Greek public TV’s future still in doubt

ERT [the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation] — the Greek national public television broadcaster — was closed last week on the orders of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in a move designed to placate the country’s international lenders.

Late Monday, following a court ruling reversing the closure of major public outrage, members of the coalition government claimed they had reached an agreement which would appoint a special manager to decide just how many of the network’s 2,700 pink-slipped employees would get their jobs back.

The 11 June shutdown was dramatic:

Equally dramatic was the reaction both inside Greece and within the larger European Union.

From Euronews:

There are fears the country may well be on its way to an early election, if coalition parties cannot reach agreement about ERT’s closure.

“You decided and commanded to silence the state television, tarnishing both democracy and freedom of speech. Such things happen on only on two occasions, minister: only when there is a foreign invasion of the country or when there is a collapse of democracy,” said the Syriza party leader Alexis Tsipras.

Read the rest.

The European Broadcasting Union fried off its own protest to Samaras:

President of the EBU, Jean Paul Philippot and the EBU Director General, Ingrid Deltenre urged Mr Samaras  “to use all his powers to immediately reverse this decision”.

The existence of public service media and their independence from government lie at the heart of democratic societies, and therefore any far-reaching changes to the public media system should only be decided after an open and inclusive democratic debate in Parliament – and not through a simple agreement between two government ministers.

In the letter, the EBU stresses the importance of public service media as an essential pillar of democratic and pluralistic societies across Europe.

Read the rest.

The ousted Greek broadcasters proved resilient, occupying the studios and continuing to send out programming via satellite and over the Internet.

Samaras’s actions prompted a call for a national strike and threaten to shatter the coalition government.

Reuters reports on the response of the occupying journalists, who had been earing a mere €1,200 a month, the equivalent of $19,250 a year:

“What we’re saying is that we want public TV to belong to those who pay for it, and that’s the citizens of this country,” anchorwoman Chrysa Roumelioti said on air as her co-presenter nodded somberly. “Let them be the ones to judge us.”

A bevy of studio guests, from French and Italian journalists to local celebrities and actors, stopped by to express their outrage and solidarity.

>snip<

“We feel angry and scared and cheated,” Maria Alexaki, a 31-year-old foreign news editor told Reuters from the newsroom as she finished presenting her morning show.

“It still hasn’t sunk in, but our heart and soul is here. We’re doing our shows not for us but for all the people out there who are demanding a public broadcaster.”

Read the rest.

Protests begin, politicians dither

In this clip, ERT journalists occupying the studios report on protests outside the station as Greeks mobilized in support of the workers:

Journalists across the country struck in protest, and a movement began, symbolized by this poster from Keep Talking Greece “with the help of Spanish internet friend ‘Todos Somos Griegos’”:

The shock of the shutdown of an emblematic institution threatened to shatter the coalition of conservative New Democracy, Pasok [the Greek socialist party], and Democratic Left.

To Vima reported Monday that

the Prime Minister’s relationship with his two government partners Evangelos Venizelos and Fotis Kouvelis has suffered dearly.

The three partners are one step before a full-blown conflict, a development that would cause a monumental shock to the country’s political system. This is also the first time that the Prime Minister’s method of operation is openly questioned.

>snip<

The Prime Minister’s decision to show down ERT despite the objections of Venizelos and Kouvelis during their meeting at Mr. Samaras’ home has dramatically exacerbated their relations. The PASOK and DIMAR leaders are furious at Mr. Samaras, who maintains he did the right thing and operated democratically, while claiming that Mr. Venizelos and Kouvelis were aware of the ERT shutdown.

Read the rest.

Then came a key court ruling Monday, as reported by Lefteris Papadimas and Renee Maltezou of Reuters:

A Greek court on Monday ordered the state broadcaster back on air while it is restructured, allowing squabbling coalition leaders to move towards a compromise that avoids early elections.

The ruling came six days after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras suddenly switched ERT off to save money and please foreign lenders, sparking an outcry from unions, journalists and exposing a rift with his allies.

The top administrative court appeared to vindicate Samaras’s stance that a leaner, cheaper public broadcaster must be set up but also allowed for ERT’s immediate reopening as his two coalition partners had demanded, offering all three a way out of an impasse that had raised the spectre of a snap election.

Read the rest.

More from the BBC:

The leading party in the governing coalition, the conservative New Democracy, said last Tuesday that ERT suffered from chronic mismanagement, lack of transparency and waste.

It shut the broadcaster down with the loss of nearly 2,700 jobs. Viewers saw TV screens go black as the signal was switched off.

Greece’s top administrative court – the Council of State – upheld Mr Samaras’s plan to replace ERT with a new broadcaster later this year but backed the position of the other coalition partners that the signal must be restored in the interim.

The case was brought by ERT’s union in an attempt to overturn Mr Samaras’s surprise move.

Read the rest.

The inevitable political meetings followed the court ruling.

From Ekathemerini:

In a statement after the meeting, PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos said the court ruling had “vindicated” PASOK and stressed the need for an overhaul of the government, hinting at a reshuffle. “The talks were about ERT, but the main issue is for the government to operate as a real coalition, not with New Democracy just tolerating its partners,” Venizelos said. He called on Samaras to “examine the ruling” and take “bold moves.”

Fotis Kouvelis of Democratic Left made a similar statement, condemning the premier for taking the “unilateral action” to close ERT.

Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras, who also attended the talks, had a different interpretation; he said it determined that ERT should stay closed while a temporary program is broadcast. “The big issue for the government is for radical reforms to continue,” he said, expressing hopes that coalition leaders would “converge” in fresh talks tomorrow.

Read the rest.

A compromise is reached

But a later announcement Monday declared that a settlement had been reached.

EnetEnglish reports:

The coalition leaders’ meeting has concluded. Speaking to reporters, junior coalition leaders Fotis Kouvelis and Evangelos Venizelos welcomed the Council of State’s decision. Venizelos stressed that “no government can go against the majority of parliament… this is what happened in ERT’s case,” before confirming that there will soon be a government reshuffle and a revision of the government’s programme agreement. The coalition leaders will meet again on Wednesday.

A specially appointed manager will have the right to either retain ERT’s staff or proceed with as many layoffs as he deems necessary, the head of the Council of State, Konstantinos Menoudakos, has said regarding the council’s decision.
The Council of State ruling does not cover ERT’s two orchestras and choir, so it’s unclear what their fate will be.

Read the rest.

Here’s an explanatory video on the orchestras from vlogger violin81030:

Cultural resonance on an Athenian wall

The Reuters story notes that the occupiers have posted a studio wall with a famous phrase coined by the late Gil Scott Heron for the title track of his 1974 album, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

Here’s their inspiration

Chart of the day: No faith in newspapers

Some truly bad news for ink-stained wretches today from Gallup, graphic proof that the massive layoffs and all-too-numerous closings of the nation’s newspapers are taking their toll:

California lawmakers fight open records rules

Yet another major threat to the nation’s badly weakened and downsized news media.

From Peter Scheer of the California First Amendment Coalition:

GOV. BROWN: VETO CPRA THREATS IN BUDGET BILL

The California Public Records Act (CPRA) is gravely threatened by stealth amendments revealed for the first time yesterday as part of a “trailer bill” to the new state budget. Instead of the relatively minor cost-saving tweaks proposed earlier by the Governor and approved in legislative committees, the actual amending language will gut key transparency safeguards in California’s most important open-government law.

I am writing to ask you to call on Governor Brown to veto the relevant portions of the budget trailer bill that is headed to his desk as early as tomorrow. We invite you to do this by email to the Governor office, using the form provided in this email.

How, exactly, will the budget trailer bill undercut the CPRA and set back open government?

1)  Public access to data controlled by local governments, so important to open-data and big-data initiatives, will come to an end. The final trailer bill, SB 71, eliminates the requirement of existing law that agencies must make available “electronic”  records or information in “any format” in which the agency already holds them. Gov Code sec. 6253.9(a)(1).  Instead, according to SB 71, “the local agency may determine the format  of electronic data to be provided in response to a request for information.”

This change will empower local governments to limit data access to situations in which the requested data will show government agencies and officials in a positive light. All other requests for data will be blocked by producing data in formats that are unusable in databases. Example: Requests for data held in .xls (Excel) or .csv formats will be produced (if at all) as .pdf files–even though the agency has the data in the requested formats and therefore can provide it in the requested formats at no cost.

2)  Local governments, when denying written requests for public records, will no longer be required to give a reason for the denial. SB 71 purports to make that common sense requirement (found in Gov Code sec. 6255(b)) completely optional.  What does optional mean? You can be sure that all lawyers for cities, counties or school boards,once they become aware of this change, will advise their clients to give no reasons for denying records.

3)  Local governments may even take the position that SB 71′s changes free them from any obligation to communicate–at all!—with requesters about the status of a denied CPRA request. Agencies that believe requested records are exempt from disclosure could elect to say nothing to the requester, leaving him/her in the dark, unable to determine–without suing–whether the requested records will be disclosed or withheld.

Tell Governor Brown to veto the provisions of SB 71 that would effect these changes in existing law. The link below opens an email form with an email message for the Governor and his staff (which we will print out and deliver). You can use the email message content provided or delete it and write an email in your own words.
FAC@firstamendmentcoalition.org

To view section 4 of SB 71 dealing with the CPRA, use this link: SB 71 Excerpt Relating to CPRA

RAP NEWS returns: Whistleblower

After a five-month hiatus, Robert Foster is back with a new, star-studded episode JUICE RAP NEWS [previously] featuring Edward Snowden, journalist Glenn Greenwald, Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg, and more, dealing with the issue de jour.

From the You Tube program notes and credits accompanying the video:

Rap News 19. It started off as a slow news day, and a routine update on the state of the Free World Order with NSA Director General Baxter. But then the news broke of startling revelations from the fearless paladin of adversarial journalism, guardian of civil liberties, journalist Glen Greenwald, concerning a shadowy spying program called PRISM. Who is behind these revelations, and how should we view them? How will the Authorities, and the Corporations implicated, respond? Join Robert Foster for a whirlwind summary of the events in this ongoing saga…

- Written & created by Giordano Nanni & Hugo Farrant in a suburban backyard home-studio in Melbourne, Australia – on Wurundjeri Land.

** SUPPORT the production of new episodes of Juice Rap News, an independent show, by making a donation:
http://thejuicemedia.com/donate
– private – Gratitude to our donors whose generosity has made this episode possible.

NYT Lite: ‘Some of the news that’s fit to print’

The nation’s most venerable member of America’s thinning ranks of daily newspapers has been exhibiting strange symptoms of late — notably in the form of missing story elements.

Longtime media critic James Romenesko is the country’s premier mainstream news media critic, and author of a blog read avidly by most journalists we know. He regularly catches the New York Times in moments of odd behavior.

But two stand out, both caught today.

First up, Romensko offers up a 12 June piece by Julie Earle-Levine, a on the townhouse of Beastie Boy Michael Diamond and filmmaker spouse Tamra Davis that included this sentence:

Mr. Diamond, who prefers not to give his age, now has two boys of his own, Davis, 10, and Skyler, 8, with his wife, Tamra Davis, a filmmaker, who also prefers not to give her age.

Directly beneath the quote, Romenesko adds this:

What NYT and the couple won’t tell you: Mike D. is 46; his wife is 51.

A quick Google would’ve filled in the numbers, which were required if the children’s ages were given. One of Romensko’s readers suggests an unreported deal had been reached.

Oh, and the online version of Earle-Levine’s story concludes with this:

Correction: June 13, 2013

Due to an editing error, a summary with an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Michael Diamond’s status with the Beastie Boys. He is a current member, not a former.

Gee, she really doesn’t Google, does she?

All-in-all, not a good day for Earle-Levine.

The curious case of the dropped quote

NewsDiffs tracks story changes as online texts are updated, using colors, and strikeouts [deletions] , and underlines [additions] to highlight differences in successive versions.

What caught Romenesko’s eye were the changes in a story filed today by Thomas Erdbrink and headlined “As Iranians Vote, Khamenei Assails United States”

Of the many differences between the original version posted today at 7:40 a.m. EDT and the successor posted at 9:33 a.m., Romenesko singled out the last line in this paragraph:

“He is a war veteran, a good manager and a religious person,” said Noushin Sobhani, 31, a gynecologist. She and her parents voted at the Imam Sadegh University, where most of Iran’s cadre of bureaucrats is are trained. “We hate America,” her father said, smiling. “I hope The New York Times building burns down.”

Oh, come on. This one’s on an editor, perhaps a committee of editors. It’s a wonderful line, delivered by someone who probably has good reason to feel as he does, given Uncle Sam’s long history of screwing over the Persian people [for example, this and this].

But the line is specifically relevant because it places the reporter in context, as a representative of institution that plays a powerful political role at the heart of an empire.

Shame on the editors.

Free trade pact threatens Euro film industry

Negotiations for a massive new U.S.-E.U. Free Trade Agreement threatens a European institution, a once flourishing film industry already under threat by the overwhelming power of Hollywood’s marketing machine.

The proposed elimination of national film subsidies could prove the last straw for independent productions.

From Euronews:

French actress Bejo asks EU to protect European cinema

The accompanying Euronews text story reports on European film figures who fear the free trade agreement now in the drafting stage would force European nations to drop subsidies for their domestic film industries, rendering them vulnerable to domination by the Hollywood regime.

The clip features Bérénice Bejo, who starred in the Oscar-winning 2011 French film, The Artist:

Bejo told euronews: “I grew up with American films and culture. It’s very good that it exists and I totally support this culture. I don’t reject it at all, but I think for both of us it is important to have choice and counter-balance.”

France wants its entire audiovisual sector excluded from negotiations.

Director Costa Gavras said a free trade deal with the United States would put the industry, and those who work in it, at risk.

“They are several thousand people who work in the audiovisual sector in Europe. If this cultural exception is scrapped, many films simply won’t get made; cinemas will close; directors and actors will find themselves out of work,” he said in an interview with euronews.

Read the rest.

From Agence France-Presse, here’s a second video report on the European film industry worries:

Euro cinema threatened by free trade accord with US

The program notes:

The EU’s cherished ‘cultural exception’ is under threat according to a delegation of European filmmakers during talks on a massive free trade accord with the United States.

Worries even in Hollywood itself

It’s not just Europe that’s feeling the heat of a changing landscape. Even the most venerable names in the Hollywood pantheon are sweating bullets over the future of the cinema, as Bryan Bishop notes in a provocative piece for The Verge:

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg think the film industry is heading towards a cliff. The pair behind some of the most successful franchises in movie history think that conservative programming choices and rapidly evolving distribution schemes have set the stage for a massive upheaval — and internet-based services may become the dominant medium when moviegoing as we know it crashes and burns.

The duo were joined during a panel at the University of Southern California by Microsoft’s president of interactive entertainment Don Mattrick, who played backup with the occasional Xbox reference as Lucas and Spielberg took center stage. While the focus was ostensibly on the future of the entertainment medium — USC just opened a new building for the school’s Interactive Media department — the topic quickly pivoted to the state of film distribution in a world where everything from games to television are competing for consumers’ attention.

Read the rest.

The curious case of the hypocritical hater

We refer to Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican who has emerged as a hardline partisan of the Bush/Obama GWOT [Global War on Terror].

So zealous is King that he advocates prosecuting leakers who exposes the sinister scope of government spying, but he was to jail the journalists who bring the leaks to light.

Here he is spouting his bile to Anderson Cooper on CNN’s AC 360:

Sounds pretty clear-cut. Anyone who obstructs the war on terror is dirty Japanazi Pacifascist deserving the worst of all possible fates.

But such wasn’t always the case.

Consider this blast from the past, via Booman Tribune, in which Rep. King demonstrates a very different attitude toward another group of folks then considered terrorists by the American government:

“We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry,” Mr. King told a pro-I.R.A. rally on Long Island, where he was serving as Nassau County comptroller, in 1982. Three years later he declared, “If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.”

So if you’re Irish and set off bombs that kill folks you’re a hero. But if you’re a Muslim. . .

Blood on the Newsroom Floor: Now with Greece

It’s been too many months — months featuring cancer surgery and a long and arduous regimen of chemo — since we chronicled the pliht of the ever-diminishing news media.

So forgive a long post, one that begins with a cut to public television in Athens, then winds its way much closer to home, with scores of jobs lost at U.S. newspapers and a major cut to our own public teleivison.

Austerity zealots gut Greek public TV

Austerity claimed a major victim in Greece Wednesday, the country’s public television network.

Precisely who’s to blame is an open question, with politicians of the coalition government blaming the European Commission, a charge denied by the EC itself.

A video report from Euronews:

Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis desribed his immediate response when the screen faded to black:

For those of us who grew up in the Greece of the neo-fascist colonels, nothing can stir up painful memories like a modern act of totalitarianism. When the television screen froze last night, an hour before midnight, as if some sinister power from beyond had pressed a hideous pause button, I was suddenly transported to the 60s and early 70s when a disruption in television or radio output was a sure sign that another coup d’ etat was in the offing. The only difference was that last night the screen just froze; with journalists still appearing tantalisingly close to finishing their sentence. At least the colonels had the good sense of pasting a picture of the Greek flag, accompanied by military tunes…

After the state channels froze on our screens, I turned to the commercial ones assuming that this major piece of news would be recorded and commented upon by them. Not a word. Soaps, second rate movies and informationals. That was all we got. As if ERT’s, the public radio and television service’s, instant demise was not worth a mention by their commercial competitors.

Read the rest.

More from Lefteris Papadimas and Renee Maltezou of Reuters:

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras faced a political revolt on Wednesday from his ruling coalition partners after the government abruptly switched the state broadcaster off the air in the middle of the night.

Screens went black on state broadcaster ERT, cutting newscasters off mid-sentence only hours after the decision was announced, in what the government said was a temporary measure to staunch a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Unions called a 24-hour nationwide general strike in protest, and journalists across all media called an indefinite strike. Some newspapers were shut and private TV stations broadcast reruns of soap operas and sitcoms instead of the news.

Samaras’s centre-left coalition partners said they were furious at the decision to shut the broadcaster and had not been consulted. Coalition party leaders were meeting as night fell, with the suggestion left hovering in the air that they could force Samaras into a confidence vote which could bring him down.

Read the rest.

Christine Pirovolakis of Deutsche Presse-agentur reports on the workers’ response:

Journalists from the Greek public broadcaster ERT, which was suddenly shut down by the government because of austerity cuts, broadcast Wednesday via the internet in a show of defiance while their colleagues across the country held an indefinite strike.

Broadcasts continued throughout the night after the government brought 75 years of operations to an end Tuesday.

The ERT journalists, joined by thousands of supporters outside the broadcaster’s main headquarters, attacked the government over the shutdown and lay-offs of about 2,500 employees as part of cost-cutting measures demanded by the country’s international lenders.

The head of Greece’s Journalism Association, Dimitris Trimis, said television, radio and newspaper journalists from across the country were holding an indefinite strike in a show of support. The strike lead to a news blackout across Greece.

Read the rest.

The ultimate goal is the usual move: A shutdown followed by a reorganization with a smaller and thoroughly cowed cast of broadcasters, as evidenced by this report from Dimitris Ioannou of AlYunaniya.com:

Government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou yesterday announced the closure of the state broadcasting organisation ERT; all ERT transmissions throughout Greece stopped yesterday at 11.14 pm.

>snip<

The government has circulated a non-paper, calling the move a decision of high symbolism as regards the streamlining of the Greek public sector.

Kedikoglou said that ERT would be replaced by a modern, public but not state-owned broadcasting body. All ERT’s staff will receive the normal redundancy compensation and that the new body will operate with less staff.

During the intervening period between its closure and the launch of the new organisation, the public will not have to pay fees for ERT, he added.

Read the rest.

While the government of New democracy Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has claimed the drastic moves were dictated by the EC’s austerity policies, the EC says not so, as Ekathemerini reports:

The European Commission did not seek the closure of Greek national broadcaster ERT, Brussels said in a statement released on Wednesday.

According to the statement, the Commission has taken note of the decision of the Greek government to close down ERT, referring to a decision taken in “full autonomy.”

The Commission does not question the Greek government’s “mandate to manage the public sector. The decision of the Greek authorities should be seen in the context of the major and necessary efforts that the authorities are taking to modernise the Greek economy,” the statement read.

Read the rest.

So the EC is basically saying that while they call the tune, they don’t write the lyrics.

More from Eur-Activ:

[O]pposition leader Alexis Tsipras called the closure “a coup, not only against ERT workers but against the Greek people”, and accused the government of the “historic responsibility of gagging state TV”.

The decision was made by ministerial decree, meaning that it could be implemented without reference to parliament.

“Journalism is being persecuted. We won’t allow the voice of Greece to be silenced,” said George Savvidis, the chief of journalists’ labour union POESY.

Read the rest.

And, finally, there’s this response from Anonymous:

American public television takes a hit

The victim is PBS and its flagship evening news broadcast and two of its major news bureaus.

From TV Newser’s Alex Weprin:

The “PBS NewsHour” is laying off staff in a significant reorganization, TVNewser has learned.

According to an internal memo obtained by TVNewser, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions — which produces the “NewsHour” — will be shutting down its offices in Denver and San Francisco, eliminating nearly all the positions there. The company will also eliminate several production positions in its Washington DC office, while leaving two open senior-level roles unfilled.The “NewsHour” is also planning to save money by streamlining and digitizing its technical process.

“This difficult step comes after more than a year spent reviewing how the ‘NewsHour’ functions, and determining the streamlining necessary to address both the funding challenges (primarily a steady drop in corporate revenue) and the opportunities presented by new technologies,” wrote “NewsHour” EP Linda Winslow and MacNeil/Lehrer president Bo Jones in the memo to staff.

The changes will go into effect at the start of the new fiscal year, July 1.

Read the rest.

More from the New York Times’ Brian Stelter:

Earlier this year, public television employees who were not authorized to speak publicly told The New York Times that the production company was facing a shortfall of up to $7 million, a quarter of its $28 million overall budget, in the fiscal year that ends this month. The company’s budget outlook for the next fiscal year is unknown.  But a spokeswoman for the “NewsHour” acknowledged that the reorganization, which will take place over several months starting in July, would help balance the budget.

The spokeswoman said that about 10 employees, of 100 in all, would be affected.

Ms. Winslow and Mr. Jones said in their memo that the cuts were a result of, among other things, “a steady drop in corporate revenue.”

Read the rest.

Downsized newsrooms lead to big bonuses

Business as usual continues in the Brave New Newsroom, as reported by journalism blogger Jim Romenesko:

Less than a month after closing two of its Suburban Journals in St. Louis and putting 20 people out of work, Lee Enterprises handed out stock bonuses to eight of its directors.lee According to SEC filings, the

Obama’s patron and the fate of the free press

University of Chicago Law School Professor Geoffrey Stone played a critical role in the creation of the legalistic covert neoliberal politician that is Barack Obama, for it was Stone who brought Obama to his campus as a constitutional law professor. Obama brought him onto his advisory team during his 2008 campaign.

In this Democracy Now! debate with former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief Cris Hedges, Stone makes a critically important point about Obama: Whatever he does is accomplished with a Con Law prof’s finesse, with all the requisite whereas-es and wherefores. Thus, what he does is — moral, immoral, or otherwise — certain to pass the scrutiny of legislatures and a Supreme Court which hews to the neoliberal line, a doctrine that arose from a cadre of scholars from — where else? — the University of Chicago.

Obama has bested Bush in his zeal to kill messengers, initiating more whistleblower prosecutions than all previous administrations combined, and Hedges makes the critical point that without whistleblowers, the press has no way of reporting on government’s darkest sides.

Relevant here, a quote from Jeff Bachhman, lecturer in Human Rights at the School of International Service at American University, writing for The Hill’s Congress Blog:

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has charged six whistle-blowers, a term apparently not in The New York Times’s or The Washington Post’s editorial vocabulary, under the Espionage Act. These six individuals have revealed government waste, fraud, and abuse, acts of aggression, torture and war crimes. Yet, it is those who have revealed the criminal activity that have suffered prosecution by the Obama administration while those who actually committed the crimes have gone unpunished.

>snip<

The Obama administration has sent a clear message. Government officials and journalists who wish to work together to create news stories through the leak of classified information that portray the president and his administration in a positive light should have no fear. And to the journalists and whistle-blowers thinking about publishing that other kind of classified information, be prepared to have your emails read, your phones tapped without your knowledge and your life and career turned upside down.

Read the rest.

And now for the debate:

The program notes:

Edward Snowden’s decision to leak a trove of secret documents outlining the NSA’s surveillance program has elicited a range of reactions. Among his detractors, he’s been called “a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison,” (Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker), who’s committed “an act of treason,” (Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate intelligence committee). To supporters, Snowden is a hero for showing that “our very humanity [is] being compromised by the blind implementation of machines in the name of making us safe,” (author Douglas Rushkoff), one whom President Obama should “thank and offer him a job as a White House technology advisor,” (American Conservative editor Scott McConnell). We host a debate with two guests: Chris Hedges, a senior fellow at the Nation Institute and former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times; and Geoffrey Stone, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Stone served as an informal advisor to President Obama in 2008, years after hiring him to teach constitutional law.

Keiser Report: Potemkin recovery, Bilderberg

Max and co-host Stacy Herbert discuss the Potemkin recovery, in which all the so-called gains come in the form of stock market rises enriching the already-affluent, while the vast majority continue to suffer. One focus is the construction of Potemkin village facades at the Irish site of the G8 conference, created to maks the economy misery Ireland doesn’t want the powerful pols to see.

The second half focuses on this week’s upcoming meeting of the deeply secretive Bilderberg Group in Watford, England, a gathering of politicians and elite banksters and corporadoes. Charlie Skelton,  British journalist and comedian, is blogging the event for The Guardian, describes the mainstreaming of criticisms of the annual gatherings, once the focus only of political groups on the margins.

Killing newspapers: First, the photographers

The Chicago Sun-Times is the Windy City’s oldest paper, in print since 1844. It’s also the first major U.S. paper to fire its entire photo department, one of the most bone-headed moves in the history of American journalism.

Here’s the story, as told in three headlines.

First, from Thursday’s Chicago Tribune:

Chicago Sun-Times lays off its photo staff

Next, from a Friday posting at Poynter’s MediaWire:

Chicago Sun-Times will train reporters on ‘iPhone photography basics’

Finally, this post from today’s Gawker:

Photojournalist Replaced by iPhone Uses iPhone to Document Joblessness

With the exception of our first paid newspaper job at the weekly Winslow Mail in 1966 and out last posting at the Berkeley Daily Planet, every newspaper we’ve worked for had a photo department [and the Daily Planet had one for the first half of our stint there].

Now we happen to love photography, and we’ve got a fairly extensive kit of gear [four camera bodies, seven lenses]. We’re also modestly competent at the craft, and find it a refreshing change of pace and modes of thinking from conjuring up words to fill a blank screen.

When we started work at the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1966, no reporters were allowed to take pictures, which were the province of a three-shooter photo staff.

The Tucson Daily American had a photo staff, and the Oceanside Blade-Tribune had one photographer — though we took the occasional shot. Both the Santa Monica Evening Outlook and the Sacramento Bee had their own photo staffs, though we did shoot some photo essays for the Outlook’s Sunday magazine supplement.

We came to appreciate the separation of functions, because writers could focus on details while the shooters could focus all their energies on finding the right angles and lighting and waiting for that fleeting instant where everything comes together and an exemplary image results.

For the sad reality is that shooting and writing rely on two different sets of skills, rarely combined in a single individual. Having to think about grabbing shots whilst taking notes is a distraction, and can lead to critically missed words and phrases — while a focus on words can lead to missed images.

The sad truth is that, in most cases, multitasking diminishes the luster of the individual tasks.

But to the bean counters at the Sun-Times Media Group, the bottom line is the bottom line. And while iPhones can take a decent image, it’s not a Nikon or a Canon, with a bag full of lenses and a powerful strobe flash. And the eye behind the iPhone isn’t a highly skilled specialist in the art of capturing powerful images.

But what the heck, with newspaper circulation plummeting and readership graying, who needs photographers, right? Besides, so many readers and freelancers are willing to part with their images for little or no money [and no worrisome benefits], right?

Here’s an episode of Lou Grant, a television series watched by every newspaper reporter back when it aired weekly from 1977 to 1982. We’re posting it bvecause unklike most episodes, the hero isn’t a reporter but photographer Dennis “Animal” Price, played by Daryl Anderson.

Chart of the day: A distorted jobs ‘recovery’

From the National Employment Law Project briefing, “The Low-Wage Recovery and Growing Inequality” [PDF], the sobering reality about all those job ‘gains’ so blithely and reassuringly reported by mainstream media:

UPDATE: Angela Woodall of the Oakland Tribune reports on another noxious aspect of the recovery in the form of jobs devoid of benefits in a story headlined “Oakland feels the burden of the rise in temp employment”.

Quote of the day: Political con[descension]

From veteran journalist and former Los Angeles Times City Editor Bill Boyarsky, writing for Truthdig:

I’m not surprised that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have been waging war on the news media. They and other members of the Obama team have always struck me as elitists who don’t think really intelligent or worthwhile people would go into journalism.

That’s not an uncommon view among politicians, corporate bosses, well-paid professionals and parents who fret that their daughters and sons are choosing the low-paid and scorned media business instead of law or medical school.

Understanding that helps explain the Obama administration’s efforts to catch those who leaked information to Associated Press reporters and to James Rosen, Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent.

Read the rest.

Headlines of the day: Going from bad to worse

From the London Telegraph:

Francois Hollande tells European Commission it can’t ‘dictate’ to France

Francois Hollande has warned the European Commission not to “dictate” orders on how France should run its economy after the Brussels executive called for urgent eurozone reforms to avert a “social emergency”

From the Washington Post:

Americans have rebuilt less than half of wealth lost to the recession, study says

From The World:

Northern Ireland Town Fakes Prosperity for G8 Summit

From The Indepoendent:

One-third of Britons are too poor to ‘join in with society’

Many on lowest incomes cannot buy consumer goods, visit the cinema or go on holiday

From Hellas Frappe:

German Stock Broker – IMF Deliberately Destroyed Greek Economy To Get Access To Its Natural Reserves!

From The Guardian:

Casino boss Sheldon Adelson presses Spain over anti-smoking laws

US billionaire courts Spanish PM, hoping for U-turn that allows gamblers to smoke inside proposed Eurovegas complex

And another from The Guardian:

Be nice to China: Hollywood risks ‘artistic surrender’ in effort to please

Kowtowing to China has become a reflex for US film studios in search of a piece of booming – and lucrative – Chinese market

And finally, from the Chicago Tribune:

Chicago Sun-Times lays off its photo staff

Elder daughter scores The Ellen Show’s loot

Elder daughter Jackie, a graduate of NYU and the UC Irvine Law School’s inaugural class, was lucky enough to score an audience seat for the Mother’s Day edition of The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

She’s pregnant, you see, which was the primary requirement that also scored her a whole bundle of loot just for showing up.

She also scored some camera time, becoming the first audience member picked for a Q&A session with DeGeneres and pal Bethenney Frankel. The whole episode is a classic example of what every dad loves to hear a daughter discuss on nationwide television. . .

There’s a certain irony in all this, in that Jackie started college as an acting major before switching to anthropology as an NYU undergrad. But it’s only been in the last four weeks she got her breakthrough into national media, first on NBC News live from Boston talking about her experiences of the Marathon Day bombings followed by her appearance with Ellen.

Chart of the day: The slow death of journalism

Via Confessions of a Newsosaur, dramatic evidence of the collapse of print newspaper circulation.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Quote of the day: The slow death of journalism

From The State of the News Media 2013 by the Pew Research Center:

Estimates for newspaper newsroom cutbacks in 2012 put the industry down 30% since its peak in 2000 and below 40,000 full-time professional employees for the first time since 1978. In local TV, our special content report reveals, sports, weather and traffic now account on average for 40% of the content produced on the newscasts studied while story lengths shrink. On CNN, the cable channel that has branded itself around deep reporting, produced story packages were cut nearly in half from 2007 to 2012. Across the three cable channels, coverage of live events during the day, which often require a crew and correspondent, fell 30% from 2007 to 2012 while interview segments, which tend to take fewer resources and can be scheduled in advance, were up 31%. Time magazine, the only major print news weekly left standing, cut roughly 5% of its staff in early 2013 as a part of broader company layoffs.  And in African-American news media, the Chicago Defender has winnowed its editorial staff to just four while The Afro cut back the number of pages in its papers from 28-32 in 2008 to 16-20 in 2012. A growing list of media outlets, such as Forbes magazine, use technology by a company called Narrative Science to produce content by way of algorithm, no human reporting necessary. And some of the newer nonprofit entrants into the industry, such as the Chicago News Cooperative, have, after launching with much fanfare, shut their doors.

This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands. And findings from our new public opinion survey released in this report reveal that the public is taking notice. Nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.

Tales from San Onofre: Of nukes and nudes

We’ve written about Southern California’s San Onofre beach many times before, always in the context of nuclear power.

San Onofre’s located on the northern San Diego County coastline adjacent to the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, and it houses two nuclear reactors run by San Diego Gas and Electric.

The site is located directly on the beach and along an earthquake faultline, and the Fukushima earthquake-spawned nuclear disaster has sent some spines a-quivering, especially when word came out last year of leaks that forced a shutdown.

Now comes even more bad news, reported by Mitch Blacher of Channel 10 News in San Diego:

An inside source gave Team 10 a picture snapped inside the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) showing plastic bags, masking tape and broom sticks used to stem a massive leaky pipe.

San Onofre owner Southern California Edison (SCE), confirms the picture was taken inside Unit Three, but did not say when. The anonymous source said the picture was taken in December 2012.

Unit Three is the same unit that leaked radiation in January 2012.  SONGS has been shutdown since then as a precaution.

Read the rest.

Blacher’s report comes three days after after this Channel 10 report:

But then there’s another San Onofre controversy, this one reported by Fox 6 News in San Diego:

We guess the common thread is coverups involving catching some rays. . .

Headlines of the day: Looking for patterns?

From Newswise:

Cigarette Relighting Tied to Tough Economy

From the Washington Post:

Cancer clinics are turning away thousands of Medicare patients. Blame the sequester.

From Reuters:

U.S. considers less prison time for ex-Enron CEO Skilling

From The Guardian:

Mary Schapiro: the latest official through the regulatory revolving door

Former SEC chairman Schapiro, 57, to switch to the private sector in a move likely to anger critics of ‘regulatory capture’

Headlines of the day: Looking for patterns?

From the London Telegraph:

Europe’s leaders paralysed as EMU jobless rate hits record high

Eurozone unemployment reached a record 12pc in February and looks certain to ratchet higher as fiscal cuts deepen and manufacturing continues to struggle, raising the spectre of social explosion across southern Europe

From the London Daily Mail:

U.S. sees highest poverty spike since the 1960s, leaving 50 million Americans poor as government cuts billions in spending… so does that mean there’s no way out?

From The Independent:

Pregnant women ‘more likely to miscarry as result of cuts to Government spending’

From The Guardian:

Extreme poverty could be wiped out by 2030, World Bank estimates show

World Bank head speaks of ‘auspicious moment in history’ amid criticism rhetoric is not being matched with detailed policies

From the Irish Independent:

IMF wants faster home repossessions

From Ekathemerini:

Golden Dawn wants death penalty for violent migrants

From Keep Talking Greece:

German policemen at Greek airports to check travellers bound to Germany