Day: 8/9/2007

C-SPAN: As Fair And Balanced As Fox News?

Posted by on August 9, 2007 at 4:40 pm. 1 Comments :

According to C-SPAN’s website, the network is…

“…a private, non-profit company, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a public service. Our mission is to provide public access to the political process. C-SPAN receives no government funding; operations are funded by fees paid by cable and satellite affiliates who carry C-SPAN programming.”

That sounds like a pretty even-handed organization that is well suited to serve the public interest. But a little digging beneath the surface tells a different story. For instance, the cable and satellite affiliates that fund the network’s operations are predominately assets of the largest media and Telco corporations in the world. Companies like AT&T and Time Warner. It would be naive to presume that they have no agenda to promote.

In 2005, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) conducted a study that showed the network…

“…skewing rightward, favoring Republican and right-of-center interview subjects by considerable margins over Democratic and left-of-center guests. The study also found that women, people of color and public interest viewpoints were substantially underrepresented.”

For a recent example of the network’s bias, take a look a the schedule this week for coverage of two partisan political events. In Chicago, the YearlyKos conference for Democratic bloggers and activists was held August 2-5. The conservative Young America’s Foundation held their National Conservative Student Conference from July 30 – August 3, in Washington, DC. Here is a chart of C-SPAN’s coverage of these events (from their calendar):

Program Title # Airings
YearlyKos Conference Programs:
Media & 2006 Campaign 4
Political Issues & Current Events 2
Young Americas Foundation Conference Programs:
Campaign 2008 2
U.S. Healthcare System 3
Energy Independence 2
Using the New Media 2
Future of the Young Conservative Movement 2
Origins of Planned Parenthood 1

The tally so far is 2 YearlyKos programs with a combined total of 6 airings. That’s compared to 6 Young Americas programs with a combined total of 12 airings. So the conservative conference got twice as many time slots for 3 times as many panels as the progressive conference. The only way this can be described as fair and balanced is if C-SPAN uses the same twisted dictionary as Fox News.

Another recent example of bias is the interview with Kevin Leffler, director of the two year old crockumentary “‘Shooting Michael Moore.” For some reason C-SPAN felt compelled to give a platform to this undistinguished and outdated film but has not bothered to host the filmmakers responsible for the just-released “No End in Sight.”

Feel free to let C-SPAN’s Viewer Services know that you would like for them to schedule progressive events and guest bookings with at least the same frequency as they do for conservative programs. Or is that too much to ask the stepchild of Time Warner and AT&T?

Pearl Jam Censored At Lollapalooza By AT&T

Posted by on August 9, 2007 at 11:25 am. NO Comments :

If we really needed proof that the Big Telcos are lying through their teeth when they celebrate themselves as defenders of free speech and open access, we couldn’t do better than this. AT&T, the sole provider for the webcast of Pearl Jam’s performance at Lollapalooza, and noted opponent of Network Neutrality, cut out politically charged portions of the band’s performance. I’ll let them tell it via their website:

After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the “Blue Room” Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast:

  • “George Bush, leave this world alone.” (the second time it was sung); and
  • “George Bush find yourself another home.”

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T’s actions strike at the heart of the public’s concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the internet are now being debated under the umbrella of “NetNeutrality.” Check out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this issue. [Ed: Save the Internet has clips of both versions of the song here]

Most telecommunications companies oppose “net neutrality” and argue that the public can trust them not to censor.

And if you can’t trust a giant, multinational, consolidated, communications conglomerate like Ma Bell, who can you trust? AT&T has shown that they cannot be relied upon to manage vital national resources like the Internet. They want to own it and constrain its use to the sole purpose of enriching themselves and shaping public opinion to their liking.


 
 
Don’t let them do it because, as Pearl Jam says…

This Is Not For You!
“And you dare say it belongs to you…to you…
This is not for you
This is not for you
This is not for you
Oh, never was for you…fuck you…”

L A Times Downplays FCC Hurdles For Dow Jones Deal

Posted by on August 9, 2007 at 2:22 am. NO Comments :

The Los Angeles Times published an article yesterday titled, “Dow Jones deal prompts call to broaden cross-ownership ban,” that included this passage:

“Federal rules try to limit media power by prohibiting a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same city.

Billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. faces no such hurdle in its pending deal to acquire Dow Jones & Co. and with it the country’s second-largest paper, the Wall Street Journal…”

I think it may be something of an overstatement to say that there are no regulatory hurdles. I wonder if the authors were aware of the following:

  • Mr. Murdoch recently told Time Magazine that he would “love to challenge” the New York Times with the Wall Street Journal.
  • Ken Chandler, a former Murdoch protege who once ran the New York Post, told the Boston Herald that Murdoch is, “looking at taking on The New York Times. I think (Murdoch) is going to try to do to The New York Times what his Fox News did to CNN.”
  • The Guardian reported that, “Mr Murdoch is planning to beef up the Wall Street Journal’s political and news reporting so it can compete with the New York Times…”
  • FCC Commissioner Michael Copps recently said, “It’s interesting to hear the ‘experts’ claim the transaction faces no regulatory hurdles. Not so fast! This deal means more media consolidation and fewer independent voices, and it specifically impacts the local market in New York City.”

With Murdoch already owning major newspapers and broadcasters in New York, and the evidence of his own statements and other reporting confirming his intention to compete locally in the city, it seems to me that there is good cause for the FCC to investigate the acquisition. In any case, there appears to be no cause to flatly declare that the deal faces “no such hurdles,” as reported in the L.A. Times (which itself faces regulatory hurdles with its parent, the Tribune Company, owning both the paper and KTLA TV).

DeadLines

Posted by on August 9, 2007 at 12:41 am. NO Comments :

Pro Bloggers to get Journalist Shield.
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would shield journalists (including bloggers) from revealing their sources . However, the bill includes several exceptions regarding terrorism, national security, imminent death, and trade secret leaks. More ominously, it was amended to define “journalist” as someone who receives “financial gain or livelihood” from their work. That would exclude an awful lot of citizen journalists.

News Nets To Allow Use of Presidential Debate Footage
ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN and NPR have all agreed to make their presidential debate footage available for relatively unrestricted use on the Web and elsewhere. Only Fox News still declines to do so. CBS has not yet carried a debate.

News Corp. Plans to Sell Ottaway Newspapers
Rupert Murdoch said today that he plans to sell the Ottaway newspaper group he’ll acquire with the purchase of Dow Jones. That’s probably good news for James Ottaway, who was amongst the most vocal critics of the DJ sale.

Freakonomics To Appear Under the Banner of the New York Times.
The New York Times has announced that they will be hosting the Freakonomics blog. Recall that the authors of Freakonomics had postulated in their book of the same title, that the drop in crime in the 1990’s was due to the availability of abortions post Roe v Wade. In other words, had the women who had those abortions not done so, their children would have grown up to be criminals.