GRITtv: The F Word: Guantanamo Files Show Media Priorities
As I perused the latest WikiLeaks releases this morning, a retweet from their Twitter feed caught my eye: “Gitmo: Compare the first paragraph of these two stories about the same thing.” One was a link to the BBC and one was CNN. At the BBC, the title is “Wikileaks: Many at Guantanamo 'Not dangerous'” and the first graf points out that the US believed many were innocent or only low-level operatives. CNN's piece, by contrast, says that the released documents “reveal extraordinary details about the alleged terrorist activities of Al Qaeda operatives” at Gitmo. Distributed by Tubemogul.
Email this pageGRITtv: Katrina vanden Heuvel & Ryan Grim on the State of the Media
"We don't write about class struggle in the US so it's hard for us to see it elsewhere," says the Huffington Post's Ryan Grim on the failings of the US media around issues in Egypt. And Katrina vanden Heuvel notes that Islamophobia in the US leads many to focus on fear of the Muslim Brotherhood rather than understanding the ways that Islam and democracy coexist and complement one another. Here in the US, too, there were big media stories, as the Huffington Post merged with AOL, and Keith Olbermann signed up with Al Gore's Current TV. What's in those stories for independent media? Ryan, Katrina and Laura discuss.
GRITtv: The F Word: Protests in Cairo Forgotten by Obama
In the State of the Union speech, Barack Obama did get applause for saying that the US stands with the people of Tunisia. Now, he didn't mention the two decades of support the US had given the dictatorship. Distributed by Tubemogul.
GRITtv: Share This! Changing the World with Social Media
Social media is changing the way our public discourse is conducted, says Deanna Zandt, GRITtv's very own TechGrrl and now the author of a book about social media, Share This! By changing the way we interact with media (instead of passively consume it), social technologies from Twitter to Facebook are injecting our personal lives and values into the public space and forcing the doors wide open for potential change.According to Mashable.com it's Social Media Day today, June 30, and so who better to join us in studio than Deanna Zandt, along with author, radio host and social media expert Farai Chideya. They discuss participatory media, privacy concerns, the iPad, Net Neutrality and more.
GRITtv: Tactical Technology Collective: Use Collective Intelligence
Twitter and other social media have made it easier to reach groups of people at a time, a tactic that our friends at Tactical Technology Collective note allows activists to use collective intelligence in their work.
GRITtv: Deanna Zandt: Helping Haiti Through Tech
Tech makes it easy to share information, which makes us feel useful, but we have to be aware of our impulses and sort out what's good and what's not so good. First, the good stuff -- being able to get the word out. People have been passing along word from the Red Cross, Yele.org, The IRC, Mercy Corps, and others on easy ways to donate money? especially via text message … The ability to read news coming from inside Haiti via everyday people is also incredibly powerful. The other side of this is the potential for the spread of misinformation is high. Our brains aren't equipped to use technology to deal with highly emotionally charged situations, in many cases? they're built to rely on a variety of physical cues to filter and respond, and those cues are often missing when reading updates on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. We automatically assign that trust, or authority, over to our online friends in situations that don't necessarily warrant it. We have to change this behavior, and look for ways to establish authority of sources and verify information without falling back on old models of giving institutions like news orgs and governments the authority.
GRITtv: Is Another Revolution Coming In Iran?
The triumphant stories about how Twitter was going to save Iran may have died down a little, but the resistance in Iran is growing and swelling. Protest on the Shia festival day of Ashura resulted in the most violent crackdown since June and the death of opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's nephew. Hamid Dabashi, Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, has written 20 books and calls the movement in Iran a civil rights movement, and he joins us to discuss the ways it is changing and redefining the republic -- and its effects on the region.
GRITtv: Jay Rosen: What Does New Journalism Look Like?
"Do what you do best and link to the rest," says Jay Rosen, New York University professor and one of the most prominent thinkers about journalism in the new media era. Rosen is the author of "What Are Journalists For?," blogs at PressThink, and famously does "mindcasting, not lifecasting," on Twitter. Where is journalism headed? Is "balanced" coverage really the best option or does it leave too many out in the cold? How responsible are the media for the failures of the health care debate? Rosen has some answers to all of these questions.
GRITtv: Clay Shirky: The Social Media Revolution
Clay Shirky, professor in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, spoke with GRITtv about the way everyday citizens can use the same technology that brings us videos of a kitten on a treadmill to achieve results that strengthen and spread democracy and engagement around the world.
GRITtv: Our Internet, Not Theirs
Internet illiterate John McCain has introduced legislation that would allow corporations, not citizens, to control access to the Net. Obama has spoken about the importance of Net Neutrality, but can we count on him to fight for our right to the Web? We here at GRITtv wouldn't be able to do what we do without a free and open Internet, so today we're discussing Net Neutrality with Timothy Karr of Free Press, Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge, and Karlos Schmieder of the Center for Media Justice.
