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February 16, 2005

Moonblog

: Jerry Brown -- the politician I had more fun covering than any other -- writes his first blog post. [via Doc]

LINK | Comments (3)

Open the gates

: Mark Cuban and I give big media the same advice: open the gates, keepers.

: Commenters are pissed at his tone; I was at first, too. He compares us to tabloid lense-snappers. From Cuban, that's like Bozo the Clown critiquing opera. But the rest of the post is actually OK: It's about the people watching the powerful anywhere, everywhere.

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The enemies of First Amendment

: The House just passed the indecent indecency bill 389-38. As soo as I can, I will put up the names of the brave 38 lawmakers who voted for the First Amendment.

: The Center For Creative Voices in Media -- an anti-media-concentration group -- says:

Today’s vote was a tragedy for creative artists. More importantly, it was a tragedy for the American public.

As a result of today’s House vote, the American public will be denied even more opportunities to view quality programming, repeating the tragedy of last Veteran’s Day when broadcasters fearful of an FCC fine abruptly canceled “Saving Private Ryan” – a multiple Oscar-winning tribute to veterans. Today’s House action revokes the public’s right to choose what to watch – and what not to watch – and turns that choice over to Big Brother: the FCC, the Parents Television Council, and the giant media conglomerates who will self-censor programming to avoid these exponentially increased penalties.

: Here are the good people who voted for the First Amendment:
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Baird
Berman
Clay
Conyers
Delahunt
Farr
Fattah
Frank (MA)
Grijalva
Harman
Hastings (FL)
Hinchey
Honda
Kucinich
Lee
Lewis (GA)
Lofgren, Zoe
McDermott
Nadler
Owens
Paul
Payne
Sabo
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanders
Schakowsky
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sherman
Stark
Velázquez
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watson
Waxman
Woolsey
That's one Republican, one independent, and 36 Democrats.

LINK | Comments (85)

Exploding TV: Fat Actress meets fat pipe

: Yahoo will air the first episode of Fat Actress before it airs on Showtime. Damned smart. Showtime will reach a larger audience. Time will tell what the best distribution mechanism is for such programming -- or whether that choice is left us us instead of to the industry moguls.

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Fighting for the First Amendment

: Even the conservative Heritage Foundation believes the indecency legislation rushing through Congress is indecent. James L. Gattuso just published a paper on the Heritage site trying -- late in the day, unfortunately -- to get Congress to stop this rush toward regulation and censorship. The good bits:

...However, the proposed solution, increased government restrictions on speech, is fundamentally misguided. Conservatives – who have long been the targets of politically correct speech codes on college campuses and elsewhere – should be particularly wary of this approach....

Considered more carefully, however, this regulatory approach is flawed and perhaps even dangerous. “Indecency” is a notoriously hard term to define. Content need not be obscene to be indecent, but it must be more that merely offensive or inappropriate. The FCC defines indecency as “language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities.” This definition is as clear as mud....

The chilling effect that results is very real, keeping much non-offensive—and valuable—material off the air.

Even more dangerously, the push for restrictions on indecency will, almost inevitably, lead to calls for restrictions on other types of content. Who could, for instance, oppose restrictions on “hate speech”—as, of course, defined by regulators. And what about content deemed “insensitive” to others in society? The path to politically correct speech codes is a clear one. Even controls on political speech are possible. There is already talk of re-imposing the “fairness doctrine,” which required broadcasters to air both sides of controversial issues. The doctrine’s effect was to discourage controversial issue-oriented programming. It was not until this rule was repealed in the 1980s that talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh found a place on the radio dial....

Rather than impose ever-stricter limits on media content, lawmakers concerned about the quality of programming should instead promote policies that would expand the choices available to consumers. Already, cable programmers such as the Family Channel and Disney Channel offer family-oriented television. Many more are available on satellite television. And Sirius—despite its Howard Stern deal—recently announced it would offer several channels of children’s radio on its satellite network.

By reducing governmental barriers to new outlets, policymakers could further increase the number of choices available. Such steps could include freeing up underused radio spectrum, reducing regulations that discourage investment in new telecommunications systems, and reducing taxes on providers.

Ultimately, the solution to offensive programming lies not with policymakers but with individual consumers and families. Parents and others unhappy with what they see on the television have available to them weapons more powerful than has any congressman. Like other businesses, broadcasters respond to their customers. Complaints to broadcasters and to the advertisers that support them can be effective. But the most powerful weapons consumers wield are their own remote controls.

The right should be fighting this because they hate regulation and big government. The left should be fighting this because they should hate government control of speech. Every American should be fighting this because we believe in the cornerstone of the Constitution, the First Amendment.

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Amendment 1.1

: It's a dark day for the First Amendment. The House is expected to pass its indecent indecency bill raising the fine for any of us -- any of us -- who violate the very unclear rules of the FCC to $500,000.

The chickens in Congress -- birds of both parties -- will pass it because they're afraid of voting for smut but not afraid of voting against the Constitution. The chickens in the broadcast industry have done nothing to fight this (if they had any guts, they'd go silent for some period of time in protest, as Howard Stern suggests); the unions are squacking at last.

Meanwhile, the allegedly religious right is pushing for more: They want the Justice Department to go after cable.

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Aid and comfort

: A blogger finds an al Jazeera cartoon (animated here) apparently inspired by Eason Jordan's Davos comments.

: I should have added the words -- "which an emailer believes was apparently inspired by..." Commenters are quite right to catch me on that. When I got email on this, I found the blog but no link to Al Jazeera and was, at first, qualifying the statement that this was on their site because I couldn't find it (I keep forgetting to go to the .net vs. the .com). Once found, in its full context, I should have added that qualification. I thank the commenters for the editing.

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The agony of the Upper West Side Eeyore

: Kurt Andersen writes a smart -- and, for a New Yorker, quite brave -- column arguing that liberal New Yorkers should face the possibility that the war in Iraq was good:

But now our heroic and tragic liberal-intellectual capaciousness is facing its sharpest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, most of us were forced, against our wills, to give Ronald Reagan a large share of credit for winning the Cold War. Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his administration’s awful hubris and dissembling and incompetence concerning Iraq, just might—might, possibly—have been correct to invade, to occupy, and to try to enable a democratically elected government in Iraq....

Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush’s risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. We can be angry with Bush for bringing us to this nasty ethical crossroads, but here we are nonetheless....

LINK | Comments (29)

Michael Wolff, prisoner of paper

: Michael Wolff, who makes his living trying to find new ways to make people think he's an ass, now goes after the blogs in a speech:

I want to stop rambling and finish up by telling you why I don't want to write a blog. Because I don't. At some point in the '50s Truman Capote was asked about Jack Kerouac, and he said, "That's not writing, that's typing," which is to some degree how I feel about blogs. I even hate saying the word blog. I hate being forced to say the word blog.

When I look at that particular blog piece of software I react viscerally. I said, "Oh, I don't want this. I don't want to be part of this." There's that scene in "Doctor Zhivago" where the professionals and the intelligentsia are reduced to having to walk with the hoi polloi, and that's what I feel when I'm forced into this blog stuff.

So I want to take what I think of as a noble and principled stand in saying that I'm not going to be part of this blog stuff. And I'm going to insist upon this until I am washed away....

Well, they do have impact. Part of it is actually involved with a kind of further devaluation of information because what it sets up is this constant second guessing of information. Which is not necessarily bad but it does lower the value of all information. You undermine that authority of information. But having been around this business now for some time I've learned that nothing lasts too long. By all rights, 18 months from now we should be looking back at this and all kind of embarrassed to say the word blog -- I hope.

So much for Wolffman.com.

LINK | Comments (21)

Brave bloggers from Nepal

: Here's a new blog from Nepal with this chilling intro:

King Gyandendra of Nepal has issued a ban on independent news broadcasts and has threatened to punish newspapers for reports that run counter to the official monarchist line. Given that any person in Nepal publishing reports critical of "the spirit of the royal proclamation" is subject to punishment and/or imprisonment, contributors to this blog will publish their reports from Nepal anonymously.

LINK | Comments (0)

On second thought

: Henry Copeland catches a change in the headline on The NY Times' post-Jordan blog story:

Earlier today, the NYT's headline read "Bloggers as News Media Trophy Hunters"... now the headline is "Resignation at CNN Shows the Growing Influence of Blogs"...

LINK | Comments (4)