3/11/11

Media Reform Daily
News of the movement for March 11, 2011
Have you registered for the National Conference for Media Reform? Check out the newly unveiled schedule. It's amazing.
A Dangerous Congressional Overreach on Net Neutrality Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner testified on behalf of the Free Press Action Fund and the SavetheInternet.com coalition before a House subcommittee that wants to overturn the Net Neutrality rules adopted by the FCC. Turner called the effort to overturn the rule "a dangerous overreach" that "will leave consumers completely unprotected."
Megan Tady, SavetheInternet.com
How Much Money Does It Take to Kill Net Neutrality? Looking at the 15 congressmen who voted against Net Neutrality, the top three ISPs -- Comcast, Verizon and AT&T -- gave their campaigns some $868,024 over the past four election cycles. Did the money influence these lawmakers? Draw your own conclusions.
Nicholas Deleon, Crunch Gear
 
A Tea Party Hit on Net Neutrality In that genre of political theater that is a political debate on what is already a foregone conclusion, yesterday's high-profile hearing on Net Neutrality was a flop by almost any measure. The hearing was an attempt to make the committee chairman Rep. Greg Walden's (R-Ore.) argument for discrimination on the Internet seem sensible. That argument misfired.
Nancy Scola, American Prospect
Genachowski Says Title II Docket Is a Potential Aide to Congress FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told House Republicans that the FCC is keeping the so-called 'Title II' docket open to aide Congress and private industry. Genachowski's observation came in a letter Monday in response to questions from Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.)
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable
2-5 Percent of Your Bill Actually Goes to Bandwidth Somewhere between 2-5 percent of your monthly broadband bill actually goes to bandwidth. While costs drop and revenues rise, actual re-investment back into the network continues to shrink. In short, the broadband sky is not falling, and again -- there's absolutely zero real financial reason (outside of TV revenue protection and greed) to shift the U.S. from a flat-rate to a per byte overage pricing model.
Karl Bode, Broadband Reports
Legislators Introduce Bills to Restrict State Wireless Taxes Legislators in the House and Senate introduced companion bills that would prohibit states from levying new taxes specific to wireless services in an effort to keep barriers to access for mobile internet services low. The Wireless Tax Fairness Act would impose a five-year moratorium on new discriminatory taxes on wireless services.
Jonathan Charnitski, Broadband Breakfast
World Day Against Cyber-Censorship Honored with 'Enemies of the Internet' List Launched by Reporters Without Borders in 2008, World Day Against Cyber-Censorship (Mar. 12, 2011) is intended to rally everyone in support of a single Internet without restrictions and accessible to all. This year, Reporters Without Borders will pay tribute to those who have been adversely affected by online censorship with its latest list of "Enemies of the Internet."
Reporters Without Borders
Four Key Challenges for NPR's Next CEO Whoever the NPR Board of Directors eventually chooses for this position will assume leadership of an organization that in recent months has lost its CEO, its senior vice president for fundraising and its senior vice president for news while its federal funding has been challenged. How is a new CEO to handle all of this? Some NPR staffers have some ideas.
Mallary Jean Tenore, Poynter Institute
NPR Girds for Funding Battle Wednesday may have been NPR's darkest day, as its CEO became the third top executive in two months to be toppled by scandal and fears of cuts to its federal funding. But on Capitol Hill, there were rays of light for the public broadcaster, as Senate moderates in both parties, who ultimately could be the key decision makers in any funding fight, offered a defense of the broadcaster against the conservative onslaught calling for defunding.
Meredith Shiner and Keach Hagey, Politico
CPJ: More than Half-Dozen Journalists Missing in Libya The Committee to Protect Journalists says that at least seven journalists covering the conflict in Libya were "unaccounted for," while three others had been abused. The committee, which has been closely tracking journalist attacks in the Middle East conflict, expressed "deep concern" about the safety of journalists there.
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable
The Gory Details: Tim Armstrong's Layoffs Memo to AOL Staff In the wake of the merger between AOL and Huffington Post, AOL is cutting as many as 900 jobs, including close to 200 editorial staffers in the United States. These changes, among others, will be necessary to execute the vision of "creating real-time engagement and continuing to build a comprehensive source of compelling news, entertainment, information, opinion, and community," Armstrong said in a memo to AOL staff.
Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider
Texas Tribune, Bay Citizen to Split $975,000 Knight Grant Two of the most prominent and well-funded non-profit news startups will use nearly $1 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to build a free, open source publishing platform for other news organizations. The Texas Tribune and the Bay Citizen will focus on a system that can help sites without the same resources manage their content, encourage community engagement and raise revenue.
Staci D. Kramer, Paid Content
Does Metaphorical Framing Really Work? While editors and journalists worry about whether a simple word choice could influence their readers, politicians take another tack. They use metaphors all the time, explicitly in order to persuade people to view things their way. Lera Boroditsky, a psychology professor at Stanford University, conducted an experiment to see just whether this kind of metaphorical framing really works.
On the Media
media minutes
This week: A House subcommittee votes along party lines to give phone and cable companies unrestricted power to restrict free speech and block services like online video and audio. And the National Radio Project illuminates social justice issues and gives a voice to perspectives often excluded from mainstream news. Listen here.
In Other News...
Drum Roll Please! NCMR Program Unveiled Free Press unveiled the long-anticipated program for the National Conference for Media Reform. This is the conference to go to, and it is the time to go to it. Our media system is a wreck, and we’ve got to reign it in so we can have quality reporting on our nightly news, more localism and diversity in our papers and online, accurate representations of women, gender, sexual orientations and communities of color in the news and entertainment, and an affordable, fast, and open Internet for everyone in America.
Free Press
Eshoo, Shimkus, and Doyle Introduce Legislation to Promote Greater Collaboration Among FCC Commissioners Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), along with Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), and Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) introduced the Federal Communications Commission Collaboration Act today. The bipartisan legislation would modify the FCC's Closed Meeting Rule, which prohibits more than two Commissioners from talking outside of an official public meeting.
Rep. Anna Eshoo
Watching a Movie Is a Political Act Movies are big businesses, and the distribution chains are largely under the control of studios, which makes it difficult to break in for any independent filmmakers. AFFRM, the African American Film Festival Releasing Movement, is a collective that will theatrically release quality independent African-American films through simultaneous limited engagements in select cities.
Hannah Miller
Obama Highlights $90 Million Ed-Tech Agency Educational technology advocates applauded President Obama’s focus on college and career readiness and his call for a new federal agency devoted to ed-tech innovations.
eSchool News

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