I just opened this first message. It stems directly out of the concerns of what was supposed to be the main story - that of the FCC being blasted because of promoting consolidation and non-local ownership in media. If you needed a jolt to see this process of money uber alles as a serious and personal threat, we all just got it. What's needed is the vox populae to finally rise up and demand a reversal of this process, then to vote out these enemies of democracy. Ed
----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 11:22 AM Subject: Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey Johnson Fired After Defying Tribune - LA Times 10/5 http://www.laobserved.com/ Johnson fired as Times publisher! Kevin Roderick It's breaking this morning. Editor Dean Baquet is said to be in meetings with Tribune this morning. The Times says in an online story that Johnson was asked to resign and that David Hiller, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, would immediately replace him. Hiller is expected to ask Baquet to stay on, but friends say he has not yet decided. Sources say the Tribune hit team team arrived in Los Angeles last night. ********* http://www.latimes.com/business/la-100506johnson,0,3972238.story?coll=la-home-headlines Times Publisher Johnson Is Asked to Resign By James Rainey Times Staff Writer 10:58 AM PDT, October 5, 2006 The Tribune Co. asked Los Angeles Times Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson to resign this morning, a little more than a month after he defied the media conglomerate's demands for staff cuts that he suggested could damage the newspaper. Tribune Publishing President Scott C. Smith was huddling with top managers at the newspaper and was expected to announce after the meeting that David Hiller, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, would immediately replace Johnson as chief executive at the 125-year-old newspaper. Hiller was expected to ask Times Editor Dean Baquet to stay on the job, despite the editor's sharp protests against further job cuts by the Chicago-based parent corporation. Friends of Baquet said the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist had not yet decided to remain with the paper. Late last month, Tribune announced that it would entertain offers to sell the company or break it into pieces. The company's board agreed to study the possible sale or breakup of the media company, which owns the Chicago Tribune, KTLA-TV Channel 5, baseball's Chicago Cubs and other TV stations and newspapers. Tribune bought the Los Angeles-based Times Mirror Co. in 2000. The turmoil at Tribune's largest property comes at a time of marked uncertainty for many media companies, which have seen their audiences and advertising revenues declining with competition from the Internet and other news outlets. [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-silver/fcc-chairman-martin-hears_b_30912.html?view=print Huffington Post Josh Silver 10.03.2006 FCC Chairman Martin Hears Overwhelming Public Opposition to Big Media A standing-room only crowd of more than 500 Angelenos packed into USC's Davidson Conference Center today to speak out against media consolidation. The event, the first of two official Federal Communications Commission hearings held in Los Angeles, gave the public and leaders of the city's creative, labor and civil rights community a chance to tell all five FCC commissioners how proposed changes to media ownership limits would adversely affect their lives and work. "The decisions we will make about our ownership rules will be as difficult as they are critical," Chairman Kevin Martin said in his opening statement in Los Angeles. "Public input is critical to this process." Martin pledged to convene at least five more hearings before the agency makes a decision on proposed rule changes. The event featured panel discussions with elected officials, civil rights and labor leaders, entertainers, policy analysts and public advocates. In speech after speech the presenters and the public urged the FCC commissioners to address an appalling lack of diversity, localism and competition in U.S. Media. The citizens of Los Angeles sent a clear message about how the public airwaves should be used to serve the public interest, not the financial priorities of a few big media corporations. The FCC must first address the concerns raised in Los Angeles and in all proposed FCC hearings before rewriting rules that limit media consolidation. "The media are vital to our democracy," said Congresswoman Diane Watson. "We want to create a true free market where everyone can have a seat at the table. We need to ensure that the power of American entrepreneurialism is not stifled by just a few media giants." "There is a gap between those who own the airwaves -- the people the public -- and those who control the airwaves and act against the public interest," said civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson, who cited a recent Free Press study that shows an appalling lack of minority- and female-owned television stations across the country. "Media ownership should look like America." "Our watch word in this discussion is that the airwaves belong to the American people and we believe it's time to take them back," said John Connelly, national president of AFTRA. "That is our desire and our objective and we believe that it is the FCC's job to serve our interests." "When the local programming decisions are prohibited by a remote corporate parent, the public interest is not being served," said Tim Winter, executive director of the Parents Television Council. "I urge the commissioners to listen carefully but separate the special interests from the public interest and base your decisions on what you hear here today and what best serves the public interest." Following the panel, the five commissioners listened to dozens of citizens -- some waiting in line for more than two hours to get into the hearing -- who expressed concerns about the quality of local news and programming, lack of diversity over the airwaves, and the barriers placed on independent content and local control by Big Media corporations. "In today's marketplace, being fired from one station is like being fired from eight stations," said longtime broadcaster and AFTRA member Bernie Allen. "How do you expect these corporations to give us a diversity of opinion if they can't even give the marketplace a diversity of programs?" "What is the point of spending time on a creation that you know will be taken from you?" said Sally Hampton, an independent writer, producer and director. "These conglomerates do not have any incentives to work with true independents." "I personally feel that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was a disaster. It made my station worth a lot more money. But that's not the point. It's the public interest that matters," said Saul Levine, a local radio station owner. "Radio is the town hall of America. But it's small, family-owned, independent operators that count. There's no public benefit to allowing Clear Channel to have more stations. It will drive me out of business." ### http://select.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/opinion/05herbert.html?th&emc=th Poor, Black, and Dumped On By BOB HERBERT Published: October 5, 2006 Most of the carnage - the terrible illnesses and the premature deaths - is hidden. "The people in those agencies who issue the permits, and then do very little monitoring and very little enforcement in our communities, they don't go with us to the emergency rooms where the children are suffering from serious asthma attacks. And they certainly don't go with us to the funeral homes where we bury people who are 40 years old and have died of cancer. They don't see the terrible damage that this stuff is doing." Monique Harden, a lawyer and director of a human rights agency in New Orleans, was talking about a problem that will get no attention at all in the Congressional elections, which are primarily about foolishness and the compulsion to deceive. The evidence has been before us for decades that black people, other ethnic minorities and some poor whites have been getting sick and enduring horrible deaths from the filth that they breathe, eat, drink and otherwise ingest from the garbage dumps, landfills, incinerators, toxic waste sites, oil refineries, petrochemical plants and other world-class generators of pollution that have been deliberately and relentlessly installed in the neighborhoods where they live, work, worship and go to school. Two colossal environmental debacles occurred, for example, in West Anniston, Ala., a neighborhood that is mostly black and mostly poor. A chemical plant conveniently located there produced thousands of pounds of potentially deadly polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's) each year. For years after the danger was apparent, residents were left uninformed. Some were later found to have the highest concentrations of PCB's in their bloodstreams of anyone ever tested. But the PCB's from the chemical plant were just one of many risks faced by the residents. In 2003 the military began burning deadly chemical weapons stored at the Anniston Army Depot in West Anniston. Emissions associated with burning chemical weapons include dioxins, PCB's, furans, heavy metals and trace amounts of nerve and mustard gas agents. The Rev. Henry Sterling, a pastor in Anniston, told me with great sadness how he had buried his niece who had died from cancer when she was just 30, and then two days later had to bury two other women in their 20's, and then the following week two more women in their late 20's. He added, "My secretary was from here, and she was just 32 when she died from cancer. We have young men dying, too. But during that short period it just happened to be all women. " We've known - or should have known - since at least 1987, when a landmark study was published by the Commission on Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ, that wildly disproportionate numbers of hazardous waste sites have been placed in communities with large concentrations of black and Latino residents. Since then an enormous amount of data has been compiled showing that government and industry alike have used black and poor neighborhoods as dumping grounds for the vilest and most dangerous of pollutants. You go to these communities, where the air can be thick enough to make you gag, and you find that the rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke and the like are off the charts. The largest hazardous waste landfill in America is near the small, rural town of Emelle, in Sumter County, which is part of the so-called "black belt" of Alabama. It takes in hazardous materials from 48 states and some foreign countries. More than 70 percent of the Sumter County population, and more than 90 percent of the population of Emelle, is black. The systematic placement of garbage dumps, chemical plants, oil refineries and other hazardous facilities in communities inhabited primarily by blacks and other disadvantaged groups is nothing less than an unconscionable extension of the devastating Jim Crow policies that have existed in one form or another, legally or illegally, since slavery. More than 70 environmental, human rights and public health groups participated in a bus tour last week - dubbed "The Environmental Justice for All Tour" - that visited communities across the country that have suffered terrible damage from these blatantly discriminatory policies. The tour was enthusiastically received at each stop, but got hardly any attention from the larger society. The message to blacks and others struggling with these hideous policies could not have been clearer: we are not in the least interested in you. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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