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November 01, 2003

Yum
: A wonderful food blog. It's in German, but don't worry: It's a blog in pictures. [via Plastic Thinking]

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Google and Microsoft
: Says David Galbraith: "Google owns the command line to the Internet and Microsoft cannot afford to concede that to them."

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Comments and libel
: In re the Luskin/Atrios libel-suit dustup, Jack Balkin, esteemed professor at Yale Frigging Law School, explains to bloggers why they cannot be successfully sued for what is said in their comments. Thanks, Jack, we needed that.

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Media haters

: Larry Lessig's cadre of media haters has a new book out. Mark Cooper is the author of Media Ownership and Democracy in the Digital Information Age from Lessig's Stanford unthinktank. Please, please don't buy it. That would be so un-creative-commons, so big-media of you. No, go get it for free and then read along with me.

I have two problems with Lessig et al. The first is that they hate media and media companies so thoroughly and indiscriminately. The second is that their cure for this is government involvement in media -- which is to say, government interference in news and journalism. They disdain the free market of ideas and commerce. They want the government to impose ownership structures and even content on a free press to fit some paternalistic view they have of proper information in a democracy. That is the last thing government should ever decide. I find that constitutionally and democratically abhorrent.

I remain surprised that Lessig et al are the darlings of the libertarians. You'd they'd disdain anybody in favor of greater government meddling in our press and media. But they apparently hold their media disdain more dearly than their ideology... or their logic. Lessig wants less government involvment in copyright but wants more government involvement in media ownership. The thread that ties that together is only media hatred. It's an intellectually and ideologically illogical stance.

Further, Lessig et al purposefully ignore the changes that have come to media in recent years. Today, we have far more outlets of news and information on TV than we have ever had, thanks to cable. We have far more viewpoints, thanks to the Fox revolution. We have new and diverse outlets of media in the Internet and in ethnic media. The barrier to entry to media is now lower than in the history of language.

At the same time, there are tremendous economic pressures on media thanks to new competition, necessitating new ways to do business (and sometimes, yes, that means consolidation).

In addition, technology means that consolidation is not only a matter of business but also of reporting: a text reporter can be a photographer can be a TV reporter -- but only if that reporter works in an environment where he can do all those things, a consolidated environment.

They simply can't stand the idea -- the essential reality -- that news is a business, not a government program. And in a free society, news is the last business that should be regulated by government. News must be regultated by the marketplace, the free marketplace of ideas.

But Lessig, Cooper, et al ignore all that in the face of their media hatred. They want to stick it to media any way they can. They want to see us spoonfeed what they think we ought to know rather than what we, the market, want to know -- just at the time when, on the Internet and in weblogs, the citizenry is revolting against that sort of Mama-media.

I pulled a few choice quotes from Cooper's book. Click on the "more" link below to read on...

Cooper writes:

I refer to the “forum for democratic discourse” rather than the “marketplace of ideas,” because the marketplace metaphor is far too commercial. While the basic concept underlying the marketplace of ideas is sound - ideas competing for attention and support in an open public arena - the picture of a marketplace fails to capture the fundamental qualitative difference between the nature of action and interaction in the commercial marketplace and the forum for democratic discourse. I want to draw a sharper distinction between democratic discourse and commercial media.
The objective of the commercial marketplace is to exchange goods
and services to improve efficiency and produce profit. The objective of
the forum for democratic discourse is to promote a “robust exchange of
views” that produces “participation, understanding and truth.”

And that's just the problem: They don't want the press to be free. They want to promote their agenda, their version of "the truth."

It's not just news and political discourse they want to regulate but also entertainment. They quote FCC Chairman Powell saying, "But the overwhelming amount of programming we watch is entertainment, and I don’t know what it means for the owner to have a political bias. When I’m watching Temptation Island, do I see little hallmarks of Rupert Murdoch?" Their reply:

The decision of what is entertaining and what values are promoted in society is clearly embodied in the commercial decision underlying “Temptation Island.” It stands for the proposition that paying people money to put their relationships in jeopardy under a voyeuristic lens constitutes good programming. It is highly unlikely that such a view would come from programming on the Pax network, or even on some of Fox’s affiliates, as long as they remain independent and can choose not to air programming that offends their local community values.

There's this small moment of ignorance:

The new technologies of commercial mass media are extremely capital intensive and therefore restrict who has access to them.

Well, actually, it's quite to the contrary. In the digital age -- not just on the Internet but in the coming digital TV time -- it is getting cheaper and easier to produce content and distribute it to the world.
The other, greater truth is that the oligarchy of the few -- the three networks -- is dead, thus there is greater diversity in mass media while mass media is dying under pressure from the growth of niche media. But they're not satisified with that:

Notwithstanding the growth of new media, the dominant mass media – commercial television – remains extremely scarce in an important sense. The number of channels available is quite small compared to the number of citizens. Sunstein argues that even in cyberspace, where web sites and home pages are extremely plentiful, there is scarcity of another key element of the communications process: attention.

The first half of that is patently absurd: We have too few channels for too many people? How many channels is the right number? The second half is patently illogical -- when we have too many channels and choices, we have too little attention to, what, the things you think we should be watching -- and also, essentially paternalistic.

Even in a quick read, I found inaccuracies. Take this:

The result of the ‘business over news’ attitude has been the deterioration of the American newspaper. The Philadelphia Inquirer, for example, became one of the nation’s strongest papers while Gene Roberts was its editor. When Knight Ridder bought the daily, it began slashing staff and putting tremendous pressure on Roberts to increase profits. Roberts soon had enough of the corporate newspaper model and retired...

Well, Knight Ridder took over the Inquirer -- from far-right-winger and Nixon pal Walter Annenberg -- in 1969. Roberts came on in 1972 and retired in 1990. They could have found that out in a simple Google search.

Now get aloada this bit of Marxist analysis of media history:

Initially intended to pull people together and provide information to educate and enable citizens to more actively pursue their political and cultural interests, the profit potential of the burgeoning electronic media industry led to a takeover by advertisers and large bureaucratic and corporate institutions.

And before that, it was all run by, who, Mother Theresa? Hell, TV started as vaudeville on video with sponsors buying even shows' names. Jeesh.

And, finally, there is this doozie:

After three decades of existence and two decades of presence in civil society, the Internet has not lived up to its hope or hype.

You see, Cooper and Lessig can't acknowledge that the Internet -- and all you webloggers -- matter, because then they'd have to admit that there are new and diverse sources of news and information (you got here via a link from one of them, after all) that will have a broadening impact on the country's -- the world's -- free marketplace of news, information, and viewpoints and on the citizenry's ability to both express and receive opinions. If they admitted that, they'd have less to fret about; it would pull the plug out of their media-bashing balloon.

: Listen to Doc Searls instead:

The big industries aren't in charge here, much as they like to think they are, or should be. This is the People's Market. Nothing communist about it, either; because the Networked World loves to support markets, commerce, transaction, conversation, relationship, opportunity, enterprise and fun — all those qualities that make real markets the real cradle of real civilization.

[Doc is actually writing about fears of an "electronic tsunami" hitting the book biz. It's a good post. Go read it here.]

: UPDATE: See this comment from Matt Welch:

Speaking as someone who is exposed to more libertarians than the average bear, my view is that Lessig is a pretty controversial character in that camp, too. Reason magazine, in fact, is printing a terrific article in the January issue (available on newsstands in December) that rips apart the propaganda polluting the Cooper/Lessig wing of the anti-deregulation movement, and reiterates the literally incredible positive advances in media diversity over the last two decades.

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Sex and blogs (not an oxymoron)
: All other cybertrends are like birth: first comes sex, then comes everything else.
Blogs are the opposite. First came tech and politics and war. Now comes the sex.
There has been a lot of sex talk hereabouts lately: There's the imminent arrival of Nick Denton's Fleshbot, an allegedly high-class sex blog. See, too, this Village Voice roundup of sex blogs [via Anil]. Here's a Newhouse News Service story saying that women like porn online, too. Daniel Drezner wraps up a considerable online discussion on porn here: Naomi Wolf in NY Mag says porn turns men off to real sex and James Joyner disagrees. And there are some pioneers in this arena: See Raymi, for example.
Sex, sex, sex. So what's up with that?
Well, as I said to the church lady who yelled at me when I said that I liked Cheers (the lesser of two reasons why I left that church): Hey, lady, life has sex. So it's only natural that TV and weblogs do, too.
Here, I do not think that sex will become the province of pornographers -- and spammers. I think we'll see sex made cool and sleek again because blogs comes from real people. We'll see.....

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The death of Ted Baxter
: Lost Remote sends us to a column by Terry Heaton arguing that the days of the TV news anchor are numbered.
He says that in our connected world, time is precious and anchors (and news shows) take too long to get through a story. Right. In fact, they drag out stories to fill time because fewer stories means lower cost.
Second, he says he'd rather hear from the reporter who is on the scene than the anchor in the studio.
Third -- and this is key -- he says "the only 'personalities' I care about are those who share my beliefs and provide the arguments that I need to communicate those beliefs with other members of my 'tribe.' I don't care what these people look like or sound like. What they say is paramount." There, ladies and gentlemen, is the key to the success of FoxNews. Bill O'Reilly is not as pretty as Peter Jennings but at least you know where he stands.
Finally, Heaton says, that the age of the media elite is over: "I have little time or respect for people on pedestals."
I'm not so sure that anchors will go the way of dodo birds quite yet. But I certainly do believe we'll see an evolution in TV away from dull, overpaid, pretty news readers and toward grizzled, opinionated news thinkers.

: Heaton also sees a different future for TV reporters:

The video news people of tomorrow will be very different than those of today. You'll write, shoot and edit your own material. The ability to write will be paramount, for — in an on-demand world — people will read your words before they watch your video. Your compensation will be based on your work, not your appearance or your Q score. You'll make a living, but it won't be extravagant. There'll be a premium on what you say, so your point of view is what'll separate you from the rest and determine your following. You'll likely have a blog and your own Web address.

Yes, and lots of people will be getting cameras like the one Glenn Reynolds just got (thanks to Gizmodo). Today, we can all be pundits on blogs. Tomorrow, we can all be TV reporters.

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New Iranian blogs
: Pedram, the Eyeranian, links to lots of new English-language blogs from inside Iran. I particularly like this woman's viewpoint:

Isn't it funny? the governmental laws and rules in Iran (with a semi-modern society) are defined from the pattern which had been followed by savage Arabian tribes in about 1400 years ago! they used to neglect all women's rights, just like most other countries in that old time, but the silly point is that we are still obeying them,...!
In the law book of Islamic Republic of Iran you can find such clear discriminations against women that makes the reader doubt if the edition date of the book is really 2003!!!
for instances:
- a wife must not leave the house without permission of her husband! and if she leaves house for 1 hour, and her husband doesn't agree, he can go to a court and say it to the judge...!! ...
- in a court, witnessing of a man equals to 2 women!!!
- there are some jobs that are forbidden for women : being president of the country, religious leader (marja'e taghlid) or being a judge..!! ...
- It is forbidden for a female (!) to ride a bike or motorcycle! if the police see her, they can arrest her!
there are thousands of these silly discriminations in the rules of iran which are applying right now in the courts, families, and totally entire ISLAMIC society..!! they are like dark shadows, following you during your life, always reminding you that in this religion, you are considered as slaves and men are masters!!

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Mirrors
: Konstantin Klein, a German correspondent, is leaving Washington after seven years and Papa Scott translates his valedictory post:

The USA to which I came in July 1996 was a completely different country than the USA that I am now leaving: well-off, self-satisfied, open, optimistic. It was the land of Bill Clinton and the Internet, sudden wealth, free of worries. Today on the other hand, my adopted countrymen find themselves being driven from one fear to the next (and many of them let themselves be driven), threatened, despised, isolated. Who is responsible for this change - everyone has his own their theory, I'm sure. I've been so close to the action that right now I don't have an overview, I'm missing the big picture. But I already noticed in 1996/1997 how helpful it sometimes is to leave a country and to observe it from the outside.

Well, I wouldn't quite agree with that portrait but, fine, it's his.
What I ask is that he paint a corresponding picture of the Germany to which he is returning. Seven years ago, it was also optimistic and bubbly but today it is depressed and angry and isolating itself from its friend, America, and trying to figure out how the hell to restructure itself out of the economic mess in which it finds itself. So you could look at this another way: The world economy and the world situation -- thanks to terrorism -- are worse off than they were seven years ago and I'd wager that Germany is worse off by comparison today than America. But that is in the eye of the beholder.

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Weblogs in China
: I predict that China will be the next frontier for weblog explosion. Here's an interesting new group weblog -- in English -- called Living In China and a list of the more than two dozen bloggers involved (many of them Americans and other expats living over there). Then there's a weblog on media in China, which points to this report on the state of the art of weblogs there:

...while foreign blogs are dominated by a combination of male nerds and professionals – including journalists – Chinese blogs are mostly neatly designed websites, done by good-looking young women. Unfortunately, also most good-looking young Chinese women tend to have lives that are as boring as those of their nerdy counterparts. In China they only emerged this year and a few are really encouraging. In one blog of a Shanghai girl review the sex she has with many men. Fortunate for the guys most reviews are anonymous.

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Persian or Farsi
: Blogalization, the multilingual blog, answers the question I've been meaning to ask: Is it Persian or Farsi?

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