What did I say? Sad New Year?

Well, I've actually had a busy day, I still have to call home and wish my family in Scotland (five hours ahead) a Happy New Year. Meanwhile the BBC notes in a headline that "New Year begins as world mourns" - referring of course to the disaster in Asia. I really miss the Year in Review specials the BBC put out. Can't get them in the US. Hmmmm, I got nothing else - except to reiterate a sentiment I expressed in a Tuesday blog, by the Boston Globe's James Carroll. Yes I'm repeating myself, but it bears repeating, even though it's overly sentimental (the sentiment is optimistic even for five years ago); but oh well, it's New Year and I don't care:

Only five years ago, the uncharted future was spread before us. We were an optimistic and confident people. Our firm membership in the global community was as clear as the televised sequence of midnight celebrations - Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg, Paris - that circled the earth at the glorious millennium. Watching that rotation on an axis of joy, the only "homeland" we wanted was the very planet, and our "security" was everyone's. The human family was never more aware of itself than that night, and we Americans were never more a part of it.

But this year, what a lonely nation we have become. And to how many fewer peoples are we the tribune of hope. How like exile is our "homeland," and what is "security" if it depends on suspicion of those who are unlike us?

OK, that's about it. Oh yes, btw, check out Project Censored to find out about the stories you didn't find out about in 2004 (more on this later).

Right. Happy New Year, anyone who's still reading. I won't cry over 2004's passing. I just hope 2005 is better. OK, I said that about 2004, but ...

Dems and Social Security: Wake up!

Again I reference Josh Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo. Marshall, who's fighting what sometimes seems like a one-man campaign against Bush's Social Security "plan," points to a Boston Globe article, by Washington bureau chief Peter S. Canellos, drawing uncomfortable parallels between Bush's strategy on Iraq in 2002-03 and on Social security "reform" now - a point I alluded to in a Dec. 15 post. I've also piped up about how Bush has been able to get away with framing this issue in the media almost entirely on his terms (just ask George Lakoff). I'm really not that bright, so if I can spot this clear as day it should be pretty obvious to anyone who looks - or maybe I'm just losing it ... and yet, the Globe notes a disturbing fact: "Right now, however, the Democratic message is hardly being heard while the president has created a strong linkage in the public mind between the Social Security shortfall and the national economy, and between dealing with the shortfall and creating personal investment accounts." The article signs off:

Democrats ... have made protecting and preserving the current system one of their defining issues as a party: For at least two decades, they have been contending that Republicans are plotting to reduce promised benefits. If Democrats plan to come out against Bush's plan, they should weigh in now. As many of their leaders can attest, the public has little patience for complaints registered too softly or too late.

Note to Democrats: "Too late" comes around awfully quickly in this day and age.

European broadsheets shrinking? Heavens!

The Wall Street Journal has picked up on a trend that's been gathering speed in Europe for more than a year: The shift in format among quality papers from big awkward broadsheet to handy tabloid. This is a bit of a paradigm shift, since news staff and readers alike have for generations associated broadsheet with quality, and tabloid with sleaze. As the WSJ notes:

The shift is about much more than simply cutting the size of the pages. Europe's broadsheets have been fighting for readers with traditional tabloids that offer more titillating fare, especially those in the U.K. For newspapers like the Times of London and Belgium's Gazet van Antwerpen, going tabloid means conceding that large-page newspapers may become relics of a bygone era -- even as they insist they can maintain higher standards of journalism.

We'll see whether "quality" is maintained. What seems to be more important for newspapers such as The Times and The Independent is that they've seen their circulation steadily increase (or, as in the case of Gazet von Antwerpen, stabilize). What's more, the circulation gains, at least in Britain, come at a time when the "traditional" tabs, such as the Sun and especially the Mirror, are seeing steep declines in readership. Maybe some readers are switching over. (Question: Will these new readers expect values and practices from their new brand of paper that are more "tab" than "quality"?) In any case, readers seem to like the change. The WSJ also points to other "serious" European broadsheets that have turned into tabloids this year, including Information in Denmark, Dagens Nyheter in Sweden and De Standaard in Belgium.

I wonder how long it takes the Wall Street Journal to follow suit.

Sad New Year

Last note of the day, from Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, who manages to quite capture my own feelings about the direction we've taken over the past five years (a period that has seen me move from Seattle to Western New York):

I confess that, looking back on this recent American past, I find myself deeply saddened. If that note seems unduly grave, or partisan, for this festive week, apologies. In truth, few Americans seem happy with what we are becoming. The expansive sense of historic open-endedness, so palpable across all political divides a mere five years ago, as the year 2000 was dawning, has been replaced by a national claustrophobia, with the growing suspicion that we are hedged in by walls of our own creation.

Yes, fear and a sense of victimhood understandably stalked us in 2001, but instead of shaking those alien feelings off, we used them to construct an emergency garrison, from which we take aim at others, but which, also, is turning out to be our self-made brig. ...

Only five years ago, the uncharted future was spread before us. We were an optimistic and confident people. Our firm membership in the global community was as clear as the televised sequence of midnight celebrations - Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Delhi, Johannesburg, Paris - that circled the earth at the glorious millennium. Watching that rotation on an axis of joy, the only "homeland" we wanted was the very planet, and our "security" was everyone's. The human family was never more aware of itself than that night, and we Americans were never more a part of it.

But this year, what a lonely nation we have become. And to how many fewer peoples are we the tribune of hope. How like exile is our "homeland," and what is "security" if it depends on suspicion of those who are unlike us?

That part about the new millenium celebrations got to me. Carroll might be overstating his case there, at least a little. To be honest, we in Seattle felt pretty much like we'd been left out of the world's celebration in 2000 - Seattle mayor Paul Schell had cancelled the city's Space Needle celebration after fears of terrorism had gripped the city (not to mention the millenium computer bug that never happened). How stupid we felt as the rest of the world (and, tentatively, the rest of America) erupted in joy. How sad that that same cloying, deadening fear that gripped Seattle in 1999 has now gripped the whole nation ... and threatens to drag it down.

Berlusconi quits AC Milan: Conflict of interest?

So it seems that Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi will have to remove himself from one more part of his media-culture empire: He's being forced to quit his role as president of Italian football club AC Milan. It's all thanks to a new Italian conflict-of-interest law that prevents him running any private interest while in office. The BBC notes that "Berlusconi has been Milan's president since 1986, winning four European Cups and seven Serie A titles." Still, like everything else with Berlusconi, it seems he won't allow himself to get too far from the action, since according to the BBC there are reports that the position will go to Berlusconi's son, Piersilvio, who "is currently the deputy chairman of his father's media empire Mediaset." Like Rupert Murdoch, Berlusconi believes in keeping things in the family.

The trouble with all this is, of course, that Berlusconi's whole prime ministership has been one massive conflict of interest. As CNN pointed out, he and his family own Fininvest, the company that controls three commercial TV channels belonging to Mediaset (Italy's main private network). Berlusconi is also able to bring heavy political influence to bear on the public RAI network, as a Time Europe makes clear. What's more (from CNN): "The Berlusconi family empire is vast, from telecommunications to insurance and building. It [still] includes top football team AC Milan, the Mediolanum bank, Italy's largest publishing house Mondadori, leading daily newspaper Il Giornale and the popular news magazine Panorama." Berlusconi was quoted in 2001 (when he was up for reelection): "'Let people decide whether there is a conflict of interest or not,'" Berlusconi replies. 'There's parliament, which is a sovereign judge, there's the press exercising its right to criticise -- not to mention the Italian court system.'"

Fine, but Berlusconi owns or controls the media, and practically all the broadcast media. Conflict of interest? Well I know I've made my mind up about whether there's a conflict or interest!

Mess O'Potamia, again

Another must-read article - this time from Doug Ireland in LA Weekly to remind us about the U.S. media's desultory role in explaining what's really going on in Iraq. He recommends (as have many, many others) that Americans:

Spend a week watching the news broadcasts and TV magazines of the BBC, France2 and Deutsche Welle, all available on many U.S. cable systems. The footage of dead Iraqi babies and children — victims of U.S. attacks on "terrorists" — that you will regularly see on European public television is rarely aired on U.S. networks. The regular interviews in Iraqi hospitals with doctors recounting the slaughter of the innocents that show up on European news broadcasts aren’t often seen on the all-news cable networks here, let alone on the Big Three broadcast nets’ newscasts.

I'm sorry; I don't like giving the U.S. media such a hard time without a break, but given their horrible track record to date, it's really hard to find someting positive to say about the coverage. What's more, many on the right are also consistently critical about war coverage, though for different reasons. This contributes to a toxic ennvironment where some erstwhile neocon supporters of the war such as William F. Buckley have come out against the war, while the National Review's William Kristol, is increasingly critical of the way the war's being fought by its sponsors (e.g., Don Rumsfeld). It's interesting to note that the latest round of Rumsfeld-bashing only emerged after a planned and controlled "pseudo-event" (a Rumsfeld pep talk to the troops) took an unexpected turn when a soldier decided to ignore the script. Just for once we got to see something real in a war that is incessantly scripted for U.S. public consumption. You can bet that we won't be allowed to see that scene played out again on TV - not if Rove et al have anything to do with it. And the media will go along, as always.

How not to cover a tsunami

As Der Spiegel correctly points out, Western media, with their focus on tourists and early warning systems, are "failing to give proper focus to the poverty-stricken locals hit by Sunday's Indian Ocean tsunami." The magazine notes two big problems. First, there is of course the constant media focus on western tourists -- including gripping first-hand blog accounts placed on BBC and CNN web sites -- instead of local residents, who are (as ever) lumped into the "thousands of dead". Second, and less obviously, there's the misplaced media attention on the lack of a sophisticated coastal early warning system in the region. Why misplaced? Well, apparently U.S. officials did have advance warning about the impending tsunamis, and "tried in vain for an hour and a half to warn the region that disaster was about to strike" -- but they didn't know who to contact. The point is underlined by a US NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) official, who expressed (surely in frustration): "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world." This leads the magazine to conclude, "It wasn't the lack of wave-measuring buoys that doomed thousands in the region, it was the lack of system of communicating the danger" to the people who live in the danger zone. The trouble with this conclusion is that it doesn't suggest a simple, high-tech solution to the problem (which Westerners, and especially Americans, are pretty good at handling), but rather a complex organizational-cultural solution (which Americans are not so good at effecting).

Fox goes for the low ball yet again

Oh dear, Fox is at it again -- this time for its latest reality show, "Who's Your Daddy?" How does this work? As Media Guardian describes it:

In each episode a young woman wins $100,000 if she guesses her biological father correctly from a line-up of eight men that she meets in the course of the show. If she is wrong then one of the fake fathers pockets the money.

Solid family entertainment, no? Apparently a single mother is at the heart of the campaign to get the show axed. I can't believe one of the Big Gun Guardians of our "Values" hasn't taken up the challenge to lead this campaign (PTC, where are you?). The LA Times, for example, is up in arms, but honestly, why are people still shocked by this? Can't they understand that this is the free market, and this is supposedly what the market wants? Of course, if people don't watch it, then the market will ensure the show will be dropped, and fast. Otherwise, get used to it. That's the process when you chuck out the notion of public service obligation. Fox is very good at doing that.

Anyway, Media Guardian also notes:

Fox is in trouble with another of its reality programmes. Two weeks ago Wife Swap producer RDF announced it would sue Fox TV for at least £10m, claiming another of its reality shows was a "blatant and wholesale copycat" of its hit Channel 4 series. RDF director of programmes Stephen Lambert claimed the Fox show, Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy, was the "most clear-cut case of copyright theft in the history of the reality genre".

Copyright law is supposed to protect copyright holders from appropriating the "look and feel" of a product. That's a very vague standard, but we'll see if this suit goes anywhere.

Ethical journalism or Shattered Glass?

So what is good journalism? It's a bit of a puzzle, and I know I don't have all the answers, but I can see a few pointers out there. I gave what I think is one part of the puzzle -- about oppenness and transparency -- in a previous blog, quoting Tim Porter (who also left me a kind comment). I think another significant piece of the puzzle is about professional ethics. I was thinking about this the other day after I watched again the movie "Shattered Glass" (Dir. Billy Ray, 2003), about the gross dereliction of journalistic duty perpetuated by New Republic scribe, Stephen Glass. This brings me to Bill Moyers, who completed his last "NOW With Bill Moyers" show on PBS before Christmas. Moyers got to the ethical heart of the matter in this speech he gave to the Society of Professional Journalists at their conference on Sept. 11, 2004 (reproduced in Alternet). he notes that the job of journalists "remains essentially the same: to gather, weigh, organize, analyze and present information people need to know in order to make sense of the world." He goes on:

You will hear it said this is not a professional task – John Carroll of the Los Angeles Times recently reminded us there are "no qualification tests, no boards to censure misconduct, no universally accepted set of standards." Maybe so. But I think that what makes journalism a profession is the deep ethical imperative of which the public is aware only when we violate it – think Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, Jim Kelly. Ed Wasserman, once an editor himself and now teaching at Washington and Lee University, says that journalism "is an ethical practice because it tells people what matters and helps them determine what they should do about it." So good newsrooms "are marinated in ethical conversations...What should this lead say? What I should I tell that source?" We practice this craft inside "concentric rings of duty and obligations: Obligations to sources, our colleagues, our bosses, our readers, our profession, and our community" – and we function under a system of values "in which we try to understand and reconcile strong competing claims." Our obligation is to sift patiently and fairly through untidy realities, measure the claims of affected people, and present honestly the best available approximation of the truth – and this, says Ed Wasserman, is an ethical practice.

Moyers goes on to state something that is only too obvious to anyone who cares about good journalism: "It's never been easy, and it's getting harder. For more reasons then you can shake a stick at."

Euro 2004 is King of the World!

Media Guardian notes the findings of a ViewerTrack report (from media agency Initiative Worldwide) that shows the Euro 2004 final easily eclipsing the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games "to win the title of the most watched sporting event of the year." The final, between Portugal and Greece (Greece won in a huge upset), was watched by 153 million TV viewers around the world. The audience spike was helped by a huge rise in the number of Asian viewers. The report notes that this cements "football's place as the most popular sport in the world."

Most popular everywhere, it seems, except the USA. In this country we couldn't even get the final -- or, for that matter, any of the group matches -- on free TV. All the matches were on Pay-TV, which is of course something that deeply offends my European public service sensibilities. When my partner and I were in Boston in June to see a Red Sox-Phillies game, we stopped into the bars along Boylston Avenue to see if we could catch a Euro 2004 match. Every bar was charging $20 for a seat. "Get stuffed!" or something to that effect was my response. The weekend after -- the weekend of the final -- we were in Ontario for a friend's wedding reception. Now while neither he nor his lovely bride were into footie (plus they had other things on their mind!), it was clear from the Canadian press, and from conversations with people up there, that people were treating the Euro 2004 final quite seriously, especially when it turned out that Greece and Portugal were in the final. There are huge communities of Greeks and Portuguese in Toronto, and their enthusiam was seeping out into the broader Canadian public sphere -- unlike the US, where the vast majority of people simply had no clue what was going on in the Iberian Peninsula.

I'd also had a positive Euro 2004 experience in Canada the week previously. I'd landed at Toronto airport from Scotland (waiting for my flight back to Rochester) just in time to see the England-Portugal quarter-final. I watched the match in a bar, and later got to see the end of extra time, including the “silver shot” component and the penalty shoot-out. We watched it on an airport bar TV just past security, with a large group of various nationalities –- none of whom seemed to particularly want England to win! It was a tough game, no doubt – Sol Campbell should really have been given that headed goal right at the end, but hey, whatareyagonnado? England were truly gutted as they went out on penalties against Portugal. Write up another page to England's “we wuz robbed/the world is against us” litany, going back to Maradona’s Hand of God, Beckham being sent off against Argentina in '98, England cursed during penalty shootouts, all that stuff.

Anyway, never mind England; the broader point is that even at the airport, everyone was really into that game -- including the Canadian airport staff, most of whom were of Greek, Italian, or Portuguese (or Scottish) heritage. A lot of them are like myself -- not huge football fans, but certainly very happy to get involved in the big matches, even when their own country/team isn't involved. I'm left wondering once again why it is that football/soccer is not treated seriously in the States. Why is it that the world's most-watched sporting event of 2004 can be no more than a tiny blip on the radar screen of the world's most powerful nation? What's it going to take to make the USA a true soccer nation -- and will television ever break its fascination with Major League sports just a little, to let in the true world game?

Simply Having a Wonderfully Tacky Christmastime

Well, I'm going to hazard a guess that I won't be able to put an entry in my blog tomorrow, since it's Christmas Eve and we have to drive six hours to get to my partner's family's home in Pennsylvania. Yes, it's that time of year again, where we have to deal with Christmas. Actually, as members of the biggest Consumer Empire in history (that is, the U.S.A.) we've had to deal with Christmas since late October; naturally this bugs me rotten. Here I am, trying to be a serious media scholar, grading papers and getting my manuscripts published so they can be read by six or seven like-minded scholars who give a damn ... and Christmas keeps butting in with its lights and ads and jingles ... you just can't ignore it! I'm forced to align myself with comedian Lewis Black's exasperation. Black, as a very lapsed Jew (I'm a very lapsed Presbyterian), has been heard to exclaim, in one of his Comedy Central specials: "How long does it take you people to shop!?" (Btw, thank you, Viacom, for giving us Comedy Central, and showing you don't completely suck!) So I guess I think Christmas is a pain! Fact is, I don't get into Christmas until really really late, i.e., when my partner and I grab a(nother) glass of wine and turn on the telly at 10 p.m. on Xmas Eve to watch the 1951 version of "Scrooge"/"A Christmas Carol", starring the wonderful Alastair Sim, aired every year on WHYY (Philadelphia/Wilmington Public Television).

So Christmas is just terribly tacky, that's established -- apart from Alastair Sim and WHYY, of course. It's American capitalism gone mad! But here's the thing: There is a country where Christmas is even tackier than in America. As my partner never tires of pointing out, that country is Britain. In fact, when it comes to pure, utter tat, British Christmas knocks the Yanks into the dirt. (I would love to make an argument that the Scots do all this a tad better than our English friends, but really it's just as bad; the main difference is that Scots make a bigger deal out of New Year, which is much much better in Scotland than in England or the States). Anyway, where was I? ... tacky, tacky, tacky ... Oh yes, it's forever mystifying that Americans associate Christmas in England with Dickensian snow, frosted windows, happy carollers, cherubic children, chestnuts on an open fire, all that. But of course it's not like that at all! That's all bollocks, really! Brits open their pressies, eat Christmas Dinner, maybe watch the Queen, then sit round the telly and drink till they pass out. Then it's Boxing Day and no-one knows what the hell to do with that day. OK, so they eat Christmas leftovers, sit round the telly and drink till they pass out. Maybe there's football on. (Actually, there will be football on.)

But it's all good, because it's still all wonderfully tacky (and that's where Brit-Xmas still beats the US version -- with the wonderfully bit). In terms of what they laughingly call "Christmas," Brits have for decades enjoyed/suffered/gotten away with all the following and more: Christmas Pudding; Santa's Grotto (complete with very dodgy Santas); Morecambe and Wise; tacky shops with ugly paper "50% OFF SALE" posters covering all the glass windows; trendy Vicars; getting drunk and then puking up at Christmas Service/Mass; bone-dry Turkey and stuffing; Noel Edmonds up the Post Office Tower (on BBC); crap wine; Cadbury's Selection Boxes; "The Snowman"; Blue Peter Advent Crowns; Beano and Dandy annuals; "Noel Edmonds' Christmas Presents" (on BBC); Oor Wullie and -- in alternate years -- The Broons annuals (OK, that's just in Scotland); the Queen's Speech (boooo!); Sharon Osbourne's Alternative Christmas Speech (ummm, yayyyy?); Christmas Crackers; the Bond Movie; Tunnocks Snowballs (oops, Scotland again!); and of course, rubbishy Christmas number one hit singles. And talking of rubbishy Christmas number one hit singles, perhaps the best movie to watch to get a sense of just how wonderfully tacky British Christmases are, is 2003's Richard Curtis Brit-Disneyland fantasy, Love, Actually. This is the film where Bill Nighy, playing an aging pop star, shows just how low the Brits can go. Harrumphhh! Country's going to the dogs!

Another challenge to the FCC

As the year comes to a close, it's gratifying to hear another example of how the FCC is no longer able to automatically smooth the path for its corporate friends without stirring up some serious opposition. The latest example of a corporate media owner actually feeling serious resistance by citizens' groups concerns Media General, an owner of 27 newspapers and 26 television stations across the U.S.. Now Media General is in the strange position of owning both a broadcast outlet and a local newspaper in multiple cities, including Panama City, Fla., and Florence, SC. But wait! you exclaim. That's not allowed! Well it is if you get a waiver from your friendly FCC that bypasses long-standing cross-ownership rules. As Broadcasting & Cable explains, "FCC rules have allowed Media General to operate the combos despite the ban on local crossownership. Because acquisitions of newspapers don’t typically need approval of any regulator, a TV owner may buy a paper in one of its markets and operate it until the local station’s license is up for renewal." But now it's license renewal time in Panama City and Florence, and of course Media General thinks it would be very nice to renew its license waiver (which would give them another eight years of cross-ownership). So, no problem, right? After all, Michael Powell's FCC doesn't seem to mind bending the rules for Big Media owners, right? Well actually there is a problem -- thanks to the Media Access Project (MAP). This group (along with with Common Cause and Free Press) is challenging Media General 's license (and waiver) renewal. This will be a tough fight for MAP in this deregulatory environment, but if the group succeeds, Media General will have to divest itself of the newspaper if it wants to renew its broadcast license. This will be interesting to watch. Every TV station in the country has to renew its license within the next three years, and more and more corporate owners are applying for waivers. It would be a really good idea to nip this sort of thing in the bud. Cross-ownership rules are there for a reason (I'll come back to this later), and it's about time the FCC were reminded of this.

What can blogging teach traditional journalism?

The Benton Comm Policy Listserv led me to First Draft by Tim Porter (Ink-stained Kvetches about Newspapering, Readership & Relevance), who asks: What can blogging teach traditional journalism? Here's what he's come up with:

1) Be more personal.
2) Let the public in on news decision-making.
3) Be more focused and intentional -- stop trying to be everything to everybody.
4) Print the truth, not just the facts.
5) Don't just report, teach... Become a resource and not just a product.
6) Be more local.
7) Give readers access to source material (like the full text of interviews).
8) Add multiple RSS feeds to web sites. (Here's a description of what RSS is.)
9) Add email addresses to stories.
10) Learn to change in response to the flow of news or market conditions.

Free speech takes a hit ... OK?

The Washington Post notes that the State Department has removed Al-Manar, "one of the most popular television networks in the Arabic-speaking world," because it has been designated as a supporter of terrorism (because it is run by Hezbollah and is militantly anti-Israeli). It has been placed on the Terrorist Exclusion List because of what the State Department describes as "incitement of terrorist activity." What a Terrorist Exclusion List designation means is that "foreign nationals who work for the network or provide it any support can be barred from the United States." But my favorite bit in this article is the State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher's insistence that "It's not a question of freedom of speech ... It's a question of incitement of violence." Well, actually, in legal terms incitement to violence is a pretty high standard for the government to prove. An inciter has to pretty much be jumping up and down in front a rabid mob outside the White House, shouting "Let's burn the place right now!" before he meets that legal standard. At least that's what the U.S. Supreme Court case ruled in Brandenburg v. Ohio.

Anyhoo, that's still not the point. Maybe Al-Manar should be banned. It was banned in France -- though the current U.S. administration could never use a French precendent as a rationale for anything. Maybe they should. Hell, maybe I'd ban a channel like Al-Manar (I'd have to check it out first to make sure). So the U.S. State Department is banning it. Fair enough (maybe). They just shouldn't try and argue that it's not a question of freedom of speech: it certainly is! But you know, sometimes you do have to ban certain types of speech, for the greater good, and you have to be able to admit that that's what you're doing. That's why some types of speech are restricted by international law (e.g., racist propaganda -- see the UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination). The U.S. bans obscene speech and child pornography; it's not terrible to argue that we need to ban incitement to racial hatred (and terrorism). Just be honest about what you're doing!

Actually, my real favorite bit is where the Post quotes Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, a newspaper in Dearborn, Mich. Siblani, who points out that al-Manar is popular in this country in part because of its strong support for "resistance against Israeli occupation," expresses his frustration with the decision thus: "I disagree with the State Department that it incites violence," he said. "By that standard, they should shut Fox News for inciting violence against Muslims."

Ban Fox? Whaddaya think?

Invisible Labor Secretary

I noted a while back the difficulty labor unions have in getting their voices heard on network TV -- even when they're willing to pay for the privilege. David Swanson in Truthout points out another facet of Labor's invisibility in Bush's America: the lack of coverage in the U.S. media of the Labor secretary, Elaine Chao. Chao is one of the few cabinet-level re-appointments for Bush's second term, but I bet you haven't heard about this (in fact, 10-to-1 you haven't even heard about her). The basic point of the article is not that Chao has received excessively favorable media coverage; rather that she's received essentially no substantive coverage at all! The wife of powerful Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, Chao is seen by the media as a "safe bet" for renomination, and her status as an immigrant is a point of note -- but that's about it. She's certainly no friend of American labor, but the deeper issue is that she just doesn't get covered. It's like the media just don't care about labor issues. In fact, it's clear they don't! I like to point out to anyone who'll listen that almost every major newspaper has a large business section, but never a labor section -- yet many more Americans work for a wage than own stocks and shares. Why is that? What do we even have a labor secretary for? Now that's a quesion ... .

There goes Slate

So the big news is one of my fave online mags, Slate, is leaving the Microsoft fold and being sold to The Washington Post Group. The New York Times notes that Steve Ballmer, "Microsoft's chief executive since 2000, has spearheaded a move to spin off businesses that are not part of the company's core software development operations." Current editor Jacob Weisberg will stay in charge.

I do like Slate. It's been around since Michael Kinsley came to the MS main campus in Redmond, Wash. in 1996 (the same year I worked there) to start up an online magazine with a political focus. (I still remember the naff Newsweek cover, titled "Everyone's Moving to Seattle," with Kinsley in a Sou'Wester, holding a salmon and grinning inanely: just awful.) This was back when Microsoft was in its short-lived "content is king" phase. Kinsley got Parkinson's disease and gave up the editorship, but he keeps going, and so has Slate. (Here's a good Seattle Weekly article about the history of the mag). Well, it's eight years later, content is definitely no longer king at Redmond, and loads of online magazines have come and gone, yet incredibly Slate has survived. But Ballmer and Bill Gates have finally gotten sick of the thing. I hope things don't change too much in Slate-land.

Oh, btw, I need to exhale and exclaim: "Slate. Boy, eight years! Time flies!" Yup.

Redefining PBS: Give 'em gobs of cash?

Fresspress.net republishes an article on the financial future of public service broadcasting -- and specifically an attempt by PBS to create for itself a permanent trust fund from the government auction of the spectrum that is currently being used for analog television (broadcasters are supposed to give it up by about 2008 or 2009 -- though no-one's quite sure exactly when -- as they move permanently to digital broadcasting). The Freepress.net article describes this as "an endless Holy Grail-like quest since its founding in the 1960s: to secure ongoing and independent funding for noncommercial radio and TV." It goes on:

For decades, public TV and radio have been buffeted by political forces of Congress, which controls the key federal contributions to its annual budget. It's always been kept on a very short funding leash, which has helped keep both PBS and NPR from engaging in the kind of programming that would significantly challenge the status quo (both of media and of politics). But PBS President Pat Mitchell believes that there is now a serious opportunity to create a permanent trust fund worth billions of dollars. The new funding initiative will recommend how PBS (and presumably NPR and public TV and radio stations) can gain the revenues made possible from the sale of publicly owned airwaves.

The key question is, what would PBS do with this massive public windfall -- especially when so many people have in recent years suggested that PBS doesn't know what to do with the system it's got now? As the article points out:

For example, before any discussion of raising new revenues, we should be assured that the spirit of the original mission of public broadcasting is fully honored. Where is the commitment to producing serious news and public affairs (both at the station and national level)? How will significant programming slots be controlled by persons of color (at a time when Tavis Smiley, for example, is quitting NPR for its failure to "meaningfully reach out" to a multi-cultural audience)? How much of the schedule will be controlled by independent producers? Will ad-like underwriting vanish from PBS, especially its news and children's programs? How will the governance of public broadcasting change so it becomes more democratic? What new innovative programming ventures will be created that can harness the more than 2,000 digital channels soon to be available to public TV?

Funnily enough, these are just the kinds of questions (though not of course the exact same questions) currently being asked by Lord Burns in his BBC Charter review. Certainly, public largesse should require careful consideration about how broadcasting should best serve the public. Of course, the same thing should apply to commercial broadcasters using the public spectrum ... shouldn't it?

Framing Social Security

Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times discusses the media-political battle for framing the emerging battle for Social Security "reform". The article includes a report of a House Democrats' "closed-door session to discuss strategy," where they

heard George Lakoff, an expert on political communication at UC Berkeley, give a sober assessment of how Democrats were at a disadvantage because Republicans had successfully set the framework for the debate. For years, conservatives have been broadcasting messages that lay the groundwork for revamping the program, relentlessly arguing that Social Security is unsustainable. Democrats have not successfully countered with the view that the program is in good health and sustainable for decades to come with relatively minor modifications. The result: Polls show that huge majorities of Americans lack confidence that Social Security will meet their needs in retirement. An often-cited 1994 survey found that more people between the ages of 18 and 34 believed in UFOs than believed Social Security would exist by the time they retired.

George Lakoff is a linguistics professor at UC Berkeley, and an expert in language and framing in politics. He has assumed a higher media profile of late, esepcially as he has become more closely identified with the Democratic Party. For example, back in July, he appeared on NOW With Bill Moyers, arguing that the Republicans have won the battle of framing public issues with terms such as “tax relief,” “common sense forest management,” etc. – plus of course “death tax,” “pro-life” etc. Lakoff is very effective at making an argument I agree with: That the battle for political supremacy in this country is a battle for media agenda-setting and framing, and for a long time the conservatives have been doing this far far better, while the liberals have sat on their laurels. That has to end. I hope more and more people on the left are listening closely to Lakoff.

LOTR Return of the Last Movie

We went over to RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) with friends last night to watch the newly released "The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King" (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition), on DVD. We were lucky enough to be able to watch it in a screening room, on a widescreen overhead projector, for a near-cinematic experience (although we did have the advantage of being able to hit "pause" for potty breaks and when the pizza delivery guy showed up!) Now I'm a big Tolkien fan from way back, and I've absolutely loved the Peter Jackson trilogy -- like a true geek I've been following its development since long before the first movie, "The Fellowship of the Ring," came out in December 2001. (Here's a very early press release, from August 1998, though I didn't catch wind of it quite this early). But I followed along on the web -- I remember the controversies over the dropping of Tom Bombadil, the replacement of Aragorn, and the expansion of Liv Tyler's Arwen character -- oh, it seems like only yesterday). We queued with great excitement to see the first screening of "Fellowship" on opening night in Geneseo, NY; then we watched it again in Rochester, and again. "The Two Towers" followed in December 2002, which we saw at Rochester's Tinseltown. And it's now almost exactly a year since we saw the cinematic release of "The Return of the King", with the same friends, again at Tinseltown, the best place in the area for the Big Cinema Experience! Well, this year we've all been having withdrawal symptoms at the lack of a new "LOTR" adventure. This new DVD release has a wonderful 50 minutes of additional scenes, which was great, and the setting for our screening was great, but it still wasn't quite the same as having a whole new movie to look forward to. And next December there'll be ... absolutely nothing. Oh well. At least we still have plenty of DVD commentary tracks to look forward to!

But of course all hail Peter Jackson for making such a wonderful trilogy, and for making me desperate to go back to New Zealand. And yes, kudos to Bob and Harvey Weinstein at Miramax for making it happen. Now we just have to hope that Jackson can make a go of his remake of "King Kong", currently being produced by Universal Pictures and Jackson's own NZ production company, Wingnut Films. And of course there's still the chance of a Jackson production of The Hobbit.

Fallujah: The movie

Looks like Hollywood's getting ready to fight the Battle for Fallujah (the March 2004 battle, not the most recent venture) all over again. CNN reports that Universal Pictures is "developing what would be Hollywood's first feature film about the war in Iraq, with actor Harrison Ford ready to portray a U.S. general in the movie." Harrison Ford? Oh right, he must have finally got that promotion he's been looking for since he played Colonel Lucas in "Apocalypse Now", which was set in, what, 1969? Wow, so it's taken Ford 35 years to make it from colonel to general in the U.S. Army! Bit slow, there, Harrison.

Blockbuster drugs

So now it looks like Pfizer-produced Celebrex is joining Vioxx as the latest "blockbuster" drug to come under suspicion for being, well ... dangerous to its users. Lots of media talk about how we have to do something about these drugs, but the FDA's in a shambles, etc. The real problem, folks, is not the drugs themselves, but the marketing of the drugs. Ever since August 1997, when the FDA relaxed its rules for "direct-to-consumer" advertising on television, things have gotten dodgier. Very quickly, the US was flooded with drug ads in Prime Time (and the US became, with New Zealand, the only country in the world that allowed this). Now drugs are marketed like major Hollywood movies -- hence the term "blockbuster". Only mass-marketing drugs is a very different proposition from mass-marketing the latest piece of Hollywood rubbish. ("Blockbuster," btw, was originally a term applied to huge WWII bombs, 5,000 lb and over, carried on RAF bombers and big enough to destroy entire city blocks). Drug companies wheel out new drugs that might or might not be marginally better than existing (and much cheaper) drugs, and then hawk them as new "wonder drugs" -- relying on massive marketing and advertising campaigns. By the time we find out there might be a serious problem, the industry has already seen to it that millions of people are using these drugs. Just rubbish!

Media sections take a hit in UK press

Oh no! The Guardian media section reports that The Financial Times is cutting its pullout weekly media section, Creative Business, just four years after its ambitious launch. The Guardian notes that the FT's "decision comes two months after The Telegraph closed its media section and in the same year The Times decided to downgrade its media coverage on Fridays." Apparently these special sections aren't drawing enough advertising support -- which is, after all, the only reason the press puts these things together (what, you thought it was in response to reader interest?) So I guess media sections aren't as sexy for advertisers after all. Oh well. Fortunately, Media Guardian looks like it's not going anywhere ... for now.

Professional "bias"

There's a good piece in The Guardian (reprinted by commondreams.org), about the link between journalistic professionalism and an inevitable pro-Government bias (or "framing"). The piece, by David Edwards and David Cromwell of media lens, even references well-known critical structuralist scholars such as (in the U.S.) Robert McChesney and (in the UK) James Curran and Jean Seaton, authors of the widely read and very good Power Without Responsibility. Inevitably, the piece tears into the U.S. media coverage of the Iraq War, but it even has a go at the supposedly more critical UK papers, The Guardian and The Independent. It also gives some very useful -- and little-understood -- media history.

The modern conception of objective reporting is little more than a century old. There was little concern that newspapers were partisan so long as the public was free to choose from a wide range of opinions. Newspapers dependent on advertisers for 75% of their revenues, such as the Guardian and Independent, would have been regarded as independent by few radicals and progressives in, say, the 1940s. Balance was instead provided by a thriving working class-based press. Early last century, however, the industrialisation of the press, and the associated high cost of newspaper production, meant that wealthy private industrialists backed by advertisers achieved dominance in the mass media. Unable to compete on price and outreach, the previously flourishing radical press was brushed to the margins.

And the the kicker: "just as corporations achieved this unprecedented stranglehold, the notion of professional journalism appeared." The historical context is important here. You can argue all you want that professional journalism is good or bad; but you can't argue about how and why it got started. It got started in order to help publishers make more money.

Stern's safe! So's Pay TV

Good news for Howard Stern fans. The FCC isn't going after satellite radio for indecency. Broadcasting & Cable note that because satellite radio (i.e., XM and Sirius, which is where Stern is going) are subscription services they aren't regulated like terrestrial over-the-air radio; they're allowed much more latitude (much like Pay TV on cable and satellite). Apparently, L.A.-based Mt. Wilson FM Broadcasters had asked the FCC to modify its "Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service Rules to include an indecency provision analogous to that for over-the-air broadcasters." That's not going to happen. This is very important for those Pay TV providers, for as Multichannel News points out, any extension of indecency rules to pay radio could set the stage for also spreading them to pay TV-land. That would mean no more naughty words or bared (female) nipples on HBO or Cinemax!

The Next Media Debate? Will this one be for real?

There are so many things about which I disagree with the current Bush administration/Republican majority; and so many things about America that drive me mad. I know how hard it is to convince people in the States about, for example, the desperate need for national (yes, socialized) health care - not least because the last time it was floated, by Clinton in 1993, the media and the political system combined, in typical American fashion, to make a huge hash of presenting it to the American people. But that was something new. When it comes to social security, that's something that most Americans really like, and have done for seven decades, but which the current administration wants to effectively abolish (if not immediately, then certainly in the long run). Democrats CANNOT let that happen. Not if they want to call themselves Democrats. I sign on to Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo piece about the need for the Democrats to unify and refuse to give an inch on Bush's mad social security privatization plan. If the Democrats - or even a few of them - buckle, the media will immediately buckle with them, and we will be presented with a Republican fait accompli that closes down serious discussion on this very serious issue. This will happen, just as surely as it happened with the dreadful media coverage of the Iraq situation in the run-up to that war. Only if the Democrats really unify as an effective parliamentary-style opposition - since that's all that's left to them in Washington - will there even be a chance for anything like a serious media debate about this topic. Time to get some backbone, Democrats! (fish or cut bait; crap or get off the can - all that good stuff). You're now a Loyal Opposition, so start acting like one! That means you're either vehemently against social security privatization or you really really want this to happen; there is no middle ground! Sorry, but there isn't. People here need to learn how to take a stand on what's important. Unfortunately, the mainstream media in this country will never get backbone without the politicians going first.

Sinclair vs MoveOn.org

So everyone's been talking about the Sprint-Nextel merger, or the $500 million that Time Warner's paying "to settle wide-ranging criminal and civil allegations that its America Online division improperly pumped up revenue" prior to the AOL-Time warner merger in 2001. Fair enough, but what, I ask, about the Sinclair-MoveOn bunfight - that's where the action's really at! (Right?) Yesterday we heard that a liberal-leaning coalition, headed by MoveOn.org, was mounting a campaign against the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, and especially its commentary section, "The Point," helmed by Sinclair spokesman and chief lobbyist Mark Hyman. "The Point" has been widely criticized by liberals and moderates for its conservative, pro-Republican bias. And you might remember Sinclair as being at the center of the whole controversy over its anti-Kerry swift boat documentary scandal in the weeks before the election.

Well it seems that Sinclair's Hyman has a response for MoveOn. It's not quite "Piss off!" but it's close. Hyman is quoted in Broadcasting & Cable as saying, "As soon as MoveOn.org allows me to use their e-mail lists and post to their Web site, maybe then we will have a conversation." Fair enough? you ask. Well no. You see, there's this thing where Sinclair's stations are supposed to be licensed trustees of the public airwaves - that's the trusteeship model, and it's supposed to mean something. And in fact, the law recognizes a clear difference between web sites, which can say pretty much what they want, and broadcasters, who are supposed to operate for the public good (after all, they broadcast over a public resource: the spectrum). That's why Hyman's attempt at equating his medium with that of MoveOn is a non-starter. He's not allowed to have access to someone else's web site without their permission. However, we as the public should have some sort of access to the public media outlets that are supposedly run by private interests in our interest! That is also the principle behind the Supreme Court case, Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission (1969), which upheld the FCC's Fairness Doctrine (and which has never been overturned). Of course, the Fairness Doctrine was allowed by Congress to die in 1987 - a decision I vehemently disagree with. But even if the Fairness Doctrine is dead (well, dormant) the basic trusteeship principle is still intact (or supposed to be). And we haven't gone so far down the deregulatory path that media owners can propose moral, legal, and functional equivalency between a web site and the public airwaves. No way! Hyman also contends that his commentaries are "just public discourse" and cover a range of issues. More likely he already conceives of his TV stations in the same way as talk radio: hopelessly biased and proud of it! It's no way to run a public service!

Anyway, the anti-Sinclair campaign is being run through a special website, SinclairAction.com.

Private Ryan is saved ... on TV

I'm glad to see that FCC chair Michael Powell is, for once, showing some sense in recommending to his four fellow commissioners that the FCC reject indecency complaints against ABC television stations for airing the film "Saving Private Ryan" on Veterans Day. Sixty-six ABC affiliates actually refused to air the uncut version, fearing reprisals for showing "profanity and graphic violence" from the FCC, which has been cracking down on broadcast indecency. But 159 stations went ahead and aired the film uncut, arguing that the language was an essential part of the movie, and necessary for retaining the accuracy of the film. Fortunately, sanity prevailed ... this time.

Raymond Williams

Jim McGuigan, a Professor of Cultural Analysis and Sociology at Loughborough University in England, offers an interesting appraisal of Raymond Williams, one of Britain's foremost cultural studies scholars, in the online journal Flow. Williams is still one of my favorite scholars - maybe because, even though he was writing about a Britain that I only barely remember as it was fading away, his work still seems very relevant to today's world; or maybe I'm just nostalgic. But whenever I see someone writing anew about Williams, I pay attention.

For some more background on Williams, check out this overview at The Museum of Broadcast Communications (museum.tv) in Chicago.

Carlin at Snowy Syracuse!

Our Big Outing this weekend was to sunny Syracuse (just kidding - it snowed the whole way there and back!), to see George Carlin strut his stuff at the Landmark Theatre. The Landmark is one of those wonderfully ornate 1920s-era movie theaters that you still find around Western New York (there's another in Buffalo - Shea's Performing Arts Center, we went to earlier this year, to see "Raiders of the Lost Ark"). Anyway, Carlin was not too shabby - better anyway than the first time we saw him, at Rochester's Auditorium. He was a bit more political-satirical this time (though perhaps still not satirical enough, given the crazy state of the world today). There was the Carlin mix of old stuff and new stuff - he was also pushing his new book, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops. I like Carlin's outlook on the world - he's kind of a glass-is-half-empty guy when he observes what's going on around him. I can get behind that. Certainly nothing that's going on today has convinced me that Happy Days are Here Again. That's why I get depressed when Ms. Goddess and myself head down to the local coffee shop every Sunday to read the Sunday New York Times. How depressing - and I have to read this stuff! Might as well take the opportunity to get the occasional belly laugh out of all the misery and stupid shit going on around us!

New coach for UW

The football program at my alma mater, the University of Washington, has been mired in mediocrity and controversy of late. Rick Neuheisel, the "golden boy" coach who was hired with great fanfare in 1999, was later kicked out after being involved in a very embarrassing betting scandal. To make matters worse, Neuheisel is suing the UW for wrongful termination (the trial starts next week). Since then the Huskies have gone from bad to worse - they lost 10 of 11 games played this past season, including all their Pac-10 games; that's a record for sucking, especially for UW, which sees itself as a traditional football powerhouse. Now it looks like they're about to start on the road to recovery, by hiring former Notre Dame coach Tyrone Willingham - UW's first black coach. He'll replace Keith Gilbertson to become UW's third head football coach in four years (I guess I'm glad I missed those seasons!). An announcement is due early next week.

BBC radio sci-fi drama still rocks!

After taking my eye off the ball, I'm now keeping a close eye on developments in BBC radio sci-fi drama -- especially the latest radio dramatization of Douglas Adams' last three Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books: "Life, the Universe and Everything"; "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish"; and "Mostly Harmless". These have apparently already been dramatized as two new radio series (which form the so-called "Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases") on BBC Radio 4. (The first has already been broadcast and is now available on CD - a possible Crimbo pressie, I ask myself?; the second will be broadcast in May 2005). I'm a big Douglas Adams fan from his early radio dramatizations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the late 1970s.

Also on the sci-fi radio front, Steve Coogan is slated to make a new Radio 4 drama series, Nebulous. According to The Guardian, the series is "set in 2099's post-apocalyptic England." Produced by Coogan's Baby Cow company, it's "the story of Professor Nebulous, the director of eco-troubleshooting organisation K.E.N.T. -- the Key Environmental Nonjudgemental Taskforce." Sounds intriguing!

Our debt to Bill Moyers

The Nation notes America's debt to Bill Moyers, for my money one of the best journalists on television, and one of the very few still willing to take on tough issues. He'll be sorely missed when he leaves the show he started, PBS's NOW with Bill Moyers, on Dec 17.

PTC not happy with FCC numbers

I noted the other day the FCC claim that the Parents Television Council has been filing nearly all the indecency complaints filed with that agency. Since I last mentioned the PTC, things have moved on. Now it seems that the organization wants a "congressional investigation of FCC accounting practices; the group says that the FCC is undercounting the number of complaints it receives about indecency" from that group. Apparently, though the PTC is not concerned about the impression that it filed the vast vastmajority of complaints, just that the FCC is supposedly still undercounting the number of complaints sent by the PTC. Yet Mediaweek reported that the FCC "last week estimated it had received 1,068,767 complaints about broadcast indecency so far this year," and nearly all of these came from the PTC. So in other words, if I get this right, the PTC is annoyed that they are only portrayed as accounting for 99.9% of all complaints, when it should account for, what ... 99.999%?

What would Madison do?

A commentary piece in the Center for American Progress puts the case for public control of the media very well.

The nation’s founders, particularly Madison, believed that it was important for the public, not merchants, to own and support the major media distribution mechanism of the day – the post office. Public ownership of media remains an important part of U.S. communications policy, but going back as far as the days of the robber barons and the trusts battling against Teddy Roosevelt and Louis Brandeis, corporations have sought to diminish public media.


While most of us rely on corporate media (the New York Times, Verizon, Comcast, NBC, etc.), publicly-owned media continues to struggle for the place the founders established for it. This struggle is illustrated by two seemingly different examples. One involves the future of public broadcasting; the other involves the efforts of the City of Philadelphia to provide its citizens with an alternative means of communication.

As I continue to teach, work, and live in the United States, I am constantly reminded how much the thoughts and opinions of the founders of this country – and the powerful, 18th Century founding documents they produced, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – have been co-opted by powerful late 20th century business interests, to the detriment of the common people (or “regular folks,” as Bush calls them, i.e., us). We need to keep hold of positions such as the one outlined above, because I think that it better represents the spirit of Madison, Jay, Jefferson et al. Flawed individuals that they were, I can’t believe that the founders would have signed on to the present-day corporate agenda as it stands. They recognized the need for an expansive public media realm. I only hope more people today come to recognize, as Sen. John McCain does, the need for that public realm to thrive.


(Sen. McCain (R-Ariz), btw, is heavily involved in media regulation through his position as chair of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee - see also McCain's Commerce Committee press releases.)

Libraries live to fight another day

Much as I worry that libraries will someday forget that information can still be of value when it's in printed form, I still applaud those wonderful librarians (the best people on earth, really!) for constantly pushing the information-for-all envelope further into cyberspace. That's why I'm heartened to read a New York Times Technology Section article about the New York Public Library's expansion into digital downloading of information, including E-Books and even movies. As long as we can have fair and reasonable public access to information on a borrower basis -- in electronic as well as digital form -- I'm happy. But I'm constantly worried by industry attempts to restrict fair use, including a long-term goal to limit access to digital information to a pay-per-view basis (thereby rendering the library's free-loan/fair use model unsustainable). That's why I'm also happy to see that, with the end of Congress's current legislative session, the industry has actually failed to get their way, with the demise of an omnibus intellectual property package (see also the Public Knowledge press release on this issue.

The air war in Iraq

I like Tom Engelhardt's piece in Mother Jones about America's air strikes in Iraq -- and the lack of media attention to "the loosing of air power on heavily populated urban areas" in that country. This is kind of a big deal. We're talking about F-16 jet fighters and helicopter gunships here. It's a great example of the way in which the supposedly "independent" media can report on a story, but in a very limited way, and absent any framing by journalists of this issue as morally questionable (to say the least). That's why Engelhardt can say, quite seriously, that this is "the great missing story of the postwar war." It is surprisingly easy to "bury" information within the media flow -- just by de-emphasizing it and placing it in an acceptable frame. Even when an Iraq story "breaks" big -- think Abu Ghraib -- it very quickly gets de-emphasized and placed in an acceptable frame. This might change, a little, if there is a real ground shift in elite opinion about the conduct and necessity of the war. Just don't hold your breath.

Those darn Commies in the NFL

Daniel Gross over at Slate points to the long-running saga of Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer's attempt to buy Manchester United Football Club. This saga has become increasingly bitter. I like this article for a lot of reasons -- I don't want to see this corporate raider take over Man. U, any more than I wanted to see Rupert Murdoch buy the club a few years ago ... and I'm definitely not a Man. U supporter (I'm not even English). I'm not sure why, but my reaction might have something to do with the persistent notion I have that the Yanks (including ex-Aussie Yanks) should just stay the hell away from European football (just as Europeans should flee from "American Football"). It's like worlds colliding. Anyway, the most compelling point about this article is not about Glazer, or Man. U, or the Premier League itself, but rather the comparison it makes between NFL and the English game. This point's been made before, but it bears repeating:

The NFL is socialism for billionaires, with revenue splitting and a salary cap. The enforced parity ensures that a few teams don't dominate the league year after year. By comparison, [English] soccer is a class-based system. The clubs are sorted into different divisions. There is no salary cap. And the wealthiest and biggest clubs—Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool—constitute a sort of permanent nobility.

Yes, on one level it sounds like a load of bollocks, but it retains the essence of truth. Meanwhile Gross points out that "Man U. fans have had a fun time painting Glazer as the owner of a mediocre team in a grotesque sport that has the gall to call itself 'football'. And owning an NFL team is seen as nothing like owning a Premier League club." All true. But the pull quote above stands on its own.

Parents Television Council, FCC complaints, and the unions

I'm really starting to get worried about the emerging climate of censorship in this country's media -- and I'm not just talking about Howard Stern's travails. The whole thing was certainly kicked off by Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction", but it's taking on a much more sinister dimension. Three things, just from today's news: While the LA Times reports that Los Angeles broadcasters are rejecting an anti-syphillis public service ad for being too "lighthearted", the International Labor Communications Association notes that American broadcasters are increasingly rejecting ads from unions, who have never got a fair break from broadcasters to start with. Then Mediaweek discovers that the Parents Television Council, an activist group, was resposible for 99.8% of all indecency claims filed with the FCC in 2003, and 99.9% of all indecency claims filed since the CBS Super Bowl halftime show this year. Yes folks, 99.9%! One artists' rights advocacy spokesman is quoted as stating the bloody obvious: "It means that really a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio.” Trying?


Last word to the unions:

This unfair and unbalanced practice [of rejecting union advertising] is, of course, not reported on by the media. Rejecting union ads or any other ads (except political campaign ads) is perfectly legal, and no explanation for the decision to reject a particular ad is required. But ad sales executives are completely open about their motivations. If, they say, an ad from a union will be viewed negatively by a corporation that buys more advertising than the union does, the union ad gets rejected. Thus the collective wealth of working people cannot compete in our "democratic media" against the wealth of corporate owners unless the union spends as much as the corporations – and even then ads can be rejected or required to become corporate friendly.

Long Way Round

I finally got to see the final episode of Bravo's series "Long Way Round", about Ewan MacGregor's and Charlie Boorman's epic four-month round-the-world bike journey. (We watched it last night after going to see John Waters's frankly unsatisfying "A Dirty Shame"). This was better. I thoroughly enjoyed Ewan and Charlie's bike show, probably because, like so many others, I saw something of myself in both characters, though my partner definitely sees me as "Ewan" -- I wonder why. :-) Kudos to NBC-Universal-owned Bravo for putting on something interesting for a change; I've long since tired of the shenanigans of the "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" gang.

Even Bigger Media

While on the subject of Big Media, let's not forget industry attempts to get around the courts - especially a certain Philadelphia appeals court. The Benton Foundation notes that the New York Times will be running a series of short articles, including one on the media, which "focuses on Big Media and efforts at the FCC to allow for Bigger Media." It goes on:

In the coming weeks, the largest media conglomerates and the FCC will decide (how?) to appeal the Philadelphia federal court decision that threw out the FCC's 2003 attempt to loosen media ownership rules. The new rules would have allowed the same company to own up to three television stations, eight radio stations, a cable operator and a newspaper in the same market.

This is coming down the pike. Watch this space. Btw, for an excellent overview of the "Uprising of 2003" (when more than 2 million citizens rose up to complain about the FCC's attempts to relax media ownership rules), see chapter 7 of Robert McChesney's The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communications Politics in the 21st Century. (And no, I'm not getting a kick-back for sales of his book!) :-) You can also check out NOW With Bill Moyers for more information on media consolidation.

Telecommunications Act a bust?

The New York Times reports that Congress and media industry executives think they need to overhaul the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the "eight-year-old landmark law governing the nation's telephone, cable and media businesses ... because, they say, it has already become outdated by new technology and industry trends." It's interesting to note that the country survived from 1934 to 1996 with the previous Communications Act (which, although amended and revised from time to time, remained the cornerstone of U.S. telecom policy for more than 60 years - in fact, it remains the basis for the 1996 act). The Times report notes that the 1996 law is outdated, and fails to take account of new technological developments (such as phone services over the Internet); it quotes one industry analyst as saying "a train wreck is approaching, and that there need to be some changes." Perhaps the more fundamental point is that it was such a flawed bill to begin with. The trouble is, the previous bill was written in a dominant deregulatory environment, largely for the narrow interests of private, commercial media owners, rather than the broader public interest. Nothing has changed. If today there is "no consensus" about where the rewrite should go, that's surely because there is no consensus among those commercial interests about how best to make money out of us, the Poor Bloody Consumers, in the rapidly changing media-technological environment. Under these circumstances, I suppose it would be too much to ask the current government to draft a bill that pushed commercial interests to one side and looked to the public interest first, wouldn't it?

Is Bob Novak really such a dick?

Well maybe. Read Amy Sullivan's piece (originally in Washington Monthly) and see for yourself. This is an excellent overview of the whole sick Valerie Plame situation, involving a government witchhunt of journalists and their sources - and of how Novak seems to be able to fly over the BS that envelops his less well-connected colleagues, such as Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.

Of course, federal prosecutors going after journalists is a much bigger issue than teflon Novak. While on the subject, CNN's Lou Dobbs reports that "up to ten" U.S. journalists are under threat of going to jail for refusing to reveal their sources. Yes, this is a bona fide assault on the First Amendment. Journalists need a federal shield law, and now!

Magic 8 Ball World of Politics

CJR Daily (the Columbia Journalism Review's web successor to its election-era Campaign Desk), notes how articles in today's New York Times dealing with rumors about Bush's ongoing cabinet reshuffles are, well, completely lacking in , errr, solid information. This is a segment they are calling Cabinetstakes, which describes "highly speculative, anonymously sourced stories with one thing in common: From them, readers learn next to nothing." They focus their ire on an article by Richard W. Stevenson. I'll let you read CJR Daily's analysis, but I do like their conclusion.

Readers would do just as well consulting a Magic 8 Ball: Will Snow depart "eventually"? "Signals" point to yes. Will Snow go "sooner rather than later"? Affirmative, according to "hints." Will Snow go "as soon as Bush decides" on a replacement? Unnamed insider says it is so. Is Bush "close" to deciding on Snow's replacement? Reply hazy, ask again later.

Diane Rehm and the indexing of Iraq

The U.S. is increasing its Iraq troop commitment from 138,000 to 150,000 (much too little, much too late), and more and more, the media - and, more importantly, the elite sources with which they index the coverage of this issue - are coming to the realization that this country is involved in a ... what's the key word? .... Oh yes, "quagmire"! Latest example of how the steady shift in elite opinion is panning out is NPR's mainstream-yet-excellent Diane Rehm show. Rehm (based at WAMU in Washington, DC), spent an hour on this morning's show covering the war - again - with some pretty decent guests, such as Julian Barnes, Pentagon reporter for "U.S. News and World Report"; Ivo Daalder, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, co-author of "America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy"; and Maj. Gen. Bill Nash, U.S. Army-Retired, senior fellow and director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. None, repeat none, of these guests seemed to be following the standard Bush administration/neocon argument for why the U.S. is in Iraq. And again, Rehm is mainstream, not an obviously liberal-left-aligned media commentator such as Amy Goodman. It's all going pear-shaped, it was all going pear-shaped 18 months ago, and it'll get even more pear-shaped before this is all over.

BSkyB to lose football monopoly

Before I cancelled cable last month, I would occasionally watch a European football match - usually from the English Premier League - on Fox Sports World. Fox had its pick of games mainly because they did a deal with the English Premier League back in 2001 that gave them an effective monopoly on the broadcast of these games in Europe. I now note with satisfaction a (partial) reversal suffered by News Corporation - specifically, its English Premier League coverage on the pay-satellite service BSkyB (Sky Sports). In case you didn't know, BSkyB has been doing everything it can to retain its monopoly in the face of attacks from the European Commission. Of course, BSkyB's deal means that millions of fans in England who don't have access to its satellite services can't watch their teams live. The EU Commission in Brussels has been trying for years to force BSkyB to open up their nice little deal to more competition from terrestrial broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV. Finally something seems to be happening, though it won't happen overnight. The commission has announced that the current state of affairs is in fact illegal, and it will force the break-up of BSkyB's exclusive deal when it comes up for renewal in 2007. Now this means that the English Premiership clubs could lose millions because they won't rake in as much cash as before. They might even have to cut back on player salaries. I guess my response is simple: Tough! European football, just like American major league sports, needs to come to terms with the notion that there are limits to how much money you can have sloshing around sport. What's more, if we want to keep football available to audiences for free, we have to make it cheap enough for traditional public service broadcasters and their terrestrial commercial counterparts to bid for games.

BBC Look North?

Guardian columnist Peter Preston uses his column to have a go at the BBC's strategic decision to move big chunks of its organization - primarily sport and children's television - away from Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush (the BBC headquarters in West London) up to Manchester. He thinks it's far too expensive - at GBP500 million - and a result of the muddled thinking of Mark Thompson and Michael Grade (who took over from, respectively, the much-loved Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davies as director general and chair of the board of governors). Preston's deeper concern, though, is that the money will be utterly wasted as, in time, the Beeb's core functions are pulled back South by London's immense gravitational pull on all things cultural in England (a force that, among other things, pulled the Guardian itself to London from Manchester). Much as I hate to say it, but he's probably right.

However, the most fundamental point Preston makes elaborates on what I was talking about in a previous post, about the trouble with the BBC's funding mechanism. He suggests: "In five years, Lord Burns or his government-appointed successors may conclude that BBC funding can't sustain the new hubs and services just finished in Manchester. Perhaps they won't like whatever deal has been struck on the governors and will seek to uproot it again. Perhaps the Tories will be in power." He continues:

And none of this has anything to do with bricks, mortar and the ability to chart a course. None of it helps an institution we could easily help by guaranteed licence fee and lengthened charter if we wanted to, for barely the price of a new ID card. Give power and resources back to the doctors and nurses, but take it away from the programme makers? Grant greater autonomy to classrooms, but not studio floors? Welcome, alas, to the Blair-blurred, British-bodged Broadcasting Corporation.

UCC versus the ad-men and the nutters

You might be aware of NBC's and CBS's decision to ban an ad from the United Church of Christ. The ad "is a 30-second spot that depicts two burly male bouncers standing guard outside a church and choosing who will be allowed to pass a velvet rope and enter. Among those turned away are two men holding hands and several nonwhite people." The ad goes on to suggest that the UCC doesn't discriminate against such people. The Boston Globe (where the previous quote is from) also quotes Robert J. Thompson, the director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, who probably has the most sensible comment to make on this. Says Thompson: ''They [the networks] don't want to do anything that could possibly incite boycotts or advertiser pullouts. And I could see why network TV would be uncomfortable airing an ad with a benign message, because what happens when a less benign message, perhaps from a fringe religious group, comes along?" Sensible, yes, but also quite sad. It's like so many things with free speech in this advertising-besotted media system: How can we keep the progressive stuff in the public sphere while keeping the advertisers - the only people who really matter - happy, and also keeping the nutters at bay.

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Another big media event on tonight (one I hope to get to see eventually) is the (Time-Warner-owned) HBO premiere of "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers". This biopic, co-produced by HBO Films and BBC Films, looks like a good 'un. It's got Geoffrey Rush playing the brilliant Sellers. As a kid I loved Sellers' "Pink Panther" films, and I even recall getting a kick out of his Goon Show sketches (with Spike Milligan, Michael Bentine, and Harry Secombe), which were already well old by the time I was growing up, but which were tremendously influential to British comedy. But I suppose my favorite Sellers outing has to be Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove". Back in August I had the privilege of introducing a screening of "Dr. Strangelove" at Rochester's Dryden Theatre, part of the George Eastman House. Here's what I had to say about Sellers' performance(s).

Practically from the start, Sellers was a shoo-in for "Strangelove."  Columbia Pictures, who had financed "Lolita" and was now bankrolling Kubrick's new project, was pressing for Sellers to play a major role.  Thankfully Kubrick, notorious for his desire to control every aspect of his films, concurred ­ to the extent that he found not just one role for Sellers, nor two roles, as Sellers had played in "Lolita," but three: President Merkin Muffley, the nasally Leader of the Free World; Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, a Royal Air Force officer on secondment to US Strategic Air Command (Motto: "Peace is Our Profession."); and of course, the not-quite-so-former Nazi scientific advisor to the President, Dr. Strangelove.

Certainly the rest of the cast also performs excellently , and this is one of those films where everyone is on top form. George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, and Keenan Wynn, all play their senior officer roles to perfection.  Slim Pickens, as the B-52 bomber pilot, is unforgettable - his final scene is perhaps the signature for the film.  And look out for a young James Earl Jones as a B-52 crew member.  But ultimately, of course, when it comes to the acting, it's Sellers' film.

There are so many choice moments in this film, so many absolutely wonderful lines.  If this film is a favorite of yours, I won't bore you with repeating them; and if you're seeing it for the first time, I won't spoil them.   But I think I can tell you that my favorite bit is the confrontation between the Peter Sellers's Group Captain Mandrake - ever the rational, stiff upper lip RAF officer ­ and Brigadier Gen. Jack D. Ripper, the American base commander, who's lost his mind - this is where the "precious bodily fluids" line crops up, you might have heard of even if you haven't seen the film. 

"Wizard of Oz" in color ... sort of

Here's the kind of TV/movie trivia I love. This is provided by Matthew Lombard at the MMC listserv (run through the Mass Media & Communication doctoral program at Temple University). Lombard notes that the Time Warner-owned WB network plans to screen "The Wizard of Oz" in high-definition television (HDTV) on Sunday, Dec. 19. The funny bit, though, is Lombard's recollection that when the movie "was first shown in 1956, many viewers who had just purchased color TV sets flooded CBS, which carried it, with complaints when the opening sequence came on the air in black and white."

"Sideways" is brilliant!

Sometimes I interact with the media just for fun - like last night, when I went with my partner Lori to see "Sideways", which was playing at the Pittsford Plaza Cinema 6, near Rochester (one of our two favorite movie theaters, along with The Little). Brilliant, just brilliant! I loved Paul Giamatti, but the cast were all spot on! Btw (got my media critic hat back on now), this is another film brought to us courtesy of those nice promoters at Fox Searchlight. Much as I dislike old Rupert Murdoch, I have to admit his massive TransNational Corporation can be useful for some things (although not for importing Chinese cinema ... I'll explain another time.)

Blethen speaks!

The media/public interest advocacy group, The Benton Foundation, which produces an excellent daily roundup of media-related news, notes a piece by Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen that appeared in Maine Today. Even though Blethen is a “publisher and chief executive officer of The Seattle Times and a fourth-generation newspaper owner,” he still hates what’s happening with media consolidation today. Blethen, who was talking to a Portland, ME audience, noted that “Ongoing consolidation of media ownership threatens American democracy, ... because it saps investment in local journalism and stifles controversial coverage that conflicts with corporate interests.” Blethen apparently distributed a “written list” of “principles for reclaiming America's media.” The article goes on to note that Blethen's priorities would be:

to maintain current FCC rules, including minority ownership requirements and public service obligations. He also supports new legislation to ban companies from owning both television stations and newspapers in the same market. Radio ownership rules should be rolled back to 1996, when regulations were relaxed.

This last part, btw, refers to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which is probably the worst piece of media legislation imaginable. Anyway, this is not Blethen’s first shot across the media’s bow. He gained a little more attention back in September when he penned an anti-consolidation article in the Washington Post that began: “Democracy is in crisis -- not in far parts of the world but right here in the United States.”

I wonder if anyone is listening - outside of Portland, Maine, that is.

NBC's Nascar Nation News ... but what about the rest of us?

The New York Times's Frank Rich quotes NBC president Jeff Zucker who says of his network's new anchor, Brian Williams: "No one understands this Nascar nation more than Brian." This chimes in nicely, Rich notes, with NBC Universal chairman Bob Wright, who has just called America a "red state world." Welcome to the NBC nightly news of the future: A place where "blue America" doesn't count. So don't expect any much in the way of, ahhh, real journalism from these guys anytime in the next four years. Trouble is, as Rich notes, we still need strong journalism - willing to take on powerful interests rather than get in bed with them. But as the old, Watergate-era generation retires, it gets harder and harder to see where that strong journalism is going to come from. Certainly the bloggers can't do it on their own (dare I say our own)? One thing I'm sure of: journalism's standard bearer won't be Brian Bloody Williams!

Keeping Our Facts Straight!

It's a month on from the election, so it's a good time to look back and try to view that crazy time objectively. Not that we can ever be truly "objective," especially in this year's poisoned political climate, but it's worth it to try ... and few places try harder than Annenberg's FactCheck.org. This organization has just released its definitive list of the political advertising "Whoppers of 2004" - a "summary of the misinformation we found during the Bush-Kerry presidential campaign." Read it and weep! (Then pull yourself back together! There's another political bun-fight coming down the pike in less than two years!)

Not very French at all

You know, in some ways I'm glad that the French go to such lengths to preserve the integrity of their film industry. But then I wonder ... The Guardian notes that the latest collaboration between Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and the director's amazing star Audrey Tautou has hit a rocky patch in La France. Seems that according to a French court, the new film, the much-anticipated A Very Long Engagement, really isn't French at all! The film, whose correct title is in fact Un long dimanche de fiancailles (Not French?) is set in France, has a French director, with French actors, all speaking French; but because they got a boatload of cash from Warner Brothers, the Court has ruled that film is in fact ... (gasp!), Americain! That means it can't grab about 3.5 million euros worth of French government funding. I don't know if that's a problem, but A Very Long Engagment is one of the most expensive French - sorry "French" - films ever made, so the producers probably could use the bucks. Thing is, the French film industry has slipped a bit in recent years - some even suggest L'exception culturelle is in crisis, as the Frenchies don't seem to be making movies that enough people want to see any more. I say, if you get a film project that's French and a potential hit (and a Jeunet-Tautou collaboration is about as bankable as you're going to get in France today) then just give them the damned money! We don't want our French stars baling out and making tracks for Hollywood, do we?

U.S. broadband woes

A recent report by the little-known but still-influential International Telecommunication Union states that the U.S. continues to slip down the world rankings in terms of broadband internet penetration - we're now down to 13th place. Not good for the country that's supposed to have the 3rd or 4th highest GDP per head. Perhaps one reason for this is that the big internet companies hate competition that might increase public access, but will also crimp their massive profits - especially when that competition is from cities and local municipalities trying to set up broadband access to the internet along public utility lines similar to telephone, water, and electricity provision. Big media companies such as Comcast, SBC, and Verizon are lobbying furiously to stop the development of public high-speed internet utilities. Without the establishment of such networks, I fear the information gap between rich and poor in this country will only get wider. Internet penetration is already plateauing in the United States, while it reaches saturation coverage in vibrant competitor nations, especially in Asia. The latest blow to public provision of broadband is in Pennsylvania, where Governer Ed Rendell (who I used to like) caved in to Verizon pressure and signed off on a law that will prohibit cities from setting up public networks without fiirst giving private companies (like Verizon) the opportunity to set up their own private service. Inevitably these networks will milk the rich and ignore the poor - that's been their practice in the past.

You might like to read the outraged response from Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy.