audio by year 2009

Media Minutes looks at five of the top stories of 2008: The FCC proceedings concerning Net Neutrality, the 700 MHz spectrum auction and white spaces; Pentagon propaganda; journalists’ arrests at the RNC; and grassroots media organizing for PEG and LPFM.

A $44 billion broadband stimulus package would bring world-class, high-speed broadband to everyone in America and create 3 million new jobs. And media reformers offer their best wishes for 2009.

The FCC wants to know if Comcast is favoring its own digital phone service over others. And Progress Illinois is fighting Fox News for suspending their YouTube account for using video clips from the local Fox affiliate.

Building a fiber optic broadband network is expensive, so why not add the conduits when we dig new roads and repair old ones? And a new movie highlights the controversies surrounding copyright, intellectual property and music.

A new book written by 16 scholars lays out a communications policy agenda for the Obama administration. And the National Hispanic Media Coalition wants to know whether a spike in anti-Latino hate speech in the media is contributing to increased violence against Latinos.

Community television advocates have asked the FCC to investigate AT&T's treatment of public, educational and governmental channels on its U-verse cable TV system. And with tools for mapping and data gathering getting easier to use, people are taking government transparency into their own hands.

Public advocates shared their ideas about how to use the $7 billion marked for broadband in President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package. And hundreds of journalists, activists, academics, artists and students are coming together for the Sixth Annual Women, Action and the Media Conference.

Blogger Glen Greenwald and Democracy Now! host and executive producer Amy Goodman are sharing the first annual Izzy Award for Independent Media. And the Local Community Radio Act will be invaluable to local musicians across the country.

The open nature of the Internet will be lost if Internet Service Providers are allowed to use a technology called Deep Packet Inspection to snoop on Internet users’ data and communications. And EFF’s “Surveillance Self-Defense” guide shows you how to legally protect your computer data against government spying.

Good friends of mine Lightning and Monk are at it again. Lightnen' lives in the boonies in a corn field with no electrity and he asked me to put this somewhere on line so his sister, family and friends could here the Motzart in him. When they first thought up the $5000 a Second theme it had do do with the cost of the Iraq war.

The FCC came one step closer to increasing the diversity in media ownership by proposing changes that should give the public accurate information on the race, ethnicity and gender of broadcast station owners. And as technology becomes central to media distribution, anyone with a message to share must embrace their inner geek.

An industry-sponsored bill in the North Carolina state legislature would squash attempts by cities and towns to follow the City of Wilson’s lead and build their own broadband networks. And local radio advocates lobbied Congress last week to pass the Local Community Radio Act.

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on “The Future of Journalism.” And a new study from the Future of Music Coalition examines playlist data from across the country to determine if FCC efforts to diversify music on the radio have made an impact.

People in prison and their families are paying excessively high telephone bills to keep in touch. And in Chicago, four top TV news stations will share newsgathering resources, but one top station refused to join them.

What will it take for individual members of humankind to realize that all 6.7 billion of us are interdependent as brothers and sisters? Is the Revelation story of endless war leading to a final judgment day of species suicidal extinction written in stone and therefore unavoidable? What would you do on the very last day?

A rich discussion about the future of journalism, the importance of public media and the urgent need for high-speed broadband access throughout the United States took place in Washington, D.C., as stakeholders from each sector sat together to talk about issues of content production and infrastructure.

Local radio wins a victory in the courts and gets a hearing in Congress. And the ACLU helps lead the way in unblocking websites based on "viewpoint discrimination" in Tennessee and Indiana schools.

The Broadband Internet Fairness Act would help prevent overcharging by Internet Service Providers by requiring the companies to submit their pricing schemes to the Federal Trade Commission for approval. And the Allied Media Conference incorporates a wide range of issues and artists, educators, and social justice organizers who use media as a tool for change.

The House considers legislation on protecting consumers from online marketers' secret data mining for behavioral advertising. Julius Genachowski become Chairman of the FCC, and the Personal Democracy Forum mashed up politics and technology for the sixth year.

New FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wasted no time in moving the process of creating a national broadband plan to the top of his agenda. And the new criteria for broadband stimulus funding make Net Neutrality a basic rule of the road.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) told FCC nominees Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Attwell Baker that the FCC was broken and he expects them to fix it. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) asked Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor about the Internet and the First Amendment.

The closing of the Bay State Banner, Boston's only black-owned community newspaper, is another example of the systemic crisis facing journalism. And Verizon is back in the Massachusetts legislature with a new video franchise bill that could harm community media.

As Google expands it book search service, consumer privacy protections are shrinking. Privacy watchdogs want the search giant to takes steps to ensure our privacy. And Dan Rather called on President Barack Obama to form a White House commission on journalism and public media.