Mediacology

Watch the latest news video at video.foxnews.com

“Cyclonic perpetual emotion machine…” and other prescient observations about Fox from Jon Stewart. Not surprisingly, Stewart eviscerates his nemesis on ‘The O’Reilly Factor.’ But of greater interest is his discussion of TV and radio from a media ecology view (around the 13:00 mark).

This news clip and video of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s Ady Gil being struck by Japanese whalers will be of interest to anyone who has read Kevin Michael DeLuca’s Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism. In it he reflects on the success of Greenpeace’s anti-whaling image war in the 1970s in which [...]

Former Vikings, contemporary Danish are better known now for windmills, bicycles and excellent rain gear. Like many of the social democracies of Europe’s northern frontier, to some the Danes are actually Europe’s modern hippies, which they hoped to leverage with the “Hopenhagen” brand. History, it was hoped, would show that Copenhagen and its COP-15 UN [...]

Like most mediated Americans, I’m fascinated by the Jaycee Dugard story. To recap briefly, at 11 years old she was abducted by a drug-crazed rapist/pedephile who claims to be a messenger from God. He’s deluded to the point that he believes he has invented a machine which can channel the voice of God. Meanwhile he [...]

I’m sure Fox is not being ironic when they criticize The Story of Stuff for fear mongering. What is sure is that Fox is a bit of weathervane informing us of our good work. In other words, if it feels like attacking the use of The Story of Stuff in classrooms (I use it for [...]

Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot
As usual, the Onion captures the inanity of TV news.

It remains to be seen if Sarah Palin will get a free ride from the press, but judging on the latest shenanigans at MSNBC, I’m guessing she will get little scrutiny, despite her clearly extremist views.

Glenn Greenwald has an incredible succinct breakdown of my Olbermann and Matthews were removed from the anchor desk of future [...]

There is nothing particularly constructive about this clip, other than to point out the obvious: cable news is nothing more than a kindergarden sandbox. And they think bloggers give news a bad name!

Old media always goes to war with the new. So the following news is hardly surprising. Too bad for AP. They have no idea what they will be missing, which is a ringside seat to the next media revolution.

AP vs Bloggers: The Mainstream Media Declares War on Blogs:

But lets look a little deeper here, because [...]

This barely deserves commentary, but I think it’s interesting to compare O’Reilly’s “Far Left Fiesta” with the Lessig post below. Just a few quickies. It’s curious that Robert Greenwald is identified as the director of Xanadu rather than OutFoxed. Hmmm. And calling the conference a fiesta I guess means that media reformers are illegals in [...]

Fox decided to ambush Bill Moyers at the National Conference for Media Reform 2008. Watch what happens.

Reminds me a bit of Warhol’s screen tests. BTW, great music!

Never before have I seen a symbol treated like a head of state, but such is the treacherous journey of the Olympic torch as it wends its way from one protest to another across the globe.

See more photos here.

The brilliant graphic from Reporters sans frontières.

Technorati Tags: Olympic torch

These days I go to author Jim Kunstler’s Clusterfuck Nation to get a grip on the economy. Not surprisingly today he scribes a grim report (snippet below). The thrust of his program is that we have to end the suburban mentality, which leads him to criticize environmentalists for trying to play the cars-can-be-saved-as-a-way-of-life card (as [...]

Bad News at the Pump: The Dangerous Implications of $100-Plus Oil | ForeignPolicy | AlterNet:
Three factors, in particular, are responsible for the current surge: intensifying competition for oil between the older industrial powers and rising economic dynamos like China and India; the inability of the global energy industry to expand supplies to keep pace with [...]

Know thy enemy.
Think Progress:
Lesson 1: The Public Won’t Support You, Unless You Do Things “Harshly”: Soon after 9/11, according to Bob Woodward, Ailes sent a “back-channel message” to President Bush, suggesting that he needed to take “the harshest measures possible” in retaliation for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He added [...]

The above video clip happened live during an Italian evening news broadcast I was watching a few weeks ago. Don’t worry about the language, it’s not necessary to know Italian to understand what’s happening. This goes to show what an echo chamber the news is. Rather than the news coverage itself being important, instead the [...]

The Daily Show is still the best place for media deconstruction.
Via Huffington Post

Technorati Tags: Daily Show, election

You can read my latest column on war, pictures and propaganda at Understand Media. Link follows.
Understand Media -> Articles -> War Pictures by Antonio Lopez:
Regardless of your opinions about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, the Bush Administration has relied heavily on media management and imagery to justify and promote its cause. Whether [...]