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Posted on By Patrick Maines

“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.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

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.

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

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.  

Posted on By Patrick Maines

‘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.” 

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

Leave PBS Stations Alone

Since 1985, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has had a policy on the books stating that its member stations must offer a “nonsectarian, nonpolitical, noncommercial educational program service.”

It might be going a bit far to say that PBS has “adhered” to the policy.  Member stations routinely air presidential debates and weekly shows like “Washington in Review” that are nothing if not political.  The “enhanced underwriting credits” for big program funders like Boeing and Lockheed Martin look suspiciously like slick network TV commercials.   

And being British isn’t enough to make shows like “Are You Being Served?” and “As Time Goes By” educational.  Moreover, a handful of smaller stations run sectarian programs that include Catholic Masses and Mormon worship services.

Now, however, the PBS board is considering a revision to its so-called “Three Nons” policy that could force local religious programming off the airwaves of PBS member stations, or force those stations to give up their PBS membership.

A change in policy would likely affect stations like WLAE in New Orleans, which has aired a Sunday Mass since 1984, and Brigham Young University’s KBYU in Provo that carries Mormon worship services.

The proposed policy change is a bad idea.  A PBS committee “believes that if PBS or its Member Stations were perceived by the public to be ‘commercial,’ ‘political,’ or ‘sectarian,’ PBS could be hampered in its ability to carry out its mission.”  

Wait a minute – PBS seems to be carrying out its mission just fine with its members’ current mix of programming that includes all of the above.  

So why single out sectarian programming?  Some might argue that there should be a strict separation of church and state, since PBS member stations receive some funding from the federal government’s Corporation for Public Broadcasting, either directly or through PBS.  

But one need look no further than the FCC, which regulates both noncommercial and commercial broadcasting, to diffuse that argument.  As far back as 1929, the agency (then the Federal Radio Commission) said that broadcast licensees would meet their “public interest” obligations by offering a “well-rounded” mix of programming that included “religion, education and instruction.”  In a 1946 report, the FCC said it expected broadcasters to make free time available to “religious, civic, agricultural, labor, and educational groups.”

The FCC strayed from that policy briefly in 1999, when it issued a ruling that would have banned religious exhortation, proselytizing, and personal expressions of religious belief.  The resulting firestorm was so fierce (including the swift introduction of several bills in Congress) that the FCC deleted the provision a mere month later.

PBS should take its lead from the FCC.  PBS would do well to respect the local character of its member stations, and allow those stations to meet the needs of their audiences without injecting an anti-religion bias.

As it is, public broadcasting in this country is a strange and unlikely amalgam of governmental and private interests, with stations licensed to state and local governments, public and private universities, and even religious groups.  Its fragile equilibrium could easily be disrupted – say, by an untoward policy change.

Changing the “Three Nons” policy as proposed will accomplish nothing positive.  On the contrary, quite likely it will cause a firestorm of its own that might well ignite the now-simmering debate about the very existence of PBS, and whether a broadcasting system that receives even minimal government funding is still a good or necessary idea in this age of media abundance.    

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Whither Journalism? Part II

If journalism of a satisfactory depth, independence, and scale is going to survive, it will have to be produced by professional journalists employed by profit-making organizations.  As such it will require revenue streams that are sufficient for the purpose.  As a practical matter this means that newspapers will have to find ways of getting paid for access to their online content.  Advertising by itself will not do the trick.

But given the growing number of bloggers, citizen journalists, and news aggregating sites who specialize in opinion pieces (RealClearPolitics, Huffington Post, Drudge) there is a real question of how professional journalists can distinguish themselves from the rest of their online competition.

The view from here is that the question answers itself.  Professional news organizations, newspapers especially, should rid their online news pages of opinion and concentrate instead on the production of news and feature stories that run deep and straight down the middle.

Unfortunately this is the precise opposite of what is in vogue today, with media organizations like Newsweek and even the Associated Press moving in the direction of more rather than less opinion in their news stories.  It’s a mistake.

Opinion is the cheapest commodity in the world, precisely because everybody has one.  No need for inside or expert sources, for special expertise in the subject matter, or even for any real writing ability.  Opinion gains recognition in direct proportion to the extravagance of its expression.  As such, opinion is the “killer app” not of newspapers but of the blogosphere, which is why a site as undistinguished as Daily Kos attracts such a large number of visitors.

The problem for newspapers is compounded when the opinions they express in their news and editorial pages are too one-sided politically.  To give one example, the New York Times, which is losing paid circulation at a ferocious pace, reads these days very much like a house organ in its support of the Democratic party and policies.

To believe that this is not spotted, and resented, by people who are, say, Republicans or conservatives, is an exercise in self-delusion.  Even if one wants to argue that Republicans and conservatives are not in the majority today, they represent a very large minority for any business needing to sell itself to the public at large.

In any case, the main point is that newspapers and other professional news organizations should concentrate on doing those things, like in-depth and objective coverage of domestic and foreign affairs, which neither the news aggregators nor the bloggers have the talent or resources to do themselves.

Whatever their future revenue streams — from advertising and micropayments or walled content — it’s going to be necessary for the “mainstream media” to finds ways of distinguishing themselves from their online competitors.  One way of doing that would be to practice first-rate journalism and rigorous objectivity in the reporting and analysis of the news.

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Whither Journalism? Part I

As evidenced by recent hearings in the House and Senate, the future of journalism is attracting a lot of attention these days.  And why not?  Hardly a week goes by without news of the shutdown, bankruptcy reorganization, or downsizing of a daily newspaper somewhere.  And pretty much everyone seems to agree that newspapers are the “gold standard” among journalism organizations.

Journalists themselves have been dedicating large quantities of ink to the subject.  But like the witnesses at the congressional hearings, the prescriptions of journalists are as notable for what they don’t recommend as for what they do.

Actually, journalists aren’t recommending much of anything.  For the most part they content themselves with finger-wagging diatribes under headlines that read like draft obituaries.  Stories, for instance, like Howard Kurtz’s in the Washington Post (The Death of Print?) in which it’s argued that the blame belongs with the Internet and unimaginative and slow-footed management.  Or Frank Rich in the New York Times (The American Press on Suicide Watch), whose villain is an ungrateful public which “thinks nothing of spending money for texting or pornography” but is unwilling to shell out for … the opinions of Frank Rich?

And then, of course, there are the ideological opportunists, like John Nichols of The Nation (David Simon, Arianna Huffington and the Future of Journalism) who, true to his “class warrior” conceits, sums things up this way: “There will be time for the debate about solutions.  For now, it is not just useful but necessary to be clear about the cause of the crisis in journalism….  It wasn’t the Internet.  It wasn’t the current economic downturn.  It was a lousy ownership model that saw civic and democratic values replaced by the rapacious greed and commercial calculations of big media companies.”

Well, enough of this.  Let’s consider some solutions, and one very bad idea that is being offered up as a solution.

To take the bad idea first, the granting of nonprofit status to newspaper publishers makes no sense from either a journalistic or a business point of view.  Looked at journalistically, such a development would lead inexorably to challenges of these companies’ nonprofit status by governmental or private parties who would allege political partisanship.  Sooner or later these challenges would find traction, either in the courts, Congress, or in media boardrooms, thereby compromising the papers’ very reason for being.

As a business proposition, nonprofit status seems even more bizarre.  After all, the papers that are most notably failing today aren’t the work of mom-and-pop organizations.  They’re the products of the biggest companies in the industry, like Hearst, McClatchy, Gannett, and the Tribune Company — all of which are not only private, for-profit companies, but publicly owned companies (save for Tribune) at that.  How would the shareholders (or creditors) of any of them fare in such an arrangement?

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

Back to Square One

Two of the Supreme Court’s decisions most awaited by First Amendment advocates this term have landed with a thud.  Or maybe a whimper.  But certainly not with a bang.

On April 28, the Court upheld the FCC’s power to implement a tougher policy against so-called “fleeting expletives” on live television.  This was the Second Circuit’s case involving profanities uttered by Nicole Richie and Cher during music-awards shows in 2002 and 2003.

The other shoe dropped today when the High Court considered the Third Circuit’s case involving Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.  The Supreme Court told the appeals court to consider reinstating the FCC’s $550,000 fine against CBS.  

In both cases the High Court skirted the constitutional question of whether the FCC’s content controls run afoul of the First Amendment.  Last week’s profanity decision, for instance, was decided on procedural grounds (upholding the FCC’s right to change its indecency policy) and only then by a slim 5-to-4 vote.

In both cases too, the courts of appeal had sided with the networks and against the FCC.  The First Amendment question will now most likely be addressed specifically at that appellate level and, one hopes, make its way back to the High Court for a definitive ruling.  

We know that the Supreme Court avoids reaching constitutional questions when a case can be decided on other grounds.  That’s exactly what happened here, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise.  But it’s still a disappointment.

On a bright note, however, Justice Clarence Thomas said in a dissent that he thinks it’s about time to reconsider the two cases at the heart of broadcast regulation: Red Lion, which creates a lower standard of First Amendment protection for broadcasters; and Pacifica, which turns on the FCC’s authority to regulate “indecent” broadcast fare.

The openness of Justice Thomas is both refreshing and hopeful.  But, with the First Amendment question presently back at the appellate level, it will be a long time (if ever) before the Supreme Court tackles the underlying premises of Red Lion and Pacifica.  And with a new, and as-yet-unnamed justice thrown into the mix following the retirement of Justice Souter, all bets could be off.
 

Posted on By Patrick Maines

Time Warner Cable and Consumption-Based Billing


Time Warner Cable has had quite a bumpy ride for the past couple weeks.  Having announced earlier a plan to conduct trials of a consumption-based billing policy, in which users would be charged based on the amount of data they download and upload, by week’s end the company was obliged to suspend the trials altogether.

What happened in between were the protests of some customers and bloggers, the usual mischief of some of the “public interest” lobbies (they’re from Washington and they know what you want), and most importantly, the intervention, as critics, of a congressman (Massa) and a U.S. senator (Schumer).

Aside from the fact that broadband users who consume unusually large amounts of bandwidth, downloading movies and the like, would have to pay more, it’s not immediately clear what’s wrong with consumption-based billing.  That is, after all, the way we pay for most things, and it protects those who use less from having to subsidize the payments of those who use much more.

No matter.  In an age when information “wants to be free,” and everyone is entitled to everything, arguments based on marketplace economics are probably not going to persuade a lot of people, and certainly not grandstanding members of Congress.

Which is why, at the end of last week, Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable’s CEO, announced a suspension of the trials scheduled for later this year in Rochester, N.Y., Austin and San Antonio, Texas, and Greensboro, N.C.

In a display of their usual savoir-faire, several of the “public interest” moguls were full of gloating, like that of Timothy Karr of Free Press: “We’re glad to see Time Warner Cable’s price-gouging scheme collapse in the face of consumer opposition.  Let this be a lesson to other Internet service providers looking to head down a similar path.”

Only slightly less tiresome was the statement of Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge: “The company properly listened to its subscribers, the public and policymakers, all of whom (emphasis added) were highly critical of the proposition in the first place.”

The celebrations, however, may be a bit premature.  What Time Warner Cable said was that it was suspending the trials, not abandoning consumption-based billing, and that in the meantime it was going to deploy measurement tools, a kind of “gas gauge,” that would allow users to see how much bandwidth they were using each month.

Assume that some months from now it transpires that the vast majority of users consume bandwidth in amounts that would qualify them for the lowest and cheapest tiers, while only a small minority would have to pay at the highest rates.  Now that would be awkward, wouldn’t it?

Posted on By Richard T. Kaplar

A Disappointing Delay on Cross Ownership

Since January we’ve heard a lot of talk about changing the way the government does business.  At the FCC, however, it looks like it’s still just talk.  When it comes to the newspaper-broadcast cross ownership rules, at least, the times … they definitely are NOT a-changin’.

This week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said it would put off a decision on whether to lift a stay on the FCC’s modest attempt to loosen the rules until after the Obama FCC has a chance to review the revisions.

This comes after acting FCC chairman Michael Copps announced that the Commission would no longer oppose a petition by activist groups to put the case on hold until the new FCC leadership was in place.  

Let’s add this up.  The usual suspects in the activist realm (Media Access Project, Free Press, United Church of Christ, etc.) try to stall a court action that might loosen the cross ownership rules.  They know that if they can stall until a Democratic-majority FCC is in place, the changes are as good as dead.  The acting FCC chairman, who favors that outcome, goes along with the idea.

So it’s business as usual at the FCC.  But we expected more from the federal judiciary.

The court’s decision was unfortunate.  The judges should have acted decisively and immediately to lift the stay – as a matter of principle.  The ban on cross ownership makes absolutely no sense, neither in this digital age, nor in this recession.  The ban should have been abolished in its entirety years ago.  Some relaxation now would at least be a step in the right direction.

As for the activist groups and the acting FCC leadership – shame on them.  Has nobody among them noticed that in recent months newspapers have been biting the dust at an increasing rate that is nothing short of alarming?

If these policy watchers and makers truly cared about the public interest and a diversity of media voices, as they purport to do, they would be doing everything possible to help newspapers survive.  

It’s true that the problems facing the newspaper industry go well beyond the scope of the newspaper-broadcast cross ownership rules.  And it’s true that repealing the rules will not, by itself, restore the industry to robust health.

But getting rid of the rules – or even relaxing them a bit as the previous FCC chairman had proposed – might just help a little around the edges.  And if even one newspaper were able to keep publishing as a result, wouldn’t the public interest be better served?

That would be a change we could believe in.