BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH – DAVID BARSAMIAN

 

David Barsamian is founder and director of “Alternative Radio”, the independent award-winning weekly series based in Boulder, Colorado.  He is a radio producer, journalist, author, and lecturer.  He has been working in radio since 1978.  His interviews and articles appear regularly in the Progressive and Z Magazine.

 

As a writer, Mr. Barsamian is best known for his series of interviews with Noam Chomsky, which have been published in book form and translated into many languages, selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

 

His newest book with Noam Chomsky is Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy; and other books such as Targeting Iran with Noam Chomsky, Ervand Abrahamian, and Nahid Mozaffari;  Imperial Ambitions with Noam Chomsky; Speaking of Empire & Resistance with Tariq Ali; and Original Zinn with Howard Zinn . His earlier books include Propaganda and the Public Mind: Conversations with Noam Chomsky; Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire and The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting.
His show, “Alternative Radio” airs on 90.1 FM, KKFI in Kansas City on Wednesdays at 9 AM following ”Democracy Now.”
The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its “Top Ten Media Heroes.” Barsamian lectures on U.S. foreign policy, the media, propaganda, and corporate power in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, India and Europe. He is the winner of the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism, the 2006 Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Award and the Cultural Freedom Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation.

 

Mr. Barsamian spoke previously at the Friends of Community Media’s annual media awards event to honor those in the media who have served their communities

 

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                  Contact:  Tom Crane

                                                                                                                                       816-561-6288

NOTED JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR TO VISIT KANSAS CITY

Kansas City, Mo. , 11/14/17  – David Barsamian author of a new book with Noam Chomsky – Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy, will present his views on the state of the world on December 1, 7:00 PM at St. Garabed Church, 4400 Wyoming in Kansas City.

One of America’s most tireless and wide-ranging journalists, Barsamian is an integral part of the independent media landscape both with his weekly radio show, “Alternative Radio” in its 32^nd year – and his books with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy, and Richard Wolff.

The show airs locally on KKFI FM 90.1 on Wednesdays at 9 AM.  An interview with him will air on Tuesday, 11/14 on the station at 6:00 PM on the Radioactive Magazine Show.

David is the recipient of many awards including the Media Education Award, the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair award, and Friends of Community Media’s Media Excellence Award.

Admission at the door will be $20, $10 for students, low-income people, and seniors.  A reception to meet Mr. Barsamian is at 6:00 PM for a fee of $30 (includes an event ticket and refreshments).  Autographed books and CDs will be available for purchase.  Ticket  proceeds will benefit Friends of Community Media, a non-profit 501(c)3 group.  Tickets in advance are $15.00 and may be ordered at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3178201

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From the Washington Post – headlined:  

FCC Strikes Local Media

 

Trailer of Corporate FM – a film by local film maker Kevin McKinney

 

 

 

This Saturday, October 21, 2017, 2-3:30 PM, Friends of Community 
Media (FCM) Forum will feature a videoconference / webinar with Lewis 
Friedland, professor of journalism at the University of 
Wisconsin-Madison, and author and editor of multiple works in this area 
including "The Communication Crisis in America, And How to Fix It"  
(2016) (Palgrave).


Venue:


KKFI Annex
3901 Main St.
Kansas City, MO  (rear door, second floor)


Title:  Communication’s Challenge to Democracy


      This is the October 2017 episode of the FCM Forum, which hopes to 
catalyze improvements to media and in the greater Kansas City area.


      Hope to see you.
      Spencer Graves, Secretary
      Friends of Community Media
ph:  408-655-4567

Friedland, Lewis

Read moreSaturday Event

---

FCM Forum this Saturday, Sept. 16, 4-5:30 PM KKFI Annex Room, 39th & Main Rear Door.  Spencer Graves has set up an agenda which will include two items:  

1.  Reports back from people’s efforts to contact their representatives in the US House and Senate regarding net neutrality.

2.  Planning for a monthly webinar series on media and democracy to be cosponsored by the Friends of Community Media (FCM) and the United Minority Media Association (UMMA).  Per the draft minutes of an UMMA meeting earlier today (below), UMMA may meet on the third Saturdays at 10 AM in the KKFI Annex.  This webinar / Forum series might be scheduled to begin after that, e.g. at noon or 11 AM or 11:30 AM.  In July and August, we met later in the day.  These webinars could be live streamed on Facebook and subsequently offered on WorkingJournalistPress.com, broadcasted on KKFI and offered to the Pacifica network of ~200 listener-sponsored radio stations.  With luck, we may be able to get FreePress.net and other groups concerned with media reform to co-sponsor later episodes of the webinar series.  We have expressions of interest from the following three, who could do webinars for us Oct. 21, Nov. 18, and Dec. 16, not necessarily in this order:

2.1.  Lewis Friedland, professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin and author of important publications on media and democracy (https://journalism.wisc.edu/sjmc_profile/lewis-a-friedland/).

2.2.  Rev. Timothy Hayes, Jr., the Interim President of the United Minority Media Association (UMMA), who is 25 years old and has built a church on social media and can likely help us replicate that success in improving media and democracy here in the greater Kansas City area — and the world.

2.3. David Barsamian, founder and director of Alternative Radio, a Boulder, Colorado-based syndicated weekly public affairs program heard on some 250 radio stations worldwide. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Barsamian).

For more on Spencer Graves’ thoughts on the webinar series, see “https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Webinars_on_media_and_democracy”.  For more on my thoughts regarding the afflictions that humanity inflicts upon itself, see“https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_and_%27Restoring_Internet_freedom%27” and “https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Winning_the_War_on_Terror”.

 

Reminder – Saturday 8/12 KKFI annex room, FCM member meeting to vote on bylaws changes and discuss UMMA support.

NET-NEUTRALITY INFORMATION

  THEY WANT TO TAKE AWAY OPEN-ACCESS TO THE INTERNET!

Who are “They”?

 The 5 major corporate media companies control over 90% of TV and radio stations and newspapers.  They want to control Internet content as well.

Why do “they” want to do this?

 To make a ton of money and to promote political agendas which censor opposing points of view.

What is protecting citizens from “them” now?

 “Net-neutrality”.  This means everything on the Internet is equally accessible and the Internet should be a place where many ideas compete equally with big money.  In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) put into place protections to ensure that service providers could not be allowed to discriminate against content without a court order.  The Trump Administration wants to do away with this protection.

How can “they” do this?

 The FCC has the power to change or discard the rules governing the Internet.

What can we do?

 Public hearings and correspondence can be used to stop the process of destroying the open-Internet.  You may write the FCC at:  Federal Communications Commission, Washington, D.C. 20554 about the Friends of Community Media letter –

or post a comment on the Friends of Community letter which can be found here:

https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/10718681816260/FCC%2017-60A1.pdf

on the FCC Website at:

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/filings?proceedings_name=17-108&sort=date_disseminated,DESC

 

What is Net Neutrality?

When people use the Internet, they expect something called “net neutrality” This is keeps telecommunications companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from slowing down or blocking any content or websites they don’t like.

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted net neutrality rules that keep these companies from censoring the Internet.  A decade earlier, Comcast was caught doing that.  When this was revealed, in 2014, it contributed to activism that generated 3.7 million comments to the FCC about this issue.

On May 18, 2017 President Trump’s FCC approved a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM)” “on restoring Internet freedom” to restore the “freedom” of telecoms to censor your Internet.  The deadline for original comments on that NPRM was July 17 with a deadline for “reply comments” of August 16.

No matter what a person’s Internet concerns are, preserving it should be important.   If the new FCC rules are allowed to stand, progress on many issues facing our nation will be blocked.  Net neutrality threatens many of the world’s elites because their attempted control over the media is threatened.

On July 15, FCM hosted a Forum that featured Ernesto Falcon, an attorney and Legislative Council with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading citizen advocacy group focused on the law of the Internet.  Falcon was interviewed by FCM’s Spencer Graves and Tom Crane with additional comments Gordon Elliott.

On August 5, FCM will update the audience on the arguments presented on both sides and what they might do to better protect their interest. 

Interesting links about Net Neutrality:

Battle For The Net (Coalition of Freepress.net, Demand Progress, and Fight for the Future)

https://www.battleforthenet.com/    (This has some excellent videos.)

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/11/activists_plan_mass_day_of_action

FCC Head Not Amused

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/ajit-pai-not-concerned-about-number-of-pro-net-neutrality-comments/

Internet Service Providers also not Amused

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/07/14/internet_service_providers_were_not_amused_by_the_net_neutrality_day_of.html

Electronic Frontier Foundation and Net Neutrality

https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality