New New Media vs. the Mullahs in Iran

Bob Brill on KNX Radio out of Los Angeles called me this morning for my thoughts about the banning of international media in Iran. Here is an expanded version of the gist of what I told him in our interview:

The banned media are traditional, old-time broadcast and print media. They are still an important source of information in our world, and their muzzling by the mullahs in Iran is nothing to cheer about, but this action will do little to stop the flow of news out of Iran.

And this is because we now live in the age of YouTube and Twitter - or, what I call the new new media. Unlike CNN and The New York Times on the Web, these newer media allow anyone and everyone to become a reporter, and are impossible to totally shut down or even effectively control.

New media have always been a thorn in the side of totalitarian governments. The White Rose used photocopying to alert Germans to the lies of the Third Reich, and samizdat video undermined the Soviet Union from the inside out in the 1980s. Word got out on the early Internet about Tiananmen Square in 1989, and though the Chinese government in the end crushed that democratic uprising, the people of Iran today have a lot more new media at their disposal. Hundreds of YouTube videos are coming out of Iran and Twitter has been buzzing with at least that many Tweets per hour about the crackdown on democracy in that country.

But are all of these self-produced reports, sent to the world without editors or vetting, truthful? Of course not. But the same open process that brings this information also makes identification of false reports and unsubstantiated rumors easy.

The Iranian government can do what it can to shut down sites and block Internet access in Iran. But the capacity of most cell phones to record and upload videos, and just about any cell phone to Tweet, makes this a brand new ballgame for democracy.

The point of a gun is still hard to disobey or work around, but the informational means to do so have never been more accessible and powerful.

the KNX1070 Sunday morning interviews

We're coming up on the first anniversary of my Sunday morning interviews about media issues on KNX1070 all-news Southern California radio - 7:20am Pacific time/10:20am Eastern time - live-streaming everywhere at www.knx1070.com ... so I thought I'd post all of the interview topics here (yeah, I talk about lots of things) ... and keep this current...   Thanks to Jerry Edling, producer.

Larry Van Nuys interviewing me:
July 9, 2006: humans in space
July 16: social impact of cellphones
July 23: respect the First Amendment (part 1)
July 30: respect the First Amendment (part 2)
August 6: only idiots don't watch tv
August 13: terrorism in a media age
August 20: media coverage of sensational news stories
August 27: the Emmys!
September 3: Fall television season
September 10: media aftermath, 5 years after September 11
September 17: are the media too aggressive?
September 24: outer space tourism
October 1: Clinton vs. Wallace on Fox News Sunday
October 8: Bob Woodward's books on Bush and the war
October 15: the benefits of strong opinions on cable news
October 22: YouTube's impact on politics
October 29: 'tis the season for political ads
November 5: Bluetooth technology: the intelligent earring
November 12: viral marketing
November 19: swarming cellphones
November 26: the new James Bond
December 3: another look at Fall tv
December 10: John Lennon's continuing influence
December 17: Golden Globes!
December 24: Time's Person of the Year is You, the YouTube producer

Todd Leitz interviewing me:
December 31: intelligent advertising: you determine the ads
January 7, 2007: Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"
January 14: how we watch Presidential speeches
January 21: Keith Olbermann and 24
January 28: Foxing Obama
February 4: Super Bowl ads
February 11: Blockbuster, Netflix, Web: Future of Watching Movies
February 18: The FCC - at it again
February 25: Oscars!
March 4: the RIAA and fair use
March 11: Free Josh Wolf: We need a Federal Shield Law
March 18: blogger journalism
March 25: media drop the ball on reporting John Edwards news
April 1: media coverage of British-Iranian hostage story
April 8: the ethics of hostages selling their stories
April 15: don't let Imus off the hook by blaming the culture
April 22: how the media handled the Virginia Tech tragedy
April 29: demonstrating violence in the classroom
May 6: the first Presidential debates and the LA police riot
May 13: mistreatment of online Ron Paul support
*May 20: Fox's spin on after-debate poll reporting
May 27: Star Wars celebration!
June 3: Ward Churchill and sockpuppetry
June 10: The media and Paris Hilton
June 17: The Sopranos finale
June 24: Hillary Soprano and Obama-girl videos

Bob Brill interviewing me
July 1: Elizabeth and John Edwards v. Ann Coulter on Hardball
July 8: I Predicted the iPhone in 1979!
July 15: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
July 22: YouTube/CNN Presidential debate
July 29: Chinese censorship of the Internet
August 5: Teens are getting their news from Digg not The New York Times
August 12: The lack of media coverage of Ron Paul
August 19: Big Brother satellites in the sky
August 26: In praise of George Lotz, the kid who cracked the iPhone
September 2: NBC and iTunes split
September 9: Celebrity endorsements of political candidates
September 16: The Emmys!
September 23: OJ Media coverage; Moveon.org Gen "Betray us" ad
September 30: Sputnik's 50th anniversary
October 7: FCC Auctions New Bandwidth
October 28: Fake FEMA Press Conference
November 4: Writers Guild of America Strike
November 11: WGA Strike Continues
November 18: Obama: Better at Speeches Than Debating?
November 25: Impact of WGA Strike
December 2: How Important Are Polls in Elections?
December 9: How Important Are Celebrity Endorsements in Politics?


Mark Austin Thomas interviewing me
December 16: Newspaper Endorsements of Clinton and Obama
December 23: FCC Relaxes Concentration Rules: Good!
December 30: Dirty Tricks in Politics

January 6, 2008: Iowa, New Hampshire Primaries and the Media
January 13: The Dangers of a National ID Card

All interviews at 7:20 AM West Coast time... repeated throughout the day and week... live streaming at www.knx1070.com... Jerry Edling producing

My weekly KNX interviews concluded on January 13, 2008. But I've been interviewed on KNX about the following subjects and news events since then:

June 16, 2009:  New New Media vs. the Mullahs in Iran

September 20-21, 2009:  New New Media

November 30, 2009: Tiger Woods and the media

July 11, 2010:  Google vs. China

April 10, 2011: the Arab Spring

October 30, 2011: Occupy Wall Street and direct democracy

November 6, 2011:  Andy Rooney

March 3, 2012:  Rush Limbaugh's calling Sandra Fluke a "slut' and a "prostitute"

June 10,  2012:  Ray Badbury's legacy

July 22, 2012:  the Aurora killings: media and guns

August 26, 2012:  Neil Armstrong

September 9, 2012:  Democratic National Convention

October 7, 2012:  Presidential Debates

October 21, 2012: Second Obama-Romney Debate