Irony: Manhattan’s Newest “Library Of The Future” Will Be Named The “Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library,” But A “Librarian Of The Future,” Personified By Edward G. Robinson In His Last Role Says Niarchos Acted “Miserably”

Edward G. Robinson playing a librarian of the future in his last role had stern and unappreciative things to say about Stavros Niarchos after whom the NYPL will name its newest "Library of the Future"

Perhaps you have picked up on this point already: What was once the Mid-Manhattan Library is undergoing going changes now, and it will be relaunched under a new name the “Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library.”  But is this “SNFL” rechristening of the library to name it after the Greek shipping millionaire fortuitous? . . .

The NYPL is promoting the book-eliminating changes at the Mid-Manhattan Library, a consolidating shrinkage that will simultaneously eliminate New York’s biggest science library (which will be turned into a comic book focused “Pop-Culture Museum” by another ship-owning multi-billionaire) as a “Library of the Future.”  There is, however, one thing that may inconveniently haunt that “future”: It’s a “Librarian of the Future” who says the Greek shipping magnate Niarchos “acted very miserably” towards him. 

We are speaking of Edward G. Robinson who played a librarian of the future, a “book,” in the science fiction, future dystopia film “Soylen Green.”  Robinson’s role as a future librarian was famously the last role he ever played shortly before dying: He died January 26, 1973 just 12 days after the filming.  Robinson’s remarks about Niarchos were published in the New York Times shortly before his death, November 5, 1972, in an interview about his life that he gave to promote the film: Little Caesar' Is Still Punching, by Charles Higham.

It’s an interview well worth reading.  You’ll find yourself feeling for the elderly Robinson who had suffered and was feeling the effects of a number of tribulations at the end of his life, including having battling with the House Committee on Un-American Activities when his blacklisting meant he was suddenly deprived of any opportunities to work in the early 1950s.

In the interview Robinson describes the Soylent Green film:

“Soylent Green’ is, I believe, an important picture, a harrowing projection of our existence 50 years from now. It shows very clearly what may well become of us if we don't look out. It is set in Manhattan, a city of 40 million people living miserably and horribly in a depersonalized Orwellian state.

Made in 1972 and released in 1973, the film looked forward to what was then decades away, the year 2022, a year we are now actually about to arrive at.  Whatever people will tell you about when we truly first knew about the dangers of greenhouse emissions and global warming, the film presciently explains that in its version of 2022 “greenhouse effect” has created a stiflingly warm world climate, “A heat wave all year round” where “everything’s burning up.”  The world ecosystems have collapsed and people are starving because food production is minimal.

In this Manhattan of the future, wealth inequality is extremely accentuated, with the wealthy living apart in tall luxury towers protected by extra security.  They treat the common folk of the world as disposable and, with a sort of Harvey Weinstein sort of callousness, apartments come optionally with attractive and usable young women referred to as “furniture.”  The wealthy of this world are more likely than not connected with a few conglomerate mega-corporations, which, if you look behind the scenes, are in control of and virtually indistinguishable from the government that's in charge.  The highest government official wears a military style jacket.  The public is helpless and uninformed.

If you want to know anything, if you want to have any hope of piecing together any part of the big picture to understand matters in context, things that might otherwise never be fully understood or investigated in this world of the future, then books are important . . .

Edward G. Robinson, the future's librarian, a "book"

. . . That’s where the character played by Edward G. Robinson comes in.  He is the one who has access to books and who does critical research to understand the world better.  In the future slang of the movie’s invention he is known as “a book,” but that slang term is essentially the term for the librarians still functioning in that future. The Sol Roth character played by Robinson has his own personal library of books in his shared apartment.  To extend the utility of that small collection he periodically meets with other “books” (other librarians of the future) to exchange books and their knowledge of them as part of a more effectively functioning commons.  A key point plot in terms of learning the landscape of power behind what's unfolding is a banned corporate book that reveals what the powerful corporate elite knew, but weren’t sharing about the escalating waste of the world’s environment.  The frail and elderly Roth is also a touchstone in that he remembers distinctly the once robust natural world of plenty that has vanished.

A key censored book: what the powerful corporate elite knew, but weren’t sharing about the escalating waste of the world’s environment.

Roth, “the book,” lives with and is a symbiotically functioning sidekick assisting the film’s main protagonist, a police detective played by Charlton Heston.

Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson in the film

A major set-piece in the film that sets up the film’s climax is the ceremonially orchestrated death that Robinson’s Sol Roth chooses for himself.  The scene was filmed just days before Edward G. Robinson’s own actual death and, to add the ultimate pathos, Robinson reportedly waited to tell Charlton Heston  (and only Heston) that his doctor had told him he was actually about to die until just before the cameras rolled.  And this reportedly affected Heston’s performance.

Edward G. Robinson’s gripe with Stavros Niarchos, laid out fully in the Times interview, involves how  Robinson lost $3 million worth of paintings in a divorce suit.  Robinson had been an avid art collector.  Then, when he was still financially weakened in the wake of his recent blacklisting, he was forced to sell much of his collection.  He sold to Niarchos who later was unwilling to sell back paintings that Robinson was most personally attached to:

    . . .  in order to comply with the California community property laws in his divorce from the former actress Gladys Lloyd, whom he had married in 1927, he had to sell more than half his superb collection, started in 1933, of masterpieces of art. “It was so brutal—the worst ordeal I ever went through. I went to everyone I could think of—rich men who had an affinity for art—Winthrop Rockefeller, Bobby Lehman, Kirkeby out hereto try to arrange for a loan to pay off the estimated worth of half the paintings, but these men played games with me; they only agreed to help provided I would sell them four or five of the paintings for little or no money. And so I said, ‘No deal.’

    “My wife had been very ill, and it proved impossible to reach any kind of sane agreement with her. I had no real estate, very few stocks, nothing else could sell. I had put my money, my whole life's blood, into paintings. Finally, some dealers took the paintings for over three million on behalf of Niarchos, the Greek shipping millionaire. He acted very miserably in the whole matter. He wouldn't let me buy back what I wanted when I finally got the money. Just a few things he condescended to part with, crumbs from the master's table. It was horrible.

    “The worst blow of all was losing Rouault's ‘The Old Clown.’ It was the king of my collection, I used to call him ‘Everyman’ The symbol of man's inhumanity to man. After that divorce suit, I realized just what the phrase inhumanity to man’ really meant.”

    Robinson's eyes clouded over with tears. “As for the remainder of the pictures, I don't know what I'll do with them. For years selected groups, classes, have come to see them. I have never closed them off from the public. You don't own any painting, you pay for the privilege of being a custodian. But I don't like the idea of them ending up in a museum. It's like putting a beautiful dead man or woman in morgue. Last December, I was in the Prado and I was horrified: the paintings there are badly hung, badly lit, you can't see the details. And it's supposed to be a foremost tourist attraction of Spain. No, I don't want to leave these lovely things to a museum, although I suppose inevitably they will end up there. What will I do with them otherwise? I don't know. I don't know.”

George Rouault's "Le Vieux Clown" or "The Old Clown." 
"The symbol of man's inhumanity to man."  -
"It was horrible. . .  I realized just what the phrase inhumanity to man’ really meant.”

Wall Street Journal Reveals Fate Of SIBL, The City’s Biggest Science Library: Super-Wealthy Paul Allen Will Turn It Into “Pop-Culture Museum.”

The "Thing" that will take over NYC's biggest science library

The Wall Street Journal just revealed the currently intended fate of the SIBL, the NYPL’s Science, Industry and Business Library and the city’s biggest Science Library.  Paul Allen, one of the very richest of the world’s multi-billionaires wants to turn it into a “Pop-Culture Museum.”
Allen intends it to be another edition of Allen’s Seattle-based Museum of Pop Culture, or MoPOP where, according to the Journal: “Current exhibits focus on everything from Marvel comics to horror films to the rock band Nirvana.”  (See: Pop-Culture Museum Eyes a Second Home— Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is gearing up to take over a 100,000-square-foot space in the old B. Altman building, By Charles Passy, June 1, 2018.)

An obvious observation the Wall Street Journal article doesn’t offer: A science library, an institution fundamental to a functioning democracy is being destroyed.  This is being done at a time when science itself is under attack by those who are synchronistically interested in crippling democracy.  Yes, the disappearing science library is being replaced by what is called and may actually qualify as a “museum” (it’s being run as a “nonprofit’), but how readily can you differentiate a pop-culture museum like this from straight-out advertising, a further building up the brands owned by the huge media mega-consortiums of which Disney, owning the Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and Muppets brands, is just a fractional part?

Museum web page or advertisement for Marvel's Universe of Super Heros?  Or both?

While this time its being done though an out-and-out sale of the property, shifts that make library space into space that is more commercially supportive way of pop-culture is consistent with what is being done to library space even when it isn’t being sold: The NYPL’s 42nd Street Central Reference Library is being commercialized with book-eliminating wine-café and exit-through-the gift shop, “renovations” and with similar changes, the Brooklyn Public Library’s Grand Army Plaza Library (one-third of all the library space in Brooklyn) is eliminating books, while the book appearance veneer the BPL management plans to dress up the plan involves moving its “popular library” out where it can be better seen.  The BPL says that for the sake of these appearances it will make its “popular library” more book focused and less comic book focused than it currently is. . . . There are those comic books again!

The Wall Street Journal article debates whether the new museum will fill a void:

While New York City doesn't have a directly comparable facility to the Museum of Pop Culture, the subject is covered in part by a host of institutions, said Mark Walhimer, a museum consultant based in the city. In particular, he pointed to the Museum of the Moving Image, located in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens.

Yes, if you wanted to see the Star Wars exhibit you had to go to the Brooklyn Museum, where you can now purchase $2,500 tickets if you want to see the David Bowie exhibit on a private basis.  As fun as these exhibits might be, it still raises questions: Are our museums, like our libraries, becoming too commercial?

It’s amazing how Paul Allen’s purchase and the impending demise of the city’s biggest science library has so heretofore been essentially unreported by the press, both local New York City press and National media, unless you want to consider Noticing New York’s reporting: As NYPL Senior Execs Present Pretty Pictures To City Council Of Expensive Mid-Manhattan Do-Over Renovation They Neglect To Mention One Thing: Rush To Immediately Sell SIBL (at a suspiciously low price?) To Very Interesting Buyer, January 11, 2017.

It’s amazing because Paul Allen is such an eccentric and interesting multi-billionaire: As Noticing New York noted, as if out of a James Bond film, he owns a fleet of the world’s largest yachts, a squadron of World War I fighter planes, he’s flying into space and building the world’s largest airplane.

Although it presented breaking news, The Wall Street Journal didn’t do a great job of connecting a number of dots.  Among the points it didn’t mention:

    •    Our suggestion that Mr. Allen donate the SIBL back to the NYPL with the stipulation that it be used as a library, restored to its original intended purpose, something that would probably cost Mr. Allen less than operating his yachts for a very fractional period of time.

    •    The irony that Mr. Allen as a Microsoft co-founder made his money through science.  That makes it much more of a shame that Mr. Allen should now be a party to the destruction of the city’s biggest science library, a sort of “I’ve got mine” mentality while pulling the ladder up after you so that nobody else can follow.

    •    That Mr. Allen’s father worked in a library where the young Mr. Allen would tag along after him as he worked, something else that may have contributed to Mr. Allen's ultimate success.

    •    That Mr. Allen has said that when he tagged along with his father he imagined “a trove of knowledge” found in a library could save a “dying or threatened civilization.”  That may sound virtually like the kind of science-fiction fantasy that might get play in Mr. Allen’s museum, but there is a close correlation between the demise of civilizations and the loss of their libraries.  Further, it can be debated how fictive the idea that we are a threatened society might be.

    •    That it would be very deserving of investigation to look into what seems to be the very low price the NYPL sold all of its SIBL space for.  SIBL was a significant public investment.  The Journal article notes it “opened in 1996 with much fanfare.”  That was when it was christened “the library of the future.”  It is still one of the City’s most modern technologically advanced libraries, just as the central downtown Brooklyn Heights Library was when it was sold.

The Journal article concludes:

The museum's launch would spell the end for the Science, Industry and Business Library, which opened in 1996 with much fanfare. The library's services will be absorbed into Midtown's Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (formerly the Mid-Manhattan Library), which is under renovation and slated to reopen in 2020, library officials said.

The collection would become available at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the main library at 42nd Street.   

That formulation for describing the fate of SIBL elides the fact the science library is going out of existence.  NYPL is ending the Science Library because, as NYPL’s Bill Kelly, its Director of Research Libraries, explained, people should get their information from the internet.  You can listen to Mr. Kelly explain this in our video. . . the clip comes at about the 50 minute marker, directly following the inserted reporting about the proposed elimination of net neutrality.  (And after the ironic inserts about "Dark Money" in the NYPL gift shop and Stephen Schwarzman, and after the walk pass the hedge-funders' soiree in the closed research library.)

Video: NYPL 2nd Presentation of "Master Plan" Dec 7, 2017 Part2.

The Wall Street Journal is behind a pay wall.  This Citizens Defending Libraries post aside, only those who are paid subscribers to the Journal are going to know or be affected by what the Journal has, or has not reported about Paul Allen’s acquisition and the fate of SIBL.  Maybe the readers of the Wall Street Journal are not a group that will find it so essential to know the things noted here as left out of the story. . .   but wouldn’t they, at least, find much of it interesting?

Citizens Defending Libraries did offer comment for the article before its publication, but that comment was not included. 

Latest Non-reporting of National News?– Deaths in Puerto Rico

What does the number 4,645 on San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruzhat mean? You'd be unlikely to guess the magnitude of its importance given the lack of reporting in the media and misinformation in these New York Times headlines.

This seems like the latest non-reporting of the news: an update on the (intentional?) mishandling of the crisis in Puerto Rico that has gone largely unreported.  On Wednesday, May 30th the national media should have covering a new report from researchers at Harvard, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, calculating that the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria is probably at least 4,645, and perhaps as many as 5,740, at least 70 times higher than official governmental count of just 64. . . .  A death toll of 4,645 would make Hurricane Maria the second-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history, behind only the Galveston Texas Hurricane in 1900.
                               
. . . What was the media devoting huge time to covering while leaving this national disaster news essentially unreported?: The firing of Roseanne Barr!

Low-balling in the headline in the Times print edition when lower in the web edition- see below.

Meanwhile you have to wonder about some of the reporting on the number of deaths that actually did get published, for instance, The New York Times: While Democracy Now reported that the calculation was that there were at least 4,645 deaths, and perhaps as many as 5,740, the Times print edition headline inaccurately characterized the study with a low-balling “Hurricane’s Death Toll In Puerto Rico May Top 4,600, New Study Says.”  The Times web version of the story low-balled it still further: “Puerto Rico’s Hurricane Maria Death Toll Could Exceed 4,000, New Study Estimates.” . . .

. . . Obviously, “4,600" is 1,140 less than the 5,740 estimate number that the Times didn’t even mention in its article, and “4,000" is 1,740 less.

The Times reporting also removes context from the photo that San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz tweeted of herself wearing a hat with the number 4,645.

This is an example why we are holding "Where Do You get Your News" forums, the next, our second, this Friday Evening June 1st.  Come join in the discussion.

Destroying The English Commons- Isn’t This Exactly The Wrong Response To An Economic Squeezing?

New York Times front page: To `Tighten' your `belt' in England you sell 17 Liverpool parks to developers and your sold off library is refashioned into a “glass-fronted luxury home.”

Today the New York Times leads off with story on its front page about “belt-tightening” in England telling us about a sorry state of affairs where the English Commons has to be plundered and sold off to . . . . We are told that 17 parks are being sold to developers by the Liverpool local government, that a walk though Prescott in Northwest England shows that the local swimming pool has been eliminated with the razing of the community center, that the local museum is history, and that old library building “has been sold and refashioned into a glass-fronted luxury home.”  (See: Britain’s Big Squeeze– In Britain, Austerity Is Changing Everything– After eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty.  By Peter S. Goodman, May 28, 2018.)

Yes, we often think of England when we think of the concept of a shared public commons, and this is what reportedly is happening to libraries there.

Destroying the commons with a privatized sell-off to the wealthy is exactly the wrong response to economic squeezing and austerity.  Aren’t such times exactly when people ought to pool and share their resources to stretch them farther?  In fact, in England and the United States, a collective approach to mobilizing for the common good was precisely what helped our countries recover and get moving after the great depression of the 1930s.

A go-it-alone division of resources can accentuate the waste.  The Times article briefly notes that the wealthy in England are still quite wealthy and exceedingly well-off.  The Times does not note that, in these times of the country’s supposed austerity, about $45 million dollars or more was just spent on a royal wedding, almost all of that amount footed by the English tax-paying public, not the wealthy royal family.

While you can read the Times article, we’ll not recommend it as necessarily fair and accurate reporting about whether all this sell off of English public assets is really, as some suggest in the article, the way to pave the road for future “prosperity for all,” instead of just further increasing wealth inequality and further impoverishing the public now and going forward. . . .  

. . . The reason that we can’t recommend the Times article is that the Times has been biased and inaccurate in the past reporting about English politics, exhibiting a strange eagerness to discredit England’s political left: See FAIR’s– NYT: Corbyn Has Marginalized Labour With His Popular Positions, by Jim Naureckas, September 6, 2016.

BTW: Do you find the Times article about the woes in England and the response thereby `necessitated' the sort of narrative prologue whereby we might be more readily conditioned to accept when the similar sacrifices are demanded here in the U.S.?

The 2018 Race For NYS Attorney General Could Be Absolutely Critical To Saving NYC’s Libraries From Sale And Plunder

Two rallies, at one Zephyr Teachout and at the other Tish James, each speaking against selling our libraries and each now a name on people's tongues as candidates for NYS Attorney General

With the extraordinarily abrupt resignation of Eric T. Schneiderman as New York State Attorney General, there are already three very well known names already on people's tongues as the likely candidates to replace him: Zephyr Teachout (who ran a surprisingly strong race for governor against Andre Cuomo), Tish James (current NYC Public Advocate), and Preet Bharara (fired by Trump from the position of U.S. Attorney and current WNYC podcast host).

Who holds the office of NYS Attorney General is important to libraries for two important reasons:

1.)  The NYS Attorney General  regulates charities, thus the libraries, and is charged with preventing the kinds of abuse that are now ongoing.

2.)  The NYS Attorney General has the power and duty to investigate fraud and abuse generally.

The issue of the sale of NYC libraries and the need to investigate is already charged as the names of several potential candidates involve prior history.  It is also charged because Eric Schneiderman, the NYS Attorney General did not step up to meet these obligations when Citizens Defending Libraries requested that he do so and informed him about what he needed to take action on.  See:

Wednesday, July 27, 2016, Open Letter to US Attorney Preet Bharara, NYS Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, et al: Use Your Staggering Powers as Law Enforcers & Public Guardians To Immediately Halt the Corrupt Sale & Shrinking of  Brooklyn Heights Library

All the possibilities are going to require greater reflection in the days going forward.  Among other things, candidates cannot always be counted upon to keep their campaign promises when elected.  An example in point: When first running for NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman made strong statements with respecting his intention to investigate the Atlantic Yards mega-project and abuses of eminent domain.  When elected, he didn't. . . .

Similarly, when Bill de Blasio was first running for mayor he stood with Citizens Defending Libraries in July on the steps of the 42nd Street Central Reference opposing the sale of libraries, but by October was taking money coming from the development team to whom he would soon give the second biggest library in Brooklyn. 

As for the libraries and the candidates in this race, we should note that Zephyr Teachout did a campaign event with us (Citizens Defending Libraries) when she was running for governor.  See:

Saturday, September 6, 2014, PHOTO & VIDEO GALLERY: September 6, 2014 Halt Library Sales Rally (42nd Central Reference Library) With Zephyr Teachout/Tim Wu Campaign- Barry C. Lynn Speaks on Amazon

Citizens Defending Libraries put huge effort into helping Tish James get elected as Public Advocate when she campaigned that she would use that office to oppose NYC library sales.  We even forced Senator Daniel Squadron, her main opposing candidate in the election to change his position to keep up with her.  We are, however, still waiting for Public Advocate James to take the truly significant action she could use the office of Public Advocate for in fulfilling her promises.  As U.S. Attorney for the Southern District it was understood that Preet Bharara was understood to be investigating Mayor Bill de Blasio's sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library (Once Brooklyn's second biggest) amongst other pay-to-play deals.  We still don't know what it means that de Blasio got off the hook days after Trump fired Mr. Bharara.  See:

Wednesday, July 27, 2016, Open Letter to US Attorney Preet Bharara, NYS Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, et al: Use Your Staggering Powers as Law Enforcers & Public Guardians To Immediately Halt the Corrupt Sale & Shrinking of Brooklyn Heights Library

Stay tuned. . . And when you run into the candidates, think about donating to them, ask them about what they intend to do to save our libraries from plunder and be ready to document what they say.

UPDATE:  Here is one more possible candidate for NYSAG: Tim Wu, who candidate for Lieutenant Governor was  Zephyr Teachout's running mate when she ran for governor of New York, tweeted (May 18, 2018) that he is considering running for the office too.  Tim Wu actually got more votes than his running mate in that election and the New York Times endorsed him while not endorsing Teachout in that race.  Tim Wu, considered the father of Net Neutrality as a principle to defend, has written a couple of very important books about the monopolization and control of media and its ability to influence culture and commandeer our attention, plus a number of New York Times op-eds, including one (that we definitely noticed)  excoriating the privatizing take-over of the public sphere, libraries included!  And Tim Wu took a position working in the Attorney General's office so he has that extra experience.      

Where Will You get Your News When There Is A Mass-Dismantling of Outlets Like The Denver Post By Wall Street Vulture Capital Funds?

May 8th there was a demonstration outside the “Lipstick Building” in Manhattan, people flying 3,000 miles to participate, protesting the New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital for dismantling local newspapers such as: the Oakland Tribune, The San Jose Mercury News, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Denver Post.  The editorial board of that last paper, the Denver Post is now in open revolt against its hedge fund ownership engaged in such dismantling including with an op-ed titled “When a hedge fund tries to kill the newspapers it owns, journalists must fight back.”

The morning of the demonstration Democracy Now covered what’s in issue here:

Journalists Rise Up Against Wall Street Hedge Fund Decimating Newsrooms Across the CountryStory, May 08, 2018

Previously covered here:

Denver Post Revolts Against Its “Vulture” Hedge-Fund Owner & Demands 126-Year-Old Newspaper Be Saved, April 10, 2018

Democracy Now May 9th headlines

The next morning Democracy Now included footage (10 minutes in) and coverage of the demonstration in its opening headlines.

Investigative reporter Julie Reynolds explained on Democracy Now that when she investigated the hedge-fund owners she `shockingly’ found they:

no real experience in the media. They had invested for a little while, oddly enough, in Sinclair media, about maybe five, six years ago.

Sinclair media is a mega-conglomerate that, buying up local media outlets around the country is commanding them to adopt and sell, in a virtually absurdist fashion, an ultra-conservative, Trump supporting national narrative.

Reynolds explained that these hedge-fund owners, operating what is known on Wall Street as “vulture hedge fund” have gone on to do something a bit different; they:

basically extract all the resources and money they can from it, all the profit, sell off the real estate, get what they can and leave the bones out in the desert to dry, if anything remains at all.

Question is: Isn’t that really just about the same thing; two ways of getting to the same ultimate destination of an uninformed public, the proper, necessary and essential foundations for democracy removed?  Could that even be what is intended?  There is no window into the actual intent, no SEC filings that would provide any transparency.

(UPDATE: FAIR’s May 25, 2018 Counterspin program included a good, succinct segment covering Alden Global Capital dismantling of ,local news outlets around the country, and in it we learn about the instruction of management to reporters in acquired newspapers to, essentially, start republishing unedited corporate press releases as `news' affixing their bylines to them.)

We bring up these concerns at the same time that our libraries are being destroyed with the books we need for democracy disappearing.

So, “Where will you get your news?”  It’s a critical matter for discussion.  Come to our June 1st forum to participate in that discussion.  See:

Coming June 1st - Forum (The second) Where Do You Get Your News? What Are The Channels of Public Information Communication You Can Plug Into?

Coming June 1st - Forum (The second) Where Do You Get Your News? What Are The Channels of Public Information Communication You Can Plug Into?

The first forum was great so we are having the second Friday June 1st.  Citizens Defending Libraries is all about people getting the information they need and should have.  (Use the links below to listen to a high quality recording of the first forum.)

Forum (The Second): Where Do You Get Your News? What Are The Channels of Public Information Communication You Can Plug Into?

Friday, June 1, 2018, 7:00 PM to 8:45 PM
First Unitarian Universalist Congregation Chapel
119-121 Pierrepont St, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Join a discussion to exchange information and ideas about how you get your information about important events in the world.  Where do you go to seek reliable news and complete information?  Should the country’s main stream media have reported the recent succession of unprecedentedly calamitous weather events without mentioning climate change?  Does a media drumbeat for war seem off-base? Do we hear about its cost?  Picking up newspapers, do you feel like you are reading compiled corporate press releases? As much of media ownership is consolidated in fewer corporations and when a wealthy few with disinformation agendas like the Kochs buy up ownership of outlets like Time magazine, where does truth take refuge to be found?  If your media literacy tells you that the most important part of narratives you are being served is what has been edited out how do you find what fills in the blanks?  Let’s identify what kinds of critical stories go unreported and how can we find out about them.

Conversely, when things need to become news, need to be known by the general public, what channels are there to transmit that information?  When structural reforms need to be made in our society they cannot be made unless we are able to exchange information about the changes that are needed: Serviceable channels for circulating information may be our threshold basic need.  How reliable is social media as an avenue for transmitting information and in what ways is it deceptively not?

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Facebook Event Pages To Share and Say You Are Coming

There is Facebook Event page posted for this event that you can share:

•        One Facebook Event Page is posted by Citizens Defending Libraries (if you click on "see all posts" on the event page there are postings of relevant articles for discussion).

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A Grist For Thought Sheet For the Forum

See if the sheet below helps you think about and prepare for the forum.

Grist for thought.  (Click to enlarge- You can also print it.  Or you can save the image to zoom in on it.)

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Here are links you can use to listen to a high quality recording of the first forum held March 4th.*

(* The discussion was moderated by Citizens Defending Libraries co-founder Michal D. D. White.)

You can listen to a recording of the forum (one hour twenty minutes): Where Do You Get Your News? (audio via Dropbox) or Where Do You Get Your News (audio via Soundcloud) or
Where Do You Get Your News (audio via Chirbit).

Audio on Soundcloud below.


Audio on Chirbit below


Check this out on Chirbit  

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Here is a link to listen to a very relevant recent speech by Mickey Huff of Project Censored about the present state of the mainstream news media in the United States:

Fake News and the Truth Emergency - A Speech by Mickey Huff

Another recent spellbinding speech listen to that is also quite relevant to potential discussions is by Peter Phillips, who has also been involved in Project Censored, discussing the central topic of his soon to be published new book, the concentration of power and increasing unequal distribution of resources that is affecting messages that are being disseminated to the world’s public.  (Do you know how much total wealth in the world and who has most of it and in what proportions?)

Giants - The Global Power Elite

What do you know about the six conglomerate companies that own almost all the media?  Here is a link to read about them (National Amusements, Disney, TimeWarner, Comcast, Newscorp, SONY): The 6 Companies That Own (almost) All Media.

Do you know which of these which of these conglomerates have what ties to military, industrial surveillance complex investments?

Here from the above article are the media holdings just of Comcast:

Do you know what the alternative media is if you want to turn to sources other than the mainstream media conglomerates.  Are they the sources of news that Google has not been censoring?

Here is a list of outlets that recently suffered, became more obscure and harder to find when Google implemented new algorithms (its "Project Owl") to direct people away from them and to more mainstream outlets typically owned by the conglomerates:

Sites that Google is suppressing (Project Owl):

   •    DemocracyNow!
   •    Alternet
   •    Naked Capitalism
   •    Counterpunch
   •    TruthOut!
   •    Truthdig
   •    Consortium News
   •    World Socialist Web Site
   •    The Socialist Worker
   •    Common Dreams
   •    Wikileaks
   •    The Intercept
   •    Media Matters (Media watchdog site)
   •    Black Agenda Report
   •    Russia Today (and particularly its 9/11 and Operation Gladio coverage)
   •    International Viewpoint
   •    Global Research

Project Censored has another longer list of alternative media sites: Project Censored List of Independent News Outlets.

Here are sites that have been outlets to publish work that has won Winners of the Izzy Award (The Izzy Award from- Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College is named after maverick journalist I. F. Stone. Presented annually for "special achievement in independent media," the Izzy Award goes to an independent outlet, journalist, or producer for contributions to our culture, politics, or journalism created outside traditional corporate structures.)-

    •    2017- Mother Jones &The Nation
    •    2016-  INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS, and the Invisible Institute, Democracy Now!
    •    2015- The Nation and The Guardian
    •    2014- Independent journalists JOHN CARLOS FREY (for reporting on U.S./ Mexico border deaths) and NICK TURSE (for reporting on civilian casualties of U.S. wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan). And the first members of the newly-established I.F. Stone Hall of Fame were inducted: GLENN GREENWALD and JEREMY SCAHILL.
    •    2013- Mother Jones
    •    2012- Democracy Now,  Center for Media and Democracy
    •    2011- Truthdig.com and City Limits
    •    2010- The Intercept, The Nation and Democracy Now!.”       
    •    2009- Democracy Now!

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An advertisement run in New York Magazine by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization  (UNESCO) honoring World Press Freedom Day, a day to remind a reminder people of the countries around the world where the press and the news are censored: “Don’t just read New York, Read. .” and the list it gives is The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Economist, USA Today, National Review, BBC News, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, because “It all starts with a free press.”  But how representative of a truly free uncensored free press is this list of corporately owned, mostly mainstream, mostly legacy publications?

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A Banned Segment from Saturday Night Live (click through for best viewing)

The 1998 Robert Smigel animated short film "Conspiracy Theory Rock," part of a March 1998 "TV Funhouse" segment, has been removed from all subsequent airings of the Saturday Night Live episode where it originally appeared. SNL producer Lorne Michaels claimed the edit was done because it "wasn't funny". The film is a scathing critique of corporate media ownership, including NBC's ownership by General Electric/Westinghouse.

 SNL Banned Episode ~ Media Controlled Conspiracy Theory Rock ~ from DianeDi on Vimeo.  (If this video is deleted yet again by those who continue to seek to ban it you may have to search to find it.- Your library is unlikely to have a reference copy retained and available under the doctrine of fair use.)

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List of journalists fired or self-exiled from mainstream media outlets because they expressed or wanted to express views unacceptable to the outlets they were working for:

•        Phil Donahue- Legendary television host fired from his top-rated program by the “supposedly liberal” MSNC in 2003 during the run up to the Iraq War because he was expressing anti-war views.

    •    Bill Maher- Fired by ABC from his “Politically Incorrect” program for not saying exactly the right things about 9/11 in its aftermath.  He said that terrorists “staying in the airplane” that was to hit a building could not described as “cowardly.”  Since that time Maher has been has been doing Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO where he has always been careful not to be anti-corporate and has, as well, been careful about what he says about 9/11.

    •    James Risen- Risen was a reporter for the New York Times.  He and another Times reporter, Eric Lichtblau, wrote a story about the  secret illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of the American public by the George W. Bush administration that won the New York Times a Pulitzer Prize in 2006, but the Times originally suppressed that story.  Risen now works for the Intercept.

    •    Robert Parry- An award-wining American investigative journalist (and finalist for the 1985 Pulitzer Prize) best known for his role in covering the Iran-Contra affair for the Associated Press (AP) and Newsweek.  In 1995, Parry self-exiled himself from mainstream media to found Consortium News (the Consortium for Independent Journalism Inc.)

    •    Ed Schultz- Fired from the position if MSNBC in the spring of 2014 host after bridling about things such as directions he received from MSNBC management concerning what to cover and not to cover, including directions not to cover the Bernie Sanders campaign, including Sanders’ announcement that he was going to run for president.  Schultz now works for RT where he says he has far more freedom to cover what he wants how he wants.

•        Gary Webb- A journalist forced to resign from the San Jose Mercury News in 1997 and subsequently railroaded out of journalism with the CIA working at it in the background after Webb wrote a 1996 series uncovering the CIA's role in importing cocaine into the U.S. to secretly fund the Nicaraguan Contra rebels through the manufacture and sale of drugs in the U.S.  Pressured to drop pursuit of his story Webb published his evidence in the series "Dark Alliance" for which the national Society of Professional Journalists voted Webb "Journalist of the Year" for 1996.  Webb had earlier contributed Pulitzer Prize winning work at the paper.   He subsequently experienced a vicious smear campaign during which he found himself defending his integrity, his career, his family that ended in his unfortunate death.  Later revelations about CIA involvement in illegal drugs coming into the United States validated and amplified what Webb was the first to report.

    •    Seymour Hersh- It is observed that Hersh has been “increasingly marginalised and his work denigrated” although he once worked for the New York Times Washington Bureau to report such stories as the Watergate scandal, and exposed the My Lai Massacre and the US military’s abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.  Hersh has been forced from one outlet to another, each outlet more remote from where U.S. citizens are likely to learn what he is reporting: Publication of Hersh's work has moved from the New Yorker, to the London Review of Books to the German publication, Welt am Sonntag.  Thus the American public is unlikely to learn about Hersh's most recent reporting that although a sarin gas chemical weapons attack in Syria was used as an excuse for Trump's recent order of a “retaliatory” strike against the country, there was zero evidence of such an attack.  Similarly, previously reporting, based on what Hersh's contacts within the security and intelligence establishments, revealed that Assad's alleged use of sarin gas in Ghouta, outside Damascus in 2013 also failed to stand up to scrutiny.  In between the Hersh's reporting on these alleged sarin attacks mainstream media reacted in a suspectly ostracizing way to Hersh's scoop about ways in which the public was misled respecting the reported killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.  Even in the London Review of Books the bin laden story immediately attracted so much attention it reportedly crashed the LRB servers. (In the fascinating Netflix "Wormwood" documentary by Errol Morris, which is about the still mysterious 1953 death, subsequent coverup and probable assassination by our government of an American scientist and Central Intelligence Agency employee participating in a secret government biological warfare program, Mr. Hersh explains what he is and isn't willing to report about events within the very secret intelligence community without sufficient sourcing.)

    •    Peter Arnett (and Producers April Oliver & Jack Smith)- Arnet, a Pulitzer Price who worked for CNN for 18 years and was famous for reporting from Baghdad during the Gulf War was, he said “muzzled,” and then fired by CNN, like his producers April Oliver and Jack Smith they did entitled "Valley of Death," (and a more senior producer resigned), because of an investigative report (a joint production of CNN and Time magazine), presenting evidence about how Army special forces venturing into Laos in September of 1970 used sarin gas in an operation to kill American soldiers who had defected into Laos from Vietnam.

•        Dan Rather (and his producer Mary Mapes)-  Dan Rather and others including his "60 Minutes" program producer Mary Mapes were fired by CBS (Rather's was a slow-burn firing) when covering the 2004 presidential election campaign they were subject to criticism for alleged liberal bias in reporting a basically true story about preferential treatment of George W. Bush in the National Guard (1968 to 1973 during which time Bush did not show up for a medical exam and stopped fulfilling his flying commitments).  The criticism leading up to the firing focused on the fact that documents with which the newspeople had been supplied to support their story were likely faked in whole or in part by somebody, possibly in a dirty trick intended to sucker them.  When a 2015 feature film, "Truth," starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford was made dramatizing the issues and events with respect to the firing CBS refused to run advertisements for it.

 •        Chris Hedges- Hedges was another award winning journalist working with a team to win a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times in 2002.  Amnesty International gave him an award that year for international journalism.  He’s worked for Christian Science Monitor, NPR and was a foreign correspondent for the Times for fifteen years.  Hedges, under pressure from the Times, was forced to leave the Times in 2003 (listen at 14 minutes) because he had been denouncing the those urging the U.S. forward to its invasion of Iraq.  (Hedges was an early critic of the war.- We invaded in March of 2003.)  Hedges now writes for Truthdig and is a host of “On Contact” for RT.          

 •        Ashleigh Banfield-  NBC fired news journalist Ashleigh Banfield, host of “MSNBC Investigates,” from MSNBC in 2004 after officially scolding her in the spring of 2003, and thereupon banishing her, because she criticized her TV news colleagues for “sugarcoating Iraq war coverage with patriotism and not showing the reality of the conflict.”  She had criticized  “cable news operators who wrap themselves in the American flag and go after a certain target demographic.”

 •        Marc Lamont Hill- In November, 2018, Mr. Hill, an American academic, author, activist, and television personality, a Professor of Media Studies and Urban Education at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was fired from his position as a commentator for CNN twenty-four hours after he expressed his opinion on the Arab–Israeli conflict before the U.N. saying that Palestinians have a right to resist their occupation by Israel through international boycotts of Israel and to defend themselves from the Israeli military.  This point of view was considered unacceptably anti-Israel (while some tried to cast his view as being antisemitic). The coverage by FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, is especially insightful and detailed, plus it includes a call to action.

 •         William M. Arkin- (Added after January 2019 resignation)- We will see whether William M. Arkin who resigned NBC with his 2,228-word farewell “blistering critique” of what he calls “perpetual war” and the “creeping fascism of homeland security” stays self-exiled from NBC and the rest of the mainstream, corporately-owned media.  He may not have a choice.  Arkin was clear his critique “applies to all of the mainstream networks,” CNN, Fox, etc, not just NBC.  And Arkin said he wanted to “step back” and “think about how we can end this era of perpetual war and how we can build some real security, both in the United States and abroad.”  Arkin pointed out that, in the prior year, the United States has been bombing (listing them) nine countries (ten if we include, as we should, the U.S. participation in the bombing of Yemen).

 •        Tareq Haddad- (added December 2019)- Tareq Haddad resigned from Newsweek at the end of 2019 because Newsweek and its senior editors were burying a scandal.  The scandal was about the covering up of evidence, now with an every greater number of whistleblowers from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons coming forward, that a supposed chemical attack in Duoma, Syria, supposedly by the Assad regime, was faked to provoke the United States to escalate military actions in the country.  Haddad’s furnished a very detailed account, complete with screen shots of emails from his senior editors, of how his story was suppressed and how Newsweek mobilized with not so subtle efforts to communicate that he was out of line to think these kinds of stories should get published.  Haddad said about suppression of information by mainstream corporate media (providing evidence he cited) that "The U.S. government, in an ugly alliance with those the profit the most from war, has its tentacles in every part of the media — imposters, with ties to the U.S. State Department . .  filter out what can or cannot be reported. Inconvenient stories are completely blocked."
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"Deniable censorship"  as contributor to the hijacking of our democracy- Supermajorities of Public  (70%+) go unrepresented.

On key issue after issue, a very long list, the American public is progressive by polls exceeding 70%.  But the public and those huge majorities don’t get represented by their elected officials.  The nonresponsive elected officials are instead accountable to moneyed interests and enact contrary policies.  They are aided and abetted in this hijacking of democracy by a corporate mainstream media ruled by “deniable censorship” (to use Julian Assange’s term).   

Here is a description of the “pyramid of censorship,” “deniable censorship” provided by Julian Assange in his 2012 book “Cypherpunks.”  It was read Saturday evening April 20, 2019 on WBAI by Chris Hedges at the end of his show “On Contact.”

My experience in the West is that it is just so much more sophisticated in the number of layers of indirection and obfuscation about what is actually happening. These layers are there to give deniability to the censorship that is occurring. You can think about censorship as a pyramid, This pyramid only has its tip sticking out of the sand, and that is by intention. The tip is public— libel suits, murders of journalists, cameras being snatched the military, and so on– publicly declared censorship. But that is the smallest component, Under the tip, the next layer is all those people who don't want to be at the tip, who engage in self-censorship to not end up there. Then the next layer is all the forms of economic inducement or patronage inducement that are given to people to write about one thing or another. The next layer down is raw economy— what it is economic to write about, even if you don't include the economic factors from higher up the pyramid.  Then next the next layer is the prejudice of readers who only have a certain level of education, so therefore on one hand they are easy to manipulate with false information, and on the other hand you can't even tell the something sophisticated that is true.  The last layer is distribution— for example, some people just don't have access to information in a particular language. So that is the censorship pyramid.

If you want to hear Hedges reading this on his show you can also go to the beginning of this video:

The Censorship Pyramid - Chris Hedges reads Cypherpunks by Julian Assange

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Do you know about these media watchdog sites?:

    •    Project Censored
    •    FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) and Counterspin
    •    Media Matters
    •    On The Media (? WNYC)
    •    OffGuardian (watches the Guardian.)
    •    Jimmy Dore Show (also on YouTube)
    •    Atlantic Yards Report (Former Times Report and now Atlantic Yards Pacific Park Report- Watches New York City real estate reporting and started by watching the New York Times slanted reporting of the Atlantic Yards Project)  

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Here is what is offered as a “Media Navigator” by Swiss Propaganda Research that “classifies more than 60 news outlets based on their political stance and their relationship to power” noting that, “in many cases, the latter is more significant.”  Swiss Propaganda Research (SPR) describes itself as “an independent research group investigating geopolitical propaganda in Swiss and international media.”
 
Noting the position of different news media outlets on the x/y chart, particularly the posited "relationship to power" (including "The Nation," "The Intercept," "Democracy Now," "Mother Jones," and "Counter Punch") can be thought provoking.  Also provoking thought is the fact that arranging the square icons on the grid with this symmetrically doesn't not allow nuance or for two outlets to have an identical ranking- Still it works fairly well.

Click to enlarge

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Books?

There is fast news and there is the slow absorption of news and information that puts it in context that can come from books.  As for books, Citizens Defending Libraries has previously posted giving examples about how important books have been suppressed: Books As Catalysts In A World Where Information And Points of View Are Often Suppressed.  NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller created Forbidden Bookshelf as a way of allowing the public to find and read controversial books that, almost impossible to obtain, are about subjects that have effectively been censored.

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Have you considered how less news might be better a better way to be informed; that addicts to the 24/7 news cycle may want, instead to read classic books to help them understand current events because of how the 24/7 news cycle is addicted, with it voracious appetite to “access journalism,”   which is inherently biased to be flattering to those in power.  That problem is compounded by the unfolding censorship crisis that is making the internet as a source of news increasingly treacherous, which mainstream outlets mat not be concerned about at all.  More here:

On The Media Interview With Dean Starkman: The Difference Between "Access Reporting" and "Accountability Reporting" Explains How Very Important Things DON'T Get Reported- Plus Consider The Censorship Crisis 

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Facebook (and social media generally?)— Reliable filters for the news that will influence you?

Facebook has acknowledged experimenting with its influence on voter turnout and voter biases.  Before the 2016 election Facebook altered its algorithms (without `colluding with the Russians’)  so that deceptive news stories favoring Trump were more prevalent in its ecosystem.

If this is as troublesome as it sounds, what might be the solution? . . . .   

FAIR’s May 25, 2018 Counterspin program lacerated this treacherously counterproductive proposed solution.

Facebook announced it’s partnering with D.C. think tank the Atlantic Council to `monitor for misinformation and foreign interference.’ The details of the plan are vague, but the council has stated the goal is to design tools `to bring us closer together, instead of driving us further apart,’ whatever that means.  Behind it’s bland name, The Atlantic Council is associated with very particular interests: It’s funded by the U.S. State Department, Navy, Army and Air Force, along with NATO, various foreign powers and major Western corporations, including weapons contractors and oil companies.  Fair’s Adam Johnson notes that what diversity of opinion exists is largely about how much and where U.S. military and soft power influence should be wielded, not if they should. But, with the exception of Splinter, news outlets showed no curiosity at all about a government-backed entity telling us which news is fake, or how it works when a venture supposedly meant to curb `foreign interference’ is bankrolled by the United Arab Emirates, Japan and Taiwan, to name a few. . .  Not that U.S. government money is exempt from the “foreign” qualifier with its suggestion of malicious influence; to most of Facebook’s 2.2 billion users, after all, the United States is a foreign country.

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See our post about vulture hedge fund Alden Global Capital dismantling local news outlets around the country with the prospect that republished corporate press releases will be the only source of news:

Where Will You get Your News When There Is A Mass-Dismantling of Outlets Like The Denver Post By Wall Street Vulture Capital Funds?

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Latest Non-reporting of the News?– Deaths in Puerto Rico (Second most deadly Hurricane in U.S. history)

This seems like the latest non-reporting of the news: an update on the (intentional?) mishandling of the crisis in Puerto Rico that has gone largely unreported.   . .  What does the number 4,645 on the San Juan Mayor's hat mean?  You'd be unlikely to guess given the  lack of reporting in the media and misinformation in these New York  Times headlines.  . . . What was the media devoting huge time to covering while leaving this national disaster news essentially unreported?: The firing of Roseanne Barr!

Latest Non-reporting of National News?– Deaths in Puerto Rico

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Maybe you would like to get involved in the discussion early?  In the comment section to this page you may want to supply information about where you go to get your news and why.  Or maybe you'd like to post about what you think are the biggest issues that mainstream media is not reporting on?  Climate change?  The cost of war?  Voting irregularities in the last election?

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