty. Don't agree? Read this:
Published on September 13, 2007:
Censored Stories
The Top 10 big news items the U.S. media largely missed in the past year
By AMANDA WITHEREL
[...] This year's Project Censored presents a chilling portrait of a newly empowered executive branch signing away civil liberties for the sake of an endless and amorphous war on terror. And for the most part, the major news media weren't paying attention.
"This year, it seemed like civil rights just rose to the top," said Peter Phillips, the director of Project Censored, the annual media survey conducted by Sonoma State University researchers and students who spend the year patrolling obscure publications, national and international Web sites and mainstream news outlets to compile the 25 most significant stories that were inadequately reported or essentially ignored.
While the project usually turns up a range of underreported issues, this year's stories all fall somewhat neatly into two categories: the increase of privatization, and the decrease of human rights. Some of the stories qualify as both.
"I think they indicate a very real concern about where our democracy is heading," said writer and veteran judge Michael Parenti.
[...] As the stories cited in this year's Project Censored selections point out, the federal government continues to provide major news networks with stock footage, which is dutifully broadcast as news. The George W. Bush administration has spent more federal money than any other presidency on public relations. Without a doubt, Parenti said, the government invests in shaping our beliefs.
"Every day, they're checking out what we think," he said. "The erosion of civil liberties is not happening in one fell swoop, but in increments. Very consciously, this administration has been heading toward a general autocracy."
Carl Jensen, who founded Project Censored in 1976 after witnessing the landslide re-election of Richard Nixon in 1972 in spite of mounting evidence of the Watergate scandal, agreed that this year's censored stories amount to an accumulated threat to democracy.
[...]
1. GOODBYE, HABEAS CORPUS
2. MARTIAL LAW: COMING TO A TOWN NEAR YOU
3. AFRICOM
4. SECRET TRADE AGREEMENTS
5. SHANGHAIED SLAVES CONSTRUCT U.S. EMBASSY IN IRAQ
6. FALCON'S TALONS
7. BLACKWATER
8. KIA: THE NEOLIBERAL INVASION OF INDIA
9. THE PRIVATIZATION OF AMERICA'S INFRASTRUCTURE
10. VULTURE FUNDS: DEVOURING THE DESPERATE
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Currents/Content?oid=oid%3A100285
Bush's $400 Million Face Lift
Critics say corporate-style PR goes too far
By MOLLIE ZIEGLER,
[...] Agencies across government are under increasing pressure to sway public opinions — either to win funding from Congress, to satisfy customers, to recruit new employees, to educate the public about new programs, to minimize fallout from controversial policies, or, as with GPO, even to survive.
As a result, many agencies are taking a page from corporate America and applying sophisticated public relations tools and tactics: Web blogs, coordinated media marketing campaigns, stylized TV ads, Hollywood-style animation, self-produced audience talk shows, flashy new brands and logos, and video news releases designed to appear as legitimate newscasts.
And PR and marketing companies are cashing in on this booming new market. A catalog of contracts offering federal agencies advertising and marketing services, run by the General Services Administration, saw sales shoot up from $39 million in 2001 to more than $400 million so far this year.
http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=2060330