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Blowing bubbles has become a symbol of what happened at the G20 Protests in Toronto…

Hundreds of protesters expected to blow bubbles at Toronto rally
www.digitaljournal.com/article/294791
“Digital Journal reported on Friday that a woman was arrested shortly after she began to blow bubbles at two police officers. One of officers threatened to arrest of her if any of the bubbles hit him because it was an act of assault. The officer has been dubbed: Officer Bubbles.”
…
“During the G20, the police acted in a way that directly contradicts how we believe a lawful society should behave. Many protesters and innocent bystanders were unjustly arrested and detained for up to 36 hours, some without even the right to have access to a lawyer or a phone call.”

Two things I’ve learned in Canada are:

A perogy is a potato based food stuffed with cheese or other tasty fillings.

Proroguing Parliament is when a Prime Minister closes Parliamentary sessions for a period, often to avoid facing up to scandal or just to get a nice long vacation (which this time was met with giant waves of protest in rallies today all across the country!)

One estimate said over 7000 people attended in Toronto! I took photos, including these:

Yesterday, the new edition of the hugely popular networked computer game Warcraft came out and the store where I work is selling out quickly (as of writing this sentence there is only one left.)

Today there are 263 stories on Google News about the phenomenon.

As someone who used to play video and role playing games, I understand the appeal. That said, some of the customers buying it look as if they do not leave the house very often and I sometimes feel like a drug dealer helping people get their fix. I have encouraged several of them to remember to go outside and play from time to time…

BBC Video: Hordes Greet Warcraft Expansion
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7725328.stm

related blog post:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/11/addicted_to_warcraft.html
The problem with WoW is that the whole game is engineered to be addictive and to get you in to a headlock. First of all you’ve got the point and the level system you have to work through – because we’re all fallen sinners we are never content so you start the night saying right I’m gonna get to lvl. 52 tonight, then you get there and it’s approaching mid-night and your thinking, well i might as well keep going for a bit to see what the lvl. 52 quests are like and hey presto before you know it your deep into lvl. 52 and you just know you’ve blown your chances of making it to the library by 9am the next morning! The other thing that makes it addictive and gets you in a headlock the the whole Guild thing. If your in a Guild with say a gang of player around lvl. 50 then you can’t take a week or two away from the game because when you get back the rest of your Guild will be deep into the lvl. 60s. You just have to keep playing daily to keep up with everyone else. Vicious circle.

While it’s important to have at least a general awareness of what’s going on in the world around you, following all the crime and violence news in the papers, on TV, or the Internet really serves no purpose other than to make one feel more stress.

Love globally, focus locally!

Television stations are airing “news” segments that have been produced by corporate entities more than ever. It’s tempting for stations to use these as they’re already pre-produced, which is good for tight timelines and budgets.

However, this is essentially about an attempt to disguise advertising as journalism. Unfortunately, many people believe that what they see on the news is what’s really happening.

Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed
http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/execsummary
Over a ten-month period, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) documented television newsrooms’ use of 36 video news releases (VNRs)—a small sample of the thousands produced each year. CMD identified 77 television stations, from those in the largest to the smallest markets, that aired these VNRs or related satellite media tours (SMTs) in 98 separate instances, without disclosure to viewers. Collectively, these 77 stations reach more than half of the U.S. population. The VNRs and SMTs whose broadcast CMD documented were produced by three broadcast PR firms for 49 different clients, including General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One. In each case, these 77 television stations actively disguised the sponsored content to make it appear to be their own reporting. In almost all cases, stations failed to balance the clients’ messages with independently-gathered footage or basic journalistic research. More than one-third of the time, stations aired the pre-packaged VNR in its entirety.

Medialink
http://content2.medialink.com/vnr.htm
Pioneered professionally by Medialink, the Video News Release (VNR), the television version of the printed press release, translates the printed word into the sound and pictures television newsrooms need. Produced in broadcast news style, VNRs relay the news of a product launch, medical discovery, corporate merger event, timely feature or breaking news to television news decision-makers. Every major television station in the world now uses VNRs regularly, and most are from Medialink. It’s a fact.

The most efficient notification and direct pathways ensure that your VNR advisory and full script reach news directors around the globe in the manner they prefer.

No Fake News
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/fakenews
Corporate propaganda has infiltrated local TV newscasts, with disguised product advertisements posing as genuine news reports. This represents a breach of the trust between broadcasters and their viewers.

Take action to stop fake news today. Demand that the Federal Communications Commission investigate, strengthen disclosure requirements and punish stations that air fake news.

I bought Rob Brezny’s new book Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings because I love his work so much.

Here’s a gem from page 44:

   How did it come to be that what we call the news is reported solely by journalists? There are so many other kinds of events besides the narrow band favored by that highly specialized brand of storytellers. Indeed, there are many phenomena that can literally not even be perceived by journalists. Their training, their temperament, and their ambitions make vast areas of human experience invisible to them.
   ”Ninety-six percent of the cosmos puzzles astronomers.” I loved reading that headline on the CNN website. It showed that at least some of our cultural equivalents of high priests, the scientists, are humble enough to acknowledge that the universe is made mostly of stuff they can’t even detect, let alone study.
   If only the journalists were equally modest. Since they’re not, we’ll say it” The majority of everything that happens on this planet is invisible to them.

Here’s a tidbit on the effect that the Internet is having on how people get their news!

Democratic Media: A Do-it-Yourself Starter Kit
http://www.prwatch.org/node/3782
Running counter to this trend, there is a growing citizen journalism movement that is broadening the ranks of reporters and bringing in new voices that are more diverse and harder to tame than companies like Viacom or Disney. One of the most successful examples, South Korea’s OhMyNews, has played an important role in transforming the country’s traditionally conservative, corrupt political system. It has also become a commercial success and has grown to include an English-language international edition.

As the archbishop observed in his sermon, internet-powered citizen journalism has the potential to undermine some of the “near-monopolistic practices” and “control of the product” now found in the traditional media, but it has some problems of its own: “Unwelcome truth and necessary and prompt rebuttal are characteristic of the web-based media. So are paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry. The atmosphere is close to that of unpoliced conversation – which tends to suggest that the very idea of an appropriate professionalism for journalists begins to dissolve.”

Here are two stories about how one missing girl case has dominated the American news: one from the BBC and one from a Political Teen blog!

Missing teen case grips US media
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4125492.stm
Columnist and author Arianna Huffington says: “If you were to get your news only from television, you’d think the top issue facing our country right now is an 18-year-old girl named Natalee who went missing in Aruba.

“Every time one of these stories comes up, like, say, Michael Jackson, when it’s finally over I think, what a relief, now we can get back to real news. But we never do.”

The Political Teen: everyone drop what you’re doing a white girl has gone missing
http://thepoliticalteen.net/2005/06/04/everyone-drop-what-theyre-doing-a-white-girl-has-gone-missing/
I am sorry to hear that another person has gone missing and there is no sign as to where she is. However, why is it always white, young, girls that seem to make news. You know there are hundreds, if not thousands of other people missing, but it is always the stereotype that is on your 6 o’clock news.

The United States government is now producing a television station for the citizens of Iraq. I wonder how this will go over…

Your tax dollars at work!

Good Morning Iraq: US Sponsored Television in the Middle East is “Cheaper than an Invasion”
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,357110,00.html
Al-Hurra means “the free one” in Arabic. The station is intended to function as a counterweight to the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network — the voice of the Arab world — which routinely portrays the United States as a hated and suspect global power. At least this is how America interprets the station — and that’s why the Bush administration has created Al-Hurra.

Al-Hurra’s headquarters are located in a two-story brick building about 20 miles outside of Washington, DC. Most of the office buildings on Boston Boulevard in Springfield, Virginia, are occupied by companies involved in the US aviation and defense industry. Al-Hurra leases its offices from Boeing.

This may sound really weird, but I find Ann Coulter totally inspiring.

I’d like to be just like her, minus the hate, fear, egotism, and misguided nationalism!

Why Anti-Coulter?
http://users.rcn.com/skutsch/anticoulter/why.html
Ann Coulter is a pundit who has made her mark as one of the loudest and most controversial of the far-right shouters on the web and on the airwaves. Her views are Neanderthal in their conservatism (scroll down for some typical quotes), yet she attracts a fair bit of attention (yes, I do catch the irony that this web site is part of that attention) and with, I feel, too few reasoned attempts to refute her flawed and harmful polemics. In column after column she fires crazed missiles of warped ideology at innocent and defenseless common sense. With this web site, however, common sense is armed and shooting back!

Quotes From Ann Coulter
http://users.rcn.com/skutsch/anticoulter/quotes.html
COULTER: I take the biblical idea. God gave us the earth.
PETER FENN (Democratic strategist): Oh, OK.
COULTER: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees.
FENN: This is a great idea.
COULTER: God says, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”
FENN: Terrific. We’re Americans, so we should consume as much of the Earth’s resources…
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: … as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.

RightWingNews.com: Best Quotes From Ann Coulter’s Columns
http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/coulterquotes.php
If John Kerry had a dollar for every time he bragged about serving in Vietnam — oh wait, he does.

We’ve all become so desensitized to advertising that companies (and the government!) are looking for new ways to reach the public with their messages. Making advertising look like news via a “video news release” (VNR for short) is getting more and more popular despite the fact that it should be illegal.

Medialink
http://www.medialink.com/vnr.htm
Pioneered professionally by Medialink, the Video News Release (VNR), the television version of the printed press release, translates the printed word into the sound and pictures television newsrooms need. Produced in broadcast news style, VNRs relay the news of a product launch, medical discovery, corporate merger event, timely feature or breaking news to television news decision-makers. Every major television station in the world now uses VNRs regularly, and most are from Medialink. It’s a fact.

The Art of Manufactured News
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA513090.html?display=Feature&referral=SUPP
For viewers, discerning real news from pitches has never been harder. Sometimes the paid “newscasts” are authentic reports sponsored by a client. Other times, they’re corporate videos disguised as newscasts. Medialink has made buys for the latter on Rainbow Networks’ AMC and Fuse channels, among others, and for General Motors Corp., Siemens AG and Philips. One of its competitors, News Broadcast Network (NBN), a New York-based company that distributes conventional VNRs and corporate B-rolls, buys remnant time on cable networks and on stations in small TV markets, as well as on radio stations.

And Now, the Counterfeit News
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031605O.shtml
Most of these tapes are very skillfully done, including “interviews” that seem genuine and “reporters” who look much like the real thing. Only sophisticated viewers would easily recognize that these videos are actually unpaid commercial announcements for the White House or some other part of the government. Some of the videos clearly cross the line into the proscribed territory of propaganda, and the Government Accountability Office says at least two were illegally distributed.

United States Government Accountability Office: Office of National Drug Control Policy
http://www.gao.gov/decisions/appro/303495.htm
For the purposes of this opinion, we examined eight VNRs seven that you provided as part of your request, and one more that ONDCP provided to us. Seven of the eight VNRs include prepackaged news stories. As explained below, we conclude that the prepackaged news stories in these VNRs constitute covert propaganda and violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition because ONDCP did not identify itself to the viewing audience as the producer and distributor of these prepackaged news stories.

White House to agencies: Ignore GAO’s ruling on ‘illegal’ TV news releases
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0315bush-news15.html
The White House, intent on continuing to crank out “video news releases” that look like television news stories, has told government agency heads to ignore a Government Accountability Office memo criticizing the practice as illegal propaganda.

Here’s another one about people working hard on the PR front to counteract those pesky disgruntled citizens. This article is from 2002, I’d love to hear some more recent stories about this sort of thing, especially from the big firms! I’m sure it’s going on now more than ever.

Spin on This!
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-02/05ainger.cfm
Three years ago at a party, a woman I hadn’t seen since college told me she was now working in PR. ‘How interesting!’ I lied. ‘So, what kind of PR do you do?’

This kind of PR is the counter-offensive that flourishes in activism’s wake, increasing in direct proportion to public distrust of the corporate sector.

Here’s an interesting entry from a public relations blog about how to make a story more likely to get on the news:

Newsworthiness: The Psychology of News
http://101publicrelations.com/blog/archives/000171.html
Believe it or not, part of what makes a news story “newsworthy” is it’s ability to entertain. After all, when it comes right down to the essence – ratings are what drive the media business, not the desire to communicate the news.

She does things like dating Leonardo DiCaprio, showing up on every worthwhile red carpet in the world, and having regular vicious fights with high-profile people in public places.

The media analysis group Project Censored has released their list of the top 25 censored stories for 2003-2004.

Here’s #1:

Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/1.html
During the short boom of the late 1990s, conservative analysts asserted that, yes, the gap between rich and poor was growing, but that incomes for the poor were still increasing over previous levels. Today most economists, regardless of their political persuasion, agree that the data over the last 25 to 30 years is unequivocal. The top 5% is capturing an increasingly greater portion of the pie while the bottom 95% is clearly losing ground, and the highly touted American middle class is fast disappearing.

According to economic journalist, David Cay Johnston, author of ˆ£Perfectly Legal,ˆ§ this trend is not the result of some naturally occurring, social Darwinist ˆ£survival of the fittest.ˆ§ It is the product of legislative policies carefully crafted and lobbied for by corporations and the super-rich over the past 25 years.