A Critical Ear

This week the focus of our show was the DNC, with Bob reporting live from Denver. However, we managed to fit in reports from Gaza and a world news bulletin, before connecting up with Bob.

With Bob, we started by talking about how the DNC compared to other protest events, then talked about Kucinich’s speech and the importance of international law. I mentioned a new Pew survey (showing that people feel they know more about Obama’s personal story than his policies) as a segue into a discussion of where Obama stands on foreign policy. We then discussed the IVAW rally at the DNC, and closed our DNC focus by talking about a rumoured raid on Indymedia space in Denver. To finish, I asked Bob about significant events in the world this week, and he gave some context on the Gaza convoy, pointed to the continued discussions on a ‘Status of Forces’ agreement (SOFA) in Iraq, as well as to new signs that the Afghan government is interested in having a SOFA to govern US forces in Afghanistan.

During our discussion, Bob mentioned a video he produced of a Code Pink rally, which was included in his blog post on Common Dreams. I promised a link (there’s also a link to Kucinich’s speech in there).

There was also mention of the Blue Dog party hosted by AT&T (to thank them for the gift of retroactive immunity). More from Glenn Greenwald of Salon here. Further DNC coverage from the Colorado IMC.

Next week we’ll be at the RNC.

Audio now up at Radio.Indymedia (mp3), Audioport (mp3), Radio4All

While travelling the past few weeks I fell somewhat behind on uploads of the program to the Indymedia Radio site (though I was generally successful with getting them to Audioport on time). I’ve now uploaded the following to that site:

8 May, 15 May, 22 May, 29 May, 12 June.

This evening sees yet another edition of the show, it being Thursday and all that. One of the topics we’ll be returning to is that of the Pentagon Pundits, and the scandal of covert propaganda that has been so under-covered in the mainstream media. The Pentagon has now released over 8,000 pages of documents related to the illegal propaganda campaign, though as the Center for Media and Democracy notes, they are “in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect.” Speaking of the CMD, I should point to their weekly podcast, where in 5 minutes they cover the most important stories related to spin and propaganda - both governmental and corporate.

The subject line pretty much says it all. Bob’s in Oslo this week, so I did the show solo, drawing on various recorded pieces, including Tim Robbin’s address to the NAB. The link is to radio.indymedia.org. Also available through audioport, the WRFU site, and Radio4All.

Today we started with the Interworld Radio headlines, as usual, and then played some actuality from yesterday’s vigil at the veterans’ memorial in Urbana, marking 5 years of war in Iraq. Following some short discussion of the vigil, and an aborted start to an excerpt from the Winter Soldier event, we cut to an interview being conducted with Bob, live on WRFU, by broadcasters from Radio Adelaide’s Back Story. We closed out the show with the compilation from Winter Soldier (compiled by Pacifica) and a discussion of the role of such events and of independent media in providing coverage.

A Critical Ear has been broadcasting steadily, and I’ve been putting copies up on Audioport (from where WETX-LP picks them up) but I’ve been having difficulty connecting to Radio4All, where I’d been hosting publicly-accessible copies, and so fallen behind in posting here about show editions. This coming week we have a special edition of the show, where regular co-host Bob Naiman will be temporarily replaced by my good friends Paul Riismandel and John Anderson, both of them astute observers of our media environment. We’ll talk about the FCC’s current consultation on LPFM radio among many other things. Should be a fun show. Meanwhile, those listening to the show locally may have noticed that WRFU has gained some new public affairs content in the late afternoon and early evening. We’re building out a public affairs strip on automation, which will run during those hours when we have no scheduled shows (or when scheduled shows don’t broadcast). It should give listeners a chance to listen again to popular local shows such as Media Geek (Paul’s show) and Media Matters, as well as bringing new shows, such as War News Radio, to the community. Let us know what you think.