Not Ready To Make Nice

Some people say they really are not a fan of country music. Well, many radio stations took this to a new level after the Dixie Chicks’ lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience in London, England that they were not happy with President George W. Bush, saying, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” This was just days before the Iraq invasion.

Even fans reacted poorly. Bossier City, outside Barksdale Air Force Base, a tractor sales company and radio station combined efforts to hold a “Chicks Bash” rally where they ran over the group’s CDs with a tractor.

It seemed the Chicks were getting no airtime and no fan support just because they had opposing views in a time of war. And that's exactly what happened. They were put on the list of anti-war songs not to be played on air because it did not reinforce the message of unity and allegiance the country was trying to portray.  And they are not the only musicians that suffered for being anti-patriotic. Every Rage Against the Machine song was on this list of music not to play. And that was just the horrifying start.

When the Dixie Chicks finally got back on their feet again and made their comeback, they produced the song "Not Ready To Make Nice" and a highly political music video to go along with it.

Check it out here.

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT9GL0IQ

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT9GL0IQ

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT9GL0IQ

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT9GL0IQ

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT97Ty1x

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT97Ty1x

Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.
Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81093,00.html#ixzz2DT97Ty1x

Silencing An African Voice: Part Two

 

Nollywood does not only face categorical challenges but also economic-- a similar challenge for many alternative and/or independent media outlets. It can be difficult for Nollywood and African films to earn a place in the global marketplace because the leading powers in film distribution are primarily from the west. According to Ukadike from the text Conversations With Filmmakers, “If you look at the African American experience, all of their music; their creative and intellectual property, is owned, patented, and copyrighted by white people.”

Africa does not have distribution policy or right in its own countries. In reality, the U.S. has a false distribution arrangement where African films can be checked out of libraries and watched for free, rather than paid for. African intellectual property is not given any value. For example, California Newsreel is a token organization that prevents African films for free. Most of the filmmakers are not rewarded with any distribution payment. Even worse, when looking at the types of films this organization acquires for distribution it is clear they interfere with the production process, selectively deciding the types of films that are to be made if the filmmaker wants to be distributed internationally. It is because of this process African filmmakers are torn between striving to accommodate their films to this discourse and the need to sell their films to paying audiences, and the quite different expectations of what a good film should be. African film is not given any value in the global market or disseminating process because any type of idea or voice from Africa is not valued in a world frozen in a colonial mindset.

  

Many independent media outlets face similar economic problems. Even some of the most successful outlets like Huffington Post have joined more mainstream outlets, like AOL, for the money. If they can't resist the temptation then how are smaller outlets? Many independent media outlets get funds through memberships and subscriptions, or donations. Many Nollywood films get funding through donations, however without distribution payment and with expensive and limited equipment needed, Nollywood films are not as numerous as they could be-- meaning the African voice is not as loud as it could be due to economic restrictions and limitations.

A Westernized African Voice

In the world of cinematography, the type of lens a filmmaker uses can change how the viewer visualizes the story being told. A lens can be colored, distorted, clarified, magnified. These visual perspectives then shape the way we look at the image and interpret it. But one does not need to be a filmmaker to use lenses as a way to visualize the world. Everyone has a perspective; everyone views the world through a different metaphorical lens. Every time we write an article, we must acknowledge it is from a particular lens, or point of view. As Roy Richard Grinker and Christopher B. Steiner point out, “when we look at something we always, necessarily, look from somewhere else.”

Unfortunately, the lens the west uses to view Africa has an effect on the country’s representation globally. Africa is seen by many through the distorting lens of colonialism. The concepts of family, kingship, tribes, civilization, culture, and savageness are all derived from this time of colonialism. This historic language is constantly reinforced today, especially in film and media, by western civilization. However, when we view film and Africa only through this colonial lens, we are undermining the emergence of the African film industry as a mode of self-retrieval and resistance, a mode of finding a voice and reclaiming history, as well its future. 

This issue of imposing a western perspective on an African voice was evaluated through a slightly sarcastic article from Granta magazine. The magazine was founded in 1889 by students at Cambridge University as The Granta, a periodical of student politics, student badinage and student literary enterprise. Since its rebirth in 1979, "Granta has published many of the world’s finest writers tackling some of the world’s most important subjects, from intimate human experiences to the large public and political events that have shaped our lives." 

The article, How To Write About Africa by Binyavanga Wainaina, actually acts as a guideline of what not to do, mentioning the most common offenses amongst most journalists and media outlets. For example he writes, "In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions." The work ends with my favorite line, "Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care." 

I was so shocked and horrified by the truth of this article. This descriptions can be found in almost every mainstream media western media outlet. Take for example, National Geographic's special issue on Africa. The site's main stories include an African safari live web cam, a story on AIDS, a look at the Congo's Mbuti Pygmies tribe and a story on oil-- with pictures of strong African men bare chested. Not one of these stories help to further or work against these stereotypes and misrepresentation mentioned by Wainaina. Where is the African voice in media?

Nollywood can be considered an alternative form of media to the western perceptions of Africa. This localized film does not carrying the ever-present narrative that Africa needs to be saved or spoken for. According to Mahir Saul and Ralph Austen, “That narrativization is speech fashioned out of its locality and defined in the hybrid mobilization of the technology of video.” And Nollywood is actually the third largest film industry in the world. 

Is the African film industry of Nollywood technically independent media? No. But it is alternative media to the predominant westernized voice on African issues that dominates the global understanding of the continent.  And for that, I think the growth of Nollywood and African media is important to the growth of all independent and alternative media because it means the growth of reclamation of all silenced voices on a global level.

A Call to Divest

We all chose to come to Ithaca College for one reason or another, whether that was academic programs, gorgeous gorges or the No.1 college town. For some, they chose to come here for one of the college’s five main values: commitment to sustainability.

Yet, what good are the degrees we are earning in college if the world in which we could use them no longer exists due to global warming? This is the question many IC students involved with the Divest Campaign are asking to try to stir action amongst students and the college’s board of trustees. The group is actually a coalition between many clubs on campus, modeled after the GA’s from the Occupy movement.

The Divest For Our Future Campaign is a partnership between Better Future Project, Students for a Just and Stable Future and 350.org. According to Divest For Our Future, their main goal is to “have all college and university presidents and boards to immediately freeze any new investment in fossil fuel companies and divest from direct or indirect ownership of fossil fuel stocks and bonds within 5 years.”

There are 22 campus campaigns nationally, including at the IC and Cornell campuses. The IC Divest campaign has been directly directed toward the college’s board of trustees, calling upon them to divest.

“One of the elements of that fiduciary responsibility is that trustees have oversight of investing the endowment in a way that promises the best possible monetary returns so as to help subsidize high quality educational programs, provide student financial aid, and so forth,” Ithaca College President Tom Rochon said. “However, it also means investing the endowment in a way that is in alignment with the mission and values of the college.”

There are 200 publically traded companies that hold a majority of the world’s coal, oil and gas reserves. These are the companies the project hopes colleges and universities will divest from, instead investing in clean energy to build a strong, local, green economy. In a statement from the national campaign, “The mission of higher education is to provide individuals with the tools, resources, and knowledge to have an influence on the world around them. Our schools invest in our future. Yet at the same time, they are supporting corporations that are actively threatening the future of all life on earth.”

Fossil fuel companies are polluting the earth without paying for the damages they are causing directly to ecosystems and indirectly through sever weather caused by increased global climate change.

“You don’t think about investing where the money is,” IC Divest student leader Allison Currier said. “We think about green building and using compostable material and recycling and that all is really good and important but to make real change you need to make it from the inside out and you need to move money because we live in a capitalist system where money drives everything.”

With a $200 million endowment at stake, you would think this movement would be getting more attention by the college media, as well as the national mainstream media. However, there are virtually no news stories on this campaign. This is because news stations have become directly tied to huge corporations, many in the oil industry. For example, Exxon Mobil sponsored CNN’s election night coverage. And they were being transparent; many national news stations do not disclose their ties to major corporations like GM, BP and more.

As students trying to preserve our future for our families, selves and world, we have a right to want the institutions we attend to divest from the companies that threaten that future, However, until the national media can also divest, there will be no fair coverage or pressure put on this institutions to want to make a change in this capitalistic system. And $200 million is a small endowment; imagine the change that could occur with divestment from larger colleges, universities and organizations.

I think the media has a responsibility to shed light on this campaign and the wants of the American youth, regardless of sponsorships or corporate affiliations.

Broadening Discussions (even after victory)

I was very excited to see President Tom Rochon rescinded the media policy this week. It was an unfair policy that seemed to be more for a corporation rather than a college. 

However, in our celebration I think we must also keep a skeptical eye on the top to bottom hierarchy this institution seems to be embracing in all areas of the college. Yes, we won the battle but not the war. We should not forget that the reason Rochon terminated the policy was because the Society of Professional Journalist’s panel members discussion with the president and the board. It was not because of faculty discontent. It was not because of student protests. 

We are in an institution that hears us but is not listening. Senior Rob Flaherty said it best in this week’s Ithacan article: “I don’t want the repeal to take away from broader discussions that need to happen on campus about the decision-making process here and the sort of perceived corporatization and centralization of campus.” 

Live Blogging: David Cay Johnston

Minute by minute coverage with David Cay Johnston during his visit to Ithaca College's Independent Media class.

2:40 p.m. "The only degree I have is night high school... but I never stayed at any college for more than 30 units."

• Has enough credits for a masters, went to 8 colleges, but never got a degree from any of them

2:45 p.m. "Before I came along, the LAPD was treated like a god like institution from the LA Times."

2:48 p.m. "I took the LA Times places where they never intended to go."

• referring to LAPD political spying and abuses
• the intelligence unit was not being controlled

2:57 p.m. "A few days after this blind date, I went to this police social function...No matter how mad Gates was he would always talk to me... because he wanted to know what I was doing and that what Henry Kissinger's way."

• Johnston's bind date was spyed on, tried to use intimidation factors on him
• that first date, blind date is now Johnston's wife

3:03 p.m. "I have to manage my editors and figure out how to get things into the paper"

• Editors jobs would be on the line so the LA Times did not want this story covered 

3:12 p.m. "You will have the same work, but not the same benefits and that's not all due to the economics facing all news organizations."

• IRE has gone down 16%, but journalists 30% decrease

3:14 p.m. Take law, public communications courses, learn numbers because you will be able to turn them into useful things

3:17 p.m. "My head is kind of a spreadsheet."

• this is a way Johnston makes numbers easy to understand for his readers

3:18 p.m. "The CIA Factbook is a trove of information."

3:20 p.m. "You'll have bad editors, you'll have good ones. You'll have bad producers and you'll have good ones. But you'll also have people who make you look better than you deserve."

3:22 p.m. "Editors: they have real power."

• They have the power to put a huge investigative piece on page 87 

3:24 p.m. "There are no rules in journalism they there are only judgement but because you sign your name to everything you write you have to live with those judgements." 

3:25 p.m.  "George W. Bush was sold to the American people as a product."

3:30 p.m. "Once you tell me what the bar is and I hit the bar you got to put it in the paper."

3:36 p.m. "Disclosure is the best disinfectant," Professor Jeff Cohen said.

3:35 p.m. "If you are just Joe-Schmo and I am interviewing you, I will give you a tremendous amount of leeway...If you are Bill Clinton I am not going to cut you any slack under and circumstances." 

David Cay Johnston's Coming To Town!

I am so thrilled that the IC chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is hosting Pulitzer prize winner David Cay Johnston tomorrow night in Textor 101 at 7 p.m. Johnston is an incredible investigative reporter, mainly focusing on areas of taxes and economics that evaluates the idea of the 1 percent. Johnston also is the current president for Investigative Reporters and Editors. His third book, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind, was just released and is becoming a big hit.

So why should we care about this speaker? Because investigative reporting, finding a story in the silences, defines independent media. This is exactly Johnston's message.

Interested in hearing more about his economic views and his new book? Check out his interview on Democracy Now here.

Interested in seeing him in person?! Stop by Textor 101 at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 13th.

The Horrors of Factory Farms

When Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906 he blew the cover off of the hidden bad practices and corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century. Now the book is  often interpreted as an account of the poor working conditions in the industry. Yet Sinclair would be tossing and turning in his grave if he could see the state of the factory farming business today-- specifically the meat industry.

The News 21 food and health reporting project by UC Berkeley School of Journalism recently released a video called Farms, Lies and Videotapes. The video investigates Iowa livestock facilities. According to News 21, "One former investigator goes public for the first time to offer a rare glimpse at how these videos are made, and what’s at stake for farmers, animals and consumers."

So why is the food industry so secretive? So why is the mainstream media not reporting on this animal cruelty. When an individual is cruel to animals they are condemned legally and socially. When a corporation does it we call it business.

For my Plants, People and Food Production class we did a 48 hour food journal. We then called all of the corporations to try to figure out where the food we ate is coming from. The thing is, it is a mystery. For proprietary reasons we are not allowed to even know the state our food is coming from, let alone the farm itself.

And why did News 21 need to sneak a video camera into some of these factory farms? Because the farm has changed from the picturesque family business we all grew up singing about to an unethical business needed to stay behind closed doors. The animals are seen as livestock (live- property, not living being with feelings and pain). What is even more unfortunate is that many of these farmers disagree with the way these animals are being treated, but are stuck under the thumb of big industry in order to make a living.

But if these moral reasons are not enough to stir the consciousness of media to report on this issue, then maybe the health reasons are. The conditions of these animals lead to disease and bacteria in the food we eat.

Then my question is, with so many reasons for these controversial factories to be reported on, why is this story still unheard?

Dooms Day or Election Day?

As the map of the United States gets painted in blue and red, I cannot help but think of previous election days, and the poor mainstream media coverage of them. Because the news world has turned into a 24 hour world, the focus of journalism has become who can get the news out first instead of who can be the most accurate in their reporting. This can have extremely negative repercussions. It is not like mainstream media hasn't called the winner wrong before, just for the sake of getting the "answer" out there first.

But what will be this year's main obstacles. ProPublica came up with a list of seven things that could go wrong this election day (or already have).

1. Confusion of voter ID laws.
2. Hurricane Sandy
3. Shortened early voting in Florida (and frusteration)
4. Newly drawn districts' voters going to wrong areas
5. Provisional ballots take a long time to count
6. Voter suppression and intimidation
7. Tie in the electoral college

To me, two of the greatest issues on this list have to do with voter id laws and intimidation tactics because this is discouraging and taking away people's right to vote and have their voice heard. In Florida, voters are waiting for 4-6 hours just to vote, and many potential voters are turning away because of the inconvenience. Many of these long lines or lack of voting machines are in areas near colleges or with a large minority community. Coincidence? I personally doubt that it is seeing as those are the communities most likely to vote for Obama. And in areas where voting machines are plenty, the process is still not running smoothly. Some touch screen voting systems have been caught altering votes.

But are we hearing this in mainstream media? No. I just watch a map of the United States change colors, and I listen to arbitrary numbers thrown around in discussions about polling. Mainstream media is all about voter sanctification, whereas alternative media like ProPublica is actually covering the voter suppression.  

This is such a tight election, and such an important one, that everyone should be able to have their vote count. Because this election is huge. So go and vote. Take an active role and make sure you are going to your correct districts voting area and that your ballot is filled out accurately. Pay attention to media's coverage of the election with a critical eye. Because if there was ever a time to have an opinion or be passionate about something, it is now and it is this. 

I cast my vote, and with my eyes and ears glued to the election coverage, I am left crossing my fingers.

Reaction: The Internet is My Religion

I have always struggled with my spirituality and moral beliefs, and the teaching of the Catholic church. I believe God loves and supports everyone, including gay people. I believe you do not have to go to church to be a good person. I believe bad things happening to good people is not a punishment from God, but an unfortunate reality. I define myself as spiritual but have a hard time identifying with a specific religion.

However, I cannot help but to agree with Jim Gilliam's PDF 2011 speech. "As a child I believed in creationism, that the universe was created in 6 days. Today, we are the creators," said Gilliam.

We are all connected. And now we literally are all connected through the internet. People connected can create a new world. "Each one of us is a creator, but together we are the  creator."

Gilliam went on to talk about passion in the sense we are all unique, having different interests, but because of this we can all bring something new to this world we are constantly creating and recreating.

"We serve God best when we do what we love for the greatest cause we can imagine."

A look into Indian Tribes Independent Media

Sitting in the Ithaca College pub, I was brainstorming with my friends about my next blog post. What would I talk about this week regarding independent media?

"What about Indian tribes?" said Jason MacDermott, a junior anthropology major at IC. "If independent media is about voices being silenced my mainstream media than I think that's a perfect example."

I couldn't agree more. 

In mainstream media, the Indian tribe community and native Americans are largely ignored. In fact, they are largely ignored in history books as well (the story of Thanksgiving is not as friendly as elementary school made us think). However, because of this dark past, blogger Delvin Cree states that journalism is difficult for writers today who want to report news within reservation boundaries.

Let's look at the story of Bill Lawrence.

According to Cree, "Bill's effort in exposing the truth of what was happening on Minnesota reservations made someone mad enough to shoot bullets through his office windows in Bemidji. Even though an act of violence took place, he continued to be one one of the nation's most ferocious tribal government watchdogs."

He even won the Freedom of Information award in 2003 from the Society of Professional Journalists for his investigative reporting. But what is happening currently within this beat? I explored IndianCountryTodayMediaNetwork.com to find out.

The site covers world news, politics, business, veterans, the environment and more, all from the Indian perspective. This perspective is largely unheard, but this media organization is trying to give voice to this silenced population.