Underlying Rights

Remember the name Elaine Tang. The Harvard-Westlake student’s very impressive accomplishments suggest we’ll be hearing a lot more from her in the coming years.

This enterprising 17-year-old interned in Beijing last summer with animation firm Xing Xing Digital, while also studying advance Chinese at Peking University. With the help of company CEO Lifeng Wang, she made El Monte, an animated short about the true 1995 story of 72 Thai and Hispanic workers held captive and forced to work 18-hour days at a Southern California garment factory. Her film has just been accepted into the 2012 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, where it will screen May 10. From the press release:

Spending her mornings in class and her afternoons interning at Xing Xing, Tang was not only learning the animation process, she was also translating technical cinematic terms while also explaining the significance of the El Monte story to her production team who only spoke Chinese. Tang and her team created the storyboards, contacted the actual garment workers from the El Monte case to do the voice-overs, and produced the short animation recounting the El Monte story.

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When the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness (GLAD) filed suit against CNN over the news network’s lack of close-captioning of online videos, the cable channel responded with an anti-SLAPP motion. Very broadly, CNN argued, all of its activities – right down to the decision not to caption website videos – are protected by the First Amendment.

Per a THR Hollywood, Esq. report by Eriq Gardner, CNN’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit has been denied. Oakland United States Magistrate judge Lauren Beeler ruled on March 23 that GLAD will have its day in court:

CNN also made the argument that not providing closed-captioning was an issue of editorial control because the news organization should have the right to reject something that didn’t satisfy its editorial standards, including technology that could result in inaccuracies.

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Early this morning, Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, Policy Erin Egan, posted a lengthy note on the company blog responding to the much talked about Associated Press story on employers demanding the Facebook passwords of job seekers applying to their company. It reads in part:

If you are a Facebook user, you should never have to share your password, let anyone access your account, or do anything that might jeopardize the security of your account or violate the privacy of your friends.  We have worked really hard at Facebook to give you the tools to control who sees your information.

As a user, you shouldn’t be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job.  And as the friend of a user, you shouldn’t have to worry that your private information or communications will be revealed to someone you don’t know and didn’t intend to share with just because that user is looking for a job.  That’s why we’ve made it a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to share or solicit a Facebook password.

We don’t think employers should be asking prospective employees to provide their passwords because we don’t think it’s right the thing to do.

Reaction to the plan has been supportive, but mixed. Facebook users commenting on Egan’s post almost unanimously applaud her sentiment, but don’t think a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities will do much to stop employers. We tend to agree. Publicly shaming employers who engage in this practice is the only way to end it. Or at least make sure it’s not used arbitrarily.

An ugly PR battle has erupted in the wake of last weekend’s L.A. Fashion Weekend event. Held at Sunset Gower Studios, the recurring series of runway shows is put on by The Gallery and broadcast locally on KTLA.

At issue is the apparent selective media credentialing conducted by event producer Mikey Koffman and her reps. From the Agenda magazine blog post that sparked what is now a full-blown Facebook rebellion:

The real offense came when Koffman forced photographers and videographers to sign a release before shooting the shows, demanding they relinquish their rights to use the images except for blogs and online local press, and to give all their commercial rights and ownership over to her—a stunt Koffman pulled at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week for her “Green Initiative” show a few years back when the events were held at Smashbox Studios. This is what really caused the loudest uproar amongst Los Angeles’s local press.

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During a week when the LA Times is being forced to absorb yet another Zell bankruptcy-fueled layoffs hit, the obituary for the paper’s Pulitzer Prize winning female trailblazer Dorothy Townsend feels especially bittersweet. Still, her accomplishments should not be overlooked.

Townsend, who passed away at age 88 on March 5 from cancer, worked for the Times from 1954 to 1986, sharing in a 1966 Pulitzer awarded for coverage of the Watts riots. From Valerie J. Nelson’s obit:

After insisting on being reassigned from “the women’s pages” in early 1964, Townsend became the first female staff writer to cover local news in a city room long populated only by men…

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Presidential candidate Rick Santorum‘s plan to ban “hard-core pornography” made national news for the first time yesterday. Of course, Santorum’s porn position isn’t anything new to the Valley and its porn industry. Writes Adult Video Network’s Tom Hymes:

The argument being made here is not the same old argument that porn is immoral or leads to immoral behavior, though that could be read into it as well. The new position, which first reared its ugly head only a few years ago, posits that porn is a national health issues, ergo the “pandemic.”

A connection is also being made between porn and trafficking, which is very serious because then it becomes an outgrowth of international organized crime, which leads inevitably to the claim that terrorist groups are sex trafficking in order to undermine our culture while making money to use against us militarily. Before you know it, porn producers are labeled terrorists and put in Guantanamo.

Absurd, right? Looney Tunes? Never happen?

Indeed. Like every other sentient human being, we’d love to be able to laugh off Santorum and whatever dark, closeted urges drive his politics. But this here is ‘merica, where the reptilian brain runs the show.

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Actress turned media expert Geena Davis spoke to a pair of audiences in Seattle on Monday. The first, on the campus of Microsoft, was made up mostly of men; the second, at Seattle Town Hall, consisted largely of women.

Why this is relevant is that it provided a perfect visual representation of the male-female divide upon which Davis’ Institute of Gender in Media is pinned. During her second evening appearance, the Oscar winner suggested that the world is due for a resurgence of the women’s movement, although a new word may be in order. Per a report by KPLU Tacoma public radio‘s Tom Paulson:

Many noted that the word ‘feminist’ has become tainted. Davis got a laugh when she recalled the reaction she got from critics and many in the public when she described one of her other movies about women baseball players, A League of Their Own, as a feminist movie.

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KPFK parent company Pacifica Foundation has retained the services of notorious union-busting law firm Jackson Lewis. The firm is notorious for holding seminars to help companies create “union free workplaces.”

From an anonymous KPFA employee on the California Labor Federation blog:

Last week, the union representing KPFA’s workers, Communications Workers of America Local 9415, became aware of Jackson Lewis’ hire by Pacifica at all five stations in the network – KPFA in the San Francisco Bay Area, KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston, WPFW in Washington D.C., and WBAI in New York. At a meeting of KPFA’s bargaining unit, the station’s union workers voted to demand that the Pacifica National Board immediately terminate its arrangement with Jackson Lewis, and sent a letter to all members of Pacifica’s board to that effect. The board met Wednesday, March 7, but chose not to take action to reverse its employment of the union-buster…

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Over the weekend, the impressive trio of Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinhem and fellow Women’s Media Center co-founder Robin Morgan published a CNN.com op ed entitled “FCC Should Clear Limbaugh From Airwaves.” They argued that for 20 years, radio host Rush Limbaugh has “hidden behind the First Amendment,” and that with his latest incendiary remarks, it’s time to finally do something dramatic about this subterfuge.

But James Hirsen, a law professor, best-selling author and media analyst, has a problem with the fact that Fonda’s name is in the byline. Writing today on newsmax.com, he argues that this is a clear case of the pot calling the talk radio kettle black:

Using Fonda in an effort to stifle free speech is a tactic that drips with Hollywood irony. Fonda is, of course, the individual who in July of 1972 made a celebrity stopover in Hanoi, and as our soldiers braved the battles of the Vietnam War, she sat with the enemy for a photo-op aboard an anti-aircraft gun.

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Scary story out of Berkeley over the weekend. Local police chief Michael Meehan sent a cop to Bay Area News Group reporter Doug Oakley‘s house at 12:45 a.m to try to convince him to change elements of a story. Oakley initially thought a family member of his had been hurt, but was shocked to discover the officer wanted changes to a story that had just been published online. The San Francisco Chronicle has more details:

Oakley, 45, had written a story about a raucous community meeting Meehan attended Thursday. The story, which appeared online late that night, reported that Meehan had apologized for the department’s slow response in connection with the Feb. 18 slaying of Berkeley hills resident Peter Cukor by an intruder on his property.

The report upset Meehan, who said he never apologized for a slow response – which he has steadfastly denied – but instead had said he was sorry he had failed to quickly release information to the public about the slaying….

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