THE ON-LINE MEDIA FUTURE

While we can only speculate what the future holds for the online news medium, there are certain trends that are unignorable.

First, portions of news media are being shortened and will continue to decrease in size. The mini-summaries that are present in prominent newspapers like the Miami Herald's "5-minute Herald", in the New York Times, and even in weekly magazines like the Economist, will become commonplace to fill the demand of those who don't have enough time to read the entire newspaper before work, or throughout their entire day. I believe that the format present in the Miami Herald's On-line news front page will become more and more commonplace, as the headline will be followed by a small paragraph basically supplying the lead and some information on the current news. The video portion will also be much more prominent, and much more elaborate, as well as the graphic design. The websites with the most eye-popping graphic design will dominate, much like in the broadcast news arena where channels like Fox practically blind you before they tell you that a tanker fell in North Dakota.

Basically it's all about what's prettier and what's quicker. Speed and Allure. Hook the average American with the IQ of 98, and try to keep his limited attention span for just a minute (5-minutes for the Herald). It'll be more than ever all about catching the reader, and giving him what he wants as fast as he possibly wants it. Time is Money.

Blogs will only grow in importance, because they equal the playing field in so many respects. There is no need for creating a paper when the online medium is free, and a lot of blogs are way ahead of newspapers in the field of graphic design.

The real conflict will be when newspapers cease to offer free online versions of it's paper. This could be when blogs, or rising independent newspapers can really assert themselves in the arena. One figures that newspaper advertising will decrease in value as newspapers will not be read by as many people, especially with this next generation using the internet more than any other generation. Online advertising will indeed grow as the internet becomes read by so many more people, but enough to offer it for free? I'm not so sure.

And you can't say enough about Ipods. We will be reading the daily news on Ipods before you know it, palm pilots already do it.

Blogging for Votes

I think that the best feeling ever, is the act of spotting and exposing someone who is full of shit. There's nothing more pleasing than finding some asshole that rambles on, and pretends to know everything about a particular subject matter and its facts. And then just plastering a big fat, "YOU'RE A MORON" statement right in his/her face. No really, there is no greater feeling. You should try it sometime if you don't think it's true.

Political Blogs provide plenty of these opportunities at all ends of the political spectrum. Ideologues, with plenty of emotion but little literature or proof to back it up, clog these websites where all you need to express, whatever it is you want to express, is an e-mail address, a keyboard, and only a basic understanding of the English language.

This is potentially very dangerous, because many people might take what they are saying as fact, instead of propaganda, especially if it’s on a site that sells these things as fact. Blogs can have this effect, and this could possibly be the recent phenomenon’s biggest flaw.

This seems to be less the case when exploring the more left-wing blogs, who at least attempt to post stats, quotes, and graphs, to illustrate a point. At the dailykos.com, a Democratic blog, the posts contain background information, each with sources, citations, video, polls, and/or stats. Even democraticunderground.com places more focus on video and just straight news coverage as opposed to opinion, even though each post does not contain as much information as the dailykos. Turn to Republican blogs, like blogsforbush.com, and gopbloggers.com, and the story is different.

They write their ridiculous headlines like "Just In Case You Think the Left Is Patriotic", “Liberal Thought Police Rumble On”, that contain just simple opinion with no backup that is far-fetched to say the least, and completely miss any type of countering argument. This is not to say that Democratic blogs show the countering argument either, but some of the arguments posed by these bloggers are plainly ludicrous.

With the first article, a writer by the name of Jonathan P., states that “liberals themselves have done the greatest damage to our civil rights” citing the example of censorship in the Michigan school system as they have removed Huckleberry Finn from the bookshelves. Excuse me, while I make you look like a moron, Jonathan P.

What about the elimination of Habeas Corpus by the Bush administration? The government can now legally go into your house, and ship you off to Guantanamo Bay Cuba. And speaking of Guantanamo, the military has taken many Iraqis and others from the Middle East and placed them in camps across the world, as well as in Cuba, some without charges, for months. What about the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act? Your statement Jonathan Prick, makes no sense at all. These could be some of the most damaging effects on our civil rights in the history of the country, and they were all done on the watch of a Republican Congress, and the Bush administration, and you're talking about the elimination of Huckleberry Finn from bookshelves?

The article, written by Mark Noonan, a conservative blogger who has recently been contracted to write a book about the corruption of Democrats, wrote on this website how all Democrats “view our troops as war criminals” and “as far as the left is concerned all our soldiers do is murder innocent people”. He relates this to Vietnam, and how when soldiers came back to the US they were greeted with “spit and insults”. Alright alright, relax Marky.

All Dems don’t support the troops? That’s ridiculous. And the military definitely deserves some of the flack that they are getting, especially with some of the videos coming in from Iraq like on Frontline, and some that are posted on YouTube, like the one below.



Vietnam wasn’t exactly a great thing either for the military’s reputation. Has Mark heard about My Lai, Vietnam? What about Lieutenant William Calley? Does it ring a bell? It should, for it actually was the murdering of hundreds (the figures most cited are 347 and 504) of defenseless Vietnamese civilians by Charlie Company. Republicans should probably try to keep the words Vietnam and Iraq as far away from each other as possible.



To give the conservatives credit, there are some blogs that present arguments with background and not just opinionated propaganda, such as powerlineblog.com. This blog provides powerful analysis, and good arguments on issues especially recently on Kerry’s statements on the education-level of Iraqi soldiers.

The Internet: Good for Democracy?

Despite theoretical deliberations, there is no contradiction between the street and cyberspace.
- Geert Lovink and Florin Schneider

No one was killed in The Battle for Seattle. Despite the tanks, projectiles, troops, OC spray, CS gas, broken glass, fires blazing, batons striking, no one died. People cried, bled, lost teeth, got their noses crushed inward, got burned, got beat, got knocked back, and got arrested. And everybody saw it. It was all recorded by cameras and camcorders. And because of what happened, the head of the police force resigned, and the event the thousands of demonstrators disapproved of, a new round of worldwide trade talks, couldn’t proceed. Their mission was accomplished.

The demonstration in the streets was a nationally organized event, not by word of mouth, but by new technological tools like the internet and cellular phones. Outside the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference of 1999 on November 30th, protesters stood firm behind the idea that multilateral trade policies favoring global corporations were unacceptable, telling the WTO, a group of government representatives who set international rules regarding trade and tariffs, that they were not welcome. The National Guard had to be called in, a curfew enforced and to the euphoria of the rioters, the trade talks were cancelled and had to be postponed to a future date. The internet played an important role for organizations like the Sierra Club, Corporate Watch, Direct Action Network, and the steelworkers union which used the information superhighway to create a united front against the WTO’s free market liberalization agenda. “Websites offered resources to those planning to attend, from maps of Seattle to legal advice, while email and listervs were used to coordinate, inform, organize and train. The Ruckus Society used the Net to provide manuals and organize action camps for training in non-violent civil disobedience, from urban abseiling to crafting soundbites,” writes Graham Meikle, lecturer on Media and Communication at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia in his book entitled FutureActive, Media Activism and the Internet.

At least in this example, the internet can foster a greater involvement in the political process, but overall, is the internet really delivering on its early hype of being a revolutionary tool for increasing the participation of the average individual in the democratic process?
There is no doubt that the internet has the potential to become the most effective tool in political participation ever. The speed at which information travels, and the input that one person can have on many is unparalleled. At the beginning of its ascension, the internet was described as “the early, turbulent days of a revolution as significant as any other in human history” and predicted further to “surpass all previous revolutions – the printing press, the telephone, the television, and the computer – in its impact on economic and social life” (Davis 9). Nothing in the past can compare to YouTube (a Google website that allows users to post video clips online) or Blogging, where one can post an original thought or idea and have thousands of people from across the world chime in and share in the experience. But is it really working to get people involved in the political system?

There are countless case studies like the WTO meeting in Seattle, where the internet has organized protests for a cause, when haste is needed or not. Examples such as during Christmas of 1998, where expatriate Eric Lee, came across a story on BBC about a Chinese union organizer who faced a treason trial and a likely death penalty for organizing protests by workers who’d lost their jobs. Lee sent out a bulk e-mail to all of the addresses on his LabourStart list, a news and resources website for trade unionists. Lee recalled that within minutes he received feedback from a South African labor group, a protest message, and then a message from a group of activists in Sheffield who said they had contacted their representative in Parliament. Then the coordinator of Austrian LabourNet translated his message into German and forwarded the message to their trade union contacts, and sent a faxed protest to the Chinese embassy in Vienna. The chain continued until it reached half a dozen Chinese embassies. And this was on Christmas, when human rights and labor rights activists were off on holiday leave. The Chinese unionist was sentenced to ten years in jail. Lee stresses that this mini-network he created within hours may have had no effect, but just the sheer passage of information is truly stunning.
The internet is not all about politics however. Everything nowadays is on the Internet: entertainment sites, sports sites, online shopping sites, health information sites, the latest news on your favorite celebrity, and of course, what makes up a huge bulk, pornography. “It does not necessarily follow that making information more readily available to more people and allowing the individual more control over that information produces well-informed a politically engaged citizens,” writes Richard Davis, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University, in his book The Web of Politics. “Even among those who go online, many will choose to do so for other purposes than politics. For them, the Internet has work functions, personal communication advantages, or mere entertainment value, but it is not a tool for political participation.”

The internet, according to Davis, has its negative effects as well, even socially. “A major social cost of the Internet is the growing tendency toward social isolation. The Internet may connect us virtually with the far reaches of the globe, but leave us with little real contact with those who live next door.” He then quotes Stephen Doheny-Farina, a mass media professor at Clarkson University, and author of many works that study the relationship between geophysical communities and computer technology, as saying pertinently, the “net seduces us and further removes us from our localities.” Richard even continues to argue that the Net could be perceived as better than the real world because of the ability to control it by a user. Bill Mitchell, Editor of Poynter Online, an online journalism site, agrees. “There is an anti-social aspect to the internet, the emergence of digital media probably encourages people to spend time behind the keyboard, which we may have ordinarily spent debating with people, going to meetings, or holding demonstrations.” He also sees the internet’s sheer power as an educator also. “You have at your fingertip information and news from a much wider array of sources. It makes so much useful information available to people that it at least has the potential to help democracy.”

But the internet is not the only thing that can isolate someone socially. The television is always there to pick up what attention the internet has not taken. Perhaps both have led to the dulling of social activism from the masses but the potential of the internet to educate the masses cannot be overlooked. Its potential as a great equalizer in society alone is something to be excited about. “No computer is ‘above’ any other… neither IBM nor the White House has any special advantage over a 15-year-old clever enough to set up his own connection. Class, hierarchy, and even physical location count for nothing on the Internet” (Davis, 21).
So it comes down to the user, and his ambitions, to choose. Like it has always been. You choose to get involved, or you don’t. The only difference is there is more to choose from. There is more political information, and there are more distractions. You have your congressional representative’s inbox at the tip of your finger, or the trigger of a joystick in a game of combat jet fighting with three guys from Tokyo. Which are you going to choose?

Another argument is that if you have a computer hooked up with the internet, what do you need to protest for? You’re probably wealthier than the norm, and don’t have any immediate concern to criticize the system. University of Miami Journalism Professor Michael Salwen comments: “Blogs, news, and the exchange of information are beneficial. The only problem is that those without internet access are not part of the process, and these people come disproportionately from the lower classes.” It is true though, that with the decline in the cost of computers and internet access, many more first-world inhabitants have access to the internet whether it is at home, at a library, or at work, than ever before.

“With the exception of the already politically interested, most people will not normally gravitate to political information, even if it is readily available. The majority of adult Americans do not watch national network television news regularly. More than four in 10 adults do not read a newspaper daily” (Davis, 24). Other factors of life are just more important: obtaining an income in an ever more competitive world, raising a family, securing a modest standard of living.
One of the most important jumps that the internet has created is the ability for the user to become a participant in the media, as opposed to just a member of an audience. The newspaper, radio, television, and cable technologies did not allow for user involvement, and if it did, it was never as fast as the Internet can possibly be, which is instantaneous. It is also another way for traditional news media to be transported.

The WTO was unable to hold their trade talks in Seattle on N30, because of the outcry from the public in Seattle over the WTO’s globalization practices, the WTO has not held another Ministerial Conference within our borders. The 5th Ministerial Conference held in 2005 had a riot, and actually had a death. The self-inflicted stabbing of Kun Hai Lee, who was a Korean farmer, was performed to represent how “the WTO kills farmers”. Those were his last words before he proceeded to slash himself to death with a blade.

The internet is a tool. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but it seems like a majority believe that the latter vastly outweighs the former. The internet gives more voices and more information to more people. Like all media, there are other things you can do with it than stay informed and active. With the newspaper you can read the comics and do the word searches, with magazines, you don’t need to pick up the political journals, rather the Cosmopolitan, or the Penthouse, with the radio, you can listen to sports, comedy, instead of NPR, and with television you can watch just about anything, instead of C-SPAN. The internet is no different, only you have more choices.

And that can be a problem for most humans who would rather stay ignorant and happy on the cooking or home gardening network rather than up to date on the latest civil right to be eliminated, or the latest country we’ve told what to do. But that’s just it, it’s a human problem. But the beautiful thing about a democracy is you have the choice whether to be involved, or not. You cannot force someone to vote, pay attention, or care about anything. The internet gives you more options, more outlets of communication, more information and more things to keep your mind occupied, but it’s up to the human to make the decision of what he or she will do. There will be those who battle the police and those who watch it on TV whether you have the net or not, it’s just now, more people know about it. Maybe more people will care that way, maybe not, it’s up to us.

Works Cited:

1. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet, Graham Meikle, 2002. Routledge, Great Britain.
2. The Web of Politics: The Internet’s Impact on the American Political System, Richard Davis, 1999. Oxford UP, New York.

Alright, so let me get this straight.

A group of House Republicans say they warned J. Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House, of disgraced Florida Rep. Mark Foley’s inappropriate internet messages with a teenage page, some which definitely instigated meeting with the minor, and he didn’t do anything about it. He says he won’t resign, and that he doesn’t recall anyone telling him anything about it. http://www.republicanmainstreet.org/foley.jpg President Bush says that Hastert, third in line for the presidency should Bush and Cheney be relieved from office, “is a father, teacher, coach, who cares about the children of this country.”

Alright, that doesn’t make much sense. Surely the president would be outraged that a Speaker in his party would have not taken action if there was any kind of inappropriate messaging between Mark Foley and an underage assistant, right?

No actually. “I’m confident he will provide whatever leadership he can to law enforcement in this investigation,” Mr. Bush said. Whatever leadership? He sure showed that leadership before the story broke.

Now there’s evidence that Mark Foley even had internet sex with a high school student who served as a congressional page, while waiting for a House vote in 2003:

Maf54: I miss you

Teen: ya me too

Maf54: we are still voting

Maf54: you miss me too

The exchange continues in which Foley and the teen both appear to describe having sexual orgasms.

Maf54: ok..i better go vote..did you know you would have this effect on me

Teen: lol I guessed

Teen: ya go vote…I don’t want to keep you from doing our job

Maf54: can I have a good kiss goodnight

Teen: :-*

Teen: kiss

Ouch.

I mean seriously, I wonder what Mark’s doing at home when he reads that on ABC.com. Needless to say, this could be a serious blow to the Republican campaign for re-election only five weeks until ballots are cast, and the Republicans will keep digging themselves a deeper hole if they don’t relieve everyone within a close proximity of the scandal of their duties. And the Washington Times definitely knows this. The title of a Tuesday editorial reads, “Resign, Mr. Speaker.”

The speaker would be hard-pressed not to resign especially with colleagues spraying quotes like these around:

“We need to admit that this was done on out watch.” “This is a political problem, and we need to step up and do something drastic.” “It’s almost like the perfect storm forming against us.” “The House has to clean up the mess.”

And then there’s Mark Foley.

You got to love the strategy of Foley’s lawyer, disclosing that he was molested by a clergyman, but of course, he accepts full responsibility for sending salacious messages to teenage male pages. I’m sorry representative; I don’t feel sorry for you. You’d think that maybe he’d look at it as something that he could try to prevent because it affected him so deeply, just like the façade he created with years of lies that positioned himself as “Congress’ leading defender of children on the Internet.”

That’s right. It was none other than Mark Foley who “spearheaded a legislative crackdown on Internet sites that post provocative photographs of teenage and preteen youth. He had pushed to open FBI databases to track sex offenders. He tried to force sexually explicit Web sites to label themselves accordingly.” Sneaking a little peak while you’re there supposedly protecting our youth, huh representative? I’m sorry. But I’m really not.

It seems like the Republican Party is in kind of a pickle here, and it would be prudent to make the statement that behavior like this is absolutely intolerable, and criminal. But I guess loyalty within the party is something that the Republicans cherish, and maybe they’ll make like the Catholic Church heads, who reshuffle disgraced clergyman into the church system, instead of expelling them indefinitely. It’s just sad to see that people have to protect their party members even if they’re exhibiting extremely inappropriate behavior, especially for a public official. Maybe Hastert didn’t know, and the House Republicans are flat out lying. Either way, the Republicans just continue to sink. There’s always a time where you just cut your losses and move on, and it seems like it’s already passed.

Money For Ink

I love Carl Hiassen. I think he’s one of the best columnists to ever make his mark in the beige commentary slots in the Miami Herald, as well as a great novelist. I also think that his satirical play on bribery being a decent thing to do especially when the pay is cheap and the responsibility is high is brilliant.

I’m referring to the September 17^th edition of Issues and Ideas section, when he jokingly downplays the wrongdoing of at least 10 journalists recently discovered to accept payments to appear on the government radio and TV Marti station. Hiassen begins his commentary calling these acts “compassionate conservatism” and saying that reporting is the most “underpaid, ragged and dispirited sector of the American workforce.” He compliments an administration that finally “appreciates our toil and sacrifices and reaches out to help.”

I have to admit I laughed pretty hard. I’m glad there are people who have reservations about employing someone to cover Cuba that is getting paid nearly $175,000 from the U.S. government to host programs on a station that broadcasts supposedly “uncensored” news to Cuba, also known as telling another country basically what they should do.

Why is this? Well, I actually believe that the explanation that Jesus Diaz Jr., Publisher of the Miami Herald, is spot on: “I personally don’t believe that integrity and objectivity can be assured if any of our reporters receive monetary compensation from any entity that he or she may cover or have covered, but particularly if it’s a government agency.”

And that’s just it. Being paid by a government agency clashing ideologies with another government, especially with that particular sum of money, will definitely compromise someone’s point of view, and does not reflect well on the integrity of a newspaper.

And the Cuban Liberty Council and some Cuban exiles demonstrating about it do not help the cause either.

Setting up an online petition, directed towards the CEO of McClatchy (the company that recently purchased the Miami Herald), Cuban exiles are quoted as saying that they “feel that this action is one of the most blatant and direct rejections . . . of our community and of our right to be represented by our own voices in the pages of the newspaper.” This is the problem. It’s not about your voices. The news is not about having your voice in the paper. The news, is supposed to be what happened, not what happened in the eyes of a Cuban reporter. So basically, the petition is saying that we need Cuban bias in the paper.

Hiassen also ridicules the idea that because Radio and TV Marti are not seen by many in Cuba due to jamming of the radio signals and that it broadcasts in the middle of the night, maybe these crimes are not as serious as they seem. It has less to do with people being affected by what he is writing, then with the plain fact that a writer for the dominant newspaper in Miami is getting a check from Uncle Sam. I think that the $15,000 that staff writer Wilfredo Cancio received is enough to maybe alter the direction of a piece, or keep one’s ideas in line. Not to mention Pedro Alfonso’s $175,000.

The bottom line is that one of the newspaper’s most important roles, a role that everyday seems to be diminishing with examples such as the Armstrong Williams case (which is sheer bribery), is the role of watchdog over government. Call me irrational, but I think if Pedro Alonso would have stumbled over a little scandal within the U.S. government he would remember the little Radio and TV Marti gig he booked and look the other way. And quite plainly, just the chance that that might happen is unacceptable.

And I at last come to Hiassen’s little finale where he sarcastically asks for his paycheck because of the numerous years he has said “snarky things” about Castro, such as the fact that he is “a windbag, geezer, liar, despot and all-around phony.” Right on. The reason why we believe you Carl is because you don’t have that paycheck, because you don’t have that man with the red, white and blue top hat and white beard standing over you. You write your column because you’ve done the research, you’ve looked at the facts, and you’re making a rational decision based on those facts. You’re not doing it because you have an extra wad of dirty money in your back pocket. We don't say, well of course he's writing that, he gets paid thousands of dollars from the U.S. government.

Complacency in an Indifferent Nation
As an entrance essay to Swarthmore College, my brother, who completed it in 1992 for entrance a year later, wrote about his experiences in Chile during a riot. Set in the mid-1980s, the spark that started the fire was that a concert, one that featured the sounds of the country’s most famous musicians and musical instruments, was cancelled. Authorities proclaimed that the concert was “too communist”, and could not be performed to the public. The Chilean masses in Santiago would not accept such constraint. Riot police began beating those who would raise their hands, and some of those who would not, and “camels” or water spraying trucks began opening up on those screaming for the freedom to play music. The wet bodies hurled into the walls, and the clubs made the pavement red.
Events like these do not happen regularly in the States in the present day, and there are many reasons for this. Some think there is a loss of collaboration and attention that from our country’s youth, and a lack of will to make a difference. Most believe that there is nothing that motivates the masses enough to put forth the effort. College professors and students alike point to the 70s, when large activist organizations were connected and formed to make the civil rights movement a reality and help bring an end to the Vietnam War. Professors, like Ronald Cox, a political science professor at Florida International University, believe that the main difference between two of the more controversial issues of each time, the Vietnam War and Iraq War, is the draft that made it mandatory to report to the armed services.
“The draft brought the war right into young lives, and created a situation where one could die for what one didn’t believe in, that’s powerful motivation,” he says. But now, people seem content with letting those who sign up voluntarily die in a war that according to polls most people disagree with.
The New Republic, a magazine chockablock with political criticism, and is credited with being the only magazine on Air Force One, constantly runs articles claiming that the Bush administration has created a “forgotten war”, one where as the casualties mount, the people care less. I understand this feeling, because I read the headlines daily, and they are always there, a soldier dying here, or a helicopter exploding there, and I pass over it shamelessly and double-click to see if I won my fantasy football league.
It’s not that I don’t care. Because I do. It’s that I honestly don’t care enough. And that’s probably saying a lot more than the average student or citizen.
To say that it’s a phenomenon present in this country only could be close to the truth. Organizing, demonstrating, and being socially aware are actions dominating the daily lives of the youth in foreign countries. For example, earlier this year, again in Chile, secondary-school children boycotted class all over the country demanding that the economic windfall generated by soaring copper prices be spent on improving a deplorable and disintegrating education infrastructure. That kind of organization is unheard of in the high schools of the U.S. In France, teenagers took to the streets to try to put an end to a newly incorporated law saying that it was okay for employers to fire their younger employees for absolutely no reason. In Iraq and in Lebanon, Muslim youth are literally fighting invasion and occupation by taking up arms with their brethren.
So that’s probably it then, the real reason we do not rise up is the fact that we have it the best. One of the richest nations in the world, and certainly the most powerful, we flaunt our military for the world to see, and we slant the trading laws to favor us at the expense of the less developed countries. We impose sanctions on countries for generating weaponry that we already have, and we force countries to cooperate with us. Even with a president that cannot speak coherently and the world loves to ridicule, we’re still untouchable. I guess the real question is, when we’re dominating both hemispheres, albeit unfairly and with an iron fist, how is the resistance going to come from within? Liberalistic thought has no place for morality. It only has space for self, self possession, and individualism.
Another reason for panic is the fact that nobody in our age group knows any of this. Social awareness seems to have hit an all time low. Newspapers do not get read by our age group, and those who say they read it online have to battle social networks like myspace, not to mention the regular bully of print, TV, to get to the news. We don’t know about NAFTA, about CIA interventions, the huge subsidy that the government gave to private oil companies after they achieved record profits, or about the fact that it’s not logical to have nukes and tell others not to create them. We actually believe that the U.S. is driven by the greater good, and the spread of democracy is the reason why we’re in Iraq. The propaganda machine does not just dominate, it’s not challenged. The world fears us, and for good reason. Because the only thing that can stop us at the moment is ourselves. And we really just don’t care; we have more important things to worry about.So my brother got into Swarthmore among other things by writing about an experience that is foreign in this country, and that not many in our age group can relate to. And in the end, really who can blame us for not having that experience? We’re happy, we’re fat, we’re ignorant, we’re irresponsible, we’re distant, and we only care about ourselves. The world should fear that, and they do.