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Let the market speak: Demand ala-carte services. Paticipatory Governance Requires Factual Information. Let's demand better information services. As America: who was once a nation that MADE things now becomes a nation that only BUYS things we must be mindful how that change effects our society. Iowans value family, community and education. Most of us are quite capeable of prep-cooking factual information into some dish that chews, swallows, and digests into good ideas. Iowans also tend to be among those counted in favor of community and education so notions like Citizen Media, net-neutrality, and maintining local control of our information system is not too big a stretch. I know some of you Boomers still crave information lost in recent years, slipping down the slope of high-glossy-tainment. Correct thinking understands the importance of Citizen Media in the future; especially in an Internet society where every man, woman, and child has the opportunity to become a Citizen Journalist. The time has come now for America to have a fully funded Citizen Media. This site hopes to stimulate a dialog with persons with BIG Ideas and perhaps even gear-up a new learning curves that face us ahead.

Public Access Television is the baby in the TV family. You NEVER want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, not then, not now, not ever. Historically, networks have never reflected the diversity in our world community:in the last 10 dissipating years of minority media ownership levels have now plumeted below the Jim Crowe era. So it is important to try and keep in mind there is more than one correct answer. We hope to overcome a legacy of exclusive and discriminatory approaches to media ownership and recognize every community benefits from a well funded citizen media. A medium We Iowans have known for 35 years of [PEG]Public Educational, and Government channels to be a proven path of social cohesion in a stable community.

Telecoms Can This Very Minute Agree To Match Terms Of Any Cable Franchise Agreement and Operate in that same area the very next day.
	Now how simple is that? Be on level playing field with other high quality providers. Cable Providers who offer voice, video, and data services offers bandwith and support fees for Citizen Media. If the proposed bill becomes law operational fees for public access are gone. All because Qwest decided to enter the market.

Qwest To Be Ashamed Of Their Corporate Citizen Behavior: to not support the public debate! We, the People have interest of the nations land, bandwidth, and infrastructure. On my property, on your property, along the roads and thoroughfares they dig holes and we pay taxes so that we have a communications system. We are the Landlords in this scenario. Telecoms dirty little habit of buying politicians to abuse every rent of common decency constructed in legislation creating the FCC of 70 years ago: the public discourse is perverted with corporatism. For a few lousy coin lawmakers ought to make every one of us to go to the window [like Peter Finch did in that 60's movie] to yell "I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore." The bottom line here is:

Telcoms Need to Pay to Rent the Infrastructure.

ANY Legislation stubbornly persists to destroy a service and created a better informed electorate in our state for 35 years [deRegulated last 20]. Should such same Telcom bills come to pass in 27 of 50 statehouses: We enter a world where 5 Captain's of Industry shall wield complete control of our information services and Citizen Media will be a faded memory of local talk radio on WMT and WHO. In these pages we are in discovery of sifting data from the corporate Media pertaining to substance behind the persuasion of our ever-predictable news services.

Could it be that humor about the news — the satire we see on Stewart and Colbert and in all the news parody videos — are actually legitimating the very news system that they claim to be challenging? Of course we like to laugh at people in power — younger people who respond more to attitude than analysis do especially — but, in a curious way, laughing about the news often leads to a feeling of being superior to it, the mistaken belief of being uninfluenced by it, and also usually unwilling to do anything about it. Making fun of those in power is an honorable sport, but it is often more recreational than political. What’s worse is that politicians tend to co-opt the humor and then take part in it in a self-deprecating way that is also self-promotional. That’s why President Bush was more than happy to make fun of himself at one of those atrocious Washington White House correspondent dinners. It takes the edge off his critics and reinforces the idea that he is just one of us, an ordinary guy, coping with the immense responsibilities of his office. Recall that when Stephen Colbert actually used an appearance at one of these dinners to say something serious about the disgusting symbiotic relationship between the media and the mandarins of policy he was ignored by most in the room and booed, even if the video of his appearance was a big hit on You Tube. (That was before Viacom sued demanding it be taken down in the name of property rights!) Just this past week, there was another one of these “family affairs” in Washington that brings the mafia of news and the mafia of politics together. It was the annual Radio and TV correspondents’ dinner. This is the same affair that Dick Cheney dropped in to back in 2003, to thank the news media for its shameful cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq. He was applauded for his deference, which was really a recognition that playing the press game is critical to managing public perceptions. The Bush Administration was proud at how skillful it was in turning the fourth estate into the fourth front of the war. This year, this charade was even more obscene as John Eggerton described in a report on Broadcasting & Cable, an industry trade. The story of this party of the like-minded boggles the mind at a time when the war is being debated and scandals seep out of the sewage of Beltway politics. Now we have politicians trying to one-up the comics. “White House adviser Karl Rove boogied, backed by NBC’s David Gregory, Brian Wiliams burped the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and the President cracked wise, all to the general delight, and occasional gales of laughter, of journalists gathered for the Radio & Television Correspondents Association dinner in Washington. Rove was a better sport than a dancer, tapped by the surprise entertainment–Whose Line is It Anyway’s Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood–for an improv rap number featuring ‘MC Rove,’ with Gregory as one of his backup dancers, and based on information supplied by Rove that, among other things, he collected stamps and liked to ‘tear the tops’ off of small animals. Rove got into the spirit of the bit, though when President Bush was asked to supply a rap nickname for Rove, his response was ‘Your Fired!’ Sherwood then suggested Rove had offered his resume to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of a host of legislators in attendance at the annual dinner at the Washington Hilton.” Isn’t this just more of what the late critic Neil Postman called “Amusing Ourselves To Death.” His still relevant book is about “Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.” My desire to raise questions and speak out about the tendency to substitute satire for substance comes as a response to the new JIB JAB video about a news biz that is now integrated into show biz. It is very clever… as you will in a second. There’s a disturbing note from its creators that came with it. I hope you will see the problem I am having: “My brother and I just had the incredible honor of premiering our latest video in front of President Bush as well as thousands of journalists and politicians at the Radio-Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington, DC…. Rather than making fun of the President (which, to be honest, is like beating a dead horse) we decided to turn the tables and make fun of the press. We hope you enjoy our latest effort! Adios Amigos, The Brothers Spiridellis” So here they are, on the one hand, dismissing Bush as a “dead horse” while at the same time reveling in his presence. Oh, how seductive is the proximity to power. Yes, these jibjabbers are good at making fun—but don’t we need to go a little further and a little deeper? While we are laughing, and having our own attitudes reinforced or massaged, and while our funny bones are tickled into a good “hehe” or “haha,” we’re not doing much more than shaking our heads before sending the video around to friends and family to show how cool we are. I am not anti-fun, funny or humor. I include articles from The Onion in my MediaChannel.org blog along with other humorous putdowns of the really deplorable situation we are in. Their latest takes a much-needed wack at all the stupid commentators on cable TV

We can't be crying: We have Work to do. Iowans Must do better, we Can do better, and we Will do better. By all means, lets all have a good laugh—it’s crying in the direction of participation. But also let’s get involved in a campaign to challenge the absurdity that passes for news and is doing such a disservice to us and our country. Aren’t you angry about the degradation of the news and those family type dinners in which journalists amuse and salute politicians they should be trying to put in jail? I used to think journalists are supposed to have an adversarial relation with powerful pols, not become their friends. Let’s call for an end to the travesty of journalists in black tie sucking up to criminals posing as politicians. Collusion and complicity is obscene in an industry that is constitutionally protected as our watchdog. And also, let’s try to get more substance on the airwaves so that the 69% of young America that can’t find Iraq on a map can learn something, as opposed to laughing themselves into unconsciousness.