kentbye's blog

The increasing rate of natural resource consumption seems to be a "vital issue of the day" that is often ignored by the elite political leadership and therefore the mainstream media. The sustainability issue is still an unanswered question, and many would argue that it is the biggest challenge facing everyone on the planet today.

It is probably safe to assume that in the context of US "National Security Interests," that oil at least played into the equation of going to war with Iraq. It also probably safe to assume that access to water and oil are going to cause many future conflicts.

I have been noticing that there are a number of articles questioning the relevance of network news since tonight is Tom Brokaw’s last broadcast as the NBC Nightly News anchor.

The Echo Chamber documentary focuses on the network news because of the influence that the media logic of the electronic medium of news has on the national political discourse...

The Echo Chamber documentary interview with Jim Lobe is now posted online here.

Lobe is the Washington Bureau Chief for Inter Press Service, and he has been following the neo-conservative movement for over 30 years. His writings became very popular after 9/11 and were picked up by many non-interventionist websites ranging from the Libertarian Lew Rockwell to Anti-War.com. IPS also has a compilation of Lobe's Neo-Con articles

A number of people had questioned the color coding on the interview index page, and so I cleaned it up and posted some thumbnail pictures.

I am cleaning up the site a bit as I am posting a draft of my business plan and some new interviews.

Grievances with the mainstream media are often framed in terms of the supply rather than the demand. Most analyses focus either on the field of journalism, corporate ownership, commercialization or government regulation.

But what about our culture that demands to see mindless infotainment?

I would like The Echo Chamber documentary to provide a catalyst for the process of cultural evolution based upon the insights of the dynamic nature of our culture and various theories of human development.

The following sections explore the question of how ‘the public institution’ interacts with other institutional powers of influence...

I have been struggling with how to incorporate the methodological flaws of the Media Research Center into my documentary film. For the first time, I have organized my thoughts as clearly and succinctly as I can in this blog post.

But the medium of web writing and the medium of film are completely different, and it will be very difficult to make the same caliber of an argument within The Echo Chamber documentary.

A writer has more freedom to use complex words and phrases that carry very specific meanings, and adding a hypertext link allows the reader to learn more about the difference between an inductive and hypothetico-deductive method of scientific inquiry.

The Media Research Center is the conservative watchdog group that is the most influential intellectual authority behind the claims that the media "slant reports in favor of the liberal position on issues."

While there may in fact be instances where the media’s coverage is tainted by a political bias, the standard of scientifically validating this causal path goes beyond simply collecting "a mountain of evidence."

The MRC claims to have proven the existence of liberal media bias through "sound scientific research," but yet their scientific methodology relies solely upon inductive method of investigation while never using a more comprehensive Hypothetico-Deductive Method of scientific inquiry.

I intend for my project to be soundly grounded in theory from the disciplines of sociology, psychology and mass communications.

The underlying theory that I am trying to apply is that fixed attitudes and beliefs can limit one’s perception of reality. Our attitudes and beliefs are influenced by our value system and sense of morality. Our value systems serve as the primary filter to how we see the world and what we perceive to be the "truth" as we understand it.

The project will be covering issues that are very emotionally charged, and it will inevitably stimulate emotional states of high passion and low logic. But at the same time it is difficult to make a credible argument to an opposing viewpoint by going outside the bounds of accepted academic discourse. The more that the film’s content is grounded in academic theory, then more persuasive and acceptable it will become.

Names are important because they carry meaning.

I named my production company "MetaThought Productions" after a textbook called "Tools of Critical Thinking: Metathoughts for Psychology" by Pepperdine University Professor David A. Levy.

My mission statement explains further:

Our mission at MetaThought Productions is to expand consciousness by exploring the limitations of our attitudes and beliefs. By "thinking about how we think," then we can gain the perspective to be able to break out of our dominant paradigms. We accomplish this by producing multimedia outreach tools for liberals and progressives that stimulate dialogue with conservatives. The Echo Chamber documentary intends to build understanding between the polarized ends of the political spectrum by providing an emotionally engaging catalyst for discussing grievances with the mainstream television news media.

I thought that I would publish some of the goals that I want to accomplish before my Christmas break starting on December 21st. If I tell everyone in the world what I want to do, then I enable all my friends, family and volunteers to hold me accountable to my intentions.

Plus if you share these goals, then you can help me by simply visualizing these that these intentions will manifest.

Don't believe in the power of prayer or the power of intentionality? Then drop by the Institute of Noetic Sciences for some scientific research, or check out Dr. Wayne Dyer's The Power of Intention for the pop culture version.