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After 25-plus years, I left Seattle for Mt. Vernon, the county seat of a rural area known for its annual Tulip festival and magnificent farmland. Moving here has been a series of culture shocks: from polite drivers yielding to me on my bicycle, to the stench of overt racism (as opposed to the often sublimated racism in Seattle.) I was unprepared to have many Euro-Americans assume that, because we share the same skin color, we share the same bigotry. This country's political pluralism is no longer an abstraction, it's now my neighborhood. And now Mt Vernon is blighted by mayor Bud Norris' unilateral decision to give the "Key to the City" to the vituperative, racist hate-monger Glenn Beck. One of the frothing-heads on FOX "News," Beck was born in Mt. Vernon, though his family moved to nearby Bellingham before Glenn entered high school. Mayor Norris is a xenophobic loose cannon, a huge ego in a small town, and one of many people here who are dazzled by Beck's enormous audience and financial success. Edward R. Murrow, a real journalist, was also born in Skagit County--but he's dead, and not a raging hate-monger, so no special day for him. Read more.

Today, the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy published a new 100-day study of the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Press coverage of the US occupation of Afghanistan. The study began in late May of 2009 and was concluded on September 2. We looked at all stories published related to what the Pentagon now calls the Af-Pak War, since it includes US military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There were a total of 24 stories during this 100-day period, 18 were national media sources and Press reporters wrote six stories. Read more.

It’s odd that the Seattle mayoral candidate who has taken a sabbatical from a telecommunications job, Joe Mallahan, isn’t the one pushing a city-wide broadband plan. Instead, the ostensibly green office seeker, Mike McGinn, pumps the idea that everyone in the city deserves fiber to the door. In an interview with TechNerd, McGinn leaned on the city’s 2005 recommendations for a city-wide buildout, and a 2007 feasibility study conducted by an outside firm. That study determined that just about $450 million raised in a revenue bond issue, where only proceeds from the service would go to bondholders, and a relatively low subscription rate by residents would allow successful reployment. A good hunk of costs were relative to each subscriber who wanted service, and not incurred until that subscriber was signed up. Read the full interview.

UPDATE: check out the action in Mt. Vernon via Youtube, Flickr, or Twitter. On Saturday, Sept 26, right-wing broadcaster Glenn Beck visited Western Washington--keynoting a conservative rally at Safeco Field in Seattle, then heading to his childhood home of Mt. Vernon, where Mayor Bud Norris presented him with the key to the city. Norris' decision to honor Beck was instantly controversial with local residents who reject Beck's history of on-air extremism and racist commentary. An online petition asking Norris to reconsider tarnishing the name of his city quickly gained over 16,000 signatures, and Mt. Vernon residents organized a protest against the honoring of Beck, with the theme "Hate is not a Skagit Valley value." The action took place at 5:30 pm Saturday, Sept. 26 outside McIntyre Hall at Skagit Valley College (2501 East College Way, Mt. Vernon). Read more.

With $7.2 billion on the table nationally, the state will review proposals to improve broadband connectivity and adoption for Washington communities. Funding is awarded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as competitive grants. “Broadband connectivity lets public safety agencies share information, grows Washington businesses, improves the effectiveness and quality of health care, makes it possible for students to build job skills through remote education and allows all of us communicate with the world,” Gov. Chris Gregoire said. “These are vital elements of a robust economy and a key to our future prosperity.” Read more.

Is someone trying to restrict press access when Glenn Beck is presented with the key to the city of Mount Vernon? There will be no press credentials for the sold-out "Welcome Home Glenn Beck" event, 7:30 p.m. Saturday at McIntyre Hall — with the exception of one member of the local press who will accompany Mayor Bud Norris. Norris, who planned the instantly controversial evening, said the directive came from Fox News and syndicated-radio personality Beck and his representatives, and that he wasn't told why: "No, I didn't ask for a reason." Norris said he would be choosing the one reporter allowed but hadn't decided who it will be. Read more.

In February 2010, the FCC will put forward a national plan for broadband deployment and adoption. On everyone’s mind is the question of whether that plan will achieve President Obama’s stated vision to stimulate the economy, increase jobs, and address social problems. The Internet has become an increasingly vital tool in our society. More U.S. residents are going online to conduct day-to-day activities such as education, business, personal correspondence, research and information gathering, job searches or communicating with medical providers. Each year, being digitally connected becomes more critical to economic and educational advancement and democratic participation. Read more.

In Seattle, public interest groups Reclaim the Media and WashPIRG are releasing a new report, A Public Interest Internet Agenda, a guide for policymakers creating strategies to connect more urban and rural households to affordable, high-speed broadband Internet. The report was prepared by member groups of the national Media and Democracy Coalition, including Reclaim the Media. The report should provide immediate guidance to the Federal Communications Commission, which has been given a deadline of February 2010 for preparing a national broadband strategy. The FCC’s new Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has called for “a process that will be open, transparent and will allow public participation in ways that are unparalleled," and the FCC has begun to schedule public hearings to guide its work. "The US has fallen behind in universal Internet access, in affordability and in speed, thanks to years of hands-off public policy," said Reclaim the Media executive director Jonathan Lawson. "We need a concerted national effort to get back on track, and policymakers specifically need to hear from the unserved and underserved sectors of our community, not just the telecommunications carriers who have let us fall so far behind. The community-generated recommendations in this report bring balance back to the discussion." Read more.

Good news for all American consumers who use the Internet: in a speech today at the Brookings Institution, FCC Chair Julius Genachowski made a strong commitment to preserving Net Neutrality in the face of increased efforts by providers block services and applications, saying "If we wait too long to preserve a free and open Internet, it will be too late." He continued: We’ve already seen some clear examples of deviations from the Internet’s historic openness. We have witnessed certain broadband providers unilaterally block access to VoIP applications (phone calls delivered over data networks) and implement technical measures that degrade the performance of peer-to-peer software distributing lawful content. We have even seen at least one service provider deny users access to political content. And as many members of the Internet community and key Congressional leaders have noted, there are compelling reasons to be concerned about the future of openness. Read more.

The wireless industry is gearing up to fight new Net neutrality rules that the Federal Communications Commission is formulating to keep the Internet open. On Monday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski gave a speech at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., outlining plans to turn the agency's principles for open Internet access into official regulation. In addition to making sure that network operators cannot prevent users from accessing lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, or attaching unharmful devices to the network, Genachowski wants to add two more rules. The first would prevent Internet access providers from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications, while allowing for reasonable network management. The second principle would ensure that Internet access providers are transparent about the network management practices they implement. Broadband providers such as AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon Communications have opposed regulation or new laws that would dictate how they could run their networks. Up until this point, the Internet has been free of any regulation. And these companies would like to keep it that way. Read more.

The centerpiece of Glenn Beck's incessant attacks on "White House czars" like Van Jones, as well as his attacks on ACORN, is his claim that this is all about rooting out the deep-seated radicalism within the Obama White House -- and ultimately, the deep-seated radicalism of Obama himself. He's been quite explicit about this. But what about Glenn Beck himself? Beck has shown a powerful affinity for right-wing radicals dating back at least to his days at CNN's Headline News, when he declared his sympathy for the John Birch Society (in its campaign to stop the non-existent "NAFTA Superhighway") and warned that Al Gore's real purpose behind his "global warming campaign" was to install a global government. (Back then, it was Gore, not Obama, who was just like Hitler.) Read more.

For once, media activists are not the only ones paying attention to the FCC! Led by conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, rightwing media personalities have been drumming up controversy about new FCC Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd. Their fabricated claims about Lloyd’s policy positions—spurred by a genuine fear that a diverse and locally accountable media system would cut into their profits—demonstrate why media reform is such a critical fight. In the wake of their success in ousting Van Jones from his position as green jobs advisor, Beck and his minions have targeted Mark Lloyd as the next progressive black leader to take down, falsely calling him a diversity “czar” and making outrageous accusations about his policies. Although we at the Prometheus Radio Project are always happy to see more public engagement with the agency that regulates our media, we’ve been disappointed in the quality of the debate on Mark Lloyd. Debate, in fact, is overstating it. Read more.

Over 200 people gathered in downtown Denver for a Save the News event organized by Kim Humphreys of I Want My Rocky and Josh Stearns and Craig Aaron of Free Press Wednesday night Sept 16. Stearns stated "a vital part of the news ecosystem" was lost 6 months ago when Rocky Mountain News was closed by the E. W. Scripps corporation. Three months prior to the Feb 27 final edition Humphreys found out her employer was being put up for sale. She had the idea to organize because, as the site says, "Without watchdogs, our democracy won't work. As journalists, we can't be objective about our own existence." Read more.

Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski will propose a new network neutrality rule during a speech at the Brookings Institute on Monday, the Washington Post reports. Anonymous sources have told the Post that Genachowski won’t offer too many details about the proposed rule and will likely only propose “an additional guideline for networks to be clear that they can’t discriminate, or act as gatekeepers, of Web content.” Read more.

In the first Congressional oversight hearing since the three new FCC Commissioners took office, all five Commissioners endorsed the Local Community Radio Act HR 1147/ S592, unanimously reaffirming the FCC s continued support for the bipartisan bill which would expand low-power FM radio across the country. FCC Chairman Genachowski and Commissioners Baker and Clyburn expressed support for the Local Community Radio Act in a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet. Introduced by Rep. Mike Doyle (PA-14) and Rep. Lee Terry (NE-2) in February, the bill would repeal a 2003 law that restricts Low Power FM radio (LPFM) radio to rural areas. Read more.

So everyone has been talking about Saturday’s Tea Party March on Washington and how it represents a sea change of sorts. Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t. Whether it was 1.2 million people or tens of thousands who showed up, it all has to be put in context.  First, we already know close to 46 million people voted for John McCain and Sarah Palin so close to half the country that voted has a different political outlook on things. We should not be suprised or intimidated by how vocal that opposition is. We have our own troops in large numbers. Second, many of the rallies that McCain and Palin held were pretty similar to the Tea Party demonstration in the sense they played upon people’s fear of change and were staging grounds for then candidate Obama’s character to be viciously assassinated.  We heard Palin invoke everyone and everything from Obama being a Muslim, to him not being a real citizen of this country, to him being a guy who ran around with ‘terrorists’ like Bill Ayers and ‘racists’ like Jeremiah Wright. You name it,  it was said. Everything but the kitchen sink was tossed at Obama during these McCain/Palin rallies. Many of the outlandish and now disproven assertions uttered from the stage were underscored by corporate media outlets like Fox News. Read more.

On Wednesday, more than 50 civil rights, public interest and grassroots organizations sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission and congressional leaders supporting Mark Lloyd, the associate general counsel and chief diversity officer of the FCC, and the agency's longstanding mission to promote localism, diversity and competition in the media. In recent weeks, Mr. Lloyd has been unfairly attacked on cable TV and radio talk shows with false and misleading information about his role and responsibilities at the FCC. A respected scholar and public servant, Lloyd was hired by the agency to expand media opportunities for women, people of color, small businesses, and those living in rural areas. The full text of the letter and a list of signatories is below. Read more.

The gatekeepers of political opinion on cable are doing nothing to curb the increasingly incinerate and oft times blatantly false rhetoric coming from their political hosts and commentators against political figures of color such as President Obama and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Therefore, advocates are going for the jobs of conservative pundits like CNN's Lou Dobbs and FOX's Glenn Beck, who have made some of the most inflammatory statements. “In recent months, we've seen a ramping up of the most hateful rhetoric,” said Stephanie Jones, executive director of the National Urban League Policy Institute. “And also, complete misinformation about President Obama and a bunch of other issues.” Read more.

This week, Lou Dobbs is broadcasting his radio show from a national lobbying conference sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization founded by a white nationalist and designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. At a time when studies document the growing link between anti-immigrant hate speech and increased violence against Latinos, Dobbs' appearance at FAIR generates especially profound concerns among those targeted by his almost daily attacks: immigrants and Latinos. For years, Dobbs and CNN banked on the fact that many of the Latinos who bear the brunt of his systematic media assaults--Spanish-speaking immigrants--were unaware of the threat that Dobbs posed. But all of that is changing; Latinos are increasingly making the connection between racism in the media and discrimination in their hometowns, and coming to a simple, yet historic conclusion: Lou Dobbs is the Most Dangerous Man for Latinos in America. That's why Presente.org is joining with Latino organizations throughout the United States demanding that CNN get rid of Dobbs. And we are not alone. In the coming weeks, CNN President Jon Klein will be inundated by a growing national chorus of calls to stop promoting Dobbs' brand of "news." Read more.

As President Barack Obama and members of the Senate and House returned from their vacations to grapple with health care reform, energy and climate change legislation, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of the nation’s shouting heads were concentrating on other issues. Fresh from successfully targeting then-White House green-jobs adviser Van Jones, right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck Twittered his followers to “find everything you can on Cass Sunstein (the regulatory czar), Mark Lloyd (Federal Communications Commission diversity czar) and Carol Browner (energy czar).” He later added White House science adviser John Holdren to the lengthening list of Obama administration staffers whom he calls “radical” or “revolutionary.” Meanwhile, Obama himself came under attack for addressing the nation’s schoolchildren, as had Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush before him, about the importance of studying hard and not giving up or dropping out. Jim Greer, chairman of the Republican Party in Florida, said the speech would “indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda.” Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell declared, “This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.” Read more.