Comcast's proposed merger with NBC would produce a media behemoth that would control a significant portion of available channels and content.

The owners of Comcast and NBC Universal, two of the most powerful communications conglomerates in the United States, want to merge their corporations in a broadcast and cable behemoth that would dominate the discourse in the United States.

If they get their wish which executives of the corporations expressed to key House and Senate subcommittees on Thursday an already narrow and frequently dysfunctional debate in America would become narrower and more dysfunctional.

The power of the open Internet was on full display Monday as President Obama responded to questions from the public in a followup to last week's State of the Union address. Appropriately, one questioner asked about the president's support for the open Internet itself. Watch the President's answer in this clip.

Academic associations tend to be politically conservative.

I don't mean that they revere Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman, though plenty of scholars do. Rather, each group – representing a field's professors and graduate students – tends to evade controversy, rarely taking a public stance on an issue that might divide the membership.

Thus, it is remarkable that the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has declared its support for Network Neutrality.

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.

"He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, said tonight. "He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect."

Throughout the earthquake's aftermath, the voices of many Port-Au-Prince radio stations have been loud and clear.

Radio Solidarite 88.5 FM is one of the outlets to survive the tremors. It resumed broadcasts from its small studio, at the top of a two-storey building in the city's centre, once the staff found some gas for their generator just two days after the quake.

"We have tried to say to the population to be strong, we appreciate their courage," said Radio Solidarite Director Georges Venel Remarais. "The international press was talking about violence but we didn't see any. The help is very slow at times, and people get angry. Our work is to say, let's be calm."

Watch the U.S. media and its coverage of the crisis in Haiti, and you get the impression that Washington is a benevolent power doing its utmost to help with emergency relief in the Caribbean island nation. But tune into al-Jazeera English or South American news network Telesur and you come away with a very different view. I was particularly struck by one hard hitting al-Jazeera report posted on You Tube which serves as a fitting antidote to the usual mainstream fare. The report is highly critical of the U.S., which according to the reporter has focused most of its energy on fostering stability and putting boots on the ground as opposed to rebuilding Haitian society.

It’s not the first time that al-Jazeera has taken on the U.S. military. Indeed, the network fell afoul of American authorities as long as seven years ago during the invasion of Iraq. A news organization comprised of many editors, journalists, presenters and technical staff who had formerly worked with the BBC in London, al-Jazeera broadcast shockingly graphic pictures of dead and captured American soldiers.

CNet's News.com reported today that Verizon Communications, one of the country's largest providers of broadband Internet access, has started cutting off the accounts of people accused of repeatedly infringing copyrights. The company says it doesn't monitor what its customers are doing on their DSL or fiber-optic connections; it leaves the job of detecting infringements to the MPAA, RIAA and other copyright holders. Instead, when it receives a notice from a copyright holder about an alleged infringement linked to one of its lines, it sends a notice to the account holder identifying the work(s) at issue and warning, "You are legally responsible for all activity originating from your account."

A Verizon spokeswoman told News.com that few accounts have been terminated as a result of repeated accusations of infringement. A single warning letter has been enough to stop the complaints about the vast majority of lines, she said. And that's a good thing -- it's hard to defend garden-variety file-sharing, particularly when there's plenty of authorized content available free online. Verizon also insists that it doesn't tell copyright holders the names of the people it sends warning letters to, in keeping with its privacy policies.

In what could turn out to be a tall order, the Federal Communications Commission Thursday (Jan. 21) launched an initiative to examine the future of media and the information needs of communities in the digital age. Steven Waldman, who recently joined the FCC as a senior advisor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, will lead the effort, which will culminate in a report later this year.

The FCC intends for the report to serve as the basis for policy recommendations for the commission and other government entities.

Topics under consideration for the report include the state of TV, radio, newspaper and Internet news and information services; the effectiveness and nature of public interest obligations in a digital era; and the role of public media and private sector foundations, among others.

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In May 2009, Absolut Vodka launched a limited edition line called "Absolut No Label". The company's global public relations manager, Kristina Hagbard, explained that "For the first time we dare to face the world completely naked. We launch a bottle with no label and no logo, to manifest the idea that no matter what's on the outside, it's the inside that really matters."

A few months later, Starbucks opened its first unbranded coffee shop in Seattle, called 15th Avenue E Coffee and Tea. This "stealth Starbucks" (as the anomalous outlet immediately became known) was decorated with "one-of-a-kind" fixtures and customers were invited to bring in their own music for the stereo system as well as their own pet social causes – all to help develop what the company called "a community personality." Customers had to look hard to find the small print on the menus: "inspired by Starbucks". Tim Pfeiffer, a Starbucks senior vice-president, explained that unlike the ordinary Starbucks outlet that used to occupy the same piece of retail space, "This one is definitely a little neighbourhood coffee shop." After spending two decades blasting its logo on to 16,000 stores worldwide, Starbucks was now trying to escape its own brand.