By Ryan Kim, San Francisco Chronicle
Local broadcasters who made the switch to digital television at midnight Tuesday reported fewer than expected complaint calls Wednesday, easing fears that the early transition from analog signals would cause widespread disruptions. Continue reading Digital switch goes smoothly for local stations
San Francisco Chronicle by Carolyn Said
While not as hard-hit as some cities like San Diego, where several network affiliates will switch to digital months before the federal mandate, and several rural regions of the country, where customers without cable services or a functioning converter box may face the loss of multiple stations, the early switchover in the Bay Area pits the economic stresses on smaller broadcasters against their public interest obligations. Continue reading 4 Bay Area Stations to Shut Off Analog Signals Early
Printed in Race, Poverty and the Environment
Just because technology is in place doesn’t necessarily mean people will find value in it,” states Dr. Faye McNair-Knox, executive director of One East Palo Alto—an organizational member of the East Palo Alto Digital Village Program. “Working alongside groups who provide essential services to local residents has helped us to partner with individuals who have not participated to become familiar with the technology and develop their own value for it. You really have to build that whole base of value within a community for people to access technology.” Continue reading Digital Infrastructure: By the Community, For the Community by Eloise Lee
Lisa Gray-Garcia aka Tiny, poet, poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist and lecturer is the founder and executive director of POOR Magazine/ PoorNewsNetwork (PNN), the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America. Printed courtesy of the author and PNN (Poor News Network).
The walls of the conference hall auditorium were white and tall and engulfed the humans who sat in rapt attendance. I sat quietly, in panel after panel, afraid to move or make too much noise as tech-embedded words like, White space, Bit Torrent, Net Neutrality and Blogosphere floated past my ears. They bounced off the walls and knocked up against my head like thick steel rods, knocking my fingers off their tenuous hold onto the edges of the digital ravine, which seemed to grow sharper and taller with each obtuse reference to a technology I had never had the time, privilege or the access to learn in all of my 38 years of poverty and homelessness. Continue reading The Low-Access People: Tiny Grey-Garcia’s Notes on the NCMR
Printed courtesy of Poor News Network and authors Guillermo Gonzalez and Gloria Esteva
I am the co-teacher of the Voces program and a migrant scholar myself and as I heard Gloria speak I realized that her words and the fact that we were even there was the actualization of what POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork(PNN) along with other individuals and organizations were fighting for through testimonies in the public comment portion of the meeting of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on net neutrality at Stanford University last Thursday. Gloria’s words resonated the powerful voice of migrant raza communities and other poverty scholars that otherwise would not be represented at this meeting. Continue reading The FCC Bus: One Person’s Story
San Francisco- Media Alliance joined 18 other not for profit membership associations, including the CalGuns Foundation, Greenpeace, People for the American Way, the Council on islamic-American Relations and many others, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) against the National Security Administration (NSA) , the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). Named defendants included Attorney General Eric Holder, NSA Director Keith Alexander and National Intelligence Director James Clapper.
The lawsuit focuses on the broad telephone metadata collection program reported in the Washington Post and UK Guardian in June of 2013. The lawsuit cites the freedom of association clause in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution and NAACP vs Alabama (1958), a case which denied government unfettered access to the membership lists of the civil rights organization. The lawsuit alleges a chilling effect on the freedom of individuals to associate.
Article in the Nashville Scene:
For a surreal stretch of hours last June, a radio tuned to 91.1 FM in Nashville did nothing but emit bottomless, hissing static. The erstwhile WRVU, which for decades beamed out an engaging, erratic mishmash of everything from punk rock to country classics, jump blues to hip-hop, had been sold to local NPR affiliate WPLN, its signal cut off abruptly. Continue reading What’s Left of the Dial
WASHINGTON, DC – On March 16, 45 civil rights, public policy and public interest organizations, including ColorOfChange, Open Technology Institute, Media Alliance, the Center for Media Justice and Public Knowledge, will deliver a letter and petition demanding that the FCC and DOJ investigate law enforcement’s largely unregulated use of military-grade cellular surveillance devices, called Stingrays. Continue reading Groups Ask FCC and DOJ to Investigate Law Enforcement’s Warrantless Use of Cellular Surveillance Devices
