Media

[moominmuppet]

Thanks to calebbullen, I've started recording the new Bill Moyers series on PBS: Bill Moyers' Journal, and I'm really loving it. The interview with Jon Stewart is now available for viewing on the site, and I highly recommend it (ooooh! I just discovered that the site also has video of a Moyers interview with Stewart in 2003 -- I'll have to watch that one too).

The piece that originally got me started recording the show, though, was Buying the War, on the relative lack of investigative reporting and criticism by the media during the build-up to the war. It's an impressive and powerful piece, to say the least, and I highly recommend it.

While I was looking through PBS's listing for Bill Moyers, I also found and finally got around to watching Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. I really liked it, but aside from learning some new details about how it all came together, and occasionally being shocked by the sheer blatancy of the abuse, I'm not sure how much I really gained from it beyond what I'd already read on the topic. I've found that frustration with a decent number of documentaries in the recent past -- on the one hand, I'm very much the "choir", on the other hand, I've gotten so much more active about following the news and commentary from various sources, that by the time a full movie comes out, it's mostly stuff I've heard before. That doesn't necessarily mean I don't recommend the films in question though -- it's just that I think they're most valuable to people who haven't had time and energy to follow the issues as they've developed.

This also reminds me -- I've been meaning to ask for suggestions about news/information/commentary sources. I currently watch/read/skim/follow these, some more regularly than others:

Mother Jones (paper and online -- headlines emailed)
In These Times (paper)
NewTrust (online -- headlines emailed)
Alternet (online -- headlines emailed)
TruthOut (online -- headlines emailed)
Ms. (paper and online -- headlines emailed)
New York Times (online -- headlines emailed)
Daily Show (tv)
Colbert Report (tv)
Countdown with Keith Olbermann (tv)
Bill Moyers Journal (tv)
Cleveland Plain Dealer (online -- headlines emailed)
Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report (online -- headlines emailed and RSS feed)
Scientific American (paper and online)
BBC News World (online - RSS Feed)
Talking Points Memo (online -- new addition since watching the most recent Bill Moyers Journal -- RSS feed)
Boing-Boing (online -- RSS feed)
CNN Top Stories (online -- RSS feed)
FactCheck.Org (online -- RSS feed and headlines emailed)
Daily Kos (online -- RSS feed)
Feministe (online -- RSS feed)
Feministing (online -- RSS feed)
Pharyngula (online -- RSS feed)
Salon.com (online -- RSS feed)
Skeptico (online -- RSS feed)
Gay People's Chronicle (online -- headlines emailed)
The Advocate (online)
Bi Activist List (online mailing list)
IndyMedia (just added to myself to their mailing list -- thanks Mike -- headlines emailed)
(note: in case other people are looking for sources of info/opinion/etc, I've edited my notes above to indicate how I access their info -- if something online doesn't come to me via RSS or email, I'm very bad about forgetting it exists altogether)

as well as a variety of email notifications from various political and activist groups, and links and discussion of issues in the LJs on my friends list.

Most specifically, I'm looking for more TV news sources, and maybe some specific Must-Read blogs. I'm most interested in finding and supporting more active journalism, so suggestions in those directions would be especially appreciated. The prompting for this is that I'm feeling a lack of daily tv news that I trust, and that goes into the kind of detail I'd like, so I'm kind of "news-shopping" on the DVR at the moment, setting various stuff to tape, and seeing what I like. I enjoy Countdown a good deal, and haven't found Olbermann fudging his facts, although he certainly also makes his opinions clear, but he only gets to do maybe 25 minutes of actual news coverage a night, if he's lucky (the rest is filler and celeb junk that often seems to annoy him as much as it does me). I'm not getting rid of Countdown, but I'd like to add something more, too. I've particularly been prompted by various articles discussing the budget cuts to many investigative journalism departments in favor of more (cheaper) talking heads. I'd like to attempt to take part in changing that by making sure I'm prioritizing active journalism in what I seek.