tonight on r t saying go to the end a new york part blocks key parts of the national defense authorization act activists are attacking it as a battle won but there's still a long way to go we'll tell you all about it. and down but not out ron paul is shifting his strategy for the two thousand and twelve g.o.p. presidential race focusing on delegates instead of dollars we'll give you a few good reasons why you shouldn't count this. yet. i am not a journalist i'm just a guy who serves. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cures an awful lot about my country. but it's no laughing matter the major media outlets are taking

a major head in the ratings this despite paying their personalities bloated salaries but the average viewer isn't impressed so does this mean the days of the overpaid media stars are coming to an end. it's thursday may seventeenth seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . well a victory for opponents of the n.d.a. a federal judge has ruled that provisions in the controversial law may violate our constitutional rights president obama signed the national defense authorization act back in december the move has outraged activists that say the law is so vague that a lot of u.s. citizens to indefinitely be detained by the military without due process but a group of activists who did president obama and yesterday the federal judge took

their side here as part of a court ordered issued by judge katherine forrester reads quote this court is acutely aware that preliminarily and joining an act of congress must be done with great caution however it is the responsibility of our judicial system to protect the public from acts of which congress infringe upon constitutional rights so the law has been blocked at least for now and just hours ago an amendment was to the n.d.a. was presented on the house floor representative andrew smith led the fight to bar indefinite detention for terror suspects on u.s. soil a vote on the environment is expected to happen tomorrow to talk more about the case and the implications of it i'm joined now by alexa o'brien a journalist for w l central and founder of us day of rage welcome to the show alexa so a huge victory for you your reaction to the judge's ruling. well

i'm very pleased with the judge's ruling and i thought her ruling the sixty page ruling that she wrote was very well thought out and very well reasoned. it's only the beginning. of and so alexa you are one of seven plaintiffs in this case explain to us your testimony the case you made to the judge that you had standing to sue because you feared you could be detained under the n.c.a.a. . yes absolutely that is one of the clear rulings that judge forrest made was that the plaintiffs myself included had standing to bring a case against the u.s. government. i had a ferry fairly lengthy affidavit and lengthy deposition my deposition took two days and of course i also testified in court so some of the features of that was the targeting by private security contractors working in conjunction with the u.s.

government to target me. two of those firms one was. came out in the release of the. global intelligence files related to the private security intelligence from stratford in one of those e-mails a exchange between a gentleman named thomas cole peche who is the director of operations at this investigative research and. i'm sorry for the protective services in an exchange with fred burton who is the head of counterterrorism at stratford and who was also the former deputy chief of the department of state's counterterrorism division for the diplomatic security services had been specifically tasked to tie an organization that i helped found whose only purpose is campaign finance reform to islamic fundamentalists and saudi jihad.

and there's more. that's just one part of it i have had a federal agent tell me that they've seen documents detailing the types of surveillance. for us day of rage. the director of federal programs at my former employment in for being a business meeting that people in the government had been asking about me by name and so therefore because i covered want. animal and have spoken to individuals of the u.s. government spoken to or about individuals that the u.s. government considers terrorists i definitely had. had a chilling effect on my my freedom of speech and so these are all arguments that you made to the judge and apparently the judge sided with you and what makes the n.b.a. so controversial is how they get is and its vagueness critics say and plaintiffs as yourself say it's all open to all kinds of scary possibility of the plaintiffs fear

that you've been reporting terrorist suspects could be considered grounds for being detained under this law as you said a lot of the work that you do that you could become under scrutiny and be subject to indefinite attainment of the judge acknowledged some of the danger the vague language in this bill can you talk about that. yeah well i mean you use the subjective tense you said could i mean i was you know already so you know that was already happening i was already being targeted. further you know if you look at the war on terror and how it's fought it's fought through intelligence and right now i would say that there is a battle over the information sharing environment you know the actions of a journalist collecting information to write a story to do investigative work are not very different in terms of transferable skills in the actions of a. an intelligence collector so to speak and so there is really clearly

a conflict a competition between the intelligence sector of society and the press and up until this particular ruling it looks like the press was losing i mean this is i am very pleased with this ruling of course this is only the beginning i mean the council has spoken out publicly in their discussions with the press that they are calling on president obama to you know essentially permanently put an injunction on this particular type of statute now this is just the beginning it's a preliminary injunction that's what's emplaced in this measure is only temporary so are you confident that it will continue to work in your favor and ultimately that you that you'll prevail. whether you know whether i prevail or not is is sort of a moot point in a certain sense i mean i want to prevail i don't i can't tell the future i am

naturally taking it one step at a time i mean you know an australian friend of mine was joking with me over twitter yesterday that said you know you've basically pushed it back to two thousand and eleven i mean we have to really and i'm speaking in my own person now i'm not speaking for the other plaintiffs but you know we have to look at the. indefinite detention of prisoners of war two in this country i mean i think that there's a lot of work to be done the united states to reestablish the rule of law and the principles of our democratic republic now lexan amendment was was presented on the house floor just moments ago to get rid of the provision that allows for indefinite detention on u.s. soil what do you make of the timing just one day after this this ruling. well you know i'm not going to place speculation here this is what i know you know i read the i haven't read the statute itself you know whether or not me out we rule out indefinite detention you know the question is who is the terror suspect in the case

of the national defense authorization act which we brought suit towards the u.s. government for you know the language of substantially support associated associated forces i mean you know what are those things so you know being called a terrorist suspect by that you u.s. government is not clear or. diagnosis we need to understand what exactly is the u.s. government saying is a criminal act right firstly. and secondly you know i looked at the human rights first organization sort of i guess they proposed this as a as a great idea but you know i don't have a lot of trust in human rights first when harold koh you know i was on their board of directors this is a gentleman who is a proponent for drone warfare i don't know how you connect human rights and drone drone warfare together so that's my preliminary opinion. alexa thank you for coming on the show it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out again the vote to

that amendment on the house floor is expected tomorrow and we have course will be keeping a close eye on the developments on this case alexa thanks for coming on the show that was alexa o'brien a journalist for w l central and founder of you day of rage. i think. all new rules over the controversial practice of fracking but are they enough last week president obama proposed that national guidelines on fracking the technique extracts natural gas from the earth by injecting fluid into the ground the liquid mixture sometimes includes toxic chemicals that make it that make its way into water wells so the obama administration's rules require drilling companies to disclose what chemicals they're using and test wells to make sure they're not prone to leaking now fracking companies say the rules are too restrictive the fracking critics say they don't go far enough in fact they say it only applies to a very small percentage of natural gas supply in the nation so if drilling and

drinking water still on the verge of becoming hazardous as a result of fracking talk about what the frack is going on i was joined by mike loued wig he's a reporter for truthout dot org first discuss president obama's proposed guidelines take a listen. well these new rules coming into the obama administration only cover b.l.m. land which the brewer land management and tribal land and that is where the federal government jurisdiction only covers about eleven percent of our known gas reserves so most of the fracking operations in the country won't be covered by these rules. so what needs to happen now do they need to be expanded to cover some of the this other land or how do they fix this. well there is a patchwork of regulations state by state actually the industry prefers that they don't want the federal government stepping in to make new regulations so they might

have. rules that might overlap but. we're waiting on federal regulation to go beyond that and the e.p.a. has been doing a study but that would be the end of the year so in the cases where the regulations do apply but it seems like as you just said they don't apply to a majority of fracking sites here in the u.s. what is the likelihood that even in these scenarios they'll be enforced i think that the federal government can be enforcing these but as far as we know one of the big provisions of these rules is disclosure of the chemicals that the companies bring to the ground back industry has been trying to keep those chemicals some of them trade secrets for years but they won't have to disclose these chemicals until after they're done drilling and that's one big hole in that in this rule that you know people who want to test their water before the drilling they get a baseline or night of what was there before the drilling won't be able to do that so it sounds like it'll be too late the damage will be already done by the time

people know what's what kind of chemicals are in the water the damage could already be done by then to be harder to hold companies accountable if you don't have a baseline data on what was in your water before they start drilling now on the other side there the drilling companies say the rules go too far and that natural gas say it's touted as a great alternative to coal which comes with its own environmental problems so what do you say to that argument. a natural gas can be cleaner than coal but coal is also been regulated much more extensively than natural gas and also you bomb and ministration has actually been working pretty closely with the industry their new inner agency working group to come out with these rules got praise after praise from the industry for doing this so actually you know of course they're going to say they don't want to be regulated but so far i think they're pretty happy with it now many people are concerned about fracking including beer breweries and here's

one of the headlines as sad as fracking could poison your next to be here that's what it reads the founder of the brooklyn brewery fears toxic chemicals are making their way into beverage as the possibility of poisoned water is enough to scare you drinkers push this fight over the edge was a beer drinker myself i hope that i don't think it is poison bear but i think it might stick. and i think it bit more on the environmental movement than just microbrew fans. will i guess anybody to stand by the cause so what are you hoping happens next what needs to be done in order to strengthen these roles that you say right now are inadequate as they stand the e.p.a. has been conducting a study on fracking for the past about two years and that will be done to the end of the year and they've been commissioned by congress to do this and the hope is that after they're done they'll come out their own regulation but that process is taking a very long time and i think the for activists it's time to look at the state level

states have a lot more power in regulating fracking at this point so it's time to push your local and state legislators to take the kind action right mike thank you very much for coming on the show that was michael loued leg is a reporter for truthout dot org. oh yes announce he's going to stop campaigning but ron paul isn't out of the race just yet the presidential candidate says he simply doesn't have the cash to splurge on campaigning but he has a new strategy fighting for and winning delegates after all his supporters say that's what really counts so just because many people have called this race over ron paul and his supporters say they're here to stay so can the ron paul delegate strategy work joining us now is mary wilson volunteer organizer and ron paul supporter hi there mary nice to see you so romney has the cash to continue campaigning ron paul has a more behind the scenes strategy how does he plan to implement this delegate

strategy and can the strategy work. well the process began a long time ago in the caucus states and in even the primary states have a delegate selection process and ron paul supporters showed up and became those delegates who go on to from the district conventions to their county conventions on to their state conventions and get elected as national delegates ron paul's priority is focusing on those states where there is a delegate selection process where i mean it's actually not necessarily ron paul strategy as much as it is the people who are going and becoming those delegates so i don't. fault him for not spending a lot of money in the primary states on advertising especially negative ads run polls not just that's just not his way so but he already did a lot of campaigning through many of the primary states like california we had six rallies here a town hall rallies attended by more than twenty five thousand people there were

three different fundraisers i attended a couple of them and it's up to the grassroots now i think to support ron paul and get him elected so the announcements that i heard this week for me it doesn't mean that he has stopped his campaign whatsoever it just means that we have to push on continuing to get ourselves elected as delegates ron paul never had the power to anoint anyone as a delegate and the way i have interpreted his recent announcements and because i'm at the grassroots level i don't have direct coordination with the campaign my interpretation is it's up to us carp adium it's the delegates who need to get themselves elected who need to get to that convention if we want to make a mark in the platform if we want to get our president elected we have to show up and make it happen. and i have a feeling ron paul's supporters are going to show up because they have stuck by him

throughout all of this and i've talked to many of his supporters that say it's not necessarily about winning it's about his message what do you think about that. i'm still at it i know that it is about a movement we are is not only about ron paul winning we have to get ourselves elected at all the local levels in order to really create a change ron paul can't do this on his own it's up to us to become part of the party and take action at local levels in order to make any progress the progress that we need we need sound money we need to end these wars there's so much to it in his message and. he's like he's not just a leader to many of us he is also a fatherly figure and there's a lesson in everything and i think it's sink or swim and it's tough love and we have to do something if we want it to be done you can't wait around and expected to

be done for you right mary so they're after the republican national convention in august they'll be just a couple months before the election and if mitt romney does become the nominee what will ron paul supporters as yourself what would you do would you ever back romney or would they or would they stay home on voting day and sadder where where would you take that energy. myself personally i would write ron paul in. but i don't know where the movement will go in august if he is not the republican nominee. i know a lot of people would like to push him to go third party i don't think that's in his agenda whatsoever but it really has to it's going to be based on our actions i think and if we want our president elected we have to do everything in our power to make it happen and show a strong showing we have to be the delegates on that floor i don't i don't know

about what's going to happen if romney gets the nomination i think it would be very . detrimental to the party i don't think that we could win as republicans with romney as the nominee i think that he doesn't pose any change from what we currently have and we can't just sit around and hope for change any more we have to take action now because we are on the verge of becoming a europe or something else where there's catastrophe in most americans unfortunately don't know about it right mary thank you for coming on the show pleasure as a way of fighting i tell you a little very quickly well you know that i can tell you there's a money bomb going on right now the rise for liberty money for the ron paul campaign people can donate at ron paul two thousand and twelve dot com. also the l.a. liberty h.q. dot org is where people can support ron paul in los angeles and look for their liberty candidates at l.a. liberty vote dot com right there you have it that is how you support. for your

candidate there that i have as mary wilson volunteer organizer and ron paul supporter. well a rough week for c.n.n. the network's prime time show slumps and ratings the lowest c.n.n. has seen in fifteen years on tuesday piers morgan tonight drew only thirty nine thousand viewers that's a bit small compared to the host who slot he took over larry king of your ship stood strong for years but pierce isn't alone this by being paid millions and millions many stars are losing the ratings and the viewers so what's going on we explored you know if you buy a ten million dollars chandelier you should have a house to put it in fired from current keith olbermann compares himself to a multi-million dollar household next year the chandelier. the political commentator announced doing the same thing that worked for a forty fifty million dollars blaming them for shoddy production and from liberal

to conservative slanted media not too long ago fox said goodbye to their top political pundit captivating america with his conspiracy theories here if you will have a secret you're the answer emotional outbreaks i am not a journalist i'm just a guy who cares. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country even fox had enough of the answer ix and oprah considered to be the most influential woman in the world. with the highest rated talk show for decades her own network isn't quite living up to the hype it was the usa today headline that would get oprah not quite standing on her own and it just did. the network reportedly lost three hundred thirty million dollars since it started airing last year former morning show darling katie couric

rakes in fifteen million annually that's a page from my notebook on katie couric c.b.s. news today she's not doing it in ratings here's the b.s. in the evening and c.n.n.'s prime time silver fox one always found on the front line and scene of the crime. can now be found here i know all the real housewives of beverly hills despite millions in compensation why are stars in the news on this ng their shyness because big corporate they're going to dumb it down to the least common denominator and of course it will be almost like entertainment meanwhile recent statistics show viewers leaving the mainstream networks in droves for march of last year to march of this year c.n.n. lost a staggering fifty percent of its viewers fox lost seventeen percent m s n b c's fared well in comparison with a three percent rise in viewers so where are they turning to instead social media

and online outlets are giving the mainstream a run for their money and whatever you have that huge gap between what you're reading online on facebook and twitter and what the evening news is showing you that some people choose alternative outlets well times have changed and viewers now have the luxury of options so if they don't like what they're seeing they simply stop tuning it. or if they don't like what they're reading. they're just one click away from any outlets that will report on the news they find important and washington liz wahl r.t. . and earlier i was joined by christopher chambers journalism professor for georgetown university he's playing the massive drop of viewership among the mainstream news outlets take a listen. well you have to understand it. in terms of three when you call it factors or obstacles but it's basically saturation segmentation and

sociology and they can jump around among all these three but basically when you have somebody like oprah the saturation point is incredible when she's on once a day and doing her thing everybody wants to see your but entire network that doesn't even have daytime original programming that was you know that was tanking and the sociology aspect to a lot of younger women didn't find her relevant anymore and they didn't like the the the celebrity worship so you know you know there's gone to social media same thing with katie couric a lot of younger women don't find her a lot of them don't even know she is and then the segmentation thing might help people like bill o'reilly and sean hannity and people like that but you don't see them going off to start their own network which is which is what glenn beck did with t.v. now the segmentation health because his audience of lunatics followed him but it's not on prime time you have to order it you have to watch it on you tube so you know

so there is some savvy there so i mean when you look at that interplay among those three factors it explains a hell of a lot of what's going on i was smiling piers morgan i mean larry king was larry king it was an icon a lot of people like that a lot of people older people like me like tuning in but then when he was gone we basically went with them and now where did we go i mean some people went to fox some people are watching you know animals kill each other on animal planet but they're not watching piers morgan because there's just something you know not very genuine about him and b. and he's still trying to do the celebrity get for the latest murder or scandal and it really is wearing thin but these networks are banking and that they've always kind of banked on their star isn't and best millions. you know there's many examples that we could point to. i guess these days the big salary doesn't necessarily translate to big ratings no i mean it doesn't. you know for certain

like when you talk about segmentation it helps certainly when you're talking about rush limbaugh you know why he's making the big bucks why bill o'reilly is making the big bucks because of that maniacal following and because you know unlike certain shows i mean like maybe jon stewart jon stewart's not dealing in fear and you know that appealing to their t.v. these are tuning but he's also analyzing he's not appealing to the reptilian brain the medulla back there that always thinks about you know killing people and what somebody is trying to do to me which is what the other guys are doing so that does help but still you don't see them going off to start their own network rush limbaugh is not that stupid so you know there's that aspect of keeping that market and being renumerated be paid for it to deliver what they need to deliver to the sponsors but they're not going to overstep and overreach and i think that's what katie couric oprah has certainly done it c.n.n.

has done it by putting their trust in piers morgan but making a reasonable bet with say soledad o'brien in the morning which is a reasonable alternative to the morning shows where you see the big seller it's especially on n.b.c. with matt lauer but at least matt lauer is he's kind of keep it in his comfort zone he might not be worth it in terms of the news and entertainment product but he's worth it to them in terms of delivering to their sponsors also and that story there we showed. last half of their viewers the ducks last seventeen per sat so it's kind of happening across the spectrum here is this a trend is this. signify a big shift and where people are turning to the politics i think so i mean you do have people scaping to social media now again the materials. he has to come from somewhere somebody has got to be doing the original reporting the original riginal digging the original analysis some people are leaving because of that segmentation factor and they want to see the raw meat especially if they're right wingers i want

to see all this stuff that nobody wants to cover you know obama was born on mars or something like that so they're going to get a lot of people are leaving to get the news that they can pick and choose what news and when to look at it and they don't have to deal with these overblown stars i mean when you look at somebody like jon stewart or stephen cold beer or even rachel maddow there's something understated about them as opposed to keith olbermann there's something to original and interesting in the product as r.t. or if you were to look at current with saying kong or in the young turks i mean there's a certain continuity there which some of these bigger than life balloon heads. i think it turns a lot of people off even in my generation so we're looking at news and other sources but we we still demand that the news on social media come from a reputable source and they're in there in is the problem we are saying they are facts i guess that social media and i guess that's well but no big bucks a half the media.