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First, let me introduce myself to the E Pluribus webspace: Annie Seaton, Aaron Barlow's erstwhile sidekick, collaborator, and co-conspirator. We intend, together, to reform most of what remains of Western Civilization. Hola! What follows is my post-face on the "Race and New Media" (after this RANM) conference. Ironically, this conference on "new" media, organized partly via email, googlechat, and Facebook, had its origins in a series of "real"-world encounters I'll introduce various protagonists, with an eye to their future appearance on these pages--

Our Race and New Media conference last Saturday was a great success—putting it mildly. Positive reviews are raining in from all directions, from participants to audience members, and there are a few journalists in the process of writing rave reviews. We’ll also have the audio online soon for podcast, as well as pictures.

Seeking for the reality about African American lives was never an easy task. It was never found in history books and certainly not in Hollywood. Racism in movies always resounds the culture at large and reveals a nation that troubled for centuries by its history of slavery and segragation. Hollywood never forgets what culture is all about and potrays it in movies, songs etc.

During the 1960’s, a thought that possibly have crossed many minds while watching the evening news, simply was whether America would ever witness an African-American face being broadcasted on their television sets or hear a voice belonging to black American on the radio? This was a baffling question that left many individuals pondering while watching and listening to the whites take over America’s mainstream.

Although these tools are available on the old ePluribus Media Scoop site, I thought I would recap them here, just for the convenience of the Race and New Media participants.

A Reminder of Why Fact-Checking is Important

...check out the DVD Shattered Glass, which as the Amazon review notes: "tells the true story of fraudulent Washington, D.C. journalist Stephen Glass (Christensen), who rose to meteoric heights as a young writer in his 20s, becoming a staff writer at The New Republic for three years (1995-1998), where 27 of his 41 published stories were either partially or completely made up."

Click Read More for the Guidelines and Tenets

Alfred Lockwood

Before I begin, I would like to start off with a story that my journalism professor told the class.

One day a thief noticed a guy leaving his house and so he decided to climb up a tree and enter the house through the second floor window. The thief ended up falling from the ledge and crashing down to the ground, breaking his legs.

A few days later the owner of the house received a letter stating that he was to appear in court so that he could be put on trial and lynched because of the injury to the thief.

In June 2007,not even a year ago, to the world was presented "Zeitgeist", an activist documentary film that left people in shock. Zeitgeist has changed opinions and beliefs of many bringing a strong statement that the truth is not told but it is realized, inspiring people to be more critical and find the truth for themselves.

My reaction, on reading Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech yesterday, was that he has offered us and our presidential candidates the chance to raise the level of debate in America to a level not reached for more than thirty years. This morning, The New York Times, in an editorial, agrees: “

We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.

Race in the Media

The world of media is one of limitless boundaries. Expanding messages and ideals over the vast span of media that is readily available today such as television advertisements, newspaper articles, and radio broadcast to name a few. Mass media allows a large population to receive at anytime the views and opinions of any one person or group regardless of location. The population today is constantly bombarded with various images some of which are good, most of which reflect negative ideals that promotes submissive behavior in the world system. The various mass media outlets of today range from the traditional means to the truly revolutionary technological methods that represents the high tech era that we are currently in. these different methods used today allow a large scale of people to receive the information given by a small group or individual readily at hand and almost immediately a task otherwise impossible to do.

The news media refers to the section of the mass media that focuses current news to the public. These mass media include print media like the newspapers, magazines and broadcast media, radio stations, television stations, television networks, and the increasing Internet-based media the World Wide Web pages, weblogs.