Results tagged “currenttv”

What's being described as a "major bloodbath," both the Los Angeles and San Francisco Current offices plan on snipping 80 employees, which will bring their entire staff to somewhere around 300. This comes on the heels of news that Al Gore's media company will become more YoutTube-ish. That is to say, shorter videos produced my non-employees.

      

After almost five months of being held in North Korea for "hostile acts," San Francisco-based journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee arrived back in the U.S. just 24 hours after Bill Clinton negotiated their release with Kim Jong Il. The two flew into Bob Hope Airport in Burbank early this morning, "dressed in short-sleeved shirts and jeans" and appearing "healthy."

Last night. before a vigil for Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are currently serving a 12-year jail sentence in North Korea for illegally crossing the border, the inmates' husbands spoke out about their conditions. The news was disheartening.

Current TV has asked us to plug an interview their doing with Newsom right this very second. For better or for worse, the chat will be about not trashing your coffee grounds (which we did this morning, then laughed) or tossing your SF Examiner in a garbage can on the sidewalk (which we might or might not do every afternoon after lunch). Green stuff, you know. They're going to ask Gav "some of the most popular questions asked by the Current Green community" -- e.g., "What's the thing you can really transform?," "What's your take on the proposal to close 220 state parks?," and "Which areas of California are most suitable for wind farms?" Watch it if you have a free minute or two. (But what SFist wants is a filmed Nathan Ballard interview. It's high time for Newsom's spokesperson to shine. Because he's funny and charming as all heck. Seriously, we're a breath away from getting all Gypsy-end-of-Act-I on him. He's got star quality, that one.)

Current invited the public to submit and vote on questions for Mayor Gavin Newsom regarding his run for governor and his green platform. Six of the questions will be chosen alongside picks from editors at Treehugger, Grist, Huffington Post Green, Chelsea Green, and Good Magazine. The interview will be streamed live on Current at Noon tomorrow.

Concerned that today's sentencing will land, if all goes horribly wrong, Current TV journos Laura Ling and Euna Lee 12 years of hard labor inside a North Korean jail, we asked formerly-jailed journalist Josh Wolf for his thoughts on the brouhaha.

While many chin-scratching political commentators claim that Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two Current TV journalists who were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea, are bargaining chips in a high stakes poker game who will be set free once negotiations begin (what, no chess metaphors? oh wait, that's just for the Middle East), you should know that North Korean prisons are no Martha Stewart-insider-trading spa retreats. Lee and Ling will not wax poetic to the media about the taste of lemon or monochromatic home accents during their incarcerations. North Korean hard labor prisons make Midnight Express look like after-school detention. The gulags of North Korea can involve torture, rape, beatings, and much worse. According to San Diego Union Tribune, "Grandsons are condemned to life-long terms as slave laborers alongside their grandfathers, both equally helpless in the brutal surroundings. Prisoners are arbitrarily murdered by security guards. Women suffer from forced abortions at the hands of unlicensed doctors. Newborn babies are beaten to death. And sons and daughters are publicly executed in front of their mothers." If their sentences are carried out, Ling and Lee could face these conditions in North Korea's gulag system. Our hearts go out to the two journos and their families. Seriously.

Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two Current TV reporters nabbed by North Korean border guards while they were doing a story about human trafficking on the Chinese-North Korean border, have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor in what former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson has called a "high-stakes poker game" that has more to do with our nuclear relations than it does with these women and their alleged crimes. A Korean-language TV station has reported that the women were convicted of "hostility toward the Korean people."

Scene from yesterday's rally at Civic Center to free Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Both are on trial in North Korea for something ridiculous, facing 10 years of hard labor.

In an effort to raise awareness about the plight of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two CurrentTV journalists detained in North Korea, there will be a vigil tonight on the front steps of City Hall from 6 to 8 p.m. The women, who are likely being used as pawns in the volatile relations between North Korea and the United States, go on trial tomorrow and have been assigned a North Korean attorney.

CurrentTV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were detained for illegally crossing the North Korean border and accused of "hostile acts," are set to go on trial on Thursday. They were working on a documentary about the sad stories about North Korean refugees fleeing to China. If convicted, they could spend up to ten years in a North Korean boot camp. Al Gore, a partner at Current, has been working closely with the State Department to get the women released, and the Swedish Mission at the United Nations has been serving as an intermediary.

Here's a great follow-up to last fall's Imperial Fleet Week: Death Star Over San Francisco, by Mike Horn of Current TV.

It's been over two weeks since Current TV reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee were arrested at the North Korean border. The two journalist sit in jail, waiting to be tried for "hostile acts" against the Communist country. They could each receive up to 10 years in jail of hard labor, or worse.

The two CurrentTV journalists detained in North Korea, reporter Laura Ling photographer Euna Kim, are under investigation by authorities for espionage. While allegedly being treated well in captivity (at least according to North Korea), the two SF-based journalists are facing "intense interrogation" in Pyongyang. If convicted of spying, according to reports, "the women face at least five years in prison under North Korean law."

What with the Fowler family giving San Francisco a bad name, let us not forget about the real, truly liberal, adorably subversive families of the Bay Area. Take, for example, the Rosenthals. According to Current TV -- which, as of late, has been getting better and better -- they're like this:

Emmy-awarding Current TV -- YouTube for the Atlantic Monthly set, and a site we have grown to love over the last year -- is handing out the pink slips today. Alas. According to Valleywag, via a tipster, "'32 have been cut from the San Francisco office" and the terms "'bloodbath'" is being thrown around. May you land safely and softly on your feet, SoMa/Mission Bay brethren. (Valleywag)

Care of Current TV, here's a nifty video about Proposition 98, which, if passed, would eliminate rent control. Zoinks. It also features someone with a very thick East Coast accent. Double zoinks.

Moby must be sick with envy over this one. Tonight the "unconventional young network," Emmy Award-winning Current TV, will air a taped, private, hour-long Radiohead concert on New Year's Eve (and on New Year's day on broadcast Current TV.) Thom Yorke and his merry band of croonies will perform each track off of their top-listed 2007 effort, In Rainbows.

The sexy cats over at ValleyWag have the fresh MySpace office shots that you want. Or not.

We watched the Emmy Awards last night (for what it's worth: yay, 30 Rock!), and the award shows fellating Al Gore continues, this time for Current TV, which won for Best Interactive Programming or Best iWorld Wide Web Doing God's Work or something inane like that.

There are few places where people get their collective geek on like Burning Man. A lot of folks are staying home this year -- Violet Blue gives some good reasons why -- and taking a chance to relax on the full-press coverage and pimp as much anti-party legislation as they can while the freak vote is out of town.

Screw getting Dooced, Josh Wolf has set the blogger bar a bit higher than getting fired. He's been jailed. Judge William Alsup, presiding over a federal grand jury case investigating the attempted burning of a police car and assault of an officer during an anti-war protest last year, has held Mr. Wolf in contempt of court, and ordered him imprisoned. The crime? Refusing to answer a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's office for raw footage of the event and to stand witness before the Grand Jury.

If you're an aspiring filmmaker who has always dreamed of having your work judged by the likes of Melissa Etheridge, Edward Norton, and Margaret Cho, then have we got the contest for you. Current TV is looking for short films that address issues of "tolerance and understanding diversity" to be featured on their network. The grand prize is $100,000.00. A few of the rules, as presented in their press release, after the jump.

Blogs. They're either what's right or what's wrong with the Internet specifically and the collective media consciousness in general -- depending on whom you ask. Me, I kinda like blogs, but then I like to read and I like to write, and really, is it much more complicated than that? I'm the kind of person who's constantly finding a new favorite medium. But at about two years, this is the longest relationship I've had with any one in particular. Oh, I still like to flirt with printing, photography, audio and video. But if I'm a media technology whore, then the blogosphere is the abusive pimp I just keep coming back to.

Kim Knox at Left in SF provides a handy listing of schools on the block for mergers and closures, and the board has decided to shut dow n the elementary school on Treasure Island. Looks like The City won't be able to provide any sort of internet connection to the public at Monday's scheduled public hearing on TechConnect. Maybe one of you has a brand new 3G modem?

Well, we haven't had a chance to watch Current TV because somehow it ended up in Comcast's "Premier Tier," and we're not about to pay an extra five dollars a month after reading these reviews:

As you know, we've been following the story of Current TV (formerly INdTV) pretty closely here at SFist. Why? Because we got all excited by Al Gore's rhetoric about changing television and giving yutzes like us a voice. Well, both the rhetoric and our expectations have been deflated in the past year, as Current begins to look more and more like, well, a very slightly more relevant MTV.

Josh Wolf, a local vlogger, posted the following recently on his "The Revolution Will Be Televised" blog about Current TV's new rights agreement and payment schedule for content submitted to Current: