Mic Check Radio

As a tangent series to the Activist Cinema episodes we've been doing for a few months, here is short playlist of fantastic Activist Music - The Hip Hop Edition.

Introduction - Boots Riley (The Coup)

Public Enemy - Fight the Power

LMFAO - Shots

The Coup - Laugh, Love, Fuck

Tha Truth - Power to the People

Dead Prez - Police State

Immortal Technique - Rich Man's World

Street Sweeper Social Club - Fight Smash Win

[Click to Listen]

On the heels of our 5 part series on the Corporate Media, we tryout the Zen TV Experiment.  Instead of passively watching TV, try this:

-Watch 15 minutes of a scripted sitcom without the sound.

-Watch 15 minutes of a news program without the sound.

-Watch the TV for 30 minutes while it is turned off.

It only takes 1 hour and we promise, it will be a more memorable 1 hour than anything on the TV you would normally be watching.  The places your mind will go and the thoughts you will come up with in that 30 minute period may just surprise you. [Click to Listen]

We have come to the end (for now) of our Corporate Media series.  On this episode we take a look at several examples of the corporate/government hijacking of the public airwaves that have been exposed.  After that...the numbers don't lie!  Alternative media outlets are growing in numbers and listeners.  We examine the Pew Research Centers 2013 State of the Media report and the many reasons it gives us to celebrate.  Mainly the low, low, low viewership of the Corporate Media's flagship "news programs". [Click to Listen]

This week, in our continuing series taking a look at the multiple corporate and government influences on our media, we focus on public relations firms.  In this episode we focus on Ketchum, Qorvis and Edelman and their use of video news releases, sponsored content, native ads and paid content slipped right into news programs. [Click to Listen]

In part three of our Corporate Media series we take a look at the known influence of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird on the media.  The New York Times, Time/Life, CBS, NBC, Newsweek, the AP, UPI, Reuters and even all the way down the publishing hierarchy to The Louisville Courier-Journal were actively working with the CIA.  And just when you thought it was safe to say that all of this CIA influence of the corporate media was in the past, we have the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 (NDAA) which allows the use of government produced propaganda on the US public (previously made illegal-at least on paper-by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948). [Click to Listen]

After World War II, the proven power of propaganda and the TV boom coincided so beautifully that the CIA invented an infrastructure to exploit/manipulate/guide/control the media, and by extension the public.  And Operation Mockingbird is just one program that we know about.  From just one of the government agencies who are spying on us all.  Who knows what craziness lurks in the classified archives at the National Clandestine Service offices? [Click to Listen]

In the first part of our Corporate Media series we take a quick look at the history of US government's attempts to regulate (and eventually deregulate)the media over the past hundred years.  What is the end result of all of these bills and laws that have been passed?  The greatest consolidation of corporate media power (also known as: propaganda) the world has ever seen. [Click to Listen]

Activist Cinema Episode 5 - Network (1976) is simply one of the best American films.  Period.  It also happens to be a satire that ended up being so prophetic that the satire has fallen away in the decades since it was initially produced.  Giant, international corporations buying up the TV airwaves and forcing the News Divisions to turn a profit by mixing in more and more entertainment at the expense of the public service they were originally intended to serve.  Sound familiar to anyone?  This film predicted media consolidation, the rise of reality TV, corrupt news broadcasts and so much more. [Click to Listen]

Five years after the 2008 economic collapse, how are we as a civilization doing?  All of those new Wall Street regulations are keeping the banks in line.  All of the 'too big to fail' banks have been broken up.  Community banking has taken over as the dominant banking system.  The nationwide moratorium on home foreclosures kept millions of families off the streets.  The SEC has been bringing law suits of major banks and investment firms by the hundreds to the court system.  Bankers have been going to jail in record numbers and paying appropriately high fines for their criminal acts.  It's exactly the world that President Hope and Change promised the voters five years ago. [Click to Listen]

It's been a long, long two years since OWS started up in the heart of the financial district in NYC. The ripple effects of this movement are too diverse and too numbered to fully catalog in a short podcast.  Instead we take a look at the arithmetic of protests attendance.  The corporate media dismisses protests and movements (like the coverage of OWS Year One) when they say the numbers are too low, but what do these numbers actually represent?  At what point are the assemble more powerful than the elected?  This episode ends with a reading of the Declaration of Occupation. [Click to Listen]