Media Re:public

In Russian Organized Crime v. American-Russian Law Institute the Russian-American Law Institute explains what they believe to be the reasons for the continued detention of their director Emanuel Zeltser and his secretary Vladena Funk.

Meanwhile this site and this one have been set up specifically to support the campaign to free Zeltser and Funk. A demonstration in support of the pair is planned at the Belarus Consulate in NYC this Wednesday, April 2.

Note: The American Russian Law Institute is a little hard to parse. I only recognize one name on their advisory board but it’s a damn good one:Boris Kuznetsov who until he found himself under attack by the Russian government was helping defend my colleague Manana Aslamazyan and the Educated Media Foundation. Background and current news on that ongoing case is at the Internews Netork site.

Tags: Zeltser, Belarus

When the A/V guy here at USC remembers, we’ve been playing a 15-minute audio collage as people filter into the auditorium. It’s called

“We’ve Got Your Back, Ashley Dupré”

It was created for Media Re:public by Love and Radio author Nick van der Kolk and features the voices of John Henry Purcell, Nishima Chudasama, Ian Gray, Sharlene Leurig, and Tim Terway.

If you want to hear it, it’s now up on the Berkman’s site and also here. Enjoy!

Wouldn’t dream of competing with the experts. My colleagues David, Doc and Ethan (alpha order, just for David W) are blogging this forum at various velocities.

I’m busy trying to follow the twitter feeds, the IRC channel (#berkman on freenode) and the Question Tool.

Think we hardly get any international news in our mainstream media? Right you are. But we don’t get any domestic coverage either, unless it’s about the elections, according to the insightful but not cheerful new State of the Media Report from the great folks at the Project for Excellence in Journalism:
“The agenda of the American news media continues to narrow, not broaden. A firm grip on this is difficult but the trends seem inescapable. A comprehensive audit of coverage shows that in 2007, two overriding stories — the war in Iraq and the 2008 campaign — filled more than a quarter of the newshole and seemed to consume much of the media’s energy and resources. And what wasn’t covered was in many ways as notable as what was. Other than Iraq — and to a lesser degree Pakistan and Iran — there was minimal coverage of events overseas, some of which directly involved U.S. interests, blood and treasure. At the same time, consider the list of the domestic issues that each filled less than a single percent of the newshole: education, race, religion, transportation, the legal system, housing, drug trafficking, gun control, welfare, Social Security, aging, labor, abortion and more.” — The State of the News Media 2008, by the Project for Excellence in Journalism

A few days ago I posted a press release about the detention in Minsk of Emanuel Zeltser, described as a human rights lawyer. The story was later reported in Forbes and elsewhere.

Now, Russian oligarchi-in-exile Boris Berezovsky tells Georgian TV station Rustavi2 Emanuel Zeltser is a swindler who is trying to seize the assets of Berezovsky’s former partner Badri Patarkatsishvili, who died suddenly in February.

“they [Joseph Kay and Emanuel Zeltser] presented themselves as people authorized to manage Badri’s assets. Shortly after that it became absolutely clear that they were swindlers, who have falsified documents and as far as I know Mr. Zeltser is now in prison in Belarus, where they also tried to seize Badri’s assets through faked documents “ Details and lots of other interesting tidbits about Georgian politics in the full English transcript of the interview.

Meanwhile, someone posted a long comment on my earlier post titled
BEREZOVSKY AND BELARUS KGB PLOT AGAINST US LAWYER EMANUEL ZELTSER

This is what we call an информационная война (”information war”). Make your own decision about what to believe, I’m just the messenger here.

More and more smart and interesting people are coming - will we see you there? If so, please be sure you registrationalize yourself now, otherwise we won’t have your name tag waiting. We’ve also begun posting some reading materials, if you want us to post something of yours (even if you’re not coming) send it on.

Folks have been asking about webcasting. Here’s the scoop - due to timing issues (Richard Sambrook speaks at 9:30 pm East Coast Time 1:30 am in London) and the fact that we can’t webcast all the sessions, we’ve decided that we’ll post video of the sessions later.

Of course if anyone as amazing as Steve Garfield shows up, we’ll expect it to be webcast by phone.
peace
Persephone

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Living up to his title, Vermont judge the Honorable David Howard has ruled to release ibrattleboro.com from a libel lawsuit that aimed to hold the site responsible for comments posted by a reader. This is an important affirmation of the special protections put into the law to protect online publishers from being held responsible for audience-contributed material. It’s a wonderful outcome.

My erudite colleagues at the Citizen Media Law Project have explained the legal issues better than I can and ibrattleboro.com co-founder Chris Grotke has a very readable post explaining the case to readers.

So, if you have a site where people comment or submit material, be grateful, do not be intimidated and make sure you know your rights.

The power of the social network is demonstrated by the amount of energy people will spend discussing their epic customer service nightmares in their personal blogs.

The wonderful folks at LinkTV held a contest for videos of American Muslims expressing what they wanted to tell the world. The results are terrific: lovely, funny, sad, moving. Go, watch them here right now.

Walked through a disturbing and moving installation in the Harvard Law School quad on my way to the office. Labeled the Iraqi Freedom Trail (no link because I can’t find them on the web - do they actually exist?), it was a series of laminated placards with stories and statistics documenting the history of sanctions and the war. Meanwhile, the lawn was populated by thousands of sticks in different colors representing specific numbers of Iraqi and US deaths. Rows upon rows.