Reporters Without Borders released its annual Press Freedom Index today.

The good news: the United States moved up 12 points from last year. (A higher ranking indicates more press freedom.) The bad news: we're still only #36 out of the 173 countries indexed.

I just attended the Grassroots Media Justice Tour in Denton, Texas, the last stop on this nationwide tour. This exciting event showcased the following speakers:

Radar magazine has a great interview this week with Linda Greenhouse, who recently retired after 30 years of covering the Supreme Court for The New York Times.

               Some of you may read the title and ask “has Jason gone nuts”, or is he going to focus on church?  Not necessarily but close enough.

Help The Arc Fight Offensive Portrayal of People with Intellectual Disabilities

August 8, 2008
Background

Tropic Thunder is an action/adventure/comedy scheduled for nationwide release on August 13 and promises to be one of the blockbusters of the summer. DreamWorks is the film's producer and Paramount is its distributor. The premier will be held in Los Angeles, California on Monday, August 11.

The film features popular actors Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black as self-absorbed actors filming a big-budget war movie on location. Through a series of freak occurrences, they are forced to become the soldiers they are portraying.

So. It's 1:18 pdt and my inbox is empty for the moment. I found a lot of reading to pass on. My major news sources are, roughly in priority: alternet.org, solidarityinfoservices@igc.org (Labor Left News, of 4 reprint services for social justice activists), washingtonpost.com, and sometimes huffingtonpost.com. I get NYTimes and LATimes on net, too, but mostly leave them until last unless it's breaking news. and in my interest areas.I get action notices and info from various organizations, too, and am on two listservs. After the election - or even before - I am going to cut WAY back. I already have, several times.

This is a re-post from SilentPatriot on Crooks and Liars. Check it out, then read the Greenwald Salon posts from over the weekend -- very much worth the full read of both posts (links provided)

Last week, Laura Sahramaa wrote a blog about the connections between documentary media and social change as witnessed through the documentaries An Inconvenient Truth and Sicko. As a huge documentary fanatic (especially those aimed at creating social change) & aspiring documentarian, I wanted to highlight a couple of examples of simple, online videos made by the YouTube generation that are aimed at social change, if only to prove the point that you don't have to have a major movie studio or a distribution plan to pick up a video camera and start making some waves in your community.

So I'm a sucker for kickass, trailblazing women, even though I hate the fact that they're generally only celebrated after their deaths.

Frances Lewine (who passed away last week, one day shy of her 87th birthday) joined the Associated Press White House press corps in 1956, but, after covering the first lady's activities for eleven years, became frustrated that she was "relegated to social and family stories and sidebars while male colleagues covered the president."

So, like any good trailblazer, she channeled the frustration she experienced as a woman in the "old boys club" of journalism into action and became a leader in the movement of female journalists protesting sex discrimination in the workplace, as well as the AP's first full-time female White House correspondent in 1965.

Gigi's post yesterday touched upon an interesting point - what does it mean to say we're progressives? Is there enough of a common thread among all the competing issues for 'progressive' to truly be a meaningful moniker?

Before I set down some thoughts on this issue, I want to you watch an ad which the Center for American Progress has been playing in a few select media markets the last several weeks. Join me after the jump, won't you?