[CIMC-working] Re: vampires and corps - POSTED: TABD update feature

[Doug Morris]

Hi,

It is just about time to suspend debate to finish off the round of coverage 
on TABD.

But not quite...   we won't be able to work through this on Sunday.  This 
is going to be a long discussion

But first...
We need to change the word Greed back to Vampires or Vampirism or the 
phrase Corporate Greed to Vampiric Corporations or Blood Sucking 
Corporations or Corporate Blood Suckers.
This is too powerful to miss.  It is great for the actual themes in demos, 
context, coverage, and reality of the horror of corporations.
Whoever changed it needs to change it back in consideration of my 
arguments. Enough on that.

There are major points to discuss that underlie the need for this change 
back...

So.. to respond to your points here:

At 04:40 AM 11/9/02 -0600, Ian Bicking wrote:
>It's not really for
>philosophical reasons that I'm of this opinion, it's for functional
>reasons.  I feel that a more neutral title makes the site more useful to
>the reader, and I feel usefulness to the reader should be one of our
>highest concerns. In fact, I feel strongly that the most important goal of 
>the center
column is to direct readers to interesting and informative content.  ... 
I'm of the
opinion that a more boring title is better,

In reply to Ian:

First. A functional approach is a philosophical approach, inherently, being 
based on presuppositions about the nature of communication.

There are profound philosophical presuppositions that motive the intent to 
make things useful and functional and boring.

It is important to argue in the most strong terms that we should not 
constrain our coverage generally by the presuppositions of efficiency over 
depth, boring over vital and colorful, simplicity over some complexity, 
refferal/indexing over mobilization/awakening potential and even occasional 
shock value or objective and dry over passionately political.

More on this below.

Second. Based on 15 years of on and off media editorial work in 
political/alternative contexts:
There is not one main function for the center column.
There are at least four (maybe five) most important major goals for the 
center page or front page or highlighted coverage in a news medium.
None of these need dominate the other:

1. to summarize main points events and critiques.
2. to point to content
3. to mobilize actions and discussion
4. to offer creative or enjoyable or incisive or powerful views on the 
world succinctly
         -- something that has intellectual or aesthetic value in own right
5. And for political (or religious or artistic movement) media, one could 
argue:  to build movement networks and movement identity(ies)  (which one 
could argue in the case of the global justice movement is a commitment to 
diversity in views and identities together working for global justice from 
below).

We need to balance these points.  Some of these do contradict the 
others.   Dick alluded to some of these points.    To not consider 
strategically and move to all of these ends is to most or lose the power of 
media.

More on the first points:

The current reality of corporations and military imperialism are morally 
abhorent.

The very language of objectifying news coverage is part of the way that the 
horror of modernity is normalized and dealt with by corporations, media and 
government.  People become human resources.  More death becomes increase in 
mortality rates.  Government lies become strategic disinformation 
campaigns.  And willful exploitation and murder of human beings becomes 
simply: greed, not the most hideously rapacious amoral mass murder and 
drinking of communities and nations of people.

We must have creative and political flair in our central column.  At 
times.  Push the boundary too much and you loose people.  Don't push it 
enough and we become what we abhor because the ways we have been trained to 
think are to be tools of corporations and bureaucracies:  to become 
rational instruments of systems of domination, to become arbitrators of a 
normalized bourgeois reality.

If we fall into the language of instrumental rationality we adopt the norms 
of our oppressive society and edit out our radical critiques and 
passions....   then we've already lost have the battle to be radical media.

Political speech needs to be liberating: a praxis.
This means challenging our presuppositions about efficiency and utility and 
practicality.

It is not practical to destroy the planet or stand by while millions are 
killed for sake of profit.

We can not participate in recreating oppressive categories and modes of 
communication.

In profound hope for some critique of monolithic standards of the 
objectification of media practice...
Sincerely,
Doug