I haven't figured out how scary this is...

[Joshua Zeidner]

On 1/17/08, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-01-17 at 12:03 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> > On 1/17/08, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2008-01-16 at 21:17 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> > > > There is a great resource put out by Columbia University called 'Who
> > > > Owns What' which is an index of all major media publications and what
> > > > corps own them:
> > > >
> > > >   http://www.cjr.org/resources/
> > > ----
> > > which of course is out of date - the first Corp I went looking for was
> > > Bain Capital now that they have purchased ClearChannel and absorbed them
> > > completely. This is Mitt Romney's company and he will control a large
> > > media chunk.
> > >
> > > The past few years of corporate acquisition gives the illusion of
> > > corporate growth and it's hard to keep up.
> >
> >   Interesting... I guess I had no easy way of verifying the data.
> > They have since I last checked reformatted the page.  thanks!
> >
> >   an interesting story:
> >
> >   "Media ownership study ordered destroyed"
> >   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14836500/
> >
> >   Martin at FCC is in the hot seat right now.  Although we may not agree
> > on everything, Craig, it's good to see that other people recognize
> > these problems.  Martin should be tried for treason.  Note the
> > language here:
> >
> >   "The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy
> > all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of
> > media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at
> > the agency says."
> >
> >   I didn't know the FCC was a person!  We should be asking 'WHO' here,
> > not 'WHAT'.  Its interesting that we no longer value reports on their
> > validity, instead we just burn them if they don't serve our lobbyists
> > interests.
> >
> >   as for Theyrule.net , its a great site but not really for
> > professional analysis.  One of the maps there that show the relations
> > between M$, Dell, and Intel really tells an interesting story.  They
> > stay away from the typical lefty antics and just show the data, and I
> > really appreciate that.
> ----
> being someone who is of bleeding heart liberal persuasion, I hesitated
> to respond because my own personal politics are of concern only where
> they might intersect in a meaningful way.
>
> Indeed, what has been happening under Martin's stewardship is nothing
> short of criminal and it just seems to fly under most radar - which is
> just another example of the corrupt main stream media.


  Thats why I keep bringing it up.  :)

  Martin is a scum bag and America needs to know about it.  Since when
is it ok to burn federally funded research reports?


>
> In reality though, television news and newspapers do not hold the same
> sway any longer and it's mostly people 45+ that are buying newspapers or
> watching national news channels (NBC, CBS, ABC). They have lost huge
> chunks of viewers and then the cable news networks have missed the
> opportunity to capitalize.


   Well I think the advent of commerical civilian digital networking
offered a viable alternative, but it is without a doubt under threat
at this time.  Obama does appear to be on point with Net Neutrality,
but I have my doubts as to whether these things will get put into
effect.  It seems though that we are moving with a quick pace to erode
all rights to privacy and eliminate the neutrality of all carriers.
The Democratic party were the primary builders of the commerical
network we have today, unfortunately they are not helping much to
preserve it.


>
> The Ashleigh Banfield story http://www.alternet.org/story/15778 and Phil
> Donahue's story http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0303-06.htm tell you
> all you need to know when the supposedly 'liberal' cable news network
> fires it's most popular stars simply for political reasons.

  Clearly traditional media formats are far too susceptible to this
sort of thing and we need to maintain a flexible END-TO-END
infrastructure in order to maintain the state of free speech.


>
> That these megalithic corporations such as Clear Channel (now Bain) or
> News Corp. or whichever are basically buying large numbers of media
> outlets ultimately will serve to kill competition, become the final nail
> in their empires because they serve their agenda's and in the end,
> people just aren't that stupid.



  Stupid enough to allow it to persist for a decade or two.



>
> Like the RIAA, the newspaper, magazine, broadcast networks are
> struggling to maintain empires that are failing and the very methods
> that they use to increase their power by expanding which will probably
> just hasten their decline. Just listen to the morons that are the
> talking heads on the political shows that got everything wrong in New
> Hampshire, are predicting that if so and so wins in South Carolina, it's
> all over, etc. These people, the MSM have completely lost all
> credibility. CNN might be the worst offender of all (Fox News simply
> doesn't count - any discussion of MSM credibility excludes Fox News out
> of principle).



  Forget NH, take a look at the housing crisis!  We are currently in
one of the worst financial crisis in US history, and the MSM was
telling us everything is honky-dorey less than a year ago!  And the
public goes right back to watching it!  Why would they do such a
thing?  There are no choices.



>
> But honestly, that wasn't my intent of tossing the article out for
> everyone. I guess what worried me most about Microsoft embedding 'spy'
> mechanisms is part and parcel of things like the FISA legislation which
> obligates computer software manufacturers to embed spy software if
> deemed necessary for national security and I'm thinking that it might
> not be reasonably safe to sit in front of a computer any time soon...for
> a lot of reasons.



  I don't think this particular technology has any spyware
implications.  I don't think it is usable without the user knowing
about it.

  -jmz



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