television
GRITtv: East WillyB: Creating Socially Conscious Humor Online
"We need to be able to laugh about issues but we also need to know that aside from the comedy that we find in the series when cultures collide, there is a very real issue of displacement in many urban communities," says Julia Ahumada Grob, the co-creator and lead actor of the web TV series East WillyB. The show is set in Bushwick a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, and it addresses the problems of gentrification and displacement of communities of color through humor, and brings high-quality TV production values to the 'net. Julia and actor Flaco Navaja join Laura in studio to discuss dealing with pressing social issues through humor, addressing the "new generation Latino" and why they moved to create their own media. Distributed by Tubemogul.
Email this pageGRITtv: Sally Kohn: Putting Public Broadcasting in Perspective
Republicans have NPR and PBS in their sights once again, and once again progressives and media reformers have to fight for every penny that public media gets. Just how many pennies is that, though? Sally Kohn of Movement Vision puts that funding in perspective in this video.
GRITtv: Dave Zirin: Fighting the NFL Lockout
"It's not about dollars and cents, it's about owners telling players who is boss," says Dave Zirin, sports columnist for The Nation, about the impending NFL lockout. Even Barack Obama has gotten into the act, though, writing off the labor dispute in professional football as "millionaires fighting billionaires" and ignoring the real factors in the fight, from the health risks and short careers the players face to the people who will be out of work if football doesn't go on--while the owners sign a TV contract that pays them even if there is no season. Dave joins us via Skype to give us the latest on why progressives should stand with the NFL players, and the connections to the labor struggles going on around the country right now. Distributed by Tubemogul.
GRITtv: The F Word: Media Miss the Al Jazeera Story
One of the biggest stories of the past few weeks has been the story of Americans discovering Al Jazeera English. It shouldn't have been so hard. As the protest movement in Egypt grew, Americans found that Al Jazeera had what no US network has any more: fully staffed reporting teams working round the clock in Cairo. But other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. -- including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. -- cable viewers couldn't watch Al Jazeera. Some cable operators have blamed political pressure. Others have said they had little time for it. Distributed by Tubemogul.
GRITtv: Peter Hart: False Equivalencies and Right-Wing Buzzwords
"They are goading people into feeling like their country has been stolen from them," says FAIR's Peter Hart of Glenn Beck and other right-wing media personalities with what he terms a "conspiratorial worldview." It's not just using violent metaphors, in other words, it's creating a paranoid mindset that something dangerous is happening to the U.S. that can appeal to those already inclined toward paranoid thinking, like Jared Loughner. Peter joins us in studio to discuss the media narratives of the last few days following the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tuscon this week, from the fantasies of Glenn Beck to the mainstream idea that the left somehow has an equivalent to Beck and Limbaugh. Distributed by Tubemogul.
GRITtv: The F Word: Leaving the People Out of the Debate
“Occasionally you see pictures and they're standing in some long line or applying for jobs, but they're not thought of,” said GRITtv guest Edrie Irvine recently, speaking of unemployed people like her. It's not just the unemployed we don't tend to see on U.S. TV. Take public workers. They're in the news every day, but it's not actually them. It's people talking about them. Politicians, pundits and propagandists targeted them for cuts and layoffs. But public workers themselves are barely in the conversation. Distributed by Tubemogul.
GRITtv: Jenn Pozner & Anna McCarthy: Talking Television
Mad Men harks back to an era when advertising was art and television was educational -- maybe. Meanwhile, reality television gives us messages that seem to fit right in with a 1950s ethos -- right down to the race, gender, and class politics. Television is everywhere, and everyone is talking about it, so we asked Anna McCarthy, NYU professor and author of The Citizen Machine: Governing by Television in 1950s America, and Jennifer Pozner, executive director of Women in Media and News and author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV, to join us to talk TV. Anna and Jenn discuss educational programming and escapism, Mad Men and mommy wars, and of course, the power of advertising in this Friday's feature conversation.
GRITtv: The F Word: Who Profits from Silly Campaign Season?
We need another word for silly season. It's way beyond silly how some are competing in this midterm race. In Illinois in particular, it's not been pretty in the tight fight for Barack Obama's old seat. At three different points in a recent televised debate, Democratic contender Alexi Giannoulias challenged Republican Representative Mark Kirk over his claims that he had been shot at in a plane when he was serving in Iraq. "The question, Congressman, is, why would you not tell the truth? Why would you make all this stuff up?" Giannoulias asked. Watch more at http://grittv.org! Distributed by Tubemogul.
GRITtv: Daryn Strauss: Watching Women in Digital TV
It's 2010 and for the first time in history a female filmmaker won an Oscar for Best Directing. Mind you, we've had four women total ever be nominated, so it's tough to win when you're not even in the race. We look on TV and see an abundance of women: Desperate Housewives, The Closer, Damages, Weeds, I could go on. We look at the box office and we see films like Sex and the City and Twilight, which had the highest grossing opening for a film by a female director ever. Even when it comes to comics and heroes, we were given Buffy... Daryn Strauss is creator of the critically acclaimed web series, Downsized and the website, Digital Chick TV.
GRITtv: Melissa Leo: Tremé and New Orleans
Actress Melissa Leo didn't know much about New Orleans before moving there to shoot a season of HBO's Tremé, but she quickly fell in love with the city, its music, and its resilient people. The show's focus on the music and culture of the city has brought national attention once again to the unique jazz scene, and filming in New Orleans has brought money and jobs to a city badly in need of both. Melissa joins us via Skype to talk about her experience in New Orleans as an outsider, and why it's important for pop culture to remind us of people's struggles. Distributed by Tubemogul.
