Gore: Use Net to Save World

A big part of my project here at MediaVigilante is to start thinking about how the media can be used as a platform to promote discussion necessary for change.

After Obama's recent win, many will be expecting, possibly unreasonably that he is able to make the changes many people are expecting.

On the back of this, Al Gore has used his speaking engagement at a Web2.0 conference to stress the importance of using the internet in creating some of that discussion.

'Studs' Terkel Will Be Missed

Man of the millions, legendary Pulitzer Prize winning U.S. broadcaster and author, Louis "Studs" Terkel passed away on October 31 at age 96.

Terkel became best known for his interviews chronicling some of America's hardest years, through the eyes of the working masses.

His approach of amplifying the voices of the voiceless was an essential part of his various radio shows, plays, tv shows and books including Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (1970) and Working (1974).

His work became so synonymous with the struggle for a better world that he drew the eyer of authorties during the McCarthyist, anti-communist witch hunts during the 1950's. NBC chose to cancel his popular, but short lived, television show, Studs' Place, after he refused to say he was duped into signing political petitions by the Communist Party.

Studs represented a kind of journalism that has become a rare commodity in today's media environment. Never afraid of his radicalism, Terkel became a man dedicated to another vision of not only his own profession, but to the world as a whole.

He will be missed.

Cuban "Journos" and the Secret Golden Handshake

As anyone who truly understands the media would understand, journalism is a loaded profession. If you are to fight for the rights of all journalists, you will inevitably come into conflict with your own belief in human rights.

This could not be more true of a country like Cuba, where some partisan "independent journalists" have been funded by U.S. organisations openly campaigning for the violent overthrow of the Communist regime.

As Legendary PBS broadcaster Bill Moyers explained in a 2003 interview,

"...the very concept of media is insulting to some of us within the press who find ourselves lumped in with so many disparate elements, as if everyone with a pen, a microphone, a camera, or just a loud voice were all one and the same...David Broder is not Matt Drudge. "Meet the Press" is not "Tempation Island." And I am not Jerry Springer. I do not speak for him. He does not speak for me. Yet 'the media' speaks for us all"

Read more in Sydney based Academic Tim Anderson's report for Green Left Weekly

There's also an interesting piece on Cuban Journalism at Project Censored, and some other interesting observations here and here