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February 17, 2005

About About

: PaidContent is all over The New York Times' $410 million acquisition of About.com.

: FRIDAY UPDATE: Rex Hammock does the math: $820k per blog.

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Media on media

: Supposed to be on Kudlow & Co. with Matthew Yglesias Friday between 5 and 6p ET. Kudlow loves blogs!

Also supposed to be in a Howard Kurtz piece on bloggers on CNN Friday between 3:30 and 4:30p ET.

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They're bleeping our soldiers again

: PBS' Frontline spent months filming a report on soldiers in Iraq, A Company of Soldiers, set to air on Feb. 22. Guess what: Soldiers under fire tend to use no-no words. And this caused PBS to wimp out and bleep the words. Under pressure, they agreed to also send an uncensored version. Frontline Executive Producer David Fanning wrote a stirring memo to PBS stations:

...This is a film about young men at war, often in combat, and always in danger. As you might expect, the language of these soldiers is sprinkled with expletives, especially at their moments of greatest fear and stress. As we edited the program, we were judicious, but came to believe that some of that language was an integral part of our journalistic mission: to give viewers a realistic portrait of our soldiers at war. We feel strongly that the language of war should not be sanitized and that there is nothing indecent about its use in this context....

Our attorneys, including outside counsel, have advised us that the expletives in “A Company of Soldiers” do not violate the FCC’s indecency rule. They have concluded that the uses of the f-word and others in this film do not cross the FCC’s guidance against “gratuitous” use....

For these journalistic and legal reasons, FRONTLINE believes this is the moment for public television to stand firm and broadcast “A Company of Soldiers” intact, as it was intended. We believe what is at issue is not the particulars of this case, but the principle of editorial independence. Because overreaching by the FCC is at its heart a First Amendment issue, all programs are at risk, whether art, science, history, culture, or public affairs.

We believe the risks of an adverse outcome are small and the principles we stand on are large. Editorial decisions should be free from influence by the government and should be made in accordance with the standards, practices, and mission of public broadcasting.

WGBH in Boston decided to air the uncensored version.

: So first PBS wimps out showing Buster the bunny visiting lesbians because the new secretary of education thinks lesbians are offensive. Now PBS censors our soldiers because Bono said the F-word once. Here is a blogger's interview with the senior editor of the Buster episode.

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Limp legislation

: I'm going on MSNBC's Abrams Report at about 6:30 with a Congressman who tried to amend the indecent indecency legislation with a ban of erectile dysfunction ads between 6 and 10 p.m. What a lubcricated slope that is.

: I just got bumped because of the Cosby story (the story: authorities will not prosecute on the allegations a woman made against him). One form of erectile dysfunction or another....

I was so looking forward to telling the Congressman that the real solution to his problem is not legislation; he should just stop buying Viagra.

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They don't all hate us

: After the hand-wringers and nervous nellies and snots of big media finished trying to dismiss blogs, the MSM friends of bloggers are coming out of the woodwork. Peggy Noonan has a wonderful column today telling her colleagues why blogs are good:

When you hear name-calling like what we've been hearing from the elite media this week, you know someone must be doing something right. The hysterical edge makes you wonder if writers for newspapers and magazines and professors in J-schools don't have a serious case of freedom envy.

The bloggers have that freedom. They have the still pent-up energy of a liberated citizenry, too. The MSM doesn't. It has lost its old monopoly on information. It is angry.

But MSM criticism of the blogosphere misses the point, or rather points.

Blogging changes how business is done in American journalism. The MSM isn't over. It just can no longer pose as if it is The Guardian of Established Truth. The MSM is just another player now. A big one, but a player.

And here's Stephen Baker at Business Week singing harmony:

In truth, blogging represents an explosion of free speech. While blogs certainly empower lynch mobs, they can also lead to long and open conversations, virtual town meetings. These are the greatest antidote to censorship and secrecy. The Jordan case gave birth to loads of such discussions.

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What should PBS be
:
: What should PBS be now that it has all this competition from cable (and pressure from Washington)?

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A rose by any other...

: I'm not in the habit of cool links anymore -- so uncool, you know -- but this is irresistable: the baby name voyager, which displays names over time. So depressing to find that you are merely a cliche of your age. [via BlogPulse]

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Cable modems and email blocks

: Cablevision sometime ago blocked Port 25 for outgoing email, forcing me to use their email server to send (with no apologies from them, of course, when their server is down). Every damned day, I curse them when I take my laptop back and forth from home to office and have to switch outgoing addresses. That's a great customer relations positioning: The company you curse every day. I know nothing about the tech issues behind this. David Isenberg knows everything. So go read his story about this here.

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Gross

: Last night, driving home and listening to cable news (thank you, Sirius), I heard the breaking news that Michael Jackson had thrown up.

Do we need to know that? Do we want to know that? No? Then why do we know that?

I repeat that the news judgment of the people and of big media splits here. They think we want lots of Jackson and cheap trials. I don't think we do.

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'We can fact-check your ass'

: Elizabeth Spiers gets to the essence of what we're witnessing with this MSM-blogstorm: It's about fact-checking. It's about getting to the facts.

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The fools

: Howard Stern this morning is playing the self-congratulatory babble of the congressmen who kneecapped the First Amendment yesterday. They are obnoxious in their foolish pride. "We're one step away from burning books," Howard says.

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On (not off) the wall

: Tom Tyler etched it in brass.

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