• In the Belly of the Murdoch Beast

    Dave Saldana
    October 24, 2011

    I always feel a little better when I go home to Los Angeles. My hometown takes a lot of flak about its Tinseltown image and how “fake” the people are supposed to be. But I can assure you that the working folks of my hometown are as real as the 99-percenters anywhere else in the country.

    Last Friday, more than 100 of my fellow “real” Angelenos took their concerns about the corporate media and their power to corrupt our democracy right into the lap of one of their most notorious figures: News Corp. potentate Rupert Murdoch.

  • State AGs Add Nail to AT&T/T-Mobile Coffin

    Dave Saldana
    September 20, 2011

    It happened with little fanfare, but another nail was banged into the coffin of the unlamented AT&T/T-Mobile merger last week when attorneys general from seven states joined the Department of Justice’s lawsuit to block the deal on antitrust grounds.

  • Justice Dept. Sees Through AT&T's Jobs 'Promise'

    Dave Saldana
    September 8, 2011

    The Department of Justice gave wireless customers an extremely valuable gift last week when it filed suit to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, a $39 billion boondoggle that would've made AT&T richer and more powerful at the expense of everybody else.

  • Shake-Up: Where Earthquakes and Media Policy Collide

    Dave Saldana
    August 24, 2011

    I grew up in California, spent most of my life there and experienced many earthquakes, including the deadly 6.9 Loma Prieta quake of 1989. So the 5.8 earthquake that rattled Washington, D.C., Tuesday was not (you’ll pardon the pun) as earth-shaking for me as it was for many people who felt the ground beneath them move in ways utterly new and foreign.

  • Will the new copyright-policing deal become the Heckler’s Veto?

    Dave Saldana
    July 8, 2011

    ctc_copyright2.pngThere’s a concept in the law of free speech known as “the Heckler’s Veto.” It’s the idea that if a speaker creates such a stir that he is silenced to avoid enraging the audience—perhaps to the point of violence—then the audience, and the most unhinged among them, gets to determine the limits of free speech.

    In the United States, that sort of thing is generally frowned upon.

  • A Recovering Journalist Reads The FCC Future of Media Report

    Dave Saldana
    June 16, 2011

    I am a recovering journalist. 

    I went to school for it, got a master’s degree in it, won awards for it and taught it at two universities. So you could say I’ve spent a lot of time in the business of informing my fellow citizens about the goings-on in their world.

    But I don’t do it anymore. Not because I don’t believe that informing the public is an important service—it absolutely is.  I left the profession because I was no longer convinced that we were providing any such thing.

  • What color is the sky in Jim Cicconi's world?

    Dave Saldana
    June 2, 2011

    Is it the fiery orange of AT&T’s corporate logo, or the hot pink preferred by the object of his desire, T-Mobile? 

  • When Newspapers Get It Right

    Dave Saldana
    March 17, 2011

    It's no secret that the newspaper business is in trouble. It has been for a very long time, with readership shrinking along with ad revenues, and costs continuing to climb. But some newspapers are not content to go gentle into that good night… they’re finding ways to make themselves more valuable to their communities, reflecting the readers’ needs and delivering news in innovative and engaging ways.

  • Free Press Congratulates Electronic Frontier Foundation on 21 Years of Service

    Dave Saldana
    February 16, 2011

    Free Press wishes to offer our congratulations and thanks to EFF for their work on behalf of the American public.