Judith Miller goes free--and why there's still a problem

New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been freed from jail, having agreed to testify to the grand jury investigating the events surrounding the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the press. Miller had been jailed for contempt of court after refusing to identify a confidential source. But she's been freed after a source - apparently it's Lewis "Scooter" Libby, VP Dick Cheney's chief of staff - lifted his confidentiality arrangement and agreed that she could discuss their conversations. So, a reporter gets out of jail-that's great, right?

Well, not so much.

It was back in early July that Miller was jailed by a US court for refusing to testify in an investigation into the unmasking of CIA agent Valerie Plame in 2003. As part of the grand jury hearings, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald successfully pressed the issue and got his way. Fitzgerald has been aggressively "investigating who in the Bush administration told the press Plame - the wife of former US ambassador who had criticised the president - was a CIA agent. Ms Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, had earlier criticized President Bush over evidence he had presented to justify the assault on Iraq. Mr Wilson later alleged that his wife's name was deliberately leaked in order to discredit him." (It turned out that the source was none other than Karl Rove himself.)

While Cooper went to jail, Time's Matt Cooper was let off the hook - supposedly - after he apparently "received a 'somewhat dramatic' message from his source telling him he was free to testify." In a disturbing move at the time, Cooper's bosses at Time had even given up Cooper's notes to the special prosecutor by that point.

(Here, by the way, is a useful overview and timeline of the affair, courtesy of the BBC. Also, see here for an AP report that also includes information on Robert Novak's shady role in all this.)

The consequences of these developments could be serious for American journalism. The pursuit of journalists to reveal confidential sources - combined with the lack of a federal shield law to protect journalists - is likely to place a "chilling effect" on robust media debate of contentious issues in the United States. The BBC quotes Bill Kovach of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, who "alleges that the case is part of a trend in which the government has sought to control the press's ability to cover its behaviour." States Kovach: "'There have been concerted efforts, especially by the Bush administration, to reduce the availability of information and to tone down the aggressiveness with which the press pursues it. . . . This is not just attributable to 9/11, but it appears to be a continuation of three decades of efforts.'"

Still, as I noted back in April, although part of the problem lies with the current administration, the press itself has to shoulder some of the blame. The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof reminded us about the pressures on many journalists to reveal their sources - not only Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, but also Jim Taricani, a less-well-know NBC television journalist, who was finally freed in April "after four months of house arrest for refusing to reveal his sources."

As Kristof pointed out, "the climate for freedom of the press in the U.S. feels more ominous than it has for decades." Now it would be great if there was some outpouring of public support for an embattled press - something like the groundswell of public outrage that greeted the FCC's 2003-2004 attempts to roll back media cross-ownership rules. But that hasn't happened. In fact, much of the public thinks the press a.) has too much freedom, and b.) abuses that freedom. Kristof noted some stunning poll results that I have commented on many times. E.g., the Pew Research Center's "Trends 2005" report, which shows "that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing in their daily newspapers, up from 16 percent two decades ago." Then there's the study by the National Opinion Research Center that has "measured public confidence in 13 institutions, including the press. All of the other institutions have generally retained a good measure of public respect, but confidence in the press has fallen sharply since 1990." And then there's the USA Today survey of 112,000 American high school students, which showed "that 32% of them believe that there is too much freedom of the press, versus 10% only who believe that there is not enough. Even worse, "no less than 36% would prefer that the media be subject to government authorization beforehand." And the results of that poll seemed in line with other recent studies of adult attitudes.

Of course, the press itself has to take much of blame for its dwindling credibility. But at the same time, that doesn't help. No matter how messed up our major media institutions are, and how poorly they serve the citizens, it's still much more dangerous when people give up on the media and accede to the principle of greater press restriction. And as for the First Amendment and the protection of the courts? Kristof correctly identifies just how flimsy these protections really are. He notes that while "Judges don't exactly decide cases based on public sentiment, . . . their decisions do reflect the values of their society. And in our society, public support for the news media has all but evaporated." And he reminds us: "The safety net for American journalism throughout history has been not so much the First Amendment - rather, it's been public approval of the role of the free press. Public approval is our life-support system, and it is now at risk."

It's not just Murdoch investing in the Internet ...

While News Corporation boss Rupert Murdoch has been prominently investing in internet media firms, he's certainly not the only one. Other big media corporations, including Viacom and Time Warner, are also pursuing aggresive interent acquisition strategies. The Benton Comm Policy listserv notes a Wall Street Journal piece (Story here but requires registration) that highlights how all these corporations "are spending billions in a spate of acquisitions and aggressive Internet initiatives, and are likely to keep on spending." Why are they doing this? In a nutshell, it's the fear of being left behind by new media as audiences migrate to the internet--potentially prompting advertisers to jump ship. The piece goes on:

Some hope to directly challenge the giant portals like Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. -- Web sites that serve as gateways to the Internet. Others are transferring some of their most valuable content to online sites, even though that risks alienating their traditional distribution partners. Although it's too soon to say whether the media industry's latest approach will bear fruit, the companies are finding some areas more fertile than others. They have been investing heavily in youth-oriented Web sites, like gaming, and less in areas like prime-time entertainment programming that is still a cash cow for the television networks. They're also mostly avoiding the pay-per-view model, which hasn't yet gained traction online.

How worried should the media corporations be? Quite worried, if a new report from the Center for Media Design at Ball State University is to be believed. The study, reported by the Christian Science Monitor, tracked "the behavior of 394 ordinary Midwesterners for more than 5,000 hours, following them 12 hours a day and recording their use of media every 15 seconds on a hand-held device." It found that people were involved in some kind of media interaction for more than two-thirds of their waking hours. About 30 percent of this time "was spent using media exclusively, while another 39 percent involved using media while also doing another activity, such as watching TV while preparing food or listening to the radio while at work." TV watching remained the most popular media activity, taking up about four hours of every day for about 90 percent of those studied.

But what about the interent? Well, three-quarters of the subjects used a computer--typically for more than two hours per day--and most of that time was spent on the internet. The report notes: "As, over time, the computer becomes a vehicle for more rich media content (often related to TV programming), the line between the two media is likely to blur further, calling into question the TV-centric mindset."

And the lesson for advertisers:

You'll need a "holistic" view of media. "If you're advertising in one medium, you can complement the message by combining it with another medium" [vice president for Time Warner Global Marketing Jane] Clarke says. "The findings suggest creative ways to combine and package media for advertisers to get their messages to consumers."

Advertisers might want to look more closely at less-conventional forms, such as computer software and mobile phones, as new advertising media, Bloxham says. Overall, the study concludes, "From an advertising perspective, there is good news and bad - both an array of new media outlets along with the challenge of more outlets competing for attention."

Defining media broadly, including mobile phones, was definitely the right approach for the study, [director of the Institute for the Future Paul] Saffo says. "A cellphone is no longer just a communication device, it's a media device," he says, one on which people enjoy music, share photographs, and even view video clips, suggesting that the new industry might be called "Cellu-wood."

So the big media corporations are right to be worried. Keep on investing, guys!

BBC pushes internet TV

While U.S. TV networks still shy away from the internet, the BBC, Britain's public service broadcaster, is embracing it with open arms.

The Wall Street Journal took note last week of the BBC's moves to mainstream the Internet and integrate it with its broadcast activities. Aaron Patrick of the WSJ points out the Beeb's trial, beginning later this month, to issue its iMP (interactive media player) to about 5,000 selected UK viewers to allow them to download and watch most of the BBC's television content for up to seven days. "No other broadcaster has made so many shows available for download to computers," notes Patrick. He goes on: "The BBC hopes its iMP software will become the iTunes of Internet television, allowing viewers to customize their TV schedules over the course of a week."

Amazingly, the iMP uses peer-to-peer file-sharing/networking software similar to that designed for Napster and Kazaa (software that triggered a "music-sharing free-for-all" on the Internet). In this form of peer-to-peer networking,

iMP users will be required to share the downloads with each other. As programs spread from computer to computer, most iMP users will actually download them from other people instead of the BBC. That means the broadcaster won't have to buy Internet capacity to transmit large computer files to millions of people.

The BBC's move shows how far ahead it has moved from its U.S. counterparts in this regard. U.S. networks, fearful of what they've seen happen with musical downloads, have so far only toyed with internet television, and refused to make complete shows available for download (although of course countless TV shows are in any case illegally obtained off the Internet thanks to software such as BitTorrent). The BBC is trying to make the whole process legal and above board. Patrick quotes Nancy Cassutt, vice president of content at Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc.: "What the BBC is doing is what every network Web site here in America is trying to do -- discover what works online." It helps of course that the BBC, funded by the license fee (a form of taxation), doesn't have to worry about shareholders and making profits as it tries out this bold new experiment.

The trial should last for three months, and if it's successful (and why wouldn't it be!), Auntie "plans to make the iMP freely available in the U.K. next year, becoming the first TV network to show its entire schedule over the Internet."

But remember, you'll have to live in the UK to get this.

Can we avoid the ads any more?

Here's a piece of news I caught over the summer but never added to the blog: the rise of product placement on television. Product placement, or the practice of inserting advertising messages directly into a TV program, has been expanding massively over the past year or two. CNN Money notes that in 2004, the value of product placement on television increased by 46.4 percent over 2003, to $1.88 billion. Although product placement has always been around to some small extent on television, and the movie industry has been using it at least since the late 1970s, the current scale of product placement is something completely new. And it's being driven by TV producers desperate to squeeze out another revenue stream. The classic TV advertising model--of sets of 30-second ads interspersed between program segments--is quite simply maxed out: an hour of prime time already consists of 18-19 minutes of ads and promos, and you simply can't fit any more in without finally alienating the viewer. And in a world where TiVo users can just zap these ads at will (and most of them do), TV executives are worried. So they're responding by rushing to build ads in to the programming itself.

The CNN piece also notes that "advertainment" is not limited to television. "Video games, novels, movies, pop songs, music videos, Broadway plays -- every nook and cranny of the culture, it seems, comes preinstalled with product plugs. Or soon will." This is a process that's been going on for decades, but it has been getting steadily worse, as more and more of our cultural space--our public space--gets plastered with commercial messages. There are fewer and fewer places you can turn these days, without seeing an advertising message--and more and more of them are covert or hidden. But, notes CNN:

TV is a little different. Its broadcast channels are carried on public airwaves and regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, which lately has been taking a new look at embedded advertising -- and its potential for catching the audience off-guard. "I think product placements can be deceptive, because most viewers don't realize they're really advertisements," says FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein. "That's why there's a law that requires disclosure. The question is: How well are we enforcing it?"

The Incredible Shrinking Box Office, part II

Here's a topic I've been meaning to return to for some time: Hollywood's penchant for bad summer movies. It seems that more and more people are getting a little sick of it and avoiding movie theaters; and since I last brought this up, the summer slump has continued. With the summer season officially over after Labor Day, things look bad: box office receipts are down about 8-9 percent from the same period last year, and the number of tickets sold down about 11-13 percent (figures according to either CNN or Media Guardian, take your pick). In fact, U.S. summer movie attendance was at the lowest level since 1997.

Some films did alright. Top summer performer was George Lucas's final instalment: Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, which grossed $379.8m. Among the runners-up were Paramount Pictures' War of the Worlds and Warner Bros Pictures' Batman Begins. But at the same time, big planned summer blockbusters such as Michael Bay's The Island, Ron Howard's Cinnderella Man and Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven flopped.

So why the slump? Notes Media Guardian:

The box office slump has been blamed on everything from the narrowing window between a film's cinematic and video/DVD release to improvements in home cinema systems to high ticket prices. Or, if you take the word of John Fithian, who heads the US association of cinema owners, it's just because the films simply aren't good enough.

I have my own ideas. Earlier in the summer I wrote about the time my partner and I went to the movies (specifically Pittsford Plaza) to see the aforementioned Kingdom of Heaven (she's a big Orlando Bloom fan), and I was once again struck by how noisy some of the theater patrons were. As is often the case, too many theater patrons just can't shut up during a movie! This is especially true of the very young. Sometimes I shush people - and repeatedly - but as often as not that just doesn't work. So during this particular movie we took early evasive action by moving to the back of the theater just before the film started, so as to get some peace to watch the movie. Fortunately the noisiest ones were all toward the front, and it was a fairly big theater. Calm was restored, though at a price.

But things are undoubtedly getting worse with noisy, rude, and ignorant movie audiences. And Pittsford Plaza is in fact one of the less distracting places in this regard. (FYI: If you value audience silence during a movie, and live in the Rochester, NY area, then do not go anywhere near Regal Cinemas Culver Ridge, in Irondequoit. You will go mad.) But it's not just the kids: the previous month I had had to shush a older couple during a screening of Downfall (about the last days of Hitler). Now they were German, but that's still no excuse. National guilt about your embarrassing past is all very well, but that doesn't give you leave to blabber about it during a movie. I can watch Gandhi and squirm at the Amritsar massacre scene, but I don't need to announce to the audience, "That's terrible; on behalf of the British state of which I am uncomfortably a subject, I'd just like to say I feel really bad about that." It's not required. I think it's better to keep that to myself. So should you all. No matter how much you feel you have to say something during a screening - unless it's "My husband's having a heart attack, help!" - you really, really don't!

Anyway, as my exasperation increased I noted that summer cinema audiences were consistently down from the previous year, and many in the industry were (and are) worried that the future of big cinematic releases (the whole summer blockbuster "tentpole"/3,000-cinema big release thing) could be in jeopardy. Now there are lots of reasons for why this is happening, and EW helpfully gave us the results of an online poll asking respondents "What keeps you away from seeing a movie in theaters?" Here were their results:

28% The quality of movies — most of them suck
22% The ticket price
11% People in theaters are rude and annoying
9% The DVD is out in a couple months anyway — I can wait
3% I hate sitting through all those pre-movie ads
26% All of the above

I think you can guess which of the above options I would respond to (though "All of the above" is also worth seriously considering.)

The fact is, that for people like me, the big suburban multiplexes have become almost uninhabitable - populated with hordes of noisy kids who can't differentiate between watching a DVD at home (when some discussion is allowed) and watching it in a theater (when it manifestly is not!) Yet these are the very people that the studios chase after with their blockbuster movies. Now I like to see the odd Big Dumb Movie myself - but increasingly, I have to avoid them by retreating to the boutique alternative theaters (the Little, the Dryden), or else reconsider the financial necessity of that 42" plasma screen HDTV for the DVDs!

What's an ageing prof to do!?

(PS If you want to read the inside scoop on how the movie studios are still able to make boatloads of money, in spite of the theater slump. read this piece by Edward Jay Epstein in Slate.com.

Murdoch hedging his political bets in US?

Tina Brown, the British-born American magazine editor, columnist, and talk-show host, is not one to shrink from off-the-wall statements. Late last week she was at it again. Writing in the Washington Post, Brown made a bold claim that to most Americans would seem really incredible: that conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch could switch his allegiance to the Democrats if he felt it was in his business interests to do so. In a piece titled "Rupert Murdoch, Bending With the Wind," Brown notes Bush's sinking poll numbers and the unexpectedly strong performance by "liberal" CNN in its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She also notes "Recent friendly meetings between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Murdoch, recorded in the New York Observer" that just could "be early signs of embryonic bet-hedging" by the media veteran.

Really? How far can we take this? Can we really countenance the possibility that, come the next Presidential election, Murdoch's empire might turn from the Republicans and toward a Democrat--even Hillary?

To address that question, Brown tries to illuminate something about the basic instincts of this enigmatic man who has proved to be perhaps the globe's greatest media buccaneer . . . and survivor. She points out: "Less publicized than Murdoch's fierce political conservatism--undoubtedly his private conviction--is his readiness to turn on a dime when it's commercially expedient. That suppleness is one of the things that make him such a formidable opponent. Nothing distracts him from his business goals--not ideology, not friendship, not some inconvenient promise, not even family."

Need a historical exemplar? There's a good one back in Brown's native Britain. Tina reminds American readers of Murdoch's volte-face in 1997, when he shifted his media empire's support from John Major's hapless conservative government to "New" Labour's up-and-coming Tony Blair. Could he be planning a similar shift in the US--taking a leaf out of his UK playbook? Perhaps.

No one in London believed that the Sun, Murdoch's rabidly Thatcherite tab, would ever support the Labor Party. But in the 1997 election Rupert was quick to spot Tony Blair's rising star. The tabloid cowboy editor, Piers Morgan, kept a diary of working for Murdoch while editing his scandal sheet the News of the World and wrote a book that rode the bestseller list all summer in Britain. "The Tories look like dying donkeys," he notes in a diary entry in August 1995, "and Blair is starting to resonate with the public as a fresh, dynamic, viable alternative. Murdoch doesn't back losers and he is talking in a way that suggests he might ditch the Tories."

Brown goes on to cite the comparisons frequently made between Murdoch and William Randolph Hearst, which she characterizes as often "misleading." Why?

Like Hearst, Murdoch was a liberal populist as a young man and moved far to the right in middle age. But Hearst, once he switched, kept his flag flying from the same ideological pole. When the vehemently anti-communist Rupert wanted to expand his television beachhead in Asia, he didn't hesitate to cancel a book contract by his HarperCollins imprint with the former governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, rather than risk alienating the Chinese. Bruce Page, author of "The Murdoch Archipelago," described to me Murdoch's outwardly authoritarian character as "fluid nothingness at the core -- less a matter of drives than lack of the containing structure found in normal people."

Add in a possible change-of-heart by Murdoch's right-hand man at Fox News, Roger Ailes, and you have a script that could--just possibly--lead to a shift in direction for Murdoch's empire. Remember, it happened in the UK eight years ago, and it happened overnight. The only question--at least for Brown--is whether the Republicans, like the British Conservatives, have really "started to look like dying elephants." Remember, Rupert doesn't back losers.

What to make of the MSM's "angry" response to Katrina

MSM news reporters are still showing high levels of concern and even anger in their coverage of the Katrina aftermath in New Orleans, as NYU professor and media critic Jay Rosen points out in his PressThink weblog (where he points to key pieces by Matt Wells of the BBC, Alessandra Stanley of the NYT, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, and Gal Beckerman at CJR Daily). But, he wonders, is it right for journalists to "get angry" and show their anger and frustration so clearly on air. Rosen thinks not--at least not all the time. As Rosen argues in his opening:

Spine is always good, rage is sometimes needed, and empathy can often reveal the story. But there's no substitute for being able to think. What is the difference between a “blame game” and real accountability? If you’ve never really thought it about it, your outrage can easily misfire.

This continuing anger is something that is causing concern in some quarters of the media. Although right and left were initially unified in their criticism of the federal government's response to Katrina, there are signs that conservative media commentators are growing restless over the media's emboldened (and angry?) stance. President Bush's statement that he will "take responsibility" for errors by the federal government seems to have caused more heartache among at least some of those on the right of the media spectrum. Stephen Spruiell, media correspondent for the conservative National Review, points to examples of what he calls bias by CBSNews and CNN in that journal's Media Blog. Sprueill seems to be particularly concerned with CNN president Jon Klein's statement that CNN will take a "more muscular" approach to covering political news. Perhaps Klein is emboldened by the apparently widespread public support for CNN's Katrina coverage. Anyway, here's Sprueill's response:

There's nothing wrong with being aggressive — or even "muscular", whatever that means — about getting answers from both sides, which Klein says will continue to characterize CNN reporting. Last week I noted several instances in which CNN anchors were tough on Democrats. But I also noted a few in which CNN went beyond the boundaries in order to make their coverage more "accusatory" than "aggressive". For one, Aaron Brown really twisted a Bush quote to make him sound out-of-touch. For another, CNN apparently coached a guest to "get angry" (although CNN denied it).

Sprueill then refers Klein (if he's reading this) to the Jay Rosen piece mentioned above. Sprueill argues that "News organizations don't need to be 'more aggressive' — especially when there's a state of confusion and no one has all the facts. Then you just get a bunch of people yelling at each other. They need to be more intelligent — putting the accusations aside and patiently but relentlessly gathering facts."

This is an interesting debate, and one that'll surely go on and on, given the scale of the Katrina story (not to mention the ongoing war in Iraq). If you follow the contention that the news media are finally doing their job and showing some backbone in critically covering the actions of those in power, and that this represents some sort of paradigm shift in media-government relations, can that new emboldened stance be articulated consistently to the public through professional journalistic values, or is it only to be expressed through anger? Can you have some appropriate balance between the two? What is that balance anyway, and can the news media maintain it over time . . . or not?

Thumbs up for news media

USA Today reports that Americans have generally given the news media a "thumbs up" for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. The paper cites a study by the highly regarded Pew Research Center. The study surveyed 1,000 Americans between Sept. 6 and 7, and found that 65% of respondents rated news coverage of the hurricane good or excellent (this compares with the 54% approval rating the news media received for its 2004 presidential election coverage). Not surprisingly, television-- and particularly cable television--was the main source of information. CNN was the most popular source, cited by 31% of respondents, compared with Fox (22%); local news stations (19%); ABC (14%); NBC (12%); MSNBC (9%) and CBS (8%). CNN also boasted of its lead in a full-page ad placed in today's (Wednesday's) New York Times. It still seems the case that CNN is the go-to news network at times of crisis, even though it is normally beat into second place by Fox.

The show of public support might explain the news media's increased willingness to challenge government authorities, both on the air and in the courts (the same article notes that CNN successfully "filed suit against FEMA in U.S. District Court in Houston Friday after government officials said the news media had no right to show pictures of Katrina victims. FEMA and the army later backed off that demand).

USA Today quotes Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, who expresses his hope that most or all news organizations continue to emphasize the story, with “each one synthesizing and adding to what others are learning. If only one or two news organizations do it, it won't have the same effect.” The question is “how many news organizations have the investigative muscle to handle a story this complex, and how many can afford to lose a team for the time it will take to do that, especially in TV,” argues Rosenstiel. “I fear the list of news organizations that can do that today is not very long. And sadly, it gets shorter if ad sales go down and other news pushes Katrina off our radar screens.”

One year ago . . .

With the media-related news dominated by Katrina coverage, I thought I'd turn to something I do from time to time just for variety: look at what was happening in the media world one year ago. With that in mind, here are some interesting studies and statistics (from Benton's Communication Policy online service) that were surfacing around September 13 last year:

• Intruigingly, USA Today was noting that Wall Street may be tiring of corporate media mega-deals. It quoted one portfolio manager as saying "Enough is enough. . . . We keep waiting for the cash to come in. When it does, it seems they always have to make new growth acquisitions. And the real return to investors hasn't been that great.” Big media companies are largely mature, like utilities, so the argument goes. If mega-deals aren't paying off, it makes no sense for companies to keep using their cash to build even grander empires. There's also a realization that: a.) There's a media glut, and companies are saturating the market with so many movies, TV shows and music albums that it's hard to justify making many more; b.) New technologies make many investments risky. Noted Benton's Communication Policy Listserv:
  
  TV producers and distributors could see their economic models collapse if millions of viewers get digital video recorders, such as TiVo, and use them to skip ads. Radio stations are grappling with Internet and satellite rivals. Music companies watch anxiously as more consumers skip high-margin CD albums to buy low-margin download singles to feed their computers and iPods. Cable operators worry that satellite companies will poach more TV customers, while phone companies continue to cut prices to lure high-speed Internet subscribers. The competition will intensify if phone companies make good on threats to offer cable-like video, or if electric utilities offer broadband over power lines. Broadband, meanwhile, could evolve into a cheap, new distribution network for all kinds of media -- including pirated movies.
  
  
• Broadcasting & Cable was discussing a little-known segment of the media market called "Nevers": 20 million people who don't subscribe to cable or Pay-TV. Most of these people can afford to pay for TV, but either choose not to, or just don't watch TV at all. A recent survey of 385 TV-free families by Eastern Washington University professor Barbara Brock "found that more than two-thirds of them are headed by adults between 31 and 50 years old with two or more kids. More than half the parents had college degrees and earned a combined annual income greater than $60,000."
  
  
• With the Presidential election season in full swing, a Media Tenor/Media Channel study of the big three networks' nightly news over the first 6 months of 2004 found that less than 5% of campaign coverage was devoted to candidates' positions on the issues. According to one commentator on the study, "The bulk of the coverage focused instead on horse race politics, candidate sparring and campaign strategy, depriving Americans of meaningful information on important election-year issues." This study joined many others that showed news media coverage of the political races to be seriously lacking--especially by local television.
  
  
• Forrester Research released a study on the behavior of TV viewers using digital-video recorders (DVRs). DVR users apparently spend 60% of their TV time watching shows they've delayed or recorded. More worryingly for advertisers, they skip 92% of the ads under those conditions. Overall, ad exposure drops 54% among DVR users. Although the research did find that 75% of DVR users watch some ads at least sometimes (with movie ads and promotions for upcoming TV shows scoring highest) they watched fewer than 10% of ads about credit cards, long-distance carriers, car dealers or banks. DVRs were as of a year ago in about 5% of US homes; Forrester expects penetration to reach 41% by about 2009.

Murdoch plans his assault on the Internet

News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch has been gathering his forces for the next step of his assault on the Internet. The Guardian's David Teather and Jane Martinson note that up to 45 of Murdoch's chief executives met this weekend near Carmel, California "for two days of private discussions on what he [Murdoch] has described as the company's highest priority: how to grapple with the threat and opportunity of the internet to the media empire he has spent a lifetime building."

Until this year, Murdoch's News Corp has been largely missing from cyberspace, in spite of owning an array of global media assets, from BSkyB, the Times of London and the Sun to the New York Post, Twentieth Century Fox and Fox Broadcasting. Yet from almost a standing start, Murdoch has built a significant web presence in less than a year. News Corp has formed an internet unit, Fox Interactive Media, that oversees its web activities. And with big-budget purchses of Intermix Media (including MySpace.com, a popular social networking site), IGN Entertainment (a gaming and lifestyle portal for young men), and Scout.com (which will be integrated into News Corp's Fox Sports enterprises), NewsCorp has made a splash on the Internet. Murdoch now also apparently wishes to buy Blinkx, a search engine.

The Guardian article reports that these recent purchases now "gives News Corp 70 million unique users and 12bn monthly page views. That catapults it into the fourth-largest internet firm in the world by page impressions, behind Yahoo, Time Warner and MSN, according to the investment bank Merrill Lynch." That's a pretty scary statistic, considering that News Corp hasn't been on most people's Internet radar screens up till now.

Apparently the agenda at the Carmel meeting was dominated by "how to turn News Corp's web properties into a hub for entertainment-related content. One News Corp insider called the strategy an attempt to create an 'entertainment Google' -- a one-stop shop for all those looking for computer games, movies, music or chat online."

US journalism gets tough after Katrina

The news media have been talking about how aggressive and outraged they've become since Hurricane Katrina made itself felt. Reporters suddenly feel at ease sticking it to government officials over their apparently inept handling of the initial response. This, some suggest, is in marked contrast to the quiescent attitude that U.S. journalism has up to nowdisplayed in the face of the current administration. Supposedly, the gloves are now off, and everyone from NBC's Brian Williams and Tim Russert to ABC's Ted Koppel to CNN's Anderson Cooper now feel it's OK to get stuck into the government. Even FOX's Bill O'Reilly has been turning up the heat. Actually, it may well be Anderson Cooper himself (the "boy reporter" who used to work for Channel One and spent two seasons hosting ABC's reality show "The Mole") who showed the way last week when he stopped playing nice guy and verbally attacked Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, in a live interview. Jack Shafer in Slate used Cooper's attack as evidence for the emergence of a news media that, at least for the moment, "have stopped playing the role of wind-swept wet men facing down a big storm to become public advocates for the poor, the displaced, the starving, the dying, and the dead." (Note: The online journal Salon has a highlight reel now available for viewing, that includes Cooper's interview among others (requires free daypass) that shows some of the most prominent examples of media reporters "getting tough.")

Meanwhile, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, never a friend of this administration at the best of times, has this week gone into overdrive with its satirical evisceration of the government response (see, e.g., recent online video clips such as "Inarguable Failure," "Beleaguered Bush" and "Meet the F**kers," available here). Hard to believe, Stewart in his Monday night show actually praised the TV news media that he so regularly slags off, likening them to an old drunk fat guy in a bar who can "really move" if the occasion demands it.

So what's going on? A Viewpoint piece by BBC correspondent Matt Wells ("Has Katrina saved US media?") posits that "Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina." Wells goes on:

National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account. They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests. Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states. It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.

But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington.

So are the news media finally doing their job, returning to the principle of Fourth Estate watchdog journalism, a la Watergate and Woodward and Bernstein? Salon's Eric Boehlert cautions us not to get too excited. He reminds us of the media's early timidity in its coverage of the tragedy,and argues that "The fact that this kind of aggressive questioning of people in power during times of crisis now passes as news itself only highlights just how timid the mainstream press corps has been during the Bush years."

Certainly one reason why the news media have felt strangely emboldened in the past week or so is because there has been some measure of partisan, cross-party agreement that the government was too slow and inept in its response. Conservative commentators have joined the chorus of criticism. Republicans as well as Democrats have been critical of agencies such as FEMA. And Democrats share a good deal of the blame for the current mess. But soon, more than likely, cries of "liberal media bias" will be heard from the right, and it'll be interesting to see whether the news media returns to normal, or whether Katrina marks a real sea change in the way the MSM operate.

Those who hate cable news . . .

Slate.com's Jack Shafer has just posted a follow-up piece called "News You Can Lose, Part 2", which is basically a collection of emails from readers who are griping about cable news. The comments expressed by Slate readers in this piece and its predecessor ("News You Can Lose: What I hate about cable TV journalism") make pretty sobering reading. These people really do not like cable news.

Thing is, I would agree with most of their comments most of the time--except that right now, I'm cutting the cable channels a tiny bit of slack. Yes, most of the time CNN, Fox, and MSNBC are simply awful, but when a natural disaster like Katrina occurs, cable news can and often does provide a valuable public service in bringing substational resources to cover the event as widely as possible, communicating to the wider world the scale of what's going on. It's certainly not perfect, but it is helpful to many people, and even to the country as a whole. My rule of thumb is that cable news can be useful and even enlightening up until the point when "packaging" takes over, and instead of real news we get back into reheated information about the missing Aruba teenager, the latest celebrity trial, or whatever. And yes, the cable news channels are already starting to fall back into their normal mode of operations, this time with packaged shows around the hurricane. So I suppose the time to cut them some slack is coming to an end.

Until the next major disaster.

Framing the disaster response: some thoughts

Yesterday--Friday--was the day where the crazy morass of reports and impressions about the Gulf Coast disaster, and the government's response to it, finally began to coalesce into a dominant construct, and the result was not pleasing to the federal government. CNN placed a piece on its web site yesterday morning, the question being "The disaster response: 'Magnificent' or 'embarrassment'?". It was clear from the report that the writer was tending toward the latter.

As the day progressed, and the news became more and more awful, most news organizations seemed to be turning--at least for the moment--toward an initial "national embarrassment" frame for the tragedy. That was the opinion on Fox News (and on Friday morning the web site's home page was headlined 'This Is a National Disgrace'). The same was true of the New York Times and numerous other major papers (and a Times editorial was typical of many that excoriated the slow response while we saw constant TV pictures of the breakdown of law and order in New Orleans.) The Washington Post's page one story on Friday was describing New Orleans as "A City of Despair and Lawlessness". Two BBC headlines say it all: "Rescue effort falls short" and "New Orleans crisis shames Americans".

At times like this, when our thoughts and impressions about something as "big" as this are unformed and malleable, Friday's news can be particularly important because Friday is a key "News Round-up" day, when many broadcast media organizations have special shows devoted to journalists getting together and talking about the week's events and trying to make sense of what's been happening over the past few days. Shows such as PBS's Washington Week in Review and Diane Rehm on NPR provide a forum for journos to interact--and often come to some sort of consensus over interpreting the news. (As with the Sunday morning talk shows, relatively few people actually watch or listen to these shows, but the people who do watch/listen to it tend to be important opinion leaders--so such shows are important.)

This Friday--yesterday--the news was mostly bad--and certainly bad for the Bush administration. Whereas on previous days the news media had been focusing on the scale of the tragedy and the devastation, by Thursday more and more time was being spent on the horrible scenes at the Superdome and the Convention Center. Awful TV pictures merged with more and more reports of lawlessness, shootings, rapes throughout the city--including even at these aforementioned shelters (supposedly "refuges"). The U.S. media began using the new and loaded term "refugee" (a term normally limited to people in the "third world", and one I first heard applied to these Americans on the BBC on Tuesday night) to describe the displaced people of the region. And more and more voices by Thursday were raised with the question "Where is the federal government"? More and more people on all sides of the national debate were expressing their revulsion at what they were seeing. And President Bush's interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America" had not gone down well with anyone, it seems.

After another horrific night, by Friday the "rescue" story had shifted emphatically from being "magnificent" to being a "national embarrassment". And that was the day--the last day of the working week--that most journalists on all these round-up shows crystalized their opinions about what was happening and presented their theses to the viewing/listening public. A dominant frame for the events was solidifying--and the frame was defined by the failure of President Bush and the government to act quickly and decisively enough. What's more, this frame, or media construct, was being joined by commentators on the right as well as the left. Influential conservatives such as Tony Blankley of the Washington Times and David Brooks of the New York Times joined their liberal-progressive counterparts to use their news round-up soap-boxes to excoriate the federal response. Brooks, for example, was extraopolating his Thursday Times column ("The Storm After the Storm") to argue for a sea change in our national conversation following this latest disaster. And when I saw the normally amiable Brooks on Friday's News Hour with Jim Lehrer, he was clearly seething mad about the lacklustre response of the Bush administration, which he saw as emblematic of many deep failings in our system of government (and remember, he's a conservative.)

By late Friday and Saturday the news from the Gulf region was starting to improve--marginally--as arriving federal relief finally started to make itself felt. But in a serious and enduring way, it was already too late for the Bush administration. The damage has been done (and not just on the Gulf Coast). The media have made at least a preliminary decision that what has happened in the past 3-5 days has been a "national disgrace", and something really fundamental about the way we as a society do business must change. The Bush administartion, usually so adept at managing the news media, has been overwhelmed by events as surely as have the people of the region. There are many, many reasons for this, most of them bad for the administration's public image (and not much better for the image of the Democrats, it must be said).

All the same, the buck must stop at the Oval Office. This is going to be a very difficult piece for the administration to "manage". The disaster is an event that brings into excrutiatingly sharp focus America's positions on race, class, the economy, Iraq, the environment, the role of government . . . everything is up for grabs in the ongoing national debate. There is a good chance that the massive scale of this event and its consequences will change the very ground under which everyone in America--conservatives, liberals, and everyone else--stands. This "frame" which began to crystyalize yesterday could, just possibly, become as important as the "war on terror" frame that followed 9/11--a frame through which every other piece of major domestic news is refracted. It could be that important.

Now we have to watch carefully.