“We’re from government and we’re here to help save journalism.”
That seems to be the hot new meme in media policy circles these days. Last week, it was the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) kicking off their “Future of Media” effort with a workshop on “Serving the Public Interest in the Digital Era.” This week, it’s the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) turn as they host the second in their series of workshops on How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? Meanwhile, the Senate has already held hearings about “the future of journalism,” and Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) recently introduced the “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” which would allow newspapers to become nonprofit organizations in an effort to help them stay afloat.
I have no doubt that many of the public policymakers behind these efforts have the best of intentions and really are concerned about what many believe to be a crisis in the field of journalism. But here are my three primary concerns with Washington’s sudden interest in “saving journalism”: Continue reading →
Just a reminder about tomorrow’s Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy event on, “The Crisis in Journalism: What Should the Government Do?” It will be held at 9:30am tomorrow at the Newseum (Knight Conference Center) located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave here in Washington, DC. Breakfast will be served. (You can RSVP please by emailing: cbpp@msb.edustrong>cbpp@msb.edu</strong). Here’s the event description:
This roundtable discussion will bring together academics, government officials and industry leaders to consider the future of the journalism industry. Specifically, what does a future economic model for the journalism industry look like? What is the role of new media in modern journalism? How can news papers integrate web-based news into their business models? How can government entities, particularly the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, help to form a sustainable 21st century model for journalism in the United States?
Mark MacCarthy of Georgetown Univ. will moderate the panel, which includes: Continue reading →
I was just reading this interesting Broadcasting & Cable interview with Steven Waldman, senior advisor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who is heading up the FCC’s new effort on “The Future of Media and the Information Needs of Communities in a Digital Age.” The FCC’s Future of Media website says that “The goal of this project: to help ensure that all Americans have access to vibrant, diverse sources of news and information that will enable them to enrich their families, communities and democracy.” In the interview with B&C, Waldman promises that “we are not in the business of providing bailouts or encouraging bailouts to particular companies or industries,”and that “we can absolutely, definitively say that we have no plans to take over the media, and we have no plans to reinstitute the fairness doctrine while I am at it.” I’m certainly glad to hear that. As I’ve pointed out here many times before (1, 2, 3, 4), the prospect of greater government involvement in the news business raises profoundly troubling implications for an independent press and the First Amendment.
Anyway, I’ll be debating these issues with Mr. Waldman and others next week at this Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy event on, “The Crisis in Journalism: What Should the Government Do?” It will be held on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 9:30am at the Newseum (Knight Conference Center) located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave here in Washington, DC. Breakfast will be served. (You can RSVP please by emailing: cbpp@msb.edustrong>cbpp@msb.edu</strong) Here’s the event description:
Continue reading →
I testified this morning in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet at a hearing titled, “An Examination of the Proposed Combination of Comcast and NBC Universal.” Among those testifying were Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts, and NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker. Down below I have attached my brief remarks (we only had 5 minutes), but see the Scribd doc at the very bottom to also see the embedded charts. I also wrote a paper about the proposed deal back in December entitled, “A Brief History of Media Merger Hysteria: From AOL-Time Warner to Comcast-NBC” as well as this editorial for Forbes.
____________
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today. My name is Adam Thierer and I am the President of The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF).
Although we are still early in this process, there has already been a great deal of hand-wringing and even some dire predictions about the pending merger of Comcast and NBC Universal. I hope to put this proposed marriage in some historical context and explain why the deal certainly won’t have the detrimental impact some critics fear, and also explain why it might even be one potential model for how to sustain traditional media going forward.
Beware Media Merger Hysteria
First, let’s remember that we’ve been here before. Paranoid predictions of a media apocalypse have accompanied the announcements of many previous media mergers, from AOL-Time Warner to News Corp.-DirecTV to XM-Sirius.[i] In these cases and almost all others, however, the “sky is falling” claims proved to be greatly overstated.[ii] The only “harm” that one could reasonably claim came from those mergers was not to consumers or content providers, but to the merging firms themselves and their shareholders. That’s because many mergers simply fail to create the sort of synergies and benefits originally hoped for and consequently die of natural causes over time.
Other firms, however, have found ways to make deals work and deliver important new services that previously were unimaginable or simply too expensive to offer alone.[iii] Regardless, the point here is that we’ll never know what works unless we permit marketplace experimentation with new and innovative business models. Continue reading →
The Annenberg School at the University of Southern California recently released a paper by Geoffrey Cowan and David Westphal entitled, “Public Policy and Funding the News.” In it, Cowan and Westphal join the growing chorus of voices advocating a substantial role of government in propping up struggling media entities or investing in news production going forward.
I can’t say that I disagree with everything in the report, especially the contention that many traditional news-gathering institutions face serious challenges to their survival. But as I have noted here before, there are three big problems with recommendations to greatly expand the role of government in the media sector or journalistic profession as a solution:
- While public media & subsidies may have a role, that role should be tightly limited and focused on filling specific niches or unfilled needs within certain communities. Public subsidies should not be viewed as a replacement for traditional private media sources. Moreover, public subsidies will not begin to make up the shortfall from traditional private funding source, unless we plan on having Congress spend hundreds of billions of dollars (like the radical regulatory advocates at Free Press advocates) to subsidize news.
- If we do end up taking that path, it will raise profound fairness questions since it will leave taxpayers footing the bill for things they might not want or could find objectionable, even offensive. (Conservatives wouldn’t like funding Bill Moyers, and liberals wouldn’t be too keen on supporting Rush Limbaugh).
- Any plan to have government step up its role in supporting journalism will raise profound questions about press independence and threaten core First Amendment values. Putting journalists on the public dole is a serious threat to the integrity of the profession.
Continue reading →
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka, Progress Snaphot 6.1
Stephanie Clifford of the
New York Times posted a very interesting article this week summarizing a recent “on-the-record chat” the Times staff had with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairman Jon Leibowitz and FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection chief David Vladeck. The interview [discussed by Braden here] is profoundly important in that it reveals an alarming disconnect regarding the relationship between “privacy” regulation and the future of media, which were the subjects of their discussion with Times staff. Namely, Leibowitz and Vladeck apparently fail to appreciate how the delicate balance between commercial advertising and journalism is at risk precisely because of the sort of regulations they apparently are ready to adopt. Because the value of online advertising depends on data about its effectiveness and consumers’ likely interests, and because advertising is indispensable to funding media, what’s ultimately at stake here is nothing short of the future of press freedom.
The “Day of Reckoning” Is Upon Us
Leibowitz and Vladeck spend the first half of
The Times interview wringing their hands about “privacy policies,” the declarations made by websites and advertising networks about their data collection and use practices (for which the FTC can and must hold them accountable). But the two feel that privacy policies don’t adequately inform consumers. Chairman Leibowitz claims that online companies “haven’t given consumers effective notice, so they can make effective choices.” And Mr. Vladeck states that advise-and-consent models “depended on the fiction that people were meaningfully giving consent.” But he and the FTC seem ready to abandon the notice and choice model because the “literature is clear” that few people read privacy policies, Vladeck told the Times. He and Leibowitz continue:
“Philosophically, we wonder if we’re moving to a post-disclosure era and what that would look like,” Mr. Vladeck said. “What’s the substitute for it?” He said the commission was still looking into the issue, but it hoped to have an answer by June or July, when it plans to publish a report on the subject. Mr. Leibowitz gave a hint as to what might be included: “I have a sense, and it’s still amorphous, that we might head toward opt-in,” Mr. Leibowitz said.
This clearly foreshadows the regulatory endgame we have long suspected was coming. When the FTC released its “Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising” eleven months ago, we asked: “What’s the Harm & Where Are We Heading?” Their answers to both questions have become clearer with each new calculated comment—all apparently intended to slowly “turn up the heat” on the advertising industry so that the proverbial frog will stay in the pot until the water finally boils. Leibowitz’s FTC has simply dodged the “harm” question with a four-part strategy: Continue reading →
Free Press, the radical pro-regulatory media activist group, recently filed comments with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the agency’s upcoming workshop on “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” The Free Press comments provide an enlightening glimpse into the mind of how many on the Left now think about media policy in America. Their approach can be summarized as follows:
- Nothing the private sector can do will save journalism (unless it is entirely non-profit / non-commercial in nature);
- Even if there was something that private players could do to save journalism, Free Press would likely have federal authorities forbid it anyway (especially if it involved new business ownership patterns or combinations); and,
- The only thing that can really save journalism is a “public option” for the press in the form of massive state subsidization of media in this country.
To elaborate on the last point, here’s how Free Press summarizes what they are looking for:
For U.S. public media to become a truly world-class system will require a substantial increase in funding. This could be accomplished by an increase in direct congressional appropriations to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. With increased funding — to as little as $5 per person, increasing annual appropriations to some $1.5 billion — the American public media system could dramatically increase its capacity, reach, diversity and relevance.
But they stress that a simple expansion of the PBS/NPR/CPB non-commercial model will not be enough since that system is “vulnerable to repeated threats of funding cuts” and too “reliant on corporate backing, via the underwriting process.” They want to go well beyond
non-commercial media, therefore, and have the state start building a massive public media infrastructure. Here’s where their pitch for a public option for the press comes in: Continue reading →
It won’t be easy, you’ll think it strange, when Libby Jacobsen tries to explain how traditional journalism still wants your money after all that it hasn’t done.
On the OpenMarket blog, she critiques a report released Monday calling for the traditional journalism industry to be propped up various ways. And she does so with gusto:
Outrageously, [former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr.] also wants to put telecoms on the hook for bailing out reporting, suggesting that the FCC collect fees from internet service providers to be used for a national “Fund for Local News.” He’s blind to the fact that telecoms and ISPs have done nothing but help disseminate news and information. There is more reporting, more information, more news available to us today than there ever has been in the history of civilization. It’s true that there’s a lot of garbage out there, but there’s a lot of very good online journalism as well. Nearly everything published online is subject to peer-review from a massive amount of people, and the success of sites like Wikipedia are proof that accountability, credibility, and accuracy matter just as much online as they do offline.
Have I said too much? There’s nothing more I can think of to say to you. But all you have to do is look at Libby’s post to know that every word is true.
(Just one thing, Libby. What happens when a bad pun ruins a perfectly good blog post?)
Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles;
[The Lord] hath put down the mighty from their seats [of power] and raised up the lowly.
– “Magnificat”
The Internet continues to humble the mighty in journalism. We hear a lot about the humbling of news outlets like the New York Times, but little about the humbling of news-makers. While the media
reformistas would have us believe that dark, shadowy forces control what we hear, see and read, the reality is that it’s becoming increasingly impossible for even the world’s largest companies to “manage” stories because we live in an age of true media abundance. There’s no better sign of this than the fact that Michael Arrington has declared, with good reason, the “news embargo” dead. In the days of media scarcity (which the reformistas like Andrew Keen want to re-create), press releases often declared a story to be “embargoed” until a specific day and time, allowing companies to shape the story by planting releases with the “right” journalists ahead of time. Such embargoes have been breaking down for some time, but now, with the explosion of media abundance, even Google no longer has “the clout to force press to stick to embargoes.”
It’s not my favorite recording but this clip of Bach’s “Magnificat” (BWV 243) should sear into your brain the irrepressibility of the Internet as the greatest leveling force since the invention of the printing press. The two are not unrelated: Bach’s Lutheranism was made possible only by the ready availability of the printed word.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.