Truth Emergency US Santa Cruz, California Jan. 25-27, 2008

Truth Emergency US

This Truth Emergency Movement held its first national strategy summit in Santa Cruz, California Jan. 25-27, 2008. Organizers gathered key media constituencies to devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to disclose, legitimize and popularize deeper historical narratives on power and inequality in the US. In sum this truth movement is seeking to discover in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists, whistleblowers and independent media activists can transform the way Americans perceive and defend their world.

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Peter Phillips
Truth Emergency US
Truth Emergency US
By Peter Phillips and David Kubiak

Many economists now doubt that government measures can prevent a major recession given the severe slump in the housing market, the subprime mortgage crisis, growing unemployment, declining consumer spending, and record high oil prices. Even harder times for working people are undoubtedly at hand, yet mainstream corporate media continues to lavish more attention on the Super Bowl and celebrity misadventures than measures to protect Americans from grave personal economic harm. We are spun, mislead, propagandized and amused to death by our media conglomerates and as a result the US has become the best entertained and least informed society in the world.

There is a literal truth emergency in the United States, not only regarding distant wars, torture camps, and doctored intelligence, but also around issues that most intimately impact our lives at home. For example, few Americans know that there has been a thirty-five year decline in real wages for most workers in the country, while the top 10% now enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens.

George Seldes once said, "Journalism's job is not impartial 'balanced' reporting. Journalism's job is to tell the people what is really going on." Michael Moore's top-grossing movie Sicko is one example of telling the people what is really going on. Health care activists know that US health insurance is an extremely large and obscenely lucrative industry with the top nine companies "earning" $93 billion in profits in 2006 alone. The health-care industry represents the country's third-largest economic sector, trailing only energy and retail among the 1,000 largest US firms.

Nevertheless, 16%of Americans still have no health insurance whatsoever and that number will not soon decline, as insurance costs continue to rise two to three times faster than inflation. The consequences are immediate and tragic. Unpaid medical bills are now the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the country, and the Institute of Medicine estimates that nearly eighteen thousand Americans die prematurely each year because they lack coverage and access to adequate care.

US private health care services differ markedly from other industrialized countries where single payer systems provide everyone with medical care as a basic human right. Unfortunately, objective media coverage and comparisons of single-payer public health care with our current profit-driven corporate system are almost non-existent at this time. To protect their bloated bottom lines, private insurance companies and HMOs invest heavily in lobbyists and corporate-friendly political candidates that promote their "indispensable" role in any future health care reforms. Besides their insider political influence, these firms deploy massive advertising budgets to discourage media investigations of the economic interests shaping our health policies today

Tens of thousands of American engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how corporate media marginalize, denigrate or simply ignore their concerns. Activist groups working on issues like 9/11 truth, election fraud, impeachment, war propaganda, civil liberties/torture, and many corporate-caused environmental crises have been systematically excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation leading to a genuine truth emergency in the country as a whole.

Now, however, a growing number of activists are finally saying "enough!" and joining forces to address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and practices of their own. They are working to reveal the common corporate denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of trustworthy news sources that tell the people what is really going on. These activists know we need a journalism that moves beyond forensic inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of corruption, propaganda and illicit political control to rouse the nation to reject a malignant corporate status quo.

This Truth Emergency Movement held its first national strategy summit in Santa Cruz, California Jan. 25-27, 2008. Organizers gathered key media constituencies to devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to disclose, legitimize and popularize deeper historical narratives on power and inequality in the US. In sum this truth movement is seeking to discover in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists, whistleblowers and independent media activists can transform the way Americans perceive and defend their world.

Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored, a media research organization. David Kubiak taught mass media and memetics for 10 years at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan and is the former executive director of 911truth.org. For information on the Truth Emergency movement see: http://truthemergency.us/

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Thanks

Great job! I'm looking forward to more coverage on this conference.

Santa Cruz media summit aims to overhaul world news

Santa Cruz media summit aims to overhaul world news
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/story.php?sid=65181&storySection=Local

January 24, 2008

Santa Cruz media summit aims to overhaul world news
Shanna McCord
Sentinel staff writer

SANTA CRUZ -- Some widely known political activists are expected to land in Santa Cruz this weekend to take on the mainstream media and reshape world headlines.

Missouri-based nonprofit 911truth.org, a group dedicated to investigating government cover-ups surrounding the Sept. 11 terror attacks, has organized the media strategy summit at the University Inn and Conference Center. The three-day summit, called Publicizing Truths with Consequences, is expected to draw anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan; former FBI agent and whistle-blower Coleen Rowley; Elizabeth Kucinich, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich; Ray McGovern, a retired CIA officer turned political activist; and 2004 Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb.

At least 200 media-savvy people from across the country, all interested in independent, alternative media sources, are scheduled to attend, according to organizer David Kubiak of Half Moon Bay.

"We define media pretty broadly. Passionate letter to the editor writers are welcome," said Kubiak, who worked on Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. "We want to develop a prototype of a noncorporate news source to show we can do a better job of reporting the state of the country."

Big-name media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN often ignore stories that uncover election fraud, military deception, war issues and deeper narratives that reveal corruption in the American government, Kubiak said.

"Even The New York Times has been egregious so many times," he said. "The media has become a corporate fraternity, and they're not going to report on things that are uncomfortable to the government or uncomfortable to their sponsors and owners."

Kubiak said the summit will strive to create new financial models that would make professional journalists less reliant on corporate advertising, the main revenue source for all major newspapers, magazines, radio stations and television stations.

"The local media should be a leader in that process," he said.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barbara Trent will address the media's role in supporting small, independent movies.

She said such films often carry important political messages that could affect the government's policies and decisions if more people were aware and equipped to make a difference.

"My message is as a movement for peace, sustainability and justice, we have not put ourselves together in a way that works for independent film," said Trent, creator of "The Panama Deception" and "Soldiers Speak Out."

"Those films could help change the world. It's a terrible loss," she said.

Santa Cruz was chosen for the summit because it's a "bastion of enlightened people and progressive activity," organizers said.