This seems like something to keep an eye on. To learn more visit their website. If you're anything like me, you find the reporting of Jon Stewart (on Comedy Central's, The Daily Show) to be more incisive and truthful than the major news networks. You've probably also gotten the feeling that the news we hear is very carefully scripted and filtered. Serving a multi-cultural church makes me realize how little I know about the life & death issues of other countries. I hear more about Tom and Katie's new baby than the fact that today, around the world, more than 20,000 people will die, simply because they are too poor to stay alive (living on $1 a day or less).*
*The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs, p. 1. Visit the Millennium Promise website.
The Real News web site includes a copy of its 53-page business plan that you can download as a PDF file. One of the most interesting things is an appendix where they publish the results of polling that they had Zogby do for them. This really tells the story on American TV news. People were asked if they would make contributions to support an independent TV news source that did not get any corporate money: Among those with incomes of $30,000 or less a year, a third said they would. Among those with incomes of more than $75,000 a year, only 8% said they would. American TV journalism is hopelessly compromised by Big Money and the wealthy know it!
Incidentally, Jay Paul (the key player in this initiative) has a stirling record in Canada and elsewhere around the world. He is from that great world of journalism that is carefully hid from most American viewers because the anchors don't get $100,000 per 30-minute show and facts that are disturbing to American corporate interests are freely shared.
Posted by: Monte Sahlin | May 04, 2006 at 05:43 AM