Stories from 2004-01-01

"The emergence of citizen reporters has broken down the monopoly of information control and ownership by political/economic elites and has significantly contributed to the democratization of the media. In fact, OhmyNews has changed the concept of the reporter. The old way meant becoming a professional journalist and getting a press card - a credentialed and somewhat elevated position in South Korean society. The new way, however, is that the reporter is the one who has the news and who is trying to inform others. Pay, however, is not an incentive. Pay for the ‘news guerillas’ varies from nothing to just under $16, depending on how a story is ranked by the editors - 'basic,' 'bonus' or 'special.'" [more]

"Starship Troopers (1997) is the last film with which he felt he could be oppositional. 'While I was working on it at Sony the regimes kept changing and ultimately no one looked at it. Someone said to me, "I think these flags look like Nazi flags", and I said, "Well, they're not. The Nazis didn't have green-and-white flags." But of course they are Nazi flags and the costumes were based on Nazi uniforms. It's about Earth, but Earth is the United States, clearly. We were showing a fascist utopia where the citizens were like the citizens of the US last year, believing in it, and not seeing the evils. A lot of the newscast inserts are based on Texas. It's all Mr George Bush - how many people get executed, gun laws, soldiers giving out bullets." [more]

"Part of a secret $3 billion in new funds ... will go toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. Experts say it could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists." [more]

"The fact that researchers could only get access to the Giuliani records through a laborious, time-consuming, and usually unsatisfactory process for three years was not well received by the research public or by citizens with evidential and informational needs for the records. These records included documentation of the City's response to 9/11, a subject on which the former mayor has already published a book - a book that no one has been able to effectively examine because the records are not available." [more]