Our media, our free press: Is it failing? What can you do?

When was the last time you heard a really big story covered on the mainstream nightly news - that hadn’t already been covered, better, sooner on NPR? I think we could count them on one hand, waking up to NPR every morning, hearing the real news - all the news - and then wondering how the big networks can miss so much.

When we read the ever shrinking Reno newspaper, the Gazette-Journal, we’re also amazed at how many things in the community aren’t covered, or are covered inadaquately.

Radio? What now passes for radio in America is shameful. It’s a sound machine made of right-wing propagandists and ideologues, the like of Howard Stern and host of wannabes, and programmed second tier pop music.

Internet? America has some of the slowest broadband in the world. So much for being the technological leader.

Comcast is on a juggernaut course to slurp up the rest of what remains of broadcast and internet - dooming any hope of maintaining internet neutrality.

Two of the best, albeit nascent publications, The Nation magazine and Reader Supported News are struggling.

Meanwhile, the media and internet in America is owned by fewer and fewer companies, as the entire thing continues to consolidate. There is less diversity. There is less freedom of opinion and expression. The messages are distorted, real information is in short supply.

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As journalism goes, so goes Democracy

Last night, in my Kindle edition of The Nation magazine, I read what was perhaps the most disturbing article in quite some time… “The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers” by John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney.

There is nothing less than our very democracy at stake.

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Everything's Cool

Mr. Maven and I just watched this, and it really helps clarify the so-called climate and global warming ‘debate’ - which was ingenously engineered courtesy of the fossil fuel lobby, aided and abetted by the Bush administration.

Had I not read Thomas Friedmans’ book ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’, a lot of this would have been real news, but even with that I still didn’t realize that the scientific discussion about global warming and climate change began to hit the media as far back as 1987!

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The hills are alive - with the sound of kvetching and retching

Forgive my ‘Yiddish-isms’. That’s what happens when you grow up in or near Miami Beach. Kvetching means complaining. I think you know what retching refers to. But the media echo chamber is so alive with pain and angst over what Obama should do, hasn’t done, the way he done did it that I can’t hear myself think.

Notable examples: all the screaming heads on CNBC, and most notably Rick Santelli. The print media and blogosphere - liberal, centrist and right wingnut - has joined in as well, and then they’ve given far more attention than should be warranted to that bloated, self righteous, self important default leader of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh, that I feel like heading for the nearest emergency exit post haste.

Can we all back up and breathe, before we completely loose track of the real issues?

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Where Do You Stand Politically ... and what does that say about you?

The Pew Research Center has a fascinating series of quizzes that tell you where you stand in “Beyond Red vs Blue”. Just complete the questions and your scores are not only evaluated but then you can look at a number of issues and see just how you fit in with the rest of America.

http://typology.people-press.org/typology/

Take the test and do explore the other interactive areas. I can assure you, it’s all informative and could, if we’re lucky, bring us closer together as a society and help wean us off this strict political polarization that is corrosive, destructive and artificial …. created by spinmeisters and lobbyists to divvy up the spoils.

Maven