Amin Kazak Lecture

From the beginning of Amin's lecture I was immediately reminded of the first day of our class when we began defining frames and lenses. Our perceptions about how we view information and how we present information can have great effects on the facts. As a result we often argue about the accuracy or political affiliations of many American media stations. We argue about how conservative Fox News has become; then we argue about how liberal CNN has become. Amin explained that the situation is very much the same in the Middle East. The television stations are owned and operated by many different groups. Here are a few that Amin mentioned:

Al Jazeera - Americans have been very critical of this station so it was to my surprise that the station is financed by Qatar, an American ally.

Al Manar - This station is controlled by Hezbollah and therefore often presents a negative frame when discussing issues of Israel.

Al Arabia - This station is financed by Saudi Arabia and thus is more sympathetic to the Untied States.

The frames presented by each television station are quite unique. For example, on this day CNN and Fox were both covering the kidnapping of an American soldier, however Al Jazeera didn't mention the story at all. Very interesting.
Of course, the American stations never overlook stories for political reasons....

A Western Strategy?

"...The stars are seemingly aligned for the Democrats to make a serious run for the West in 2008. But, are the states worth their weight in electors? Probably not.

There are four states in the West that seem most likely to switch to the Democrats. In order of likelihood they are: New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and Montana. Those states carry a combined weight of 29 electoral votes. If Democrats were able to win all 4 states in addition to the states that John Kerry won in 2004 it would give them 281 electoral votes - more than the 270 votes needed to win the White House. But, victory in all 4 states is highly unlikely.

The Western strategy is severely dampened because it is almost impossible to imagine a Republican ticket without John McCain on the ballot. Even if Republican primary voters punish him for working with Democrats he will almost certainly be added to the ticket in an effort to appeal to independent voters. The prospect of John McCain on the ballot hinders the Democrat's western strategy as Arizona, McCain's home state, would be taken off the list immediately. Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado would likely become very uncompetitive as well. Even if the Democrats were able to pick off two of the remaining western swing states they would still lose the election in less they won Republican states in other parts of the country...."

Ohio Election

The feeling on the ground here is amazing. There are more candidate signs on the streets than you could ever imagine. However, with all our optimisim and hard work we know that the race in CD-15 is deadly close. Our internal polls at the AFL-CIO have us up five points. However, neither Deborah Pryce (R) or Mary Jo Kilroy has publicly released a poll in over a month which means neither wants to share the news that this one will go down to the wire.

We are sending between 60-100 canvassers a day to canvass. We expect to send as many as 300 canvassers on election day. In addition we have a phone bank filled with volunteers up to 16 hours a day.

I have slept just a few hours since flying in on Thursday and I expect that to be less the next two nights. It is about 9:00 p.m. locally and we are awaiting our canvasser packs to arrive from D.C. They should arrive about midnight and then will need to be organized, priortized, and mapped. That process will take us about 8 hours. :(

The Democrats are poised to win up to 4 seats in Ohio with the possibility of an additional upset. The statewide races are looking amazing with Ted Strickland leading by 40-points in today's poll! Sherrod Brown is also leading by a sizeable amount and it looks like the Democrats will pick up every single statewide office in Ohio.

The polls close in 46 hours and I can't wait!

Radio Ad

This radio ad is now playing in seven states:

National Black Republican Association

Do you guys think it will have any affect on the mid-term elections?

Podcasting

Earlier this month Google purchased the video sharing website, YouTube, for 1.65 billion dollars in stock. The site allows visitors to view and post videos for free. The videos vary from congressional debates to concerts. As the high price tag might indicate the traffic to the site is growing exponentially each week. This week the traffic ranking website, Alexa, rated YouTube.com as the 6th most visited website on World Wide Web. The tremendous success of this website begs the question: Will podcasting overrun commercial media?

Podcasting as defined by Wikipedia is " multimedia file distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers." Thursday's panel, led by members of Colorado Public Radio, seemed to agree that podcasting will be the future of media. The panel declined to say that commercial media would be replaced by podcasting, but rather podcasting would become a larger part of commercial media. The panel argued that they see an increase of podcasting surfacing for two reasons. One, as the commercial media market news quality becomes further downgraded a disgruntled public might seek alternative sources of media including podcasting. The second reason they sighted was that the commercial media market might begin to integrate user's podcasts as a way to decease costs and increase variety.

Kristina Tabor cited the innovation and success of Al Gore's network "Current" as evidence that podcasting is beginning to weld greater influence in the media. The advantage of the system is it allows people from all over the world to bring news to others. Often times podcasting allows stories to surface that would not otherwise be covered. McChesney would argue that this is because the current media have a tendency to rely on their stories from people in power. If Clinton gives a speech - it must be news. If Rumsfeld gives a briefing - it must be news. However, with podcasting it allows individuals to submit stories that are often ignored like the increased rate of autism in children.

The panel also cited job cuts in struggling commercial media as evidence that stations can't afford to place a cameraman and a news anchor in every city of the world. In fact, NBC announced just last week that they will be laying off almost 700 employees. Those job cuts mean that the range of stories the media covers could see further shrinking. Podcasting would allow the media to save even more money by decreasing the amount of programming the networks had to produce. For example, panelist Andrea Dukakis said that it took her about 20 hours to produce a five minute story for Colorado Public Radio. We can assume that the time to create a story for television is even longer. The uses of podcasts for just a percentage of network news could cut costs by millions of dollars for struggling media outlets.

O'Reilly Update

Well...O'Reilly has still not read my letter. I must assume it is because he does not have a clever response. If O'Reilly insists on demonizing the "sps" (secular progressives), he better have the facts to back them up, because this blogger will not tolerate exaggerations.

Stay tuned for this evolving story....

O'Reilly Letter

I just finished emailing Bill O'Reilly. Here is a copy of the letter I sent:

Dear Bill,
On Thursday's program you referenced activist George Soros as "the single most dangerous individual in the United States of America." Do you really believe a 76-year old political activist is more dangerous than individuals in the KKK? Or the Earth Liberation Front? Or anyone on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List? Did you just get carried away?

Kyle Taylor
Denver, CO

Stay tuned to see if my letter is read on the air!