Blogs

Brad Seawell of the MIT Communications Forum writes to note that a free public forum on Thurs., Sept. 20 launches a new center studying the relationship between emerging media and civic engagement. A key area of inquiry is how virtual worlds such as SecondLife affect civic engagement in the real world.
READ MORE: http://newshare.typepad.com/nenf/2007/09/virtual-vs-real.html

Censored!
The Top 10 Big Stories American Mainstream Media Missed in the Past Year

Here are the top-10 most underreported or ignored stories of the past year, from ACME partner Project Censored.

Visit Project Censored for the complete list of 25.

And see ACME's home page for our Project Censored classroom guide - ways to use this annual book in your civics, journalism, social studies, communications, history, or language arts classroom.

1. Good-bye, habeas corpus

ACME advisory board member and independent Canadian journalist/author Naomi "No Logo" Klein, whom I first heard speak on "No Logo" at the NMMLP-sponsored Taos Talking Picture Festival almost a decade ago, is back with a brand-new book called "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."

I've read all four excerpts online - the book will no doubt pack a tremendous wallop - seeking to expose the new post-9/11 "military/industrial/terror" complex that is re-making corporate globalization using radical free market "shock doctrine" techniques.

From the Center for Social Media:

"Confused about copyright? You're not alone.

Media literacy educators rely on the ability to use copyrighted materials in their teaching. But ignorance about copyright -- and particularly a lack of awareness of the fair use provision - is interfering with teachers' ability to teach important critical thinking and communication skills that enable them to promote digital learning.

Youth media and literacy were key topics at Journalism That Matters: The DC Sessions," a gathering of more than 150 journalists, bloggers, educators and activists Aug. 7-8, 2007, in Washington, D.C. The Media Giraffe Project at UMass convened the two-day gathering as part of a year-long effort to establish "The Next Newsroom," -- a prototype news organization in a U.S. community that will be created from scratch.

At the risk of opening up a box of Pandoras:

Today is, of course, the 6th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Big Media has been strangely quiet on this front. The past few years have been devoted to constant re-hashing of the events of six years ago.

We remember all those who lost their lives on that day, and all those who stepped up and sacrificed their time, life energy, and hard-earned wealth to assist the citizens of New York and Washington, DC in their time of need.

Hold on to your Barca-Loungers, friends - the new fall TV line-up is upon us, and it is time to invoke the dreaded "C" word.

Consumerism?

Nope, you knee-jerk TV watchers - product placement and Tivo will take care of all those pesky commercial interruptions any week now. Seamless advertising, embedded in the narrative - commercial interruptions are so... last millennium.

Today's word is "class." I know, I know, we live in a class-less society.

Remember "the Honeymooners," "All in the Family," and the Cleavers?

Move it on over and make way for the "Cashmere Mafia."

Recently there has been a lot of discussion on the ACME email list about Miss Teen South Carolina and her inarticulate response to a question about why some Americans can't find America on a map.

(You can see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WALIARHHLII)

This got me to revisit something I wrote a few years ago. I think it's still relevant:

Its a Tuesday afternoon in March and I’m teaching a media literacy course at a small New England Unversity.

My class is a group of about 25. They are fairly lively and involved students as these things tend to go.

We're ramping up the REEL ACTION film series here at Champlain College.

Our second film of the fall series - REEL BAD ARABS, based on Jack Shaheen's work - is a tour de force.

Here's our e-press release - you can show this film, or others like it, in your school or community!

Happy week-end,

Rob

ACME/Champlain is pleased to announce the second in a series of fall 2007 REEL ACTION film screenings.

Multiple reactions abound to the youtube video showing Miss South Carolina, contestant for the Miss Teen USA pageant, fumbling over an answer to the question she received in the pageant's nod to intelligence. Some saw a scared teenager who couldn't find her words and these people rushed to protect her, as one would one's own child. Some saw the failure of the U.S. education system. Some saw stupidity, and compared her to our fumbling president. Some just felt sorry for the poor girl and depicted her as simply dealing with a brain white-out. Why so much attention?