A panel on netroots at the NCMR today talks about what happens if people supported by the netroots actually get into office. They talked about how the role will shift from watchdog to accountability. There's no doubt the netroots has done a great job of shifting to the debate. As Duncan Black, "the godfather of the netroots" as Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks dubbed him noted about how far we've come, the political debate used to "Range from The New Republic on the left [laughter] to the Free Republic on the right."
The favorite subject of big-media bashing turned up. Baratunde Thurston of Jack and Jill Politics and an Obama supporter noted that the talking heads were "dangerously unqualified to talk" and that "cable news is a terrible place for an idea." Additionally, Gina Cooper of Netroots Nation acknowledged the homogeneous nature of the convention, then known as Yearly Kos. (It's a claim that Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has spent some time disputing.) She thought that now bloggers will begin to have to address some of its own internal problems.
For anyone hanging out at home right now, you should check out the live broadcast of tonight's keynote plenary. There are some great speakers and acts including a former producer of the Daily Show. An editor of The Onion is cracking up the audience right now. I'll update if anything really interesting happens.
Yet, I really wanted to see the perspectives on this panel that were unfiltered by the mainstream people, that provided a variety of perspectives and views that is incredibly difficult if not impossible to find on CNN, Fox, or any other major news outlet. An intelligent discussion of race and gender campaign coverage --that's what I was looking forward to.
The panelist quickly agreed that, as Roberto Lovato summed up, the hatred and abuse of Black people and women is alive and well in the main stream media.
The panelists pointed blame squarely at the ingrained media institutions that continue to perpetuate and manufacture racism and sexism. Laura Flanders brought up the economical arguement for the sorry state of the coverage of race and gender in the campaign: the Media are multinational, global corporations. Flanders says flatly that "The most restrictive force in America is power" --not race or gender -- and "The media has become the most restrictive power in our democracy."
Bill Moyers spoke at the National Conference on Media Reform early this morning. His message was more motivational than investigative. His message was peppered with language that sought to empower attendees. "You are not alone," he said, after a demonstration in which he asked each person to stand up and meet the person on either side. It was a new role for a man who has produced "Buying the War" and other investigative documentaries produced by public media. But there was still a strain of more typical Moyers-style criticism. "We now know," he said, "that a neo-conservative is someone who sets a house on fire and then six years later boasts that it cannot be put out."
Moyers is something of a lifelong maker of public media, there at its inception and a survivor of the many attacks on its editorial independence for being "too liberal." He highlighted the nature of web media today, where the line between editorial and advertising is becoming blurrier and less defined. Already, he noted, advertisers are buying keywords in news articles ("Do we think they'll buy keywords like 'health care reform'?") It is something Moyers said is being called "communi-tainment." Moyers is right to point out the failings of for-profit media, but it is also certain that a true democracy needs not just public media, not just non-profit media, not just commercialized media, but all of these. When they are in balance, they will call one another out on their failings.
I'm in the panel on the election at the NCMR in Minneapolis. The panelists widely acknowledge there are a lot of problems with media coverage and the election. David Sirota, author of the new book The Uprising, noted that people are panicking over the disastrous process of the Democratic primary -- even though it is in at the basic sense of the word democratic. Robert "Biko" Baker of the League of Young Voters performed a spoken word poem about disenfranchised, working-class, youth of color that are largely left out of the youth vote surge. He noted that some of his friends are among the fallen in Iraq, but more of his friends are among the fallen of hopelessness and economic insecurity.
In the end, the panel is acknowledging that the diverse pool of candidates in the presidential election has shamed many members of the media into acknowledging that isn't own pool isn't so diverse. More women and commentators of color (and those that overlap between the two categories) are filling the ranks of the talking heads -- something that was long overdue. But in the end, we want media that reflects the composition of America.
I'm sitting in on a panel discussion about How Independent Media Creates Change with an all-star cast of panelists -- Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake.com, Daisy Hernandez of ColorLines,and Jefferson Moreley of Center for Independent Media, moderated by Tracy Van Slyke of the Media Consortium.
Robert Greenwald led things off by pointing out two Fox News reporters sitting in the front row of the auditorium. Apparently, Fox is covering over a day of the conference. Greenwald had harsh words for the folks at Fox for their smear tactics in the past when covering some of the wonderful speakers at the NCMR. So, if you want to see some interesting spin of this conference, be sure to follow the coverage on Fox News. I wonder how they'll frame the conference, particularly appearances by Dan Rather, Naomi Klein, Arianna Huffington, and others tomorrow night.
Jane Hamsher, who's speaking now, just bashed Fox News too over the false rumors they spread concerning Barack Obama's religion.
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