There, now

That wasn't so bad, was it? Finals have been received from all of you now, and I'm looking forward to reading/viewing them. I really am, truth be told. I'm hoping to post final grades online (through Banner) this weekend. I'll be happy to discuss your final exams, final grades, or anything else BUT it will need to wait until the beginning of next semester -- C-Doc's heading out of town to try to get some writing done to appease his even crankier Editor, and is hoping to be as off the grid as he can be. But drop me a note after January 15, and we can find a time to meet if you'd like. Good luck with the rest of your finals, and get some rest over the break -- you've earned it. Well, most of you have. . . .

A Brief Diversion

From America's finest newspaper. I mean, of course, The Onion.

THE TOP STORIES OF 2006

1. December 15, 2006

   Thousands More Dead In Continuing Iraq Victory

2. May 24, 2006

   Al Gore Caught Warming Globe To Increase Box Office Profits

3. November 8, 2006

   Kevin Federline, Wife Divorce

4. July 6, 2006

   Ken Lay's Children Inherit 4,000 Pensions

5. August 14, 2006

   Israel Bombs Anti-Semitism Out Of Lebanon

6. November 9, 2006

   Karl Rove Accused Of Throwing Midterm Elections

7. August 5, 2006

   NASA Launches Probe To Inform Pluto Of Demotion

8. September 6, 2006

   Osama Bin Laden Takes Credit For Crocodile Hunter's Death

9. February 14, 2006

   Generous Vice President Cheney Gives Hard-Working Media Field Day

10. January 31, 2006

    Coretta Scott King's Wiretap Ends

Twenty-Five Hours Away

from the deadline seems the right time to put a moratorium on questions about the exam. So, all done. You'll be fine. Breathe. Think. Make sure you answer all parts of the question (see the question below, and re-read it). Post your exam on time (neither too early nor too late). And, seriously, you'll be fine.

A Farewell Clip

from what can be, on some days, the toughest interview on TV

A Reminder

and a gentle warning. Please do not e-mail me with exam questions; post them now on this new thread.

But read my comments so far on the old thread below before you do, and think before you ask -- please limit questions to those that you really think are important and require direction from me.

In other words, use your own judgment and know that as long as you fully answer the questions, and attend to the requirements I highlighted in the Exam Question itself (see below), you should be creative and deal with this Blog Essay in whatever manner you think most appropriate.

C-Doc is perilously close to refusing to answer any and all questions moving forward -- so again, before asking , make sure you really need an answer from the increasingly Cranky One .

A War on Blogs

Here. And more Here

(HT to Cursor)

Use this new thread

for questions about the final exam

And so it begins

A Reminder

To check in at Alana's View for all things extra-credity. . . .

Best story ever

Ahhh, the power of the internets and its infernal tubes (from the NYT):

So This Manatee Walks Into the Internet

By JACQUES STEINBERG

The skit, as scripted for the Dec. 4 installment of “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” was about absurdist college sports mascots that the host and his writers would like to see someday.

Among them were “the Boise State Conjoined Vikings,” who had been born locked at the horns, as well as something Mr. O’Brien called “the Webcam manatee” — said to be the mascot of “F.S.U.” — which was basically someone in a manatee costume rubbing himself or herself provocatively in front of a camera (to the tune of the 1991 hit “I Touch Myself”). Meanwhile a voyeur with a lascivious expression watched via computer.

Who knew that life would soon imitate art.

At the end of the skit, in a line Mr. O’Brien insists was ad-libbed, he mentioned that the voyeur (actually Mark Pender, a member of the show’s band) was watching www.hornymanatee.com. There was only one problem: as of the taping of that show, which concluded at 6:30 p.m., no such site existed. Which presented an immediate quandary for NBC: If a viewer were somehow to acquire the license to use that Internet domain name, then put something inappropriate on the site, the network could potentially be held liable for appearing to promote it.

In a pre-emptive strike inspired as much by the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission as by the laws of comedy, NBC bought the license to hornymanatee.com, for $159, after the taping of the Dec. 4 show but before it was broadcast.

By yesterday afternoon hornymanatee.com — created by Mr. O’Brien’s staff and featuring images of such supposedly forbidden acts as “Manatee-on-Manatee” sex (again using characters in costumes) — had received approximately 3 million hits, according to NBC. Meanwhile several thousand of Mr. O’Brien’s viewers have also responded to his subsequent on-air pleas that they submit artwork and other material inspired by the aquatic mammals, and the romantic and sexual shenanigans they imagine, to the e-mail address conan@hornymanatee.com.

One viewer sent a poem. Mr. O’Brien asked James Lipton, the haughty host of “Inside the Actors Studio” on Bravo, to read it on “Late Night.” It included the lines: “I want to freak thy blubber rolls,” and “The product of our ecstasy will be half man and half a-’tee.” After that a curtain opened, and Mr. Lipton gamely danced with the manatee character. Another viewer wrote a song, which Mr. Pender, the band’s trumpet player, crooned to the character. Set to the heavy metal band AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” it included the lyrics “She had big black eyes/no discernible thighs” and “The waves start shakin’/the ocean was quakin’/my pelvis was achin’. ”

Reached by telephone at NBC yesterday, Mr. O’Brien said he was stunned and overwhelmed by the viewers’ response to what had initially been a throwaway line, and by what that response, collectively, suggested about how the digital world was affecting traditional media like television.

“We couldn’t have done this two years ago, three years ago,” Mr. O’Brien said. “It’s sort of this weird comedy dialogue with the audience.”

He added, “I still have an abacus.”

Regardless, Mr. O’Brien and his staff are digitally savvy enough to seize an opportunity when it presents itself, particularly in the aftermath of such Internet comedy phenomena as “Lazy Sunday,” a filmed clip from “Saturday Night Live” that drew large audiences on the Web last year, initially as a bootleg. After the taping of the Dec. 4 show, Mr. O’Brien said the show’s executive producer, Jeff Ross, informed him of the problem, then asked him whether he wanted to mute the mention of the site or buy the Web address.

“We didn’t want to take it out,” Mr. Ross said yesterday, “so we bought it.”

In explaining to the audience the next night what he and his writers had done, Mr. O’Brien marveled, “For $159, NBC, the network that brought you ‘Meet the Press,’ Milton Berle and the nation’s first commercial television station became the proud owner of www.hornymanatee.com.”

Now, by clicking on “tour,” visitors to the site are drawn into a netherworld of mock-graphic images with titles like “Mature Manatee” (with a walker of course) and “Fetish” (a manatee in a bondage costume) as well as dozens of viewer submissions, including “Manatee & Colmes,” a spoof of “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox News.

Mr. O’Brien said he knew he was on to something when, on Wednesday night, he was at a Christmas party in the lobby of a friend’s building and a waiter approached him with a platter of salmon and toast points. When Mr. O’Brien politely declined, he said the waiter drew in close and whispered in his ear, “My compliments to the horny manatee.”

As he prepared last night’s show, Mr. O’Brien said he was planning to give the bit its first night off, although he was confident it would soon return.

“We don’t want the entire show to be ‘Late Night With Horny Manatee,’ ” he said. “Though, of course, it will become that eventually.”

If you're having trouble

with the Perlmutter article, try here

Animals. Close up. With a wide angle lens.

By way of summary, and farewell. . . . .Hat tip to The Compromiser

Scroll down for Final Exam

Stupid News Hair.

Final Exam: Whoo-Hoo!

Please answer the following multi-part question in an extended blog post (think the equivalent of 7-9 typed double-spaced pages, give or take) that must be posted to your blog ONLY between 8:45 and 9:15 PM on Thursday, December 21, 2006. Please check your blog's date- and time-stamps now to make sure they are set properly.

Your posts will be evaluated both on the substance of your response (and the extent to which you clearly demonstrate your command over the material we have read, viewed, and discussed over the course of the semester) and also on the style of your post -- do you make effective use of properly embedded links to cite multiple sources and generously reference web-based materials? is your post formatted cleanly, with appropriate paragraph breaks, proper off-setting of extended quotations, and effective and appropriate use of images and videos? is the essay free of egregious spelling and grammatical errors, and written in lively, clear prose? does it move smoothly and logically from one point to another, presenting one coherent extended essay overall?

REMEMBER: this is a Final Exam, in which I am obligated to evaluate your mastery over the material we have covered this semester. The more that you make specific reference to our readings, viewings, lectures, discussions in class, and posts on C-Doc's, and explicitly draw upon and try to integrate the ideas we've explored and debated, the easier it will be for me to make positive judgments about your newfound expertise. In this instance, more is more.

So, ON TO THE QUESTION:

• Briefly describe and evaluate the six mass media models we have discussed over the course of the semester. Choose the one that you think SHOULD be the standard by which we evaluate media performance in a pluralist, democratic polity, and briefly explain why.
• Using that standard, describe and evaluate the performance of Mainstream Media/Big Media, with particular emphasis on recent history and the current state of affairs.
• Using the same standard, evaluate and compare the performance so far of what we have called New Media.
• Now, making logical and reality-based inferences, evaluate the potential for New Media to achieve that standard.

At the same time that you post your blog essay, send me an e-mail with your essay copied into the main message as text. Please put FINAL EXAM: [your last name] in the subject heading. This is to ensure, should there be unexpected Blogger problems, that I will have a record of your exam with the date and time it was submitted. I expect to read and grade exams, and to post final grades for the course, that weekend. I'll then be happy to schedule appointments in the spring semester for anyone who would like to discuss their final exam or their performance in the course. FOR THAT REASON, please do not delete your blog until, at least, February 15, 2007, so that there is a record of your semester's work.

Use the Comments section of this thread to post questions about the final exam: I will answer them here.

PS: Remember that we're meeting Monday in F535 at 8PM, not at our usual times (see below). And, yes, I'll be taking attendance. I'm awfully mean, you know.

It's unanimous-ish!

We'll not meet at our regularly scheduled classtimes Monday December 11 and, instead, will meet at 8PM, Furst Hall 535 for:

“The Truth Is Out There: Politics and the Media Today”: a Debate on Political Journalism

  FROM THE LEFT: Paul Glastris (Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Monthly)

  FROM THE RIGHT:  Matthew Continetti (writer for The Weekly Standard)  

Extra Credit Update

See Alana's View

Speechless

From the Washington Times:

Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, will hold a full committee hearing tomorrow on "Climate Change and the Media."

The hearing will look at how the media has presented scientific evidence regarding predictions of human-caused catastrophic global warming, the senator's office said.

"Senator Inhofe believes that poorly conceived policy decisions will result from the media's nonstop hyping of 'extreme scenarios' and dire climate predictions," said committee Communications Director Marc Morano. "This hearing will serve to advance the interests of sound science and encourage rational policy decisions."

For Next Week

Moyers, The Net at Risk? Try to find time to watch -- it's a good summary of the issues, and fun fodder for the final.

More on Al Jay-Z

From CJR

For Examples

Alana's View takes on Gillmor. And so does The Shoe Man's View.

"Messianic Internet Types"

Follow these links: it's a good starting place for us to start thinking about a counter-point to Gillmor's optimism (sorry, Moshe).

The Hart ("Easy Citizenship: Television's Curious Legacy") and Prior ("News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout") articles fit in here, too, so if you have time, read them (or give 'em a good skim). . . . . .

Monday we'll begin to build a critique of Gillmor, and temper his hopefulness (seriously: sorry, Moshe).

Symbols Matter

There are a few things here that might be worth thinking about and discussing in class, something I never thought I'd say about a column by Clift, typically among the worst practitioners of Convention Wisdom instead of reporting or original thought. . . . .And there's still much here that is too facile. . . But still:

Clift: Senator-Elect Webb Not to Be Toyed With

Virginia Senator-elect Jim Webb is the rare Washington figure who doesn't suck up to power.

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY

By Eleanor Clift

Newsweek

Updated: 2:42 p.m. ET Dec 1, 2006

Dec. 1, 2006 - Every so often a politician comes along who doesn’t pander to the president. Fresh off a nasty campaign that centered on the war in Iraq, Virginia Senator-elect Jim Webb had no interest in a picture of himself with President Bush, and he didn’t want to exchange small talk with the man whose war policies he opposes. So he skipped the receiving line at a White House reception for newly elected members of Congress, creating the first of what we should all hope will be many ripples in Washington.

Webb’s presumed snub of Bush is rare enough in a city where everybody who’s anybody has a glory wall, and social occasions are geared to a parade of picture taking. But what happened next is where the story really takes off. President Bush, spying Webb across the room, walked over to him and asked, “How’s your boy?” Webb’s son is a Marine in Iraq.

A more seasoned politician might have been flattered that the president knew his son was in the line of fire and bothered to ask about him. That wouldn’t be Webb, a best-selling author who got into electoral politics for primarily one reason, his opposition to the Iraq war. “I’d like to get them out of Iraq,” he replied, according to several published accounts. “That’s not what I asked you,” Bush said, repeating his question: “How’s your boy?” Webb’s reply: “That’s between me and my boy.” Afterward, a source told The Hill newspaper that Webb was so angered by the exchange he was tempted to slug the guy. That might have prompted the Secret Service to pull their weapons, which wouldn’t have been the first time Webb, a highly decorated Vietnam combat veteran, faced the barrel of a gun.

A quirky individualist who wants no part of the phony collegiality of Washington, Webb was rightly insulted when Bush pressed him in that bullying way—“That’s not what I asked you”—trying to force the conversation back to Webb’s son. Webb could have asked how the Bush girls are doing, partying their way across Argentina. He could have told Bush he was worried about his son; the vehicle next to him was blown up recently, killing three Marines. Given the contrast between their respective offspring, Webb showed restraint.

But that’s not how much of official Washington reacted. Columnist George F. Will was the most offended, declaring civility dead and Webb a boor and a “pompous poseur.” Were the etiquette police as exercised when Vice President Dick Cheney told Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy to perform an anatomically impossible act on the Senate floor? Or is that amusing by Washington’s odd standards?

Webb told The Washington Post that his intention was not to offend Bush or the institution of the presidency but that “leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is.” By standing up to Bush, Webb became a hero to a lot of people who voted against this president and this war, and whose views have been sidelined for six years. Symbols matter. Bush certainly understands their importance, or he wouldn’t have jetted onto that carrier in a flight suit and stood in front of a banner that proclaimed MISSION ACCOMPLISHED more than a thousand days and thousands more deaths ago. A president snubbed by a junior senator-elect and then, more tellingly by the puppet prime minister in Iraq, should be wondering where he went wrong, not the other way around.

It’s justice long overdue for a president who has so abused the symbols of war to get his comeuppance from a battlefield hero who personifies real toughness as opposed to fake toughness. Bush struts around with this bullying frat-boy attitude, and he gets away with it because nobody stands up to him. Bush could have left Webb’s initial response stand, but no, he had to jab back—“That’s not what I asked you.” Webb is not one to be bullied. He knows what real toughness is, and it’s not lording it over people who are weaker than you, and if you’re president, everybody by definition is weaker.

The lords of Washington will say that Webb got off to a rocky start, but so did Paul Wellstone, another iconoclastic citizen turned politician who dared to violate social protocol. It was another Bush and another gulf war, but Wellstone’s initial impropriety set the stage for what turned out to be a distinguished and even inspirational career that was tragically cut short by a plane crash four years ago. A professor of political science at Minnesota’s Carleton College, Wellstone was antiwar even then and had run on a progressive platform. At a White House reception in 1991 for newly elected members, Wellstone used his time in the receiving line with President George H.W. Bush to press his opposition to the first gulf war that loomed on the horizon and to urge more attention to education and health care. After he moved through the line, Bush was overheard saying, “Who is this chickens--t?” It's a sentiment the son surely shares.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15990689/site/newsweek/

NYT asks "Politics as Usual?"

Ooooh, it's all science-y!

Want to participate in an experiment? Check out this link. Now post the same link on your own blog. It's that simple. Results revealed at the Modern Language Association Conference this spring. I know, I know, how ever will we wait. . . . .

But it's a question central to our ongoing debate about the potential political influence of New Media -- how do ideas spread? how fast? is there a tipping point at which they become influential? must they be picked up by MSM for there to be real impact? should we turn to our friends in the biological sciences and perhaps think about this as a viral network? what does Acephalous mean, anyway?

Rabble Rousing

Not that any of you or your colleagues are rabble, of course.

Here's the summary of last night's meeting, for those who couldn't attend. I like these ideas a lot, for what it's worth.

That We Know This

Doesn't make it less troubling

From the Researchers at The Onion

More on Al Jay-zee

From the New York Sun:

Al-Jazeera English made its debut last Wednesday, and it took only a couple of days to discern that although one reason for its absence from American TV screens is political, another may be that the global range and scope of its reportage, were it to find an audience here, could prove an embarrassment to the relative parochialism of CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, et al.

Read the whole article.

This Could be Fun

from Personal Democracy Forum:

Please join PDF's Micah Sifry and others for a discussion panel next Tuesday, November 28th:

Blogging and Elections
Tuesday, November 28; 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
Museum of TV & Radio
25 West 52nd Street, New York City

Blogging. "The new frontier" in campaign warfare (according to the New York Times). As the lines between journalism, advocacy, and campaigning become increasingly fuzzy on the Internet, elections are becoming a whole new kind of horse race. We have assembled some of the influential names from the online political arena for a look back at the impact of blogs on the 2006 midterm elections and a look forward at what we can expect in the making of the president, 2008.

Duncan Black, Publisher, Eschaton@atrios
Ana Marie Cox, Wonkette Emerita; Washington Editor, Time.com
Peter Daou, Publisher, Salon's The Daou Report
Patrick Hynes, Founder and Proprietor, Ankle Biting Pundits
Micah Sifry, Executive Editor, Personal Democracy Forum
Matthew Yglesias, Staff Writer, The American Prospect, Blogger, TPMCafe
Additonal panelists to be announced.

To purchase tickets and receive a $10 discount, please go to http://www.mtr.org/events/ss-06fall/ss-mnv.htm#blogging and enter the promotional code "midterm."

Al Jazeera English Gives Us More of the Same?

From Slate:

The News From Qatar
Al Jazeera English debuts.
By Troy Patterson
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006, at 5:07 PM ET

It's been a week since Al Jazeera English went live, and the most-e-mailed story on the news channel's Web site is still "Al Jazeera English goes live." Please refrain from fussing about this special deployment of the word story—the article's main source is one of the channel's executives—and appreciate what so many people are excited about: The Anglophone extension of the 10-year-old pan-Arab network is beaming news to 80 million households around the world from broadcast centers in Kuala Lumpur, London, Washington, D.C., and Doha, Qatar. In the eyes of its constituency, the most urgent thing Al Jazeera English has said so far—topping cute little human-interest stories like "Why the West Needs Ahmadinejad"—is, "Hi."

U.S. cable and satellite companies aren't exactly tripping over one another to carry the channel, which maybe has something to do with the widespread belief that Al Jazeera has an anti-American bias. The vast majority of Americans who want to size up the channel for themselves have to head to its Web site, where you can sample 15 minutes for free or, for six bucks a month, stream it 24/7. Yesterday, delivering updates on an Israeli missile strike against Hamas officials in Gaza, the channel kept returning to images of two children wounded in the attack. Others might have detected something propagandistic in the way the camera lingered on their blood-splattered faces, but it just looked liked old-fashioned tabloid style to me. The last couple days of Al Jazeera English suggest that its main bias is the universal one in favor of juicy drama.

For instance, yesterday's installment of People & Power, a magazine show, led with a story on "the fight for the future of Mexico." What a silly duck I was to expect that it might concentrate on Felipe Calderón, who takes the presidential oath of office on Dec. 1, and the man he narrowly defeated, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who claims that Calderón stole the election. Rather, it was a look at two figures who "represent the extremes"—plutocrat Carlos Slim and Zapatista spokesman Subcomandante Marcos. This approach allowed for the introduction of theatrical elements (scenes of cops in riot gear, dancers in indigenous garb, and Marcos puffing on a pipe from behind his face mask) that combined with the report's cinematic style (time-lapse footage of traffic, electronic funk on the soundtrack) to give the whole segment the flavor of a promotional video. What was being promoted? Political theater.

The next People & Power report promised "a rare glimpse of absolute power in Turkmenistan." Pretending to be a tourist, correspondent Juliana Ruhfus tiptoed around the dictatorship of Saparmurat Niyazov, the kind of dude given to renaming the month of April after his mom. While Ruhfus told us that Niyazov controls the world's fourth-largest reserve of natural gas, she left us in the dark about the implications thereof. No, the tension of hanging out in her bugged hotel room and chatting up an anonymous taxi driver was enough; analysis was less important than atmosphere. Even the sportscasters here are aching for controversy: The most recent edition of Sportsworld featured a preview of the Ashes, the England-Australia cricket series, that rejoiced in profiling the Australian player least likely to speak in pre-approved sound bites: "In this desolate media landscape, Shane Warne is an oasis."

Al Jazeera's focus is the Middle East, of course—today's rigorous coverage of the killing of Lebanese Cabinet minister Pierre Gemayel has ceased only for a talk show dedicated to the Darfur crisis and featuring the reportage of, uh, Mia Farrow—but it's truly a global channel: "Bomb blast in Thailand ... " "Evacuees leave Tonga … " "For eastern parts of Europe, things are looking pretty miserable as well … " Well, that last one was just the weather report, but you get the idea. Al Jazeera English is covering the world more deeply and broadly than U.S. television news does and with an even greater respect for the laws of show business.

Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic.

Evidently, You're Mad as H***

And you're not going to take it any more. Huzzah.

Please make certain to visit Maytal's blog and contribute to the discussion about your final project -- the more you all participate, the more the action the class plans will represent your interests. You might suggest some specific actions, perhaps some short-term and some longer-term too. As Maytal says, "Comment Away!"

Dissent about Dissent

Here's a few more (see below). Beyond the pale?

From another cartoonist who seeks to provoke, David Rees: some examples of Get Your War On. Be warned if you go to his website -- most of the cartoons are replete with shall we say colorful language.

Oh dear, here we go

Since the discussion this Monday is about whether there should be limits to political speech, especially during wartime, over the next few days I'll post some material to provoke discussion. If you have any good candidates to add, send me a link or e-mail. These from Ted Rall should get us started.

"Amplifying Officials, Squelching Dissent"

For Wednesday, from FAIR.

Patriotism and Dissent

For Monday, along with the DuBois essay, let's discuss this, from the late Sen. J. William Fulbright, in The Arrogance of Power:

To criticize one's country is to do it a service and pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that a country can do better than it is doing. In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste but its effect, not how it makes people feel in the moment but how it makes them feel in the long run. Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism, a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals of national adulation.

Judge for yourself

What do you make of this?

From the New York Sun (who HATED my first book, btw):

The long-delayed sister channel to Al-Jazeera is set to make its debut this morning, but the new network's ability to build an audience in America is in doubt because major cable and satellite providers here have declined to carry the new television offering.

. . . . . . . .

A former ABC News correspondent who will be one of the main Washington anchors for the new network, David Marash, expressed some regret yesterday about the limited platform in America. "It's disappointing. Of course, you want to play to your home crowd if you can," he said.

Mr. Marash told The New York Sun that the distribution problems may give the network a slow start here but should become less important over time. "The cable-satellite deficit is a very temporary problem. I think in 10 years broadband through the Internet will be the distribution route of choice," he said.

The fledgling network continues to take flak from critics who fear it will mimic the original Al-Jazeera service, which has been accused repeatedly of being a mouthpiece for terrorist groups and for insurgents in Iraq.

"They've helped create violence, helped kill Americans, and helped create the civil war going on in Iraq," one critic, Clifford Kincaid, said. "Now, in addition to all the damage committed by Al-Jazeera Arabic, it is expanding. The only difference they have is some Western faces as window dressing."

Mr. Kincaid, who is an editor for a conservative press watchdog group, Accuracy in Media, said the new news outlet should receive close scrutiny from the American government."If Congress can review a foreign-owned company taking over American ports, they ought to take a look at the operation of a foreign-government sponsored television channel," he said.

Both the Arabic network, which went on the air in 1996, and the new English channel are funded by the family of the leader of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

Mr. Marash said he expects the concerns about the new channel to diminish once people actually get to see it. "I think there's been a lot of negative anticipation that is not in any way going to be rewarded," the journalist said. He said the new channel will offer "real network quality news but with a focus on the southern regions, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, somewhat at the expense of North America and Western Europe."

Nero fiddles?

From Agence France Presse:

Their caption:

Oil painting by the Iraqi artist Moayyed Mohsen, which shows outgoing US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld leaning back reading papers, with combat-boot-clad feet beside a weathered image of the Lion of Babylon atop a ruined plinth. The massive mural dominates the wall of a Baghdad art gallery in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah.

Serendipidy, they call it

News as fresh as next week's assignments, from the Times:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 12 — Al Jazeera, the Arab news channel that began a decade ago as an upstart, has became a thorn in the side of every dictator in the region as well as of the Bush administration.

Critics call it radical; its admirers lionize it. And the network continues to battle accusations that it is sympathetic to Al Qaeda and other extremists.

Several of its reporters have been jailed — one is in prison in Spain for ties to Al Qaeda — and its offices have been shut in almost every major Arab country at some point, and bombed by American aircraft in two wars.

Now, Al Jazeera’s journalists are working to transform the channel into a conglomerate with global reach. . . . . . .

Read the whole thing.

REALLY Fake TV News

From Democracy Now. See specially from 9:50-14:50 and 41:00 - 48:00.

For Monday:

And look here for the RATS ad

On the Ignorance of Washington Pundits

Read this.

Ooooh, pictures!

Scroll down, and you'll see some images we'll discuss this coming week. Look through them and think about O'Shaughnessy's discussions about Single-Issue Evangelicalism and Party Propaganda. 'Though there are no examples here, we'll talk about Corporate Propaganda, too -- perhaps you might post examples on your own blogs?

UPDATE: I love it when you occasionally listen to me! Corporate Propaganda example here

. . . . and one example of anti-corporate propaganda here

G.W. Bush Propaganda: USA

Party Propaganda: USSR

Party Propaganda: Nazis

Propaganda: Single-Issue Groups

Example Set Four: Animal Testing

Propaganda: Single-Issue Groups

Example Set Three: HIV/AIDS

Propaganda: Single-Issue Groups

Example Set Two: Guns

Propaganda: Single-Issue Groups

Example Set One: Abortion

Net Neutrality

We'll discuss this at some length later in the semester, but for now, here's a pretty good ad against "deregulation" proposals that would allow large Internet Service Providers to privilege certain kinds of internet traffic over others. Think about McChesney's discussion about "deregulation" in the context of radio and television, and you begin to get a handle on what's at stake regarding public access to and control over electronic communication:

Politics in Spaaaace!

Yup -- some of the smartest, and most thoughtful, meditation on current politics has been on Battlestar Galactica. Seriously. Read this, from Salon:

Space balls

While politicians spent a campaign season avoiding the big issues, TV's bravest series has been facing them in thrilling fashion.

By Laura Miller

Nov. 10, 2006 | For the past month, while the national political conversation has concerned itself with racy military thrillers and antique racial slurs, the real issues -- the big, soul-scraping ones -- have been wrestled with in the wasteland of Friday night basic cable programming, on a channel otherwise devoted to no-budget thrillers about killer centipedes.

Surely you've heard by now (because we've certainly repeated it often enough) that "Battlestar Galactica," the new remake of the cheesy '70s series, is the most thrilling and trenchant dramatic series on TV at the moment (except, of course, for "The Wire"). Maybe you still haven't given it a shot because you just can't believe a show set on a spaceship could possibly engage you when you can watch the simpering narcissists of "Grey's Anatomy" instead -- in which case, you are an idiot. But if you've simply not yet gotten around to it, hurry: Rent the DVDs of Seasons 1 and 2 (they're short), and then hasten over to iTunes to catch up on the first handful of episodes for Season 3 because this one is not just about other planets; it's about our own.

The first season of "Battlestar" seemed daring merely for having the remnants of the human race persecuted by a genocidal, sanctimonious and devious enemy, the Cylons, who were not above sending suicide bombers onto the humans' ships. The series' troubled fighter pilot heroine, Starbuck, showed her darkest side when she was put in charge of interrogating a Cylon captive and tortured him without a tinge of conscience. (The Cylons, a kind of robot created by robots that were originally created by humans, are nearly indistinguishable from human beings, even under close scrutiny. The humans' position is that they're "toasters," and homicidal ones at that, but it's not always possible to maintain this position, as the story of the Cylon Sharon has demonstrated.)

At the end of Season 2, however, the show's creators executed a daredevil twist by scooping most of the characters (along with the remaining human population) off their ships and onto a dreary colony on a planet they called New Caprica. At the very end of the season finale, an overwhelming Cylon force descended, marching through the muddy streets of the tent city, and announced that they were taking over. Instead of trying to exterminate humanity, they were going to try to reform it. And the chosen method of reform would be a little thing we call occupation.

The two opening hours of Season 3 were, it must be said, unrelentingly grim. The humans, shivering in damp bulky sweaters and fingerless gloves, had mounted an insurrection. Gaius Baltar, the self-serving scientist and secret Cylon collaborator whom they had rashly elected president, was running a Vichy-like government that had become hopelessly implicated in the Cylon's brutal crackdowns on the rebels. Colonel Tigh, the former executive officer of Galactica, a leader of the resistance, lost his eye while being detained and interrogated, like many others, without charge or due process.

Some colonists, whether out of a misguided attempt to ameliorate the situation or out of bald self-interest, had signed on with the human police force that the Cylons set up to maintain order. They had to keep their identities secret, however, because the insurrection regarded them as collaborators. The Cylons just couldn't understand why the humans wouldn't behave. The humans just wanted the Cylons to go away.

The parallels to current events are obvious, but "Battlestar Galactica" has always kept more than one historical touchstone in play. The early scenes, when Secretary of Education Laura Roslin was sworn in as president because everyone above her in the civilian line of command had been massacred, cited the swearing in of LBJ after the Kennedy assassination. The scene of the shiny, terrifying Cylon centurions (a servant class of robots that actually look like robots) marching down the main road of New Caprica while the devastated colonists looked on was the Nazis marching into Paris.

The really audacious stroke of this season was showing us a story about a suicide bomber from the point of view of the bomber and his comrades -- no, it was more than that, because the cause of this terrorist was unquestioningly our own. We sympathize with the insurgents wholeheartedly. So when Colonel Tigh, a blood 'n' guts military man if there ever was one, insists that suicide bombing is the only way to end the occupation, the show leaves the question of whether he's right up to us. Is it worth it?

The humans in "Battlestar" don't have an overarching religious fanaticism to persuade them that it is. (The Cylons are the messianic monotheists.) So when Baltar confronts former President Roslin in her jail cell about the morality of the suicide bombing, and demands that she look him in the eye and tell him it's the right thing to do, she can't. Every time you start to get all starry-eyed and latch onto Roslin as the second coming of Josiah Bartlet, the show reminds you that it's a whole lot tougher -- on its characters and its viewers -- than "The West Wing" was. "Battlestar Galactica" may be set in outer space, with robots, in the far distant past, but it reminds us every week that the other TV shows are the fantasies. "This," as Roslin tells her stricken assistant in a recent episode, "this is life."

More on the Midterms

from The Onion:

Republicans Blame Election Losses On Democrats

November 7, 2006 | Issue 42•45

WASHINGTON, DC—Republican officials are blaming tonight's GOP losses on Democrats, who they claim have engaged in a wide variety of "aggressive, premeditated, anti-Republican campaigns" over the past six-to-18 months. "We have evidence of a well-organized, well-funded series of operations designed specifically to undermine our message, depict our past performance in a negative light, and drive Republicans out of office," said Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, who accused an organization called the Democratic National Committee of spearheading the nationwide effort. "There are reports of television spots, print ads, even volunteers going door-to-door encouraging citizens to vote against us." Acknowledging that the "damage has already been done," Mehlman is seeking a promise from Democrats to never again engage in similar practices.