BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis

November 30, 2004

Wheel of Free Speech

: Pat Sajak -- Pat Sajak! -- lambasts Hollywood's creative community for not expressing outrage over the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh.

So, again I ask, where is the outrage from Hollywood’s creative community? I mean, talk about a violation of the right of free speech!

Perhaps they are afraid that their protests would put them in danger. That, at least, is a defensible position. If I were Michael Moore, I would much rather rail against George W. Bush, who is much less likely to have me killed, than van Gogh’s murderer and the threat to creative freedom he brings. Besides, a man of Moore’s size would provide a great deal of “bulletin board” space....

There’s another possibility; one that seems crazy on the surface, but does provide an explanation for the silence, and is also in keeping with the political climate in Hollywood. Is it just possible that there are those who are reluctant to criticize an act of terror because that might somehow align them with President Bush, who stubbornly clings to the notion that these are evil people who need to be defeated? Could the level of hatred for this President be so great that some people are against anything he is for, and for anything he is against?

Color him Orange

: So Tom Ridge is gone. I have no regrets and had many complaints. Ridge tended toward the twinkie (cute drawings of disaster; duct tape; color codes) rather than the decisive. As much as I'd like Rudy Guliani to replace him, I doubt he would (thankless job that won't advance his career). But I hope we get somebody strong.

Tom, we hardly knew ye

: Just saw what was practically an obituary for Tom Brokaw on Today as he leaves his anchor chair X-on-the-studio-floor this week.

The irony of this slatherfest is that network anchors try so hard to have very little personality. Oh, they have some personality, but only just enough to seem human, without quirks (besides his speech impediment) or passions or emotions or opinons. It's engineered personality.

And now we are being asked to miss and practically mourn this anchor as if he were a dear personal friend, our news goombah.

But he wasn't. He was a guy who read the news, a news cipher. And he was damned good at it. I regularly watched Brokaw, in part because I was raised in a Huntley-Brinkley home, in part because I watch NBC entertainment shows, and in part because I do like the job NBC News and Brokaw do. But he was no pal of mine. No offense, Tom, but I won't miss you. I wish you well in your retirement; I hope you enjoy your wealth and relaxation. But I will feel no vacuum in my life.

And just wait until we see the video Taj Mahals that surely are being built already for Dan Rather (which, yes, will ignore Rathergate and other controversies). And he's the guy with the very fake personality, what with all his downhomeisms studded in the news like raisins in muffins (I still wonder whether he doesn't have secret downhomeism writers feeding him his hokum).

I'm not decrying personality on the news. To the contrary, I've been saying that the audience is responding to personality -- witness Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly -- and what we need is transparency about a news person's perspective.

But what we do not need is fake personality.

So as we say goodbye to Dan and Tom, I hope what we're really doing is signing off on the era of tapioca humanity in the news. The networks don't know it yet, but that's what's really happening.

: And I know the seduction of creating a personality for the camera. Back when I was a TV critic, I appeared on TV often and made pilots of regular segments on TV about TV (which were never picked up; I was always told that the subject matter was too touchy to deal with in a competitive environment but it also could have been that I simply sucked). During those scripted shticks, I often found myself putting on the personality producers told me take on (yes, they really did tell me to smile with my voice).

Lately, thanks to this blog, I've been doing the TV thing again but because I'm not really selling anything (other than the cause of free speech or my ego), I'm not trying to slap on a personality like the makeup they slap on my face. I'm me. I'm excitable. I talk fast. I'm opinionated. I don't know whether it's good TV but I do know that it's a lot more fun and less worrisome than trying to act like somebody. It's liberating.

So I repeat my advice to CBS: You should replace Dan Rather with Jon Stewart. And if you don't have the balls to do that -- which you won't -- then, yes, you should follow the rumors and at least hire Tim Russert, who seems to have some real personality. Don't hire another cipher, another everyman, another engineered personality. Hire a human.

: UPDATE: Says Terry Heaton, who knows TV news: "It's a scary time for people in television news, because the blue smoke and mirrors has been revealed for what it is."

Shoeless Jeff

: When I go through airport security, I take off my shoes and jackets and pull out my laptop and stow my change and phone and get through quickly and when it's all done -- even when I've switched flights at the last minute and, as a result, end up being flagged for special screening -- I always say, "Thank you." I'm damned glad these guys are inspecting us because I've seen what happens when we don't.

And so I got pissed reading Joe Sharky's travel column in The Times today about a guy who gets pissy about taking off his shoes.

Mr. Coop, who is from San Jose, Calif., says he will travel about 160,000 miles this year. "If I have enough time, I will decline to take my shoes off, just to see what's going to happen on the other side," he says.
Twit.

Now I certainly understand women getting pissy about being felt up by pervy TSA guys and I expect the bad guys to be exposed and fired.

But taking off your shoes? What's the big, boy? We actually know that a bozo terrorist tried to use his shoe as a weapon of mass murder. So take off your damned shoes, guy, and stop wasting the time of the TSA agents -- whom I've found to be consistently courteous and professional -- and the people in line behind you.

: When I was in Toronto, I went up the CN Tower -- which, by the way, was a weird experience, since I already don't like heights and after 9/11 I have nightmares about city towers; I stayed to the back of the elevator and wouldn't go anywhere near the glass for 1,200 feet up (yes, kids, Daddy's a wimp). But one thing made me comfortable: Every tourist had to stand inside a contraption with little jets that spritzed air all over us. "What's it detecting?" I asked the guard, who looked uncomfortable and said nothing. "Explosives?" I asked. He nodded. "I'm glad you do it," I said. "So am I," he said.

Another media-man blogger

: Simon Waldman, head of digital publishing at the Guardian and a good guy to have lunch with, has a new blog.

November 29, 2004

More media on media

: I'm to be on CNBC's Bullseye with Michael Wolff to talk about the indecency absurdity tonight at 6:30ish ET.

Odd bedfellows

: Still catching up on weekend reading, I find the darnedest defense of Dan Rather from Bill O'Reilly.

The ordeal of Dan Rather goes far beyond the man himself. It speaks to the presumption of guilt that now rules the day in America. Because of a ruthless and callow media, no citizen, much less one who achieves fame, is given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations or personal attacks. The smearing of America is in full bloom.
Methinks that Bill is still a tad sensitive about his own dragging-through-mud he now is contractually forbidden from talking about: his sexual harassment settlement.
Right-wing talk radio in particular pounded Kerry and also bludgeoned Dan Rather for his role in another smear incident - the charges against President Bush about his National Guard service. Again, Rather was found guilty without a fair hearing. Charges that he intentionally approved bogus documents that made Bush look bad were leveled and widely believed. It was chilling.
That wasn't really the issue, Bill. It was that Rather took 12 days to even acknowledge that he could have made a mistake. He refused to leave or look down from that pedestal he built for himself. He hurt the credibility of the news business and its relationship with its public as a result. I never thought or said he intentionally lied. He intentionally ignored the truth, though.
I believe Rather, along with Andy Rooney, Walter Cronkite and other guardsmen of the old CBS News, is liberal in his thinking. That is certainly a legitimate debate - how for years CBS News has taken a rather progressive outlook. But holding a political point of view is the right of every American, and it does not entitle people to practice character assassination or deny the presumption of innocence. Dan Rather was slimed. It was disgraceful.
But, Bill, the issue for you and for Dan is transparency: admitting your perspective -- or, if you prefer, bias -- to the public so they can fairly judge what you say.
But you'll be seeing more of this kind of thing in the future. All famous and successful Americans are now targets. Unscrupulous people know that any accusation can be dumped on the Internet and within hours the mainstream media will pick it up.
Or mainstream media will make a mistake and the Internet will, within hours, correct it. Works both ways, Bill.
This is not your grandfather's country anymore.
And I, for one, am glad of it.

: UPDATE: Winfield Myers calls it the O'Reilly Fracture.

First they came for Howard Stern... and then they came for you

: Few were standing up protesting when the FCC went after Howard Stern.... Few were yelling about the slippery slope of government censorship.... Until it put a chill on airing Saving Private Ryan. Then the newspaper editorials finally started to act alarmed, as well they should.

Here are two more that should alarm you:

First, here's a Billboard story saying that the FCC will go after satellite next:

With envelope-pushing air talent like Howard Stern and Opie & Anthony flocking to the less-restricted refuge of satellite radio, could the Federal Communications Commission be far behind?

Specifically, could the FCC enforce its indecency rules -- which Stern claims drove him away from terrestrial radio -- on satellite radio too?

That's exactly what Saul Levine is hoping for. On Oct. 29, Levine, the president of Mt. Wilson FM Broadcasters, filed a Petition for Rulemaking to amend Part 25 of the FCC's pending satellite radio rules to include an indecency provision.

While legal experts say subscription radio enjoys deeper First Amendment protections than free radio, Levine's petition argues that the FCC is, in fact, empowered to enforce indecency rules on satellite radio and asks the commission to "level (the) playing field." ...

According to Levine's petition, the FCC already has subjected satellite radio to Equal Employment Opportunity and political broadcasting rules and policies. What's more, the petition says, the type of radio service (i.e., broadcast, common carrier, etc.) "is not a relevant consideration" in the imposition of programing or public-interest rules, nor is whether satellite radio operates as a broadcast or subscription service. In fact, the FCC put satcasters on notice in 1997 that it "may adopt additional public-interest requirements at a later date."

An unnamed Senate staffer and First Amendment attorney Robert Corn-Revere also say in that story that this won't work because satellite is a paid service you choose to get and because the First Amendment won't allow it. But that won't stop them from trying. Just watch.

The second story is in today's Wall Street Journal arguing that computers and the internet are the next target of the prudes, prigs, and self-appointed national nannies:

If America gets serious about doing battle over "values," will the Internet-enabled personal computer be able to stay out of the crosshairs?

It's a wonder that no one has yet run for office by campaigning against the computer. After all, you couldn't ask for a better sin-delivery system than a PC with a fast Web connection....

According to their stereotypes, conservatives worry about sex while liberals worry about violence, and the world according to the personal computer provides a lot about which both sides can fret....

If you don't protect Howard Stern's speech from government censorship, yours is not far behind.

Yo, Canada

: Here's a heretical thought coming out of four nice days in Toronto:

Would our world in America be all that different if we had not revolted against England?

I don't mean to piss off Canadians with another observation that, gosh, we're so much alike. Of course, there are differences, cultural and philosophical. Robertson Davies used to argue that Canada actually has more in common in its worldview with Scandanavia than with the U.S. and I think he had a point. And I will say that Canadians are lousy at making left turns.

I also don't mean to piss off Americans by devaluing that which we value so strongly: our Constitution and Bill of Rights (well, except when we find the First Amendment politically inconvenient) and dogged individualism. Nor do I necessarily want to get into an argument about what I still view as the superiority, even with its problems, of the Canadian health-insurance system.

And perhaps one could argue that we're similar because of the gravitational pull of our oomph and that oomph comes from the independence bred of the revolution.

But having given all those caveats, it is still true that we and our lives are remarkably similar for having taken such different paths 200 years ago. And our lives are similar to the lives in England and then by extension in Europe and what we haughtily call the "modern" Western world.

What ties us together, I think, is not history or revolution or philosophy but simply democracy.

What ties us together is that when you give people the right to determine their own destiny, they will find the water levels of freedom and civilization.

: I was sitting in the Toronto airport thinking about this as I read a Q&A with Natan Sharansky in the National Post (which, stupidly, won't let us see the story; I wish I could tell you to read the whole thing but I can't) as he flogged his new book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror. Sharansky makes powerful arguments in favor of democracy for all people and against the prejudiced and wrong-headed belief that some people do not want or are not ready for democracy.

Why are you optimistic that people will be achieved in the Middle East?
Because I believe that every society on earth can be free and that if freedom comes to the Middle East, there can be peace. The question is whether the free world will do everything in its power to help this region become democratic.
Amen to that. Ultimately, democracy is what will tie the people of the world together. We may seem to be on radically, dangerously different courses now but in the long run, let people govern themselves, give the people control of their lives, and people will be people.

: By the way, here's the proof that the U.S. and Canada are alike after all. I pick up Maclean's magazine and what's the cover story but:

The War Between Town and Country. Cottagers vs. farmers. Suburbs vs. small towns. Urban cash vs. rural clout. This is Canada's next culture war.
AKA red provinces vs. blue.

Media on media

: If you're by a radio now (9:30a ET), I'll be on Air America's Unfiltered on the FCC.

The national nanny

: In a National Post piece about Michael Powell as the new darling of religious nutjobs, there's this quote I like:

Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic congressman from New York and ranking member of the House constitution subcommittee, says Powell's complaints against ABC and Monday Night Football "make it abundantly clear that he is less interested in doing his job than he is in becoming the country's chief censor."
Good for you, Congressman. And how did you vote on the indecent indecency bill? The right way. Thank you.

: UPDATE: I didn't make it clear enough that Nadler voted against the indecency indecency bill; I just added that clarification above. Others who had the courage to vote for free speech (even if accused of voting for smut):

Only 22 members, including Paul and Ackerman, had the courage to actually vote "no," with most of them voicing free speech concerns. Another 20 members voted "present" or simply did not vote at all. Among those voting "no" were many of the House's most progressive members, including California Democrats Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Zoe Lofgren and Pete Stark, as well as New Yorkers Jerry Nadler and Jose Serrano. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, also voted "no," as did Georgia Democrat John Lewis, the veteran civil rights activist. Michigan Democrat John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, was among the members who did not vote.

November 28, 2004

The vast Canadian conspiracy

: I pick up the Globe & Mail on the way back and find that John Roberts, the likely successor to Dan Rather, is Canadian. Peter Jennings and now John Roberts. Hmmmmm. Sounds like a conspiracy to me. Odder still, Roberts' real name is Robertson. But he changed his name to Roberts and then to J.D. Roberts and now he's John Roberts. Hmmmmm. Code names?

Some right-wing pundits in the U.S. have suggested that Canadians have a liberal bias. In the summer of 2003, White House operatives raised questions about the objectivity of Canadian ABC reporter Jeffrey Kofman, after he had filed a number of negative reports about American troop morale in Iraq. Distributing copies of a profile of Kofman that appeared in the American gay and lesbian magazine The Advocate, White House spin had it that Kofman's bias came about because he was both gay and Canadian.

Roberts is decidedly heterosexual, with a wife and two children, a son, 19, and a daughter, 13.

Ah, but he's still Canadian, isn't he? Once a Canadian, always a Canadian.

Hey, ABC News: Real sucks!

: I just went through consumer hell with Real trying to watch the segment on my FCC scoop on ABC World News Tonight. I tried to subscribe to ABC NewsNow for $40 a year but that didn't work and so I then had to subscribe to ABC SuperDuperPassGas or whatever the hell they call it for another too-many bucks per month. And then I had to download software three times. And then I had to walk through glass to watch two minutes. And then when I tried to cancel it all, I had to stay on hold on not one but two calls to Real for 40 friggin' minutes. Real sucks. Real Audio sucks. Real Video sucks.

ABC News: Please follow my advice below. You're pissing off your viewers/customers/audience/public and not making much money from Real -- right? -- when, instead, you could use your public to market and distribute your brand and product. Make us your ally, not your enemy, eh?

November 27, 2004

Not dead, just vacationing

: Sorry for the radio silence. I'm still in Toronto. Back home tomorrow. Back blogging then.

November 26, 2004

abcnews1.jpg

Half of 15 minutes

: The good news: I was on World News Tonight in Jake Tapper's story about the FCC and the jihad against free speech. The bad news: Because of college football, it appeared only on the West Coast. So it wasn't seen where it matters: Washington. And I haven't seen it yet either. Oh, well, those are the breaks. Now I'll start ranting about America's jock jihad.

The great indecency hoax: We are not a nation of prudes

: In his upcoming Sunday column, Frank Rich makes the argument I've been making for months and I'm damned glad to have company with influence: He says that Americans are not, in fact, storming the FCC demanding a crackdown on indecency; that's all just a hoax perpetrated by a few well-organized religous nutjobs and a few political cynics at the FCC. Rich is also generous enough to point to my little FCC scoop.

Ever since 22 percent of the country's voters said on Nov. 2 that they cared most about "moral values," opportunistic ayatollahs on the right have been working overtime to inflate this nonmandate into a landslide by ginning up cultural controversies that might induce censorship by a compliant F.C.C. and, failing that, self-censorship by TV networks. Seizing on a single overhyped poll result, they exaggerate their clout, hoping to grab power over the culture.

The mainstream press, itself in love with the "moral values" story line and traumatized by the visual exaggerations of the red-blue map, is too cowed to challenge the likes of the American Family Association. So are politicians of both parties.

But Rich puts forth lots of facts and ratings showing that, in fact, we love Desperate Housewives in blue states and red; we are not prudes; we are being misrepresented by the prim ayatollahs and exploitive bureaucrats and lazy reporters and pundits. He ends here:
Those who cherish the First Amendment can only hope that the Traditional Values Coalition, OneMillionMoms.com, OneMillionDads .com and all the rest send every e-mail they can to the F.C.C. demanding punitive action against the stations that broadcast "Desperate Housewives." A "moral values" crusade that stands between a TV show this popular and its audience will quickly learn the limits of its power in a country where entertainment is god.
I don't always agree with Rich but you know that I love this column. I'm delighted that Frank Rich in The New York Times and Tom Shales in the Washington Post and Jonathan Alter in Newsweek are using their powerful platforms to question, not to just spread, the too-quickly swallowed conventional wisdom that we are a ntion of prudes. We are not. So here's hoping that Rich is right and whether it is putting the chill on Saving Private Ryan and driving Howard Stern to satellite or gasping over a harmless if dumb network promotion or whatever comes next, the nannies will go too far and we will finally stand up as one and tell them to put a sock in it.

The objective

: Jay Rosen and other bloggers get some major quote love from Mike France in a Business Week column about whether there is a market for nonpartisan news. France hopes there is.

I talk a lot about the need for a new transparency of perspective and process in the news business -- because I believe it will, in the long run, restore credibility. That doesn't mean that every reporter on every story becomes a partisan. Not every story is red-v-blue; not every story is so simple. But where there is a perspective that's relevant, isn't it better to disclose it than not to?

A thousand points of control

: Go read Business Week's terrific interview with Pierre Omidyar on his unique model for charity. Or maybe it's not unique; it merely takes the model that works in commerce and media and politics and brings it to charity: Give the people control and they will use it. (Where have I heard that before?)

Omidyar is pioneering a third way, a philanthropy that's fanatically bottom-up. It's anti-vision. Anti-dictate. And, in a sense, Omidyar isn't even choosing how his $10 billion is given away -- or to what causes it goes. He wants you to do that.
See also an online Q&A with him here.

: This is what Jim Hake is trying to do with Spirit of America: Letting the people who know identify needs and letting the people who contribute answer them.

: Which reminds me: Please join in the Spirit of America Blogger Challenge and give something, anything. You can contribute via my team and the money will go to building and hosting an Arabic-language blogging tool. You'll merely be changing the world. Or you can join my team with your blog or give via someone else's team. Whatever. Just give, please. It's important for Iraq and America and blogs and the world.

The unholiday

: I went a little farther than over the river and through the woods for Thanksgiving. We came to Toronto, where they're not having Thanksgiving. It's a turkey-free zone. And, no, I'm not defecting.

November 25, 2004

Turkeys

: Off to see family today. Happy Thanksgiving.

November 24, 2004

The two posts below go together: The first is about the death of the Dan Rathers of news; the second is what should rise in their place.

The death of anchors = the end of one-way news (and what to do about it)

: Yes, the exit of Dan Rather, stage left, spotlight off, tail twixt legs, marks the death of the anchor, the extinction of the trusted news star.

But it's more than that. It's the toppling of journalism on a pedestal. It's the end of news as a lecture. It's the death of one-way media.

That is what anchors embodied. And that is what we, the people formerly known as viewers/listeners/readers in the audience, have rejected.

We rejected the old system of trust: If we trusted the person, it was thought, then we trusted what he said. Anchors equaled automatic authority. But no more.

Oh, trust is still important. In fact, in this new, distributed world of ours, it is even more important. Trust is our organizing principle. Trust is what makes weblogs, Technorati, eBay, Craigs List, RSS, chat, and email work: We pay attention to those we trust; we filter out the rest. We each decide whom to trust; it's no longer decided for all of us.

We control trust. And so that is how we operate with news, too: We can get the source material on the web or via CSpan to judge the facts for ourselves; we can follow the track record of reporters and news organizations to see when they mess up and whether we should believe them; we follow the links of those who have not led us astray; we can see who is being transparent and who is not and judge accordingly; we decide what stories are important for us; we get to question those in power thanks to new media. We are in control.

The idea that we should just sit there and watch as someone reads the news to us is -- now that we see the alternatives -- quaint at best, condescending at worst. Why the hell should we ever have let Dan Rather decide what's important to us and how we should should look at it? How did we ever tolerate listening to the news from him without taking the opportunity to talk back?

And just look at what happened when we did talk back: Dan Rather could not stand the idea that bloggers in PJs could have facts and a voice; he attacked those who only tried to help him get to the truth; he showed that he cared more about his position on the pedestal than about the truth or serving his public. This led to his downfall. Dan Rather wasn't made to listen, only to speak. When he was forced to listen, it destroyed him.

All this is not to say that reading the news is outmoded, or that video is obsolete. Hardly. They're convenient means of communication. There will always be on-camera anchors and reporters, prettier than your average bear. That's not the old-fashioned part of network news.

No, instead, it's the top-down, one-way, one-size-fits-all news-extruding machine that's ready for the mothballs. We've seen how this sausage is made and we're not swallowing it anymore. It's the old view of delivering the news that's antiquated. We no longer wait for the news to come to us; now the news waits for us to go get it. We are in control.

So don't think for a second, CBS News, that finding the right face with the right voice will solve your problems. It only extends them. Same for you, NBC and ABC and, for that matter, cable news.

No, you have to explode your newsroom, tear apart your shows, rethink news to turn it into a conversation, and hand over control to the people you used to read to if you want to survive in our new world. And it's not hard.

How to explode TV news in four easy steps

Try this:

1. Slice.

Cut up your shows into stories and put them all online.

After you air a story, it's fishwrap. Nobody can see it. If they missed it, well, that's tough for them. Is that any way to treat your public? Well, you don't have to anymore.

You should put up every story you do -- and not just as a stream but as files that the people can distribute on their own.

You can still make money on this -- in fact, you'll make new money: Put ads on the video; track those ads; and tack on a Creative Commons license that says people can distribute the video but cannnot muck with it. And you'll find something magical will happen: Your audience will market your product for you and distribute it for you and it won't cost you anything more. It's free money, damnit. Tell that to your stockholders.

And while you're at it, take your script for the segment and associate it with the video as meta data (that is, post it on a blog with a link to the video) so people can find your stories on search engines and then watch them.

This means that people who really want to see your stories and are interested in them can now do so. We're no longer captive to your schedule and your selection; we can watch what interests us. We are in control.

The result: You will get a more interested and involved audience. You will get a bigger audience. You will get more people who will like what you do and start watching your old-fashioned shows. You will benefit. We will benefit.

If you really care about informing the public -- which, of course, you do -- then this is the first step to doing it a new and better way.

2. Add.

You have more material for every story you do: I've seen how much goes into a 3-minute piece and how much is left out.

Now in most cases, I do think that stuff that's cut is extraneous to most people.
You're right to edit and package. Keep it up.

And in the early days of online when news people thought this medium was all about getting more time to tell longer stories with more stuff and another chance to show off cute writing, I screamed in protest: No, your stories are already too long anyway. Find the nearest period!

But for those who are intensely interested in a story or who want to look deeper into what we say, why not put up all the rest of your material? Why throw it away? Put up entire interviews and do it in chunks so people people link directly to one piece or another and, in essence, put up their own remixes. Show the world your great reporting.

If you're doing your job right, this will help your credibility and reputation, for most people will see that you really did pick the right stuff and did tell the story well.

More important, you enable people who need more information to get it. And that is our job, isn't it?

3. Link.

It's as simple as that: Link outside of your own echo chamber of a newsroom. Link to your competitors and show what they did on stories -- stories you did better, stories you didn't do. Do not assume we are your captive. Assume we are smart and want to be informed and want to find the best reports we can. Also assume that we are a thinking public and we want to see and hear different perspectives on a story so we can decide what we think. So help us. We'll appreciate it.

Link to your competitors. It will be good for you. It will make you want to do better jobs on stories than they do.

4. Listen.

Listen to the people you used to call your audience but should see as your equals.

The next time bloggers suggest a fact of your may be wrong, CBS, listen to them. Quote them. Look into what they say. Thank them. Learn your lesson, huh?

And it's not just about fact-checking your ass. It's about knowing that your former viewers have something valuable to say. At first, it's just about quoting their words.

But you know that it won't be very long before we're all equipped with cameras and we'll all be witnesses to our 15 minutes of news. The wise news organization will create an easy way to collect and remix and redistribute all that. Wouldn't you like to have eyewitness video from the heart of a new story? Recognize that anyone can be a reporter. Anyone who sees and reports news is a reporter. So widen your world. Listen. Quote. Make your public a star alongside your anchors.


: When you've done all that, you've turned news into a conversation.

You've turned the spotlight away from the anchor -- the mere personality who got you in trouble -- and you turn it onto the news itself, where it belongs.

You've engaged the people you used to call your viewers, who used to just sit there but have since started walking away, into the news.

You've made anchors what they should be: supporting players, second bananas. (And you've saved yourself a helluva lot of money along the way.)

And you've informed the public. Isn't that what news is about instead of an anchor's fame?

And now a word from our sponsor

: Tom Watson hates my post last night giving bloggers credit for helping topple Rather. Go read it.

: UPDATE: There's an odd discussion going on here and at Tom's blog on bourgeois vs. proletarian with folks complaining that I can't be just folk because I've had media jobs. My response to Tom and the commenter here:

First, this was my response to someone who agreed with you in a comment under my link to your post:

Pardon me, but you sound a bit like the cultural revolution in Mao's time, making the proletariat into the new exclusive class. I'm people, too. I don't declare myself "a-list." You said that. In the blogosophere, in fact, talking about an a-list is old media think, back to the days when only the one or two biggest could afford the printing press or the broadcast tower. That is mass-market-think. And that is over. Now we are all equal, we're all just people. That's the point. Dan Rather is no beter than you or me. He may think he is. By this rationale, you may think he is. But I don't. And I don't think I'm any better -- any more of an a-lister -- than anyone else. So don't put me apart in a room you built for me.

Second, I had not appeared on TV or been quoted in media in years. Oh, yes, I used to be -- when I had a media perch at TVGuide and People. But that went away. It came back only because I am blogging. I've been on those shows with the likes of the man behind PowerLineBlog and much of the Rather fact-checking, who's not, to the best of my knowledge, a media mogul (he's not even from New York!). Sure, big media is going to be more comfortable at first putting on other media guys but that is expanding and that is a great thing.

Third, on Rather himself: I was highly critical of Rather long before I became a blogger. I called him the dumbest anchor alive. I regularly complained about his pomposity. So this is not a blogger-come-lately attitude; it is my opinion of Rather and has been for years. I think that Rather has been bad for journalism and bad for TV journalism and he was particularly poisonous when he refused to admit for 12 days that he could have made a mistake. I am glad to see him dethroned for more than the latest Rathergate. I wrote a much longer set of posts today trying to explain that here [scroll up].

Fourth, that is not out of some right-wing conspiracy. I'm a Democrat. Voted for Kerry. Can't stand Rather. That's not incompatible. And it's not the stuff of conspiracy theories.

Thanks for the nice things you said at the same time. I appreciate that. I like you and your blog, too. And I love having discussions like this. These are not the discussions of bourgeois vs. proletariat it's just a discussion.

Dan Rather's biggest mistake was dismissing those who would have gotten him closer to the truth just because they weren't elite and weren't fellow professionals. That kept him removed from the facts and removed from his public; it was just plain snobbish. Please don't do the same thing in reverse to me just because I've been lucky to have some good jobs. I'm still just another person in a conversation with you and that is the real future of media....

And, by the way, Tom, your resume looks an awful lot like mine. So what we have here is a media pro complaining about a media pro complaining about a media pro. Do I hear an echo in here? Do I hear an echo in here? Let's get past judging people by what they are or were and instead judge what they say and how they say it. Isn't that what this medium is all about? I am proud of my resume as you should be proud of yours. But I'd rather you argue with my arguments than with my CV.

The next FCC FOIA

: I just filed the next FCC Freedom of Information Act request. I had suggested that a reporter should do this; when I talked with Howard Stern, he said I should do it.

The question: What evidence does the FCC have that any Viacom executive knew that Janet Jackson would bare her breast and thus should be fined $550,000 for the crime? Jackson said no one knew. Timberlake said no one knew. But in its complaint against CBS et al, the only thing the FCC says was a violation of the law was 19/32 of a second -- let's repeat that: 19/32 of a second -- during which Jackson's titanium-tipped tit was exposed to the air and airwaves. Says the commission:

Based upon the preceding analysis, we find, in context, that the exposure of Ms. Jackson’s breast was apparently indecent, and, therefore, is legally actionable.
They may whine about other things being "crude" or "inappropriate" but those are critical, not legal judgments. The only illegal thing, they say, was the exposed breast.

They don't fine Jackson or Timberlake, as the law allows (and, if you buy the argument that the FCC is only doing its duty, which Michael Powell regularly makes, then you'd have to argue that they must fine the performers.... but they don't). They fine CBS/MTV/Viacom because the FCC holds them responsible.

But on what basis? That is the essence of my FOIA request.

The FCC almost acknowledges that it has no evidence of the crime:

In sum, even assuming that neither CBS nor MTV had advance knowledge that Ms. Jackson’s breast would be exposed during her broadcast performance, the record clearly establishes that officials of CBS and MTV did have prior knowledge of, indeed were intricately involved in the planning process for, and tacitly approved, the sexually provocative nature of the Jackson/Timberlake segment. Moreover, they extensively promoted this aspect of the broadcast in a manner designed to pander, titillate and shock. Viacom made a calculated and deliberate decision to air the Jackson/Timberlake segment containing material that would shock Super Bowl viewers, and to accurately promote it as such.
Ah, but it's not illegal -- yet -- to be provocative or shocking. The only allegedly illegal act here was the baring of the breast. But the FCC does not link CBS directly to that act.

So I want to see the evidence they have. My FOIA request:

In regard to FCC 04-209 (Super Bowl/Viacom/Janet Jackson), I request any documents from the Commission investigation -- including but not limited to notes, interviews, quotes, research, memoes, and analyses, external or internal to the FCC -- that contend or support the contention that Viacom and any of its subsidiaries -- including but not limited to CBS and MTV -- or executives were in any way aware before the fact that Janet Jackson's breast would be exposed on the Super Bowl telecast.
My guess is that this well is come up dry. They don't have any evidence. And if that's the case, the FCC would be going after Viacom only for vindictiveness -- and to impose a chill -- not because they did anything illegal.

It's bad enough that the law is unconstitutional. It's worse that the enforcement of it is unconstitutional, too. Since when can government fine us for not breaking the law.

The FCC has to respond within 20 days. I'll keep you informed.

: Remember that you, too, can file FOIA requests. Here's where you file them with the FCC.

: By the way, the previous FOIA scoop got mentions in Newsweek via Jonathan Alter and the Plain Dealer via Tom Feran plus Daily Variety

The Viacom settlement

: The Viacom settlement with the FCC didn't make clear what it covered -- other than that it erased everything except the ongoing battle over Janet Jackson and the death of civilization. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The company agreed to a record $3.5 million settlement to expunge all but one pending indecency complaint.

The payment will cover five outstanding fines totaling $440,500 involving radio programs. It also will settle numerous other incidents under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission that could have led to millions of dollars in additional penalties. Among them was an expected fine of nearly $1.5 million related to shock jock Howard Stern's raunchy on-air antics, as well as complaints involving television shows on CBS and UPN including "Cold Case," "CSI" and the Victoria's Secret annual fashion show, say people familiar with the situation.

Still, Viacom executives were quick to note that the company plans to continue to fight a proposed $550,000 fine by the FCC related to its airing of the Super Bowl half-time show in February.

I'm disappointed that all this will not be going to court. But that is the FCC's strategy of blackmail. Part of the settlement says that the FCC can't use any this in license renewals or applications.

Somebody needs to have the balls to fight the FCC in court and take it to the Supreme Court. Howard Stern complains that he never got his day in court because of FCC blackmail. He still won't.

Glamourblog

: Who says bloggers are all hairy pastey white guys? Here's a glamorous Paris model who's moblogging. Alas, not in her PJs. [via Loic]

FCC follies

: The FCC have been quite the busy little beavers.

: Live is dead. As a result of a $3.5 million consent decree agreement with Viacom to settle all its indecency complaints -- except for Janet Jackson -- the company will now put delay equipment on all its TV and radio shows.

More fun: The company must provide indecency training for all on-air personnel within 30 days. That means they're going to give Howard Stern potty training. I wonder whether they will have to give Dan Rather potty training, too.

If the FCC finds against an a Viacom station in the future, the company must suspend all employees involved pending an investigation. So, folks, when the FCC decides to bring its latest fine against Stern next month, he would be suspended. Say hello to satellite.

The pig spit commissioners Michael Copps and Kevin Martin don't think it goes far enough. If any bloggers ever see either of these guys in a porn store, please take a picture of them and forward it, please.

: The FCC oh so generously decided not to fine three shows that had received complaints. Compare these, if you will, to other shows that have gotten complaints recently. Farts and whipped cream got complaints. These did not:

: Keen Eddie did not get fined for having a whore sexually excite a horse.

Commissioners Kathleen Abernathy and Jonathan Adelstein concur but with skewed logic. The entire rationale behind the FCC's authority is to protect children from nastiness, yet they say: "... whether a program is suitable for our children is not the standard that as Commissioners of this agency we must apply...."

Getaloada this high-horse moment: ":We are, however, compelled by the Constitution not to overreach our limited authority in this area and impose our taste and personal judgments on the rest of America. If we overstep our authority, we run the risk of having our limited authority curtailed forever." As well you should, you fools. What are you doing but imposing your taste and personal judgments on the rest of America? What are you doing but that? You damned well should have your authority curtailed forever.

The horrid Kevin Martin dissents with this gem: "Yet, the majority concludes that the program, in which a prostitute is hired to sexually arouse a horse by removing her blouse and to 'extract' semen from the horse, is not indecent because the prostitute is 'never seen actually touching' the horse. Despite my colleagues’ assurance that there appeared to be a safe distance between the prostitute and the horse, I remain uncomfortable."

We're all uncomfortable when you talk about semen, Kev.

: The commissioners don't fine the canceled Coupling -- though they are "troubled."

The episodes in question do not explicitly depict sexual activities or organs (other than kissing). Rather, the characters’ conversations together with the set-up of the scenes make clear that sexual activity has occurred. Further, despite repeated references to sexual activities and organs, which we find troubling, none of the episodes contains graphic descriptions of sexual activities and organs or uses language that is so graphic as to qualify as indecent or profane.
They sound so damned disappointed.

: They are similarly disappointed when they reject another Parents Television Council (read: Prudes Television Council) complaint against Off Centre for talk about a stuffed toilet.

I hear they're going to go after This Old House, though.

Ah, but Kev Martin finds that the FCC's action is inconsistent. Sounds like ground for appeal to me:

The Order similarly acknowledges that another show contains “sustained and repeated references” to sexual organs, and that “the cumulative effect of such repeated references appears to pander to a vulgar interest.” Yet, the Order concludes neither show is indecent. This decision appears to be inconsistent with our precedent. In the past, if similar references, in similar contexts, have been made on radio shows, the Commission has fined the radio station.
Mikey Copps similarly says that they would find against radio and are inconsistent.

: And then they turn around and fine a radio station.

November 23, 2004

Rather's apologist

: Michael Wolff just said on MSNBC that Dan Rather will be remembered as a "seminal figure" in the history of network news and not for this story that he blew.

He's alone in that. Everywhere I've turned on the dial tonight, the accepted view is that Rather is going because he blew it.

Bye, bye, Dan

: Dan Rather is stepping down from his pedestal in March. Yes, bloggers deserve some credit....

The dinosaur of news just keeled over. This marks the end not of any golden age but of pompous, stand-apart news. They don't know it yet, but it does.

(I was blogging this from a TV news greenroom, where I was doing something unrelated. That, by the way, was how this entry and the one below got messed up; my Treo ate them. Anyway, there was much buzz among the TV news folks, but little surprise.)

Howard Kurtz appeared on CNN and said that Rather left now -- before the release of the Rathergate report -- so he could leave on his own terms. That is to say, the report is not going to be a valentine.

I wish CBS would have the balls to try something new, to break out of the pack, to blow up the obvious, to reinvent what TV news should be. They won't, of course. But we can try to tell them how they should do it. What would you do with CBS news if you had to fill that chair? Leave comments.

: Here's RatherBiased.com's statement.

Frankly, it's a shame that it has to end this way for Dan. In the end, he became the person he most despised, Richard Nixon. Had Rather and the CBS management been more serious about viewer input and fairness, they would never have had to stonewall about a story they shouldn't have run.
And Powerlineblog's here.

What should happen but won't I

: They should recognize what's happening in news and hire Jon Stewart or David Letterman or anyone with attitude -- not haughty Rather attitude, but the attitude of the audience, the voice and scowl of the people, the honest voice of the comedian who pokes holes in pomposity rather than pumping it up. It should happen but won't.

: Jay Rosen on Rather's farewell.

The Vanity Fair party

: I've been remiss not linking to Vanity Fair's new site.

I took some crap here because Vanity Fair was not online; it wasn't my fault, really, but because I get to hang out in the Conde cafeteria, I had to accept some level of blame. So I'm glad to see that they are finally up and the site is very nicely done. James Wolcott beat them to the punch with his blog. But now the magazine has content from print as well as a banquet of links, including many to bloggers.

The Independent in London writes a happy review of the site, glad to finally be able to read some of VF over there.

There's a party going on in cyberspace. It's a classy affair, with A-list celebrities, wise, old coves, rapier wits and blindingly bright members of the intelligentsia. It should be a damned good party, because it's been a long time coming. Several years after most magazines dipped their toe in the water by launching online editions, one of Condé Nast's flagship titles has just entered the fray with vanityfair.com....

Aside from the cocktails and celebrity element, there's an earnest desire to stimulate intelligent conversation, just like at a high-society party.

Congrats to my colleagues.

Goober of the year

: Renée Graham of the Boston Globe nominates Michael Powell to be Time's man of the year sinc he has done so much -- of damage -- in 2004.

From driving Howard Stern to announce a 2006 move to satellite radio to making ABC affiliates so skittish about airing a film with graphic violence and profanity that more than a third canceled a Veterans Day airing of ''Saving Private Ryan," no individual this year has had a greater effect on our cultural lives -- for good or ill, for better or worse -- than Powell....

In Iowa and Nebraska, instead of Spielberg's World War II epic, several ABC affiliates showed the TV movie ''Return to Mayberry." Somehow, the selection of that film hardly seems a coincidence. It could certainly serve as a sad commentary on the archaic mind-set the FCC's restrictive rules is promoting, with Powell as an overbearing Barney Fife with too much power and too little desire to use it beyond fostering his own myopic cultural and political agenda.

All New York's a stage

: Yesterday, I'm walking through Times Square by the office and I see some folks staring up Broadway at a flatbed truck surrounded by a few cops and camera trucks. The truck passes. Oh, Bono is playing. Shrug. Another day in the center of the universe.

macys.jpg: The other day, I'm walking through Rockefeller Center and I see a squad of burly guys in hard hats trying to look still-macho as they climb up the Christmas tree with bundles of lights. It's beginning to look a lot....

: This morning, I'm walking to work from the PATH by Macy's and I see that they're ready for the Thanksgiving Day parade. The street is painted with the logo and here's the majorette's-eye view of the cameras.

All New York's a stage and all its people merely extras.

Vlogging

: Audioblog.com has a very neat video blogging tool and Eric Rice is having fun with it.

November 22, 2004

From the front

: Kevin Sites finally gets to tell his story of the tape of a shooting.

So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.

The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.

Are they celebrating in Holland?

: This is Islam Awareness Week.

Oh, I think we're plenty aware already.

Blog ethics

: My sneaky friend Nick Denton nominated me to join Jason Calicanis in setting up a Blog Ethics Committee. I had to let this sink in. Here's my response:

We don't need a committee. We don't need an authority figure or moral guidepost.

This is a distributed world, a world owned by the whole. We are ruled by the wisdom of the crowd.

The most I might go for would be a blog ethics wiki, in which all bloggers get the chance to contribute their collective wisdom and conscience to a debate over what's right.

Besides, the rules of ethics in publishing are really quite simple. As they relate to advertising, I'd start here:

1. No one can buy your editorial voice or space.

2. Anything that is bought should be clearly identified so the audience would not be confused about its source.

3. Be transparent about any relationships you have that could affect what you say and about anything you receive related to what you say.

4. Be open. Be honest.

That pretty much covers the waterfront. If you get more specific than that, your knickers get knotted over every new kind of ad or freebie. It's really quite simple; it's common sense. Your credibility is your only asset; if you sell or or screw it up, you don't get it back.

On other fronts:

We can debate until the elephants and donkeys come home about disclosing your own political prespective and bias. That's up to you. '

You need to follow the law -- whether you like the law or not -- regarding copyright and trademark and if you don't, that's your risk.

You can set your own rules about answering and quoting email and tolerating commenters, anonymous or otherwise.

There, I just saved myself a committee meeting.

Supporting Spirit of America and Arabic blogging: Money meets the mouth

soalogo.gif: Spirit of America -- the great charity that lets Americans help Iraqis, people to people -- is about to come out with something I think can change the world: Arabic-language blog tools.

At the same time, SoA has issued a challenge to bloggers to raise money. Roger L. Simon jumped the gun and got there early. So I'm determined to catch up.

Here is what you can do:

1. Contribute to the Buzzmachine team. I've decided to put the money behind the Arabic blogging tool because I think it's a worthy project and I pushed for it to be done. I seeded it with the first $500.

2. Join the Buzzmachine team. Just sign up your blog to add into the pool.

3. Start your own fund or team by clicking here.

It's always important to emphasize that Spirit of America isn't about left or right, anti- or pro-war. It's about people. It's about Americans helping Iraqis realize the dreams of any people for freedom and democracy and free speech.

This is a new breed of charity that identifies need on the ground and that lets you decide where to put your donations. SoA is also helping Iraqi bloggers start the Friends of Democracy. It is funding TV stations in Iraq. It is sending over tools and sewing machines. It is doing great work. And I can tell you how much I trust and respect the people behind this charity because I've gotten to know them -- Jim Hake, Kerry Dupont, and others -- and their good work.

: Now let me talk for a minute about the Arabic blogging tool.

Not long after I first discovered Hoder and the Iranian weblog revolution, I wished for blogging in Iraq and Zeyad emailed me and then started HealingIraq. He introduced blogging to others, and that led to IraqTheModel, among others. They have made a difference, helping us all see Iraq from the perspective of citizens and building bridges with us. But they blog in English.

To bring the full power of citizens' media to a people, it has to be available in their native language. Zeyad recently emailed me again and said he's getting ready to blog in Arabic. That will be even more important. The folks at SixApart have generously volunteered to help him with a bilingual blog. I just got email saying that Blogger is going to help him figure it out. The new Spirit of America tool is being built by iUpload (full disclosure: we're working with them at Advance Internet). The more the merrier.

Hoder helped people in Iran blog in Persian by giving them instruction in using the English-language Blogger. How much better it will be when he and Zeyad and the IraqTheModel brothers can spread the power of this new people's medium in their native languages.

I firmly believe that once people start publishing and communicating in not just Iraq but Saudi Arabia and Jordan and the rest of the Arab world, we will finally hear the voices of real people and discover that we share many interests and needs. Bridges will be built. Power will be challenged. Old ways will meet new. Understanding will grow. When citizens can speak, good things happen.

It's not just about Arabic blogs in Iraq, of course. It's about the world. Spirit of America is starting with Arabic and plans to move to Persian. And Blogger has announced that it will be available in new languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Korean. That, too, will be helpful.

And then we will look to bilingual bloggers to translate the best of citizens' media from around the world.

See Biz Stone's blogging tours of the world (part I and II). Blogging is worldwide. And that is a good thing.

The chill on free speech, continued

: Here is yet another chill on free speech caused by the FCC's and Congress' efforts to control and censor our speech:

A radio personality I won't name told me that the company for which he/she works is trying to require him/her to indemnify them against any FCC fines -- including not only fines against the performer but against the company.

This means that under the current bills festering in Congress, this poor schmo would be liable for between $1 million (that is, $500k fines for the performer and the company) to $6 million (that is, $3 million each) per day.

I would (a) recite nursery rhymes, (b) go to satellite and hope these prigs, prudes, and fools did not follow, or (c) find a new career in aluminum siding.

On the air
: I'll be on Brian Leherer's show on WNYC today to talk about the FCC and free speech.

November 21, 2004

Good news

: Who can say this is not good news?

Iraq will hold its first democratic elections for more than 50 years on January 30, it was announced yesterday.

America, the brand

: I just saw the most remarkable piece of product placement/advertising/political positioning. On American Dreams, teen soldier JJ returns home with just a damaged leg and psyche and his hard-ass father gives him a car: a Mustang.

Cut to the commercial, the only one in the hour: A modern-day soldier returns home, presumably from Iraq. The story is stretched out as his kid brother drives him and his mom home (in a Ford) and the soldier has to wait for his father, who has some issues. Finally, the father returns, driving his own Mustang, the same vintage as the one we just saw in the '60s American Dreams. The father talks about his return; if he's not JJ, he's an '00 proxy. And this father gives his son a car. You guessed it: a Mustang. "We at Ford wish everyone in the Armed Forces a safe return home," the chyron says. "For your service, you have our gratitude."

I have no idea whether this is brilliant advertising or brilliant exploitation.

(But as we know, Ford/Lincoln/Mercury is a red-state brand.)

A blogging demo

: There's someone here taking pictures of a blogger blogging. It's every bit as exciting as you'd imagine. A geek typing. I've had that happen a few times when people want to do stories on blogging and want to make it visual: "Go ahead, blog," they say, as, oh, I don't know, we're going to take off our clothes and end up in our PJs cackling madly. Blogging is just not visual. Whittling is more exciting.

Distributed reporting

: Finally catching up with email and read a neat notion from Jay Rosen. He noted that Josh Marshall was getting his readers to call their representatives to see whether they had voted for the DeLay Rule since (a) the votes weren't recorded and (b) the reps would be more likely to level with voters than with reporters. "Great example of blogging doing journalism one better," says Jay. Right. It's distributed reporting: The people do the digging.

I can imagine a score of stories where this would work: You ask your readers to call their congressmen to find out a stance and put together a chart (a wiki would work better for this than blog comments, by the way). You have your fellow bloggers each tell you whether the newspapers and TV and radio stations in their town covered a story you think is important and even have them all call the papers' editors to ask why not. I think a lot of our open-space tax dollars are wasted on space nobody'd want anyway, so I could ask people to take pictures of stupid open space purchases near them. But it's not restricted to bloggers alone: A smart reporter could start a blog and ask readers what's happening in the communities they cover.

Whither weblogs?

: The Philadelphia Inquirer asked me to write an op-ed on the future of weblogs after the election -- yes, there is one. Here it is.

November 20, 2004

The names

: Yad Vashem has put the names of more than 3 million victims of the Holocaust online. [via TimesOnline]

On second thought, take that shrimp off the barbie

: Shocking news: Australians are fatter than Americans. That's doubly shocking because they have better beaches.

Criticizing the FCC

: Now here's the third post quoting critics going after the FCC -- at long f'ing last. The latest is James Wolcott (and quoting Jim always causes such... ahem... interesting comments):

In my book, I called for the toppling of Michael Powell at the FCC, whose arrogant, anti-democratic meddling becomes more autocratic with each inflation of his neck size.

I was thinking too small, which is unusual for me.

Jeff Jarvis has a bigger, better idea: abolish the FCC. Get rid of the whole busybody, bureaucratic shebang.

This is a call which can unite liberals, conservatives, and true libertarians--in short, all those who believe the First Amendment and free speech aren't outmoded ideals that can be breeched whenever some bully behind a desk chooses to exercise his prerogatives and grab face-time on the news. Michael Powell has become a glutton for attention and it's time to starve him and the rest of the white-collar censors.

Amen, brother it criticism. Let's say it again: This is a call that [sorry... once a copy editor, always a copy editor] can unite liberals, conservatives, and true libertarians.

Chop suey commentary

: Frank Rich writes Chinese menu columns: He slaps together one thought from column A and one thought from column B that don't belong together. And, yes, an hour later, your brain feels empty.

In his column tomorrow, he starts bemoaning the FCC's censorship and the chill that brought 66 stations to preempt Saving Private Ryan.

Merely the threat that the F.C.C. might punish a TV station or a network is all that's needed to push them onto the slippery slope of self-censorship before anyone in Washington even bothers to act. This is McCarthyism, "moral values" style.
But then, because the F words came in a movie about war, he tries -- pulling from column B -- to make this an issue not of government censorship but of the prowar Republicans. Get it? A movie about war was censored while we're at war and so this must be a Bush coverup.

Can you say non sequitur?

Media on media

: I'm going to be on Brian Lehrer's WNYC show (which I always enjoy) on Monday at 10:40 to talk about the FCC and all that. The show's blog post on the story here.

: My interview with Bob Garfield on On the Media is up now here. They do a good job of editing down a longer chat into its key bits. Transcript up soon.

: Here's audio of my appearance on David Lawrence's show. He's a good guy who's also fighting this good fight.

: I'm supposed to have a perspective piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer tomorrow on the future of blogs, post-election. I'll link to it when it's up.

The national nanny

: Tom Shales gives our national nanny, Michael Powell, a well-deserved critical lashing in tomorrow's Washington Post. Tidbits:

Oops. They got rid of the wrong Powell. The father unfortunately is going, but the son, even more unfortunately, remains behind.....

Staying in office, however, and capable of wreaking havoc in American broadcasting until 2007, is Colin's son Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and definitely not a force for good in America.

Pompous and imperious, an ideologue who believes unfailingly in his own philosophy of how TV and radio should work (the FCC also has domain over telephone and emerging broadband technologies), Powell ignores or condemns anyone who opposes him. Though FCC chairmen have labored mostly in obscurity, Powell has managed to make himself famous; he's the Torquemada of the insane campaign now being waged against "obscenity" on the airwaves....

In fairness to Powell, the commission's two Democratic members, Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein, have been among those pushing for not only fines but license revocations when stations violate the still-vague obscenity rules. They are idiots....

We stand at the top of a dangerously slippery slope. When you start leveling fines for uttering certain words, the list of the verboten is bound to grow. We could be facing four years of even more paranoia than usual about Big Brother, much of it justified....

Powell belongs at the bottom of the barrel [of FCC chairmen] with the lowliest of the bunch. He is an agenda masquerading as a man, the proverbial pompous ass and, worse, a genuine threat to freedom of speech.

Shales also passes on our little FCC scoop (and says something nice about a former TV critic).

Old news is no news

: Has anyone else noticed that the headlines on GoogleNews are getting very stale? It's not as if the editor got tired; it's a computer. I used to be able to check in to find the latest. Now I find one- and even two-day-old headlines.

Democracy within

: I quite liked this description of democracy (lower case) in Jeremy McCarter's review of the play Democracy (upper case) in the New York Sun.

The new play shows how democracy-the system of reconciling irreconcilable goals-operates in Germany, and in Germans. We are each of us a democracy, the play argues, a mass of conflicting perspectives, divided loyalties, contradictory motivations. Brandt himself is charismatic but brooding, moody, and various. "So many people, with so many different views, and so many different voices," he muses. "And inside each of us, so many more people still, all struggling to be heard."
That's how I felt before the election: red voter on one shoulder, blue voter on the other, confused voter in the middle.

November 19, 2004

How do we fight the FCC

: I'm on David Lawrence's show right now talking about how we can all fight the FCC. I want to hear your ideas. How do we all tell the FCC to butt out of our culture and get away from our First Amendment?

I'll file friend-of-the-court brief with any network willing to fight them. I'll send them call-your-bluff complaints. I'll file FOIA requests to expose their uninvestigations. I've sent letters to my legislators telling them not to vote for the indecent indecency bill when it comes back (in January). What else?

Media on media

: I'm supposed to be on David Lawrence's show tonight at 7 PT, 10 ET.

Why conservatives should kill the FCC and defend free speech

: The other night on Aaron Brown's show, I argued with the Heritage Foundation's Rebecca Hagelin over the FCC and the First Amendment (I attacked the first and defended the second, which only logically follows these days but she argued for more government regulation of speech from the agency). Today, someone sent me a wonderful post from the Heritage Foundation's very own weblog agreeing with me. In other circumstances, that last sentence might scare me. But today it only makes me gloat.

First, it points to a great post by James Gattuso, which says:

But the real question is who should decide this question: five members of the FCC, or 300 million Americans with their remote controls? There’s something frankly unsettling about federal officials opining on whether they like this or that thing shown to Americans. (And, although Powell was careful to say he didn’t know whether FCC rules were violated, the chill in the air was nevertheless apparent.)

Advocates of regulation, of course, argue that only “inappropriate” content is at risk. “We just have to draw the line somewhere” is the refrain. Yet, that line is a fuzzy one — and tends inevitably to move in the direction of more and more government control. If there’s any doubt of that, just ask station managers who refused to air Private Ryan last week, out of fear of FCC disfavor. And it unlikely to end there.

No one should know this more than conservatives — who have spent years fighting politically-correct speech codes on college campuses and elsewhere. In the end, giving government power to define what is appropriate and acceptable may be as — or more — obnoxious to conservatives as to liberals.

Amen to that. Are you listening, Rebecca?

After pointing to more from another Heritager, the blog concludes wisely:

Bottom line: Defining indecency is awfully difficult, and different people will draw the line on it in very different places. Given the diverging views of the 5-member FCC, laying down a clear, bright-line definition of indecency is probably impossible. Vague standards and vigorous enforcement--what we have now--will necessarily spur broadcasters to act overcautiously and pull the plug on worthwhile programming like "Private Ryan." For conservatives concerned about trash TV, the off-button may be a more attactive alternative.
True conservatives should be the ones calling for Michael Powell's head -- and dismantling the entire damned FCC.

Insult our culture, you insult us....

: Last week, a review of a children's movie in The Times was filled with bizarre poltical and anatomical references.

This week, we have A.O. Scott looking for profound meaning in SpongeBob SquarePants (but, thankfully, not finding any):

The loud, silly innocence of Mr. Hillenburg's imaginary world, where double entendres seem to bubble up and dissipate faster than you can catch them, is a welcome antidote to the self-seriousness and brutality that rule so much of the popular culture.
I am fed up with these overarching generalizations about popular culture. The other night on Aaron Brown's show, the lady from the Heritage Foundation and Aaron himself went on about the coarseness of our -- our culture ... that is to say, us. Now we have this critic, who ought to know better, making another ovarching generalization about self-seriousness and brutality.

Well, there are brutal movies and there are children's movies.

Folks: It's not one culture. That is the lesson of the internet. That is the obvious lesson of the nichefication of media and entertainment: We get choice, we use it. See Jarvis' First Law of Media. So you can't generalize about all of our culture. And when you do, you generalize about all of us. And that's intellectually lazy and dishonest.

You are what you buy

: Ken Mehlman, Bush campaign manager, reveals the bottom-line marketing strategy that led him to victory. It's the exact same strategy that sells cars: market segmentation.

No, we are not a red v. blue nation. We are Volvo v. Lincoln nation.

"If you drive a Volvo and you do yoga, you are pretty much a Democrat," Mr. Mehlman told an assembly of the nation's Republican governors here. "If you drive a Lincoln or a BMW and you own a gun, you're voting for George Bush." ...

"We did what Visa did," Mr. Mehlman said. "We acquired a lot of consumer data. What magazine do you subscribe to? Do you own a gun? How often do the folks go to church? Where do you send your kids to school? Are you married?

"Based on that, we were able to develop an exact kind of consumer model that corporate America does every day to predict how people vote - not based on where they live but how they live," he said. "That was critically important to our success."

He said that is what led him to the conclusion that supporters of Mr. Kerry had a preference for Volvos over Lincolns, and yoga over guns.

In addition, Mr. Mehlman said the Bush campaign had moved beyond simply placing advertisements on traditional television and radio networks. For example, he said, Mr. Bush began placing advertisements on in-house networks at private gyms, guaranteeing a captive audience of what he described as receptive voters.

"Because our demographic studies and analysis showed us that a lot of young families get information not at the 7 o'clock news but at the 7 o'clock workout before they got home," he said.

Politics is just a product, in this view.

Now this is press transparency

: The Times (of NY) rounds up all the sex scandals at The Spectator in London:

"Someone should bottle that magazine's tap water," wrote The Guardian in an editorial this week, referring to the three erotic scandals that have enveloped The Spectator in recent months, involving, among others, its editor, associate editor, publisher, former receptionist, one of its columnists and the home secretary.
I keep saying we need to humanize journalism here. So that's what we need: Some good, juicy, public affairs!

: Update: The editor in question, also an MP, has a blog (thanks to the commenter)

Stern on Letterman

: Howard Stern mentions my little scoop on the FCC on Letterman's show tonight: "An ex-TV Guide writer went and researched. Three people complained. Three people."

Damn. Wish I'd recorded that.

: It's a serious talk and a good talk. Howard discusses the problem of the FCC and free speech and Clear Channel and creativity. Random quotes:

"This is my way of checkmating the United States government," he says.

"This guy Michael Powell... he's telling us what we can hear," he says. Later: "How can we have a democracy how can we have an open exchange of ideas?"

"My fellow broadcasters are not standing up for me."

"In five years, satellite radio will be dominant in radio broadcasting."

On getting satellite radio: "I believe it is a political movement."

Dave: "In many ways, you pioneered terrestrial radio."
Howard: "And now I'm here to destroy it."

On making fun of racists: "I think the show actually has a high moral value." Dave asks: "Is there a segment of the audience that may not get it... that may have its prehistoric beliefs reinforced?"

Dave: "How come President Bush won the election?"
Howard: "Had I been on in more markets in the country, I believe we would have had an effect on the election."

"I can't syndicate my show anymore. Radio stations are deathly afraid of the religious right... and Michael Powell..."

"Bababooey is coming. Everybody is coming over to the new place."

Siriusly

: I have another theory about Mel Karmazin's arrival at Sirius: I think he'll try to engineer a merger with an earthbound radio company -- possibly even Infinity (since Viacom is making noise about falling out of love with radio and, as Fred says, Mel's still in love with it).

: Sirius also managed to buy a spot on David Letterman tonight, as Stern appears ther.e

The danger of the FCC, a continuing saga

: Reason has an illuminating (which is to say alarming) interview with FCC Chair Michael Powell in its December issue. It's not yet online, so I'll do some typing....

: What enrages me most is Powell's justification for his upsurge of censorship and fines against broadcasters. What's changed in the last six years? Reason asks. Well, nothing, Powell says, as he explains that they don't investigate indecency independently but only respond to complaints, and then he adds:

What has happened in the period you've identified is indecency complaints have skyrocketed.
Hold on one minute. Skyrocketed? I will, of course, refer you to my little scoop that revealed only three people bothered to write letters to the FCC to cause its largest fine in history (and only 20 more Xeroxed them). That is not skyrocketing. That is not a flood of complaint. That is a few letters from a few crackpots. And on that basis, Michael Powell abandons his once-strong defense of the First Amendment for the sake of cynical politics.

: What frightens me most is that Powell acknowledges it makes no sense to regulate broadcast specially in a time when only 11 percent of Americans get their TV over rabbit ears -- yet he won't say whether that means he wants to try to extend regulation (read: censorship) to cable... and the internet.

The editors of Reason read a quote to Powell: "Rather than continuing to engage in willful denial of reality, the time has come to move forward toward a single standard of First Amendment analysis that recognizes the reality of the media marketplace and respects the intelligence of American consumers."

Surprise, surprise: It's a speech of Powell's from 1998. Now he says: "To suggest that we bend the First Amendment for one industry singularly is to do hazard to our most cherished principle." And so, which way does this go: No censorship of broadcast? Clearly, that's not what Powell's saying. So then does censorship extend to cable... and satellite... and the internet? He's not saying.

Later, he repeats the nonstatement: "...Do I think that the First Amendment should be less protective of broadcasting than it should be of cable? I don't particularly." I take that as a veiled threat. This, too:

Powell: I think it will be increasingly difficult to argue for content-premised legislation for broadcasters only.

Reason: Does that mean Congress is going to extend content regulation further into cable or other traditionally nonregulated areas, or does it mean they give up trying to regulate broadcasting?

Powell: Well, what Congress choses to do is anyone's guess. But I would say this: There's an enormous sledgehammer on the other side: the First Amendment and the way courts view it.

Many in Congress are, indeed, trying to extend regulation to cable... and then who knows what comes next.

These people have to be stopped.

: He issues another vague threat, saying that indecency and profanity are "in the criminal code, which means John Ashcroft could theoretically go try to slap handcuffs on you. No nobody expects that, but there's nothing about that statute that says otherwise."

So Powell says he's only enforcing the law and has no choice but to levy all these fines. Then he turns around and says the attorney general has the choice not to enforce the law. He doesn't even try to be consistent and logical on the issue.

: Reason asks whether the FCC should be shut down. He doesn't answer that question, either.

: Separately, Susan Crawford responds to my post suggesting that we get a conference together to envision killing the FCC. She says it more positively and intelligently but the moral to the story is the same: We should imagine what would be possible if the FCC were not there making things impossible.

Right v. wrong

: Just for the record, I'm still contemplating this and this and will likely recast Denton's sneaky challenge. Later.

November 18, 2004

More Stern

: Mel Karmazin is the new CEO of Sirius, landing there with main man Howard.

: Fred Wilson's take here. Mine later.

Howard in orbit

: Curbed has coverage of Howard Stern handing out Sirius radios in Union Square today. I happened by afterwards. There's little sadder in the world than the leftovers of a Stern crowd.

It's (not) beginning to sound a lot like Christmas

: Our South Orange blogger at NJ.com writes about the school's decision to ban music that could be considered religious in any form. My church's choir director (who suffers my bad bass) used to be the choir director there and the truth is that thanks to decisions like this all across America, churches are getting the use of music that schools can't ever think of singing again.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

: So I'm thinking about buying a big, honking flat-screen TV so I can corrupt my morals yet more. Was debating between LCD and Plasma. David Pogue in The Times says go for the LCD. What do you say?

So sorry

: We're in a sorry state of forever saying we're sorry. And I'm sick of it.

Alessandra Stanley in the NY Times today is sick of the sorrys on TV: sorry for the Desperate Housewives promo, sorry for cutting off CSI, sorry for Janet Jackson, sorry for bad words in Saving Private Ryan. Enough.

Mark Cuban says saying sorry should be the new business model: TV is making money out of apologizing... and getting tons of attention for it.

What we should be doing is turning to the people who expect us to say sorry -- the prigs and prudes and religious nutjobs and Michael Powell -- and say: Sorry for what? Huh? I'm sorry you don't like what I like; I'm sorry I'm not sorry; but I'm not.

Is anybody a journalist?

: In a word: yes. Anybody can witness and report and now publish news.

LawDork responds to this question on last nights' West Wing (which, unfortunately, I couldn't see). See this post on the show and then this post that uses my little FCC FOIA expose to prove the point. See also this quote on the topic from Glenn Reynolds yesterday.

And see today's NY Times on Kevin Sites in Iraq -- keeping silent on the video he shot of a soldier shooting an Iraqi -- that ends with this:

His Web site describes Mr. Sites as a "pioneering, multimedia journalist" who has worked in Afghanistan, Latin America and Eastern Europe as well as the Middle East....

Mr. Sites has worked for several networks and has a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, according to the site.

Thus The Times blesses his credentials. But he'd be a journalist without them. He's the guy who shot the video that is news.

cnntwoshot.jpg

Off the air

: On Aaron Brown's show tonight, they had to pair me up with somebody from the Heritage Foundation who -- oddly for a conservative! -- wants more government regulation, interference, and bureacracy ... when it comes to regulating her definition of morality, that is. She wants more FCC regulation. I say the FCC has no business regulating our speech; it's just plain unconstitutional.

Aaron did a good job balancing, but I also told him that it was a bogus assumption, which he read earlier in the segment, to say that America was "outraged" at the Desperate Housewives promo. That's what they said when Married by America got fined $1.2 million based on the work of three prigs who wrote letters and 20 who Xeroxed them. Outraged? No. It's time that we challenge these assumptions, made and spread in media. To say that and to show the Housewives promo 25 times tonight is sensationalism, I said.

Aaron tried to agree with the woman that the culture is too coarse. To his surprise, I said, no, it's our culture and we all have values and we all have taste and I won't insult the American public by generalizing that we're all coarse.

Two soundbites:

: I go to church every Sunday and I listen to Howard Stern every day and that is not incompatible.

: When the lady went on about what offends her, I said that the homophobia on the 700 Club offends me, but I don't suggest it should be taken off the air or fined by the government. I change the channel. Pick up the remote, I said.

When I got out, I had email on my Treo from some church lady named Sherry using her work email at Lilly.com (tsk, tsk) with this charming bit of evangelism:

You have no morals and I feel you are pathetic.
Mighty Christian of you, Sherry. And here's another one:
I submit to you that you lack moral values and you church attendance proves nothing.
Mighty grammatical of you, Josh.

But I also got some nice emails from Canadians. And Jeremy Brown did me the favor of capturing the picture a