Stephen Schultze is an up-and-coming technology policy analyst who is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. He is also finishing up his Masters of Science in Comparative Media Studies up at MIT. He’s been kind enough to stop by here at the TLF on occasion and comment on some of the things we have written — usually to give us grief, but we welcome that too! He’s very sharp and always has something of substance to say, and he says it in a respectful way. So I look forward to many years of intellectual combat with him. (Incidentally, we also share a mutual admiration for the work of Ithiel de Sola Pool, especially his 1983 classic, “Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age , which I have noted is my favorite tech policy book of all-time.]

Anyway, Stephen has just posted his master’s thesis: “The Business of Broadband and the Public Interest: Media Policy for the Network Society.” It’s a noble attempt to defend and extend the “public interest” concept in the Digital Age. Stephen attempts to “identify the several dimensions in which it remains relevant today.” In his thesis, Stephen cites some of my past work on the issue since I have articulated a very different view on the issue. Specifically, he cites a line of mine that I have used in multiple studies and essays on the issue:

“The public interest standard is not really a “standard” at all since it has no fixed meaning; the definition of the phrase has shifted with the political winds to suit the whims of those in power at any given time.”

I stand by that quote and down below I have pasted a lengthy passage on the mythology surrounding the public interest standard, which I pulled directly from my old 2005 “Media Myths” book. It explains in more detail why I feel that way.

“Right now is a critical point of media in transition that will affect the shape communications ecosystem going forward,” Stephen states in his thesis. I couldn’t agree more, but I completely disagree that that somehow justifies breathing new life into a standard-less standard that justifies open-ended, arbitrary governance of the Internet and digital media. Read on to understand why I feel that way… Continue reading →

SHARE: 21 comments