My buddy Joe and I have known each other for about two years and love to get into socio-political-religious conversations. We finally decided that maybe we ought to start recording them into a podcast. Here’s the inaugural episode, which I’ve dubbed Getting to Know You.

This was initally a very private and personal introduction I wrote to an email I was forwarding Bill O’Reilly. I sent it to some friends and family and even an old high school teacher with whom I recently connected. I started to get a little choked up towards the end when the magnitude of the fight against these mother fuckers really hit me. Please share and recommend to your loved ones, because I am terrified of these thugs, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit back and let them call ME INSANE.

As fellow travelers who have had your eyes open regarding the conduct of this nation over the recent years, either recently or for quite some time, Bill O’Reilly believes you are nuts. What is the act of insanity that you committed? Well you, like me, probably think Fox News is run by a bunch of propagandist liars who lead the charge to invade Iraq, and twice heralded the coming of Bush (of whom they are now rooting for his third term). I know… we’re loons.

With that said, please read the following message I am forwarding regarding the recent FreePress.net event. It’s an organization that I highly recommend you pay close attention to with regard to honest criticism of the establishment media’s behavior. And be sure to keep your friends informed. I’m not going to let these assholes lie us into another disaster.

These are important times we live in, and I love you all very much. I am terrified of what my country has demonstrated itself to be capable of. That said, here’s the email from FreePress:

———
Last night, Rupert Murdoch launched a laughable attack against you, the media reform movement, and journalism itself.

His on-air bully Bill O’Reilly called us “crazy” and “fascist” — you, me, and the millions of others who want media reform. These people are “doing a lot of damage to America,” O’Reilly yelled. Our crime? Calling for journalism that’s more honest, just and accountable to the public.

When Bill O’Reilly goes after you, you must be doing something right. So we’ve decided to return the favor, and tell him two things: (1) Thanks so much for the compliment and (2) please stop pretending to be a journalist.
Visit the link below to sign the letter and thank Bill O’Reilly for proving once again that Fox News Channel has nothing to do with real journalism in America.

Take action at: https://secure.freepress.net/site/Advocacy?id=269

Now if I’ve never I talked politics with you personally before, it’s important that you understand that I am not talking about partisanship, but merely our obligation as a free citizenry to hold our leaders accountable. It does not matter if a D or an R follows their name, the whole point of the Bill of Rights and our system of checks and balances was to ensure that power was dispersed. The United States was formed in order to throw off the bonds of a tyrannical and repressive system which allowed no means of criticizing its leaders. It was not formed to spread that democracy elsewhere, it was not formed to promote the will of God, it was merely a system by which ordinary people could decide if their leader was doing a good job or a bad job. The end is the means, and it in no way can come at the end of a spear.

I just saw this posted on CurrentTV and it absolutely needs to be seen by everyone. This fits right in with the narrative that has arisen regarding the failure and interference of the corporate media. If there is one movie that will drive any sane person screaming from their couch watching cable news to the warm hills of the blogosphere and more people powered media.

Artist Brian Springer spent a year scouring the airwaves with a satellite dish grabbing back channel news feeds not intended for public consumption. The result of his research is SPIN, one of the most insightful films ever made about the mechanics of how television is used as a tool of social control to distort and limit the American public’s perception of reality.

I implore you to watch the first 10 minutes and recommend as soon as your gag reflex fully kicks in. This just demonstrates that our press has been crippled by its own fascination with itself and has been abusing its power for decades now. Just a few gems to be found in this footage:

• Larry King tells Bill Clinton that Ted, his boss is a huge fan and could do a lot to help.
• Several phone callers issue heated criticisms to Pat Robertson, which he responds to with meaningless stories and platitudes. As soon as they cut away to other coverage, we get to watch Robertson proceed to declare everyone who criticized him “total homos”, or some other such juvenile nonsense.
• Footage demonstrating how Democratic candidate Larry Agran was rudely and completely snuffed out of the ‘92 race by the media’s circular logic of “you can’t have media coverage until you get some media coverage”
• During NBC’s 500th Anniversary Propaganza Spectacular Columbus day special, an actual Cherokee Nation history scholar’s tried to describe the 2 years of genocide committed by Columbus after his ‘discovery’ of America. This is then derided off camera by Katie Couric, saying: “They just you know think that he ruined paradise and had no respect for nature and treated the Indians like dog doo…” (did I mention that she’s talking about a quarter million dead by 1494 and a tyrant who decreed that all boys who couldn’t find gold lost their hand? dog doo??)

I was shocked that this film isn’t widely held up and distributed throughout the blogosphere. The ENTIRE documentary is press footage, indicting them with their own words and images. It is impeachable evidence of the traditional media’s bias and fealty towards established power and the status quo. Please show this to anyone you can to remind people that all of the issues brought up by McClellan are nothing new, they’re the same old game and it needs to change.

As someone who has worked in the interactive industry for nearly a decade, I can say without a doubt that abolishing protections that keep the Internet free from corporate interference in the flow of information would be a major step backwards and diminish the United States’ in the global technology market.

Here’s how things work now, with net neutrality in tact. Let’s say that I wanna start producing hilarious cartoons or videos and build a website around them. I pay a hosting fee that is determined by how much storage space my website requires and how much traffic I expect to receive. But no matter how small or large my hosting package is, my site will be delivered to anyone who views it just as fast as Amazons, Comedy Central, ESPN, etc. If my cartoons are really popular, I have to buy a larger hosting package to accommodate my traffic, but that is my decision as the content provider.

Now let’s take away net neutrality from this scenario. Now my website can be moved into a ’slow lane’. For an additional fee on top of my hosting costs, I have to pay in order to get my site to go as fast as Amazon, Comedy Central, ESPN, etc. All who have way more money to outspend the average person, and thereby diminishing the quality of the internet for anyone who might not prefer to use the services of sites that can afford the ‘fast lane’.

The growth of YouTube and other broadband-intensive services is opening up vast new markets both in terms of economic expansion and personal expression. To abolish net neutrality would cease to give the consumers control of which services are successful, and place it in the hands of a few telecom companies that may not always have the consumers needs and interest ahead of short-term profits or stifling competition.

My entire career has been predicated on the technologies and trends that the openness of the Internet has fostered. The more control we give to private corporations over which trends and technologies will succeed, the less people like myself will be able to contribute to the market, ultimately stifling progress and possibly putting my economic stability at risk.

‘Nuff said, go sign the petition.

It’s not exactly a new topic, but I’ve reached the tipping point where I feel I must begin to participate in this movement and be an advocate for its legitimacy. I’m fed up with the traditional media doing nothing but chuckling over bowling scores and haircuts. I’m fed up with pundits pretending to speak for Americans, when the average American’s concerns are completely absent from the discussion. Most of all, I’m fed up with all the ridiculous crawls and graphics. Network and Cable news in its current form is officially a dinosaur and I believe we are the generation who will witness and participate in its extinction. Newspapers will change, but if I’m right it will be for the better as far as owners, journalists and the public are concerned.

Besides the fact that it so resembles a high school caste system, I’m also done waiting for the traditional media to start understanding how urgent an issue global warming. Sure the major science channels will do the occasional 1-2 hour ’scare the pants off you’ special, but no ongoing stories about what we can do on the local level. No ongoing stories of the people who want to spread the word about actions they’ve taken. And there’s very little coverage of actual local civic engagement. I have no clue what the hell is going on in my community.

While I am sure that a lot of issues are covered by my local paper, let’s face it, I don’t fall into a ‘reads the local paper’ demographic. Nor do I wish to. As i mentioned earlier, I believe that for newspapers to remain competitive, they will need to begin to invite and eventually rely on direct citizen contributions. If the success of YouTube and reality tv have taught me two things about the emerging populous it’s that 1.) they know how to work cameras and computers and 2.) reality is easy to produce. I can’t emphasize the second point enough. All the shittiest shows in TV land actually are harder to produce than quality documentary pieces because they need to trick you into thinking that shit is interesting or compelling. Case in point, Hell’s Kitchen:

Now as a counterbalance to what a solid people-powered media documentary takes to produce and have an impact, I give you this:

If you haven’t caught on by now, I’m a big fan of Current TV. I first heard of it due to Al Gore’s involvement and have been following it’s progress for a while now. It is essentially a media outlet that thrives on user participation. If you want the antithesis of what passes for news on other networks, I highly recommend CurrentTV if for no other reason than the fact that I want this news model to thrive.

So with relatively few resources, I am beginning this journey myself. I am going to participate in more community events, trying to connect with other concerned citizens and documenting as much of the process as I can. I don’t know if this will lead to participating in local politics, working in a community garden, or cataloging the timeliness of the subway on nights and weekends. All I know is that I’m excited about the outlets exist now for me to help create a more honest, legitimate and reflective media establishment. All I need to do now is wait for my new camera to arrive.