POLITICAL MUSIC!

Conor Oberst is one of my favorite musicians and he is very involved with politics. His band, Bright Eyes, went on the "Vote for Change" tour with Bruce Springsteen and REM before the 2004 presidential election and performed at a series of Obama rallies in 2008.

 

Conor has never been shy about sharing his views and criticisms of the government. In 2005, he performed his controversial Bush protest song "When the President Talks to God" on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and subsequently had cancellations from 2 other late night talk shows he was scheduled to perform on.

 

This year he has gotten very involved with the border control/illegal immigration situation. He teamed up with the ACLU and put on "The Concert for Equality" in Nebraska, his home state, which raised money for a lawsuit against the city of Fremont, Nebraska for an ordinance the city passed on June 21, 2010 banning the hiring of or the rental of properties to illegal immigrants. The song above, "Coyote Song", is about two lovers separated by the Mexico-United States border. All proceeds from the song will go directly to the Sound Strike Fund, which provides needed resources to families caring for children in Arizona whose parents are detained or have been deported, immigrant rights organizing and legal defense.

Cronkite and Murrow Would be Proud: The Uncovering of the Atlanta Public School Cheating Scandal

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked the state attorney general Friday to investigate Atlanta Public Schools for withholding a critical report largely confirming the newspaper’s findings last year that test results in a dozen schools were highly suspicious.

The AJC asked Attorney General Thurbert Baker to determine whether the district’s denial in July of a request for the report was a criminal violation of the Georgia Open Records Act.

The newspaper’s complaint calls the district’s refusal to produce the report a “willful and premeditated violation.”

“The purpose of the Open Records Act is to prevent government officials from burying information in this way,” said Tom Clyde, an AJC attorney.

District spokesman Keith Bromery said Friday that officials were reviewing the complaint and would not comment.

The complaint comes amid federal and state probes into the falsification of hundreds of Atlanta students’ scores, with dozens of GBI agents questioning teachers and administrators at schools across the district.

Breaking the open records law is a misdemeanor and carries a $100 fine.

The statistical analysis by University of Pennsylvania researchers surfaced last week after Channel 2 Action News and the AJC obtained copies from a non-profit education advocacy group.

The report largely validated the newspaper’s October 2009 findings on statistically improbable gains or drops at a dozen Atlanta schools on that spring’s state Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. The newspaper found the odds of such drastic changes were astronomical and could signal cheating.

In response, Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall announced that two independent experts would scrutinize the district’s test results.

In February, the district released a report by one of the experts, consultant Douglas Reeves, that concluded the gains were consistent with academic practices he observed at the schools — eight of which he visited on a single day during a whirlwind tour.

But the district made no announcement when the second expert, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education Dean Andrew Porter, completed his report in May.

At the time, the district was in the thick of a state-ordered investigation into additional revelations that high numbers of wrong answers had been erased and corrected on CRCTs given at 58 schools.

The AJC requested the Porter report July 19. District officials responded July 22, saying, “A copy of the Porter report does not exist in the district.”

Last week, however, district spokesman Bromery said Hall read the report in May. He said district officials gave it to investigators hired to scrutinize the erasure findings.

It would have been “inappropriate,” he said, to release the report once it became part of the investigation.

According to state law, public officials cannot turn over documents to private individuals to avoid disclosing them.

The AJC also argued that the investigation is not a valid reason to keep the Porter findings secret.

“The circumstances indicate the Porter report was withheld by APS at a time when Superintendent Hall did not want it to reach the light of day,” Clyde said.

“A public official should be very concerned by a possible criminal violation of the Open Records Act. If it is proven, it’s effectively a finding that the official is intentionally concealing information for the very citizens that they are supposed to serve.”
-Atlanta Journal Constitution

As we have discussed in class, muckraking and journalistic investigation is mostly dead. We no longer have anyone like Edward R. Murrow or Jack Anderson who make it their job to investigate and call the government out when something does not seem right. Also lacking, are objective and trust-worthy broadcasters like Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley and Peter Jennings. They were journalists who America could trust, but sadly they have been replaced with talking heads, like O’Reilly and Olbermann, who are clearly biased and only want to promote one side of any argument.

I came upon a ray of hope, however, when I heard about the cheating scandal of the Atlanta Public Schools. The Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) did their journalistic job and uncovered this scandal themselves and brought it to the public’s attention. They were the first to raise questions about the improbable test scores in December, 2008. The newspaper showed analysis of implausible gains on core skill tests that were taken by students in the spring and then again in the summer. Then in the fall of last year the newspaper struck again, this time over student’s scores on the CRCT that they had taken that spring. The CRCT scores from twelve Atlanta schools showed implausible gains and drops on the test which is considered the most crucial measure of academic achievement for grades 1 through 8. The AJC also brought allegations about graduation rate calculations of the Atlanta Public Schools, which did not seem to add up. Then, when the superintendent withheld a report largely confirming the newspaper’s findings about the extremely suspicious CRCT results, the AJC did not hesitate to ask the state’s attorney general to investigate the school system.

This is the kind of journalistic investigation that I like to see. They researched a story they found suspicious and then brought about public awareness. On Saturday, the Atlanta Public School Superintendent Beverly Hall announced that she will be stepping down next June and both the state and U.S. Attorney’s office are launching investigations into the issue. Cronkite and Murrow would be proud.

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/ajc-files-complaint-with-748329.html?cxtype=rss_news


http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/atlanta-superintendent-beverly-hall-747762.html

The Real World: Alaska

Willow Palin, the 16-year-old daughter of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, wrote multiple Facebook posts containing homophobic slurs such as "faggot" on Sunday night, according to TMZ.

The web site reports that Palin's teenage daughter wrote the comments on Sunday night, when her mother's television show "Sarah Palin's Alaska" premiered on TLC. According to TMZ, a classmate of one of Palin's children published a Facebook update claiming that the show "is failing so hard right now."

Willow Palin reportedly unloaded on the student, calling him "so gay" and "such a faggot." She later demanded that the student "quit talkin shit about my family." According to screenshots obtained by TMZ, the 16-year-old called another commenter on the Facebook thread a "low life loser" and lashed out at multiple others, writing, "Sorry that all you guys are jealous of my families success and you guys aren't goin to go anywhere with your lives." -Huffington Post

Does Willow Palin realize that her family's reality TV show is on The Learning Channel (TLC) not MTV?

Why in the world would someone who knows that their every move is being watched have an out lash like this on the Internet and even go as far as to use gay slurs? It really is hard to fathom this kind of ignorance. I am sure that Sarah raised her better than that…right?

Her mother may be the next President of the United States and she is cussing and calling someone “such a faggot” on her own Facebook account? I understand that she was upset that people were reacting harshly to her family’s reality TV show, but come on! When you are in the spotlight you are always going to have critics. It just comes with the territory. You are a public figure and therefore as we have discussed in class you have less protection against hateful speech. You are only giving the "haters" more pleasure by lashing out and giving them the attention they want anyway.

I would expect this kind of behavior from let’s say…Snooki off of Jersey Shore, but not the daughter of a former Alaskan Governor and Vice Presidential nominee. Are there any boundaries anymore? Has the Real World house become no different from the White House? With political figures now having reality TV shows I am not really sure that there is…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/16/willow-palin-facebook-posts_n_784585.html

MSNBC: Behind on the Times?

NEW YORK (AP) — MSNBC says Keith Olbermann will be back on the air Tuesday, ending his suspension for violating NBC's rules against making political donations after two shows.
MSNBC's chief executive Phil Griffin said late Sunday that after several days of deliberation, he had determined that two days off the air was "an appropriate punishment for his violation of our policy."
The left-leaning cable network's most popular personality acknowledged donating $2,400 apiece to the campaigns of Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. NBC News prohibits its employees from making political donations unless an exception is granted in advance by the network news president. In this case, Olbermann's bosses didn't know about them until being informed by a reporter.
Left unanswered is the question of why Olbermann would do something he undoubtedly knew would be provocative, or whether he was trying to make a statement against NBC's policy. He did not immediately return an e-mail message seeking comment Sunday.
On his Twitter page, Olbermann wrote: "Greetings from exile! A quick, overwhelmed, stunned THANK YOU for support that feels like a global hug."
The incident raised questions about how long-standing rules designed to preserve the appearance of objectivity for news organizations fit at a time that cable news networks, most prominently Fox News Channel and MSNBC, have increased their popularity through prime-time programs that dispense with any notion of impartiality.

This story goes right along with what we have been discussing in class recently, media objectivity. Is objectivity a lost cause in today’s society? Do people even want to hear objective new stories anymore? These are important questions and stories like this bring to light the need to answer them. 

Everyone knows that when you turn on MSNBC, you are going to be greeted with a liberal slant. Just the
same as when you turn on fox news, you are going to get a conservative lean. Why then is it an issue for a news reporter on one of these stations to donate money to the party aligned with their political views…the same views that they express vehemently on their show everyday?

People want to have their views reinforced by the news channel they are watching. An extreme conservative is not going to tune into Olbermann’s “Countdown” and a liberal is not going to watch The O’Reilly Factor. Our society is changing, the way we view media is changing, and networks can either get with it or get left in the dust. News Corp., the parent to fox news, gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association and NBC won’t allow Olbermann to donate $2,400 to three Democratic candidates?

I was glad to hear that MSNBC ended Olbermann’s suspension after just two shows and I hope that they will change their ancient company policies ASAP and maybe take a few pages from Murdoch’s playbook this time!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAwQNqYTGXw5vlF84xAWa8fddScg?docId=09852e5ab4bb4ed491cd6c84c6edd00d