Re: nettime Working on article about the need for a progressive press in US
Ronda: Are you saying that there is no role for a press in our society? There is always a BIG role for media to play in our lives. I'm an environmentalist (as I'm sure you are, as well) and the dominant medium of our times is ALWAYS our environment. How can you fight the environment? (Hint: Ever hear of an anti-environment?) That the Internet has done away with the need for a press? The dominant medium in the late 1800's was telegraph -- aka the global-collage of the daily newspaper's frontpage -- and this was enormously effective in spreading the word about seances and white-slavery. W.T. Stead was a historic figure of ICEBERGIAN proportions. Cecil Rhodes wasn't a small man either. The dominant medium in the early 1900's was radio -- giving us both Hitler, Stalin and Columbia University's era-defining TECHNOCRACY movement. Let's not forget Hadley Cantril, the Radio Research Project and the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, James Joyce (yes, he was a student of Stead's) . . . or Jacque Ellul, okay? The dominant medium of the late 1900's was television -- giving us Howdy Doody, American Bandstand and Sesame Street . . . not to mention Uncle Walter, Rock 'n Roll and the Teletubbies. Let's not forget Marshall McLuhan and Frank Zappa, okay? With the firing of Mary Mapes, the question Leslie Stall asked me about whether the Internet would DESTROY journalism (at a Columbia Journalism School forum circa 1998) has been definitively answered . . . yes and it happened long ago. I didn't think that the role of the press has to do with unmanipulating opinions. Unmanipulating? Excellent! Looks like we agree. Today's environment can neither manipulate nor unmanipulate opinions. (Question: Then where *do* opinions come from? Anti-media? UFO's?) This makes it possible to act in a way that can solve the problems. We agree again! The problems we have inherited from television like addictions, attention disorders, obesity, post-moderism, BD and the general inability to play nicely with each other CAN be solved! The modern environment -- aka medium, aka press -- is a suberb chance for us all to reach out and touch someone . . . just as we're doing right now! Are you saying that the Internet has made all this obsolete? Of course it has! All previous environments are now OBSOLETE -- which means we can now turn them into ART-FORMS. Internet-based watchblogging -- aka INDIE MEDIA -- is a marvelously artistic expression . . . keep up the good work! Diverse views and experiences are debated in the best of the press experience I am aware of. Now, don't overdue all of this . . . DIVERSITY is a television-era TRICK. Are you really sure that you want diverse views? Most people's experience (under television) is of having multiple views. Simultaneously holding four opposing views is called QUADROPHRENIA, for instance. This is a problem that can also be SOLVED. Having been involved with UNDERGROUND PAPERS since the 1960's, I can again agree with you that all this is great fun. Of course, you know that what you are describing is now MAINSTREAM and therefore accepted and respectable. Maybe you can even get a GRANT! Have a BALL!! Mark Stahlman New York City # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: nettime Working on article about the need for a progressive press in US
Mark, Your technological or rather mediun determinism, remains as suggestive as ever, and I wouldn't dare try to think I could change or even alter your opinion. I'd just leave it that there is something to your point. I've gradually come to understand and respect and some of the Mcluhanesque critique. What I find funny and rather charming about such analyses are the grimness of them and the jaundiced eyed view of the hype centered around the latest fad in technology. It's not worth saying to you that yours is a narrow analysis. It's narrowness is its charm. The situation is indeed quite grim. grin or g as you so often add. Isn't the grin one of the first mediums for the expression of aggression? But, I think that Ronda's set of questions are worth attempting to answer on their own merits, that analysis in and of itself is a worthy task. Effectualness or effectuality is another matter. No one imagines, or maybe someone does, that Marx's years in the Library and his analyses, were directly effective in transforming social relations or in god forbid overthrowing the reign of global capital, the long twentieth century, as Arrighi playfully names a set of dynamics that were set into play in the 16th century. It was left to the Russian nihilists to attempt to act on Marx's critique, to what effect in the end? the long twentieth century goes on. So what of the recent elections in the US and of course this little thing folks are calling the internet? I don't thinks it's enough to lay WMD on the conservative media, this dud rather should be layed on the doorstop of the liberal media, and the newspapers of record, who were shown to be so dependent on access to various organs, as to just parrot what they are told by their sources. They are no match for a concerted campaign to control information that comes out of the official instutions of intelligence and the executive branch. Even well meaning liberal types are controlled by the protocols of access journalism. It's not the noble lie we saw with WMD, but the bald faced lie, or the beardless lie. They don't need to hide behind their beards, and no contemporary U.S. big time politician or even CEO has any visible facial hair. We like our lies bald and beardless I suppose. Mere opinion is indeed ineffectual, except perhaps to call everything into question. For every issue or even for what might be called empirical fact, there is contest, and it all seems to hang in a kind of weightless gelatin where even pointing out a lie has no effect. To each their media tunnel. Even old Leo Strauss, had no qualms about what he called empirical fact, because he still believed a science of politics was possible, and he would not dare argue with a fact. He missed this wonderful era when facts bend to the will of our great leaders. For obfuscation and for taking the sting out of criticism, opinion is very useful. You can neutralize almost any historical fact now, by enlisting legions of editorializers to spread a contrary narrative. And the do it for free now, even better, go bloggers go. On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 10:28:46AM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ronda: Perhaps you might consider an alternative view . . . the Internet makes even propaganda-about-propaganda obsolete. Opinions can no longer be manipulated; people simply believe whatever the believe in and they are likely to act on these beliefs. Unlike radio which actually *was* propaganda (as psychological ground) or television which worried about the dangers of propaganda (as psychological figure), the Internet makes all of this seem . . . silly. ... # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
nettime Working on article about the need for a progressive press in US
Some thoughts and questions about the US and online News Media and the recent election in the US I am working on an article about the ferment in media in the US and whether it can help to challenge the conservative media that has been the support for the manipulation of public opinion in the US, as for example, with mainstream US media promoting the notion of WMD as the basis to invade Iraq. I wondered if anyone on this list has suggestions of where there might be some help in understanding the concern of media people, of journalists, of progressive people, etc. that there be a media that is less easy to manipulate in the US. Recently there was a conference at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard in early December 2004. Jay Rosen posted on his blog, that the director of the Berkman Center, John Palfrey, told him: We want to ask hard questions that get past the hype and to what's real in this story -- if anything, Palfrey wrote. We are interested, to the greatest exten t we can, in uncovering, together, the truth about whether the internet. Is the Internet really is changing politics, not just in the US but around the world, for the better. Also that the question being raised for the conference was Has citizenship really changed in the online era? Was anyone on this mailing list at the conference? The reports I saw of what happened at the conference seemed very narrow and counter to the stated purpose It didn't seem, for example, that the essential question of how there could only be a real challenge to the Bush administration if there had been a challenge to the conservative press by a more progressive, and broad ranging press in the US was even raised at the conference. There are example like OhmyNews in South Korea, or Telepolis in Germany, which show that a broader and more netizen oriented press is possible. Articles written for these focus on encouraging discussion rather than providing information that no one cares about. Also if there were such a press in the US, then it would be the basis to provide a pressure on the more conservative news media to allow their journalists to report in a way that it serves a public interest and purpose. Also it seemed that the Republican online director was welcomed. Did those holding the conference consider that what the Republican Party did in the election was part of changing politics...for the better.? That's a hard pill to swollow if that was the rationale for inviting him. Also there was an interview with Dan Gilmor in Ohmynews (the English edition) shortly after the conference. Gilmor talks about how he doesn't want to challenge capitalism and how the conservative people in S Korea should form their own form of an OhmyNews. This is hard to understand as Ohmynews in S. Korea was formed to challenge the domination of politics by the conservative media. In the US as well, the conservative media has much funding and ability to promote capitalism. What is needed is a way to critique capitalism, and to develop a progressive challenge to the conservative media in the US. Unbridled capitalism running rampant and without having the eyes of any media challenging it doesn't represent any regard for capitalism nor for the public purpose that journalism is commonly claimed as the goal. Thus it is hard to understand how Gilmor can equate grassroots journalism with a support for broader access to a media for those with procapitalism and conservative viewpoints. Now there is a new conference planned at the Harvard Berkman School. Blogging, Journalism Credibility by invitation only. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu:8080/webcred/index.php?p=5 One of the papers they propose that people read for the conference is about a blog that criticized the North Korean government. While the North Korean government may not be the ideal government form, journalists who joined the condemnation of the Iraq government in the run up to the Iraq war, helped to prepare the groundwork for the illegal US invasion of Iraq. Since the US govt and the neocons are currently targeting North Korea as they did Iraq, it would seem that US journalists need to learn how they were used to wage an invasion in violation of international law against Iraq, by their support of the US governments phony claims of WMD in Iraq. Proposing a blog that targets the North Korean government as an example of credible journalism is another hard pill to swollow. It is hard to understand what the purpose of these conferences at the Berkman Center are for, except to help to discourage a more progressive media effort on the part of people who realize the problem that exists in the US at the moment. It would be good to know of current efforts to consider how to challenge the conservative media's power in the US. Are there any online papers that are welcoming of input and articles, and discussion toward a progressive viewpoint? About 10 years ago, Michael Hauben wrote an article that then became
