Showing posts with label Political. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Political. Show all posts

Saturday, April 25, 2009

The Fine Brothers Make Political Satire a Political Statement with Anti Prop 8 Web Series

Prop 8: The Web Series is created by Benny and Rafi Fine and challenges Prop 8 the ruling that banned some 18,000 same-sex marriages in California. The series shows what would happen if other rights were taken away from you just like rights were taken away from same sex couples in California recently. The series has had a successful run thus far. It was written up in Variety and Tubefilter when it launched and the first two episodes have been viewed nearly 75,000 times the brothers’ YouTube channel, as well as on CollegeHumor, FunnyOrDie, DailyMotion, MySpace and other sites.

Even still, many sites are shying away from the content due to polarized atmosphere caused by the issue. “As you can imagine, despite personal opinions some of the companies did not want the controversial and possible backlash the series can create, and in a weakened economy, it’s hard to find folks willing to spend money at all in web video currently, let alone for a political message,” said the Fine Brothers. "We created the show out of our own pocket and are using our web celebrity and fanbase to raise awareness for equal rights in our style of comedy. We plan to continue to be involved in the movement until marriage rights are legal for all couples, same sex or otherwise, in California, and the rest of the country."



The third episode of their show "Prop 8: The Web Series" has just been released, this time showcasing in their usual absurdist style what would happen if a proposition was passed to bring back Slavery.

"Prop 8: The Web Series" - Episode 3 - Slavery
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-OCbNfCTnI

The Fine Brothers say they'll produce more videos through the time a decision is made on the case by California Supreme Court. “We hope the ruling ends the issue specifically of Prop. 8, at which time we will refocus our efforts to providing content related to federally legalizing same-sex marriage,” they said. “We also hope to get in touch with the leaders of the cause locally, and help them produce official content if they saw us fit to do so.”

Related:

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

President Obama Inauguration Online, Live Streaming and Social Media Defines Inauguration Coverage

Everyday since the 2008 Primary Election season during my commute to work I've seen a McCain/Palin poster on a hill off the side of the highway. It's been prominently displayed in clear site and with the outcome of the election decided months ago it's a symbol to a lost cause, a daily reminder of the political battle between hope and fear. But we all know that hope prevailed and that all led up to inauguration day.

Where were you when Barack Obama took the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States of America? Did you watch it online? Were you on Facebook? Twitter? Friendfeed? Did you watch it on TV or listen on the radio? While the world watched with anticipation, the day came and went and history was made right before our eyes.


For many Americans it was just another day of work and chores and for many it was a time of celebration. "The end of an error." as @Stranhan wrote on Twitter as the cast of characters from the political stage -- former Presidents and First Ladies, political leaders and, the old and the new guard came into the picture and took part in the great demonstration of democracy.

For me, I had to work and it was my job in corporate video communications to distribute the live feed from our DirectTV system into several of our regional office conference rooms and out to our private videoconferencing network. Our IT department had blocked all Internet ports to streaming and social media sites so our videoconferencing help desk line was ringing off the hook with last minute requests to connect to the broadcast. I know a lot people that took the day off to watch it with family, friends or in public squares. Here's the view from our master control room where I watched the inauguration. It's certainly not a high quality image but it's a historic moment in time from my point of view.

Now that the Obama administration has completed its first day in office I think it's time for that McCain/Palin sign to come down.



I didn't get to view any of the live streams from CNN, CBS, Hulu or other sites but the numbers are in and from what Dan Rayburn said CBS had the best online video viewing experience. Pete Wylie of Fierce Online Video said, "CNN.com reported streaming 21.3 million online video streams in nine hours yesterday, reaching 1.3 million simultaneous streams, according to the New York Times. Akamai, a content delivery network that handles video traffic for many major media sites, said it delivered more than 7 million streams at once during Obama's inaugural address. These figures topped the previous high, set during Election Day 2008... MSNBC.com and FoxNews.com also experienced heavy traffic, streaming 14 million and 5 million online videos respectively during the ceremony, according to the Boston Globe."

Mashable posted a detailed analysis of the social media effect, By the Numbers: Inauguration Day's Impact on Social Media, with visuals showing the peak numbers during Obama's swearing in ceremony.

While I haven't been able to read through all my RSS feeds, here's a sampling of what I read from the blogs:
  • Reviewing the inauguration live streams - Lost Remote TV Blog - Wow, what a day. Millions of people at work during the inauguration punched it up live on the web, creating record traffic surges and a fair amount of glitches spanning news sites and CDNs. Dan Rayburn compared the live inauguration streams and posts his reviews right here. The best according to Dan? The CBS O&Os, which our own Kent Chapline reviews below. So, the inauguration was far and away the largest live streaming event in history. Or was it? “While this is a question many want to know the answer to, it’s one that nobody can truly answer,” writes Rayburn, who says a lack of unified historical metrics is to blame.

  • Inauguration Online Video Recap: Records, Innovation, Loss Leader | Online Video Watch
    No surprise we saw record numbers for online video viewing during yesterday’s Inauguration. But while it was a banner day in terms of traffic and innovation, it also showcased the utter inability of media to monetize the massive amount of video being delivered. From my personal experience, just about every site appeared to run into issues between 11:45 AM when Akamai reported peak traffic of 5.4 million visitors per minute for news traffic and 12:15 PM when Akamai served more than 7 million peak concurrent streams suggesting there may have been some backbone scalability issues.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Online Video Presidential Inauguration Special



The Presidential Inauguration is shaping up to be one of the biggest online video viewing events of the Internet to date. Over two million people will be attending the Obama Inauguration on CNN.com Live with Facebook. Countless micro-bloggers and citizen journalists will be reporting and mobile broadcasting from Washington, D.C. via Twitter, Qik, Flixwagon and Kyte. There are many options to watch it and here are a few of your best options. General information about the inauguration can be found at the sites for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and Presidential Inaugural Committee.

Hulu will be broadcasting the inauguration in the video player below using Fox Broadcast’s stream from 12-2 p.m. ET. The inauguration will be available on-demand following the live feed.




Live streaming options

Connect
YouTube Twitter
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Sunday, November 16, 2008

President-elect Obama Ditches Old Media for New Media, Weekly Address Moves from Radio to YouTube

There's been a lot of discussion around the internet since President-Elect Barack Obama announced that his weekly radio messages will become video messages available each week on his YouTube Channel ChangeDotGov.

It's an interesting development in how social media has transformed the way our political leaders engage in conversation and community.


Your Weekly Address from the President-Elect
President-elect Obama talks about the economy in this week's Democratic address. For more information, visit http://www.change.gov

While comments have been disabled for the video the conversation has unfolded in other forums like FriendFeed where Allen Stern and Dan Farber both raised the issue of the President-elect posting on a commercial site which has the appearance of favoring or endorsing YouTube over other video sharing sites.

Allen Stern said,"My issue with the YouTube selection is around fair competition. I'd prefer that the videos not be embeddable and be offered online only on the whitehouse.gov and change.gov websites. If they are going to use online video hosting services as an outlet, I'd like to see a full RFP process take place. All video hosts who want to host the weekly videos should have an equal chance of winning the government contract." - from Obama Says Yes We Can Use YouTube - Digital Life Blog - InformationWeek

Dan Farber asked this question, "But why should the incoming president, or public official, favor one Internet video service over another? Yahoo, MSN, Blip, Veoh, and other video-sharing sites shouldn't have to lobby the White House for equal time or at least some time. I am sure the choice of YouTube was practical, and has nothing to do with Google CEO Eric Schmidt's very public support of Obama. Implicit product endorsements are difficult to avoid for any public official." - from Obama appoints YouTube (Google) as secretary of video | Outside the Lines - CNET News

Many others love the idea and say that it's a good step toward reaching the masses since YouTube is so mainstream compared to other video sharing sites and actually the video is also available on AOL, Yahoo, and MSN and High-resolution, Quicktime format: (106MB .mov file.) I noticed that the video on Change.gov uses the embedded YouTube player and they also included the full text transcript in the post. If they continue to distribute videos on YouTube I'd like to see them incorporate the new captions feature so that it would be easier to translate his message into different languages and make it more accessible for the hearing impaired. That would be an added value to using YouTube as a distribution platform.

Coturnix had another perspective, "People like Dan Farber and Allen Stern are worried about favouritism - why YouTube and not other video services? Answer: if the only place they place a video is Change.org, then someone else will put it on YouTube, perhaps edited, with open comments, who knows what else. By posting it on YouTube themselves, the Obama comms folks are putting a degree of control over the message. In the next few months, they may decide to do the same on several other video-hosting services. This was just the first address, and YouTube, being such an 6000lbs gorilla (or is it an elephant in the room?), is the obvious place to go and test the waters first before embarking on a more ambitious program." - from A Blog Around The Clock : Will there be new communication channels in the Obama administration?

I agree and I'll be watching as he continues make history and I'll be participating in the conversation.

Here are some related blog posts and discussion:
Update: Fixed a few typos, grammatical errors and added some new text.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

President-Elect Barack Obama's Acceptance Speech on UStream

The internet was on fire this evening as Barack Obama won the election to be the 44th President of the United States of America. His acceptance speech was streamed live on his UStream.tv channel and is embedded below.



Brad Hunstable, Founder had this to say on the Ustream.tv blog,"Tonight I sat back and watched with amazement one of our nation’s most sacred principles unfold live on Ustream. Over a million people followed the election on Ustream today- from small election parties, to passionate professional broadcasts.

Whether you agree or not, are red or blue, Democrat or Republican, history was made today and many experienced this through our humble service. Over the last 2 years, John, Gyula and I have had the opportunity to meet many people and see many things because of Ustream, but tonight, for me, was the most powerful."

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Super Bowl Viral Video Stars Reprise Their Roles for Election '08 and Ron Howard's Call to Action

The General Election is now just two days away and that means we only have to endure the barrage of TV commercials a little while longer. It's been a contentious political season and probably the most important election in generations. In many ways the more things change the more they stay the same and characters we've known from the past return to reprise their roles to help get out the vote.

Craig Rubens of NewTeeVee noted this week, "we’ve come full circle with two more ads from Super Bowls past revamped for online political purposes. Office Linebacker “Terrible” Terry Tate has returned to put the hurt on fools who don’t vote, while the “Wassup” guys have suffered every great malady our nation has gone through over the last eight years."




“Get Out The Vote”
Description: Terry Tate reminds you to go out and vote!
Go to http://maps.google.com/vote to find your polling place.
Go to http://www.ReturnOfTerryTate.com for more videos.


"Reading is Fundamental"
Description: Sarah Palin gets a surprising new subscription.
Go to http://maps.google.com/vote to find your polling place.
Go to http://www.ReturnOfTerryTate.com to see more videos...
Terry Tate: "How's that for Drill Baby Drill! You just subscribed to Terry's Journal of Pain!! And the first issue is free, baby! Whoo!! ... Hey Katie!"


"Waasup 2008"
Description: Its been eight long years since the boys said wassup to each other. Even with the effects of a down economy and imminent change in the White House, the boys are still able to come together and stay true to what really matters.


Many Hollywood A-listers are outspoken voices for political change as you can see from Ron Howard's Call to Action.

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Description: Ron Howard wants to talk about the election. So does Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler.
Credits: Starring Ron Howard, Andy Griffith, Henry Winkler. Written By Ron Howard, Adam McKay. Directed by Jake Szymanski

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Tina Fey Returns to SNL to Play Sarah Palin, Will It Go Viral?

Tina Fey returned to SNL last night to fulfill the role she was destined to play as Republican Vice President candidate Saran Palin. Amy Poehler joined her in the season opener playing Hillary Clinton. The official video on the NBC web site has recieved 88,668 views within twelve hours of its premiere 247,294 views as of 6:35 PM PDT.

Liz Shannon Miller of NewTeevee brought back the feature, Will It Spread? Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on SNL « NewTeeVee, which rates the viral qualities of the video and the factors that play into its viral success. Read more here.



Stay tuned for the upcoming posts on Streaming Media West now just one week away.

UPDATE: There's a good chance this video will go viral. Micheal Learmonth wrote yesterday in his Silicon Alley Insider post, YouTube Thanks ABC For A Great Sarah Palin Interview, "Consider: Over the past week, videos mentioning Palin -- including her acceptance speech, pirated news clips and dozens of parodies, including this by Web comedienne Lisa Nova, have been getting more views than either Barack Obama or her running mate, according to Web analytics firm TubeMogul:
Palin: 38 million
Obama: 29 million
McCain: 25 million"
UPDATE 9/17/08: The answer is yes, this video went viral. Beet.TV reported today that the video has been streamed 5 million times between the NBC site which has 3,786,957 combined with the various video sharing sites.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Sarah Palin Interviewed by ABC, Video Bloggers Respond

ABC’s Charlie Gibson interviewed the Alaskan Governor and Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin this past week and the internet was not lacking in video responses to her appearance. @Queen of Spain tipped me to a video blogger I've added to my list, James Kotecki's Video Blog on Politico.com. He produces a daily video blog in a short form sarcastic style similar to The Soup and The Daily Show.



While over at NewTeeVee Liz Shannon Miller posted a round up of, Weekend Vid Picks: Ladies On Sarah Palin, which includes videos from supporters and critics including this one from the sketch troupe One Hot Mess, which Liz says "gets savage. “Finally, a candidate our vaginas can relate to” is just the beginning of this assault on the girl-power-for-the-sake-of-girl-power mentality."

See more funny videos at Funny or Die


It's also rumored that Tina Fey may return to SNL to play the Alaskan Governor on the season premiere tonight which features an appearance by Democratic Presidential candidate Barrack Obama. There's been a lot of discussions, like this one from Friendfeed, that Hollywood should stay out of the political discourse but American actors and entertainers have the right to free speech and also vote just like Matt Damon.

Friday, September 5, 2008

There's Truth is Jest, The Daily Show Serves the Political Pundit's Doublespeak - Sarah Palin Gender Card

You got to hand it to Jon Stewart. Whether you like him or not, The Daily Show serves up a daily lambasting of the hypocrisy spewed by the political pundits of the right wing. This excerpt, Sarah Palin Gender Card, was featured this past week as part of the RNC08 coverage and I'm featuring here as part of the political convention wrap up.



You can watch the full episode here. Enjoy!

From Wikipedia: Doublespeak (sometimes double talk) is language constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Doublespeak may take the form of bald euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs) or deliberate ambiguity. Doublespeak is a disparaging label for any euphemistic term perceived to be uttered in bad faith.[1]

Monday, September 1, 2008

The Uptake Providing Real-Time Reports from the RNC 08 With Qik

The Uptake is on the scene at the Republican National Convention covering the political action in real-time using Qik. While Hurricane Gustav quelled the activities inside the xcel Energy Center in Minneapolis it didn't keep the protesters away as you can see in the videos below.


Qik also has an events page here for the RNC 08 which has 9 Qikkers participating .

Here's a video from CNN's coverage of the police taking on the protesters.



I wonder if we'll see any Qik videos from Congressman John Culberson?

Friday, August 29, 2008

McCain's VP Pick Sarah Palin on Flixwagon


Now as the Democratic ticket hits the campaign trail following their successful lovefest in Denver, the political stage is set for the next media event with the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. The big story today of course is John McCain's selection of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin. Traditional broadcast and new media outlets spread the news through the distributed channels. This Tweet caught my eye from Flixwagon that said,"flixwagon rare early interview with veep candidate Sarah Palin about the elections via MTV and Flixwagon: http://is.gd/236u"

I followed the link to this
Flixwagon interview with the Alaskan Governor conducted last February on Super Tuesday by MTV News Street Teamer Dani Carlson.





Here's an excerpt from that post by Ken Zamkow on Flixwagon blog:

"With Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain's surprising announcement of picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, many media outlets are finding there aren't many videos quite yet showing the veep hopeful talking about the national elections. Not MTV: back in Super Tuesday in February 2008, MTV street reporter Dani Carlson made a live video interview with Palin using a mobile phone running the Flixwagon application."
From the MTV Newsroom by Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Dani Carlson, Sarah Palin, Republican Vice-Presidential Nominee, Plugs Romney, Paul — But Not McCain — In MTV Interview Published by MTV News on Friday, August 29, 2008:
"In this interview, Palin calls controversial Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul “cool.” “He’s a good guy,” she added. “He’s so independent. He’s independent of the party machine. I’m like, ‘Right on, so am I." (more)
"She also spoke about Alaska’s natural resources, and urged the next president to look to her state for relief from the country’s reliance on foreign oil. “We have so much oil we are just sitting on,” she said. “We would be less reliant on foreign sources of energy [if we utilized that] — we need to have the ability to tap into it and produce for rest of the United States.
Related and Interesting:

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Social Media and Video at the DNC 08 with Seesmic, ooVoo, Qik, Kyte, Flixwagon (Plus Ralph Nader and Citizen Kate!)

Social media applications have changed the way we experience current events creating new distribution networks that circumvent the corporate owned media networks. The DNC 08 is a great example of how people are connecting, communicating, sharing, reporting and changing the world using real-time and instant video messaging. In 2004 blogging gained influence in the political process but now in 2008 it's completely different with Twitter, Qik, Flixwagon, Seesmic, ooVoo, UStream, Stickam and so many other live and on demand video services. These new communication tools are much more powerful and direct and enable us to broadcast our feeds across the globe instantaneously. Who knows what it will be like in 2012? Chris Albrecht posted The Ultimate Web Video Guide to the Democratic Convention on NewTeeVee and here are a few examples of the "New Media Press" that I saw today.

Seesmic has a created Public Conventions account giving people access to post their messages from and to the conventions. From the Seesmic blog, "... Dan Patterson and the crew from TalkRadioNews are rocking the DNC.Also continue to participate in the video conversation at LinkTV powered by Seesmic. Below is the latest update from Dan in a long thread that has been the center of conversation. Please check it out, but also be warned, there is some harsh language.
Re: Convention Coverage PUBLIC Accounthttp://talkradionews.com


Eileen Smith from the Texas Monthly, who I met earlier this month for the My ooVoo Day With.. Political Edition, is using ooVoo for exclusive videos and round table discussions. She and Paul Burka will be "Crashing the Conventions" and recording daily reports from both Denver and Minneapolis at the two major party conventions. Videos are available at Texas Monthly: Multimedia.
[<span class=

The Uptake is a small using Qik and captured the Ralph Nader News Conference. This may be one of the only venues you'll actually be able to hear from this staunch 3rd party candidate. At the end of the clip there's a fun exchange between Ralph and Citizen Kate.


Citizen Kate featured again in another The Uptake Qik video covering the political events the one hug at a time.



The Huffington Post created a branded player using Kyte to post its Media Shows.



Trevor F Martin is a Think MTV Street Team Reporter using Flixwagon and caught the Tent State Music Festival today. On his blog he says, "Today at the Tent State Music Festival, Rage Against the Machine headlined a star studded line-up including the Flobots, Wayne Kramer from the MC5s, the Coup and State Radio. Check out interviews with Wayne Kramer, Andy ROK and Johnny 5 of the Flobots and Boots from the Coup at http://think.mtv.com/profile/trevorFmartin"



Related:

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Qik and Flixwagon Mix it up at the DNC 08

The two popular live mobile broadcasting services, Qik and Flixwagon, are covering the events at 2008 Democratic National Convention. These mobile reporters and citizen journalists use their cell phones (which replaces the large camera crews, bulky video equipment and satellite uplink trucks) to provide an unfiltered view that you won't see on the network television broadcasts.

Qik has an event page here with 16 Qikkers attending and while the convention is only televised for a few days the Qik event one week long. I've included a few videos below.

This video which already has over 33,000 views from TPMTV is a Qik report following Hillary Clinton's speech this evening. (UPDATE: The reporter is David Kurtz and his delivery is very much in the traditional news reporting style. His other videos of interviews and on the floor coverage are already some of the "Most Viewed" videos on Qik with A look from behind the podium as Michelle Obama finishes with close to 87,000 views)


This is one is from C-SPAN of protesters, vendors, delegates outside the Denver Convention Center. About a minute into the video you can some protesters getting arrested.


Another one from the Uptake is titled "Who's Wolf Blitzer?" and features a colorful protest through the streets of Denver.


I'm always interested in behind the scenes video and this one is "Inside C-SPAN's Production Truck."




Flixwagon is also on the scene partnering again with MTV and arming a number of street reporters with Flixwagon-equipped mobile phones to cover the action in Denver. They're also streaming live videos directly to their pages on the MTV Think website as part of MTV's Choose or Lose campaign .

The official release is here.
























Some of the videos and street reporters can be found here:

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong Demos Qik in Live National TV Broadcast

Social media is gaining wider acceptance and stories of high profile adopters continue to make the news. You may have heard of the Qikking Congressman John Culberson from Texas who uses both Qik and Twitter to update his constituents and followers with an unfiltered view from inside the beltway. This is interesting story that comes from Singapore by way of the Qik blog where a few days ago Bhaskar Roy wrote,

"On 17 August at 7pm Singapore Time (4am PST, 7am EST), the Prime Minister of Singapore, LEE Hsien Loong, will be using Qik and streaming video live from his cell phone that will be broadcasted straight to television. This can be watched live on qik.com/ndr2008 and qik.com/ndr_2008."
Audrey Tan followed up on the Qik blog today saying,
"The Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong in the National Day Rally 2008 was seen in action showcasing Qik to an enthralled audience... Rather than an ordinary National Day Rally, the Prime Minister of Singapore called this the Multi-Media Super Show. During this rally, the Prime Minister talked about engagement with citizens and pushing for participation through mediums like Qik."

The Straits Times, Singapore's most widely read newspaper, reported the Prime Minister's Qik demo,
"MIDWAY through his National Day Rally address, the Prime Minister fished out a mobile phone and proceeded to film the audience before him in the auditorium. Behind him, on a giant screen, the audience saw themselves featured on the web page of the Prime Minister's Office - live.

'There you are, simple as that. I've just made our first non-political video,' he said to laughter from the audience."


Politics in Singapore have been controlled by the People's Action Party (PAP) which has been known to be a more repressive political culture consistently rejecting liberal democratic values. Lee Hsien Loong statements seemed more democratic by making the point that with this new technology anyone can become a filmmaker and share their news and information with the world. He continued, 'So, we've got to allow political videos but with some safeguards... An outright ban is no longer sensible... This is how people communicate on the Web in daily life. They make videos, they pass clips around.'
Political films in Singapore were banned 10 years due to their emotive qualities that could stir people's visceral emotions and incite irrational behavior. But as the Straits Times reports, "The promise of some political films being allowed was cheered by film-maker Martyn See, who had two of his films banned in recent years.
'This is by far the most obvious relaxation of political space in Singapore in the past 20 years. It will lessen the climate of fear,' he said.


YouTube video description: As part of explaining how his government is opening up to the social web, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong demonstrates Qik on a Nokia n95 to his National Day Rally audience. For the related links, see http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=2299

Bhaskar Roy said this came about through a Facebook connection that he made with Alvin Lai, a student from National University Singapore (NUS), who was studying at Stanford as a part of the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) s. He and Alvin later met and Alvin joined as an extended member of the Qik team. Bhaskar added that, "Who would have ever thought a chance meeting through Facebook would lead to something like this."

It's the power of social media at work.

Related

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Citizen Journalist Uses Qik to Capture "Free Tibet" Protest in China and Gets Deported

This story was covered in a number blogs a few days ago about New York video blogger and citizen journalist Noel “Noneck” Hidalgo who, along with a group of journalists, was rounded up and deported from China last week for documenting a “Free Tibet” protest in Tienanmen square. Noneck who has used video and photos to document his world travels on his blog used Qik to stream live mobile broadcasts from China and says in his video description,"I happen to have stumbled upon a set of protesters in Tiananmen Square." The video has over 52,000 views and is climbing.

In his Online Video Watch post, Bounced From Beijing For Videoblogging | Online Video Watch, Ben Homer wrote,
"The video... of obnoxious North American students protesting something occurring thousands of miles away from their literal and cultural home is somewhat entertaining, but it’s mostly irritating... The apparent arrogance of these “protesters” notwithstanding this is not be the first time live streaming will be used to capture an event which the Mainstream Media either has no access to or ignores. Independent producers broadcasting live online will continue to play a larger role in media as a whole."

The video below follows the drama previous one which is described below. Noneck goes on camera in the last 15 seconds and says,
"It's the Power of one of these little Qik cameras to go straight up to the internet is pretty amazing... hopefully I'll be able to put it in the hands of NY Times of other friends of mine."


Title: In china, at t square Description: one of the journalists who was recorded the protest had his passport stolen by security/police. 10 mins later his passport was returned.

Soon after these Qik videos were streamed live on August 10, 2008, he wrote the following message on Twitter, "I’m getting deported for filming. Everyone safe. tibet will be free! " and found himself along with a group of others on a flight back to the United States.

Noneck said on his luck of seven blog, that other journalists have been arrested since and offered this perspective,
"For those of you wondering if I'm sad about getting deported, I'm not. I'm happy to have my freedom and highlight the plight the media faces covering the Olympics. since my return, I've now seen the mainstream media use aliased emails, code words for sensitive topics, and rely on anonymous internet drop boxes for posting timely stories. it's unbelievable that even Olympic reporters must use spy-vs-spy tactics to file their stories."
He included this video to emphasize how western journalists are being censored and assaulted for covering Free Tibet protesters.


Fred Benenson noted on his blog:
"What’s interesting is that Facebook seems to be censoring Noneck’s posts about his deportationhis original status updates were deleted but the comments referencing them stayed. My friend Elizabeth observed that all of Noneck’s Facebook status updates that referenced “deportation” have been changed to

a:6:{i:0;i:672053;i:1;i:672054;i:2;i:672056;
i:3;i:672057;i:4;i:672058;i:5;i:672059;}. 10:08am Co"

With Qik, you can instantly broadcast a live uncensored feed to world. The event is simultaneously recorded online and the video makes it way through viral channels. The mobile phone becomes a powerful tool when the eyes of the world are watching.


Qik has an official Olympic events page set up here and an RSS feed here with coverage by 17 different Qikkers from August 6th to August 24th.


Related: