Dear Commons Community,

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  In recognition, The King Center in Atlanta has a list of events and service projects with which you can get involved. The New York Times has an article entitled, 50 Years After Dr. King’s Death, New Lessons for Today.  And Brookings has a piece reflecting on his legacy.  Below is a video of his memorable I Had A Dream speech!

He was a man of peace!

Tony

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyR8h9iimw4[/youtube]

Dear Commons Community,

The following is a press release from the Online Learning Consortium (OLC).

Tony

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The Online Learning Consortium (OLC), the leading professional organization devoted to advancing the quality of digital learning worldwide, today announced the election of four new members to its board of directors. Joining the OLC board, each for a three-year term, are Patsy Moskal, Ed.D., University of Central Florida; Sandra Doran, Esq., New England Board of Higher Education; Kate Jordahl, California Community Colleges Online Education Initiative; and Michael Torrence, Ph.D., Motlow State Community College.

“I am pleased to welcome these four outstanding education leaders to OLC’s board of directors,” said Eric E. Fredericksen, Ed.D., board president, Online Learning Consortium and associate vice president for online learning and associate professor in educational leadership at the University of Rochester. “The level and diversity of their experience will be highly valued as we work together to advance OLC’s priorities and support our community.”

The new directors were elected from among 230-plus nominees, which attests to the Consortium’s high level of membership participation and eagerness to contribute to OLC’s mission.

“I am excited for what we can achieve in 2018 and beyond, as we build on our position of self-sustained financial strength, guided by a board that has just expanded its expertise with the addition of our four new directors,” said Kathleen S. Ives, D.M., Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, Online Learning Consortium.

About Online Learning Consortium

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) is a collaborative community of higher education leaders and innovators, dedicated to advancing quality digital teaching and learning experiences designed to reach and engage the modern learner – anyone, anywhere, anytime. OLC inspires innovation and quality through an extensive set of resources, including, best-practice publications, quality benchmarking, leading-edge instruction, community-driven conferences, practitioner-based and empirical research and expert guidance. The growing OLC community includes faculty members, administrators, trainers, instructional designers, and other learning professionals, as well as educational institutions, professional societies and corporate enterprises.

Dear Commons Community,

The Sinclair Broadcast Group came under fire over the weekend after Deadspin released a video (above), which spliced together dozens of the company’s local affiliates reading from the same anti-“false news” script. According to the Associated Press, the company instituted a directive to its 170 U.S. TV stations that had forced their local news outlets to read this script decrying “false news.”

Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather blasted Sinclair:

“News anchors looking into camera and reading a script handed down by a corporate overlord, words meant to obscure the truth not elucidate it, isn’t journalism,” Rather tweeted on Monday.  He went on to call the practice “Orwellian” and “propaganda.”

President Trump praised Sinclair yesterday morning after reports surfaced over the weekend that the company had ordered its broadcasters to recite a script criticizing other media outlets for “biased” news. Trump said it was “so funny to watch Fake News Networks … criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased.”

Mary Nam, an evening news anchor at a Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned station in Seattle criticized President Donald Trump’s defense of the conservative media company.

“Actually, this isn’t funny at all,” Mary Nam, who anchors the news at 4, 6 and 11 p.m. at TV station KOMO, tweeted in her response. “None of it.”

Then she turned to the question of Sinclair’s growing influence across the nation’s local news stations. 

Sinclair already owns or operates 170 TV stations in the U.S. The company is in the process of purchasing Tribune Media, which would give it control over 42 more stations, thereby allowing it to reach 72 percent of TV households in America. Nam asked Trump if his administration was going to allow the purchase to go through.

While Nam made her dissatisfaction clear, other employees working at Sinclair-owned or -operated stations have voiced their frustration anonymously. CNN reported Monday that employees it spoke with felt Sinclair was pushing a political agenda on local TV audiences.

Sinclair, in turn, released a lengthy memo to its newsrooms across the country saying, “There is a lot of noise out there about our company right now, and what is lacking in that analysis is something we constantly preach: context and perspective.”

The memo, written by Sinclair Senior Vice President Scott Livingston, then lists a number of accomplishments by the group’s various newsrooms.

Dan Rather is correct that this is right out of Orwell where the dictatorship controls the news.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Political cartoonist Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution used the Easter holiday to call out evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump. 

Despite Trump’s many scandals ― including allegations of affairs with porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal ― the president maintains a 78 percent approval rating among white evangelicals, according to a Pew Research poll last month.

“Evangelicals still believe in the commandment: Thou shalt not have sex with a porn star,” Trump-supporting pastor Robert Jeffress said on Fox News last month. “However, whether this president violated that commandment or not is totally irrelevant to our support of him.”

God save us from religion!

Tony