Just FYI.. Tomorrow morning’s “Washington Journal” program on C-SPAN will be devoted to a discussion of the Federal Communications Commission’s new National Broadband Plan. I’ve been invited to appear on the show and I’ll be up against Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge.  The program starts around 8:30 am EST.

Also, here’s the link to the audio (click “Listen” in upper left hand corner of that page) from today’s Diane Rehm Show on NPR featuring a debate between me and Ben Scott of Free Press on the FCC’s plan. It featured call-ins and among the callers were Rep. Cliff Sterns and frequent TLF commenter Brett Glass. They both expressed some reservations about the FCC plan.

We’ve talked here before about the dangers of a government-subsidized press as a way of “saving journalism.” But I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite as eloquent on the issue as Seth Lipsky’s editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled “All the News That’s Fit to Subsidize.”  Mr. Lipsky is a member of the adjunct faculty at the Columbia Journalism School. In his essay today, he warns of the very real slippery slope associated with proposal to have government step in and somehow bailout newspapers as they find themselves in a time of crisis.Specifically, Mr. Lipsky addressees a new report (“The Reconstruction of American Journalism“) by Leonard Downie (former executive editor of the Washington Post) and co-author Michael Schudson (also of Columbia Journalism School), in which the authors call for a mixture of legal and regulatory changes as well as government subsidies to help prop up failing news operations.

Mr. Lipsky argues that they have “stepped onto an exceptionally slippery slope”:

I take no comfort from the analogy the authors of this report draw with government funding for the arts. In New York City, there came a time when the leaders the voters entrusted with their tax money concluded that what was being done with it in the arts was so abhorrent they tried to stop it. This happened in 1999, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani confronted the Brooklyn Museum over its display of a depiction of the Madonna that had been splattered with elephant dung. A federal court wouldn’t let the city stop funding the museum. […] Even if one could get around this sort of thing, I’ve come to the view that the real protection of press freedom is in the idea of private property. Press freedom in Soviet Russia was lost precisely on this issue when, as American journalist John Reed told the story in his famous book, “Ten Days that Shook the World,” a proposal was put on the table to restore the press freedom that had been suspended on the first day of the Bolshevik revolution. Lenin shouted it down with a diatribe about how that would mean restoring to capitalists privately owned printing equipment, paper supplies and ink. I don’t mean to suggest, in any way, that Mr. Downie is a Bolshevik. I do mean to suggest that the best strategy to strengthen the press would be to maximize protection of the right to private property—and the right to competition. Subsidies are the enemy of competition…

Amen brother.  Read the whole thing.

Polish designer Jacek Utko acknowledged that, in the long-run, nothing can save the newspaper as a print medium, but makes a pretty good case newspapers’ ability to  stay afloat while figuring out how to make the transition to digital media depends heavily on shaking up the graphic design and layout of papers.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf If nothing else, this should remind us all that innovation and entrepreneurship aren’t just about technical improvements or better business savvy, but aesthetics, too! The art of commercial culture is like the oxygen we breath: all around us but something we scarcely notice.

Today’s USA Today features a debate between the editors and me on the question of the impact media has on children and what should be done about it. Their editorial argues that “Today’s mass media penetrate deeply and quietly, inflicting real damage on young children, an increasing body of research shows.” Specifically, they are referring to a new study commissioned by Common Sense Media (CSM), which claims that a review of 173 studies shows “that a strong correlation exists between greater exposure and adverse health outcomes.”

In my response entitled “Don’t Scapegoat Media,” which appears in its entirety down below the fold, I argue that “Media have long been a convenient scapegoat for the woes of the world,” and that we must be careful not to assume correlation equals causation when surveying the impact of media on kids. After all, I argue, “how do [those studies] account for the other variables that influence youth development, including broken homes, bad parents, socioeconomic status, troubled peer relations, poor schools and so on? And how is media exposure weighted relative to these other influences? Is a beer ad really as much of a negative influence as an alcoholic parent?” Again, read my entire response below. [Of course, even if one assumes some media has an impact on some kids, there are plenty of ways for parents and guardians to take control over the media in their lives, as I have shown in my big book on the subject.]

I was also quoted in this Washington Post article about the new CSM study on Tuesday.

Don’t Scapegoat Media by Adam Thierer 12/4/08

USA Today

Media have long been a convenient scapegoat for the woes of the world. In particular, fears about the influence media might have on our children have often prompted calls for “crackdowns” on speech and expression.

Typically, these fears fade as one generation’s media boogeyman becomes another’s treasured art form. That’s not to say media don’t have an impact on some children. Clearly, media are among many factors that influence culture and behavior.

But what about those other influences? Some studies summarized in the new Common Sense Media (CSM) report suggest a potential link between media exposure and certain social pathologies. But how do they account for the other variables that influence youth development, including broken homes, bad parents, socioeconomic status, troubled peer relations, poor schools and so on? And how is media exposure weighted relative to these other influences? Is a beer ad really as much of a negative influence as an alcoholic parent?

That’s why it’s important to recall a fundamental tenet of all social sciences: Correlation does not necessarily equal causation. Human behavior is complicated and quite difficult to measure “scientifically.” Just defining “media exposure” and “negative health outcomes” is tricky enough; identifying root causes is even more challenging.

The sky hasn’t fallen the way some media critics feared. While childhood obesity is a growing problem, it’s important not to lose sight of the impressive gains we’ve made in other areas, such as falling juvenile violence, teen pregnancy, and youth drug and alcohol abuse. Moreover, even if some media negatively influence some children, that must be balanced against the many ways media inspire and empower.

The authors of the CSM survey are to be commended, however, for avoiding regulatory recommendations and instead focusing on the sensible steps parents, schools, industry and government can take to educate kids and empower families to take control over the media in their lives. More information, increased media options and better mentoring of our children are the prudent approaches.

A few days ago I posted an open letter to New York Gov. David Patterson about a measure that recently passed through the New York legislature and was awaiting his signature. The bill proposes a new regulatory regime for video games that would include greater state-based oversight of video game labels and console controls as well as an advisory board to monitor the industry. Unfortunately—but quite unsurprisingly—Gov. Patterson signed the bill last night. And so I am certain that another legal battle will ensue regarding the constitutionality of the measure, and it will likely be struck down like every other measure on this front because it violates the First Amendment. Regardless, let’s talk a little more about what animates this specific legislative effort, because I think it is very important and foreshadows the heated debate to come over video games and all media in coming years.

The New York measure is notable in that, unlike most of the other state or local measures that had been stuck down in recent years that proposed penalties for the sale of games to youngsters which were labeled by the ESRB to be intended for an older audience, it simply proposed more “oversight” of the ratings process and parental control technologies by the state. Specifically, it mandated that all games be rated and that all consoles contain screening controls. The response to that proposal has generally been: “So what?” After all, all video games are rated already and all game consoles contain parental controls. The measure also mandated a 16-member oversight board to monitor the industry and this process. Again, that proposal was not regarded by many as a serious threat to the video games or free speech.

But I fear that many are missing the big picture here. The New York bill is actually far more important that many people suspect because of what it foreshadows: A day when politicians will claim that we can make rating systems more “scientific” by putting public health bureaucrats or university social scientists in charge of them. Indeed, last night on Bloomberg TV, this became the focus of a debate between me and Dr. Michael Rich, Director of the Center for Media and Child Health at the Harvard Medical School. After you watch the clip, I’ll have much more to say about this issue down below the fold.

As you heard in the clip, Dr. Rich favors a greater role for “science” and social scientists in the video game rating and labeling process. But let’s explore what that might mean in practice.

Over the past decade, I have heard many critics make the argument that media rating and labeling systems should be centralized in the hands of the government, some academic elites, a private (non-industry affiliated) rating organization, or some combination of all of the above. These critics often give lip service to private, voluntary rating systems but they then turn around and advocate that the entire process be run by people (usually closely resembling themselves!) who would somehow rate media according to more “scientific” criteria / variables.

The problem here is that media content is art, and art is fundamentally subjective. It’s not like there is some sort of Periodic Table of Media Elements that tells us what makes for good vs. bad art. Media ratings and labels, therefore, will always be based on judgments made by humans who all have somewhat different values. Those doing the rating are being asked to evaluate artistic expression and assign labels to it that provide the rest of us with some rough proxies about what is in that particular piece of art, or what age group should (or should not) be consuming it. In a sense, therefore, all rating systems will be inherently “flawed” since humans have different perspectives and values that they will use to label or classify content.

Thus, even if a bunch of social scientists at Harvard were running the show, the media rating and content-labeling process will never be an exact science; there will always be something fundamentally subjective about it. Incidentally, exactly which “social scientists” would get a say in the process? Psychologists? Sociologists? Political scientists? Criminologists? Hey, what about art historians! I can almost see a joke in the making here: “How many Harvard social scientists does it take to rate a video game?”

But Dr. Rich and others like him would likely argue that some forms of media or art have unique influences on the development of the mind—especially the minds of children. They would argue, for example, that exposure to certain forms of violent media content will breed aggressive behavior in youth, or at least make them more desensitized and fearful of the world around them.

For the sake of brevity, I am not going to go into my typical long-winded discussion here about “media effects” vs. “catharsis effect.” Instead I will just reference the latest of my many essays on the topic (“Why hasn’t violent media turned us into a nation of killers?”) and I also recommend that you read my review of the excellent new book, Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do,” by Lawrence Kutner, PhD, and Cheryl K. Olson, ScD, cofounders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. (As you will see when you read the book, apparently not everyone at Harvard agrees with Dr. Rich! That also makes one wonder how much actual consensus there would be in the scientific community about the ratings and labels they would be imposing on artistic expression.)

OK, so let’s just imagine that those social scientists who espouse “monkey see, monkey do” theories of media effects somehow get a say in rating and labeling video games. Think about what that would mean in practice. Imagine how long it would take a game like “Halo,” “Gears of War,” or “Grand Theft Auto” to get through that review process. And imagine what the warning label on the box would look like once they were done! They’d probably affix a 10-page memo to each game carton and then a poison (skull-and-crossbones) logo for good measure. Or perhaps the label would come in form of a Surgeon General’s warning about the product being hazardous to one’s (mental) health?

In the end, the whole system would become an unworkable farce if mandated by government. Nothing would be getting rated and to market in a timely way. Game developers would be in open revolt against it. And industry lawsuits would be flying.

More importantly, few people would likely use it. Many media critics seem to forget that there is trade-off between convenience and comprehensiveness in terms of rating and labeling systems. As Kutner and Olson note in their book: “The more complicated a system becomes, the less likely busy parents are to understand it and to actually use it.” We have to be careful not to upset this balance. In my opinion, the current ESRB game rating system pushes the labeling process just about as far as it can go on the comprehensiveness scale, but does so using easy-to-comprehend ratings (7 of them) and content descriptors (over 30 of them). When media critics and social scientists say they want to make the system even more “comprehensive” and “scientific,” therefore, I really have to wonder if they have thought through the practical implications of such a move. Exactly how many more ratings and labels are we talking about? Exactly how much more detailed could it be than the ESRB’s existing system, which already has 12 different content descriptors for violent content alone (from “cartoon violence” to “sexual violence” and everything in between).

Another point: The argument that government or “ratings by social scientists” would provide more objective ratings is also undermined by the grim reality of special-interest politics. Government officials or government-appointed commissions would be more susceptible to various interest group pressures as they were repeatedly lobbied to change ratings or restrict content based on widely varying objectives and values. Inevitably, as has been the case with the broadcast indecency complaint process in recent years, a handful of particularly vociferous groups could gain undue influence over content decisions. That possible outcome raises what the Supreme Court has referred to as the “heckler’s veto” problem since a vocal minority’s preferences could trump those of the public at large.

Now let me be perfectly clear about one thing: I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with folks like Dr. Rich and his colleagues devising some sort of “scientific” rating or labeling scheme for video games and other forms media content. But the fundamental question in this debate is: should such a system should be the law of the land?

In my book on Parental Controls and Online Child Protection, I spend a great deal of time in Chapter 2 talking about the importance of third-party ratings and pressure and I heap a lot of praise on the various independent, third-party content rating and labeling systems out there today. In particular, my wife and I absolute love Common Sense Media and rely on its ratings every week when we are consider what media to allow our kids to consume in our home. It’s a great system that is highly informative; and the feedback from average parents and kids on the site is very helpful too. Other great 3rd party rating and labeling services just for video games include: What They Play, Gamer Dad, and Children’s Technology Review, all of which provide detailed video game reviews and information about the specific types of content that kids will see or hear in a game. [Incidentally, the ESRB has a section on its webpage that highlights all these independent sites.]

So here’s the question for Dr. Rich and the folks in the social science community: Why not just create your own “shadow” ratings process or collaborate with these other organizations to serve a worthy “watchdog” role over the existing rating and labeling process? That’s the win-win solution here.

It would be a huge mistake to throw out the existing ESRB system. It is working very effectively and it is already widely recognized by the vast majority of parents. Surveys by Peter D. Hart Research Associates reveal that 89% of American parents of children who play video games are aware of the ESRB ratings and that 85% of them consult the ratings regularly when buying games for their families. That’s pretty impressive considering how young the ESRB rating system is.

Moreover, let’s not forget that every game console and computer system on the market today is geared to read the ESRB ratings metadata (digital tags) that are embedded in every game shipped to market. That’s how the parental controls are enabled. Should we toss all that work out the window and just start from scratch? I think that would be a huge mistake.

Again, there is nothing stopping Dr. Rich and his fellow social scientists from crafting their own system. In fact, I believe I speak for many parents when I say we would welcome it. But mandating it and asking that it serve as a replacement for the existing ratings and console controls is an completely different issue. It’s a non-starter in my opinion.

Now that the New York bill has passed, however, the door is open for this sort of proposal to see the light of day. If the measure is not struck down, watch to see who is appointed to the 16-member advisory committee and listen to hear which way they are going. I bet it ends up being something along the lines of what I have suggested above.