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"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 11:28:01

]]> One of Frederick Douglass's greatest speeches

In March 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in Boston. By June, 14 steam presses ran day and night to produce enough copies to meet the unprecedented demand for the antislavery novel that changed the imaginative landscape of America's struggle over slavery. It is in this context of the astonishing popularity of Stowe's great novel that Frederick Douglass, the 34-year-old black reformer and the country's most conspicuous former slave, delivered his speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" If Uncle Tom's Cabin is the fictional masterpiece of American abolitionism, a book Abraham Lincoln would later acknowledge as powerful enough to "cause this big war," then Douglass's Fourth of July address is abolition's rhetorical masterpiece. In style and substance, no 19th century American ever offered a more poignant critique of America's racial condition than Douglass did on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in his adopted hometown, Rochester, N.Y.

The summer of 1852 was a time of great tension in the nation and in Douglass's own life. For nearly two years, free blacks had defied the hated Fugitive Slave Act, passed as part of the Compromise of 1850. Massive protest meetings condemned a law that denied the right of habeas corpus and trial by jury to alleged fugitive slaves, as well as threatened the kidnapping of free people of color into slavery. Now, under the American flag, said Douglass, blacks could feel "no protection," only "danger, trials, bitter mockery." So deep was the fear in northern black communities that hundreds fled to Canada, causing what Douglass described as "a dark train going out of the land, as if fleeing from death."

By 1852, Douglass had converted from the moral suasionist strategies of abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, to political abolitionism and the possible uses of violence to overthrow slavery. Douglass was struggling financially; his newspaper, Frederick Douglass' Paper, survived only on philanthropy, and he could hardly support his growing family on meager lecturers' fees. At the time, the place of a radical black abolitionist in America's future was altogether uncertain.

In these circumstances Douglass crafted a speech in response to the invitation of the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society. As was the tradition in black communities of New York state, Douglass insisted on speaking on the 5th and not the 4th of July. Before nearly 600 people who paid the 121/2c admission, Douglass rose as orator of the day after a reading of the Declaration of Independence by a local minister.

The speech has three major rhetorical moves. First, Douglass sets his audience at ease by offering accolades to the genius of the founding fathers. He calls the Fourth of July an American "Passover" and places hope in the youthful nation, "still impressible" and open to change. He calls the Declaration of Independence the "ringbolt" of the nation's destiny and urges his listeners to "cling to this day... and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight."

But his use of pronouns is a warning of what is soon to follow. The nation is "your nation", the fathers "your fathers." The nation's story is taught in "your common schools, narrated at your firesides, unfolded from your pulpits." As Douglass reminds his white audience of their national and personal deterioration, the speech finds its themethe hypocrisy of slavery and racism in a growing republic. He harkens to the biblical story of the children of Jacob boasting of Abraham's paternity but losing Abraham's faith.

Then, as though slamming a hammer down on the lectern, Douglass says, "Pardon me... what have I... to do with your national independence?" What then flows is his famous attack on America's deepest contradiction, and Douglass does not pull any punches. He was speaking in the house of his friends, but he must have made the good abolitionists squirm with discomfort. As the painful analysis unfolds, he issues a litany of accusative pronouns: "This fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn." To invite him as Independence Day speaker, says Douglass is mere "mockery and sacrilegious irony." So for his Bible-reading audience, Douglass employs one of the deftest uses of irony in American rhetoric. "Let me warn you," he says as he floats unannounced into the 137th Psalm: "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Douglass's answer to the summons? He would not sing a praise song on the nation's birthday, because "above your national, tumultuous joy," he said, "I hear the mournful wail of millions!" He sang no anthems, no spirituals, only a requiem for his people and for the nation.

After this classic use of the rhetorical device of reversal, Douglass launched the second section of the speech, dragging his audience into the "sights and scenes" of slavery itselfthe slave trade, brutal punishments, sales at auction, denials of African American humanity. He implicates the church and the state, and his subject is the evil done by Americans to other Americans. After pages of unsparing condemnations of all manner of blasphemy against every American creed, Douglass ends this unforgettable tirade with an apocalyptic warning that his well-churched audience would have understood: "Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation's bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away...."

For 20 minutes, the crowd must have felt strapped in their seats, bearing up to a hailstorm of humiliation. Then, in the third stage of the speech, Douglass lets them up, wipes their brows, and ends on cautious hope. The principles of the Declaration of Independence still exist; the founders' best wisdom can still be tapped. It is not yet too late. In an ending that evokes America's geographical boundlessness, draws on Psalm 68 to declare that blacks will rise on the world's historical stage, and then recites the abolitionist poem, "God Speed the Year of Jubilee," Douglass transcended his audience, Corinthian Hall, and almost history itself, into the realm of universal political art. He had used language to move people and mountains; he had explained a nation's condition, and through the pain of his indictment, illuminated a path to a better day. In thought and feeling, Douglass the ironist had never been in better form. No abolitionist had ever brought the two great intellectual traditions of antislaverythe Enlightenment and the Bibletogether with such power. The meaning of slavery and freedom in America had never found such a voice at once so terrible and so truthful. As Douglass took his seat, 600 white Northerners roared, wrote a journalist, with "a universal burst of applause."

David W. Blight is Class of '54 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University. He is the author of the Bancroft Prize-winning Race and "Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory" (2001) and the forthcoming "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Frederick Douglass's Greatest Speech."

Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:08:58

]]> A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube, the Webs largest video site by far.

The order raised concerns among YouTube users and privacy advocates that the video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the sites visitors.

Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers, who will use it solely to press Viacoms $1 billion copyright suit against Google.

Still, the judges order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or fall unexpectedly into the hands of third parties.

These very large databases of transactional information become honey pots for law enforcement or for litigants, said Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

For every video on YouTube, the judge required Google to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who had watched it, and the address of their computer, known as an I.P. or Internet protocol address.

Both companies have argued that I.P. addresses alone cannot be used to unmask the identities of individuals with certainty. But in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using other records of their online activities.

The amount of data covered by the order is staggering, as it includes every video watched on YouTube since its founding in 2005. In April alone, 82 million people in the United States watched 4.1 billion clips there, according to comScore. Some experts say virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube.

Google and Viacom said they had had discussions about ways to further protect users anonymity, but as of Thursday evening the two companies had yet to agree on how to do that.

We are investigating techniques, including anonymization, to enhance the security of information that will be produced, said Michael D. Fricklas, Viacoms general counsel.

Mr. Fricklas said Viacom would not have direct access to the data, and that its use would be strictly limited by the court order. Viacom would not, for example, chase down users who had illegally posted clips from The Colbert Report.

The information that is produced by Google is going to be limited to outside advisers who can use it solely for the purpose of enforcing our rights against YouTube and Google, Mr. Fricklas said.

In a letter sent Thursday, Googles lawyers pressed their counterparts at Viacom to accept a more limited set of data. We request that plaintiffs agree that YouTube may redact user names and I.P. addresses from the viewing data in the interests of protecting user privacy, wrote David H. Kramer, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

In a response, a Viacom lawyer wrote that Viacom was committed to working with Google on the privacy issue.

Interestingly, Google has rejected demands by privacy groups for more stringent protections for I.P. address records, saying that in most cases the addresses cannot be used to identify users. Yet Google argued that YouTube viewing data should be kept from Viacom, in part, to protect the privacy of its users.

Judge Louis L. Stanton of the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over Viacoms lawsuit against Google and YouTube, referenced Googles past statements on I.P. addresses to conclude that its privacy concerns are speculative.

It is an I told you so moment, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington.

Other privacy advocates said they welcomed Viacoms commitment to limit its use of the information, but they remained concerned about user rights.

Users should have the right to challenge and contest the production of this deeply private information, said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online civil liberties group.

That right is protected by the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, Mr. Opsahl added. Congress passed that law in 1988 to protect video rental records, after a newspaper disclosed the rental habits of Robert H. Bork, then a Supreme Court nominee.

Mr. Opsahl also said that even records that did not include a users log in name and I.P. address might be able to be associated with specific people.

In 2006, after AOL released for research purposes the search records of thousands of anonymous users, reporters from The New York Times were able to track down one person by analyzing her search queries. Mr. Opsahl said anonymous viewing habits may similarly yield clues about the identity of viewers.

Viacom wants the viewing data in part to help it determine the extent to which YouTubes success was built on the popularity of copyrighted clips that were illegally posted to the site. Outside experts say that without the data it would be virtually impossible to pin that down.

Judge Stanton agreed that the information could help Viacom make its case. A markedly higher proportion of infringing-video watching may bear on plaintiffs vicarious liability claim, and defendants substantial noninfringing use defense, he wrote.

NEW YORK TIMES

Paul Colichman is building a gay media empire

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:41:59

]]> The entrepreneur and his (straight) business partner, owners of premium cable network Here, have ambitious plans for the venerable Advocate magazine and sister publications.

Cult filmmaker John Waters calls him "the gay Citizen Hearst."

Though Paul Colichman is by no means as well known, rich or powerful as the legendary newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, he's trying to forge his own maverick path in the media world.

Five years ago, Colichman and his business partner launched Here, television's only premium gay cable network. Now, with an eye toward building their empire, they recently made a $6.5-million deal to buy the popular news magazine the Advocate, style monthly Out and other sister publications.

Colichman, who also owns the gay entertainment Internet portal GayWired.com, plans to expand the online presence of his new publications once the acquisition closes.

"People say, 'Why would you buy a print publication when you're really in the television business?' " said Colichman. "But our point of view is that everything is cross-platformed now -- we are in the content business, and to generate profit you need to be everywhere."

Colichman, 46, and his odd-couple business partner, Stephen P. Jarchow -- a straight family man from the Midwest -- also produce and distribute low-cost films and TV shows at their 13-year-old company, Regent Entertainment. They work from a penthouse in Westwood, just blocks away from where Colichman was born.

Colichman, whose father was a nuclear chemist and mother a bacteriologist, had no family connections in Hollywood. After earning an MBA at UCLA, he worked briefly at Fox before partnering with music impresario Miles Copeland in film company I.R.S. Media. Among their releases was the 1992 crime thriller "One False Move," the first produced script from a little-known actor named Billy Bob Thornton.

In 1995, entertainment attorney Peter Dekom introduced Colichman and Jarchow, 57, a tax and real estate lawyer who was hunting for business opportunities. Polar opposites in demeanor and lifestyle, the two nonetheless clicked over lunch at Barney Greengrass in Beverly Hills.

"Their differences made it work," Dekom said. "Paul's a visionary and dynamo, and Stephen is someone who knows how to get things financed and structured."

With a few million dollars of their own money, they formed Regent, and three years later they made a splash with the drama "Gods and Monsters," about the last days of "Frankenstein" director James Whale. The low-cost film won director Bill Condon the best-adapted-screenplay Oscar.

"It really built our reputation, and that gave birth to the idea of Here Networks," said Colichman, who along with Jarchow says they have to date invested about $40 million of their own money and profit from Regent into the cable network business.

"We realized that if you're self-financed, we had to pick a niche if we were going to truly be successful," Colichman said. "We knew that going head-to-head with the studios, we'd get our head handed to us sooner or later."

Indeed, Colichman faces tough competition in the lucrative gay market, whether it's PlanetOut Inc.'s Gay.com or the advertiser-supported gay cable network Logo, owned by media giant Viacom Inc. Although no one knows the actual size of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender market, one analysis estimates it at 15 million to 16 million adults with a buying power of $712 billion.

Colichman believes Here's competitive edge rests in the quality and diversity of its content -- including original TV series about gay families, movies, documentaries and reality shows -- which is available on video-on-demand services through cable operators such as Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Cable. Nearly 500,000 subscribers pay $7 to $8 a month for the programming.

Much of the content in Here's most popular shows, including the supernatural adult soap opera "Dante's Cove," is highly sexualized. Colichman, however, resents any suggestion that he's peddling soft porn. "It's the same that other premium TV networks like Showtime and HBO are showing."

Among the assets in his pending acquisition of the Advocate from PlanetOut Inc. are three "adult" magazines -- Freshmen, Men and Unzipped -- whose websites link to the e-commerce site BuyGay.com., which sells sex toys and adult videos.

But Colichman says once the acquisition closes that will cease. "We're not going to be selling those things," he said. "That's not our business." He added that he has asked the current owners to remove all adult advertising from the sites. Although Regent will retain the BuyGay.com domain name, it will be used to sell the Advocate and his other publications.

Those who know Colichman laud him for pushing the boundaries. When Waters, known for such films as "Pink Flamingos" and "Polyester," was hired by Here to pick movies for his film anthology series "John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You," Colichman gave him free rein.

"Paul let me do the show the way I wanted and let me pick films that even gay networks may have been alarmed at," said Waters, citing such titles as "Irreversible," a French thriller he calls "the most harrowing movie about rape ever made."

"He was brave to do a gay TV station and he's driven and obsessive in the best sense of the word," Waters said. "He doesn't consider that anything won't work."

LA TIMES

TV viewers' average age hits 50

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:51:01

]]> The broadcast networks have grown older than ever -- if they were a person, they wouldn't even be a part of TV's target demo anymore.

According to a study released by Magna Global's Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That's the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a decade ago -- and the first time the nets' median age was outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo.

Fueling the graying of the networks: the rapid aging of ABC, NBC and Fox. The three nets continue to grow older, while CBS -- the oldest-skewing network -- has remained fairly steady.

"The median ages of the broadcast networks keep rising, as traditional television is no longer necessarily the first screen for the younger set," Sternberg wrote.

For the just-completed 2007-08 TV season, CBS was oldest in live viewing with a median age of 54. ABC clocked in at 50, followed by NBC (49), Fox (44), CW (34) and Univision (34).

When live-plus-7 DVR viewing is factored in, the nets (except CW and Univision) drop by a year -- which still reps the oldest median age ever for the nets.

Sternberg notes that Fox and CW maintain median ages that are closer to the actual age of the population. The median age for U.S. households is 38.

Among ad-supported cable nets, the news nets (along with older-skewing Hallmark Channel, Golf Channel and GSN's daytime sked) sport the most gray, with Fox News Channel's daytime and primetime skeds the absolute oldest, clocking in with a median age above 65. Youngest nets are the daytime skeds for Noggin and Nickelodeon, with a median age under 10.

At ABC, youngest series was "Supernanny" (with a median age of 41), while oldest was "Women's Murder Club" (57). At CBS, youngest was "How I Met Your Mother," "Kid Nation" and the Tuesday edition of "Big Brother," tied at 45; oldest was "60 Minutes" (60). NBC's youngest show was "Scrubs" (34), and oldest was "Monk" (58).

At Fox, the youngest shows were "American Dad" and "Family Guy" (29), while the oldest was "Canterbury's Law" (55). At CW, "One Tree Hill" was youngest (26), while "Life Is Wild" was oldest (45).

Among latenight gabbers, "Tonight Show With Jay Leno" is oldest, with a median age of 54, followed by "Late Show With David Letterman" at 53. Interestingly, "Nightline" -- which should conceivably be older than those talkers, is younger, at 52. ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live," meanwhile, passed the 18-49 threshold for the first time, clocking in with a median of 50. "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" is getting closer at 46.

Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117988273.html

George Carlin: A Funny Man in an Unfunny World

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:28:09

]]> The world lost one of its great comedians this week with the death at age 71 of George Carlin. Carlin had a career as a stand-up comic that spanned a half-century, in which he continually broke new ground, targeting those in power with his wit and genius.

He impacted our culture, our media and our nation with a stream of material that skewered institutions of the left and right, from government to business and the church. He released 22 comedy albums, earning him five Emmy nominations and winning four Grammys. He was the first guest host of "Saturday Night Live," in 1975, and appeared on "The Tonight Show" 130 times. He starred in 14 HBO specials and authored three best-selling books. He also left an indelible mark on the radio station where I got my start in broadcast journalism, Pacifica station WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City.

On Oct. 30, 1973, WBAI broadcast Carlin's "Filthy Words" routine. Carlin wrote on his Web site, georgecarlin.com: "Lone professional moralist complains to FCC which issues a Declaratory Order against station. Station goes to court." That court battle would last five years, end at the U.S. Supreme Court and set the standard for broadcast indecency laws that are hotly debated to this day. It was neither accident nor coincidence that this iconoclastic comic would have some of his most controversial material broadcast over Pacifica Radio's WBAI. The Pacifica Network was founded in Berkeley, Calif., in 1949, with KPFA as the first truly listener-sponsored radio station.

Back then, radio was so overwhelmingly commercial that Pacifica founder Lew Hill and others found it worthless. As Hill wrote in his "Theory of Listener Sponsored Radio," "If we want an improvement in radio, the basic situation of broadcasting must be such that artists and thinkers have a place to work -- with freedom."

On July 3, 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission could punish WBAI for its broadcast of Carlin's routine, arguing that words relating to sex or excretion (i.e., piss) when children might be listening were prohibited. Supreme Court Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall dissented, noting the court's "depressing inability to appreciate that in our land of cultural pluralism, there are many who think, act, and talk differently from the Members of this Court, and who do not share their fragile sensibilities." Remarkably, 30 years later, the same issues are before a decidedly more conservative Supreme Court.

Recent episodes of "fleeting expletives" from the mouths of celebrities like Bono, Cher and Nicole Richie have prompted the FCC to seek enhanced power to punish broadcasters. George Carlin pointed out what in our society was truly indecent: the behavior of the powerful.

Yes, he spiced his delivery with expletives. He was angry. He, like Pacifica, gave voice to essential, dissident perspectives that have been almost entirely blocked from mainstream media. He said: "We were founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. Am I right? A group of slave owners who wanted to be free, so they killed a lot of white English people in order to continue owning their black African people, so they could wipe out the rest of the red Indian people and move west and steal the rest of the land from the brown Mexican people, giving them a place to take off and drop their nuclear weapons on the yellow Japanese people. You know what the motto of this country ought to be? You give us a color, we'll wipe it out."

His prolific output will continue to inspire for generations to come.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!

View this story online at:

Radio One releases largest national survey conducted on African-Americans

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:48:54

]]> According to one of the largest-ever studies of Black America, 70 percent of African Americans already have a plan for their future. The survey was released today by Radio One, Inc., the study's sponsor, and Yankelovich, the Chapel Hill-based research firm.

The survey of 3,400 African Americans between 13 and 74 years of age, the only study to include Black teens and seniors, found also that 54 percent were optimistic about their future and 60 percent believe "things are getting better for me."

The study provides the most detailed snap shot of African American life in the United States today, and finds strong group identity across age and income brackets. It also discloses a comprehensive and nuanced look at how African Americans feel about many aspects of life in America, and cautions against a simplistic reading of Black America as a monolithic group. In fact, it shows that Blacks are divided evenly on how they liked to be described, with 42 percent (who are more likely to be affluent) preferring to be called "Black" and 44 percent preferring "African American."

The survey, representing nearly 30 million Black Americans, identified eleven specific segments within Black America today, ranging from Connected Black Teens, Digital Networkers and Black Onliners at the younger end, to Faith Fulfills, Broadcast Blacks and Boomer Blacks at the older end.

The segmentation analysis identifies differences in Black America regarding everything from what it means to be Black today, perceptions about African American history and expectations for the future of Blacks, to consumer trends, media preferences and confidence in key institutions (such as the church, government, financial services companies and the media).

For instance, among the Connected Black Teens segment, 25 percent are saving to start a business. Yet, among Digital Networkers, the majority of whom are in their 20s, 45 percent are already saving for retirement.

"While people are less inclined these days to think that all Blacks are the same, they really do not understand the diversity within the African American community," Catherine Hughes, Founder and Chairperson of the Board, said. "Blacks share many commonalities regardless of age, income and geography, but there are also differences -- that suggest a new understanding of the past and a more optimistic sense of the future. We're confident that Black Americans -- and all Americans -- will find the results of the survey useful and in some cases surprising, given perceptions about Black life that are still pervasive in our country."

Alfred C. Liggins, CEO and President, explained that Radio One commissioned Yankelovich to conduct the study to learn more about what Black Americans are thinking today about all aspects of their lives, including their hopes for the future, their fears, the institutions they love and hate, how they get information, whether they are plugged into the Internet, and what they want for themselves and their children.

"We wanted to know in detail who we are, what we want and where we are going," Mr. Liggins said.

What is Black America today? The average household of those surveyed has three people in it, half of whom live in a single family home, one-third in apartments, one-third in the suburbs and half in cities. Among 29 to 74 year-olds, one-third are married. 61 percent of Black Americans are parents, five percent of 13 to 17 year-olds are parents, and half of all parents are single parents.

From an educational and economic standpoint, 34 percent of those surveyed who are 18 or older have some college or a two-year degree, 21 percent have a BA or higher, 40 percent have an annual income under $25,000 (20 percent of whom are retired), and one-third more than $50,000.

The digital divide has faded. 68 percent of those surveyed are online (compared to 71 percent of all Americans), and two-thirds of them shop online. Among Black teens, over 90 percent are online. Blacks who live in the south are least likely to be online (63 percent).

Black identity remains strong across all age and economic groups. While 56 percent of those surveyed have "all" or "almost" all Black friends, only 30 percent said they prefer being around people of the same race. Black solidarity too is strong across all groups, with 88 percent saying they have enormous respect for the opinions of their elders (84 percent among teens). While 71 percent overall said they believe Blacks need to stick together to achieve gains for their community, only 54 percent of teens concurred.

Discrimination remains a very real part of Black life in America. While 24 percent said they had been personally discriminated against in the past three months, 82 percent said they believe it is "important for parents to prepare their children for prejudice." 67 percent overall said they believe the history of slavery is a key way in which Blacks are different from other groups, but one-third also say that too much emphasis is put on the oppression of Blacks.

While 72 percent of Blacks say they know how to have fun and 60 percent think things are getting better for them, many often feel stressed (33 percent). Money is the greatest cause of stress (53 percent) followed by the well being of kids (49 percent) and health (40 percent). While only 3 in 10 feel financially secure, 8 in 10 pay their bills each month.

Among other findings in the report:

-- 83 percent of those surveyed have health insurance, a majority (66 percent of women and 52 percent of men) has family doctors, and 40 percent of Blacks who go online search the internet for health and medical information.

-- 83 percent of those surveyed describe themselves as Christian, though only 41 percent go to church at least once a week. 70 percent of women and 59 percent of men believe that faith in God is more likely to help them recover from a serious illness.

-- 72 percent want to learn more about how to invest. 50 percent believe banks and other financial institutions do not understand their needs; and only 8 percent trust credit card companies.

-- 21 percent shop for fun frequently and 19 percent said they have to have what they like even if it costs more than they would like to spend.

-- Blacks are wary of many American institutions. They have the highest level of trust in the education system and Black media to treat them and their families fairly (30 percent) compared to 24 percent for the healthcare system, 12 to 16 percent for police, government, and mainstream media and 8 percent for credit card companies.

-- Other media highlights include: 84 percent of households have cable, 81 percent of those surveyed watch Black TV channels weekly, 87 percent listen to radio in a typical week (only 16 percent listen to Satellite radio), 64 percent watch news or news magazines and 50 percent watch Court shows (compared to 41 percent for sports and 46 percent for entertainment)

-- Blacks are not satisfied with how they are portrayed by the media. Only 29 percent agree that the mainstream media portrays Blacks in a positive light -- compared to 50 percent who do not relate to the way Blacks are portrayed on most Black TV shows. Two-thirds believe there should be more television shows that focus on Blacks. Forty percent think Black TV is reinforcing a negative stereotype of Blacks.

For more information about the Black America Today study, please visit http://www.blackamericastudy.com. />

MySpace, NBC seek citizen journalists

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:49:06

]]> Dubbed Decision 08 Convention, the contest lets MySpace users 18 and older submit short videos on why they should be selected to cover the upcoming party conventions.

Social networking site MySpace.com is partnering with NBC News and MSNBC.com to launch a contest to find two citizen journalists to cover the upcoming presidential conventions.

Dubbed Decision 08 Convention, the contest lets MySpace users 18 and older submit short videos on why they should be selected.

A panel of judges will select five finalists and the MySpace community then will vote for two to be citizen journalists, one to cover each of the conventions.

Submission starts Thursday. Participants should upload videos less than two minutes long and answer one of the following questions: Why do you vote? Why are you the best person for this job? How will you stand out in the crowd and get the scoop no one else can?

The submission period closes on Wednesday, July 16, at 3 p.m.

MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdochs News Corp

TV WEEK

Laptop Searches in Airports Draw Fire at Senate Hearing

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:00:09

]]> Advocacy groups and some legal experts told Congress on Wednesday that it was unreasonable for federal officials to search the laptops of United States citizens when they re-enter the country from traveling abroad.

Civil rights groups have said certain ethnic groups have been selectively profiled in the searches by Border Patrol agents and customs officials who have the authority to inspect all luggage and cargo brought into the country without obtaining warrants or having probable cause.

Companies whose employees travel overseas have also criticized the inspections, saying that the search of electronic devices could hurt their businesses.

The federal government says the searches are necessary for national security and for legal action against people who bring illegal material into the country.

If you asked most Americans whether the government has the right to look through their luggage for contraband when they are returning from an overseas trip, they would tell you yes, the government has that right, Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, said Wednesday at the hearing of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee.

But, Mr. Feingold continued, if you asked them whether the government has a right to open their laptops, read their documents and e-mails, look at their photographs and examine the Web sites they have visited, all without any suspicion of wrongdoing, I think those same Americans would say that the government absolutely has no right to do that.

In April, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Customs and Border Protection agency could conduct searches without reasonable suspicion.

In her testimony, Farhana Y. Khera, the president and executive director of Muslim Advocates, said Muslim Americans traveling abroad had often had electronic storage devices seized without apparent cause. She said several had also been questioned about their political views.

Susan K. Gurley, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, said the seizing of laptops could hurt people who travel overseas for business.

In todays wired, networked and borderless world, ones office no longer sits within four walls or a cubicle; rather, ones office consists of a collection of mobile electronic devices such as a laptop, a BlackBerry, PDA, and a cellphone, Ms. Gurley said in prepared remarks.

She said the searches meant that you may find yourself effectively locked out of your office indefinitely.

Ms. Gurley said a concern was the lack of published regulations explaining what happened to data when it was seized and who had access to it.

Tim Sparapani, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview, You cant go into my home and search my computer without a warrant, but simply because Im carrying my computer with me as I travel, you can search it.

But Nathan A. Sales, an assistant professor at the George Mason University School of Law, said in a statement: The reason the home has enjoyed uniquely robust privacy protections in the Anglo-American legal tradition is because it is a sanctuary into which the owner can withdraw from the governments watchful eye. Crossing an international border is in many ways the opposite of this kind of withdrawal.

Mr. Feingold expressed discontent that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the customs and border agency, did not send a witness to testify. He said a written statement by Jayson P. Ahern, deputy commissioner for the agency, provided little meaningful detail on the agencys policies.

Mr. Aherns statement said that the agencys efforts did not infringe upon privacy and that it was important to note that the agency was responsible for enforcing over 600 laws at the border, including those that relate to narcotics, intellectual property, child pornography and other contraband, and terrorism.

NEW YORK TIMES

Change They Want: University Net Creates Socially Conscious Shows

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:23:04

]]> The University Network (TUN), which has a presence on more than 280 campuses across the country, is launching programming in late summer focusing on socially conscious artists.

The initial 10 segments of "BeFree" will feature hip-hop stars Pharoahe Monch and Hasan Salaam, with future versions to focus on up-and-coming acts and even music professors and students. In general, they are labeled as "artists who are facilitating social change through their music."

The new programming is scheduled to debut as students head back to school for the fall.

TUN, part of Submedia, is ad-supported with marketers such as AirTran Airways, "Obama for President" and Nintendo Wii targeting the lucrative college-age set.

"Marketers have seen their holy grail audience become increasingly disconnected from mainstream entertainment shows and music," said Max Saffer, a vice president at TUN, who produced the programming.

"College students are drawn to original music with an uplifting and politically aware message. "BeFree" connects student viewers with the entertainment subjects they are discovering in their own time," he adds, "and that deliver a message marketers are comfortable being associated with."

TUN has programming partnerships with NBC on Campus, eAsylum and Jim Cramer's The Street TV.

MEDIA POST

Reporters Say Networks Block War Reports

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:21:37

]]> Getting a story on the evening news isn't easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network.

"Generally what I say is, 'I'm holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,'" she said last week in an appearance on "The Daily Show," referring to the initials for rocket-propelled grenade." 'It's aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don't put my story on the air, I'm going to pull the trigger.'"

Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.

"If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts," Ms. Logan said.

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been "massively scaled back this year." Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The "CBS Evening News" has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC's "World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News." (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television "with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad." He said CBS correspondents can "get in there very quickly when a story merits it."

In a telephone interview last week, Ms. Logan said the CBS News bureau in Baghdad was "drastically downsized" in the spring. The network now keeps a producer in the country, making it less of a bureau and more of an office.

Interviews with executives and correspondents at television news networks suggested that while the CBS cutbacks are the most extensive to date in Baghdad, many journalists shared varying levels of frustration about placing war stories onto newscasts. "I've never met a journalist who hasn't been frustrated about getting his or her stories on the air," said Terry McCarthy, an ABC News correspondent in Baghdad.

By telephone from Baghdad, Mr. McCarthy said he was not as busy as he was a year ago. A decline in the relative amount of violence "is taking the urgency out" of some of the coverage, he said. Still, he gets on ABC's "World News" and other programs with stories, including one on Friday about American gains in northern Iraq.

Anita McNaught, a correspondent for the Fox News Channel, agreed. "The violence itself is not the story anymore," she said. She counted eight reports she had filed since arriving in Baghdad six weeks ago, noting that cable news channels like Fox News and CNN have considerably more time to fill with news than the networks. CNN and Fox each have two fulltime correspondents in Iraq.

Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, who splits his time between Iraq and other countries, said he found his producers "very receptive to stories about Iraq." He and other journalists noted that the heated presidential primary campaign put other news stories on the back burner earlier this year.

Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her, "One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform." In the follow-up phone interview, Ms. Logan said the producer no longer worked at CBS. And in both interviews, she emphasized that many journalists at CBS News are pushing for war coverage, specifically citing Jeff Fager, the executive producer of "60 Minutes." CBS News won a Peabody Award last week for a "60 Minutes" report about a Marine charged in the killings at Haditha.

On "The Daily Show," Ms. Logan echoed the comments of other journalists when she said that many Americans seem uninterested in the wars now. Mr. McCarthy said that when he is in the United States, bringing up Baghdad at a dinner party "is like a conversation killer."

Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has increased slightly this year, with 46 minutes of total coverage year-to-date compared with 83 minutes for all of 2007. NBC has spent 25 minutes covering Afghanistan, partly because the anchor Brian Williams visited the country earlier in the month. Through Wednesday, when an ABC correspondent was in the middle of a prolonged visit to the country, ABC had spent 13 minutes covering Afghanistan. CBS has spent eight minutes covering Afghanistan so far this year.

Both Ms. Logan and Mr. McCarthy noted that more coalition soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in May than in Iraq. No American television network has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan, although CNN recently said it would open a bureau in Kabul.

"It's terrible," Ms. Logan said in the telephone interview. She called it a financial decision. "We can't afford to maintain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time," she said. "It's so expensive and the security risks are so great that it's prohibitive."

Mr. Friedman said coverage of Iraq is enormously expensive, mostly due to the security risks. He said meetings with other television networks about sharing the costs of coverage have faltered for logistical reasons.

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.

NEW YORK TIMES