Recent press releases issued by Media Alliance. Sometimes we’ll post newspaper, radio and broadcast interviews here as well.
Originally published on
As part of an epidemic of higher education institutions nationwide ridding themselves of educational TV and radio licenses, the San Mateo Community College District in Northern California has announced the upcoming sale of KSCM-TV, the noncommercial TV station it has owned and operated for 48 years. Continue reading Maui Condos Or Public Trusts?
Originally published in the
I often hear, as a Pacifica Foundation board member that terrestrial radio in general and Pacifica radio in particular, is irrelevant.
I would make the case that anything that generates as much sound and fury as Pacifica has for the last 20 years cannot possibly be irrelevant. Continue reading Towards A Just Communications Structure: Pacifica Radio’s Never Ending Battle
Originally published in the Huffington Post
The news is full of the lack of news. Everywhere pundits, commentators, and academics mourn the death of the crusading journalism of the fourth estate. My own organization, Media Alliance, was founded in 1976, in the heady days following the Watergate scandal that ended a presidency. Movie stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman portrayed the Washington Post reporters who tracked an obscure break-in to the upper reaches of the White House. The film now seems like an antique, a dinosaur in an age when the off-the-cuff comments of long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas garner more attention than her interrogations of presidents. Continue reading Looking for Journalism in all the Wrong Places
For many, who switched to cable and satellite services with thousands of channels, no big deal. But for some, who still jiggle rabbit ear antennas, the switch is a problem, forcing them to replace their televisions, subscribe to cable service they may not be able to afford, or buy and install a converter box using a government coupon. The people most affected by the change are often elderly, disabled, on fixed incomes or from non-English speaking households. Continue reading The Day TV Goes Away: The Digital Television Transition
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Having a mother, father, brother or a sister in jail is an upsetting and scary experience. What makes it worse are sky-high special phone rates for calls from prisons that bust the family budget. That’s the reason California passed a law in 2007 phasing in reductions in the cost of prison phone calls. In state-run facilities, that is. If your mom, dad, son or daughter happens to be in a county-run juvenile facility, immigration detention center or county jail, then state law doesn’t apply. Continue reading County Allows Outrageous Charges for Inmate Phone Calls
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When a Pacific Gas and Electric pipeline exploded in San Bruno, CA in 2010, pundits all over the nation called out for more aggressive supervision of the energy company, so Californians needn’t fear having their homes burst into fireballs.
Wildfires and windstorms resulted in long-term outages across Southern California in recent years, caused largely by aging lines and overloaded power poles. At the insistence of legislators, millions of dollars in fines have been assessed.
Which makes it really puzzling when mandates for less utility regulation start sailing through the California legislature. Continue reading When Is A Phone Call Not a Phone Call? (When ALEC Says So)
by Tracy Rosenberg (originally published at Huffington Post)
To this T-Mobile customer, last week’s announcement of a proposed merger between AT&T and T-Mobile sent shivers up my spine. And not just because I anticipate a 25% increase in my monthly wireless bill. Continue reading AT&T / T-Mobile : Looking Like a Disaster
By Tracy Rosenberg – published San Francisco Chronicle
The Obama administration has taken a lot of heat recently for declaring war on Fox News, including from Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders. And it’s true that you can’t have presidential staffers ducking press inquiries. But media lies and distortions are another ball game entirely. Let’s look at the record:
