CPB, NPR and PBS, in consultation with APTS, have asked President-elect Obama to include $550 million for noncommercial public-service media in his far larger package of spending and tax cuts to stimulate the economy and upgrade the nation’s infrastructure. The groups' joint letter (pdf), sent Jan. 2, suggests federal aid for six projects involving public radio and TV that will create jobs and “produce sustainable improvements to the nation’s communications infrastructure.”

What the open Internet does perhaps more than anything else is allow us to envision, and in fact, actually produce a more democratic media system. But the open Internet is under threat by the very companies that bring it into our homes and workplaces, Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These big telecommunication companies want to become the gatekeepers of the Internet, charging hefty fees to reach large audiences as they do with other mediums.

Big telecom companies are trying to do away with the governing guidelines of the Internet called Net Neutrality (or common carriage). Net neutrality requires that Internet service providers not discriminate—including speeding up or slowing down Web content—based on its source, ownership or destination. Net neutrality protects our ability to direct our own on-line activities, and also maintains a level playing field for online innovation and social change.

We live in a civil society – a place where primary education is freely available to all, where anyone can enjoy a walk through our public parks or down our sidewalks and freely drive through the streets. Libraries across the country loan out books for free – literature that you can read on a spring day in our parks or beneath the streetlights on main street on a warm summer's evening. You don't have to tip the firemen who show up at your house or pay for police protection – in a civil society, public safety is freely available to everyone.

We enjoy myriad services and resources that we don't pay for each and every time we use them. Yet each of these key facets of contemporary society was part of a new social contract, often adopted only after years of battle and turmoil to overcome a prior status quo (from private fire and educational services to for-fee libraries and parks). Eventually, however, new models are seen to provide such an enormous benefit to the entire population that we're willing to invest in ideas that lift all boats. We realise that, as a society, each of us is better off when certain basic services are freely available to all.

In the media coverage of the violence in Gaza, the voices of Palestinians are, as usual, absent.

The voices of the Israelis have proclaimed defense. Ehud Barak, Israel defense Minister was quoted as saying“There is time for calm and time to fight.” Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated on NBC news that Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas and has the right as a sovereign country to defend itself. Outgoing U.S.resident George Bush told the Israeli government that the U.S. will stand by Israel. Our incoming President Barak Obama is refraining from taking a stand at this time, but when the commentator on this subject pressed his aid David Axelrod, he responded that Israel has the right to defend itself.

Am I surprised?

Iran has officially requested that Arab media outlets provide responsible coverage of the developments in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The head of Iran's national broadcaster Ezzatollah Zarghami spoke to the management of Qatar's Al-Jazeera, Lebanon's Al-Menar, Turkey's TRT and Iraq's Afaq TV in separate telephone conversations on Tuesday, requesting more informative coverage of the Israel-Palestinian crisis and developments in Gaza.

According to Zarghami, the Israeli policies and attacks on Gaza amount to a "holocaust".

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin does not see much chance of tightening program-access complaint rules or getting his free broadband proposal out the door before he exits as chairman in mid-January.

He is more sanguine about the prospects for the digital-television transition, though he concedes there will be challenges, including possibly running out of available money for DTV-to-analog converter boxes.

President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has reportedly pushed for a more concentrated and coordinated call center program to field viewers’ calls around the time of the Feb. 17, 2009, switch. Martin says broadcasters will need to step up—NAB already has announced a call center plan—but that funds they have requested from the FCC would be subject to government contracting rules.

Looks like Hollywood isn't going to unleash selectable output control, a controversial anti-piracy technique, any time soon.

The MPAA had sought the Federal Communications Commission's permission to use selectable output control on a new type of service to be offered by cable and satellite TV operators: movies made available on-demand shortly after they debuted in theaters, well before they were released on DVD. Studios could use the new technique to turn off the analog outputs on cable or satellite receivers, allowing the movies to be transmitted only through encrypted digital outputs. Closing the so-called "analog hole" would make it harder for people to make pristine digital copies of the movie. But it would also prevent consumers who have older TV sets, which weren't equipped with encrypted digital inputs (including early HDTV models), from taking advantage of the new service.

A powerful column appears today in the Jerusalem daily Haaretz, written by one of its top correspondents, Amira Hass, reporting on Gaza, which opens: "This isn't the time to speak of ethics, but of precise intelligence. Whoever gave the instructions to send 100 of our planes, piloted by the best of our boys, to bomb and strafe enemy targets in Gaza is familiar with the many schools adjacent to those targets -- especially police stations. He also knew that at exactly 11:30 A.M.

As George W Bush prepares to leave the White House, at least one unpleasant episode from his unpopular presidency is threatening to follow him into retirement.

A $70m lawsuit filed by Dan Rather, the veteran former newsreader for CBS Evening News, against his old network is reopening the debate over alleged favourable treatment that Bush received when he served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. Bush had hoped that this controversy had been dealt with once and for all during the 2004 election.