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July 06, 2004

The Daily Stern

: INCONSISTENT: Michael Powell doesn't make much sense in this FMQB summary of an interview. Could be his fault; could be the interviewers; could be FMQB's.

"Here's the truth: the ownership debate is about nothing but content. Don't be fooled. I mean, this is my greatest warning to the American public. It's easy to go after every ill in society by claiming it's the media's fault. It's the American pastime, right? Anything you don't like, it's the media's fault," said FCC Chairman Michael Powell in an interview with Kenneth McGee, a research fellow and Group VP for Gartner, Inc....

Powell claims that the ownership debate is not really about the ownership rules, saying, "The vast majority of people don't even know what the rules say, to be perfectly candid. Name all six of them. Name what they actually do. Nobody can. They became a stalking horse for a debate about the role of media in our society. I can expect and understand consumer anger and anxiety about that. But the ownership rules are not the cause or the cure. It was really an invitation for people with particular viewpoints to push for a thumb on the scale, for content in a direction that people preferred."

Powell accuses some of the people who hold those "particular viewpoints" of hypocrisy, saying, "It's easy to say, 'I'm comfortable with that when the government's doing it for something I like. But I get really scared when it's something I don't.' And what is juxtaposed against the media ownership debate? Indecency, which maybe is what you mean by content. Hollywood was happy to beat up on ownership liberalization because they want the government to intervene so we can promote more independent programming — which is content. But the same Hollywood says the government can't say that Howard Stern can't say the F word, because that's censorship and inappropriate."

Well, I'm quite consistent on this and that's my problem with Powell: He's not. I'm against government regulation of content. Thus I'm for deregulation when it comes to media business and media content. It's not government's job to censor what we the citizens say. Simple rule to follow. Too bad Powell doesn't follow it. He's for deregulation in terms of business (and, he argues here, that means content) but he's for regulation in terms of content (when it comes to Howard Stern).

: MORE INCONSISTENCY: MediaChannel.org (whatever that is) also goes after Powell's inconsistency:

He's bright, personable, an excellent lawyer, a distinguished veteran, and the son of the Secretary of State. Yet, Michael Powell's record as the Chairman of the FCC has been one misstep and reversal after another. In telecom and media regulation, his quest to "deregulate" has disintegrated into a search for something -- anything! -- that will pass muster with the courts, the Congress, and, most importantly, the American people....

Powell frequently cites his strong commitment to the First Amendment as grounds for media deregulation. Indeed, the "Powell Doctrine" claimed Big Media had a First Amendment right to consolidate and concentrate (although it said little about the First Amendment right of the public audience to be served by a wide diversity of voices and viewpoints). But despite his championing of the First Amendment and free expression, he tried to implement his new rules quietly, without a single public hearing....

Then came the Super Bowl. The Chairman seized on Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" to rush to the head of the censorship parade and lead the fight against so-called "indecent" programming over the public airwaves. In his rush to become the "Nation's Nanny," Powell's FCC overturned long-standing bright line regulations and substituted far more expansive, vague, and opaque indecency rules.

The net result is that Chairman Powell has been responsible for the censoring of a significant amount of original, controversial, and worthy content on the nation's airwaves -- the very free expression that is not only protected by the First Amendment, but should be encouraged by the FCC! What should have been the Chairman's finest hour, defending the First Amendment he claims to cherish, became his worst. When the First Amendment needed him most, Chairman Powell abandoned it.

: F THAT: See also Prof. Michael Froomkin complaining that filters on Internet access keep him from visiting many a political site -- he cites Atrios -- because of occasional use of the F word. [via Ernie Miller] This is why I avoided the F word here... until the vice president used it. That should have made the F word ready for prime time, no?

: F THAT TOO: Ernie also sends us to Hitchens' elegy to the F word.

: FIRST AMENDMENT, WITH A BULLET: EditorsWeblog reports that the number of Americans who support the First Amendment and do not believe it goes too far is growing.

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Help with using my mail on AOL dial-up

: Help! I'm in a hotel using AOL on dial-up (ouch!) and suddenly I can't use SMTP mail for my work and personal accounts. This is NOT about using AOL mail. I use both Outlook and Communicator and neither works on sending. I went into tech support chat with AOL. They had me change my SMTP server to smtp.aol.com and change the port (on Outlook; can't see where to change the port on Communicator) to 587. Reboot. Nothing. Nada. Crap. Go to the AOL help page they send me to and it's only about getting AOL mail elsewhere. I don't want any damned AOL mail. I want to use AOL as an ISP and, of course, AOL SUCKS!!!!!!

Can anybody similarly scarred help?

: I reset all my SMTP settings back to defaults and went online with my Treo PDAnet instead of AOL and was able to send mail that way. But Sprint service up here in the mountains is iffy, so I would like to use AOL to be able to send some frigging email. So I still need the help. Did I say that AOL SUCKS!!!!!?

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Let the sniping begin

: In a bit of perfect timing, the Journal this morning has a column saying that if John Edwards is picked, business leaders will go after him as the symbol of the devil incarnate: the trial lawyer (it's today's free Journal link):

Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has made a public vow: If John Edwards is chosen as John Kerry's running mate, the chamber will abandon its traditional stance of neutrality in the presidential race and work feverishly to defeat the Democratic ticket. "We'd get the best people and the greatest assets we can rally" to the cause, he says.

Other business leaders in Washington have been less public and less precise, but no less passionate. ...

None of this is personal. These businessmen barely know Sen. Edwards and would probably find him a far more engaging dinner companion than most of his fellow Democrats -- Sen. Kerry included.

Nor is it completely rational. Mr. Edwards's political and policy views are more moderate -- and more in line with business -- than those of Gov. Dean, Rep. Gephardt or even Sen. Kerry.

But Mr. Edwards is a trial lawyer. His campaign for the presidency was financed by trial lawyers. And there is nothing that makes America's CEOs see red these days like America's trial lawyers.

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Iraq auf Deutsch

: Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote a story about Salam Pax for the Austrian magazine Datum and he asked me to send him comments on the overall blogging scene in Iraq; he turned that into a sidebar and had it translated into German here.

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