Author: Patrick Maines

Posted on By Patrick Maines

After Aurora, Questioning Violent Programming (Again)

Very few columnists write as well, or as powerfully, as Peggy Noonan, and her piece last week in the Wall Street Journal titled “The Dark Night Rises” is no exception.  As with so many of Noonan’s commentaries, the strength in her column is not just in her way with words but in the fact that her opinions are well grounded in widely shared values.

So it is that when she alleges and bemoans the coarsening of popular culture, and the difficulty parents have these days in controlling the kind of things that their children get from the media, one guesses that few would disagree.

Even the ad hominem criticism in her piece – that Hollywood executives take care to insulate their own children from what they produce, and that they have “cabanas at the pool” at the Beverly Hills Hotel – doesn’t seem exorbitantly over the top given the thrust of her argument as a whole.

But when she suggests, by quoting from a writer at RealClearPolitics, that a “hundred studies have demonstrated conclusively that viewing violence on the screen increases aggression in those who watch it, children especially,” she is on shakier ground than she realizes.

In 2002, Jonathan Freedman, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, published a lengthy and devastating critique of this thesis titled “Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression: Assessing the Scientific Evidence.”  Some years later, Dr. Freedman wrote a paper on the same subject for The Media Institute.  That paper concluded with these words:

In sum there is no convincing scientific evidence that television violence causes children to be aggressive, or that any particular depiction of violence on television has this effect, or that it affects any particular type of children more than others … my conclusion is that either there is no effect of television violence on aggression, or, if there is an effect, it is vanishingly small.

Beyond the scientific literature, whatever its value, lie other aspects of the larger issue.  There is, for instance, the small matter of whether we, as a nation, should desire for everyone only that kind of programming that is fit for children.

And then there’s the issue of violence as a literary device.  Noonan is right to ridicule some past attempts by Hollywood executives to “rationalize and defend” what they produce.  But the problem with any wholesale denunciation of program violence is that it doesn’t allow much respect for programming that, though featuring violent portrayals, is terrific all the same.

A great case in point is the production, being shown on the AMC cable network, called “Breaking Bad.”  It is the story of one Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who, having contracted terminal cancer, takes to making methamphetamine.  “Breaking Bad” has, in its fifth season, become increasingly violent as Walter, in addition to his meth cooking, has become a murderer in the company of murderers.  So violent?  Yes.  But this is also one of the most brilliant series, of any genre, ever shown on TV.

It may be cold comfort to parents overwhelmed by the programs and platforms accessible by their children, but the only practical solution to the problem is parental oversight and responsibility for what their children watch.  Everything else – from exhortations to put the cultural genie back in the bottle, to governmental policies that attempt to circumvent First Amendment case law – is doomed to frustrate and to fail.

But that’s the thing about free speech. It’s not a prophylactic to be deployed against pictures, words, or ideas, it’s a necessary precursor to every other freedom.

                                               

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

FCC Denies Stay of Its Political File Rules

In a decision that landed a country mile from being a surprise, the FCC yesterday denied a stay requested by the NAB of its new political file rules, under which broadcasters are required to post online their spot-by-spot ad rates for candidates for federal office.

As readers of this blog will recall, a dozen broadcast station groups recently suggested an alternative approach in which the required information about political and issue ads would be posted online, but aggregated in a way that would not reveal the stations’ ad rates.  (The alternative proposal would also have provided information about political and issue ads in state and local races, something that the FCC’s new rule does not require.)

The stations were concerned that, because the political ad rates are based on the rate they charge their best commercial advertisers, the effect of posting their political ad rates online would be to encourage other commercial advertisers to demand the same low rates for their products and services.  (Broadcasters also chafed at the fact that cable and satellite companies would not have to provide this information.)

Yesterday’s denial of the NAB’s requested stay mentioned the alternative proposal only in passing, but in language that speaks volumes.  “Requiring the public to view aggregated data online and separately review complete political rate data in the paper file,” they said, “would not provide the efficiencies presented by online disclosure.”

What is missing here is what part of the “public,” other than broadcasters’ competitors and advertisers, would want to view the spot-by-spot ad rates.  The simple fact is that the proposed aggregated data would actually be more helpful to journalists and interested citizens than the disaggregated data that the FCC rule now requires.

But the best in the language of the FCC’s decision was yet to come.  In a sentence that is sure to have broadcasters rolling in the aisles with laughter, the FCC writes that “as an additional basis for rejecting the alternative proposal, the Commission finds that it would be significantly more burdensome on broadcasters because it would require both the maintenance of paper files with detailed spot-by-spot information and the creation and uploading of new aggregated files.”

In other words, the FCC denied the broadcasters own proposal because the Commission was concerned that it would be too burdensome on them – surely the first time in recent memory that the FCC has been moved to act out of concern for broadcasters’ welfare.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Koch/Cato Settlement

It was announced yesterday that, in return for some changes in its Board and the resignation of the Cato Institute’s co-founder and CEO, Ed Crane, the Koch brothers are withdrawing their lawsuits against the organization.  Given the negative effect that the lawsuits were having on Cato’s fundraising, it’s no surprise that the Institute would eventually be obliged to give up something important in order to move on. But in accepting Crane’s offer to go, they’ve given up a lot.

Organizations that are moved by idealism rather than commerce, and that persist and prosper against all odds, are often the creatures of their founders and long-time leaders.  The late Bill Baroody, founder of the American Enterprise Institute, comes to mind.  And so too with Crane, who has led Cato for 35 years, during which time it has become one of the leading think tanks in the United States.

If, 20 years from now, Cato is still the powerhouse it has become, people in the know will say that Crane’s successors were good, but that Crane was great.  And they’ll be right.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Reconsidering the FCC’s Political File Rule

The FCC’s recently minted rule requiring certain broadcast stations to post their political ad files online rather than, as is currently the case, in their local public inspection files, is not the kind of issue that is likely to stir the nation’s passions.Regardless of how challenges to the rule pan out, very few people are going to run off and join the circus if things don’t go a certain way.

Still, it’s a more interesting issue than, on its face, it would appear to be – and there’s evidence that defenders of the rule, along with reporters, are not paying attention to some of the finer points being made in opposition to it.

As of today there are three separate challenges to the rule – one at the FCC, one at the Office of Management and Budget, and one in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  The petition for reconsideration at the FCC, signed by 12 TV station groups, is the most nuanced of the complaints.

As with the others, the FCC petitioners are mostly concerned about having to reveal online their spot-by-spot ad rates, but with this difference: The petitioners propose to aggregate such data in a way that would not reveal their ad rates but would actually make it easier for everyone, journalists included, to understand who is contributing to whom, and in what amounts, and in addition to include online the same kind of information for state and local candidates, something the FCC rule does not require.

Why the broadcasters are opposed to having to reveal online their political ad rates, when they already provide this information in their local public files, takes a little explaining.

Currently, broadcasters are required by law to offer political advertising to candidates for federal office at the “lowest unit rate,” which is the rate they charge their best commercial advertisers.  But these data are not that user friendly, and in any event requires that someone physically go to a TV station for the purpose.  (For anyone so disposed, the cumbersomeness in this only grows, as the date of an election draws near, because TV stations update their political files more frequently at that time.)

Campaign representatives sometimes do check these files to ensure that their candidates are not being charged more than their opponents, but commercial advertisers do not, and that fact touches on one of the main worries among the broadcasters: They fear that if they have to reveal online their spot-by-spot ad rates, some of their commercial advertisers (knowing that the political rates are based on what the stations charge their best commercial customers) will demand these rates for themselves.

It’s also bothersome to broadcasters that their media competitors, both in broadcasting and cable, would have access to this information, and it’s further been suggested that, as written, the FCC rule may encourage trial lawyers to file frivolous lawsuits against TV stations on behalf of losing candidates.

So in the case of the FCC petitioners, the question isn’t why broadcasters don’t want to provide their political files online (they are willing to do that), but why defenders of the FCC rule insist on requiring the online display of stations’ ad rates?

After all, one of the main goals of the campaign finance laws is to provide, in a timely way, information about candidate and issue expenditures.  It’s not the goal of these laws to compel TV stations to divulge their competitive secrets about ad rates and the like.

When asked about the unwillingness of the FCC to approve this simple modification to its rule – the Commission had this suggestion before it prior to its vote in late April – a communications lawyer prominently involved in the matter said that, in the wake of the Citizens United decision, everything touching on campaign finance has taken on a kind of “religious aspect,” such that advocates of campaign finance laws are these days unwilling even to grant such harmless accommodations as those presented by the petitioners.

Notable by their absence from the FCC petition are the station groups owned and operated by the Big Four TV networks.  Lawyers for the petitioners note that the networks supported the suggested “aggregation” approach prior to the FCC’s vote, and aver that they support the petition now.

That may be right, but if so it’s hard to confirm.  It may be, instead, that the networks don’t like the odds that the FCC will accommodate the petitioners, or that they are unhappy about the petitioners’ proposed inclusion of political ad information about candidates for local office.

For its part, the National Association of Broadcasters has appealed the FCC’s rule to the OMB, claiming that the obligation to put the political files online is unduly burdensome, and in conflict with the Paperwork Reduction Act.

There may well be real merit in these other concerns, and in the arguments to be fleshed out in the broadcasters’ lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit, but it’s the modest proposal made by the FCC petitioners that shines the brightest light on how hard it is these days to forge reasonable compromises in a deeply divided nation.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Politico Accuses the Post and Times of Media Bias: Reporters Detect a Disturbance in the Force

Every once in a while something happens in medialand that stirs up reporters. The most recent example occurred last Thursday when the editors of Politico accused the Washington Post and the New York Times of bias in their coverage of the presidential campaign.

Under a headline that read, “To GOP, blatant bias in vetting,” the authors added their own commentary in ways that suggested that Republican critics of media coverage of the presidential campaign are right.

“Republicans cry ‘bias’ so often,” they wrote, “it feels like a campaign theme.  It is, largely because it fires up conservatives….  But it is also because it often rings true, even to people who don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh – or Haley Barbour.”

And with that, the dawn came up like thunder among those whose calling it is to resist journalistic apostasy whenever it rears its head. Take, for instance, one Devon Gordon, who writes for GQ (“Look Sharp/Live Smart”). Gordon wrote a piece whose thrust was nicely summed up in its title: “Five Points About Politico’s Hatchet Job on NYT and WaPo.”

Or how about John Cook who, writing in Gawker, began this way: “Megalomaniacal supervillain Jim Vandehei and emotionally hobbled robo-reporter Mike Allen, both of Politico, have penned a rugged endorsement of Mitt Romney’s chief grievance today, agreeing with his advisers that the press corps is busy ‘scaring up stories to undermine the introduction of Mitt Romney to the general election audience.’”

And lest we forget our friends from papers across the pond, there’s the Guardian’s Oliver Burkeman.  Digging deep into his reservoir of profundities, Burkeman relieved himself of this penetrating observation: “This is always the problem with the charge of ‘media bias’: for it to be valid, it would have to be the case that ‘not being biased’ were a viable alternative option, and it isn’t.”

And then there’s the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple.  In (at last count) six separate pieces on his blog, Wemple makes points like the following: (1) Politico is jealous that they didn’t develop the Post’s story about Romney’s alleged bullying in high school; (2) Politico itself gave lots of attention to the Post’s bullying story; and (3) Politico’s claim that the Post’s story was overdone fails to acknowledge that “Bullying (a) schoolmate by pinning him down and cutting his hair is not only illegal but hateful, violent and destructive."

And there it is. Never mind the well documented history of Republican unhappiness with the media, or the larger issue of media bias as perceived by about half the people in the country, and what that portends for the future of the commercial media. 

No matter that polling organizations like Harris Interactive and Pew established without any doubt in 2008 that Republicans overwhelmingly thought the media favored Obama over McCain (indeed, the Pew poll found that Democrats and Independents felt that way too), or that a Gallup poll published just last September found that 47% of the people think the media are too liberal (a number that rises to 75% when polling Republicans only), while just 13% think they are too conservative.

It is, apparently, one thing for such data to be reported in the charts and graphs of pollsters, or in the words of known or suspected Republicans, but another thing entirely for a member of the MSM to break ranks and criticize the media along the same lines.

                                   

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Julius Genachowski and Broadband Billing

Comments made earlier this week by FCC chairman Julius Genachowski have raised hackles at organizations like Free Press and kindred groups.  The occasion was the Cable Show in Boston, and the offending subject was what is called “usage-based billing” – the radical notion that people who use more of a thing should pay more than those who use less.

In a Q&A session with Michael Powell, former FCC chairman and current CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Genachowski avowed that there was much to like about broadband providers basing their charges on usage (rather than on a one-size-fits-all basis).

This wasn’t the first time Genachowski had endorsed this practice – it was part of the net neutrality regulations that the FCC promulgated a couple of years ago – but it was enough to provoke the simple folk at Free Press into eruptions of their usual blather.

The last time broadband billing was discussed in this blog (April 2009), the news was Time Warner Cable’s decision, under fire from people and organizations like Free Press, Public Knowledge, and Sen. Charles Schumer, to suspend their trials of this kind of billing in a handful of cities.

As reported at the time, the air was thick with celebration as the “victors” issued triumphant statements on the occasion.  Triumphant no more, they have been reduced, in response to Genachowski’s comments on Tuesday, to broadsides and bromides like this one from Matt Wood, policy director of Free Press: “The data caps being pushed by the biggest cable companies are bad for consumers … and the FCC should be investigating these caps, not endorsing them.”

But enough about broadband billing per se.  The more noteworthy thing about Genachowski’s comment is that this marks at least the third time that he has demonstrated his independence from the louder voices among communications policy outfits.

The first time was with the FCC’s adoption of what came to be called “net neutrality lite,” and the second was when he hired Steve Waldman to head up the agency’s “future of media” report, a document that steered clear of the most intrusive and inappropriate kinds of recommendations that had been proposed for it.

None of this is to say – nor would the gentleman necessarily welcome our saying – that Mr. Genachowski is the very model of what one looks for in an FCC chairman.  Though the net neutrality regulations are much better than what they might have been, better still would be no such regulations at all.

Still, in an environment as divisive as Washington’s, it’s probably a good idea once in a while to step outside of it all and give credit where credit is due.  So props to Julius Genachowski for his embrace of usage-based broadband billing.  ’Tis a fine thing he’s done.

                                     

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Locking Up Reporters at the DOL

If, like many people, you’re an investor, you are already familiar with the market-moving impact of government data, like the Department of Labor’s monthly payrolls and unemployment figures.  What you probably don’t know are the ways in which the DOL has for decades arranged for release of this information, or of their plans to change the procedure in July.

In order to ensure the simultaneous release of the data, the Department conducts what they call a “press lock-up.”  It works this way: At 7:30 a.m. on the day figures are to be released, about a dozen reporters arrive at the DOL, and at 8 a.m. they surrender their mobile devices, are locked in a room with the electricity cut, and given the data.  The reporters then use their own computers and software to write their stories, often with analysis and graphs, such that when the DOL restores electricity at the release time, 8:30 a.m., the reporters can then transmit their stories over their own dedicated lines.

By all accounts, this procedure has worked well and has provided the public with timely and important information, delivered in context by professional news organizations.

On April 10, however, the department announced major changes in this procedure, the most important of which are these: All computers and communication lines, which to date have been owned by the participating news organizations, are to be removed and replaced with government-owned computers and telecommunications lines; all participating news organizations’ press credentials will expire, and those news organizations that wish to participate in the future must apply for new credentials; and those groups that do apply “will be considered as an overall group and not necessarily on an individual basis (that) distributes a variety of news products that reach a wide and diverse audience.”

There are some disturbing policy aspects as well as practical problems with this scheme, and an important question that the Labor Department refuses to answer: What’s wrong with the old system, and why change it?

By requiring them to draft their stories on government computers, the DOL is, in effect, obliging reporters to turn over their notebooks.  Moreover, there appears to be less security in the new plan since all data would be released through the Internet rather than, as is presently done, through dedicated and redundant lines owned by the participating media.

Owing to the fact that the new policy was announced without notice or comment, the DOL arranged a conference call with reporters on April 16, presided over by the department’s press spokesman, Carl Fillichio.

In the same way that great truths are sometimes revealed, if unwittingly, by the smallest people, the transcript of this call speaks volumes.

Witness, for instance, this exchange during the call:

Daniel Moss (Bloomberg News): “I’m just wondering, why is the Labor Department choosing to do this now?  What is the problem that you believe you are trying to fix given the master switch is already in place and working effectively?

Carl Fillichio: It’s been, as I mentioned, 10 years since we took a holistic view of the lock-up, and times have certainly changed.  Why now rather than any other time?  Now is the right time to do it.

Daniel Moss: What is the problem that you imagine you’re trying to fix given there is an effective master switch there already that controls access out of the room for the information?

Carl Fillichio: There’s nothing we necessarily expect.  I think we’re doing prudent business management of reviewing our systems and looking at the changes in technology and the way that the news is delivered and have decided that now is the correct time to institute these changes….

Daniel Moss: Do I interpret your response, Carl, as meaning there is no current problem?

Carl Fillichio: What I’m trying to do is prevent a problem, Daniel.

Daniel Moss: What is the problem you think, you imagine, that this will prevent.

Carl Fillichio: I think we’re going to move on.  Operator, we’ll take the next question. 

There’s more like this, lots more, with some of the better ones being Fillichio’s exchanges with Steven Goldstein of MarketWatch, and Mark Tapscott of the Washington Examiner.  You can read the whole of the transcript here.

Though he never says that any violations of the lock-ups are the cause of the new policy, nor that the new policy will correct for any such violations, Fillichio does aver that two reporters in the past were “suspended” from the lock-ups. Since he refuses to elaborate about these alleged past infractions, much less to say that they were of the sort that necessitated the new policy, one is left to wonder.

Seems hard to believe that the problem would have been early public release of the data since, if anyone did so, the other news organizations would know about it and loudly object.  Perhaps there were instances where the data fell into the hands of traders who used it to buy or sell stocks in the pre-market, but if so these would likely be seen as a form of “front running” or “insider trading,” both of which are illegal and in the province of the SEC.

Apart from the practical and policy problems with Labor’s new lock-up plan, there is the interesting question of the wisdom in it.  Owing to the growing concern with invasions of privacy by corporations like Google, and governmental bodies like the Department of Homeland Security, why would anyone think this is the right time to formulate a policy that widens further government’s reach, even if benignly, into reporting of the news?

As this note is being written, May 5, there are reports that a coalition of media and "open government" organizations may soon file a letter with the Department of Labor asking that the new policy be delayed until after some further discussion of it with media representatives.

One hopes the coalition will do so, and also that, in step with the “holistic” approach that Fillichio cites no less than three times in the Q&A, the DOL will see the wisdom in stopping, looking, and listening.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Boston Debate League and the Boston Marathon

One of the most intractable and tragic aspects of American life is the plight of so many urban youth. The societal cost of this state of affairs is great; the human costs incalculable.  In the midst of the despair, however, sometimes come programs that make a difference.

An example that became the basis of the 2005 documentary, “Mad Hot Ballroom,” is the New York City public schools program that teaches ballroom dancing to fifth graders from different parts of the city.

Another example is the Boston Debate League, an organization that works with the Boston public schools to support academic teams in local high schools.  The BDL’s mission statement is to “measurably improve students’ academic achievement and their expectations of themselves … through academic debate.”

As the group explains it, “All students can realize the benefits from competitive policy debates.  In fact, the students who benefit the most are those who are currently not engaged in school and are in danger of dropping out….  In particular, we believe that policy debate can help reduce the achievement gap for urban students of color.”

And the facts seem to bear that out.  A University of Missouri study found that after one year in urban debate leagues, debaters attended school more frequently, improved their GPAs by 10 percent, and achieved a 25 percent increase in literacy scores.

Another Boston success story is its annual marathon, which this year will be run on April 16, and therein lies a connection to the BDL.  By a felicitous coincidence, The Media Institute’s vice president, Rick Kaplar, will be running in this year’s Boston Marathon, and he’ll be running for the Boston Debate League.

As Rick put it in a recent e-mail, “I like the idea of running for the Boston Debate League because debating is all about speech and freedom of expression – and it brings this form of speech to at-risk kids who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity.”

As set by the marathon organizers, the Boston Athletic Association, all runners for charity teams are required to raise a fixed amount of money for their teams in order to participate.  The Media Institute has made a contribution to the BDL in this regard, and if any of those who are regular readers of this blog would like to make a contribution as well, I know it would be greatly appreciated by Rick, and of material help to the Boston Debate League.

Here’s a link that will take you where you need to go for information about how to do that: “Team Debate.” And thanks for your interest and support.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Free Speech Is Real Loser in Rush Kerfuffle

Is it appropriate to defend free speech even when it’s harsh or degrading?  Whatever their political views, do people have a right to express them?  Not for the first time, such questions are being debated in the court of public opinion.

The proximate reason for the debate, this month, is some nasty things said about a law student by Rush Limbaugh, a man who – like Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, Bill O’Reilly, Ed Schultz, Michael Savage, and Bill Maher – makes his living by saying provocative and sometimes ugly things through the media of TV, film, or radio.

For those who believe in freedom of speech, there’s a little bit of good news amid the bad in the Limbaugh kerfuffle, but a couple things demand to be acknowledged right from the start: Neither Rush, nor any of the other on-air opinionmeisters, are scholars, statesmen, or intellectuals.  They are, instead, political entertainers whose appeal reaches as far as those who share their political views, and not one inch further.

This, and one other thing: The coordinated attacks on Limbaugh and his show’s advertisers is the product of the calculated strategy of a group – Media Matters for America (MMA) – that was created precisely to try to silence, by whatever means, right-leaning organizations and individuals.

The bad news in the Limbaugh affair is that while some people are recommending that the FCC take him off the air (Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem), or think he should be prosecuted (Gloria Allred), and after a number of his advertisers have been cowed into dropping his show, most of the media and journalism organizations one might expect to defend him have remained silent.

From the professional journalism societies to the university-based journalism reviews and the legacy “First Amendment” groups, virtually nothing has been issued in opposition to MMA’s tactics of intimidation.

It could, of course, be argued that MMA is merely exercising its own free speech rights, and that is certainly true, but that fact need not strike dumb those people who, exercising their free speech rights, could and should criticize MMA’s tactics.

According to an AP story, the next step in the war against Limbaugh is a radio ad campaign in eight cities, using as a template MMA’s earlier campaign against Glenn Beck.  Meanwhile, the head of Media Matters, David Brock, is gloating about the negative impact his organization’s efforts are having on Limbaugh’s advertisers.

In a piece published in Politico, titled “Ad exodus dooms Limbaugh’s model,” Brock says he is confident, “seeing the reaction over the previous two weeks, that sponsors will take their ad dollars elsewhere.”  He also says, in a sentence sure to be admired by fanatics and totalitarians everywhere, that MMA “along with numerous other groups, have begun to educate (emphasis added) advertisers about the damage their financial support of Limbaugh’s program can do to their brands.”

Looking beyond the campaign against Limbaugh per se,one can see that if this kind of thing persists it won’t end well for freedom of speech.  Already, for instance, a piece in the American Spectator calls for Rush admirers to contact those of Limbaugh’s advertisers who have dropped his show, the kind of thing that, along with campaigns like MMA’s, may in time have the practical effect of moving advertisers out of radio altogether.

In addition, there’s the distinct possibility that conservative groups will ape the tactics used against Limbaugh, and begin themselves to use advertiser intimidation and/or government policy to effectively shut down speech they don’t like.  Just last week Brent Bozell, head of the conservative media watchdog group Media Research Center, which has used both tactics in the past, said of the MMA campaign: “We all have free speech.”

As mentioned at the outset, there’s a little bit of light breaking through the gloom of this matter.  Though he doesn’t reference the Limbaugh affair, liberal law professor Jonathan Turley penned a piece in the Los Angeles Times this month titled “Free speech under fire,” in which he bemoans the fact that “Western nations appear to have fallen out of love with free speech and are criminalizing more and more kinds of speech through the passage of laws banning hate speech, blasphemy, and discriminatory language.”

At about the same time, liberal icon Michael Kinsley wrote a piece for Bloomberg titled “Case Against Case Against Rush Limbaugh.”  Among other poignant observations, Kinsley says this:

Do we want conservatives organizing boycotts of advertisers on MSNBC, or either side boycotting companies that do business with other companies who advertise on Limbaugh’s show, or Rachel Maddow’s?…

As we all know, Limbaugh’s First Amendment rights aren’t involved here – freedom of speech means freedom from interference by the government.  But the spirit of the First Amendment, which is that suppressing speech is bad, still applies.  If you don’t care for something Rush Limbaugh has said, say why and say it better.

In a perfect world, one wouldn’t need to be a policy wonk or a constitutional expert to understand the wisdom in this. But in this world, who knows?                                             

                                               

This piece was first published in TVNewsCheck on March 26, 2012. The views expressed above are those of the writer and not those of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

The Koch Brothers’ Designs on Cato

Political gift giving, whether in support of candidates for public office or ideologically active nonprofit organizations, is fraught with the risk that activists of a different stripe (or journalists who are themselves of a different stripe) may take offense and retaliate. 

Such has been the experience of the wealthy Koch brothers, Charles and David, two long-time funders of libertarian policies, politicians, and organizations who have been attacked without surcease by activists and journalists for about two years.  

In part, of course, attacks on them have happened because they’re easy targets.  As politically active billionaires, the Kochs quite naturally attract attention, and for all its intellectual strengths, libertarianism is a long way from being the “people’s choice.” 

Additionally, the Kochs have borne some of the brunt of the criticism that’s accompanied the Supreme Court’s correct undoing, in its Citizens United decision, of aspects of the McCain-Feingold Act.  From that time to this, advocates of campaign finance “reform” have been shrilly condemning  PACs, and particularly those, like the Koch-controlled Americans for Prosperity, that favor Republicans.

The motives of their critics aside, there have long been aspects of the Kochs’ philanthropy that are tiresome.  Take, for instance, Koch Industries’ and the Koch Foundation’s embrace of what they call “Market-Based Management,” a management philosophy developed by Charles Koch, and one that, it’s claimed, “can provide great value to non-profit organizations.”

A thing of some complexity – MBM features 10 “Principles” and five “Dimensions” – it can seem like about nine principles and four dimensions too many when pushed on grantees.

Now, though, comes the remarkable news that the Kochs have filed a lawsuit against the venerable Cato Institute, something that goes beyond the merely annoying to the virtually incomprehensible.  In a word, they want to take over Cato and fire its president and co-founder, Ed Crane.

To be fair, the Kochs have an important history with Cato.  Like Crane, Charles Koch was also a founder of the think tank, and the Koch Foundation has given millions to Cato over the years.  So if this were simply a management issue – that they wanted to replace Crane with someone else, or put new people on the Board – they’d clearly have the right to propose the idea, and whatever the merits of it, it wouldn’t be seen as an impossibly chowderheaded scheme.

Alas, issues with management are not the apparent reason for their lawsuit.  Instead, the Kochs’ designs on Cato seem to be a desire to more closely align the think tank’s policy analyses with the Kochs’ partisan political efforts, through such as Americans for Prosperity.

Taking advantage of the unusual fact that the nonprofit Cato has “shareholders” with the authority to select members of Cato’s board, the Kochs have lately been attempting to gain a majority among the directors (they already have seven of 16).

In a blog published on the Volokh Conspiracy on March 3, a senior fellow at Cato provided some background by revealing what was said at a meeting in November of last year between a Koch delegation and the chairman of Cato, Bob Levy:

They told Bob that they intended to use their board majority to remove Ed Crane from Cato and transform our Institute into an intellectual ammo-shop for Americans for Prosperity….  They’ve frequently complained … that Cato wasn’t doing enough to defeat President Obama in November and that we weren’t working closely enough with grass roots activists like those at AFP.

During a recent interview, Crane expressed contempt for those of the Kochs’ critics whose motive is political or ideological, even as he spoke of the “insanity” in the Kochs’ attempt to turn Cato into a partisan outfit.  “Were they to do it,” he said, “it would undo overnight 35 years of work and hard-won respect.”

Even though he personally would be a certain casualty if the Kochs succeed in their takeover attempt, Crane betrays little concern about that aspect of the battle at hand.  One might suspect that this is because, after 35 years at the helm of Cato, he’s had a good run, or because, like many of us, he’s reached an age where, professionally speaking, he can see the tunnel at the end of the light.  Or maybe he’s just confident that the Kochs won’t prevail.

Whatever, a few things are clear.  It’s been on Crane’s watch that Cato has grown into a leading U.S. think tank, along the way becoming one of the stoutest defenders of free speech in the country.  And none of that would have been possible if Cato had been perceived as a political front group.

One of Market-Based Management’s "Principles" is humility, described this way: “Practice humility and intellectual honesty.  Constantly seek to understand and constructively deal with reality to create value and achieve personal improvement.”

One wonders how much the Kochs thought about this Principle before they embarked on such an intellectually dishonest and destructive campaign.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.