DARPA's Military Mission & University Connections--Part 1

In this 21st-century “era of permanent war and blogging,” U.S. universities like Columbia University sometimes claim that if they formally prohibit on-campus classified research for the Department of Defense they are no longer institutionally involved in doing war research for the Pentagon. Yet in the 21st-century, universities like Columbia still are apparently performing contract research work on campus for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA], whose mission is to develop more advanced weapons technology for the U.S. war machine to use in Iraq and other foreign countries.

In a chapter titled “Managing Public Sector Research and Development: Innovation Versus Responsiveness,” the late 1980s book that Asa Clark IV and John Lilley edited, Defense Technology, described how DARPA has, historically, operated:

“The Under-Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USDRE) also exercises direction and authority over the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Originally created in 1958 as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) under control of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDRE), it was renamed DARPA in 1972 and is now a separate agency under the Under-Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. DARPA maintains no laboratories and does no scientific research of its own. It operates through…educational institutions to seek out and manage high-risk basic research and applied-technology programs…

“DARPA manages R&D on projects up to the demonstration stage, where feasibility can be assessed. It then transfers the projects to the appropriate military service…In the words of DARPA’s director Robert S. Cooper, DARPA serves, in effect as ‘the venture capitalists of the Defense Department.’”

Asa Clark IV also observed in a chapter titled “Defense Technology: Conclusions and Implications,” of Defense Technology, that “advanced-technology research and development is carried out largely in secret,” by the U.S. war machine.

Next: DARPA’s Military Mission & University Connections—Part 2

`Big Bill Haywood'

(chorus)
So fight for your class all at one time
And don’t be a scab to get pearls
And stop their machines in One Big Union
The Industrial Workers of the World.

(verses)
There once was a union builder, his name was Bill Haywood
He organized mines in Utah, so workers could get more food
He fought in Colorado, in Denver and Cripple Creek
The bosses tried to shoot him, but Big Bill could not be beat. (chorus)

They put his men in bull-pens and broke into their homes
The rich formed vigilantes and tried to gun Bill down
They framed him for a killing and chained him by his feet
But workers rallied ‘round him, and Big Bill could not be beat. (chorus)

He spoke to textile workers who came from many lands
He told them that the wage system was what enslaved all of them
And when World War broke out, he fought for his free speech
And ‘though the bosses jailed him, Big Bill could not be beat. (chorus)

So workers if you’re laid off and walking streets in despair
Remember Bill Bill’s teachings and don’t fear “sabotage”
The bosses tried to crush him, but his spirit was too deep
And all the striking workers know that Big Bill could not be beat. (chorus)

The Big Bill Haywood biographical folk song was written during the 1970s, after I read The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) still exists in this 21st-century “era of permanent war and blogging” and has a website at the following link:

http://www.iww.org/

The Big Bill Haywood folk song can be heard if you click onto the music site link at:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Biographical+Folk+Songs/Big+Bill+Haywood

Some other protest folk songs can also be heard at:

http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music

Next: DARPA’s Military Mission & University Connections—Part 1

PBS: A Publicly-Funded `Private Broadcasting Service?'

If a public broadcasting journalist uses public funds, daily access to publicly-funded television stations and air-time and venture capital from media conglomerates like Gannett or Liberty Media to establish a privately-owned commercial venture which personally enriches the public broadcasting journalist, can it still be considered “noncommercial,” “nonprofit”, legitimate “educational broadcasting”?

Yet you probably can’t expect too much soul-searching from the publicly-funded “Public Broadcasting Service” which seems to exclude most of the antiwar public from being able to use its TV studios to freely speak to each other. Despite its annual “marathon,” PBS still seems to be little more than a “Private Broadcasting Service” for private, special corporate Establishment interests. And whether they call their media operation Gannett, PBS, Channel 13, Liberty Media, or News Corporation/Fox News, the Corporate Straights still don’t seem to believe too much in sharing any of their airtime with counter-cultural antiwar voices who don’t fit their straight philosophical mold.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: Big Bill Haywood lyrics

ACT-UP And PBS Historically

In 1991, Downtown asked Robin Haueter, a then-member of ACT-UP, whether ACT-UP was then satisfied with the public broadcasting system’s coverage of its activities.

“ACT-UP is displeased with all media coverage of the issues it raises. They aren’t really doing anything about the AIDS epidemic. On the whole, MacNeil/Lehrer has certainly done no more than all of the other television news programs, which is very little. The only exception is possibly [the now-deceased] Peter Jennings, who discussed AIDS issues on The World News Tonight,” Haueter replied in the Spring of 1991.

Haueter felt that the public broadcasting system was no better than the commercial broadcasting system in terms of raising the AIDS-related issues that ACT-UP deals with. Among the issues ACT-UP deals with are “research, basic science treatments, access to those treatments and education.”

The only time Haueter can recall that the NewsHour invited an ACT-UP representative to be on its news program before 1991 was once during the June 1990 conference on AIDS in San Francisco. Asked to compare the media coverage of ACT-UP in San Francisco with New York City’s media coverage of ACT-UP, Haueter noted that “the issue of AIDS is covered very well in San Francisco” but “very poorly” in New York.

Although ACT-UP just dealt with AIDS-related issues in the early 1990s, many of its members were then also active in the Queer Nation group which dealt with violence against lesbians and gay men and which was the group that organized a protest inside Channel 13’s studio in the middle of a NewsHour broadcast during the early 1991 “Kuwaitigate” Gulf War I, that interrupted the program for a few minutes.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: PBS: A Publicly-Funded “Private Broadcasting Service?”

Discrimination At PBS Historically

Although PBS poses as an alternative broadcasting service that is seriously opposed to institutional racism and institutional sexism in the United States, the Carnegie Commission report on public broadcasting in 1979 included some interesting observations about the historic employment practices of PBS-affiliated television stations which indicates that they tended to resemble the Gannett media conglomerate’s properties in their historic employment practices:

“There are few minorities serving as key decision makers (that is, chief executive officer, program or production manager, chief engineer, or chief financial officer) in public broadcasting stations. Of the 583 total key decision makers in public television stations in 1978, 16 (or 2.7 percent) are representatives of minority groups…

“…An additional facet of equal opportunity, insufficiently emphasized by the public broadcasting system, is minority control and ownership of stations. There are very few minority-controlled public broadcasting stations today. Of the 195 radio and 276 television stations in the United States in 1977, only 18 had 51 percent or more minority members on their board of directors. Eleven of these stations are located outside the continental United States (Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

The Carnegie Commission’s 1979 report on public broadcasting did not indicate what percentage of PBS’s key decision makers were gay men, lesbians, people with disabilities or people under 30 years of age.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: ACT-UP And PBS Historically

F.A.I.R.'s 1990 Study Of The `NewsHour'--Part 2

After F.A.I.R. issued its critical report about the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in June 1990, F.A.I.R.’s then-executive director, Jeff Cohen, was invited to debate [the PBS evening news show’s then co-anchor Robert] MacNeil on Channel 13’s then-local New York City show, The 11th Hour. But within a year the show that had aired this debate, The 11th Hour, had “gone off the air,”observed Cohen.

Asked by Downtown in the Spring of 1991 whether MacNeil then seemed willing to invite a F.A.I.R. representative to debate him on his own show, Cohen replied:

“There was no willingness to have a F.A.I.R. representative on MacNeil’s show. Just as Nightline ended up cancelling a previously scheduled appearance by me on its show to discuss F.A.I.R.’s study of Nightline. It seems like F.A.I.R. may be `blacklisted’ from these shows.”

Asked to respond to a June 17, 1990 charge by then-New York Times TV critic Walter Goodman that F.A.I.R.’s report on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour was just an expression of its own political bias, Cohen said:

“The reaction to our report was, at first, very defensive. They said `F.A.I.R. is biased’ and that it `wants a MacNeil/Lehrer show composed of guests who are just critics.’ But what we want is a balanced show, where advocates for consumer groups, minorities, women and labor have an opportunity to appear on the show as well. That’s what public broadcasting should be all about.

“MacNeil/Lehrer hails itself as `independent.’ But that’s not the case.”

Asked by Downtown whether the release of F.A.I.R.’s study in June 1990 had any effect on the show, Cohen said he felt it did, but that the “changes only lasted a few months.”

“One week they actually interviewed Noam Chomsky—alone. And the next night they interviewed [the now-deceased] Edward Said—alone. And for a few days there was a period in which it seemed like a balance of policy-makers and policy-critics appeared. But then it was business-as-usual after the war broke out. Lately, it’s like it was before the study was released.”

In 1991, F.A.I.R. then-shared a Friday morning radio show on Pacifica’s WBAI, with then-Undercurrents radio show producer Laura Flanders, which monitored the media. Downtown asked F.A.I.R.’s executive director in 1991 whether Channel 13’s management had ever approached him about having a media monitoring show televised on Channel 13?

“No. But I’m sure it’s been discussed.”

Asked if there were any other recent changes [in 1991] at WNET in response to F.A.I.R.’s study,” Cohen noted that the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour now “sometimes includes an editor of Progressive magazine on its panel of five journalists” who appear on the show from time to time.

“I think Channel 13 is feeling community pressure to reflect the community’s diversity. We put a lot of heat on it when it allowed The 11th Hour to die. But Big Business is still calling the shots. Our theory is that corporations weren’t interested in diversity. And so we did campaigning on The 11th Hour issue—but MacNeil/Lehrer has all the money. So they let The 11th Hour show die for some cheaper show—though the cheaper show has had some very decent community segments.”

Cohen noted that Channel 13’s new “cheaper” show—not the plush NewsHour was even planning in 1991 to let the F.A.I.R. spokesperson get on the TV screen the following night.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: Discrimination At PBS Historically

F.A.I.R.'s 1990 Study Of The `NewsHour'--Part 1

In June 1990, the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [F.A.I.R.] liberal media watchdog group, which then had an office at 130 W. 25th St. in Manhattan, released the results of its study of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. In the spring of 1991, Downtown spoke with F.A.I.R.’s then-Executive Director Jeff Cohen to learn what were the major conclusions of F.A.I.R.’s 1990 study.

“We had already done a study of [ABC News’] Nightline. We decided to study the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour to see if public broadcasting was giving `a voice for the voiceless’ and `reflecting an America on the air in all of its diversity,’ in the words of the Carnegie Commission on Public Broadcasting.

“We found that the guest-list on PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour was more narrow than it was on Nightline. There were more government officials and less critics than on Nightline. And a greater percentage of the MacNeil/Lehrer guests were men and white.

“We did a case study of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour’s coverage of environmental issues for six months, during the period of the Valdez oil spill. And we found that not one environmental activist had been invited to appear on the show. The show’s guest-list had pro-corporation people, but no representatives from public-interest groups,” Cohen recalled in 1991.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: F.A.I.R.’s 1990 Study Of The NewsHour—Part 2