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Medieval computer
This is a volvelle, a medieval device that allowed you to calculate the phases of the moon and the latter’s position in relation...
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Favorite Food
This week’s blog is from Martha De Laurentiis, one of Hannibal’s executive producers.
Two cannibals are having dinner. “I hate my...
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Hello tumblr allow me to present you the swedish vallhund
i´m VERY...
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The Naïve Art of Truth Chasing
Yesterday’s events outside the National Security Bureau in Sana’a that spread into the neighbouring districts,...
By James Graham
Before it was Zuccotti Park, it was Liberty Plaza Park. The old name reflected the realities of Manhattan real estate, binding the park by association to the building that stands just north of it: One Liberty Plaza, a 54-story tower that necessitated the park’s very existence. The Park formerly known as Liberty Plaza, surfaced in granite and shaded by honey locusts, was a result of New York’s idiosyncratic zoning laws, in particular a provision dating to 1961. Known in bureaucratic parlance as a POPS, a “privately owned public space” — a phrase that blithely overlooks the inherent contradictions masked by its cheerful acronym — Liberty Plaza Park came into being as a tradeoff, a civic amenity provided in exchange for more generous zoning on the remainder of the property. From the start, the three-quarter-acre park’s sole reason for existence was to allow One Liberty Plaza’s architects to design a taller tower, rising at nearly an acre of columnless interior per floor. That those designers were Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM), the preeminent architects of corporate capitalism in postwar America, is one indication that the longer history of the site — beyond the two months of occupation that gave it an international audience, and beyond whatever happens next, now that the barricades surrounding the park have been removed — provides a glimpse into why the park proves such potentially compelling territory for a rethinking of the public realm.
Before the tower was One Liberty Plaza, it was U.S. Steel. Again, the restoration of the older name unravels something of its role in the urban economy — this time, signaling the financial origins that brought the building into being. The United States Steel Corporation was the world’s first billion-dollar conglomerate, once known on the New York Stock Exchange simply as “The Corporation” in deference to the vastness of J. Pierpont Morgan’s interests, virtually co-extensive with industrial capitalism itself.
The United States has fallen 27 places in the Press Freedom Index. The reason? The many arrests of journalists covering Occupy protests.
(via theatlantic)
My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.
I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.”
As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park. They then did the same with the communal property of the Occupy LA movement. For example, I watched as the LAPD destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Occupy LA’s First Aid and Wellness tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Occupy LA, at a cost of several hundred of my family’s dollars. As I watched, the LAPD sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the park. Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press reports as “30 tons of garbage” that was “abandoned” by Occupy LA: personal property forcibly stolen from us, destroyed in front of our eyes and then left for maintenance workers to dispose of while we were sent to prison.
An analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism indicates that the movement occupied 10 percent of its sample of national news coverage in the week beginning Oct. 9, then steadily represented about 5 percent through early November.
Coverage dipped markedly, to just 1 percent of the national news hole, in the week beginning Nov. 6, supporting Ms. Shepard’s assertion that it had “died down” before the early morning eviction in New York last Tuesday. It has since rebounded strongly.
But really, the key line of the story is this one: “Newspapers and television networks have been rebuked by media critics for treating the movement as if it were a political campaign or a sideshow — by many liberals for treating the protesters dismissively, and by conservatives, conversely, for taking the protesters too seriously. The protesters themselves have also criticized the media — first for ostensibly ignoring the movement and then for marginalizing it.” The lesson from this? You can’t please everyone, but you can annoy everyone all at once.
Just wanted to make a point here: the movement was created by a media outlet.
(via theatlantic)
The front page of the New York Times on May 4, 1970, reporting the killing of four students at Kent State by members of the Ohio National Guard.
Accusations of media bias are nothing new. Both sides of the political spectrum complain that mainstream journalists misrepresent them. Occupy Wall Street is no exception. The right says the media’s “liberal bias” makes its coverage too sympathetic; the left says the media undermines and underreports the protests.
Let’s look at the lede from the New York Times’ top national story on Thursday, “Cities Begin Cracking Down on ‘Occupy’ Protests.”
OAKLAND, Calif. — After weeks of cautiously accepting the teeming round-the-clock protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street, several cities have come to the end of their patience and others appear to be not far behind.This is an excellent example of how journalists, in an effort to appear neutral, can dilute their reporting to the point of incoherence. Cities cannot “come to the end of their patience” because they’re not people. Mayors and local officials can come to the end of their patience. So can cops. But cities?
43% of Americans agree with the views of Occupy Wall Street, as reported by the latest CBS/New York Times poll. In Oakland, a progressive city, that percentage is likely higher. But the lede above suggests that a significant majority of Oakland residents are losing patience with the protest.
This fake-neutral language pervades the article. The protests “resulted” in a “life-threatening injury,” “violence broke out.” Throughout are passive constructions, missing subjects. It reminds one of the purposely vague answers people give on exams they didn’t study for.
The article’s biggest flaw is that it buries its most newsworthy fact. The “life-threatening injury” mentioned above was suffered by Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran. He doesn’t appear until the 24th paragraph:
In Oakland, where one protester — Scott Olsen, an Iraq war veteran — was in critical condition at a local hospital after being struck in the head with a projectile during the chaotic street battle on Tuesday, city officials defended their actions, saying that the police used tear gas after being pelted with rocks.Apart from being some pretty gruesome prose, this paragraph is misleading. It doesn’t quote testimony from protesters who claim that a police projectile hit Olsen, or refer to video that appears to show that the police attacked first. Instead, the reader is left to assume that Olsen was the victim of “a chaotic street battle.” How the chaos began, and who its instigators were, isn’t discussed.
It’s worth noting that forty-one years ago, the New York Times held its reporters to a higher standard. In their front page coverage of the Kent State killings in 1970, the journalist provides a remarkably evenhanded account. After giving the National Guard’s side of the story—“the guardsmen had been forced to shoot after a sniper opened fire against the troops”—the article continues:
This reporter, who was with the group of students, did not see any indication of sniper fire, nor was the sound of any gunfire audible before the Guard volley. Students, conceding that rocks had been thrown, heatedly denied that there was any sniper.In other words: it’s a journalist’s responsibility to verify official claims, not merely to repeat them. Imagine a reporter contradicting the Oakland police department’s version of events with his own testimony, and the testimony of the people he took the time to interview.
As Walter Lippmann put it, “There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and shame the devil.”
(via laphamsquarterly)
