Companies the size of PepsiCo is like running a little republic, there is no question about it. The only difference is that I don't have to worry about the media hounding me every day, on every word that I say. I have a board of directors that runs the country in the interest of the stake holders.
It became very clear to me that Yooralla was not as interested in media coverage that explored issues faced by people with disability as it was in giving a pat on the back to journalists who maintained the status quo by giving readers the warm and fuzzies over their morning paper.
Most of the serious disagreement I get comes through email or social media, where people are more comfortable.
It's very much the currency of discourse on social media where political disagreements very quickly become very personalised.
'The Observer's Very Short List' is another example of how the Observer Media Group offers its readers the most cutting-edge information, available in a variety of platforms and written by an editorial staff known for its distinctive and discerning style and wit.
It's more necessary than ever before to ensure that discernment and the development of a critical mind guide our take on the world and inform our relationship to the media and information.
Bieber is the first mega YouTube star, born inexplicably out of a novel and disruptive medium. It has, of course, always been so for pop culture: feverish bubbles, silly novelty acts and disconcerting new forces impose themselves on a reluctant and condescending media.
The mainstream media disconnect has created a vacuum where real Americans are left thirsting for straightforward and honest commentary about the real America they see every day.
The spread of communications technologies - social media, TV news channels - aggravates societal divisions and discord. All that online snarling is making us jittery.
The fact that there aren't more restrictions on the media is disgraceful.
The rise of a ubiquitous Internet, along with 24-hour news channels has, in some sense, had the opposite effect from what many might have hoped such free and open access to information would have had. It has instead provided free and open access, without the traditional media filters, to a barrage of disinformation.
I wholeheartedly agree that many media 'standards' can feel disingenuous or, in fact, be a cover for less-than-honest behavior.
I am aware it's easy and may be fashionable to pose with a slum child, and the irony of getting the media along means that it can come across as disingenuous. But you take these things on board, and you hope you mean it whenever you get stuck into something.
People are nervous about their kids, and they're worried about the disintegration of families and the type of media culture they're living in.
The way corporate media likes to portray America is as a homogenous whole that high-five's each other at the Super Bowl. But what we have is a grotesque disparity between the rich and poor that is only getting wider.
Inequality reigns in horrifying ways, and not everyone can even read, but the world of media and advertising withholds very little from the imagination of the dispossessed.
When you are a media celebrity, every word you speak is dissected, as are those you choose not to speak.
Longer distances yield local media coverage that tends to be more one-dimensional and absolute, less nuanced, and more sporadic.
It's interesting to me that apparently distasteful comments from the Right against weak targets tend to draw a lot less media fire than apparently distasteful comments from the Left against hard targets. That's one of the threads that runs through the show and that people hopefully pick up on.
We know that the far left and their media allies can't beat us on the issues, so instead they'll distort our records. Let's not do the job for them, OK, Republicans? OK, independents?
