…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
From blissmeister: RAMALLAH, West Bank – Hamas militants have suspended a TV program that featured a Mickey Mouse lookalike urging Palestinian children to fight Israel and work for global Islamic domination, the Palestinian information minister said Wednesday.
Read the AP article Militant ‘Mickey Mouse’ Pulled Off Air from 1010 WINS News
From PR Watch:
“Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis,” Indiana University media researchers analyzed six months’ worth of Bill O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” editorials, which are aired on his TV show on Fox, posted on his website and printed in newspaper columns. The researchers found that O’Reilly “employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials.” The seven propaganda techniques are name-calling, glittering generalities, card stacking, bandwagon, plain folks, transfer, and testimonials. O’Reilly “called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute,” according to the University’s press release. Not surprisingly, “the people and groups most frequently labeled bad were the political left,” along with illegal aliens, criminals and terrorists. “He’s not very subtle,” journalism professor Mike Conway said of O’Reilly.
This video is presented by the Media Education Foundation, which produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation.
Directed by Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hip-hop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, this is a “loving critique” of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music. He pays tribute to hip-hop while challenging the rap music industry to take responsibility for glamorizing destructive, deeply conservative stereotypes of manhood…
Dealing with issues of race, gender violence, and the corporate exploitation of youth culture, it is a terrific follow-up to yesterday’s blog post from the Black Agenda Report.
This article from Black Agenda Report suggests rerouting the responsibility for “…the anti-social aspects of commercial hip hop…” in that “…the bulk of Black community anger at hip hop products is directed at foul-behaving artists, rather than the corporate Dr. Frankensteins that created and profit from them.”
Hip Hop Profanity, Misogyny and Violence: Blame the Manufacturer
by Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford
May 2, 2007
The often convoluted debate over hip-hop lyrics and images frequently misses the point: mass marketed rap recordings, videos and stage acts are corporate products, and the artists are virtual employees and subcontractors of huge multinationals. Corporate control of the cultural marketplace is the real villain in this story, not artists who did not pick themselves for stardom and cannot on their own alter boardroom business models. Corporations have been usurping and reshaping Black mass culture for decades – hip-hop is just the latest product line.
“What the public sees, hears and consumes is the end product of a process that is integral to the business model crafted by top corporate executives.”
Read the whole article at Black Agenda Report
Thanks to MediaChannel.org
Thank you David Strom for sending us this story about Fox News falling for a parody of a news story about a ham sandwich incident in a middle school in Maine.
From Think Progress:
This actual story was then spoofed by a parody site called Associated Content, which made up quotes and details, such as the school”™s intention to “create an anti-ham “˜response plan.”™”…
Fox & Friends subsequently picked up the spoof story and reported it as news, or should we say, mocked what they thought was the news. Here’s the video: