A Media Extinction Event

#Chaya Schiffrin, "A Media Extinction Event." The Nation, October 19-26, 2020. -"Of this writing, the Bovnter (sp.?) Institute reports that 18 local newspapers have either merged or gone out of business, throwing at least 1,500 newspaper staffers out of work; a minimum of 20 publicans have suspended their print editions; and at least 30 local newsrooms have closed."

"For him [Victor Richard, the author of 'Democracy Without Journalism?'], the prevailing assumption that laissez-faire political and 'capitalist competition' would best serve 'democratic communication' has had disastrous consequences. Far from creating a liberal marketplace of ideas, it has resulted in a system dominated by powerful elites who have limited the range of political points of view, narrowed the field of reporting, and starved local news of funds." "The embrace of a corporate liberation position did not hew to past practices; instead the refusal to invest in the press only marked an abdication on the part of the federal government --one that created an opening for further monopoly control.: "Instead of effective corporate regulation, the Fairness Doctrine --the replacement for the Mayflower Doctrine, which constrained broadcasters from editorializing -- and long served as a consolation prize for media reformers. It required broadcasters to cover socially important issues, and to fairly present opposing sides. But even that proved to be too much for Republicans, who repeatedly framed the policy as an attack on broadcasters' free speech, until it was revoked by Congress in 1987."

"More than 120 news outlets were shuttered in 2008 and the first three months of 2009; others shrank, and an estimated 13,000 newspaper jobs were lost in 2008, followed by another 2,000 in 2009." "As Richard observes, many countries have secured quality independent journalism through public funding and regulation. Norway and Sweden subsidize the press, as do Australia, Canada, Germany, and the U.K." "A publicly subsidized news industry would not only allow the United States to keep pace with many of these countries; it would also clarify how the news itself is a public good."

#Jimmy Tobias, "The Extinction Crisis Comes Home," The Nation, May 4-11, 2020. - "Cut off from their ancestral breeding grounds by enormous dams, preyed on by invasive species, and deprived of the freshwater flows that are crucial to sustaining their populations, the salmon have suffered long-term decline and face an increasingly grim future." "Decades of dam building and water extraction to quench the thirst of California's growing population, and the needs of its mighty agriculture industry have starved the state's waterways."

"A UN panel found that 1 million species around the globe are at risk of extinction, many within the coming decades." "The Trump administration is also working in lockstep with powerful agricultural interests to rollback the Endangered Species Act's protections for California's salmon, smelt and [whales]. " "The threat of mass extinction isn't just happening in far-off lands or confined to some distant future."

#Jane Fleming Kleeb, "Organizing on the Coasts Won't Save the Planet," The Nation, May 4-11, 2020. - "Kleeb says that: "We do have to change our values or platform to win back rural voters; instead, we need to stand with them as family farms are abandoned, and their land is being taken through eminent domain to build pipeline. "Showing up for rural communities is the foundation of winning back not only the White House but also the Senate. In fact, just 30 percent of Americans will elect 70 percent of the Senate."

"Energy and climate change are at the very heart of how our country will move forward."

#Bryce Covert, "You Must Be Kidding," The Nation, May 4-11, 2020. - "Both parents work in nearly two-thirds of married couples with children under the age of 13, and about three-quarters of single mothers and 84 percent of single fathers do. That's 22.6 million families that now have nowhere to send their children." "The labor force participation rate for women in the U.S. has fallen behind that of other  developed countries, thanks in part, to lack of investment in early care."

#Suki Kim, "Follow the Leader," The New Yorker, November 23, 2020. - "Adrian [Adrian is the name of the person who is leading an effort to seek independence for the North Korean people]; also, he wrote the first draft to appeal to both liberals and conservatives; he pointed out to me that North Korea lacked independent courts, accountable police, informed citizens, N.G.O.'s, and a free press." He wrote: "The day will come when North Koreans are free, and liberated, concentration camp survivors will have to learn that the world was more interested in the oddities of the oppressors than the torment of the oppressed." 

In January 2020, John Lifton, the Director of Asia Advocacy, said: "The people of North Korea suffer under constant surveillance, and face the deadly threat of imprisonment, torture, sexual abuse, and execution -- and its been that way since the 1940s." Lifton believes that, if anything, the summits have made things worse.

Ko Young Hwan, who worked at several embassies, warned the world that it would be a mistake "to think a North Korean embassy is a normal embassy, according to the Western definition. All illegal activities -- from being the middleman for the weapon's trade, to laundering counterfeit money, to transporting luxury items for Kim Jong Un -- happen inside."

#Andrew Moreanty, "The Anti-Coup," The New Yorker, November 23, 20920. - "There's never been any real justification for the American exceptionalist myth that it can't happen here. What we've seen from Trump is straight out of the authoritarian playbook." Not only can it happen here, but Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard professor, and other civil-resistance scholars propose an alternative theory, one in which political power comes from the ability to elicit others' voluntary obedience. She contends that civil-resistance movements prevail more often than armed movements do "(about 1.5 times more often, according to the the most recent version of the data)."

Chenoweth told the author of the article that if she "had to pick one characteristic that correlates with a movement's success, it's the extent to which everyone in society -- children, disabled people, grandmas -- feel that they can either actively or passively participate." "When a civil-resistance campaign does succeed in overthrowing an oppressive government, the new government installed is far more likely to remain stable and democratic."