Media
As if in answer to his own question ("Council hegemony" what are you talking about?), this week Councilmember Cam Hill was quoted in the Daily Tarheel insinuating that his colleague Laurin Easthom is not a "team player" because she is often on the losing end of 8-1 votes.
I will chalk up the rude tone of his comments to the DTH's patented 18-year-old filter (in which almost every direct quotation in the paper sounds as if it came out of the mouth of a college student) and instead address the substance. Ever since I have been on the Chapel Hill Planning Board, I have been on the losing end of many of the split votes we've had - usually 8-2 or often 9-1. And yet I don't believe a single member of the Board thinks I'm not working with them toward the many goals we share. In fact, my colleagues unanimously elected me as their chair last year!
Check out these two items that both appear on the WCHL website today. One story asks "Can hard news be found on blogs?" concluding with this ridiculous statement: "So the next time you read a blog online, remember that you could be getting information from a twelve-year-old rather than a professional."
As if in answer to their own question, they also have a report about the NC Legislature acting to remove term limits for the Mayor of Chapel Hill - a story we broke here on Orange Politics last week.
Now I've never claimed to be a journalist (although I am a professional, thankyouverymuch), but that doesn't mean my opinions aren't both informed and informative! It's just this kind of lumping the entire online world into some adolescent MySpace stereotype that will keep adults from being able to protect themselves and their children from what they see as the dangers of the Internet.
If you actually want people to read the (few) articles you are publishing online, it would help to not put flashing eyesores like this on the same page as the news.
You're letting the DTH make you look bad....
For those of you following media politics, it has not been a good couple of weeks here in NC or in DC. The NC House moved a bill to the floor that would allow phone and cable companies to roll over communities and consumers and soon the NC Senate will do the same. Meanwhile, Congress passed a similar bill, The COPE Act, which would destroy community access television and turn the internet into a "whoever pays most, is seen most" commercial model. The death of community television and the internet? Could it get any worse?
Well, yes.
The FCC, under the leadership of Kevin Marin, from our good state, are about to change the rules about media ownership limits. Remember a couple of years ago when everyone from the NRA to Move On pulled together and stopped them? Seems they didn't hear us loud enough last time.
Yesterday the Herald reported on WCOM's complaint that the Town of Carrboro was bogging them down by suggesting a public hearing on the proposal to run a flea market in their parking lot.
All WCOM station manager Chris Frank wanted to do was raise a little money for the community radio station.
But he says he dreams of a small community flea market are being derailed by a well-meaning -- but overly complicated -- town bureaucracy...
"It looks like the concerned staff wants to have a public hearing on our 'minor modification,' " Frank wrote in an e-mail Friday. "We can probably say 'so long' to a flea market this season. Heaven help the developer with a substantial project."
- heraldsun.com: Radio station's flea market faces snag, 6/5/06
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