:: information warfare :: ::

CNN
Pentagon sites: Journalism or propaganda?
From Barbara Starr and Larry Shaughnessy
Saturday, February 5, 2005 Posted: 3:04 AM EST (0804 GMT)

The Defense Department runs two Web sites overseas, one aimed at people in the Balkan region in Europe, the other for the Maghreb area of North Africa. It is preparing another site, even as the Pentagon inspector general investigates whether the sites are appropriate...

...The sites are run by U.S. military troops trained in "information warfare," a specialty that can include battlefield deception. Pentagon officials say the goal is to counter "misinformation" about the United States in overseas media.

At first glance, the Web pages appear to be independent news sites. To find out who is actually behind the content, a visitor would have to click on a small link -- at the bottom of the page -- to a disclaimer, which says, in part, that the site is "sponsored by" the U.S. Department of Defense...

...The Pentagon maintains that the information on the sites is true and accurate. But in a recent memo, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz insisted that the Web site contractor should only hire journalists who "will not reflect discredit on the U.S. government"...

...Many Democrats have called for an end to what they call administration propaganda within the United States. But many lawmakers view the rules for handling information overseas as a separate issue...

:: check out the magharebia site :: ::

:: frightening traditional operatives :: ::

Embracing the New Politics and Perfecting the Old
Donnie Fowler / November 2004

...Democrats have also been slow to adopt the tools of the new politics. When we do, our understanding has been very shallow. The Party's understanding of the web and other technologies has not kept up with the extraordinary speed of the advances. Fortunately, there are great Democrats in Silicon Valley and other tech centers who can help where we have already tried to help ourselves by ourselves. Technology is much, much broader than putting up a website and giving a volunteer a $200 Palm Pilot. Not only does it provide vast new means to raise money, it provides us uniquely different ways to communicate to voters through email and websites. The Internet is not television, radio, or direct mail, so communicating across it must be approached differently. The Internet is interactive (like talk radio on a more limited scale) and it is d e c e n t r a l i z e d, allowing activists to organize themselves without waiting for the "go" signal from a national or state headquarters. While this frightens many traditional operatives, self-starting grassroots means that more folks can participate in more ways than ever before. Technology also provides us dramatically better ways to identify and speak to narrow slices of the electorate. Powerful database technologies already exist in Silicon Valley so we need not create these tools from scratch...

.read more here

:: the democratization of tv :: ::

Uncle Al wants You.
To help him revolutionize TV. (But he won't say exactly how.)
BY AMRITA SIDHU

The ad for "The Best New Job in TV" featured two poster children of cool: a young man with a tattooed arm clutching a video camera, and a young woman wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with a paraphrased version of the George Orwell epigram: "In a time of universal deceit, to tell the truth is a revolutionary act." The symbolism was designed to be hip and to appeal to young people who might be interested in working for INdTV...

...Last May, [former Vice President Al] Gore and [Joel] Hyatt paid a reported $70 million for Canadian cable news network Newsworld International, which reaches about seventeen million US homes. Their stated goal was to create programming by and for the demographically desirable 18- to 34-year-old market...

...[INdTV aspire] to counteract the purported impact of media consolidation by handing control of the airwaves to a creatively empowered new generation. Until recently, the network said little more about its programming goals, but Gore's apparent interest in the onetime MTV video diary Unfiltered offered an early clue into INdTV's approach. Unfiltered was real grassroots television, a program whose producers selected its story ideas based upon calls from actual viewers...

...This seemingly revolutionary prospect inspired hordes of young people to apply for a job as one of the network's fifty "digital correspondents." INdTV began a national search last August through film schools and postings on Web sites such as Craigslist, MediaBistro.com, and Filmmaker.com...

...[Michael] Rosenblum said Gore was keenly interested in his ideas about the "democratization of television," which he articulated in the mission statement for DV Dojo, his New York video training school. The phrase soon became an INdTV buzzword. "In the beginning, they just wanted to talk about the 'democratization of television,'" Rosenblum said in a December interview. "Al had a lot of input in the beginning. He really dug the democratization of TV thing and made it his own"...

...The network's Web site became the focal point of all the action. INdTV called it a video blog because the written postings by employees -- mainly journalist Gotham Chopra, the son of spiritual guru Deepak Chopra -- were supplemented by occasional video postings. These communications were meant to keep applicants abreast of the recruitment process and to explain the INdTV mission. Before and after submitting their applications, visitors to the site could read the text, watch the videos, and write their own responses to posts by staff or one another...

:: read the full article here :: ::

:: learn about MTV's Unfiltered here :: ::

:: an endorsement for DNC Chair :: ::