Category: Media

As a writer and once upon a time film student, I found this year’s Academy Awards to be an exemplary display of the breadth of possibility that Hollywood’s insular, but nonetheless public, progressive political scene presents.

This year, the Academy rewarded actors not just for being beautiful people in rented jewelry and expensive clothing, but for the emotions they conjured and the political movements that their roles represented.

by Anna Daniels

The third community input meeting on the upcoming budget was held this Saturday, February 21, at Hoover High School in City Heights. The auditorium was packed to overflowing! Fifty seven citizens provided public testimony about what services they considered essential and non-essential as well as ideas on how to save money and generate more general fund revenue. Fifty of those citizens said libraries and park and recreation services are essential because they provide kids with safe meaningful alternatives to the streets and opportunities for their future.

by Frank Gormlie

Residents in this County, when asked what San Diego County government does, are often hard-pressed I have found, to list more than a couple of things. Uh, collect taxes they’ll respond, … uh, run the sheriffs office, uh, … and then there will be a long, thoughtful pause. And maybe they’ll add one or two other services.

Well, the County does collect property and other taxes, and it does finance the Sheriff’s Office – although the Sheriff is elected separately. But the County does so much more.

Street artist Shepard Fairey was arrested Friday February 6th for tagging by Boston police. Southern Californians have known of the infamous LA artist’s work for years as his images have mysteriously appeared stenciled along streets – the iconic Andre the Giant and the Obey posters and stencils come to mind immediately. Fairey is also the artist of the now famous red, white, and blue poster of Barack Obama usually with the caption “hope”. (See ‘inside’ for the full story.)

Fairey was arrested after two warrants had been issued for him back on January 24th. He is accused by police for tagging property in two locations with graffiti – based on the Andre the Giant image.

It’s hell being a celebrity, especially if you’re young and find yourself at a party, where marijuana and cameras should never mix. And it’s not exactly heaven being sheriff of a county with escalating drug crimes and pressure to treat all offenders equally.

Thus it is that Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps and Sheriff Leon Lott of South Carolina’s Richland County are being forced to treat seriously a crime that shouldn’t be one.

As everyone knows by now, Phelps was photographed smoking from an Olympic-sized bong during a University of South Carolina party last November.

Filipino and American troops will hold exercises for 25 days starting Monday inside a military reservation in Capiz that is being claimed by an indigenous people’s group as part of its ancestral domain. “Balance Piston 09-1” will be held on January 26 to February 20 at the Camp Macario B. Peralta Jr. in Jamindan town, according to a press statement issued on Friday by the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division.

The exercises will involve 141 personnel of the division and 31 US soldiers, mostly trainers, acting division spokesman Captain Renante Besa told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) in a telephone interview Friday.

On Wednesday night, when former NSA analyst Russell Tice told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann that the Bush administration’s National Security Agency spied on everyone in the United States, specifically targeting journalists, the Countdown host was so flabbergasted that Tice was invited back for a second interview.

On Thursday, he returned to the airwaves with expanded allegations against the NSA, claiming the agency collected Americans’ credit card records, and adding that he believes the massive, warrantless data vacuum to be the remnants of the Total Information Awareness program, shut down by Congress in 2003.

One out of every 150 Americans was there in Washington DC yesterday, January 20, 2009. Nothing before yesterday had ever seen such a press of humanity that demonstrated on Tuesday. So many grand words have been spoken or written about President Barack Obama’s inauguration, that we dare not add anything mediocre. We had risen yesterday in anticipation, and turned on the tube early to watch history and try to be part of it. The crowds were what amazed me. Seeing faces with tears rolling down glad cheeks were what got me the most. Watching so many young Americans happy and excited, seeing so many African-Americans beaming, and viewing the plain diversity of the crowd made us all gasp with pride. The relentless chants of “Obama, Obama!” echoed my shouts into the night air the evening he was elected.

A memorial for Donnie Truesdail is being planned here in Ocean Beach for next Thursday, January 22nd. His family and friends hope it will allow all the different people touched by the local musician and music teacher to come together and express their sympathies.

The planning for the memorial, however, is being done in the dark shadow cast by the California Highway Patrol’s conclusion that Donnie’s death was a ‘suicide.’ Their conclusion is based on faulty evidence.

This morning, the San Diego Union-Tribune ran a brief story of the death of an Ocean Beach musician and school teacher, Don Truesdail, who was killed by a truck on Interstate 5, the morning of Tuesday, January 13th. Unfortunately, the paper reported that Truesdail, 34, had jumped in front of a truck, with the implication that he had committed suicide.

The only word that Truesdail had committed suicide was this:

“Investigators said witnesses called 911 after seeing a man on the freeway shoulder jump in front of a truck. The driver, who pulled over after the accident, was not injured.”

Ever since the story appeared on the U-T’s online version, comments have poured in from Don’s friends and family, outraged at the suggestion that he had killed himself.

PHILADELPHIA–Activists have won another victory against the slated budget cuts here. On December 30, the day before 11 neighborhood libraries were set to be closed, Judge Idee Fox issued an injunction, halting the closures. She ruled that Mayor Michael Nutter needs a vote from the City Council in order to shutter the libraries. Now, the mayor must win an appeal or get support from the City Council, which has already called for a six-month delay on any library closures. Nutter has proposed $1 billion in cuts in the next five years, much of which will come out of social services. Initial cuts included permanently closing 11 of the city’s 53 libraries, cutting seven fire companies, 68 public pools, leaf and trash pickup, and snow plowing. Many of these services are being cut in the poorest neighborhoods in Philadelphia.

It’s easily the most useful diagram I’ve found for understanding the practice of journalism in the United States, and the hidden politics of that practice. You can draw it by hand right now. Take a sheet of paper and make a big circle in the middle. In the center of that circle draw a smaller one to create a doughnut shape. Label the doughnut hole “sphere of consensus.” Call the middle region “sphere of legitimate debate,” and the outer region “sphere of deviance.”

That’s the entire model. Now you have a way to understand why it’s so unproductive to argue with journalists about the deep politics of their work. They don’t know about this freakin’ diagram! Here it is in its original form, from the 1986 book The Uncensored War by press scholar Daniel C. Hallin. Hallin felt he needed something more supple–and truthful–than calcified notions like objectivity and “opinions are confined to the editorial page.” So he came up with this diagram.