by Ronald Sitton

Photo by Ron Sitton

The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks at the National Conference for Media Reform, urging participants to continue the fight to keep independent online media alive and well.

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Jan. 12 - Rev. Jesse Jackson told a gathered crowd of approximately 2,500 and an additional 2,000 watching the event through streaming media on freepress.net that President George W. Bush is a war addict who needs some type of methadone.

“The president is in a hole looking for a shelter rather than a rope,” Jackson said.

While he occasionally referred back to the president, Jackson used the forum to speak about the upcoming national Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and claimed that romanticizing King’s legacy takes away from the struggle of today.

In a rather poignant moment, Jackson spoke of King’s last hours before coming to Memphis, noting King spent his birthday at home with family and in the basement of his church trying to decide how to end poverty and to end the war. Jackson said King almost gave up the struggle the morning before coming to Memphis due to the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement, comparing King’s indecision to that of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane prior to his crucifixion.

Jackson then spoke of the problems of the affirmative action movement, noting the main beneficiaries of affirmative action has been white women through Title IX legislation allowing equal competition in sports. But he claimed many young white female beneficiaries are against affirmative action because they don’t hear the truth of affirmative action in mass media.

“I’m concerned that the media has the capacity to make America better,” Jackson said. “We must fight to open the airwaves for all people.”
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By Ronald Sitton

MEMPHIS, Tenn., an. 12 - I’ve just pulled into Memphis and made it to the Conference Hall for the National Conference for Media Reform.

Photo by Ron Sitton

Conference schwag at the media reform conference in Memphis, where fees paid for things such as tote bags and access to a Friday night concert featuring the North Mississippi All Stars.

Slate-gray skies and a steady mist took me from Little Rock to the City of the Blues this morning. It’s almost winter in the Delta; the weather-niks even forecast cold temperatures for next week. As I drove I thought that regardless of your views on global warming, no one can deny the weather cycles strayed from normal over the past decade.

The Black Keys’ Magic Potion provided a soundtrack as I looked across the landscapes that urbanites deride as monotonous but farmers appreciate as fields of gold. Yet when it takes Coca Cola’s plight of perhaps losing its winter icon, the polar bear, to make the current administration use the term “global warming,” I wonder if we can make “dilemonade” out of the dilemma confronting mankind with the current leadership lacking in powerful places. We passed the point of preventing the problem; pray we can mitigate the effects.

Sometimes as I pass the Super Uninformed Victims clogging the road and our air, I wish I owned a bumper sticker asking, “Suckin’ Gas?” But what’s a fella to do when our government provides a $100,000 tax credit to buy a gas hog versus a $4,000 credit to buy a hybrid that gets better than 60 mpg at 55 mph?

What does this have to do with media reform, you ask? When does our corporate-controlled media even discuss climate problems? It takes a polar bear and a tumbling iceberg for the video clip and a great soundbyte to even get a few minutes a month in most locales.
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MEMPHIS, Tenn., Jan. 12 - The Reverend Jesse Jackson joined an alliance of civil rights and consumer groups today in Memphis to call on the FCC to halt media concentration and promote minority media ownership.

During an event at the National Conference for Media Reform, the alliance released a slate of new studies that pointedly refute Big Media’s arguments for further consolidation. The studies were delivered to the FCC with a letter signed by more than a dozen civil rights, consumer and media groups. The groundbreaking research was also made available to the public on the StopBigMedia.Com Coalition Web site.

The six new studies on dismantle Big Media’s case for abandoning the ownership protections that currently prevent media conglomerates from swallowing up even more local outlets, according to FreePress.Net.

They include an exposé of the National Association of Broadcasters’ fraudulent financial reporting on commercial broadcasters, and an analysis of news consumption online - where the top Internet news sites are owned by the same giants that control the rest of the media. Among other demands, the coalition letter urges the FCC to stop further concentration of media ownership until it has taken the necessary steps to promote minority and female ownership of broadcast stations.

Keep up with all the action from Memphis at the FreePress.Net blog.

The BellSouth/AT&T merger is on the fast track in the Lame Duck Congress, according to Timothy Karr, Campaign Director for FreePress.Net.

“The FCC is at it again, ignoring the public interest to give handouts to massive corporations,” he said. “This time, Chairman Kevin Martin has thrown the FCC’s ethics out the window to rush through the mega-merger of AT&T and BellSouth.”

Martin is forcing one commissioner, Robert McDowell, to overlook a conflict of interest and rubber stamp the AT&T merger without safeguards for Net Neutrality - the longstanding principle that prevents Internet providers from discriminating between Web sites.

“This move could undermine basic freedoms for all Internet users,” Karr said in a press relase.

Chairman Martin is racing to deliver special favors to AT&T before the incoming Congress can provide oversight. Commissioner McDowell rightly “recused” his vote on the merger because he had prior business ties affected by the deal. That left the FCC in a 2-2 tie.

Rather than negotiate with commissioners in good faith, AT&T and Chairman Martin have resorted to strong-arm tactics to force McDowell to violate his ethical standards and vote for the merger, Karr claims.

Congress has begun to respond to Martin’s outrageous behavior. Incoming House leaders John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Martin Tuesday demanding that the merger be handled “without compromising the ethical standards of the independent agency or the individual Commissioners involved.”

This objection was echoed in the Senate by incoming Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye.

“I hope you will reconsider your decision to waive the ethical rules presently precluding Commissioner McDowell’s participation and return to serious negotiations with your colleagues at the Commission,” he said. “These rules and the rules of professional responsibility in general exist for a reason and should not be tossed away lightly.”

To stop this unethical abuse of power, the public needs to get involved to make sure other members of Congress know about Martin’s action and step up to put a stop to it.

A commercial now running on cable television all over the country, sponsored by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, claims that “Net Neutrality” is nothing more than a conspiracy by the so-called “big tech companies in Silicon Valley” to “make you pay more for THEIR products.”

That’s absurd. Don’t believe it.

What ever happened to truth in advertising? It went out during the reign of Ronald Reagan along with the Fairness Doctrine.

What’s amazing is that the large corporate chains that publish most of the newspapers in the U.S. are so anti-Net that they are not getting involved in this fight to protect their own future Web Press rights.

Do they really want to be overtaken as a news source online by AT&T and Charter Communications?

For more information, go to FreePress.Net and SaveTheInternet.Com.