The L. A. Independent Media Center, right here where you posted this, has applied for and is expecting to receive money from Soros. If you ever went to any of the meetings, Democracy Now and Amy Goodman were treated like saints, untainted and above their own decisions to continue to associate with Pacifica. Press releases all hail the association of the Philly and L.A. IMCs with Democracy Now, with established mainstream 'progressive' media, and say absolutely nothing about any affiliations with any independent minority journalists or news outlets, local or national, anywhere.

Now there has also been a bid by Stu Turner (http://www.stuturner.com/ , "My Work Email: stu.turner@cimedia.com Yes, I work for a giant media conglomerant's pre-IPO Internet start-up, Cox Interactive Media."), Marketing Director of (http://www.LAinsider.com), the local arm of Cox Interactive Media (http://www.cimedia.com), the Internet Division of Cox Enterprises, Inc. (http://www.cimedia.com/business/aboutcim/coxglance.html), the giant media conglomerate, to buy an affiliation and use the L.A. IMC to build up the number of hits on the www.LAinsider.com site for their IPO plans.

Stu Turner is the former Marketing and Promotions Director of KFI-AM640, one of thelargest talk radio stations in the world. He (Stu Turner) actually sent the original offer to www.indymedia.org up in Seattle, trying to pass off www.LAinsider.com as a local startup with no news service affiliation, just suddenly wanting to lend a helping hand. Mack Reed, the Senior Content Producer, is a staff witer for the L. A. Times (http://www.lainsider.com/mack.html), no relations to any news services there, huh?

One of the ways that Cox Interactive Media attracts advertisers is through their proprietary tracking system of Internet users called CIMTrack (http://www.cimedia.com/business/index.html .) The effectiveness of CIMTrack is attested to by Ernst & Young (http://www.ey.com/global/gcr.nsf/International/Welcome_2_new), one of the firms that Cox Enterprises and other corporations use so often to lobby in Washington, D.C., that Ernst & Young is the #1 corporate contributor to the Gore campaign and the #5 contributor to the Bush campaign (per Cox Enterprises own news service, http://www.coxnews.com/2000/reports/issues/contrib.html .) Cox Enterprises has contributed 0,000.00 so far (http://www.opensecrets.org) and last year their political contributions were over 0,000.00. This is one of the global media conglomerates (along with AOL/Time Warner, etc.) that the U. S. Senate gave, rather than leased, the public digital spectrum under the Telecommunications Act, which only John McCain opposed and actually continues to speak out against. Even james Seamus, an independent film producer, in his acceptance speech at the IFC West Awards in Santa Monica in April, used half of his time to speak out and warn indie filmmakers about the dangers of the AOL/Time Warner merger, that they need to pay attention to who istrying to control both content and access to information around the globe.

The face of corporate America and globalization in L. A. isn't who you would expect, you see and meet them posing as very 'trendy and anti-corporate' all over this city. Why isn't the L.A. IMC and the rest of the IMC network, being up front about and actively disclosing their own ties and dependencies on global media corporations? At the very least, let the people know through the IMCs, how little choice they have left to find a way not to be dependent on the very global media corporations the IMC mission statements alledgedly oppose. Call for "the people's" IMCs to practice the full disclosure policies they demand of others.