ScottsBigMouth

Chicago MediaHub Project Raising $50K For New Social Media Driven "Independent Talk" Station

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:32:00 +0000

http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2009-09-26.5510390477

The Chicago MediaHub Project (http://groups.google.com/group/chicagomediahub) is a new Chicago-based "Social Media Station" with the following purposes:

1) Create a media platform capable of producing and distributing quality journalism, entertainment, and community-oriented media programming via a cutting-edge production and distribution framework; utilizing new and existing creative and technology resources based in Chicago.

2) Act as a catalyst for media production, distribution, and job training in Chicago; through engaging community, corporate, and internationally-recognized standards organizations for employment re-training and ongoing excellence in content production and distribution.

3) Create, teach, learn, and re-organize the media landscape through new citizen-powered business, community, and media production models.

4) Finance, grow, and mentor new production companies, organizations, and individual properties; through pooled funding, financial planning, and tiered micro-financing of projects and producers, projects and individuals.

5) Host and distribute programming and resource-based educational resources on a fully-integrated technology platform.

6) Continuously evolve through input, organizational change, and creative self-analysis.

STATUS UPDATE:

In August 2009, Founder Scott Foval, President of The Foval Group Inc., announced that CMHP signed a development partnership to bring a new Internet talk radio station to the Chicago media market. The Foval Group Inc. is the current Corporate holder of the wsRadioChicago.com Station Agreement with wsRadio Inc. (http://www.wsradio.com), the world's largest provider of Internet talk radio to Live365.com, iTunes, and numerous other online websites.

This fundraiser is to fund an initial franchise payment to activate the agreement with wsRadio Inc., and launch the station's wsRadioChicago .com "Chicago's Independent Talk" this fall. This payment secures the deal, which has a funding deadline of December 31, 2009 to be maintained. The project is raising money both through donations for the project, and through private investment in the station. The project, which is Chicago's first "Social Media Station," not only includes wsRadioChicago.com "Chicago's Independent Talk," but also a Spanish-language channel, and an Arts/Entertainment channel. Each channel will feature local hosts, producers, technologists, engineers, and talent; all aired online and across a multitude of social media platforms, mobile handsets, Internet/Cable/Fiber/Wireless connected media devices and networks, portals, and in the future possibly even via syndication across the globe!

You can learn more about this exciting new development in our story by reviewing the posts on groups.google.com/group/chicagomediahub, as well as at ScottsBigMouth.com. In addition to wsRadioChicago.com, we hope to launch a Spanish-language talk radio station, based in Chicago, and creating Spanish-language talk radio content in collaboration with wsRadio in other areas of the country. We also intend to launch an Entertainment channel, featuring Chicago's unique music and entertainment scene. Most importantly, we are working with wsRadio and other providers to launch the very first Chicago-based "Social MultiMedia Station" which will broadcast our stations' content around the globe through its associated websites. Our partners at AdAnonymous (http://www.adanonymous.com) are coordinating those efforts to build Social Media into the "fabric" of all of our programs and channels, as well as supervise the build-out of wsRadioChicago.com and relaunch of ScottsBigMouth.com for our future audience.

As we are in pre-development of the wsRadioChicago.com operation here, and for the other stations as well; we are in search of investment and content partners to hep us with this groundbreaking project. Our initial budget for first-year operations includes the build-out of the station, ownership of the wsRadioChicago.com talk radio license, coordination of new program creation, the station launch, and social media operations with our partners. Our 18-month plan includes additional wsRadio.com talk radio franchises around the country, and expanding our social media programming and channels.

In the future we will offer sponsored programming, LIVE video simulcasting, syndication of our content, and multi-site support for our programming across mediums such as mobile, VOD, Internet, podcasts, advertising platforms, satellite, cable, and terrestrial broadcast media (traditional radio and TV). Our programming will be diverse, empowering, progressive, and open; allowing ANYONE who wants to host and produce a show, the ability to do so with a professional production platform.

For more information, please review the documents on this site, and feel free to post your comments and questions. You may also contact me directly, as the owner of The Foval Group Inc. and Founder of The Chicago MediaHub Project; via email scott@foval.com, or telephone 1-773-570-0011 (Google Voice Number). It is our hope that you will find our project and teaching platform as a valuable and worthy resource in the Chicago community.

Thank you for your consideration of helping us fund the Chicago MediaHub Project!

Scott Foval
--
The Foval Group Inc. / Chicago MediaHub Project
groups.google.com/group/chicagomediahub
www.foval.com
www.scottsbigmouth.com
www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-foval
scott@foval.com Email/IM
1-773-570-0011 The Foval Group Inc. Main
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ScottsBigMouth by Scott Foval is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at scottsbigmouth.blogspot.com.

President Must Keep It Simple, Hold On To Public Option Tonight

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:42:00 +0000

Love to get your thoughts on this one, kids...if they are calling tonight's speech Obama's "clutch moment" then we need to make sure the Prez is prepared, eh?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Take a Number B of A

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:18:00 +0000

Unfortunately I am also losing faith in Obama's ability to maintain separation from the moneyed. His administration is thick with folks from the banking, finance, and corporate communities. In my heart I believe he's trying to do the right thing, but the bottom line is that he has way too many people who are connected at the hip to high finance and Wall Street. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep up the pressure, though. I'm spending every waking moment trying to write more about it, talk about it, and I'll be doing a lot more reporting about it as we move along. Thanks for your comments!

--

Scott Foval

www.scottsbigmouth.com

www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-foval

scott@foval.com Email/IM

1-847-380-9028 / fovalgroup Office/Skype

1-312-519-6466 Mobile
About Bank Of America
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:16:00 +0000

Five Years On: My Diagnosis And Mission Living As HIV+

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:04:00 +0000

Thank you SO MUCH for this post. As I am on the cusp of my 37th birthday tomorrow, it means alot to hear from another survivor with such a heartfelt message. Cheers to everyone who's putting one foot in front of the other with this thing!

Scott

ScottsBigMouth.com/scott@foval.com
About HIV/AIDS
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Rick Warren Announcement Is Slap In The Face To GLBTQ Army

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:56:00 +0000

damienv5: I'm so with you on this. I actually submitted both this piece and my HIV+ coming out story to Obama's transition page at Change.gov to remind them that we're watching. Progressives as a whole and the GLBTQ community MUST stay vigilant and not allow zealots to infiltrate the Presidency of unity and of change. That's what happened with GWB, and is why we're in a mess now. We need to keep Obama on the Progressive (a.k.a. CENTRIST) course.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Rick Warren Announcement Is Slap In The Face To GLBTQ Army

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:52:00 +0000

dtd: You are being as ignorant as one could be. The GLBTQ community has always supported equal rights for ALL people, especially the African-American community and Latino communities; each which have extremely effective GLBTQ supports quadrants in their own sub-sectors. The reality is that the GLBTQ community has helped all of these other communities succeed in getting their own candidates elected, furthering their agendas, and helping achieve equality for all people. Arguably, the GLBTQ community has directly financed as much if not more of the Democratic Party as a whole than any single other area of the DNC's and Obama's budgets. Re: California...it is well known that the Mormon Church violated major tenets of separation of church and state by dumping money into the Prop 8 campaign in California, and the church is being investigated for the practice by both the IRS and the FEC for violations of campaign finance laws. The Prop 8 debate was manipulated by religious zealots, as you have been.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

BIGMOUTH OF THE DAY! Ed Schultz Takes Cliff May To Task on AC360

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:31:00 +0000

Defending common sense as usual, Ed Schultz took Ken May to task this weekend on CNN's AC360 program after an absolutely over-the-top statement that liberals don't want to win in Iraq.

May said that many on the left feel that a loss in Vietnam would be an "instructive lesson" and feel it is a good thing.

To Big Eddie's credit, he didn't let May get away with such propaganda, and pointed out that Afghanistan should be the real focus of the debate. Watch how Ed skewered May via this clip from AC360.

Congratulations to Big Eddie Schultz, nationally syndicated radio host, for keeping the righties honest! He's the ScottsBigMouth BigMouth of the Day!

Catch more of Big Eddie, listen to the Ed Schultz Show weekdays from Noon-3 EST/11AM-2PM CST on Jones Radio Networks affiliate stations and online at http://www.WeGotEd.com.

In Chicago, check out WCPT 820 AM Chicago's Progressive Talk or http://www.wcpt820.com to listen to the Ed Schultz Show from 11AM to 2PM CST.

Moving to New Digs!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:31:00 +0000

Happy post-Cinco de Mayo recovery day! We're in the middle of moving ScottsBigMouth, lock stock and barrel to the new site at http://www.scottsbigmouth.com. So you may find that as we are systematically going through the steps to move, at times you may wonder where all the rants and stories are. Well never fear, the entire site will be uploaded by Tuesday night, and then we'll be rolling out the new features there from that point forward.

We hope you'll join us over at http://www.scottsbigmouth.com and see what we have up our sleeve for the next several weeks. We're excited to "take it to the next level" with our new multimedia site and ScottsBigMouth The Show.

Warm Regards, and keep using your BigMouth!

Scott Foval
ScottsBigMouth Media (DBA)/The Foval Group Inc.
Scott@Foval.com

SITE UPDATE: ScottsBigMouth in transition

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:25:00 +0000

As announced on Thursday, May 1; ScottsBigMouth is in the process of being moved and relaunched at http://www.scottsbigmouth.com. After 7:00 PM (1900HRS) CST Thursday 05/01/2008, extending through 12:00 Midnight (0000HRS) CST Monday 05/05/2008, ScottsBigMouth Blog will be in transition to the new site. During this transition visitors to either domain may experience periodic site outages and/or limited access to selected page content. We apologize for any inconvenience, and look forward to seeing you at the New ScottsBigMouth! For any concerns or questions, please email support@foval.com and we will return your email within 24 hours.

Thanks!

Scott Foval

19 to 5! Take That Beersuckers!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:57:00 +0000

Last night our beloved and blessed Cubbies freakin' SMOKED the Brewers 19 to 5! Damn, they must have been REALLY pissed about the dry spell.

WAY TO GO CUBBIES! Let your W flags fly!

Mission Accomplished My Ass!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:12:00 +0000

Yep, it was 5 years ago today that monkeyboy stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in his brand spankin' new flight suit and pulled the biggest PR lie ever propagated on the human race. ScottsBigMouth is going out and celebrating by relaunching and making sure everyone knows that it was just that...a stunt...along with the rest of GWB's tyrannical rein! The Emperor Has No Flight Suit On!

What are your thoughts about the bloodiest year so far for America's brave patriots? Check out MoveOn.org's new ad, and give them some money to air it! Then, Hit Me at scott@foval.com or submit comments right through the site here. Remember, TONIGHT AFTER 7PM CST ScottsBigMouth.com goes LIVE. Bookmark It!

Peace,

ScottsBigMouth

BIG DAY for ScottsBigMouth!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:01:00 +0000

Well as ScottsBigMouth has told you in the past couple of weeks...Today, May 1, 2008 is a BIG, BIG, BIG 'ol day for us. By us, I'm referring to the ScottsBigMouth "community" of readers, friends, colleagues, partners, and hangers-on that have supported the blog since it was launched. Tonight, after 7PM CST ScottsBigMouth.com becomes our official home.

Initially, ScottsBigMouth.com will look much like scottsbigmouth.blogspot.com. Over the next several weeks, though, "BigMouths" will notice a significant set of changes. Here's a rundown...

1. New site design: The beta version of the site, including new ScottsBigMouth logos, sections, social network, store, and fun shizzle!

2. ScottsBigMouth The Show: ScottsBigMouth.com is the home for The Show, which will be where all the BigMouths will congregate to share and create our own show for the Internet / Radio / TV / VOD / Podcast / and Mobile! Progressive content, activism, music, news, and commentary...we're going for a mashup of major national / international participation 5-days-a-week, collaborating with some of the hottest Partners and Citizen Producers around the planet to get it done. Stay Tuned!

3. Live events! ScottsBigMouth will be going on the road to take the show out to let BigMouths be part of it. Initially focused on the college circuit...later geographically-diverse, and locationally-aware. What does that mean, exactly? You'll help define it.

4. ScottsBigMouth swag! We're going to use the power of our sponsors, partners, and marketers to blow Oprah out of the water. Yeah, she gave away a bunch of cars, but we're going to have stuff that isn't even OUT THERE YET...BigMouths will be a hotbed of new hot stuff!

5. More activism. BigMouths will be able to participate in affinity activism directly through ScottsBigMouth.com. Focuses will be Progressive causes, environment, social justice, GLBTQ, job and student empowerment, and paying-it-forward. As with everything else...you'll be in the drivers seat through your inclusion and support for your issues.

6. Giveaways! ScottsBigMouth will be giving away cool stuff every day!

7. BigMouth Empowerment Fund. We're establishing a not-for-profit that will give away scholarships for skills training, sponsorships in worthy causes, and grants for BigMouths who deserve it.

So, that's where we're headed over the next year. Again, watch for more in the coming days, and remember ScottsBigMouth.com will be LIVE after 7PM CST tonight! (the Blogger site will refer to the new domain).

Thanks to everyone who has encouraged this big step...I look forward to meeting more BigMouths and even hiring some of you to build it!

So we need your help! ScottsBigMouth needs to hear from you! We've joined the Blog Reader Project and created a survey in order to learn more about your interests, and to create the experience that you desire and deserve in the new ScottsBigMouth website.

Please take the ScottsBigMouth Blog Reader Project survey.

And once you're done, drop me a line at scott@foval.com to let me know that you've completed it. The more people who take this survey, the more fine-tuned we can make the next version of ScottsBigMouth.

Happy May Day! Only 4 days to Cinco de Mayo!

Best,

Scott (scott@foval.com)

Hillary: Someone PLEASE Get This Woman A Cot!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:03:00 +0000

From the media train wreck that is today's Democratic Presidential Primary process: Hillary Clinton did a webcast live on the Indianapolis Star's website yesterday. Wow it was not pretty mama we were watching here. She was clearly about ready to drop, and although engaging enough because that's who who she is, the performance was clearly effected. Rather than paint the picture for you...take a look at the cast and then you decide. (NOTE: You have to hit the "on demand" button on the player!)

To the Hillary Clinton Press Department. For GOD'S SAKE let her take a fricken' nap for a few hours!

Just for MandyPants...JediGym!

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:21:00 +0000

Some Nighttime Candy for all my Star Wars lovers out there! Your Welcome, Pants! xoxo

LATE POST: Why The Hell Is Hillary Doing O'Reilly?

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:05:00 +0000

Okay, I know that I'm a liberal blogging hanger-on whatever, but I do think that sometimes when my mind is blown by something that I just have to open ScottsBigMouth.

Why the Hell is Hillary Clinton agreeing to waste her precious time sitting down to talk with a nutjob like Bill O'Reilly? I mean really, does anyone even watch The Factor anymore? Does anyone believe an appearance on his show can sway votes? Hell, does anyone really think this is a good idea? What has gotten into Hill's press department that they think appearing on The Factor and his radio show going to do something to help her?

Maybe I'm clueless, or maybe...

Email me at scott@foval.com with your comments...

ScottsBigMouth Needs Your Input! (Survey)

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:51:00 +0000

Regular ScottsBigMouth readers know that we're about to launch a new site and a new multimedia show (that hopefully will grow into a broadcast). Part of launching the new site is a serious effort at learning more about ScottsBigMouth readers, and who might be tuning in to ScottsBigMouth The Show in the near future.

So we need your help! ScottsBigMouth needs to hear from you! We've joined the Blog Reader Project and created a survey in order to learn more about your interests, and to create the experience that you desire and deserve in the new ScottsBigMouth website.

Please take the ScottsBigMouth Blog Reader Project survey.

And once you're done, drop me a line at scott@foval.com to let me know that you've completed it. The more people who take this survey, the more fine-tuned we can make the next version of ScottsBigMouth.

Thanks!

Scott

PRI Sets Funky New Breakfast Table With “The Takeaway”

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:20:00 +0000

Over the weekend I got a hint that there was going to be something new to discover when I woke up. Generally my morning routine includes a healthy dose of coffee, National Public Radio's “Morning Edition” via Chicago Public Radio WBEZ's air/website, and some oatmeal. However, this morning we were treated to something completely new and different, compliments of Public Radio International (PRI) and WNYC, New York's public radio behemoth.

“The Takeaway” features hosts John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji, and content from WNYC, BBC World Service, The New York Times Radio Service and WGBH Boston. Today's freshman entry aired 6-7am on 93.9 FM and 8-9am on AM 820 in New York City; online from PRI's website and the show's own website; and 15 other affiliates across the U.S. I had heard about the show online somewhere (I have no idea other than that), and so I tuned into the online stream. I predict that this show may end up on my permanent appointment list, although not necessarily as the first thing I listen to.

Morning radio is one of those curious animals in media that can be experimented with to a certain extent, and one rarely knows what the audience is going to “click” with until you are on the air for awhile. Arguably, though, experience in the news and information business trumps all that. Hockenberry and Udoji, both vets in the business, are the “tip of the spear” in giving smart people something new to listen to other than “Morning Edition.” In a tip-of-the-hat to “Morning Edition” in fact, “The Takeaway” opened with Hockenberry receiving a “3AM wakeup call” from none other than radio legend and now-retired M.E. host Bob Edwards. The punchline, was of course Hockenberry asking Edwards if he was “ready on day one,” to which Edwards gave him a fatherly “yes, you are ready.” A cute and snarky shot over the bow to say the least.

“The Takeaway” took off from there in a very rapid-fire and continuous news/feature mix that included domestic and international news items, very much in a conversational delivery style. The show is much faster-paced than M.E., and balances itself somewhere between PRI's long-successful show “Marketplace” and WBEZ's own “848” in content. Overall I would recommend it for “testing” in your morning podcast mix.

Longer-term we shall see how the online and on-air mix plays with the audience, and gets them to participate in the conversation. In a review of the comments on the show's website, there was a tremendous amount of ranting about NPR going the route of a “morning zoo” format. I suspect this is from a group of listeners who really wouldn't be inclined to have anything but the same old oatmeal, without even a hint of brown sugar or fruit, no matter where they were in the world that day. Time will tell how the show evolves based on comments from listeners and the inclusion of new content from its ambitious team of producers and contributors.

My recommendation? Take some time to try out “The Takeaway” even as a supplement to your morning routine. If anything, you're going to get an education in how a major show, in its infancy, works out its own bugs and develops its own rhythm, as it shoots like a meteor out of the gate.

Chicago's Cops Being Up-Armed To Engage Krispy Kreme

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:24:00 +0000

This morning the Sun Times reported that top cop CPD Supt. Jody Weiss is going to up-armor his 13,500 street officers with M4 carbine rifles in the near future. The move is ostensibly to match gang firepower with po-po firepower on the city's mean streets. No word yet on how CPD is going to pay for the rifles, or what kind of retraining program is going to be implemented at the academy to make sure they know how to use them properly. The two sides to this coin? Out-of-shape CPD officers now will be able to shoot their doughnuts from a greater distance with better accuracy than with their current side arms.

On Moyers' Journal Rev. Wright Answers Critics, Serves Up Evidence of Attempted Political Assassination

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:53:00 +0000

There was an inkling early on that it was going to turn ugly. As the “corporate owned media” played the same pair of clips of Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's two most controversial sermons, in effect boiling his entire career of pastoral service down to two bits out of context, it was clear what “they” were attempting to illustrate.

Here was a man, with a lifetime of service to Chicago's black community as a compassionate and bold leader, broken down into two :30 clips that showed him as anti-American and racist. Well this weekend Rev. Wright took the mic back in his own defense. The question is whether his hour-long redemption on Bill Moyers Journal last night will have the intended effect—to prove that he is human, and that he has been absolutely mis-characterized at every turn throughout this controversy.

Moyers is a smart guy, and his guests are usually just as smart as he his. He knows the power of his platform and his reputation as a straight shooter. This week he clearly has placed a marker behind Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, and has repainted the canvass of controversy that surrounded Wright in the seven weeks since clips surfaced that appeared to show Wright preaching anti-American sentiments and racial epithets. Barack Obama's spiritual advisor, now reappearing in his first big interview since the controversy erupted, made it clear how disappointed he is that his words were used out of context to damage Obama.

During the hour long interview Moyers aired the full clips of each incident in question. This was the first time I had watched contextual segments of the comments, having only seen snippets played repeatedly on the networks. In watching the full clips, my own shock and dismay at how this man has been sliced-and-diced by clever editing made me extremely angry. In the full segments it became clear that Wrights carefully-crafted and delivered sermons were very different than the small clips that have been constantly loaded, aimed, and fired at Obama in an attempt at political assassination by association.

Whomever is ultimately responsible for taking the little words “God Damn America” out of the entire sermon's context indeed should be strung up for what they have done to Wright's brilliant oratory. Not only do you find out that Wright was not saying “God Damn America” all alone, in fact he was making a clear statement that having faith in God is more important than having faith in government. Of course, I understood it from watching the sermon, but then Moyers asked Wright what he meant...and Wright validated my understanding in his explanation.

In the other segment, delivered the Sunday after 9/11; you find that Wright points out how a U.S. Ambassador had said on Fox News in effect that all of the dirty deeds the U.S. has done around the world were in effect "coming home to roost." That's right, Rev. Wright was describing what a U.S. Ambassador said, not saying it himself...and on Fox News. Wright even talks about how the Fox News hosts were all upset at the comments. Here we begin to learn who may be behind the re-editing of Wrights own comments in an attempt to hurt Obama. The full airing of Wrights own full comments unwittingly reveal a potential motive and possible identity of the aforementioned political assassins.

Without seeing the entire interview the casual observer will never get a sense of this man, whom it was illustrated early on in the program, was indeed on the medical team that saved President Lyndon Johnson during a heart procedure at Bethesda Medical Center. Yesterday several sources revealed in fact that Wright, a retired U.S. Marine, holds commendations for “saving the life of President Lyndon Johnson” for practicing his medical specialties on the former President.

This and other exculpatory information, Moyers presents in depth in the program, and time and time again recounts with Wright uplifting details about his entire career and experience as a compassionate healer of his community and saver of individual souls. The result is a redeemed man who never should have been crucified the way he was by “the corporate media” in order to take down perhaps his most talented student, Barack Obama.

TRANSCRIPT: Bill Moyers Journal Interviews Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 14:49:00 +0000

The following transcript is from the PBS.org website. It is the transcript, as posted, of Bill Moyers' Interview with Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, spiritual advisor to Presidential Candidate Barack Obama. -SF

>>>>>>>>>>

April 25, 2008

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the JOURNAL.

Barack Obama's pastor was in the news again this week. North Carolina Republicans are preparing to run an ad tying Obama to some controversial sound bites lifted from Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons. And CBS and MSNBC led their broadcasts with reports about the ad.

DEAN REYNOLDS: In North Carolina the Republicans put their ad on the internet and say they're going to broadcast it as well.

KEITH OLBERMANN: Republican hit job the North Carolina GOP plans a Willie Horton style TV ad against Obama.

BILL MOYERS: Jeremiah Wright will be in Washington Monday for a news conference at the National Press Club -- his first since the controversy erupted over those incendiary sound bites. You've heard them; who hasn't heard them: Wright suggesting the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were payback for American policy; Wright repeating the canard heard often in black communities that the u.s. government spread HIV in those communities; Wright seemingly calling on God to damn America.

But just who is this man? That's the question I asked when those sound bites began popping up. I'd heard the name Jeremiah Wright -- his church in Chicago belongs to the fellowship of the United Church of Christ. I joined a UCC church on Long Island 40 years ago and attend Riverside Church in New York City, which is affiliated with American Baptists and the UCC. But I couldn't remember ever having met Reverend Wright. So I wanted to know more about the man, the ministry, and the church.

BILL MOYERS: In 1972, Jeremiah Wright became pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. He inherited a struggling congregation of just 9887 members.

REVEREND WRIGHT: I have a friend who every time you greet him, every time you ask him how you doing, he answers, just trying to make it man, just trying to make it.

BILL MOYERS: But by the mid 1980s, when PBS' Frontline shot this film about Wright, he'd grown the congregation to several thousand.

REVEREND WRIGHT: In our homes! Help us to be your church! In our private lives, help us to be your church! In our dealings one with another, help us to be your church Though our minds wander, our souls love only you. Let the church say Amen. Say Amen again.

BILL MOYERS: Trinity Church is located in a largely black neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago - a mixture of working class people and the poor.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Unfortunately, most churches now are "status quo." And so that, to the extent that they're not trying to feed the poor, they're not trying to hook up jobs and people, they're not concerned about the lowest, the least, the left out. They're not concerned about the youth, they're concerned about "Let me come here on a Sunday, hear something that tells me I'm ok, and I'm going to back to where I've been going. Don't rock the boat…"

REVEREND WRIGHT: How about the fact that we have pledged to take what we've got as black people and put it back into the black community? That's what I want to ask you…

BILL MOYERS: He challenged his growing congregation not to lose sight of the needs of their neighbors.

YOUNG MAN: I want to be a vehicle designer.

BILL MOYERS: That meant soup kitchens, day care, drug and legal counseling, and mentoring for young people.

YOUNG MAN:I've watched TV and looked at lawyers in past years and I've basically like the feel of being a lawyer. It's like really exciting.

MENTOR: As a matter of fact, there are a couple lawyers here in the church that maybe we can just hook you up with

YOUNG MAN: I'd like to be a doctor.

REVEREND WRIGHT: You can't be whatcha ain't seen. And so many of our young boys haven't seen nothing but the gangs and the pimps and the brothers on the corner. They've never sat and talked to lawyers, they've never sat and talked to a man, a black man, with 2, 3 degrees! They've never had a chance, they've never had an option in terms of thinking I could do this? I can be this? They see a doctor when they're sick. They don't get to sit and talk-me go to med school? They don't talk to somebody who writes programs and analyzes systems and computers. A black guy? I can do this? I can-never have their horizons lifted.

BOYS: The commitment to the black community The commitment to the black family

BILL MOYERS: He spoke out about racism from segregation in America's cities to the racist apartheid regime of South Africa.

REVEREND WRIGHT: What the word says about racism comes through loud and clear! Botha is wrong! South Africa is wrong! Apartheid is wrong! Oppression is wrong! Anybody who feels white skin is superior to black skin is wrong!

BILL MOYERS: Around that time a young Barack Obama came to Chicago and went to work as a community organizer on the South Side. As he describes in his book, Obama was a religious skeptic at first, and sought out Pastor Wright for his knowledge of the neighborhood. But soon Obama began attending Sunday Services, and in 1988 was baptized there as a Christian.

Twenty years later, Trinity has built a new building for its burgeoning congregation: now over six thousand members. Its ministry has grown as well: including tutoring for kids, women's health programs, and a HIV/AIDS ministry.

Trinity has long had strong ties with the African roots of its faith. Parishoners are asked to respect what they call "the black value system:" to rededicate themselves to God, the black family and the black community. Reinforcing the motto that they are quote "Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian."

You see the connection to Africa in the stained glass windows Wright installed in the new church. They depict many of the biblical stories that took place there.

REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: We wanted our stained-glass windows to tell the story of the centrality of Africans in the role of Christianity from its inception up until the present day. We play some interesting games educationally with the kids to help kids understand -- can you name the seven continents? As a kid, you learn that in school. All right, on what continent did everything in the Bible from Genesis to Malachi take place? And they'll give you an eighth continent: the Middle East. No, no, no, you just named seven continents. So, what continent do these things take place on in your Bible? It's that kind of biblical truth put in stain glass so kids can understand this is not something somebody made up. This is not something from black power "Oooh." This is actual biblical, historical fact that you have a central role in the Christian faith that is yours.

BILL MOYERS: Several years ago Jeremiah Wright and the church began the search for his successor, and after 36 years as pastor, he will be retiring at the end of next month.

REVEREND WRIGHT: In Genesis:2 it says God breathes into the nostrils of what God had formed from the dust. God donated some divinity to some dirt and we became living souls. That's God breath you have in you, that's God's breath that you just breathed. God is the giver of life. Let me tell you what that means. That means we have no right to take a life whether as a gang banger living the thug life, or as a President lying about leading a nation into war. We have no right to take a life! Whether through the immorality of a slave trade, or the immorality of refusing HIV/AIDS money to countries or agencies who do not tow your political line! We have no right to take a life! Turn to your neighbors and say we have no right to take a life!

BILL MOYERS: That was Jeremiah Wright three years ago, and he's with me here today.

Welcome to the JOURNAL.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Thank you for having me.

BILL MOYERS: Let's start with first things. When did you hear the call to ministry? How did it come?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I was a teenager when I heard the call to ministry. I grew up in a parsonage. I grew up a son of and grandson of a minister, which also gave me the advantage of knowing that there were more things to ministry than pastoring. I had no idea that I'd be preaching or pasturing a church at that teenage year. As a matter of fact I left Philadelphia going to Virginia Union University. And unfortunately, I was starting during the civil rights movement. And the civil rights movement showed me a side of Christianity that I had not seen in Philadelphia. I had not seen Christians who, as I saw in Richmond, Virginia, who loved the lord, who professed faith in Jesus Christ and who believed in segregation, saw nothing wrong with lynching, saw nothing wrong with Negroes staying in their places. I knew about hatred. I knew about prejudice. But I didn't know Christians participated in that, in that kind of thinking.

BILL MOYERS: So what did that do to you?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It made me question my call. It made me question whether or not I was doing the right thing. It made me pause in my educational pursuit. I stopped school in my last year, senior year, and went into the service.

BILL MOYERS: He served six years in the military: two as a marine, and four in the Navy as a cardiopulmonary technician. That's where our paths crossed for the only time.

That's Jeremiah Wright, behind the I.V. pole, monitoring President Lyndon Johnson's heart as he was recovering from gall bladder surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital. And right behind him is a very young me. I was the President's Press Secretary.

REVEREND WRIGHT: As you know, the President had to be operated on and out of surgery by 9:00 when the stock market opened. And talking and wide awake. So, we scrubbed in, like, 3:00 in the morning.

When he awakened, unlike other patients, you did not move him to recovery. You didn't move him to ICU. They kept him right there for security reasons. Secret Service all around, there was secret service in the whole operating suite and nobody else allowed in the operating suite except Secret Service.

So, after about an hour and a half, I went to get some coffee. And as I was coming back from the lounge where the coffee was, going back to monitor, I saw the guys talkin' into their wristwatches and I was nodding, speaking to them. So, I turn to go into the room to check the pace. And secret service guys standing there grabbed me, knocked the coffee outta my hand, burned me with the hot coffee, twisted my arm up behind my neck and screams into his phone, "I got him." And I was, "Got him?" And I'm screamin' in pain. And my assistant comes running out of the booth. He sees me jacked up and he starts laughing. I said, "Joe, don't laugh. Tell him who I am." And he said, "He's been here all morning."

BILL MOYERS: Standing above the President.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Guy looked at me, pulled my mask up over face, "Oh, yeah." And that was it.

BILL MOYERS: After the military, Wright graduated from Howard University, then went to the University of Chicago Divinity School for a Masters in Religious History.

But his path took a turn back to his first calling - when he was asked by that struggling little church on the South Side of Chicago to become its pastor.

BILL MOYERS: So, when you looked out on that handful of worshippers that first Sunday morning, 87 members, I'm sure all of them weren't there--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Oh, yeah. They all knew they heard this new kid was there with a big natural. So, they came to see--

BILL MOYERS: They were there.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: So, what did you see and what did you think you had to do?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Well, actually a good friend of yours, I believe, and one of my professors, got me in the predicament I'm in today, Dr. Martin Marty, one of my professors at the University of Chicago--

BILL MOYERS: One of the great distinguished historians of religion in America.

REVEREND WRIGHT: He put a challenge to us in 1970, late '69, early '70, I'll never forget. He said, "You know, you come into the average church on a Sunday morning and you think you've stepped from the real world into a fantasy world. And what do I mean by that?" He said pick up the church bulletin. You leave a world, Vietnam, or today you leave a world, Iraq, over 4,000 dead, American boys and girls, 100,000, 200,000 depending on which count, Iraqi dead. Afghanistan, Darfur, rapes in the Congo, Katrina, Lower Ninth Ward, that's the world you leave. And you come in; you pick up your church bulletin. It says, there is a ladies tea on second Sunday. The children's choir will be doing. He said, "How come our bulletins, how come the faith preached in our churches does not relate to the world in which our church members leave at the benediction?" Well, it hit me. And it hit me several different ways. Number one, I know there's a church publication, the bulletin, the weekly bulletin. But what about the ministry? And what about the prophetic voice of the church that's not heard? We're talking about things that our members are wrestling with a whole bunch of other things. And the sermons and the ministries of the church don't touch those things.

So, when, I looked and said this church had said to me, in fact not just to me, the church, the congregation has said, "OK, we were started by a white denomination. We were started in this community to be an integrated church. Ten years, that hasn't happened. Are we gonna be a black church in this community? What are we doing for this community?" They put together a statement that shows all the candidates for the pulpit. I was one of the candidates. They said, "Can you lead us in this new direction? How do we minister to this community in which we sit?" Not just on Sunday, first you have to attract people to come-- or even be interested in our worship experiences on Sunday. But what do we do in ministry that speaks to the community and the world in which we sit? That's Martin Marty. That's Martin Marty.

BILL MOYERS: Marty told me that you launched a strenuous effort to help the members of that church overcome the shame, and I'm quoting him, "they had so long been conditioned to experience." What was the source of that shame?

REVEREND WRIGHT: What Carter G. Woodson calls the miseducation of the Negro. That Africa is ignorant, Africans are ignorant; there is no African history, there is no African music, there is no African culture, anything related to Africa is negative, therefore you are not African. Chinese come to the country, they're still Chinese-American. We have Chinatown. Koreans come, they're still Korean. They have Koreatown. Africans come, they're colored. They're Negro. They're anything but Africa. In fact, we don't even call them Ebbu, Ebibu, Fulani, Fanti, Ga, no, no, no -- they're all "Negro." Portuguese, "Negro" Spanish. They're all gettin' lumped into black, but we're not black, we are Negro with a capital N.

The shame of being a descendant of Africa, was a shame that had been pumped into the minds and hearts of Africans from the 1600s on, even aided and abetted by the benefit of those schools started by the missionaries, who simply carried their culture with them into the South and taught their cultures being synonymous with Christianity. So that to become a Christian, you had to let go of all vestiges of Africa and become European, become New Englanders and worship like New England, worship God properly and right. Well, that shame was a part of the shame that many Africans in the '60s and the '70s were feeling.

Dr Reuben Sheares is my predecessor -- he was the interim pastor at Trinity -- coined the phrase "unashamedly black," where blacks coming outta the '60s were no longer ashamed of being black people, nor did they have to apologize for being Christians. Because many persons in the African-American community were teasing us, Christians, of being a white man's religion. And no, we're not ashamed of Christianity. And we don't have to apologize for who we are as African-Americans. So that, I think, is what Marty was talking about.

BILL MOYERS: So, when Trinity Church says it is unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian, is it embracing a race-based theology?

REVEREND WRIGHT: No, it is not. It is embracing Christianity without giving up Africanity. A lotta the missionaries were going to other countries assuming that our culture is superior, that you have no culture. And to be a Christian, you must be like us. Right now, you can go to Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and see Christians in 140-degree weather. They have to have on a tie. Because that's what it means to be a Christian. Well, it's that kind of assuming that our culture, "We have the only sacred music. You must sing our music. You must use a pipe organ. You cannot use your instrument." It's that kind of assumption that in the field of missions, people say, "You know what? We're doing this wrong. We need to take Christ and leave culture at home. We need to learn the culture of people into which we're moving, and preach the methods of Jesus Christ using the culture that we are a part of." Well, the same thing happened with Christians in this country when they said, "You know what? Because those same missionaries who went south, they didn't let us sing gospel music." That was not sacred--

BILL MOYERS: They were singin' the great Anglican hymns.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Correct, correct. And make sure you use correct diction. Well, the-- Africans in the late-- African-Americans in the late '60s started saying, "You know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." Even-- I was in Virginia Union, I was soloist at Virginia Union in the college, in the concert choir. We were not allowed to sing anything but anthems and spirituals. The same thing with the Howard University concert choir. The same thing with all the historical black choirs until '68. When King got killed, black kids started saying wait a minute. We're not givin' up who we are as black people to become-- to show somebody else that we -- in fact, the music majors at Howard when I was-- teaching assistant at La Vern they said to the choir director there, "We're tired of singin' German Lieder and Italian aria to prove to you that we-- you know, we can sing foreign songs. But we have our own music tradition." Prior to '68, there was no gospel music at Howard University. Prior to '68, there was no jazz major. The white universities are giving Count Basie and Duke Ellington degrees. We don't even the jazz course. We don't have blues. We don't have any of our music on this black college campus. Because the missionaries had not allowed us to teach our own music.

And at that point in history, all across the country and all across denominational lines, the-- the college-age kids started saying, no more. No mas. Nada mas. We're gonna do our people. We're gonna do our culture. We're gonna do our history. And we're gonna embrace it and not put-- to say one is superior to the other. Because we are different. And different does not mean deficient, that we just different like snowflakes. We're different. We talk about God of diversity? God has diverse culture, God has -and we're proud of who we are because that's the statement the congregation was making, not a race-based theology.

BILL MOYERS: So, God is not, contrary to some of the rumors that have been circulated about Trinity, God is not exclusively or totally identified with just the black community?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Of course not. God-- I think Jesus said to Nicodemus, "God should love the world," not just the black community-- that we have our church is what some would call multicultural. We not only have Hispanic members, we not only have members--

BILL MOYERS: When you said, "No mas," I was gonna say that's not a spiritual. That's not out of the spirituals or the blues.

REVEREND WRIGHT: We have members from Cuba. We have members from Puerto Rico. We have members from Belize. We have members from all of the Caribbean islands. We have members from South Africa, from West Africa, and we have white members.

BILL MOYERS: What does the church service on Sunday morning mean in general to the black community?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It means many things. I think one of the things the church service means is hope. That tell me that there is hope in this life, almost like Psalm 27 when David said, "I would have fainted unless I lived to see the goodness of the right in this life." Don't tell me about heaven. What about in this life-- that there is a better way, that this is not in vain, that it is not Edward Albee or Camus' absurd, the theater of the absurd. It is not Shakespeare full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That life has meaning and that God is still in control, and that God can, and God will, some people of goodwill working hard do something about the situation. We can change. We can do better. We can change policy. We can look back and say, "Well, 40 years ago when King was alive, we did not have right before his death, a civil rights act. We did not have a voting rights act." So, change is possible. But I'm getting my head whipped. The average member in the black church five days a week, "tell me that this is not all there is to this." So, they come looking for hope. And as we've tried to do, move a hurt. People who are marginalized, marginalized in the educational system, marginalized in the socioeconomic system -- to move them from hurt to healing, that there is really is a balm in Gilead.

BILL MOYERS: Are you saying that the members of Trinity leave the world of unemployment, leave the world of discrimination, leave the world of that daily struggle and come to church for-

REVEREND WRIGHT: For encouragement, to go back out and make a difference in their world. To go back out and change that world, to not just talk about heaven by and by, but to get equipped and to get to know that we are not alone in this struggle, and that the struggle can make a difference. Not to leave that world and pretend that we are now in some sort of fantasy land, as Martin Marty called it, but that we serve a God who comes into history on the side of the oppressed. That we serve a God who cares about the poor. That we serve a God who says that as much as you've done unto the least of these, my little ones, you've done unto me, so that we are not alone. Because that same God says I'm with you, and I'm with you in the struggle. Our United Church of Christ says courage and the struggle for justice and peace that is an ongoing struggle.

BILL MOYERS: Lots of controversy about black liberation theology. As I understand it, black liberation theology reads the bible through the experience of people who have suffered, and who then are able to say to themselves that we read the bible differently, because we have struggled, than those do who have not struggled. Is that a fair bumper sticker of liberation theology?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I think that's a fair bumper sticker. I think that the terms "liberation theology" or "black liberation theology" cause more problems and red flags for people who don't understand it.

BILL MOYERS: When I hear the word "black liberation theology" being the interpretation of scripture from the oppressed, I think well, that's the Jewish story--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Exactly, exactly. From Genesis to Revelation. These are people who wrote the word of God that we honor and love under Egyptian oppression, Syrian oppression, Babylonian oppression, Persian oppression, Greek oppression, Roman oppression. So that their understanding of what God is saying is very different from the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians. And that's what prophetic theology of the African-American church is.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah. But talk a little bit about that. The prophets loved Israel. But they hated the waywardness of Israel. And they were calling Israel out of love back to justice, not damning--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Exactly.

BILL MOYERS: Not damning Israel. Right?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Right. They were saying that God was-- in fact, if you look at the damning, condemning, if you look at Deuteronomy, it talks about blessings and curses, how God doesn't bless everything. God does not bless gang-bangers. God does not bless dope dealers. God does not bless young thugs that hit old women upside the head and snatch their purse. God does not bless that. God does not bless the killing of babies. God does not bless the killing of enemies. And when you look at blessings and curses out of that Hebrew tradition from the book of Deuteronomy, that's what the prophets were saying, that God is not blessing this. God does not bless it- bless us. And when we're calling them, the prophets call them to repentance and to come back to God. If my people who are called by my name, God says to Solomon, will humble themselves and pray, seek my faith and turn from their wicked ways. God says that wicked ways, not Jeremiah Wright, then will I hear from heaven.

BILL MOYERS: One of the most controversial sermons that you preach is the sermon you preach that ended up being that sound bite about Goddamn America.

REVEREND JEREMIAH WRIGHT: Where governments lie, God does not lie. Where governments change, God does not change. And I'm through now. But let me leave you with one more thing. Governments fail. The government in this text comprised of Caesar, Cornelius, Pontius Pilate - the Roman government failed. The British government used to rule from East to West. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonized Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British government failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian descent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese descent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God bless America? No, no, no. Not God bless America; God damn America! That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!

BILL MOYERS: What did you mean when you said that?

REVEREND WRIGHT: When you start confusing God and government, your allegiances to government -a particular government and not to God, that you're in serious trouble because governments fail people. And governments change. And governments lie. And those three points of the sermon. And that is the context in which I was illustrating how the governments biblically and the governments since biblical times, up to our time, changed, how they failed, and how they lie. And when we start talking about my government right or wrong, I don't think that goes. That is consistent with what the will of God says or the word of God says that governments don't say right or wrong. That governments that wanna kill innocents are not consistent with the will of God. And that you are made in the image of God, you're not made in the image of any particular government. We have the freedom here in this country to talk about that publicly, whereas some other places, you're dead if say the wrong thing about your government.

BILL MOYERS: Well, you can be almost crucified for saying what you've said here in this country.

REVEREND WRIGHT: That's true. That's true. But you can be crucified, you can be crucified publicly, you can be crucified by corporate-owned media. But I mean, what I just meant was, you can be killed in other countries by the government for saying that. Dr. King, of course, was vilified. And most of us forget that after he was assassinated, but the year before he was assassinated, April 4th, 1967 at the Riverside Church, he talked about racism, militarism and capitalism. He became vilified. He got ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds. He was no longer talking about civil rights and being able to sit down at lunch counters that he should not talk about things like the war in Vietnam. He preached--

BILL MOYERS: Lyndon Johnson was furious at that. As you know-

REVEREND WRIGHT: I'm sure he was.

BILL MOYERS: That's where they broke.

REVEREND WRIGHT: And that's where a lot of the African-American community broke with him, too. He was vilified by Roger Wilkins' daddy, Roy Wilkins. Jackie Robinson. He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he'd overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war. And that part of King is not lifted up every year on January 15th. 1963, "I have a dream," was lifted up, and passages from that - sound bites if you will - from that march on Washington speech. But the King who preached the end of- "I've been to the mountaintop, I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land, I might not get there with you,"- that part of the speech is talked about, not the fact that he was in Memphis siding with garbage collectors. Nothing about Resurrection City, nothing about the poor--

BILL MOYERS: Resurrection City was the march in Washington for the poor.

REVEREND WRIGHT: For the poor. That part of King is not talked about because we want to keep that away from the public eye, and the public memory, and it's been 40 years now.

BILL MOYERS: What is your notion of why so many Americans seem not to want to hear the full Monty - they don't want to seem to acknowledge that a nation capable of greatness is also capable of cruelty?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I think I come at that as a historian of religion. That we are miseducated as a people. Or because we're miseducated, you end up with the majority of the people not wanting to hear the truth. Because they would rather cling to what they are taught. James Washington, now a deceased church historian, says that after every revolution, the winners of that revolution write down what the revolution was about so that their children can learn it, whether it's true or not. They don't learn anything at all about the Arawak, they don't learn anything at all about the Seminole, the Cheek-Trail of Tears, the Cherokee. They don't learn anything. No, they don't learn that. What they learn is 1776, Crispus Attucks was the one black guy in there. Fight against the British, the- terrible. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal while we're holding slaves." No, keep that part out. They learn that. And they cling to that. And when you start trying to show them you only got a piece of the story, and lemme show you the rest of the story, you run into vitriolic hatred because you're desecrating our myth. You're desecrating what we hold sacred. And when you're holding sacred is a miseducational system that has not taught you the truth. I also think people don't understand condemn, D-E-M-N, D-A-M-N. They don't understand the root, the etymology of the word in terms of God condemning the practices that are against God's people. But again, what is happening is I talk a truth. Reading the scripture or the hermeneutic of a people who have-

BILL MOYERS: Hermeneutic?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Hermeneutic is an interpretation, it's the window from which you're looking is your hermeneutic. And when you don't realize that I've been framed- this whole thing has been framed through this window, there's another world out here that I'm not looking at or taking into account, it gives you a perspective that-- that is-- that is informed by and limited by your hermeneutic. Dr. James Cone put it this way. The God of the people who riding on the decks of the slave ship is not the God of the people who are riding underneath the decks as slaves in chains. If the God you're praying to, "Bless our slavery" is not the God to whom these people are praying, saying, "God, get us out of slavery." And it's not like Notre Dame playing Michigan. You're saying flip a coin; hope God blesses the winning team, no. That the perception of God who allows slavery, who allows rape, who allows misogyny, who allows sodomy, who allows murder of a people, lynching, that's not the God of the people being lynched and sodomized and raped, and carried away into a foreign country. Same thing you find in Psalm 137. That those people who are carried away into slavery have a very different concept of what it means to be the people of God than the ones who carried them away.

BILL MOYERS: And they say, "How can we sing the song of the Lord of a foreign land?"

REVEREND WRIGHT: Correct.

BILL MOYERS: That chapter ends up with some very brutal words.

REVEREND WRIGHT: It does. And--

BILL MOYERS: You used them in one of your sermons--

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes, I did. I was trying to show how people- how the anger- and we felt anger. I felt anger. I felt hurt. I felt pain. In fact, September 11th, I was in Newark. September 11th, I was trapped in Newark 'cause when they shut down the air system I couldn't get back to Chicago. September 11th, I looked out the window and saw the second plane hit from my hotel window. Alright, I had members who lost loved ones both at the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center. So, I know the pain. And I had to preach to them Sunday. I had to preach. They came to church wanting to know where is God in this. And so, I had to show them using that Psalm 137, how the people who were carried away into slavery were very angry, very bitter, moved and in their anger from wanting revenge against the armies that had carried them away to slavery, to the babies. That Psalm ends up sayin' "Let's kill the baby-let's bash their heads against the stone." So, now you move from revolt and revulsion as to what has happened to you, to you want revenge. You move from anger with the military to taking it out on the innocents. You wanna kill babies. That's what's going on in Psalm 137. And that's exactly where we are. We want revenge. They wanted revenge. God doesn't wanna leave you there, however. God wants redemption. God wants wholeness. And that's the context, the biblical context I used to try to get people sitting again, in that sanctuary on that Sunday following 9/11, who wanted to know where is God in this? What is God saying? What is God saying? Because I want revenge.

REVEREND WRIGHT: The people of faith have moved from the hatred of armed enemies, these soldiers who captured the king, those soldiers who slaughtered his son and put his eyes out, the soldiers who sacked the city, burned the towns, burned the temples, burned the towers, and moved from the hatred for armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents, the babies, the babies . "Blessed are they who dash your baby's brains against a rock." And that my beloved is a dangerous place to be. Yet, that is where the people of faith are in 551 BC and that is where far too many people of faith are in 2001 AD. We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. We want revenge. We want paybacks and we don't care who gets hurt in the process.

I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox news. This is a white man and he was upsetting the Fox news commentators to no end. He pointed out. You see him John? A white man he pointed out -an Ambassador! He pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true. America's chickens are coming home to roost! We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism! We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers. We bombed Gadafi's home and killed his child. "Blessed are they who bash your children's head against a rock!" We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy. Killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye! Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school, civilians - not soldiers - people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans, and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yards! America's chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism. A White Ambassador said that y'all not a Black Militant. Not a Reverend who preaches about racism. An Ambassador whose eyes are wide open, and who's trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised--

BILL MOYERS: You preached that sermon on the Sunday after 9-11 -- almost 7 years ago. When people saw the sound bites from it this year, they were upset because you seemed to be blaming America. Did you somehow fail to communicate?

REVEREND WRIGHT: The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly. What is not the failure to communicate is when something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public. That's not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they wanna do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or as the learned journalist from the New York Times called me, a "wack-a-doodle." It's to paint me as something. Something's wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with this country. There's -its policies. We're perfect. We-our hands are free. Our hands have no blood on them. That's not a failure to communicate. The message that is being communicated by the sound bites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites want to communicate.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think they wanted to communicate?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I think they wanted to communicate that I am- unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ. And, by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint? That's what they wanted to communicate. They know nothing about the church. They know nothing about our prison ministry. They know nothing about our food share ministry. They know nothing about our senior citizens home. They know nothing about all we try to do as a church and have tried to do, and still continue to do as a church that believes what Martin Marty said, that the two worlds have to be together-the world before church and the world after postlude. And that the gospel of Jesus Christ has to speak to those worlds, not only in terms of the preached message on a Sunday morning but in terms of the lived-out ministry throughout the week.

BILL MOYERS: What did you think when you began to see those very brief sound bites circulating as they did?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I felt it was unfair. I felt it was unjust. I felt it was untrue. I felt for those who were doing that, were doing it for some very devious reasons.

BILL MOYERS: Such as?

REVEREND WRIGHT: To put an element of fear and hatred and to stir up the anxiety of American who still don't know the African-American church, know nothing about the prophetic theology of the African-American experience, who know nothing about the black church, who don't even know how we got a black church.

BILL MOYERS: What can you tell me about what's happened at the church since this controversy broke?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Well, the church members are very upset. Because they know it's a lie, the things that are being broadcast. Church members have been very supportive. The church members have been upset by behavior of some of the media; picking up church bulletins to get the names and addresses and phone numbers of the sick and shut-in, calling them to try to get stories. One lady they called in hospice. My members are very upset about that, our members are very upset about that. Our members are very upset about that. Our members know that this is what the media is doing. And our members know they're only doing it because of the political campaign. What have we gotten into here? People threatening, you know, Christians, some of 'em, threatening us, quoting scripture and telling us how they're going to wipe us off the face of the earth in the name of Jesus

BILL MOYERS: There had been death threats?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes, there have. At, both on myself and on Pastor Moss, and bomb threats at the church.

BILL MOYERS: Did you ever imagine that you would come to personify the black anger that so many whites fear?

REVEREND WRIGHT: No. I did not. I have been preaching as I've been preaching since I was ordained 41 years ago. I pointed out to some of the persons in Chicago who find all of this, new to them that the stance I took in standing against apartheid along with our denomination back in the '70s and putting a "Free South Africa" sign in front of the church put me at odds with the government. Our denomination's defense of the Wilmington Ten and Ben Chavis put me at odds with the establishment. So, being at odds with policies is nothing new to me. The blow up and the blowing up of sermons preached ten, fifteen, seven, six years ago and now becoming a media event, not the full sermon, but the snippets from the sermon and sound bite having made me the target of hatred. Yes, that is something very new and something very, very unsettling.

BILL MOYERS: I think of how important music is to your church at times like this, that's intentional isn't it?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It is. It's been a part of our tradition. And what I tried to do again in bringing together, how do you take a people who are hurting and bring healing? How do you take a people who are suffocating with hate and give them hope? Well, a part is through the musical tradition. One of the things in our tradition that I mentioned a moment ago that's so key is blues. The Blues. We learned how to sing the blues. That's why suicide rate wasn't much higher. 'Cause we started singing the blues. Well people sittin' there every Sunday they know that tradition. Many of them, as they turn their keys off coming into church we're not listening to gospel music. They were listening to our music out of our tradition. Blues, Doo-wops, rock and roll. Anita Baker. Luther Vandross. That's our music tradition. That's a part of what helps us hold it together. So it's the same thing that helps them to hold it together out there. Helps them to hold it together in here

BILL MOYERS: What is it you said about suicide?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Blacks learn how to sing the blues rather than just giving up on life. A guy's wife walks out on him with his best friend. And he's crushed. So what does he say? Instead of going out and taking a gun and killing he sings a song. "I'm going down to the railroad to lay my poor head on the track. I'm going down to the railroad to lay my poor head on the track. "And when the locomotive comes I'm gonna pull my fool head back." I'm not giving up life over this. That life goes on beyond this. Pain is just for a moment. This whole notion about what we're going through is only a season. And this came to pass, didn't come to stay. That's what the blues do. And that's what the music tradition does. That's what the spirituals have done and that's what the gospel music has done, historically, in our church. So, yeah, trying to keep that as an integral part of worship is crucial for us.

BILL MOYERS: So what blues are you singing right now?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Don't know why they treat me so bad. I'm singing the sacred blues. The songs of our gospel tradition. That I'm so glad trouble don't last always. That, what man meant for evil, God meant for good. That what--

BILL MOYERS: What man meant for evil God meant for good.

REVEREND WRIGHT: That's a quote from Joseph, in the bible, the Book of Genesis.

BILL MOYERS: And what do you take that to mean?

REVEREND WRIGHT: That Human beings, many times, do things for nefarious purposes. And God can take that and turn something- make something good out of it. That, for instance, using that Joseph passage, when his brother sold him into slavery, and they thought, after daddy's gone, he's gonna get us. And Joseph reassured them by saying, "No, no, what you meant for evil, God has turned into something good. I'm not trying to do revenge or payback. In fact, restoration is what God is. And I restore you. As brothers, we're all brothers." That those sound bytes, those snippets were taken for nefarious purposes. That God can take that and do something very positive for it- with it. That, in Philadelphia, in response to the sound bytes, in response to the snippets, in Philadelphia Senator Obama made a very powerful speech in terms of our need as a nation to address the whole issue of race. That's something good that's already starting. That because of you guys playing these sound bytes now what's getting ready to happen as something very positive, and something very powerful that God can take what you meant to try to hurt somebody to help the nation come to grips with truth. To help a nation come to grips with miseducation. To help a nation come to grips with things we don't like to talk about. To help a nation--

BILL MOYERS: You know, you mentioned Senator Obama. In the 20 years that you've been your pastor, have you ever heard him repeat any of your controversial statements as his opinion?

REVEREND WRIGHT: No. No. No. Absolutely not. I don't talk to him about politics. And so here at a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician. I continue to be a pastor who speaks to the people of god about the things of God.

BILL MOYERS: Here is a man who came to see you 20 years ago wanting to know about the neighborhood. Barack Obama was a skeptic when it came to religion. He sought you out because he knew you knew about the community. You led him to the faith. You performed his wedding ceremony. You baptized his two children. You were, for 20 years, his spiritual counselor. He has said that. And, yet, he, in that speech at Philadelphia, had to say some hard things about you. How, how did it go down with you when you heard Barack Obama say those things?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It went down very simply. He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded as a politician. But he did not disown me because I'm a pastor.

BILL MOYERS: But even some of your admirers say it would be wrong to gloss over what Martin Marty himself called- who loves you- called your "abrasive edges." For example, you know, Louis Farrakhan lives in the south part of Chicago, doesn't he? You've had a long complicated relationship with him, right?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: And he, you know, he's expressed racist and anti-Semitic remarks. And, yet, last year-

REVEREND WRIGHT: Twenty years ago.

BILL MOYERS: Twenty years ago, but that's indefensible.

REVEREND WRIGHT: The Nation of Islam and Mr. Farrakhan have more African-American men off of drugs. More African-American men respecting themselves. More African-American men working for a living. Not gang banging. Not trying to get by. That's not indefensible in terms of how you make a difference in the prisons? Turning people's lives around. Giving people hope. Getting people off drugs. That we don't believe the same things in terms of our specific faiths. He's Muslim, I'm Christian. We don't believe the same things he said years ago. But that has nothing to do with what he has done in terms of helping people change their lives for the better. I said direct quote was what? "Louis Farrakhan is like E.F. Hutton. When Lewis Farrakhan speaks, black America listens. They may not agree with him, but they're listening.

BILL MOYERS: What does it say to you that millions Americans, according to polls, still think Barack Obama is a Muslim?

REVEREND WRIGHT: It says to me that corporate media and miseducation or misinformation or disinformation, I think we started calling it during the Nixon years, still reigns supreme. Thirty some percent of Americans still think there are weapons of mass destruction. That you tell a lie long enough that people start believing it. What does the media do? "Barack Hussein Obama! Barack Hussein Obama! Barack Hussein. It sounds like Osama, Obama. That Arabic is a language. So that's why many people still think he's a Muslim. He went to a madrasah. What's a madrasah? I don't know, but I know it was one of those Muslim schools that teaches terrorism. The kind of I don't want to think, just tell me what to think mentality is why so many Americans still think that.

BILL MOYERS: Our denomination, the United Church of Christ has called for a sacred conversation on race in America. What are the steps that you think from all of your experience can be taken to move race relations forward?

REVEREND WRIGHT: I think there are many - to start using Bill Jones' paradigm, about how one sees God. Your theology determines one's anthropology. And how you see humans determines your sociology. To look at how we've come to see race, and in others of other races, based on our understanding of God who sees others as less than important. Less than my people. And where in our religious traditions are there passages in our sacred scriptures that are racist? They're in the Vedas, the Babylonian Talmud, they're in the Koran, they're in the Bible. How do we grapple with these passages in our sacred texts? The same way you grapple with Judges:19, where it's alright for a preacher to have a concubine and cut her up into 12 pieces. We gotta argue with our texts that are, as we've been struggling with, battling with, wrestling with, anti-Semitic. The Christian, "The Jews killed Jesus." No, we gotta come to grips with, you know, these texts were written by certain people at certain times with certain racist understandings of others who are different. That different meant deficient. That doing that with adults and starting with kids. that begins the conversation that Senator Obama talked about that we need to have. And re-writing the curriculum in our schools to tell the truth in our schools.

BILL MOYERS: Jeremiah Wright, thank you very much for this opportunity.

REVEREND WRIGHT: Well, thank you for having me Bill. Thank you sir.

BILL MOYERS: That's it for the JOURNAL. We'll see you next week and on line.

I'm Bill Moyers.

Ahh the Joys of S.E.O...ScottsBigMouth Gets Optimicated

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:56:00 +0000

Do you know what S.E.O. is? Search Engine Optimization is the technique of "tagging" your web or blog pages with terms that fit the content within that page. It is an important part of activating your website's potential to reach people of interest through search engines like Google, Ask.com, Yahoo, etc.

I get asked all the time "what can I do to make my website reach more people?" These days my answer is invariably "S.E.O." Why? Well let me break it down for you a bit by walking you through what we're doing here at ScottsBigMouth to prepare for our new site launch.

As announced a couple weeks ago, ScottsBigMouth is morphing from just another run of the mill blog to a multimedia portal. Featuring my writing, my new podcast and multimedia show, and the contributions of our producers, friends, and readers/listeners/viewers; ScottsBigMouth is going to become a hub of activity from a multitude of different sources. ScottsBigMouth is changing to better serve the viewing/listening/reading audiences, and to provide a dynamite platform to match the creative work we're putting behind ScottsBigMouth The Show--which is slated for broadcast launch in a month or two (once we get the formula for our "secret sauce" just right!).

So that said, now we turn back to the mechanics of what must be done in order to maximize the exposure and traffic to the current ScottsBigMouth Blog. One of the things that must be done in order to insure that people are finding ScottsBigMouth as much as possible is that I am going back to EVERY piece that I've ever posted on ScottsBigMouth, and assigning a set of tags or "Labels" to categorize each post. Doing this in a smart and systematic way is what S.E.O. is.

The reason I'm doing this work (and it is a LOT of work) is to guarantee that the people who are looking for particular topics will begin to pull up ScottsBigMouth items when they search for "Hillary Clinton" or "schlock" in a web search. By tagging every item on the site in the way that I am doing it, I am providing a path of "virtual breadcrumbs" for people to reach the site. When this entire catalogue is done, it will be very easy for me to port those tags into the new ScottsBigMouth, and effectively create a very-well-documented set of cross-links between the new ScottsBigMouth and the old blog.

Once I'm done with the "tagging" part of the process, then I' go back to all of the search engines and "resubmit" the site to their search engines, with tags in tact. What this does is cause the search engines to look at each page of the blog in a particular light, and ultimately fine-tunes the way the engines pull up our content in individual searches. It is a technique that takes time, can be very tedious, but makes a heck of a difference in the level of traffic web sites get on a regular basis.

The long term effects of a systematic S.E.O. program come in several areas. 1. Raising web "hits" in searches for particular items in searches, 2. Raising awareness that ScottsBigMouth is a viable source of opinion, humor, political and media tidbits, and just crazy fun stuff, 3. As ScottsBigMouth becomes a bigger property, it will make it easier in the long term to track who/what/where/when/why people reach and participate on ScottsBigMouth, 4. When we begin to talk to advertisers in the Progressive communities, GLBT communities, Comedy communities, and Media communities; we will have a real, viable, and documented set of metrics to show as for where our "hits" come from...which raises our credibility with potential advertisers.

So those are just a few of the practical reasons why an S.E.O. program is very important to any small business web site or blog. Over time, like any smart business, ScottsBigMouth will offload these functions to an editorial and production team that will take day-to-day responsibility (either in house or contracted) to make sure we stay on top of the cutting edge, and keep building our web cred.

Sun Times Makes Candidates Want To Get Botox

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:47:00 +0000

OH SNAP! I mean, we knew before what being U.S. President does to the occupant's face (can you say Bill Clinton? Ronald Reagan?), but DAMN! Look at these photos from today' Chicago Sun Times. It is clear that all three of these folks are going to need some serious Botox and make-up work. Popular Photography magazine did a little project that aged each of the candidates' pictures to the point they would be at (facially) after the first term in 2012. Who do you think they look like? Email me with your opinions at scott@foval.com. I have my own opinions, but you don't care so give me yours!

Updated Elements of Journalism are Available Now

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:26:00 +0000

In searching for the best set of ethical and journalistic standards to implement on the soon-to-be launched new ScottsBigMouth website and show, I literally tripped across the new Elements of Journalism page available at Journalism.org. Below is an excerpt from the website, but it is only a teaser. I encourage you to visit Journalism.org and buy the book if you intend to blog or contribute in any way to a news portal. We will be adhering to the guidelines in this book as closely as possible in the future when reporting news. OpEd, of course, is a different animal, and we'll be posting guidelines for OpEd material as well in the coming months. Enjoy! -- SF

>>>>>>>>>>

The Elements of Journalism

What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect - Introduction

June 19, 2006

by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel

Introduction

As anthropologists began comparing notes on the world's few remaining primitive cultures, they discovered something unexpected. From the most isolated tribal societies in Africa to the most distant islands in the Pacific, people shared essentially the same definition of what is news. They shared the same kind of gossip. They even looked for the same qualities in the messengers they picked to gather and deliver their news. They wanted people who could run swiftly over the next hill, accurately gather information, and engagingly retell it. Historians have pieced together that the same basic news values have held constant through time. "Humans have exchanged a similar mix of news . . . throughout history and across cultures," historian Mitchell Stephens has written.¹

How do we explain the mystery of this consistency? The answer, historians and sociologists have concluded, is that news satisfies a basic human impulse. People have an intrinsic need -- an instinct -- to know what is occurring beyond their direct experience.² Being aware of events we cannot see for ourselves engenders a sense of security, control, and confidence. One writer has called it "a hunger for human awareness."³

One of the first things people do when meeting a friend or acquaintance is share information. "Have you heard about . . . ?" We want to know if they've heard what we have, and if they heard it the same way. There is a thrill in a shared sense of discovery. We form relationships, choose friends, make character judgments, based partly on whether someone reacts to information the same way we do.

When the flow of news is obstructed, "a darkness falls," and anxiety grows.⁴ The world, in effect, becomes too quiet. We feel alone. John McCain, the U.S. senator from Arizona, writes that in his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, what he missed most was not comfort, food, freedom, or even his family and friends. "The thing I missed most was information -- free uncensored, undistorted, abundant information."⁵

Call it the Awareness Instinct.

We need news to live our lives, to protect ourselves, bond with each other, identify friends and enemies. Journalism is simply the system societies generate to supply this news. That is why we care about the character of news and journalism we get: they influence the quality of our lives, our thoughts, and our culture. Writer Thomas Cahill, the author of several popular books on the history of religion, has put it this way: you can tell "the worldview of a people . . . the invisible fears and desires . . . in a culture's stories."⁶

At a moment of revolution in communications, what do the stories we tell say about our worldview, our fears, desires, and values?

This book began on a rainy Saturday in June 1997, when twenty-five journalists gathered at the Harvard Faculty Club. Around the long table sat editors of several of the nation's top newspapers, as well as some of the most influential names in television and radio, several of the top journalism educators, and some of the country's most prominent authors. They were there because they thought something was seriously wrong with their profession. They barely recognized what they considered journalism in much of the work of their colleagues. Instead of serving a larger public interest, they feared, their profession was damaging it.

The public, in turn, increasingly distrusted journalists, even hated them. And it would only get worse. By 1999, just 21% of Americans would think the press cared about people, down from 41% in 1985.⁷ Only 58% would respect the press's watchdog role, a drop from 67% in 1985. Less than half, just 45%, would think the press protected democracy. That percentage had been nearly ten points higher in 1985.⁸

What was different that day in Cambridge was that many of the journalists in the room -- and around the country -- were beginning to agree with the public. "In the newsroom we no longer talk about journalism," said Max King, then editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. "We are consumed with business pressure and the bottom line," agreed another editor. News was becoming entertainment and entertainment news. Journalists' bonuses were increasingly tied to the company's profit margins, not the quality of their work. Finally, Columbia University professor James Carey offered what many recalled as a summation: "The problem is that you see journalism disappearing inside the larger world of communications. What you yearn to do is recover journalism from that larger world."

Implied in that was something more important. If journalism -- the system by which we get our news -- was being subsumed, what would replace it? Advertising? Entertainment? E-commerce? Propaganda? Some new hybrid of all these? And what would the consequence be?

The answers matter, the group thought, to the public and news-people both. Journalism provides something unique to a culture -- independent, reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information that citizens require to be free. A journalism that is asked to provide something other than that subverts democratic culture. This is what happens when governments control the news, as in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. We're seeing it again in places like Singapore, where news is controlled to encourage capitalism but discourage participation in public life. Something akin to this may be taking root in the United States in a more purely commercial form, as when news outlets owned by larger corporations are used to promote their conglomerate parent's products, to engage in subtle lobbying or corporate rivalry, or are intermingled with advertising to boost profits. The issue isn't just the loss of journalism. At stake is whether, as citizens, we have access to independent information that makes it possible for us to take part in governing ourselves.

The group decided on a plan: engage journalists and the public in a careful examination of what journalism was supposed to be. We set out to answer two questions. If newspeople thought journalism was somehow different from other forms of communication, how was it different? If they thought journalism needed to change but that some core principles needed to endure, what were those principles?

Over the next two years, the group, now calling itself the Committee of Concerned Journalists, organized the most sustained, systematic, and comprehensive examination ever conducted by journalists of news gathering and its responsibilities. We held 21 public forums attended by 3,000 people and involving testimony from more than 300 journalists. We partnered with a team of university researchers who conducted more than a hundred three-and-a-half-hour interviews with journalists about their values. We produced two surveys of journalists about their principles. We held a summit of First Amendment and journalism scholars. With the Project for Excellence in Journalism we produced nearly a dozen content studies of news reporting. We studied the history of those journalists who came before us.

This book is the fruit of that examination. It is not an argument. It is, rather, a description of the theory and culture of journalism that emerged from three years of listening to citizens and journalists, from our empirical studies, and from our reading of the history of the profession as it evolved in the United States.

We learned, among other things, that society expects journalists to apply this theory, and citizens to understand it, though it is seldom studied or clearly articulated. This lack of clarity, for both citizens and newspeople, has weakened journalism and is now weakening democratic society. Unless we can grasp and reclaim the theory of a free press, journalists risk allowing their profession to disappear. In that sense, the crisis of our culture, and our journalism, is a crisis of conviction.

There are, we have distilled from our search, some clear principles that journalists agree on -- and that citizens have a right to expect. They are principles that have ebbed and flowed over time, but they have always in some manner been evident. They are the elements of journalism.

The first among them is that the purpose of journalism is to provide people with the information they need to be free and self-governing.

To fulfill this task:

Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.
Its first loyalty is to citizens.
Its essence is a discipline of verification.
Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant.
It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

Why these nine? Some readers will think items are missing here. Where is fairness? Where is balance? After synthesizing what we learned, it became clear that a number of familiar and even useful ideas -- including fairness and balance -- are too vague to rise to the level of essential elements of the profession. Others may say this list is nothing new. To the contrary, we discovered that many ideas about the elements of journalism are wrapped in myth and misconception. The notion that journalists should be protected by a wall between business and news is one myth. That independence requires journalists be neutral is another. The concept of objectivity has been so mangled it now is usually used to describe the very problem it was conceived to correct.

Nor is this the first moment that the way we get news has gone through momentous transition. It has happened each time there is a period of significant, social, economic, and technological change. It occurred in the 1830s and 1840s with the arrival of the telegraph, in the 1880s with the drop in prices of paper and the influx of immigrants. It occurred again in the 1920s with the invention of radio and the rise of the tabloids and the culture of gossip and celebrity. And it occurred with the invention of television and the arrival of the Cold War.

It is occurring now with the advent of cable followed by the Internet. The collision this time may be more dramatic. For the first time in our history, the news increasingly is produced by companies outside journalism, and this new economic organization is important. We are facing the possibility that independent news will be replaced by self- interested commercialism posing as news. If that occurs, we will lose the press as an independent institution, free to monitor the other powerful forces and institutions in society.

In the new century, one of the most profound questions for democratic society is whether an independent press survives. The answer will depend on whether journalists have the clarity and conviction to articulate what an independent press means, and whether, as citizens, the rest of us care.

This book is intended as a first step in helping journalists articulate those values and helping citizens create a demand for a journalism connected to the principles that spawned the free press in the first place.

[top]

ENDNOTES

1. Mitchell Stephens, History of News: From the Drum to the Satellite (New York: Viking Press, 1988), 34.

2. Harvey Molotch and Marilyn Lester, "News as Purposive Behavior: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents and Scandal," American Sociological Review, 39, February 1974, 101-112.

3. Stephens, History of News, 18.

4. Ibid.

5. John McCain, with Mark Salter, Faith of My Fathers (New York: Random House, 1999), 221.

6. Thomas Cahill, The Gift of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (New York: Nan A. Talese/Anchor Books, 1998), 17.

7. Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ) and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "Striking the Balance: Audience Interests, Business Pressures and Journalists' Values" (March 1999), 79.

8. Ibid.

Fallout from Pennsylvania: It Ain't Over Till The Lady Sings

noreply@blogger.com (Scott Foval) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:09:00 +0000

Well the fallout after the Pennsylvania Primary is beginning to hit the Democratic party like a ton of bricks. Everyone is even more pissed off than we could have predicted; well except Hillary supporters, that is. The national party leaders are in a tizzy because they didn't get the clean resolution to the nominee crisis that they had hoped to get. Obamakins are totally freaked out by the reality that their candidate didn't overcome the closet racism of older white blue-collar Pennsylvanians. Donors are over it all because they are still having to hedge their bets between two very formidable candidates. Finally, Pennsylvania's progressives are pissed because their state looks like a bunch of closet racists...which it does to the educated observer.

This is all culminating in the reality that John McCain, his face-sucking-love affair with the mainstream media (MSM) intact, continues to skate across very thin ice as if he's actually walking on water. His buddies in the MSM still cannot contain their affection for JohnnyMac and First-Cougar-In-Waiting CindyMac; despite the unbelievable reality that in the last month both have been exposed as shameless uber-liars who will even steal recipes from The Food Network and get away with it. The MSM, barely covering JohnnyMac's numerous gaffes on their air, are piling on Obama to “prove himself” at the behest of Hillary's press team, even though Obama has secured enough delegates to make it mathematically impossible for her to get a “clean win.” Now, the Hillbots are echoing her “Tide is Turning” phrase as if it is truth, completely ignoring the reality that she'll have to convince an army of more than 300 undecided superdelegates that she's the winner.

Considering how many of those superdelegates that are patently embarrassed about the shenanigans perpetrated in in Michigan, Florida, and now Pennsylvania this year (as they should be—points to the failure of Gov. Dean's leadership of the party) they aren't about to roll over for the Hillster as easily as you might think. The ones I've talked to (and yeah, I know a few) are talking a lot about fairness and going with the votes of their constituencies. The ones that don't have voting constituencies (party operatives) are not about to allow their party to implode just to make the Hillbots feel good.

I hate to say I told you so...but I did. My grandmother's beloved Democratic party is being shredded in a big way by this strife. Today, just as I was wrapping up this little rant, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are beginning to talk about calling on superdelegates via letter to make up their damn minds before the end of June and call on the Hill to drop this crap. The reality is that old-line party people created the superdelegate system in order to make some sort of sense from the screwed up mix of Primary vs. Caucus contests from state-to-state, and allow for a check-and-balance to the lock-step approach that the Republicans follow.

So what to do, what to do. Well rather than give my own opinion I'll just tell you what my grandma, Edith Kitchell, grand-dame of the Democratic Party thinks we should do. “Tell Hillary to sit down and shut up, and let Obama go for it,” she told me a couple of weeks ago. “Its time for the Clintons to go quietly and let us win this thing.” Are you going to argue with her voice of reason? I'll tell you what...Edie has it right, and I'm inclined to do what she says -- lest I get a little smack with the oven mitt across the bum for not using common sense!