BlogCall launched new press conference call where members of the MSM......

[ElsewheresDaughter]

http://democrats.com/blogcall

WASHINGTON -- February 25 -- A group of progressive investigative bloggers has launched BlogCall, a brand new press conference call where members of the mainstream media can pose questions to newsmaking bloggers.

The first BlogCall was held on Thursday, February 24, and it featured John Aravosis of Americablog.com discussing his newsmaking work on "Gannongate."

Aravosis is a leading progressive blogger who exposed White House reporter "Jeff Gannon" as a gay prostitute whose real name is James Guckert. Aravosis discussed the latest developments in the story during the 45-minute conference call.

The press conference was webcast by RadioLeft.com, and is permanently archived at WhiteRoseSociety.org.

"Progressive bloggers are doing outstanding investigative work at a time when the mainstream media is passively watching the innumerable scandals of the Bush administration," said Bob Fertik, President of Democrats.com and founder of BlogCall.

"These under-investigated scandals include Dick Cheney's still-secret Energy Task Force, the administration's Iraq War lies, and the criminal outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame by a top White House official. BlogCall will build a bridge between progressive investigative bloggers who are investigating those important scandals and the mainstream media," Fertik said.

BlogCall will begin a regular weekly schedule on Tuesday, March 8. The next featured blogger will be Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com, who has exposed the story of Clint Curtis, the Florida computer programmer who wrote "vote-flipping" software for touchscreen machines at the request of powerful Republican Congressman Tom Feeney.

Progressive bloggers and mainstream journalists are invited to participate in BlogCall by submitting their credentials at BlogCall.org.

http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0225-09.htm

[Mika]

1. whiterosesociety.org/Ben Burch has an mp3 of Blogcall

http://www.whiterosesociety.org/Blogcall.html

I had just started listening to it.

Thanks to Ben Burch! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[trudyco]

2. What a great idea! Pretty soon we can start our own underground

wire service. When I read votescam it sounds like those guys had something like that for the independent newspapers.

I keep thinking it would be nice to consolidate some of the blog news with indy paper news with a weekly (like the nation). I get bits from The New Republic and occasional high brow articles from the Nation and some monthly stuff from Mother Jones... then have to browse through du and nashua advocate, bradblog, the madsen articles,... it is very time consuming. Some days I don't have the time. Salon doesn't seem to have enough to subscribe to.

In the long run I think we need to form our own media. Rent out space on one of the satellite TV stations. Form our own newspaper co-op. Central blognews with webcasts. Our own news wire service.

This is great but it remains to be seen if MSM really "gets it". If they truly are underpaid and overworked, or just plain lazy, then handing them the investigative tidbits will help. However, if they are purposely omitting news or slanting it because of fear of retaliation or because the Rightwingnuts own them... well this won't get far. Sigh. I hope it is the former.

[Al-CIAda]

3. Excellent -eom

[jen4clark]

4. Could this be the beginning of something beautiful???

I wonder how long it will take, how bad things have to get before some of the progressive wealthy business people in this country figure out how many millions of us would whole-heartedly support a progressive/liberal cable news network?

Can you imagine the donations that would flood in if someone took the initiative to do this?

As long as the truth is only reported on blogs and indy newspapers, it is only going to reach those of us who already know it. We need a cable news network that would be seen by everyone and I bet it would leave FAUX "News" in the dust!

We should start a letter writing campaign - figure out who to target and just start a "draft" to encourage and convince them to get this going. A major news outlet is our only hope for exposing the scandals, lies and thuggery taking place on a daily basis in the White House. If we had a true progressive, liberal, truth telling network, the corporate media could no longer ignore it.

Who should we target? Any ideas?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

5. Ted Turner?...he did it once maybe he will be willing now to do it again ?

[jen4clark]

6. May be too late for more mainstream coverage

You know, I was stopped dead in my tracks once I started looking into the wealthiest Dem Americans. I was making a list of names and as I read who they were, I came upon some weird findings. It turns out several of THE richest Dems in the country either are or were involved in communications. Ted Turner included. Now I understand I was reading a right wing-nut site, but there's no denying that it's true:

<snip>What is very interesting about the wealth of the Democrats is that much of it is or was made in the communications industry and in the legal industry. Comcast, Saban Entertainment, Loral Satellite, Infoseek, Shangri-La Entertainment, are or were all operated by Democrats...

http://www.americandaily.com/article/165

A few of the names:
Steve Kirsch (Infoseek)
Haim Saban (Saban Entertainment)
Leo Hindery R. (cable magnate, resigned CEO of NY's YES cable network)
Bernard L. Schwartz (CEO Laral Space & Communications)
C. Michael Armstrong (chairman of Comcast)

Maybe there's more going on with the corporate controlled media than
we could ever know... There may be a concerted effort from all sides to keep things as they are.

In that case, the news you posted here of the OSPA may be the best hope we have of a source to get truth out. I will wholeheartedly support them and hope they get it set up soon to be able to accept donations!

[trudyco]

7. kick for Sunday -nt

[Catherine Vincent]

8. Does anyone know how often the calls will take place?