I very much enjoyed Dennis Baron’s new book, A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, and highly recommend you pick it up. Baron does a wonderful job exploring the history of techno-pessimism and the endless battles about the impact of new technologies on life and learning, something I have written about here before in my essays on “Internet optimists vs. pessimists” (See: 1, 2, 3).

I have a complete review of Baron’s A Better Pencil now up on the City Journal‘s website here.  I’ve also pasted it down below.

Plato Wrote it Down by Adam Thierer

a review of A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution, by Dennis Baron (Oxford University Press, 280 pp., $24.95)

In the beginning, Dennis Baron reminds us in his new book, A Better Pencil, there was the word—the spoken word, that is. Oral tradition, the passing of knowledge through stories and lectures, was the primary method of instruction and learning throughout early human civilization. But then a few innovative souls decided to start writing everything down on stones and clay. Almost as soon as they did, a great debate began on the impact of new communications technology on culture and education. And it rages on today, with a new generation of optimists and skeptics battling over the impact that computing, the Internet, and digital technologies have on our lives and on how we learn about the world.

Baron, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois, begins his splendid history of these debates with the well-known tale from Plato’s Phaedrus about the dangers of the written word. The Egyptian god Theuth boasts to King Thamus about how his invention of writing will improve the wisdom and memory of the masses. Thamus shoots back, “The discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it.” Thamus then passes judgment on writing’s impact on society, saying he fears that the people “will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.”

Of course, as Baron points out, we remember this warning only “because Plato wrote it down.” It’s one of the recurrent ironies in the history of techno-skepticism that while “the shock of the new often brings out critics eager to warn us away,” those critics often embrace—or, at the very least, benefit from—the very tools that they want the rest of us to shun. Whether it’s Luddites On-Line winning Yahoo’s “Cool Site of the Day” award, or the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association promoting National Handwriting Day via the Internet, or Ted Kaczynski’s Unabomber Manifesto attracting unprecedented readership thanks to its availability on the Web, those who have a “common tendency to romanticize the good old ways” of doing things often fail to appreciate how new technology can benefit society—including themselves.

Baron walks us through a litany of historical examples—the printing press, the telegraph, telephones, typewriters, pocket calculators, personal computers, word processors, webpages, blogs, social-networking sites, and more—and identifies the usual pattern: we greet each new technology with deep distrust and dire warnings, but in time we adapt to the new realities. Indeed, as a species, we have an unparalleled ability to learn new ways of doing things. We don’t always like technological change, and often we deeply resent or fear it, but in the end, we learn to live with it and eventually to embrace it.

With the rise of the Internet and digital technologies, we see this pattern unfolding once again. “According to the latest generation of critics and naysayers,” Baron notes, “today it is computers that are producing texts whose value and credibility we question; computers that are giving too many people control over the creation and publication of text; computers that are wreaking havoc with our handwriting.” Contemporary critics also fret over “information overload.”

The backlash against computers and digitization began while the Internet was still in its cradle, with the 1992 publication of Neil Postman’s anti-technology screed, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Postman’s intellectual descendants include Internet critics such as Lee Siegel, Andrew Keen, and Mark Helprin, whose works drip with disdain for all things digital. They warn of a coming dystopia where truth and authority vanish, culture crumbles, and political polarization breeds closed-mindedness and even the death of deliberative democracy.

These overly pessimistic critics turn a blind eye to both the wonders of the digital age and humanity’s ability to adapt. As Baron persuasively argues, “English survives, conversation thrives online as well as off, and on balance, digital communications seems to be enhancing human interaction, not detracting from it.” In fact, we live in a world of unprecedented media abundance that previous generations would have found unimaginable. As Baron puts it: “The Internet is a true electronic frontier where everyone is on his or her own: all manuscripts are accepted for publication, they remain in virtual print forever, and no one can tell writers what to do.” Such human empowerment is worth celebrating, even if it does have the occasional downside. Abundance is better than a world of scarce choices and few voices.

Baron’s retelling of the history of techno-skepticism is edifying, but it leaves one with the nagging feeling that these debates will never cease. Each generation will witness a technological watershed that brings out a fresh crop of both pollyannas and pessimists. Like Plato, however, most of us will embrace whatever’s next and move forward.

Two great articles today about the dangers of government getting too involved in the newspaper business as the industry experiences serious marketplace difficulties. Slate’s Jack Shafer (“Saving Newspapers From Their Saviors“) and Mark Hopkins of Silicon Angle (“Obama Administration ‘Open’ to State Run Newspapers“) both raise concerns about President Obama’s recent comments hinting that he is open to legislation that might grant struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

In a piece for the City Journal back in March entitled “Socializing Media in Order to Save It,” I discussed the specific proposal in question, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin’s (D-MD) bill, S. 673, the “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” which would allow newspapers to become nonprofit organizations in an effort to help them stay afloat. Importantly, however, the measure would also disallow political endorsements on their editorial pages as part of the deal.  In my essay, I pointed out how “If the FCC received grant-making authority to dole out subsidies to media operators… it’s hard to imagine how journalists won’t be expected to surrender something in exchange.”  And that something would be their journalistic independence.

Shafer and Hopkins raise similar concerns in their essays.  Hopkins shares my concern about undue government influence as a result of such a potential legislative quid pro quo:

[I]sn’t journalism supposed to be the lauded and independent “Fourth Estate,” free of bias and loyalty to any governmental institution? Obviously, bias is pervasive in the old Heritage Media, but assigning journalism governmental overlords will almost ensure that journalistic independence will end. A bailout is the only hope of continued existence for the majority of newspapers, since almost without exception they’re too proud or ignorant to fundamentally change the way their organizations operate to adapt to the new media ecosystem. If one examines the extent to which the government has structured their relationships with the large banking institutions and the automakers, it isn’t a great leap of logic to see how the interference will play out with newspapers (and who would be more aware of that than the journalists that have covered those stories?).

Indeed, the fact that the Cardin bill already proposes a prohibition on political editorializing doesn’t bode well for what the future might hold should government ride in to rescue some struggling papers.  What else might newspapers have to entertain?  Free ads for politicians? A Fairness Doctrine or mandatory right of reply for printed editorials? Censorship for hard-hitting political satire or comics?  Who knows, but it is impossible for me to believe that lawmakers won’t ask for something in return for bailing out news outlets.

Meanwhile, Slate’s Shafer does a nice job itemizing concerns raised by a wide variety of folks in the newspaper industry itself and he also notes how such media marketplace meddling could distort the emerging news playing field in dangerous ways:

The government’s attempt to prop up newspapers with rewrites of the tax code or Sarkozy-esque direct subsidies of government advertising and free subscriptions for young people interferes with the already-in-progress transition from print to digital news delivery that’s been accelerating for the past 15 years—or longer. Propping up troubled papers has a cost. It weakens the enterprises that are rising from below to compete with them to deliver advertising and, yes, deliver news. I can think of no better way to hinder the rise of such Web sensations as Politico and Talking Points Memo than rewriting the rules to benefit newspapers.

Great point.  Any way you cut it, federal meddling with the news business — even in the name of saving some traditional journalistic outlets — will likely have serious unintended consequences in the long run.  President Obama should just say no to newspaper bailouts.

I cannot in strong enough terms recommend that everyone read Gordon Crovitz’s latest Wall Street Journal column, “Free Speech, Now that Speech is Free.”  It perfectly encapsulates everything we stand for here and makes the case that I have made again and again: Speech regulation — of all flavors — makes less and less sense in a world of information abundance and user empowerment, and it is a complete affront to our First Amendment rights.  As Crovitz argues:

The Constitution was drafted at a time when there were few media outlets, and few people could be heard. Since then, technology has made it possible for everyone to express their views. The cost of expressing opinions continues to fall. Now that speech is no longer expensive, it’s time to return to the Founders’ intention that speech be free and that Congress not abridge anyone’s right to speak.

Amen brother!  In his essay today, Crovitz specifically takes on America’s increasingly insane campaign finance laws, which make a mockery of the First Amendment.  In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court arguments in the Citizens United case, Crovitz points out the insulting stupidity and sheer futility of these analog era, scarcity-oriented laws:

In the era of YouTube and Facebook, the notion that anyone or any institution can dominate political debate is quaint at best. After last week’s Supreme Court argument, key parts of McCain-Feingold seem likely to be overturned. The justices are legal experts, not technologists, but in protecting constitutional rights, they know they are operating in a very different information environment than existed earlier in the decade. Lively political debate is supposed to benefit everyone—with the occasional exception of incumbent officeholders who are not re-elected. But McCain-Feingold banned the broadcast or transmission by cable or satellite of “electioneering communications” paid for by corporations in the 30 days before a presidential primary or 60 days before the general election. This always raised a First Amendment issue. The issue now goes deeper: How can any regulation based on an assumption of information scarcity be justified in an era of information abundance?

Absolutely, 100% right.  As I pointed out in my old City Journal essay, “The Media Cornucopia“:

Throughout most of history, humans lived in a state of extreme information poverty. News traveled slowly, field to field, village to village. Even with the printing press’s advent, information spread at a snail’s pace. Few knew how to find printed materials, assuming that they even knew how to read. Today, by contrast, we live in a world of unprecedented media abundance that once would have been the stuff of science-fiction novels. We can increasingly obtain and consume whatever media we want, wherever and whenever we want: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the bewildering variety of material available on the Internet.

And yet, despite these wonderful developments, we still have Washington policymakers and regulators conditioning speech rights on the supposed “scarcity” of viewpoints or soapboxes to stand on.  What utter rubbish.  Of course, that hasn’t stopped many regulatory activist groups from continuing to use such logic in favor of expanded media regulation.

Regardless, Crovitz suggests that, with any luck, we could get a replay of what happened to the Fairness Doctrine:

The likely demise of McCain-Feingold echoes the fate of the Fairness Doctrine. The Federal Communications Commission in 1949 required holders of broadcast licenses to present all sides of controversial topics. There were few broadcast outlets and at least arguably a risk of one-sided debates. The rule was abolished in 1987 as channels grew. With hundreds of cable channels and endless uploads of videos to the Web, it would be impossible to enforce “fairness” even if bureaucrats could track how much of which views were being expressed.

We can only hope that the course of human events follows that same trajectory and policymakers come around to once again realizing the error of their past ways.

I’ve got a new essay up over at the City Journal about John Nichols and Robert McChesney’s proposal to have the government heavily subsidize failing media enterprises to “save journalism.” It follows below:

“Socializing Media in Order to Save It“ by Adam D. Thierer

City Journal March 27, 2009

With proposals to nationalize or heavily subsidize various segments of our economy more in vogue than ever, it was probably only a matter of time before someone suggested that America’s media marketplace should be brought into the government fold. John Nichols of The Nation and the prolific neo-Marxist media theorist Robert W. McChesney have now provided the road map for media’s march to serfdom. The cost to the American taxpayer would be at least $60 billion, but the cost for the First Amendment and our democracy would be incalculable.

Nichols and McChesney have coauthored several books and essays about media policy that view the world through the prism of class struggle, “manufactured consent” (á la Noam Chomsky), and the rest of the typical Marxoid tripe about history and economics. In their view, private, for-profit media cannot be trusted. As they stated in their 2003 call to arms, Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media, media-reform efforts must begin with “the need to promote an understanding of the urgency to assert public control over the media.” “Our claim,” they continue, “is simply that the media system produces vastly less of quality than it would if corporate and commercial pressures were lessened.”

In a new Nation essay, “The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers,” the authors bring their earlier work to its logical conclusion. Saving journalism, they argue, essentially requires that media become an appendage of the state. Journalism, they claim, is a “public good,” which—like education and defense—requires constant government oversight and support: “A moment has arrived at which we must recognize the need to invest tax dollars to create and maintain news gathering, reporting and writing with the purpose of informing all our citizens.” They propose that government devote $60 billion to “subscription subsidies, postal reforms, youth media and investment in public broadcasting.” Think of it as a “free press ‘infrastructure project,’” they say. “It would keep the press system alive. And it has the added benefit of providing an economic stimulus.” (Isn’t it amazing how everything stimulates the economy these days?)

Perhaps most audaciously, they argue that policymakers must respond to the crisis in journalism “with the same urgency with which they would approach the threat of terrorism, pandemic, financial collapse or climate change.” And they proclaim that their subsidy proposals are entirely consistent with what the nation’s Founders would have wanted:

We have to open the door to enlightened public policies and subsidies. . . . We need an organized citizenry demanding the institutions that make self-government possible. Only then can we, like our founders, build a free press. The technologies and the economic challenges are, of course, more complex than in the 1790s, but the answer is the same: the democratic state, the government, must create the conditions for sustaining the journalism that can provide the people with the information they need to be their own governors.

The Founders cared about a free press, of course, but they didn’t call for massive public subsidies to achieve it. They did put in place one rather important provision—the First Amendment—suggesting what they believed constituted a truly free press: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

Nichols and McChesney seem utterly naive, however, about the dangers to the First Amendment of putting government in control of media’s purse strings. “We must have a system that prohibits state censorship and that minimizes commercial control over journalistic values and pursuits,” they maintain. Well, good luck with that. If eight decades of Federal Communications Commission meddling in media markets have taught us anything, it’s that if you give bureaucrats the power to regulate the size and the shape of a soapbox, they will inevitably use their authority to regulate the speech delivered on that soapbox—indecency regulation, educational-television mandates, public-access rules, and the Fairness Doctrine are only a few examples. If the FCC received grant-making authority to dole out subsidies to media operators as Nichols and McChesney desire, it’s hard to imagine how journalists won’t be expected to surrender something in exchange. (Consider in this light the bill that Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) introduced this week that would allow newspapers to become nonprofit organizations in an effort to help them stay afloat, but would also disallow political endorsements on their editorial pages.)

Nichols and McChesney in fact do envision strings being attached to public financing. They call, for example, for an annual tax credit for the first $200 each American spends on daily newspapers. To be eligible for this indirect subsidy, though, the reader must purchase media that meet criteria set by . . . Nichols and McChesney: “Newspapers would have to publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial ‘news hole,’ say at least twenty-four broad pages each day, with less than 50 percent advertising.” Missing, moreover, is any mention of who defines what constitutes “news.” It wouldn’t take long for such a process to become a politicized nightmare.

Nichols and McChesney would also require that recipients of this “stimulus subsidy” make at least 90 percent of their content immediately available, free of charge, online. That’s an underhanded way of converting journalism into a giant, government-sponsored commons. (Incidentally, I can’t help but notice how many of Nichols’s essays are locked down on the Nation website, available only to subscribers.)

Nichols’s and McChesney’s argument shouldn’t simply be dismissed as radical, pie-in-the-sky theorizing. The authors have successfully spearheaded an increasingly influential media-reform movement through Free Press, the activist group they cofounded in 2002. The organization’s boisterous band of reformistas work tirelessly to mobilize troops whenever the slightest whiff of media liberalization is in the air. Nichols’s and McChesney’s new article gives us a taste of what we might expect their reform allies in Congress to propose next.

Nichols and McChesney are right about one thing: America’s media operators are struggling in the face of unprecedented competition and unexpected technological change. But the medicine they prescribe is far worse than the disease—for both the profession of journalism and for democracy itself.

In a City Journal article earlier this year, I wondered “how long some local papers have left when they are barred from restructuring their businesses or partnering with other local media operators to stem the bleeding and reinvent their business models.”  I was responding to the Senate’s smack-down of a half-hearted reform effort that FCC chairman Kevin Martin pushed through in November 2007, which proposed relaxing the FCC’s newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule. That rule, unrevised since going into effect in 1975, prohibits a newspaper operator from also owning a radio or television station in the same media market. However, waivers were granted to grandfather in some combined newspaper and broadcast operations that had existed long before the ban took effect. Martin’s proposal was to simply tweak the rule to permit similar combinations in just the nation’s 20 largest media markets.

Martin’s limited liberalization proposal, however, led to howls of disapproval from FCC democrats like Michael Copps and many folks on both side of the aisle in Congress. Supposedly, this was nothing more than a “giveaway” to the newspaper industry, which critics said was doing just fine.  It really makes you wonder if any of those critics even both reading the news about newspapers today.

As I have documented here on many occasions, as well as in my big Media Metrics report, the newspaper industry is in huge trouble with every financial variable of importance rapidly heading south. Alan Mutter does a good job here of summarizing “the secular forces dragging down newspapers: Declining readership, shrinking advertising, high fixed costs and growing online competition that makes it increasingly difficult to charge the premium ad rates that were possible prior to the Internet.”  As a result of these forces, everyday brings another headline like this one today in the New York Times: “The Star-Ledger of Newark Plans 40% Cut,” or this one in the Wall Street Journal: “Some Newspapers Shed Unprofitable Readers.”  The numbers are just miserable, and they just get worse and worse.

Now, you might say, “So what? That’s creative destruction at work.” Indeed it is, and it’s an entirely natural and healthy marketplace phenomenon. The problem, however, is that there’s still a lot of regulating going on.  Specifically, papers remain bound by red tape in the form of artificial market ownership restrictions that disallow the creation of new business models that might save them what appears to be their possible extinction.

I am not at all confident that consolidation or creative ownership arrangements will actually throw them much of a lifeline — it’s probably too little, too late, now that so many readers and advertisers have flocked to the Net and other media platforms.   Nonetheless, they should not be bound by archaic media ownership rules put on the books a quarter century ago in an era of less competition and consumer choice.  Let papers restructure and compete.  It may be their only chance at survival.

Update: Just a few minutes after posting this I came across this NYT article documenting the latest quarterly newspaper circulation numbers and how the numbers just keep getting worse. Sales in the spring and summer fell almost 5 percent from the previous year according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Earlier this year, I mentioned an outstanding book that John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School co-edited entitled Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering.  It’s an excellent resource for anyone studying the methods governments are (unfortunately) using to stifle online expression across the globe.  It’s one of the most important technology policy books of the year.

Well, it looks like John Palfrey will have a second title on this year’s “Best Tech Books” list.  I’ve just finished his new book with his Berkman Center colleague Urs Gasser, Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, and it is definitely worthy of your attention. In my book review posted today on the City Journal’s website, I argue that “Palfrey and Gasser’s fine early history of this generation serves as a starting point for any conversation about how to mentor the children of the Web.”  It’s a comprehensive and very even-handed discussion about a variety of concerns or Internet pathologies, including: online safety, personal privacy, copyright piracy, offensive content, classroom learning, and much more.

My City Journal review is down below, but in coming weeks I will be posting some additional thoughts about some specific things in the book worthy of more attention (including a few things I disagreed with).  Overall, I’d say Born Digital is a close runner-up in the race for “Tech Book of the Year,” closely trailing Jonathan Zittrain’s Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (which I have reviewed multiple times) and Nick Carr’s The Big Switch.  But I found far more to agree with in Born Digital than I did in those two books.  Highly recommended.

Understanding Our Digital Kids A new book offers a guide for mentoring the children of the Web.

a book review by Adam D. Thierer of

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser (Basic Books, 288 pp., $25.95)

City Journal 10 October 2008

You can’t blame parents today if they think that their children have been assimilated into the Borg or are living in the Matrix. Members of the “always on, always connected” generation have surrounded themselves with digital devices and networks and colonized cyberspace in the process. Meanwhile, back in “meatspace,” many Analog Era parents scratch their heads, trying to make sense of these momentous changes and what they mean for their kids and society.

Answers are available in Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, both of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Each chapter in the book addresses a different parental concern or Internet pathology: online safety, personal privacy, copyright piracy, offensive content, classroom learning, and more. Palfrey and Gasser aim “to separate what we need to worry about from what’s not so scary, (and) what we ought to resist from what we ought to embrace.”

The authors offer a balanced treatment of these issues—almost to a fault, in that they occasionally fail to develop fully their own positions. Of course, as they repeatedly—and correctly—note, often these thorny questions have no easy answers. “The hard problem,” they point out, “is how to balance caution with encouragement: How do we take effective steps to protect our children, as well as the interests of others, while allowing those same kids enough room to figure things out on their own?”

If there is a single solution, they argue, it’s education. The authors want parents, educators, and lawmakers to do more to engage the digital generation in a dialogue, instead of leaving it to fend for itself. “The traditional values and common sense that have served us well in the past will be relevant in this new world, too,” they maintain. But Palfrey and Gasser don’t rule out additional tools and methods, including technical controls, industry self-regulation, social norms, and even government action.

Consider online privacy concerns. “Never before has so much information about average citizens been so easily accessible to so many,” they note—and particularly when it comes to our kids. Despite the growing amount of online information about our kids (“digital dossiers”) and other potential threats to privacy, Palfrey and Gasser counsel prudence: “The answer . . . is not to avoid the networked publics in which so many people—especially Digital Natives—are leading their lives. Instead, we need to develop more nuanced ways to navigate these new publics.” Though “there is no single, simple answer,” they argue that “parents, peers, teachers, and mentors [all] have a role to play” to encourage youngsters to protect their information and identities. Most importantly, the digital natives must learn to use common sense when sharing information online.

The authors advocate the same reasoned approach when it comes to online child safety. The safety risks have often been greatly overstated—or at least largely misunderstood—by parents and policymakers. “The data do not suggest that the world is a more dangerous place for young people” because of the Internet, the authors contend. Most of the problems we see online today—cyber-bullying, for example—are really just old problems playing out on new platforms. “Involved parenting” and “open and honest conversations” are the most sensible responses, but intervention strategies by others—including kids’ peers—may be another part of the solution. Parental empowerment tools and industry self-regulation can help, too.

Palfrey and Gasser are open to government playing a role in some cases. They believe “governments should restrict the production and dissemination of certain types of violent content in combination with instituting mandatory, government-based ratings of these materials.” They also call for greater liability for online service providers and social networking sites to encourage them to crack down on potential dangers to children. Given their vagueness, however, both proposals would likely smash into serious First Amendment roadblocks that the authors fail to explore fully.

Palfrey and Gasser view government action less favorably when it comes to combating copyright piracy. “Creativity is the upside of this brave new world of digital media,” they suggest, but “the downside is law-breaking. The vast majority of Digital Natives are currently breaking copyright laws on a regular basis.” But what should we do about piracy? Palfrey and Gasser sidestep some of the underlying ethical issues and bluntly declare that “the goal should be for copyright holders, technologists, and their customers to exchange royalty checks with one another instead of legal complaints.” Yes, but what happens when many refuse to pay even one penny for copyrighted content, as often happens today? Education can encourage youngsters to obey the law, but difficult questions remain about how to deal with those who won’t play by the rules.

In chapters debating the Internet’s impact on learning and culture, the authors worry about shortening attention spans and the rise of a “cut-and-paste culture,” due to the immediate gratification provided by Google searches, Wikipedia, blogs, and instant messaging. On the other hand, they rightly underscore how “Digital Natives are quite sophisticated in the ways that they gather information” and are learning “sophisticated information-gathering and information-processing skills,” while also creating content and sharing information with peers in ways unimaginable just a generation ago.

It will be fascinating to see what impact these changes have on digital natives as they get older and become parents themselves. Regardless, Palfrey and Gasser’s fine early history of this generation serves as a starting point for any conversation about how to mentor the children of the Web.

Update Feb. 2009: I hosted a TLF podcast featuring Prof. Palfrey and discussed this book with him. Listen here.

I’m pleased to announce the publication of A Manifesto for Media Freedom, which I co-authored with Brian C. Anderson of the Manhattan Institute. Brian serves as editor of Manhattan Institute’s excellent City Journal and he is the author of best-selling books like South Park Conservatives and Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents.

In this little manifesto, we highlight one of the central ironies of the Information Age.  Namely, that despite “the breathtaking abundance of new and old media outlets for obtaining news, information, and entertainment…”

many people hate this profusion, and never more than when it involves political speech. The current media market, they charge, doesn’t represent true diversity, or isn’t fair, or is subject to manipulation by a small and shrinking group of media barons. They want the government to regulate it into better shape, which just happens to be a shape that benefits them. Doing so… would be a disaster, a kind of soft or not-so-soft tyranny that would wipe out whole sectors of media, curtailing free speech and impoverishing our democracy.

In other words, instead of celebrating the unprecedented cornucopia of media choices at our collective disposal, many policymakers and media critics are calling for just as much media regulation as ever. We itemize these threats in our chapters and they include: efforts to revive the “Fairness Doctrine”, media ownership regulations, “localism” requirements, Net neutrality mandates, a la carte regulations, cable and satellite censorship, video game censorship, regulation of social networking sites, campaign finance-related speech restrictions, and so on.

In each case, we advance a pro-freedom paradigm to counter the advocates of media control. What do we mean by the “media freedom” that we advocate as the alternative to these new regulatory crusades? Here’s how we put it in the book:

For media consumers, it’s the freedom to consume whatever information or entertainment we want from whatever sources we choose, without government restricting our choices. For media creators and distributors, it’s the freedom to structure their business affairs as they wish in seeking to offer the public an expanding array of media options, for both news and entertainment. And for both consumers and creators,media freedom is being able to speak one’s mind without restraint and without the threat of FCC or FEC bureaucrats telling us what is “fair.”

It doesn’t seem like much to ask until you realize how many people in Washington and academia today are calling for these various flavors of media regulation.  Of course, it doesn’t help that media-bashing has always been a bipartisan sport.  Indeed, depsite the fact that most of these efforts are lead by the Left, our book highlights how some folks on the Right are still guilty of joining some of these misguided regulatory crusades.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, for example, has sponsored “a la carte” mandates for cable and satellite operators and sponsored the draconian campaign finance law that will forever bear his name, McCain-Feingold. He has also proposed a follow-up law: McCain-Feingold II. Although it did not pass, McCain’s measure would have required broadcasters to run 12 hours of “candidate-centered and issue-centered programming” in the six weeks prior to primary and general elections — without giving broadcasters any control over those 12 hours (half of which would have had to run during prime time). The bill would have created a voucher system for the purchase of airtime for political advertisements, financed by an annual spectrum-use fee on all broadcast license holders. In sum, the legislation would have forced broadcast stations to pay a tax to the federal government that would in turn finance a pool of funds that politicians could turn around and spend to run ads on those very stations!

Others on the Right have favored the Fairness Doctrine in the past, and more recently, some have joined the Net neutrality effort. And many conservatives have long been in favor of various forms of media censorship.

That being said, the most serious threats to media freedom today arise from the Left and our book serves primarily as a response to the many Leftist efforts to regulate media today. As we argue in the introduction:

The left seems certain that a media problem ails our society; it just can’t decide what that problem is. Some contend that real media choices are as limited or biased as ever, while others argue that our democracy is imperiled by too many media choices, making it hard to share common thoughts or feelings. What unites these two types of critics is their elitist presumption that they know what’s best for the rest of us. They would love to rewrite regulations to tilt the media in the direction they prefer; and if they are allowed to do so, what is shaping up to be America’s Golden Age of media could come to a sudden end.

The Left’s obsession with reinstating the Fairness Doctrine is particularly telling in this regard. [You can read our history of the Fairness Doctrine here] But, as we go on to note:

Some liberals suggest that even a new Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t be enough to correct a “structural imbalance” in the media marketplace. They want tightened ownership regulations, mandates ensuring “greater local accountability” over radio and TV broadcasters, and a significant ramping up of subsidies for public radio and TV stations. One leading leftist proposal would even force private broadcasters to fund public broadcasters! These proposals expose the left’s true goal: to regulate private media outlets comprehensively and drive out those owners who dare to offer right-leaning alternatives.

This movement is being driven by a wide variety of Left-leaning think tanks and advocacy groups, especially Free Press, Media Access Project, and the New America Foundation. These organizations will likely have a strong voice in an Obama administration regarding media law and Internet policy issues. And we fear that means that new regulatory shackles will be placed on the media and free speech as a result. That’s why we penned this manifesto at this time. As we conclude in our book:

Motivated by the naked desire for political control, a reactionary fear of the new, or genuine if misguided views on equality and fairness in the media, [these liberal media activists] threaten to enact regulations that will strangle or at least cripple this social development before it can begin to reach its potential. Those on the right are not free from these impulses, either. But they, as the prime beneficiaries of media abundance — of all the conservative and libertarian talk shows and websites that would suffer in a media landscape remade by the Democratic Party and liberal activists — should embrace, defend, and expand the freedom that made it possible.

Anyway, if you care about free speech and media freedom, I do you hope you will consider giving the book a look. The main page for our book is here. And you can find it on Amazon here.

The Parents Television Council has a new report out this week about the supposed decline of the TV “Family Hour.” The City Journal has just posted my response to that PTC report here. It begins as follows…

Who Killed TV’s “Family Hour”? It’s not who you think. by Adam D. Thierer 7 September 2007 The nonprofit Parents Television Council (PTC) released a report this week lamenting the supposed death of broadcast television’s “family hour.” Though neither the Federal Communications Commission nor Congress ever mandated it, 8 to 9 PM Monday through Saturday (Eastern time), and 7 to 9 PM on Sunday, have traditionally been devoted to family-friendly programming. But the PTC’s new report claims that these blocks of time are now “no place for children,” because “corporate interests have hijacked the family hour” and “have pushed more and more adult-oriented programming to the early hours of the evening.” One might respond to this claim by questioning the PTC’s methodology, particularly its definitions of foul language. Simon Vozick-Levinson of Entertainment Weekly’s “PopWatch Blog” takes this approach, accusing the PTC of “cooking the numbers” to suit its cultural agenda. But I don’t want to engage in methodological nit-picking, since it quickly devolves into a subjective squabble about acceptable language and appropriate programming. Instead, I want to point out the fundamental flaw in the report’s premise. The family hour may well be dead—but parents, not broadcasters, were the ones who killed it.

… read the rest at the City Journal’s website.