Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Attached is the text of a new Cato Institute newsletter I released today on the possibility of a congressional investigation into the “Rathergate” controversy. Fellow TLF blogger James Gattuso has also been sounding off on this in recent blogs. My take on it follows…
The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing today on media ownership regulation and I was invited to testify. Here’s the link to my testimony.
All the charts and tables you will see in the appendix of my testimony will appear in my forthcoming book “Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate over Media Ownership.” I strongly encourage you to take a look at Ben Compaine’s excellent remarks when they are posted, as well as everything else he’s done on the issue. No one knows more about this issue than Ben.
Interesting article by Robert Robb of the Arizona Republic, who argues that the Rathergate affair will (unfortunately) lead us to more regulation of of the media.
Sometimes you can just sense the machinery of the regulatory state shifting into gear.I sense it in what would seem an unlikely event: CBS’ use of forged documents in a story attempting to discredit President Bush’s National Guard service. Paradoxically, this journalistic blunder is likely to stimulate efforts to muzzle the conservative media, which few would accuse CBS of being part of.
He makes a good point–this is a real concern. I’d go farther, however. I fear many conservatives as well as liberals, will use this an a reason to push for more regulation. The real lesson, of course, is that the whole affair is evidence that the media is more competitive–and less in need of regulation–than ever before.
Every once and awhile I see or hear something that reminds me just how far removed our society and government now is from the limited government principles of our founding. A front-page story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal on this ridiculous spat over the new Neilsen ratings system quotes Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT), who chairs the communications subcommittee, as follows: “It’s impossible to achieve a high quality of broadcasting if shoddy audience measurement practices are permitted to proliferate.”
I’m sorry, but why in the world are TV ratings system a pressing governmental matter? For the life of me, I cannot lay my finger on that portion of the Constitution that authorizes our government to do ANYTHING about “shoddy audience measurement practices” on television. I mean, come on, we’re talking about television!
It would be one thing if our government wasn’t accurately measuring our budget deficit (oh, wait, they don’t do that very well today), or the Social Security trust fund (oops, they don’t get that right either), or the number of WMDs over in Iraq (OK… I give up), but we’re talking about measuring television audiences here; hardly something that government should worry about, and certainly something it has no constitutional power to control.
No doubt following the advice of TLF, the House commerce ommittee chair Joe Barton has rejected the idea of holding hearings on the Rathergate controversy. “A news organization’s responsibility is to facts and truth, but the oversight of network news generally is a matter best sorted out by the viewing public and the news media,” he said. “I do not personally believe these documents are legitimate, and it seems clear that the press and the two presidential campaigns are properly dealing with that issue.”
Welcome news for anyone worried about government interference in the media. Of course, had Dan Rather bared his chest on 60 Minutes, that would have been a different story.
Is the wireless revolution making political polls less accurate? Jimmy Breslin argued yesterday in Newsweek that it is– pointing out that most poll are done by telephone, and none include cell phone users. “Beautiful”, he says. “There are 169 million phones that they didn’t even try. This makes the poll nothing more than a fake and a fraud, a shill and a sham.” And most of those missed are younger voters who are more likely to have cut the cord, and who are more likely to be Kerry voters. An interesting thought.
Has anyone else noticed that while CBS TV is taking a hard line on the document controversy–being strident and defiant–the stories on CBSNews.com seem much more even handed? Perhaps not all, but most of the on-line stories report on the controversy in an (almost) balanced way–perhaps not openly critical of Dan Rather, but at least giving both sides in a relatively objective manner. The stories read–as one of my colleagues put it, like an out-of-body experience–discussing CBS News in the third person, as if the common name were only coincidental.
I’m not sure what this means, if anything. It could be one more bit of evidence that even news outlets under the same ownership roof are not necessarily monolithic. Or, perhaps it means that Dan Rather is such a creature of “old media” that he hasn’t noticed what the “new media” folks down the hall are saying.
In the past few days, it has become increasingly obvious that CBS used (badly) forged documents in a 60 Minutes hit piece on George Bush. Each day, its defenses seem to become weaker, and the attacks stronger. As John Stossel said in an interview last night, CBS has circled its wagons, only to find them on fire.
Now comes word that Congress may join the fray: Rep. Chris Cox has asked the House Telecom Subcommittee to launch an investigation into CBS’ reporting on this matter. As wrong as CBS was to run its story, it would be even more wrong for Congress to get involved. Simply put: the government should not be policing the media. No matter how sloppy, biased or irresponsible, Congress simply should not be telling the media what it can or can’t do. Or even “investigating” what it has done. That is the road to censorship.
Dan Rather and CBS will doubtless suffer tremendously for their outrageous conduct–because of investigations by other private media outlets (including blogs), with likely sanctions being loss of reputation and credibility. A congressional investigation is neither necessary nor welcome.
Increasingly, its looking like documents reported by Dan Rather and CBS’s 60 Minutes last week regarding President Bush’s National Guard Service are fakes. It’s been a lesson in typography for most of us, but more and more experts seem to be publicly questioning the documents.
This is one case where my messy desk has proven helpful. I found–by total coincidence–a 1983 paper published here at Heritage, in courier font. That led me to recall the philosophy of the Heritage director of research at the time, who refused to use Times Roman because it looked too polished, rather than like a quick-turnaround briefing paper. Who after all coul print something in Times Roman quickly? Maybe the National Guard could in 1972, but I doubt it.
The real interesting thing about all this is CBS’s denial. Dan Rather in particular has come out swinging–saying to CNN: “I know that this story is true.” When asked about a retraction, the answer was: “Not even discussed, nor should it be.”
Pretty strong stuff.
The other day in my post on the rising cable viewship for political conventions, I cited figures showing cable viewership at about half that of the b-cast networks. I thought that was a lot. Last night, however, Fox news actually beat all three b-cast networks, scoring over 5 million viewers for the GOP convention. Perhaps it was Zell Miller, who knows? Just one more milestone in the ever shrinking influence of broadcast TV in America.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
