Big Bird Takes Back the Streets

Sales of Big Bird costumes are up this Halloween as many don yellow feathers to protest the GOP attack on public broadcasting. A sampling:

Photo: The Sacramento Bee

One Minute of News vs. 162 Minutes of Ads

Illustration: Bill Brown

Denver played host to the first presidential debate of 2012, but for TV viewers in the Rocky Mountain State, the political mudslinging has been going on for months, thanks in large part to the deluge of political ads from Super PACs and other third-party groups.

Since Aug. 1, these groups have joined with the official campaigns to buy time to air more than 26,000 political ads on the city's ABC, CBS, Fox and NBS affiliates.

The onslaught is wearing down many locals. "I have reduced drastically the amount of television I watch," Denver resident Larry Bahn said. "I have just about given up watching local news because the ads are almost continuous there."

Some Denver newscasts have tried to keep pace with the crush of political ads, examining their claims to separate fact from fiction.

Big Bird Storms the Debates

An occasional live blogging of the Big Bird meme of 2012:

7:24 a.m., Saturday -- I'm calling it at 7:24 a.m. EST, Saturday, Oct. 13. The Big Bird meme is officially dead.

8:00 a.m., Friday -- Public broadcasting executives don't enjoying being in the spotlight after Gov. Mitt Romney's pledged to cut funding to PBS. “We would very much like to be out of the picture as soon as possible,” Patrick Butler of the Association of Public Television Stations told the New York Times. “We think there are more important issues for presidential candidates to talk about than our little funding issue here.” 

8:00 a.m., Thursday -- Big Bird may have jumped the shark now that the Daily Show is mocking President Obama for overplaying Romney's debate-night comment. Host Jon Stewart lists a slate of Romney statements on other issues that should provide ammo to the Obama campaign, and slams them for picking a light-hearted Sesame Street ad as the focus of their post-debate spin. "You're going with the Big Bird buy, still!?" Stewart asks the president. The fear here is that very real concerns over the fate of public media are being eclipsed by Obama's mishandling of the issue. Perhaps the president should have clearly stated his full support for PBS funding and left it there. (See the Daily Show clip here).  

4:00 p.m. -- The Big Bird meme appears to be on the wane, one week since Gov. Mitt Romney announced his intention to cut federal funding to PBS, home to Sesame Street. The chart above is just one indicator. It tracks one week of Google News searches on "Big Bird" beginning Wednesday morning, hours after the conclusion of the presidential debates.

11:00 a.m. -- Sesame Street has released a statement urging the Obama campaign to take down a political ad that uses Big Bird to mock Gov. Mitt Romney. "We have approved no campaign ads," the organization said in a release. "As is our general practice, [we] have requested that both campaigns remove Sesame Street characters and trademarks from their campaign materials.

When it Comes to Political Ads, No News Is Good for Local TV Stations

The political ad invasion is upon us. It's a toxic mix of half truths and negativity that's beaming into homes across the country, but especially homes in battleground states like Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Media analysts project campaigns, Super PACs and often shadowy "social welfare" groups will spend a record-breaking $3.3 billion to buy up airtime as they attempt to influence voters before Nov. 6.

For the local stations that air these ads, it's a political goldmine. But what's a cash windfall for stations has become a nuisance for tens of millions of viewers who will have to endure thousands more political ads before Election Day (mercifully) arrives.

Happy Birthday #OWS

Some Occupy Wall Street portraits from the year that was. My focus in this work is to capture individuals within a crowd... to put a human face to large-scale democratic protests. This work is ongoing (click on images to enlarge):

The Current Runs Against Murdoch

Illustration: James Hindle

This week's Murdoch news raises as many questions as it answers, as the phone-hacking scandal enters its second year dominating front-page headlines worldwide.

But the controversy that has rocked Murdoch's British empire has caused little more than a ripple among America's political leadership.

On Monday, we learned that Rupert Murdoch had resigned from the boards of a number of News Corp. subsidiaries, including News International Group, Times Newspaper Holdings and News Corp. Investments.

These companies oversee British newspapers the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times. They also oversaw the News of the World before it was shuttered last summer as evidence of widespread phone hacking emerged.

Freedom = Censorship?

Photo: Timothy Karr

Think you have the right to speak freely via cellphones, websites and social media? Well, the companies that provide you with access to the Internet don’t.

The framers drafted the First Amendment as a check on government authority — not corporate power. But whether we’re texting friends, sharing photos on Facebook, or posting updates on Twitter, we’re connecting with each other and the Internet via privately controlled networks.

And the owners of these networks are now twisting the intent of the First Amendment to claim the right to control everyone's online information.

Taking the Internet Back to the Future

Welcome to the Comcast Age.

No, that's not a new corporate slogan, but the future facing Internet users everywhere.

Cable giants like Comcast and Time Warner have come to dominate information access in the United States. And they're using this new power to squeeze out competitors and remake new media in their old image.

For anyone online that means a future of fewer choices among broadband providers and less control over the digital diet that's fed across their networks.

Big Cable's Old Plan for New Media

Television is at a crossroads.There are two paths to choose from and two destinies for television viewers: one better, the other far worse. The path taken will have lasting political consequences.

One leads to a future where new technology offers millions of video channels streaming in and out of American homes via fast online networks.

The other involves a handful of local cable monopolies controlling what programming is aired — and blocking anything that might loosen their grip on viewers.

One future looks like the people-powered Internet, where choice is boundless and the audience is in charge. The other is a throwback to cable television's "gilded age," where powerful gatekeepers picked what people watched, when they watched it, and how much they paid for the privilege.

Reform in the Age of Corporate Lawyers

Illustration: Bill Brown

In the post-Citizens United era, wealthy individuals and corporations think democracy is a trophy they can buy, stuff and mount on their parlor walls.

But Americans scored a solid victory against big money in April when the Federal Communications Commission decided to require television broadcasters to post data online about political ad spending.

The FCC's ruling was encouraging for anyone hoping to shed light on the shadowy groups and campaign operatives that are funneling billions of dollars to local TV stations this year. The decision will help everyone get a clearer picture of the misinformation machine behind the flood of attack ads.

The Police, the iPhone and Your Right to Record

World Press Freedom Day came and went earlier this month. While it’s important to take a day to recognize our right to speak and share information, threats to our First Amendment freedoms happen all the time, everywhere.

It’s a threat that will become very real on the streets of Chicago this weekend, as a new breed of journalists and onlookers attempt to cover the protests surrounding the NATO summit.

Just ask Carlos Miller. The photojournalist has been arrested three times. His “crime?” Photographing the police. Most recently, in January, Miller was filming the eviction of Occupy Wall Street activists from a park in downtown Miami.

Super PACs Tell Lies, but the Media Spread Them

If you think presidential politics have gotten ugly, just wait.

With wealthy corporations and individuals spending billions of dollars to influence your vote, the real dirt is about to hit your TV screen like mud on a linen bed sheet.

According to the New York Times, which got its hands on a conservative proposal from a shadowy Super PAC, wealthy Republican strategists are working overtime on a billionaire-fueled campaign to flood the airwaves with race-laced attacks against President Obama:

The plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.

Who's Afraid of Rupert Murdoch?

The answer: the Federal Communications Commission and Congress.

While the media mogul was called before Parliament and hammered by regulators in the United Kingdom, few in the halls of U.S. power are willing to call News Corp. to account for the “culture of corruption” that has spread through its media empire.

Late Wednesday, Sen. Frank Lautenberg asked FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski whether U.K. findings of News Corp.’s “rampant law breaking” meant the FCC would revoke any of the 27 broadcast licenses granted to Murdoch’s company in the U.S.

How Will the Murdoch Implosion Be Felt in the U.S.?

A scathing report in Britain that Rupert Murdoch and other News Corp. executives engaged in a cover-up of "rampant law breaking" may have ramifications for the media mogul in the United States.

How far-reaching those consequences are depends on U.S. politicians' willingness to face down one of the most powerful media figures of our generation.

But chinks in Murdoch's armor have deepened since last week, when a U.K. government investigation found that News Corp. executives hacked private phone messages, bribed government officials and then sought to conceal this wrongdoing, in part by giving misleading testimony to British law enforcement and Parliament.

Finding Frank in Hoboken

In 1955 Swiss photographer Robert Frank visited Hoboken to document the city's centennial celebration. It's a day that generated several memorable Frank photographs, including two that open his masterful photo essay "The Americans."

This one features as the cover of the book:

The Misinformation Machine

Published at BillMoyers.com

Dirty politics is a growth industry with few happy customers. In the run-up to Super Tuesday, television viewers nationwide had to endure an onslaught of negative and deceptive political ads.

For many in key primary and caucus states that meant sitting through up to 12 such ads an hour. And the vast majority of these ads went on the attack: The three political action committees buying the most television time this election season have spent more than 98 percent of their money on ads that discredit one or another candidate, according to Kantar Media.

These attacks by their very nature are misleading. FactCheck.org, which tracks accuracy in political messaging, found that the "avalanche of negativity" in recent political ads also contained a fair share of distortions and lies.

Murdoch's Date With Justice

A legal net is closing around media mogul Rupert Murdoch. On Monday a top investigator in London reported that senior News Corp. employees authorized hundreds of bribes to police officers and other government officials.

But these reports of criminal behavior in the United Kingdom have yet to trigger a prosecution of Murdoch here in the States, where top executives can be held liable for systematically bribing foreign officials.

To stop this scandal from jumping the Atlantic, Murdoch has added legions of lobbyists and lawyers to his ranks. Their goal is to defang the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it unlawful for a U.S. corporation to pay off a foreign official for the purpose of advancing or protecting a business interest.

The Intellectual Dishonesty at the Heart of the Heartland Institute

More media have pored over leaked internal memos that expose the intellectual dishonesty at the heart of the Heartland Institute, the coin-operated think tank that has made a living spreading lies in the service of corporations.

The most revealing of the memos reveals the Institute's plans to create an anti-climate change curriculum for k-12 schools nationwide. The goal, according to the memo is to show "that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain — two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science."

"There’s your smoking gun," write the editors at the Star-Ledger:

Minneapolis Star Tribune: The onslaught is coming to a TV near you

This piece was published earlier this week by the Star Tribune:

If Minnesotans flip on their TVs right now, they're likely to see at least one -- a political ad slinging mud at a presidential candidate.

As Tuesday's statewide caucuses approach, they're more likely to see many more. Viewers in Florida reported seeing as many as 12 political ads an hour in the runup to that state's Jan. 31 primary. The campaigns and super PACs that bought these ads have now turned their attention from Florida -- where they spent tens of millions of dollars on local media buys -- to Minnesota.

These attack ads by their very nature are negative. But they can also be misleading. FactCheck.org, which tracks accuracy in political messaging, found that the "avalanche of negativity" in recent Florida ads also contained a fair share of distortions and outright lies.

... Read the full oped.

Obama Joins the Democracy Sell Off

President Obama succumbed late Monday to the dark logic of the Super PACs, instructing top West Wing staffers to help raise money for the so-called "independent" groups that have been successful in picking winners and losers thus far in 2012.

"We decided to do this because we can't afford for the work you're doing in your communities, and the grassroots donations you give to support it, to be destroyed by hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads," Obama's campaign manager Jim Messina wrote supporters in an email Monday night.

This is no small news -- which explains why the New York Times placed this story on page one today -- as it signals that the president has reversed his earlier stance against working with Super PACs and joined others on the low road to political influence.