Hardly a day goes by without another reminder that the demise of newspapers is in full swing.
In the Outlook section of yesterday’s Washington Post (Sun., Aug. 2) came the latest, an anecdotal example by Post reporter Ian Shapira titled “How Gawker Ripped Off My Story & Why It’s Destroying Journalism.” The title pretty much sums things up.
Gawker is, in Shapira’s words, “the snarky New York culture and media Web site.” More importantly, it is a news aggregator, and it had written about and heavily excerpted an earlier story Shapira had written for the Post.
At first Shapira was glad for the recognition, until his editor reminded him that he, and the Post, had been ripped off. Shapira had spent several days researching and writing his original story (and getting paid by the Post to do so). Gawker repackaged his story in no more than an hour and posted it on its site – for free (or close to it, if you count the time of the poorly paid 29-year-old “independent contractor” who did it).
And therein lies the worst-case scenario for the destruction of journalism – which is to say, original reporting. Newspapers are already being decimated financially by online media sites and blogs. To the extent that any of these sites offers serious journalism, that journalism frequently consists of stories that have been ripped off, er, “aggregated,” from established newspapers.
But here’s the rub: As online aggregators continue to strangle the newspaper industry, they are killing the geese that have been laying their golden eggs – original reporting. Once the newspapers are dead (or knocked senseless), from where will high-quality journalism originate? How many online outlets will be able to pay real reporters the way newspapers did? What will pass for journalism?
It’s already happening. Buyouts have emptied newsrooms of many of their most experienced and knowledgeable reporters, leaving things in the hands of novices. (A small example: An inexperienced reporter at the Post refers to the Obama inauguration train’s observation car as a “caboose,” and the editor doesn’t know the difference.)
Sadly, even the august New York Times is not immune. A piece by the Times’ Public Editor Clark Hoyt on Aug 1. described how the paper of record’s appraisal of Walter Cronkite contained seven factual errors – something of a record, no doubt, and a feat unimaginable in an earlier era.
Yesterday I was sitting with a group of friends and one of them was reading the Sunday New York Times. He asked me if I wanted to see it, and proffered a selection of unmistakably slim sections. He added apologetically: “The Times isn’t what it used to be.” No, my friend, it isn’t. But neither are the rest of them.
I don’t know where all of this is going to end, but I do know that we’re well on the way.
Dan Rather Has an Idea
According to stories in the Aspen Daily News and the Aspen Times, newspapers of record for the nation’s elite snowboarders, Dan Rather gave a speech at the Aspen Institute on Tuesday, asking that President Obama create a national commission to “save journalism.”
As one of the papers put it, without a skosh of irony, “Rather told an Aspen audience that journalism has declined to such a point that it is time for the government to intervene.”
Attributing the decline of "great American journalism" to “corporatization, politicization, and trivialization of the news,” Rather suggested that the commission “ought to make recommendations on saving journalism jobs and creating new business models to keep news organizations alive.”
"If we do nothing more than stand back and hope that innovation alone will solve this crisis," he said, "then our best-trained journalists will lose their jobs."
It’s not every day that one encounters such a rich vein of stuff. Puts one in mind of the children’s illustrations that ask the question, what’s wrong with this picture? So many upside-down daffodils and trees growing carrots.
First, you know, there’s the problem that some consider the author of this scheme himself to be a disgraced figure in the world of journalism, having lost his job at CBS for the role he played in the airing of a bogus report about President Bush.
Then there’s the (unintentionally) droll picture he conjures up of a presidential commission as a kind of jobs program for the rescue of threadbare journalists, and the linking of the employment status of some of them with the very survival of journalism itself.
But the most grievous error — that aspect of the Jabberwocky that fairly leaps off the page — is the very suggestion that government is the solution to what ails the media today. Make no mistake, there are governmental policies that could, and should, be changed (like, for instance, an end to the newspaper/broadcast cross ownership rules), but there is no need for a presidential commission or “media czar” for the purpose.
One would think that a former network anchorman would understand the peril inherent in any intervention by the government into the affairs of the press. It is this, after all, that is the primary concern of the Speech Clause of the First Amendment. What are the chances, for instance, that any such commission would use its mandate, and the media’s genuine agony, as cover to advance content regulations that parallel the commissioners’ political beliefs?
Speaking of his idea, Rather said that he was “throwing it out there for what it’s worth.” Since the Aspen Institute charged $15 per ticket to this event, we know what they think it was worth, but I think admission should have been free. It wouldn’t have improved the speech but the price would have been right.
Filling the Open Seats at the FCC
Late Friday afternoon the Senate confirmed Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Baker to fill the last of the open seats at the FCC. Though not yet sworn in as this note is being posted, it is assumed that both will be joining Michael Copps, Robert McDowell, and Julius Genachowski as commissioners within a few days.
We have not had an opportunity to work with Mignon Clyburn, but Meredith Baker is a favorite of ours. In November of last year, while still with NTIA, Meredith gave a speech at a Media Institute luncheon. She spoke of the digital transition and the First Amendment, as shown here, and demonstrated precisely why she’ll be such an asset to the FCC.
Our congratulations and best wishes to both of these accomplished women.
Bad Prescription for the First Amendment
It’s a good thing the USA isn’t experiencing any financial or economic problems, because if we were someone might notice that plans being hatched in committees of both the House and Senate will hurt all kinds of American businesses—and trash the First Amendment in the process.
The plans that are the subject of this note would deny the pharmaceutical industry—a perennial whipping boy—the right, afforded every other for-profit corporation, to deduct for tax purposes their advertising and marketing expenses.
The upshot of it all? An immediate hit to advertising agencies and to the media, all of whom are struggling in an economy that is tanking, and to the profitability of pharmaceutical companies, thereby putting downward pressure on their dividends to shareholders.
The impetus behind these congressional schemes is the frantic search for additional tax revenue as might (but won’t) cover the extraordinary costs, estimated at $1 trillion, associated with health care “reform.”
Of special note in these parts is the breezy dismissal by their congressional authors of the unconstitutional aspects of such legislation. From early landmark cases, such as Virginia Pharmacy and Central Hudson, to the present day, the Supreme Court has accorded commercial speech, as it’s called, a significant and growing amount of constitutional protection under the First Amendment.
Never mind. As demonstrated time and again, lawmakers are inclined to pass legislation without regard to its constitutional infirmities, leaving it to the courts to sort things out. Sorry to say, they are aided in this by a press corps that has demonstrated little or no interest in protecting the First Amendment rights of anyone other than themselves. (See, for instance, the coverage of McCain-Feingold.)
So it is that there’s a certain irony in the effort now underway by a number of media companies to resist this legislation. Having failed for years to explain to their readers and viewers how and why commercial messages too are protected speech, they now find themselves in the unhappy position of having to pay for that neglect.
None of which is to say that this legislation is deserved or a good idea. It is neither. It is, instead, just more economic mush issuing from people who are neither informed nor principled.
Keeping Kids Safe Online
Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in trying to keep children safe online. For more than a decade, various groups and individuals representing parents, children, educators, law enforcement, government, and industry have weighed in with suggestions.
Now, however, a worthwhile report has emerged from a coalition that is notable in equal parts for its diversity, its lack of political agenda, and its candor. The coalition was brought together by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association as an element of its “PointSmart.ClickSafe.” initiative to promote online safety and media literacy.
The coalition includes industry leaders like Verizon, Comcast, Cox, Google, Yahoo!, AOL, and Symantec. It also includes groups like Common Sense Media, the Internet Keep Safe Coalition (iKeepSafe), PTA, Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), and the Children’s Partnership.
Following a summit in Washington in June 2008 and a year-long effort, the coalition has now issued a report titled “PointSmart.ClickSafe: Task Force Recommendations for Best Practices for Online Safety and Literacy.” It’s online at www.pointsmartreport.org.
The “best practices,” 20 in all, are grouped in three categories: “before children go online, “during a child’s online activities,” and “when problems arise.” You can read the particulars here.
What I find noteworthy about the report more broadly, however, is its candor in admitting the sizable number of obstacles in trying to keep kids safe. Kids know more than their parents about technology. Kids lack impulse control. It’s hard to verify identities and ages. Technology keeps changing … the list goes on and on.
Given this daunting list of variables, many activist groups would turn to the government for a “solution.” But, thankfully, not this coalition – and that’s also noteworthy. “Best Practices … provide the most direct potential benefits, because they empower the private and nonprofit sectors to create solutions and allow government to focus on broad policy guidelines rather than detailed, prescriptive, onerous or problematic laws and regulation,” the report states.
As the FCC and several other federal agencies pursue their own studies of media and online safety, they would do well to take note of NCTA’s PointSmart.ClickSafe. This effort demonstrates that the industry, with input from a wide range of responsible advocacy groups, is indeed able to keep its own house in order without a government housekeeper.
Ship of Fools
Imagine that every person in the United States were aboard a large life raft, in the open ocean, amidst a hurricane. In that circumstance how many of the nation’s factions would be pressing their special interests? Would the environmentalists yammer on about “global warming"? Or the political class about the likely composition of the presidential tickets in 2012?
Surely the answer to those questions is no. In that situation the only issue that would be of interest to everyone aboard would be how to survive their predicament.
As it happens, everyone in the United States is aboard that life raft. It’s called the USS Economy. But because of their own tunnel vision and fundamental lack of knowledge, aided and abetted by the distracting, sententious, and superficial reportage of the media, the people still don’t fully realize it.
This country’s current and prospective fiscal and economic problems are of such a magnitude that if they are not satisfactorily addressed, and soon, the United States is at serious risk of evolving, at tremendous speed, from a prosperous and democratic country into a banana republic.
The evidence of this calamitous portent is not only easy to find, it’s coming in the windows! It’s shown in the decline in GDP, employment, tax revenue at all levels of government, and in the growth of the national debt. And these depressing data are reflected in the decline of virtually all asset classes as investors here and abroad reset their portfolios to the new and emerging realities.
Nor is the threat of declining living standards and loss of opportunity the only thing we have to fear. Though it’s noted almost never, the principal reason the United States won the Cold War is because our economy was bigger than that of the Soviet Union. Because of this we were able to steer the course of commerce and technology around the world. And because of this our military was bigger and better than the USSR’s.
But today it’s the Chinese who have the momentum in their economy — the same Chinese who, though they’ve adopted capitalistic economic reforms, much to their advantage, are still led by a corrupt and undemocratic political regime. How long after the Chinese economy surpasses our own will it take before the Chinese military surpasses our own?
Despite these hard truths, too much of the media continue to misreport and under report the nation’s economic affairs. Like a bakery offering everything from crullers to éclairs to donuts, they persist in delivering news that puts the trivial and fatuous on the same footing as the crucial.
Which is why I offer this modest proposal. How about creating a national observance (call it Get Serious Week) during which all of the media, print and electronic, refrain from reporting on anything but the nation’s fiscal and economic challenges? For one full week no stories, for instance, about professional sports (the true opiate of the masses); pop culture celebrities, quick or dead; or the campaigns of single-issue zealots who enjoy such a disproportionate claim on the media’s attention.
It would undoubtedly cost some eyeballs and ad revenue, but at a time when the concept of the “public interest” has been reduced to a cliché, it would be a refreshing demonstration of the virtue in the real thing.
“Whale Wars”: Just Another Fish Tale
If you believe, as I do, that Greenpeace is to conservation what televangelism is to religion, all that would need to be said about Animal Planet’s “Whale Wars” is that the “captain” of the Sea Shepherds’ vessel, Paul Watson, is a co-founder of that organization. Because, however, Greenpeace disputes Watson’s claim, amidst what appears to be a long-running feud between them, perhaps more may be required.
So here’s some. As reported on Wikipedia, Watson has, at one time or another, been involved in campaigns on behalf of wolves, sharks, seals, dolphins, American Indians, and now whales. Along the way he has relieved himself of opinions like his belief “that ‘no human community should be larger than 20,000 people,’ human populations should be reduced to ‘fewer than one billion,’ and that only those who are ‘completely dedicated to the responsibility’ of caring for the biosphere should have children.”
Though the fact of it may not have reached Animal Planet, Watson has also developed quite a revealing take on the media. As he says in his book, heroically titled Ocean Warrior: “Survival in a media culture meant developing the skills to understand and manipulate media to achieve strategic objectives.”
But enough about Watson. It’s the show that’s the thing, and a good critique of “Whale Wars” was published earlier this month on the Huffington Post. The author, Richard Spilman, harpooned the series for its approving portrayal of vigilantism and feckless grandstanding.
“So what’s the problem with Whale Wars?” he asks. “The problem is that it is cheap exploitation in praise of what is nothing less than eco-terrorism. It is the glorification of vigilantism on the high seas. And oh, by the way, the Sea Shepherds do almost nothing to protect the whales where they really do need protection.”
Mostly what they do is speed around offending ships in inflatables and attempt to loft stink bombs onto their decks, all the while flying and wearing the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger, an amusing choice of insignia considering that they don’t actually fight, or even scare, anybody.
In any contest between whales and whalers I would root for the whales. But if the choice is between whalers and the Sea Shepherds, I’m with the whalers.
With Friends Like These
Signs of institutional meltdown are everywhere apparent. Wall Street and Detroit are obvious examples, as are the states of New York and California. But nowhere is the collapse of standards and credibility more alarming than among journalists and their profession.
Evidence of journalism’s implosion is seen not only in the declining readership and viewership of the MSM, and in public opinion polls, but also in the recent antics of journalists themselves and of those grant-giving foundations that support journalism programs.
A lamentably good example of the latter was provided last week by the Knight Foundation — the largest provider of funding for such programs at universities and nonprofit organizations — and by the Associated Press.
In a release dated June 15, the AP announced that it was launching a project “to distribute watchdog and investigative journalism from nonprofit organizations to its 1,500 member newspapers.” Two days earlier, the Knight Foundation announced a new $15-million program of grants to several investigative news organizations. Among them are two that the AP plans to include in its distribution, the Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica.
These two announcements herald the birth of what would have been unthinkable in better times, the spectacle of an established news organization like AP accepting and distributing handouts from third parties.
Such an arrangement is, and would be, objectionable even if the “investigative news” organizations in question possessed the qualities of balance and objectivity. But these don’t, and you don’t need to be an investigative reporter to figure that out.
Take, for example, the best funded of them, ProPublica. From their own website comes this revealing statement about their mission: “Our work,” they say, “focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with ‘moral force.’ We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.”
What this suggests, of course, is that ProPublica is likely to have little or no interest in some of the worst aspects of public policy in the USA. Things like the disastrous dependency on government, forged after decades of welfare programs, in America’s inner-city neighborhoods. Or like the ruinous role played by public employees and their unions on state and municipal finance. Or the impact on the cost and provision of health care by ambulance-chasing trial lawyers.
Just by their mission statement it’s clear that ProPublica’s heart wouldn’t be in doing these kinds of stories. But that’s not the only evidence of the organization’s unfitness for the role being given it by the AP. There’s also the small matter of its founder and largest benefactor.
Billionaire Herbert Sandler and his wife, Marion (they’re always mentioned together because of the role each played in the founding of Golden West Financial), have painted, through their contributions to Democratic and leftist organizations like the Center for American Progress and Acorn, an unmistakable ideological profile, leavened with a fair amount of hypocrisy.
As Jack Shafer of Slate put it, in a piece published shortly after the Sandlers founded ProPublica in 2007: “What do the Sandlers want for their millions? Perhaps to return us to the days of the partisan press … ProPublica’s Web site vows that its investigations will be conducted in a ‘non-partisan and non-ideological manner, adhering to the strictest standards of journalistic impartiality.’ But philanthropists, especially those who earned the fortune they’re giving away, tend not to distribute their money with a blind eye to the results. How happy will they be if ProPublica gores their sacred Democratic cows? Or takes the ‘wrong’ position on their pet projects: health, the environment, and civil liberties?”
Providing an almost comic dimension to the Sandlers’ ambitions is the fact that earlier this year Time magazine named them to their list of the “25 people responsible for the financial crisis,” and "SNL" did a skit in ’08 in which it was suggested that they should be shot.
Looming over the whole of the Knight/AP exercise is the elephant in the room that is the public’s growing lack of trust in the media. A piece written last month by Melik Kaylan for Forbes.com summarized that distrust as follows:
“The Reagan years also ushered in the distrust of the Eastern-seaboard intellectual elites. President Reagan understood and exploited the great divide between the heartland and custodians of news, who were chiefly in New York. The two sides saw two different Americas. Journalists and the institutions that formed their ideas saw a country composed largely of wronged minorities with fascinating grievances. Much of the country saw itself as a unified coherent nation with its traditions under siege from insular power blocs who were back-scratching each other all the way up and down the seaboards. Out of that disconnect grew the success of Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter, Fox News, the blogosphere and the great decentralizing force of the alternative media."
By an ironic coincidence, on the same day that the AP came out with its announcement, the Gallup organization released the results of a new poll of Americans’ ideological attitudes. It found that conservatives outnumber liberals by a margin of 2 to 1. More importantly it revealed that only 5 percent of the people consider themselves "very liberal," a designation that accurately describes the investigative nonprofits the AP and the Knight Foundation have now embraced.
Leave it to them to explain, as the media continue their march toward oblivion, how such a biased and shabby program will improve the public’s trust in the mainstream media or in journalism.
The Big, Uneventful Day
A blog about media and communications policy would be remiss if it did not mark the fact that this is a watershed date in television history – even if nothing much seems out of the ordinary.
This, after all, is June 12, the date years in the making on which television broadcasters are converting their analog signals to digital. For TV viewers with cable or satellite (i.e., most of us) there is no difference. For those who still rely on antenna reception of over-the-air broadcast signals, there will be no more TV until they get a converter box (for which the federal government has been offering discount coupons for months).
The good news is that most people have already taken steps to become digital-ready. Paul Karpowicz, chairman of the National Association of Broadcasters TV Board, said at a press conference yesterday that only 1.75 million over-the-air households have not prepared for the changeover.
The National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) said it received almost 320,000 requests for converter-box coupons yesterday alone, up from the recent daily average of 114,272. And for those who somehow haven’t gotten the word about the switch to digital, the FCC has 4,000 operators standing by 24/7.
FCC and industry leaders acknowledge that some stations might experience a few engineering bumps. But for broadcasters and viewers alike, the changeover is said to be going relatively (and even surprisingly) well.
The FCC, NTIA, NAB, NCTA, and countless station engineers deserve a “well done” for making this watershed day so uneventful.
‘Breaking Bad’: An Appreciation
Every once in awhile something happens in medialand that elevates and refreshes, and at least partially reclaims the enormous potential of the industry. Media coverage of the events of 9/11 is one example, and the minor miracle that is AMC’s series "Breaking Bad" is another.
For the uninitiated, who unfortunately are legion, "Breaking Bad" is the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who, discovering that he has late-stage lung cancer, embarks on a career as a methamphetamine producer.
As measured by the awards, which already include a Peabody and two Emmys, and by the reviews, "BB" has already established itself as perhaps the best show on television. The writing, acting, directing, and camera work are achingly good. Unlike the X-rated products that are consumed by people with the emotional maturity of children, whatever their age, "Breaking Bad" really is adult entertainment.
In this brilliant series human beings are complex, neither all good nor all bad, itself a kind of challenge to a world immersed in the poses and pieties of political correctness. And then there’s the subtlety of it; the communication, with no more than a look or a word, of a world of meaning.
But the best is the essential humanity of the production — the notion that, no matter how unequal our circumstances, we are essentially the same, and capable of great understanding and empathy. How else to explain the poignant and touching relationship between Walter and Jesse, Walt’s wayward former student and now partner in crime?
Because of the way the series ended its second season — and because the producer (Vince Gilligan) has told us so — we know that "BB" will be back for a third year, a fact that virtually guarantees more awards and critical acclaim. And that’s all to the good. But there are aspects of this phenomenon that invite some further comment that go not to art but to the lesser realms of politics and commerce.
One such observation is the folly of trying to enforce content standards on TV fare where no account is given to the context in which certain words or pictures are used. "Breaking Bad" features a number of words, and acts of violence, which by themselves might offend some people. But where, as here, such things are employed not to titillate but to deepen and extend the reality of the experience, one would think many people might see what a mistake it is to allow any kind of governmental censoring scheme that is blind to such distinctions.
The commercial aspect of this show that rankles a bit is the fact of its distribution by American Movie Classics (AMC), owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, itself a subsidiary of the cable operator, Cablevision Systems. Which is not to say anything derogatory about AMC. Far from it, the network, and all involved, should be enormously proud of what they’re delivering. (Which, by the way, also includes the terrific original series, "Mad Men.")
But why, one wonders, isn’t "Breaking Bad" being shown on one of the bigger cable networks, or indeed on one of the broadcast networks? Kind of hard to imagine that AMC was the producer’s first choice when, were the show being aired on USA or TNT — not to mention, say, ABC — the audience would likely be orders of magnitude larger. One assumes it may have something to do with the very qualities that make the show so rewarding —that it’s seen as too smart or sophisticated for a mass audience.
If so, that’s a shame, both for the country and for the industry, and something that’s being noted. As Tim Goodman, TV critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and enthusiastic fan of the series, put it: “It’s like I’ve been freed from the tyranny of network programming.”