Author: Patrick Maines

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Republican Criticism of the Media (and Why It’s Ignored)

Imagine that you’re the head of a consumer products company, and it’s revealed to you that about half the people in the country don’t like some aspect of your product.  Is there any chance that you wouldn’t try to address that problem?

It is, of course, a rhetorical question.  So what, then, explains why the CEOs of the parent companies of the so-called mainstream media (MSM) – whose news operations are seen by Republicans as politically biased – do nothing about it?  

Several theories come to mind: It’s not a new problem; the “firewall” that separates the editorial side of media companies from the business side dissuades and/or impedes editorial reforms that issue from corporate management; the people who run the business side of these companies approve of their news departments, whatever Republicans think of them.

Taking them in order, it’s indeed true that rank-and-file Republicans and conservatives have seen bias in the mainstream media for many years.  But in earlier times this antipathy wasn’t as great as it is today, and for all their unhappiness there was no other place for them to go.  Pretty much the whole of the news business nationally was the province of the Big Three TV networks, the wire services, the newsweeklies, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

These days, though, according to a Gallup survey released last September, 75 percent of Republicans think the media are too liberal, and all the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination have expressed similar criticism, some with brio and to roaring approval. Moreover, there are many places – from talk radio to FOX News to Republican or conservative websites – where they can, and do, go for news and commentary more to their liking these days.

The editorial firewall, a useful convention that prevents the wholesale marketing of news to advertisers, is a better explanation, though still not compelling.  Publishers, after all, have dominion over editors, not the other way around.

Then there’s the discomfiting idea that media company CEOs like the editorial slant that Republicans believe is biased against them, either because they don’t share the Republicans’ political views, or because they believe that the Republican/conservative criticism is without foundation.

Though this may play a role with some of the MSM, it too seems too farfetched to be a controlling factor.  After all, the MSM are for-profit companies, most all of which are publicly owned and traded.  It would be strange indeed if the CEOs of these companies would put their own political views ahead of their companies’ profitability.

So what, then, explains it?  The view from here is that it may be a little bit of all these things, but that it’s primarily something else.

The lugubrious truth about the MSM these days is that all of them are suffering, to one degree or another, from lost readership/viewership and diminished advertising revenue.  And that, in a nutshell, may be why journalism per se is not front and center in the thinking of media company CEOs.

In the face of threats like that posed by the ad-grabbing tactics of Google, and the ubiquity and popularity of the social media, it’s likely that the CEOs of the legacy media don’t have much appetite for involving themselves in what – especially because of the editorial firewall – would be a contentious and quite possibly futile effort in any case.

So that, perhaps, is an explanation, though almost certainly not enough of one to satisfy Republican critics.  Plus ca change, plus c’est pareil.

                                  

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 Truth Behind Google’s Copyright-Bills Hysteria

Though the final chapter in the legislative history of the copyright bills hasn’t yet been written, a couple things are obvious even now: The tech industry has demonstrated great political clout through the mobilization of its users and fan base; and the industry lobby, led by Google, will say and do pretty much anything to advance its commercial interests.

This provides the background for what happened within just a few days last week, as Congress was flooded with calls and mail, and petitions were signed by millions, in opposition to bills whose intent was to provide an effective way to combat content infringement on rogue websites abroad.

Didn’t matter that most fans of social media, file-sharing, blogs, and the like know next to nothing about communications policymaking, or even the details of the laws they were moved to oppose.  They know what they like, and dislike, and when manipulated into seeing the copyright bills as a threat they responded in great numbers.

None of which, of course, is to wonder why people feel more of a kinship with things like the social media than they do with the mainstream media.  The one-way and “one-to-the-many” aspects of the old media don’t empower people, or allow for their personal expression, in the manner of blogs or social media like Facebook and YouTube.

But the reason so many people were disposed to dislike the copyright bills, and their knowledge of what was actually in them, are two different things.  What moved them to act on their dislike was yet another.  For these parts of the story we have to look to the tech industry lobby, and Google most importantly.  It was Google that floated the canard that passage of the bills would forever change “the Internet as we’ve known it.”

The irony in Google’s claim was apparently lost on most of the media, tech and mainstream, which may explain why so few reporters pointed out that this alleged threat is word-for-word what the company said, 13 years ago, in opposition to another copyright bill (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), passage of which has since proven to be a positive boon to Internet companies.

It may also explain why so few reporters pointed out that Google’s claims about the copyright bills – as precursors to the regulation of the Internet – are not just over the top but hypocritical.  It was, after all, Google that successfully lobbied, with the active help of a majority of FCC Commissioners, for so-called “network neutrality” regulations, the precedent of which provides not for just speculative but “here and now” regulation of the Internet.

Still, if crass exaggeration and hypocrisy were all that Google displayed in this regard, one might be inclined just to dismiss it as boys being boys.  But it didn’t stop there.  Google, and other groups that should know better, also gave expression and currency to the bunkum that the copyright bills amounted to an assault on the First Amendment.

That this argument was utterly demolished by the country’s leading First Amendment expert, Floyd Abrams, didn’t give them a moment’s pause, with the upshot being that this nonsense was parroted by all sorts of people as a reason for rejection of the bills.

In August of last year, The Media Institute filed a white paper with the Federal Trade Commission titled “Google and the Media: How Google is Leveraging its Position in Search to Dominate the Media Economy.”  Among other things, the paper demonstrated the ways in which Google profits from copyright infringement; that indeed the use of other people’s content without their permission has been at the heart of the company’s business plan.

Though the paper didn’t recommend any particular remedy, it asked the FTC to intervene in a way that would prevent the media economy from being dominated by a single entity.  Google’s conduct regarding the copyright legislation shows that, far from pulling back, its interest in this kind of domination is growing apace.

                                  

The opinions expressed above are those of the writer and not of The Media Institute, its Board, contributors, or advisory councils.  This piece was first published in the Dallas Morning News on Jan. 25, 2012.

 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Orts and All

Regulating the ’Net.  Much has been alleged in recent days about the risks to the independence of the Internet were the copyright bills currently before Congress to become law.  As mentioned here and here, the most extravagant of these allegations are flummery of the first water, but copyright issues aside, the ’net is indeed on the cusp of a significant transformation.

Evidence of this can be seen in the actions of the FCC, whether on its own initiative or by its implementation of regulations after passage of legislation into law.  The Commission’s codification of  "net neutrality" rules was the first example of the Internet’s capture.  The action currently underway by the FCC to promulgate regulations re the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, a law which, among other things, mandates captioning for online video, is another.

Goes without saying that making online video accessible to the deaf is a nice thing to do, and for many that’s the end of the story.  But people who are familiar with the way laws and regulatory policies evolve know that things like these have a precedential impact in Congress, the courts, and the regulatory agencies, and that very often these precedents are then offered up in justification of other laws or rules that are not so nice.

In any case, the point here is that it’s already too late in the day for people who have an idealistic interest in the Internet to fret the future loss of its independence.  Thanks to the majority at the FCC and/or in Congress, the Internet’s pristine independence has already been lost.

Media Matters.  The organization called Media Matters for America, which exists to demean and (where possible) destroy conservative journalists and organizations like FOX News, has now come out with a contrived accusation against George Will.

The gravamen of MMA’s contrivance is that, as a Board member of a conservative grant-giving group (the Bradley Foundation), Will should be required to mention this connection whenever he writes about or cites the work of any of the groups to which Bradley contributes!

Given that Bradley funds a very large number of conservative think tanks and other enterprises, this would mean, as a practical matter, that Will would have to include this disclosure pretty much all the time since he is, after all, a conservative himself and cites these organizations’ work frequently.

As the Washington Post’s executive editor put it, in reply to a request from MMA for comment: “Is it seriously a surprise to you that George Will quotes experts from conservative think tanks more often than he quotes experts from liberal think tanks?”

What a relief! The latest news is that Keith Olbermann, who is faithfully viewed nightly by at least 16 people, may be staying on at Current TV, a network that captures the imagination of dozens.  

It’s been a close call for the past few days, but as this is being written word is out that Olbermann and management of Current, who have been at loggerheads over something or other, have resolved their differences.  So a country that has been paralyzed with fear that things might not work out can breathe again. What a happy day.

                                  

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

Christopher Hitchens and the Art of Persuasion

For those who believe in words as a medium not just of expression but of discovery, life is a journey made all the more fascinating by the prospect that one may occasionally hit upon a word or a sentence that reveals something profound, even to oneself.  Christopher Hitchens, a man of many words, was such a person.

For those who are unfamiliar with him, the gentleman was a British-American author and journalist.  A prodigious and eloquent writer, Hitchens is perhaps best known for his resolute atheism, ideological tergiversations (from confirmed Trotskyite to alleged neoconservative), and criticism of Islamic jihadism.

With his passing this month, journalism has lost another of the very small number of political commentators who combine the qualities of erudition, scholarship, and the ability to surprise with their take on things.

Not for Hitchens the kind of commentary that centers on campaign strategies, public opinion polls, or political horse races.  For Hitchens, as for William F. Buckley Jr., politics was the stuff of deeper meaning than the careers, or even the policies, of politicians.

The Hitchens-Buckley comparison is apt in another way, too.  Buckley’s Roman Catholicism was central to his political philosophy in much the same way that Hitchens’ atheism was to his.

Hitchens, of course, wasn’t the first person to condemn religion.  H.L. Mencken once defined an archbishop as “a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.”  But as agitated atheists often do (because in a calmer state they’d be agnostics), Hitchens traveled way past such witty criticisms into the realm of the proselytizing anti-believer, a posture that, in its anger and simplicity, bears a striking resemblance to religious fundamentalism.

But never mind that.  The fetching aspect of Hitchens’ journalism, apart from the great writing, was its escape from the tiresome cant and clichés of contemporary liberalism – indeed, of all the “-isms.”  Though the man himself, early on and late, was a confirmed leftist, Hitchens’ catalog of the good and the bad gave left-wing ideologues migraines.  He was, for instance, a critic of the Vietnam War but a defender of the Iraqi invasion.  He wrote scathingly of Henry Kissinger and George H.W. Bush, but also of Hugo Chávez, about whom he said the following after a trip to Venezuela:

“After all [Chávez said] there is film of the Americans landing on the moon….  Does that mean the moon shot really happened?  In the film the Yanqui flag is flying straight out.  So, is there wind on the moon?  As Chavez beamed with triumph at this logic, an awkwardness descended on my comrades, and on the conversation.…

“Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.”

More evidence of Hitchens’ maverick ways can be seen in his earlier-mentioned crusade against what he called “fascism with an Islamic face.”  In 2008 he wrote a piece in Slate titled “To Hell With the Archbishop of Canterbury,” a criticism of the quaint suggestion by the archbishop that Britain should adopt a form of sharia law as an adjunct to British common law.  Hitchens’ criticism was greeted by much harrumphing by the politically correct, something that bothered him not at all.

As suggested at the outset, though, Hitchens has left something more than just the sum of his theological or political opinions.  He showed the way to greater readership and distinction for political commentators, editorialists, and columnists.

In a word, he demonstrated the virtue in not allowing oneself to become marginalized; to not write just for a tribe of people with similar beliefs; to be willing to tread even on the sensibilities of those who are often allies.

As seen by the wide and varied number of people who, since his passing, have written flatteringly of him, Christopher Hitchens, the man and the writer, enjoyed an appeal that went well beyond just those who agreed with him.  For one whose life involves the expression of strong opinions, it doesn’t get better than that.

                                  

First published in the Dallas Morning News, Dec. 26, 2011.  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

Rationalizing Theft: A Postscript

The fight over the copyright bills currently being considered in Congress puts on display two of the tech industry’s least attractive characteristics – its sense of entitlement, and its extraordinary lack of knowledge about things outside the area of its core competency.

So it is that the bills in question (the Protect IP and Stop Online Piracy acts) are said by the tech industry’s lobbyists and fan base to threaten the “end of the Internet as we’ve known it,” the same claim they made 13 years ago in opposition to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  (And we all know how that worked out.)

As mentioned in an earlier post, all of the techies profess to have an interest in preventing copyright infringement; it just happens that they oppose anything and everything that’s ever been (or will be) proposed for the purpose.

The earlier blog scored the hyperbolic, not to say hypocritical, aspects of the criticism being leveled at today’s copyright bills.  But after reading additional criticism of them published since, it’s clear that I overlooked something.

Though most critics don’t come right out and say so, much of the criticism of the bills springs from people who, convinced that industries like Hollywood and the traditional media are of less importance than the Internet, believe that for this reason copyright laws ought to favor the latter over the former.  As one techno-philosopher, commenting on a piece in TechCrunch put it: “The Internet is the new entertainment industry.”

One needn’t dispute the current and future importance of the Internet (and all things digital) to know that this is an inapposite and corrosive argument, for the simple reason that copyright protection was never designed to be meted out in proportion to the financial dimensions of a company or industry.  It’s a constitutional law that is meant to protect all copyright holders, whatever their commercial girth or market caps.

To put it another way, the Constitution does not have to accommodate industries; industries have to accommodate the Constitution. This is, after all, one of the reasons we call our own a nation of laws.

Because The Media Institute is not a lobby, we’re not in a position to know whether the House or Senate bills will pass either body.  We read that some softening of them may be in the cards, though the recent forceful testimony in support of the bills, as written, by Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante would seem to suggest otherwise.

Whatever the outcome, one thing has been made clear by the tech industry’s shrill opposition.  If U.S. copyright laws – and those people and industries that rely on them – are to survive, there will have to be a far more sophisticated and generous understanding of the value in copyrights generally.  As Ms. Pallante chillingly put it in her remarks to the House Judiciary Committee: “It is my view that if Congress does not continue to provide serious responses to online piracy, the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail.”

                                  

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

Rationalizing Theft: The Technology Lobby’s Attack on Copyright Legislation

The technology crowd’s objections to the copyright protection bills, now moving their way through Congress, put one in mind of H.L. Mencken’s crack that criticism is prejudice made plausible.  This, because that industry’s leaders, scribes, and think tanks uniformly oppose every legislative initiative aimed at protecting copyrighted content, even as they frequently give lip service to the concept .

From the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the late ’90s – which they fought tooth and nail, but cling to in today’s debates as though it were an uncle come to jail with money for the bail bondsman – to today’s Protect IP and Stop Online Piracy acts (good summaries of which are here and here), the techies profess all sorts of high-minded concerns, but never at the expense, you understand, of their business plans.

Take, for instance, Google, the 800-pound gorilla, inside and outside the Beltway, regarding all things digital.  The company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, claims that attempts to crack down on rogue sites profiting from copyright infringement could set a “disastrous precedent” for freedom of speech, and also that they would encourage more restrictive Internet policies in countries like China.

This is serious stuff, and would be more serious still if (a) it were true, and (b) it issued from a company with any public policy credibility in this regard.  Alas, neither is the case.  Let’s start with the credibility problem first.

The best example of a U.S. policy that really would have (or might still) set a bad precedent regarding repressive regimes abroad is the FCC’s recently concluded Network Neutrality proceeding.  Indeed, in March of last year the U.S. Coordinator for International Communications & Information Policy at the State Department, Philip Verveer, had this to say about the subject at a Media Institute luncheon in Washington: “The net neutrality proceeding is one that could be employed by regimes that don’t agree with our perspectives of essentially avoiding regulation of the Internet … it could be employed as a pretext or as an excuse for undertaking public policy activity that we would disagree with pretty profoundly.”

Though there are those, of whom I’m one, who think the FCC’s subsequently enacted Internet rules, though greatly watered down, still went too far, the more interesting thing to note in this regard is that Google was the leading figure among those lobbying in support of net neutrality.

In the summer of 2006, for instance, Eric Schmidt himself penned a note on Google’s Public Policy Blog that read in part:

The Internet as we know it is facing a serious threat.  There’s a debate heating up in Washington, D.C. on something called “net neutrality” – and it’s a debate that’s so important Google is asking you to get involved.  We’re asking you to take action to protect Internet freedom….

Creativity, innovation, and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight. Please call your representative and let your voice be heard.  

And then there’s the argument, made by Google and lesser apologists of unfettered infringement, that the Protect IP and Stop Online Piracy acts undermine the speech guarantees of the First Amendment.  Whether it’s because they like the sound of the accusation, or because, not knowing any better, they actually believe it, there’s a lot of this nonsense going around the technocracy.

They might be more cautious about making such claims if they read the First Amendment analysis of the Protect IP Act written by the most distinguished First Amendment scholar of our age, Floyd Abrams.  In a 12-page letter sent on May 24 to Senate Judiciary Committee members Leahy, Hatch, and Grassley, Abrams lays out a compelling argument that the Act is consistent with the First Amendment, and concludes with these observations:

Among a range of objections, two core critiques stand out.  First, there is a recurring argument that the United States would be less credible in its criticisms of nations that egregiously violate the civil liberties of their citizens if Congress cracks down on rogue websites.  Second, there is the vaguer notion that stealing is somehow less offensive when carried out online….

I disagree.  Copyright violations are not protected by the First Amendment.  Entities “dedicated to infringing activities” are not engaging in speech that any civilized, let alone freedom-oriented nation protects.  That these infringing activities occur on the Internet makes them not less, but more harmful.  The notion that by combating such acts through legislation, the United States would compromise its role as the world leader in advancing a free and universal Internet seems to me insupportable.  As a matter of both constitutional law and public policy, the United States must remain committed to defending both the right to speak and the ability to protect one’s intellectual creations.  This legislation does not impair or overcome the constitutional right to engage in speech; it protects creators of speech, as Congress has since this Nation was founded, by combating its theft.

Abrams’ last point is especially noteworthy.  Not only is the current concern with copyright protection  nothing new, it is in fact as old as the country itself.  Reading the overwrought diatribes of the tech community one might get a different impression, but in fact it’s all there in black and white, among the “enumerated powers” in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.

For those who have forgotten, or never knew, this so-called copyright clause empowers Congress “To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Language and wisdom, that is to say, that is not the contemporary creation of the heads of the motion picture studios, but of the Founding Fathers more than 200 years ago.

                                  

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

Hank Williams Jr.

Even the most basic facts are in dispute.  Was Hank Williams Jr. fired by ESPN or did he quit?  Was Williams’ comment (Obama playing golf with Boehner like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu) a comparison of Obama to Hitler, or was it an analogy of the irony in meetings between enemies?  And if it was in fact a comparison of the men in question, rather than an analogy, how do we know that Williams wasn’t comparing Obama to Netanyahu, or Boehner to Hitler?  Or was Williams’ separation from ESPN, whether he resigned or was fired, a consequence of other things he said?

We may never know the answers to these questions, but there are some things we can know.  We can, for instance, know to the point of a moral certainty that this flap is not a First Amendment issue.  No court in the country would adjudicate this matter along the lines of First Amendment case law.

There is no doubt that ESPN was within its First Amendment rights to do what(ever) it did.  There was no governmental involvement in this matter, and though Mr. Williams certainly has his own First Amendment rights, they do not extend, under constitutional law, to his continued employment by ESPN.

All this said, nobody who believes deeply in freedom of speech, both as an individual right and as a vital and salutary aspect of citizenship in a democracy, can be happy about any of this.  It is, sad to say, just another example of the steady erosion of freedom of expression in an age of political correctness.

As written on an earlier such occasion, one wonders where the push to sanitize speech along PC lines will end.  There’s no gainsaying that some kinds of speech are ugly and hurtful.  But increasingly, political correctness seems to be working in a way that shuts off honest debate and discussion, and seeks to isolate politically those people whose views or statements are seen not just as offensive but as undermining aspects or elements of the status quo.

Most people with knowledge of the matter understand that the actions of the MSM, regarding issues like those in the Williams affair, can be explained by the media’s fear of damage to their “brands,” often in consequence of retaliation by organized single-issue and special-interest groups, who frequently mount campaigns against the offending media’s advertisers.  Looked at this way, the MSM’s acquiescence in things PC is understandable, but history may show that understandable was not good enough.

Media companies depend on more than the constitutional protection of the First Amendment for their free rein – they rely crucially on the goodwill they create with the public.  The problem with giving lip service to freedom of speech, while breaking it to the saddle of political correctness, is that over time this can erode the public’s confidence in the media as faithful stewards of free-speech rights broadly speaking.

Several years ago, The Media Institute created and launched a national celebration called Free Speech Week, which this year begins today. That we decided to name it this, rather than, say, First Amendment Week, was no accident.  We put free speech in the name of it because we wanted to celebrate and promote not just those kinds of speech that are constitutionally protected, but those that are not as well.  Episodes like the Hank Williams affair demonstrate why it’s so important that this movement grow and prosper.

                                  

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

Response to The Media Institute White Paper: The Truth About Google, Search, and the Media Industry

GUEST BLOG

[EDITORS’ NOTE: In this space we offer Google an opportunity to take issue with the White Paper that The Media Institute filed with the FTC in August.  Google’s response is printed below exactly as we received it.]

By Adam Kovacevich, Head of Competition, Public Policy and Public Affairs, Google (Washington, D.C., office)

In August 2011, The Media Institute submitted a white paper to the Federal Trade Commission claiming that Google practices could “foreclose competition” in the media industry. The white paper largely restates past criticisms of Google on copyright and intellectual property issues. We appreciate the opportunity to post a rebuttal. Some of these criticisms are obsolete or have already been litigated; others we believe are just wrong. Here are the facts:

Google Has a Record of Helping the News Industry

Google News drives valuable traffic to news organizations’ websites for free. Each click from Google News to a publisher’s site is a business opportunity, offering newspapers and other publishers the chance to show ads, register users and earn loyal readers. Google News follows international copyright law by only showing users a headline and a short snippet for each news story.

Google sends news publishers more than 4 billion clicks each month. Google News provides about 1 billion of these clicks, and an additional 3 billion come from other Google services like web search. This means that Google sends approximately 100,000 business opportunities to publishers every minute.

Google News works with publishers by offering them useful tools. For example, Editors’ Picks is a feature that enables editors in newsrooms to identify the stories they believe should receive attention. Additionally, the new “standout” tag on Google News gives publishers the ability to self-designate unique and noteworthy content from their own or other publications. Articles tagged as “standout” may appear with a “Featured” label on the Google News homepage and News Search results. [Google News Blog, Aug. 4, 2011, Sept. 24, 2011]

News Organizations Can Easily Opt-Out of Google News

News publishers have control over their inclusion in Google News. If at any point a web publisher wants Google to stop indexing their content, they’re able to do so quickly and effectively by sending Google an opt-out request. Google also provides publishers with instructions to block their content from Google News, should they choose to do so. [GoogleNewsBlog, Dec. 2, 2009]

Opting out of Google News does not remove content from Google Web Search results. If a publisher opts out of Google News, but stays in Web Search, their content will still show up as natural web search results. [GoogleNewsBlog, Dec. 2, 2009]

Google Is Investing in the Future of Journalism

Google donated $5 million to nonprofits devoted to developing journalism in the digital age. $2 million went to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a nonprofit that supports programs that drive innovation in journalism. The Knight Foundation used half of its grant to augment the Knight News Challenge, a media innovation contest that recognized 16 winners in 2011. [Official Google Blog, Oct. 26, 2010, June 22, 2011]

Google and the Associated Press are offering six $20,000 scholarships to journalism students to encourage and enable innovation in digital journalism. The Online News Association, the world’s largest membership organization of digital journalists, will administer the program. [OfficialGoogleBlog, Aug. 15, 2011]

Google Books Helps People Discover Books, Benefiting Users, Authors and Publishers

Google Books helps readers find information and gives authors and publishers a new way to be found. For instance, the Google Books Partner Program enables publishers to promote their books online for free — so that users can search through them, and find out where to buy them or get them from a library. More than 40,000 partners have joined the Partner Program, including nearly every major U.S. publisher. [GoogleBooksBlog, May 23, 2011]

Google will work to make more of the world’s books discoverable online. The March 2011 decision by Judge Denny Chin to reject the Google Books settlement was disappointing, but Google is reviewing the Court’s decision and considering various options. We believe this agreement has the potential to open up access to millions of books that are currently hard to find in the US today. [GoogleBooksAgreement]

Google Helps Rights Holders Manage Their Presence on YouTube

YouTube created Content ID to help rights holders manage their content on YouTube. Managing rights for content owners on YouTube has been important since the site’s early days. In 2007, this strategy led to the creation of a new technology called Content ID. Content ID is a full set of audio and video matching tools that give rights holders fine-grained controls for managing their content if someone uploads it to YouTube. Rights holders have the option of blocking, tracking, or making money from videos containing their content. More than 100 million videos have been claimed with Content ID. [YouTubeBlog, Dec. 2, 2010]

Content ID helps rights holders monetize their content. More than 1,000 partners use Content ID. Rights holders who claim their content with Content ID generally more than double the number of views against which YouTube can run ads, which doubles the rights holders’ potential revenue. Content ID contributes more than a third of YouTube’s monetized views each week. [YouTubeBlog, Dec. 2, 2010]

YouTube won its copyright case against Viacom. In June 2010, a federal court decided against Viacom in its copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube. The court ruled that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if it works cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online. [OfficialGoogleBlog, June 23, 2010]

Google Does Not Block Other Search Engines from Crawling YouTube

Bing and Yahoo both display YouTube videos on their search engine results pages. A search for [rebecca black friday] on Bing and Yahoo displays the YouTube video as the fourth result on Bing (following two Wikipedia entries and a Bing Images result) and as the third result on Yahoo (following two Wikipedia entries). [Bing | Yahoo]

                                  

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

On Growing Old(er)

Owing to a desire, after posting so many pieces about communications policy, to establish a more personal relationship with the five or six people who read this blog regularly, herewith a piece on something altogether different.

I speak, as do so many, about the phenomenon of aging, and about the dread “D’ word associated with it.  Have you ever noticed that, whatever their age, most people say that they’re “getting older” rather than that they are old?  They can be 80, or even 90, and still they describe themselves as getting older.  For such people old age is a destination never to be arrived at in their lifetimes, no matter how long they live.

I can relate to that.  I have reached an age where I’m made uncomfortable about surrendering my driver’s license to some youngster, especially the females.  Equally disturbing are those scroll-down date-of-birth features on so many websites.  By the time I get to mine, so far down the list, I often don’t even care anymore about whatever product or service required the information.

And there are other things.  Like doctors and doctoring.  When I was young, whatever ailments I had were always recognized, and treated, immediately.  Now that I’m (getting older), I find that my ailments are not only undiagnosable and untreatable; they cause, more often than not, the doctors’ eyes to glaze over upon hearing about them.  The impression one gets on such occasions is that they think you’re lucky to be alive, and should stop with the complaining.

Luckily for me, I look and act like a person who is 20 or 30 years younger than I am.  (Well, actually nobody has ever said that, but that’s the way I see it.)  And for this reason I have every expectation that, when I go to my reward (it should be so good), I’ll arrive there fresh as a daisy.

And speaking of death – the Great Oblivion, as it were – I have some ideas about that too.  It’s hard for many people to imagine the world without them, even as the world itself has no trouble at all, and in some cases positively relishes the thought.

But I have a different take on it.  Whereas most people believe death of the elderly is a consequence of cellular decay or disease, I incline to the view that, when you’ve reached a certain age, God (like your wife) is just tired of putting up with you.

So to wrap it all up, let me leave you with something that, though it has nothing at all to do with the subject at hand, is also worth sharing.  I refer to a quote by that other great man, Albert Einstein: “Gravitation cannot be held responsible,” he said, “for people falling in love.  How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?  Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour.  Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute.  That’s relativity.”

                                  

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 Shrill and the Marginal: The Left’s Criticism of the Media

Readers of this blog know that it’s the personal opinion of the writer that the mainstream media are hurt by the years-long perception, among Republicans and conservatives, that the media are unsympathetic to their views.  Given their large and growing numbers, and the availability of competing sources of news and commentary, this perception seems like both a journalistic and a business problem for the MSM.

This said, we’re always on the lookout for those people who view this matter differently, even where they represent only the most marginal points of view.

Thus it is that we’ve come across a piece in The Nation magazine (than which nothing’s more marginal), by Eric Alterman.  Titled “The Problem of Media Stupidity,” the thrust of the thing is that journalists, unwitting victims of a so-called “cult of balance,” are much too fair to Republicans.

As Alterman so elegantly puts it:

There is a specter haunting America today.  It is the specter of stupidity.  A few months ago, I wrote a column I called “The Problem of Republican Idiots.” Believe me, this problem has not gone away.  No less alarming is that this stupidity is apparently contagious.  The men and women who inhabit the upper reaches of the U.S. media (and pull down the multi-million dollar salaries) appear to believe that to do their jobs properly, they must make themselves behave like idiots in order to be “fair” to the Republicans and their idiot ideas.

In support of this thoughtful view, Alterman cites the progressives’ favorite wordslinger, Paul Krugman, and quotes from an interview David Gregory did with Rick Santelli – seven months ago – on “Meet the Press.”

Santelli’s comments, this one especially, figure large in Alterman’s argument: “If the country is ever attacked as it was in 9/11,” said Santelli, “we all respond with a sense of urgency.  What’s going on on the balance sheets throughout the country is the same type of attack.”

Never mind that Gregory didn’t respond to Santelli, as other guests on the show jumped in with their own observations, it’s Alterman’s opinion that for Gregory even to countenance such a comment without criticism is proof of a kind of intellectual rot among mainstream journalists.  “On America’s most respected television news program,” he wrote, “it is apparently OK to equate a problem with your fiscal balance sheets with terrorist mass murder.  Here again, we see the ‘cult of balance’ destroying the brains of our press corps.”

Given the modest dimensions of his own intellectual attributes, one suspects more people will be struck by the chutzpah of Alterman calling other people idiots than will be put off by Santelli’s remark, in which the CNBC personality was obviously equating not the acts (9/11 and the nation’s balance sheets), but the societal impact of the two, and the need for the kind of urgent action re the latter as was the case with the former.

Still, there remains the larger issue raised by Alterman’s rant: Are the MSM too evenhanded in their treatment of Republican and Democratic policies and politicians?  Do they, as Alterman suggests, show undeserved respect for Republicans?  And if we wanted to test this hypothesis, how would we go about it?

It’s a tricky thing, this business of calling people idiots.  Dostoevsky titled one of his novels The Idiot, though in that case the subject of the pejorative, Prince Myshkin, was likened favorably to Christ, something that is probably not the way Alterman sees Republicans.  Clearer still is that Alterman is no Dostoevsky.

Which is just to say that, as a practical matter, we can’t vet Alterman’s claim just by taking his word for it, any more than we could subject it to the opinions of like-minded leftists, or conservatives for that matter.  This, because whatever “evidence” any of them might conjure up, it’s going to be tainted by their own subjective view of the world, by their ideological IDs, so to speak.

One way, perhaps, of getting around this problem is by looking at whatever evidence there is, anecdotal or scientific, indicating that Republicans themselves feel privileged by the quality of their media coverage, something one would expect to find if Alterman’s claim is true.

Unfortunately for the gentleman’s thesis, Republicans seem not to have gotten the memo. Whether measured by public opinion polls, the public statements of Republican politicians or conservative commentators, or simply by letters to the editor written by Republicans or conservatives, it’s pretty clear that the overwhelming majority feel, much to the contrary, that the media are largely in the camp of Democrats and liberals.

Perhaps, though, there’s another way of looking at this matter.  Call it, depending on your own political leanings, either the “democratic way" or the "way of the marketplace.”  I refer to the percentages of people who, as measured over the years by organizations like Gallup, classify themselves as liberals, conservatives, or moderates.  If, one could argue, these statistics show a much larger number of liberals than conservatives, media coverage of Republican policies might fairly be criticized if it could be shown that such coverage was at the expense of the larger number (of readers and viewers) who are liberals.

As it happens, though, the exact opposite is the case.  As shown by a Gallup poll conducted just last month, conservatives outnumber liberals by two-to-one, and in fact outnumber self-described moderates as well. Even more telling, for purposes of assessing Alterman’s accusation, is the poll’s percentage breakdown of those people who call themselves conservative or very conservative, in contrast with those who say they are liberal or very liberal.

Here are the numbers, as broken down by Gallup’s poll of national adults: Conservative, 30%; Very Conservative, 11%; Liberal, 15%; Very Liberal, 6%.  Apart from the much larger numbers of conservatives vs. liberals, the datum that is uniquely relevant to Alterman’s claim is the tiny percentage of people who consider themselves very liberal.

Why is this important?  Because Alterman, like all of the editorial contributors to The Nation, would admit to being “very liberal,” if not further to the left.  And as shown by the Gallup poll results, very few people share his views!

Seen this way, one can confidently say that whether one believes that the media, in a democracy, should proportionately represent the will of the people, or understands the need for the media, as for-profit businesses, to cater to the majority of their viewers and readers, there is as little evidence that they need to veer further to the left as there is that they need to take instruction from Eric Alterman.

                                  

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