THIS WEEK -- Democratic senators expressed increased dissatisfaction with the Trump administration. As backlogged courts and immigration debates drag on, thousands of lives are re-thrown into the balance. Many of them seem to believe it is a waste of taxpayer efforts, “to carry out a cold partisan vendetta,” and that it, “goes too far,” as on Twitter, Senior Oregon Senator Ron Wyden claimed, “Trump's ICE now plans to deport 350,000 people whose cases were already CLOSED.”

He tweeted another emotional and heartfelt message, “the Trump administration wants to deport unaccompanied children that judges have found to have been abused, abandoned, or neglected. Deporting them now is cruelty for the sake of cruelty,” followed by him also saying, “My @SenateDems colleagues and I are pushing back.”

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Leave it to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) to hold up the laws for music modernization. In August, April Baer for OPB reported, “music industry professionals are lobbying (Wyden) to stand down and allow a bill updating music rights laws to pass,” however; blindly letting another Modernization Act slide passed him isn’t on the senator's agenda. Maybe his impression is similar to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, that which promised to revolutionize the U.S. broadcasting industry, actually loosened some of the restrictions for keeping reporting fair. This April, Radio Ink outlined major law changes. In the article, New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler also said regarding music modernization, "because of loopholes in the law, there has been litigation in federal and state courts with mixed results, and that has put music creators’ rights at risk and created uncertainty for digital streaming services."

Mitch Glazier, President, RIAA communicated, “the Music Modernization Act is based on two simple principles – streamline the licensing system and work towards fair-market-value based rules for creators.” The August OPB story continued, “but Wyden introduced an alternative bill this spring that suggests streamlined laws for older music and less strenuous copyright protections than the Music Modernization Act," (S.2293, the ACCESS to Recordings Act). Tracy Maddux, CEO of CD Baby said in an Oregonian/Oregon Live article, "we urge Sen. Wyden to reconsider his support of the ACCESS Act and to join dozens of Senators in supporting the Music Modernization Act (H.R. 5447)." Upon looking for further clues, trying to contact his office, and being led to the “Issues” section of his website, there didn't seem to be a section for music, but the section under the "Technology: Copyright" heading said, “he has introduced legislation to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to ensure that security researchers, journalists and owners of everyday devices have the ability to undertake legitimate activities.” According to an August Billboard report, he and the Senate might have reached an agreement. 

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LATELY -- compared to web radio app station playlists, on-demand ad-supported streaming with custom playlists seem to be preferred, since services such as YouTube and Spotify have grown more. Among the on-demand streaming player giants, July and March Billboard reports by Cherie Hu and Ed Christman suggest Apple Music and Spotify significantly pulled ahead with their advertising/subscription-based service model. Oftentimes, subscribing allows for unlocking enhanced features of music applications and stopping advertising from interrupting the music experience.

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For what is really happening to America’s media fairness, compiled by the international non-profit third-party organization Reporters Without Borders - RSF (Reporters Sans Frontières)’ team based out of Paris, France, are annual reports and statistics about the freedom of press in different countries. According to their data, out of 53 journalists killed this year so far, six have been American. For the most part, the reason(s) for the U.S. killings don’t seem to be politically motivated. One instance as reported by the Baltimore Sun on July 29 was because a long-time reader who, the previous day, was still angry about an article written about him in 2011, tried to shoot everyone in the Capital Gazette Annapolis newsroom.

The American RSF Press Freedom Ranking is currently in 45th place with an index score of 23.73, compared to other countries such as first place Norway with 7.63, and Sweden, Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, and Jamaica all have scores under 12 -- more than twice as favorable of index rating for press freedom. The ranking of 45, is a negligible two-places worse from last year’s score; the best recorded rank for the United States was 32nd place in 2013.

While complicated methodologies and index scores said one thing, a write-up next to the U.S. country profile described another picture, “US press freedom, enshrined in the First Amendment to the 1787 constitution, has been under increasing attack over the past few years, and the first year of President Donald J. Trump's presidency has fostered further decline in journalists' right to report."

As the U.S. President was blamed for trying to silence the press, the write-up continued, pointing out, “He (Trump) has declared the press an enemy of the American people in a series of verbal attacks toward journalists, attempted to block White House access to multiple media outlets, and routinely uses the term “fake news” in retaliation for critical reporting. He has even called for revoking certain media outlets’ broadcasting licenses.” Further into the report suggests that the highest level of the US government, giving “violent anti-press rhetoric” has actually worked against the real news and free press, which who can partially be determined by the Media Bias/Fact Check website, that says it’s the most comprehensive media bias resource on the internet with over 2500+ sources documented and actively updated. Not only are MBFC sources compared with various degrees of left-right wing bias, they also mention the factuality of sources' writing. The description for their “least bias” category said, “these sources have minimal bias and use very few loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes). The reporting is factual and usually sourced. These are the most credible media sources.”

Check on the media freedom in your country. Also look up the media bias for your news sources! More information is available at the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker website.

A famous quote from the book and movie, 1984 has claimed, "who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." That is why many think writing informative reports/articles is so important.

Language is deep; writing is deep. If writing about the environment, it easily becomes a slippery slope into political debate because why are these specific articles being presented versus those other articles -- it’s as if history is getting “re-written” to be seen a certain way.

There are many ways independent writers can get involved and make a difference. The earliest found source of this inspirational quote is by gilded Reddit user, kai1998 posted on November 4, 2016 to the Subreddit Community, ShowerThoughts, "When people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about changing the present by doing small things, but pretty much no one in the present thinks that they can change the future by doing something small."

Upon viewing his original post was an additional edit/added note that said, “the lesson is to stay educated and informed, so that your actions can be more deliberate and meaningful,” therefore; by educating and informing others, their actions can also be more deliberate and meaningful.

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