Internet Freedom is the American Way

Can a groundswell of popular support for network neutrality save free speech online? Radio show "Media Minutes" asks whether the SavetheInternet coalition has the momentum to turn public opinion against AT&T and their coin-operated front men in Washington.

Listen to the show.

Gun Owners of America’s Craig Fields puts it best:

“In a very, very strange situation, what we have is the necessity of government intervention to ensure a free marketplace of ideas. Whenever you see people from the far left and the far right joining together about something that Congress is getting ready to do, it’s been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American.”

Columbia Professor Timothy Wu gives an historical perspective by comparing AT&T’s net control scheme to the AP’s 19th century news monopoly, calling it “a threat not only to American business and competition but a threat to American democracy.”

The loss of network neutrality will smother the innovative nature of the Internet, which has made it such a powerful economic and social engine. Warns Professor Wu:

“It’s no longer survival of the fittest. It’s no longer who has the best technology. It’s a question of who goes golfing with the CEO of AT&T. And I think that’s not the American way.”

Indeed. Listen in.

Bloggers Take Internet Fight to the Hill

Story published at TomPaine.com

AS OF THIS MORNING, more than 1,500 blogs have taken up a new cause, posting links to SavetheInternet.com and urging their readers to call on members of Congress to stand firm in defense of Internet freedom.

And, for the first time in blogger history, the Hill is hearing it.

The cyberstorm is over “Net Neutrality,” the principle that prevents large telephone and cable companies from controlling what we do, where we go and what we watch online. As part of a vote on new telecommunications legislation on Wednesday, House Energy and Commerce Committee members defeated an amendment by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass) that would have protected net neutrality by a count of 34-22.

What's remarkable about this result is the shift that occurred on Capitol Hill in the week prior to the vote. An unlikely coalition of political activists from the right and left, consumers groups, bloggers and Internet gurus banded together at SavetheInternet.com and sent more than 250,000 letters to Congress. This sparked an Internet revolt among bloggers who heaped scorn upon any member of the House who dared side with companies like AT&T and Verizon, which are spending millions of dollars in Washington to dismantle any rules that would prevent them from controlling Internet content.

When it came time to vote on Markey's amendment, two Democrats on the committee switched their previous votes to favor net neutrality, and several others who were undecided voted for the amendment, citing the explosion in public interest on the issue.

More elected officials on both sides of the aisle, in both the House and the Senate are now monitoring the pulse of the blogosphere as this issue spreads offline.

"We would not have turned the corner in this fight without your blogs, your voices," Congressman Markey said yesterday during a teleconference with bloggers. "We need to put every members of Congress on record on where they stand on the future of the Internet," Markey said. That momentum has shifted in Congress, he continued, "is a reflection of the rumbling in cyberspace about what's going on with this bill."

Bloggers from left, right and center, including DailyKos, BuzzMachine, Atrios, Instapundit and even actress Alyssa Milano, called on their readers to pay very close attention to this issue. They’ve urged everybody to go after any elected representative who ignores the public interest in favor of the well-heeled telephone and cable lobbyists that have swarmed Capitol Hill as representatives attempt to rewrite telecommunications law.

Undaunted by the Committee defeat, Markey is now rallying colleagues on the left and the right to support the introduction of his Network Neutrality Amendment onto the full floor of the House next week.

But it's an uphill battle. For the amendment to be voted upon by all members, it has to first get passed the House's gatekeepers on the , which Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi calls, "the free world's outstanding bureaucratic abomination -- a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish."

This 13 member committee (nine Republicans and four Democrats) holds the congressional agenda in its grip. If Rules votes down your amendment, your amendment is DOA. Bloggers are banding together to ensure that no Member of Congress gets off the hook that easily.

"There's a white hot firestorm on the issue on Capitol Hill," Matt Stoller said in a post at MyDD. "No one wants to see the telcos make a radical change to the Internet and screw this medium up, except, well, the telcos."

Politicians get scared when they realize the public is paying attention. As the blogosphere catches fire, momentum is shifting in Washington. Whereas before, the big telephone companies and their coin-operated lobbyists were confident that Congress would simply roll over and do their bidding, today, no member of Congress can vote with the telecom cartel without suffering repercussions.

Thanks to bloggers, the public is now watching and, with increasing frequency and volume, the message is getting through to Congress: we will not stand for any law that threatens Internet freedom.

Congress is Selling Out the Internet

Apologies for the radio silence at MediaCitizen. All of the action is happening over at the SavetheInternet.com campaign. Click on the button to the right and you will be magically whisked away.

Free Press has joined with an unlikely collection of groups, including the Gun Owners of America, American Library Association, Parents Television Council and MoveOn in the fight to defend the Internet's First Amendment -- a principle called network neutrality that safeguards the free and open internet.

Here are two MediaCitizen updates:

Internet Freedom Is the American Way (April 29)
Blogger Take Internet Fight to the Hill (April 28)

AOL Censors Opposition Group

Company Lifts Email Block After Activists Cry Foul

AOL was caught red-handed today censoring email to its customers that included a link to a site opposing the company's proposed "email tax."

Over 300 people reported that they had tried sending AOL subscribers messages that contained a link to www.DearAOL.com, but received a bounceback message informing them that their email "failed permanently."

After the DearAOL.com Coalition -- 600 organizations convened by Free Press, MoveOn and EFF -- notified the press of this blocking, AOL quickly cleared the opposition URL from their filters, alleging a "software glitch."

Today’s events prove the DearAOL.com Coalition’s point entirely: Left to their own devices, AOL will always put its own self interest ahead of the public interest. AOL wants us to believe they won’t hurt free email when their pay-to-send system is up and running. But if AOL is willing to censor the flow of information to silence their critics, today, how could anyone trust that they will preserve the free and open internet down the road?

(Pic: AOL CEO Jonathan Miller)

Here are some comments from people who experienced AOLs censorship and then tested it after AOL had reversed themselves:

Christina Lee, Atlanta Georgia :

“My email went through late this afternoon, but earlier today when I sent the same email with the link ‘DearAOL.com’ in it, it was blocked. Proof of why AOL should NOT be allowed to tax emails -- they do NOT have the best interest of their customers in mind if they think they can decide what their customers can or cannot read.”

Eve Fox, Washington, DC:

"They obviously stopped blocking the emails with DearAOL.com in them. Their behavior is a perfect example of why Goodmail is such a bad idea. That type of control and interference threatens the inherent democracy of the Internet."

Seth Hall, Massachusetts:

"After having my email to a family member blocked earlier today (April 13), the same message seems to have been delivered successfully just now, 2.5 hours later…Whether AOL has modified their errant ways or not, this example of filtering is a powerful reminder of just how dangerous it is to allow large corporate, profit driven entities to manipulate our Internet resources, especially when the public interest competes directly with their own private interests.”

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham is now telling the media that censoring www.DearAOL.com was an innocent mistake. After lifting the block, Graham attributed the issue to a technical mishap that "affected dozens of Web links in messages," including www.Dearaol.com.

"We discovered the issue early this morning, and our postmaster and mail operations team started working to identify this software glitch," he told CNet News.

Others are more skeptical. "I forwarded www.DearAOL.com to my own AOL account and it was censored. Apparently I can't even tell myself about it," said Kelly Tessitore, an AOL customer from Massachusetts.

According to EFF's Danny O'Brien, ISPs like AOL can silently ban huge swathes of legitimate mail for the flimsiest of reasons. The problem is that no-one hears about it.

It's only when DearAOL users cried foul, that this censorship came to light. This begs the question: how many other emails with important information have been barred by AOL?

AOL is part of the Time Warner, the media colossus that also runs the nation's second largest broadband cable provider. Time Warner is actively lobbying Congress -- alongside the nation's other cable and telephone giants -- to do away with protections that preserve the Internet's open architecture. These regulatory principles, called "network neutrality" are the only guarantee that users have unfettered access to the content and services of their choice.

AOL's actions today should put everyone on alert against network giants promising to be good stewards of a free and open Internet.

The DearAOL.com Coalition collectively represents over 15 million people – and has grown from 50 member organizations to 600 in a month. Since the beginning of the DearAOL.com campaign, more than 350,000 Internet users have signed DearAOL.com letters opposing AOLs pay-to-send email proposal. Coalition members include craigslist founder Craig Newmark, the Association of Cancer Online Resources, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, the AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org Civic Action, Gun Owners of America, and others.

America's Fake News Pandemic

A report released yesterday by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Free Press exposes corporate propaganda's infiltration of local television news across the country.

The Center, which authored the report, monitored local news broadcasts for 10 months and caught 77 local stations that had slipped corporate-sponsored “video news releases” — segments promoting commercial brands and products — into their regular news programming. These advertisements were dressed up as real news and passed off to unsuspecting viewers as legitimate. At no time during the airing, did the local correspondents reveal the corporations as the source of the material.

Collectively, the stations implicated in the report reach more than half of the U.S. population.

This illegal deception is a breach of the trust between local stations and their communities. By disguising advertisements as news, stations violate both the spirit and the letter of their broadcasting licenses, which obligate them to serve the public interest.

During a press conference yesterday FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein called for "vigorous enforcement" against stations that air this corporate propaganda without revealing the source to their viewers. "Failure to disclose that to the public is a violation of federal law and in fact can be subject to criminal penalties of up to a year in jail," Adelstein said during a radio interview earlier in the day.

Despite repeated claims from broadcasters that they do not air VNRs as news, the new report reveals just the tip of the iceberg. Instances of fake TV news documented by CMD likely represent less than 1 percent of VNRs distributed to local newsrooms since June 2005. Fraudulent news reports have likely been aired on hundreds of more local newscasts in the past year.

Some instances:

Sinclair Terrorizes with ‘I-Porn’

Faux tech-expert Robin Raskin offers video games as the antidote to “scary” pornographic i-Pods. What Raskin doesn’t mention is that she’s on the payroll of the companies whose products she’s pushing.

(View the original VNR and then then click on the image at right to see how Sinclair-owned WPGH in Pittsburgh faked it.)

Clear Channel Delivers a Placebo

Carrie Lazarus hails a dietary supplement as a “major health breakthrough” for arthritis sufferers. She fails to point out that the sponsor of the VNR manufactures the supplement, nor mention that it barely outperforms a placebo.

(View the original VNR and then see how Clear Channel-owned WSYR in Syracuse faked it).

Fox Sweetens the Pitch

“Parenting expert” Julie Edelman advises viewers to throw a “Hide and Glow” scavenger hunt featuring brand-name M&M candies. What the station didn’t reveal is that it lifted the entire segment from a VNR co-funded by Masterfoods -- formerly the M&M/Mars Company.

(View the original VNR and then see how Fox's KTVI-3 in St. Louis faked it).

You can find instances of fake news in your community, by visiting the Free Press map of all the VNR stations exposed by the CMD report.

Approximately 80 percent of the stations snared in the investigation are owned by large conglomerates. The list of the worst offenders reads like a who's who of big media: Clear Channel, News Corp./Fox Television, Viacom/CBS Corp, Tribune Co. and Sinclair Broadcast Group — whose Oklahoma City affiliate was caught airing VNRs on six separate occasions.

The evidence draws a clear line between media consolidation and the broadcast of deceptive, pre-packaged propaganda. When all station owners care about is the bottom line, fake news can prove irresistible.

There’s a reason for this: VNRs are free. Reporting news that’s meaningful to local communities isn’t. By opting to air a VNR instead of sending a reporter into the field, station owners save a fortune. Corporate PR firms offer local stations VNRs knowing there’s a built-in incentive to use them. By dressing up fake news as local reporting, stations cut costs and increase profits.

On April 6, Free Press and CMD delivered a formal complaint to the FCC, urging the agency to take immediate and strong action to stop this widespread abuse. The complaint calls on Chairman Kevin Martin to determine whether station consolidation has contributed directly to the potentially illegal proliferation of fake news. This FCC inquiry must happen before the Commission reconsiders its rulings on broadcast ownership, according to the complaint.

Free Press has asked the public to get involved. Today, thousands of our members and other outraged Americans are writing the FCC to demand an end to fake news.

Fake News in Your Town

Follows is my statement during a press conference with FCC Commissioner Adelstein and our allies at the Center for Media and Democracy:

Thank you Commissioner Adelstein for being such an important advocate on the side of honest media in the United States. This campaign against fake news was inspired by your unyielding efforts at the FCC.

And thank you to John, Diane, Dan and the rest of the crew at the Center for Media and Democracy. Your dogged pursuit of video news releases has resulted in a groundbreaking report that skewers the myths perpetuated by broadcast companies.

Well, the cat’s out of the bag. What many Americans suspected of their local newscasts appears to be true. Stations across the country are being compromised by commercial propaganda dressed up as real news.

The Center’s “Fake TV News” report reveals only the tip of the iceberg. Instances of fake TV news documented by CMD likely represent less than 1 percent of VNRs distributed to local newsrooms during the investigation. This disgraceful practice has infected American broadcast journalism across the spectrum.

Over the last year, Free Press, the Center and our activists have been tracking counterfeit news from town to town and pressuring lawmakers on The Hill and regulators at the FCC to crack down against news fraud:

• Last January – after news reports exposed Armstrong Williams for accepting government payments to flog Department of Education programs over the air -- thousands of Free Press members sent letters to the Commission demanding an investigation. Soon thereafter, then-Chairman Michael Powell launched a probe of Williams and broadcasters.
  
  
• Last March -- after a New York Times report found hundreds of government-produced video news releases aired on local stations across the country -- more than 40,000 Free Press activists sent letters to the Commission asking the agency to investigate those who truck in fake news reports without disclosure. Soon thereafter, the Commission issued a "Public Notice" calling on all television newscasters to clearly disclose the origin of VNRs used on their programs.
  
  
• Last June -- after commentators on NBC’s "Today" show were revealed to be promoting products on the program without disclosing financial ties to the manufacturer -- Free Press filed a FCC complaint asking that the Commission "got to the bottom of this practice, identified violators, and improved the effectiveness of the rules and the thoroughness of their enforcement."
  

Today we delivered a formal complaint to the FCC seeking a thorough investigation "to help restore the public trust in the integrity of local news." We have reached out to Americans urging them to pres the FCC "to investigate this abuse, clarify disclosure requirements and penalize all stations that air fake news."

But the problem doesn't end there. We have also asked the Commission to investigate clear ties between consolidation of local station ownership and the pandemic of television VNRs.

More than 80 percent of the stations captured in the CMD investigation are conglomerate-owned. A list of the worst possible offenders includes stations owned by Sinclair, News Corp, Clear Channel, Tribune Company and CBS Corp.

Before Chairman Martin reconsiders the Commission's rulings on broadcast ownership, he should determine whether station consolidation has contributed directly to the potentially illegal proliferation of fake news.

When station owners only care about the bottom line, fake news can prove irresistible. After all, VNRs are free. Reporting news that’s meaningful to local communities isn’t. And without decisive government action, the fake news problem will only get worse.

As our “No Fake News” campaign moves forward, Free Press is asking the public to get involved. Today, thousands of our members and other outraged Americans are writing the FCC to demand an end to fake news.

The public trust has been betrayed.

This great scandal can no longer be ignored.

Press and Propaganda: Together at Last

"Today Show" anchor in waiting Campbell Brown exchanged vows Sunday with Fox News analyst Dan Senor.

A marriage between journalists, right? Well, sort of. Senor's pedigree suggests that their's is a union of a different order.

Before winning Campbell's heart and mind, Senor was busy doing the same with the American public.

His position at Fox began in early 2005. Before that -- during Operation Iraqi Freedom -- he was Director of the Coalition Information Center, based at Centcom Headquarters in Qatar. Under Senor, Centcom daily press briefings gave new meaning to the phrase "theater of war." For more, read Michael Wolff.

Senor then moved on to serve as the White House's senior spokesperson for U.S. Presidential Envoy Paul Bremmer in Iraq, where among other things he defended the Coalition Provisional Authority's closure and censorship of Iraqi papers.

After six months in Baghdad, Senor returned to Washington where the White House placed him at the front lines of their domestic information war.

Here are some of Senor's responses to questions put to him during an "Ask the White House" session in October 2003.

To a question from "Erica" about the fate of Iraqi children:

". . . The good news is that the overwhelming majority of Iraqi people have embraced the liberation and are grateful for all we are doing to reconstruct their country. This is critical not only for the freedom of the Iraqi people but also for our overall success in the war on terror."

To questions from "Jared" about negative media reports from Iraq:

"This new Iraqi army will not be engaged in repression of the Iraqi people and posing a threat to America and the international community. It will be focused on protecting Iraq’s borders and helping us and assisting American forces in the war on terror. In addition, today all of Iraq’s 240 hospitals are open, 90 percent of (Iraq's health clinics are open). When Ambassador Bremer arrived, he said that we would meet pre-war electricity levels within a few months -- just a few days ago, we exceeded pre-war electricity generation levels."

To questions from "Jared" about negative media reports from Iraq:

"Iraq is now a central front in the war on terror. Saddam Hussein's government was a state sponsor of terrorism. His government used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. There are terrorists in Iraq today engaging US forces because they know that if we are successful in building a free government in Iraq at peace with its own citizens, with its neighbors and serves as a model for the region and is no longer a threat to the United States, then the terrorists’ days are numbered. If we choose to ignore terrorists in Iraq we will wind up hearing from them on our own soil."

That last sentence sounds awfully familiar. I wonder if that's the line that won Campbell's heart.

Neutral Debate

The following are responses to my story, "AT&T Wants to Reach Out and Control You," which was posted by the good people at the new media blog Morph. I have responded to all of the comments made there. And copied the debate below.

It's clear from this that many misunderstand the history of the Internet and in doing so downplay the threat posed by the loss of a neutral platform. I hope we can clear up this confusion and move on to doing what urgently needs to be done:

Posted by: Paulaner01 March 22, 2006 08:48 PM

From a global perspective, how are we supposed to keep up with countries like Finland, Japan, and South Korea if we're going to have our government slowing everything down? I for one don't see new laws and regulations as the solutions to making up the ground we've lost. A manufactured crisis would set us back even further, for no reason.

Reply: It's precisely because of carefully crafted regulations, public partnerships and incentive programs that countries like Finland, Japan, South Korea and even Canada have outpaced the U.S. in bringing broadband to their citizenry. For more on that, I suggest you read "Broadband Reality Check" or Thomas Bleha's excellent article in Foreign Affairs, " Down to the Wire."

The crisis in America is real. Certain communities have found themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide -- ignored by market incumbents who don't see profits in "reaching out and touching" low income or rural populations. Don't belive it? Read "Broadband Reality Check" (above) or "Are We Really a Nation Online?"

Posted by: John Rice March 21, 2006 10:05 PM

This is a provocative piece, but there are some serious inconsistencies. How about some documentation of the claims that these other countries have faster connections at lower prices? And...the scare tactics fail to pass a straight face test. There are anti-trust laws that would prevent companies from "cut (ting) off your Internet phone unless you use their service; or force you to download MP3s from his company store by slowing access to outside music sites like ITunes."

Reply to John: Anti-trust laws won't save the Internet from the cabal of large telecom and cable companies that have built their revenue projections upon a plan to tilt the Net to their favor. The Internet's future as a force for change will dim as soon as these network giants are allowed to manipulate the "pipe" and discriminate on behalf of their products and services.

By destroying the level playing field, they will shut down the outsiders, boot strappers and innovators (the Stanford kids who created Google, the Pez hobbyist who wrote the concept for eBay, the Israeli high school student who created the first Instant Messaging service, the Indian programmers who created Hotmail, etc.) whose ideas have revolutionized and democratized all media. For more, read Jeff Chester's reporting at Center for Digital Democracy and Larry Lessig's Congressional testimony posted at his blog.

There's extensive documentation that other developed countries now provide broadband to their citizens at a far lower cost-per-bandwidth ratio than the United States. For more, read Derek Turner's excellent summary at Salon.com, and this recent report out of Europe. I have access to some of Derek's research. I can share this should we decide to explore the comparison between U.S. broadband and that of other developed countries.

Posted by: oldhats March 21, 2006 08:50 PM

If thousands of people were to log-on tomorrow and Google or iTunes was suddenly inaccessible, don't you think the large majority would take their business elsewhere? The telcos have said very plainly that they will not limit or degrade service on their networks. And even if you don't take them at their word, you have to assume that they know the market would punish SEVERELY the company that tried.

Reply to Oldhats: Your argument assumes that there are other broadband choices in a given market. According to a report last August by Free Press, more than 50 percent of the country has only one or no choice of broadband provider. In a large portion of remaining markets there is only a choice of a dominant telephone company (DSL) and a dominant cable provider. The largest of these have all stated plainly that they see no need for network neutrality rules. For the majority of net users in America, then, what real choices are left?

Posted by: AJ Carey March 21, 2006 07:06 PM

There is absolutely no record of any sort of site blocking or any clear plan by so-called "evil" telecoms to filter the internet. First of all it would be terrible for business: no one would stand for it. And that's the real point. Competetion is what has lead to the success of the internet. Why stop that now?

Reply to AJ Carey: Errr . . . yes, there absolutely is a record. Here are two instances that come immediately to mind (I have more): 1. In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service; 2. In 2005, Canada’s telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.

Posted by: lessgov March 20, 2006 10:24 PM

Villains and victims? That seems awfully presumptuous. Thus far, we have seen no instances of the sort of "site-blocking" practices you describe. People feel very strongly about the Internet remaining a free marketplace of ideas. But this marketplace has been maintained in spite of (and, often because of) the enormous profits that can be reaped from the technology. It has also been maintained because our government (who, as we have seen, has interests of its own) has kept its mitts off the Internet. That is the key to keeping the Internet free and viable for years to come.

Reply to LessGov: This notion -- that the Internet has evolved with the succor of a free market eco-system -- is one of the great myths of its brief history. The Internet itself is a byproduct of government grants and oversight. Until very recently, it had been governed, like all telecommunications services, by a rule of common carriage.

What I am calling for here is not new regulation of the Internet. What's happened is that there has been a radical change in the underlying regulatory infrastructure for telecommunications. Last August the FCC took the final step to remove those principals of common carriage and neutrality from any part of the broadband network.

That neutrality principle has been central to guaranteeing that outsiders face few technical obstacles to build new applications and content for the Internet. Most of the major innovations in the history of the Internet have been made by outsiders -- often kids and non-Americans. That's because the architecture of the Internet, built upon this value of end-to-end neutrality, invited outsiders in to innovate. Now this neutrality -- again, a concept of common carriage that has regulated telecommunications for decades -- is threatened by efforts of AT&T and other large corporations to rewrite the rules.

What will happen if they succeed in removing neutrality from the network? The largest ISPs will auction off the highest value chunks of the broadband network to the highest bidders. The next generation of revolutionary applications and services will find it virtually impossible to compete against those offered by network giants. New media will begin to look like old media, with a few large corporations controlling the ebb and flow of content and services, as diversity and innovation gets pushed to the margins.

This threat to the Internet is not a myth. Unless we make more of an effort to guard against plans to dismantle network neutrality, the Internet's future isn't nearly as open, free and bright as you might think.

AT&T Wants to Reach Out and Control You

Behind the story of the AT&T-BellSouth merger is a tale about the future of all media. It has villains and victims; intrigue and peril, and -- if the public doesn’t speak up soon -- could spell the end of Internet freedom as we know it.

The aim of AT&T’s $67 billion deal is to create a network giant with nationwide reach controlling nearly half of all telephone land lines in the United States. But the real danger is the control AT&T would gain over access to high-speed Internet services.

Soon all electronic media -- telephone calls, TV, radio and the Web -- will reach your home via a broadband Internet connection. The few corporations trying to control this “pipe” – and the hundreds of billions of dollars at stake -- are racing to gobble up as many competitors as possible before consumers make the digital media shift. Verizon’s $8.5 billion purchase of MCI in January is one other episode in the merger mania that has seized the telecommunications sector.

The new AT&T -- which already includes what used to be SBC -- would create the nation’s largest high-speed Internet provider. According to company chief Ed Whitacre, this behemoth would “benefit customers through new services and expanded service capabilities” with “innovative, competitively priced products.”

But experience shows that bigger is rarely better. As large companies merge and jockey for position over the lucrative broadband market, average Americans will suffer from the fallout – especially those living in rural or poorer urban areas.

These corporations have done a lousy job rolling out their services to remote communities and low-income neighborhoods they've deemed unprofitable. This is why nearly half of all Americans have just one option for high-speed Internet service or can’t get broadband at all.

In other countries, the cost of broadband has dropped dramatically as speeds and choices have increased. Nations such as South Korea, Japan, Finland and even Canada have much faster Internet connections at lower prices than what is available here. As a result, America has fallen from third to 16th place in penetration of broadband per capita.

Not only are Americans being offered limited choices at higher costs, but now the companies that provide access also want to control the content and services that are delivered to customers. Whitacre recently alarmed consumer advocates and Internet entrepreneurs alike by dismissing the principle of "network neutrality" -- a standard that ensures all users can access the online content or run the applications and devices of their choice without interference from their Internet service providers.

If Whitacre gets his way, AT&T could cut off your Internet phone unless you use their service; or force you to download MP3s from his company store by slowing access to outside music sites like ITunes. Those controlling the pipes could also charge you extra to guarantee that your email gets past their spam filters.

The network giants are trying to make your Web experience look like cable TV, where you pay for a limited selection of programs that they select, own or control. These types of package schemes would stifle the Internet’s revolutionary ability to spread new ideas, serve marginalized communities, spark business innovation and encourage democratic discourse.

A standard of nondiscrimination has been in the DNA of the Internet since its inception. The network’s only job should be to move data — not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality of service. The brilliance of the end-to-end network is that the intelligence is at the edge of the network, with you and me, and the wires in between simply pass along the information.

As large communications companies maneuver to control and profit from broadband, they seek to dismantle the Internet freedoms that stand in their way. Without network neutrality, the network owners would have a business incentive to discriminate in favor of their own services and content by making them download faster or simply blocking their competitors. This discrimination is already built into the business plans of the largest providers.

The AT&T merger would spread the corporate gospel of Internet discrimination into more than half of the nation's broadband markets.

Thanks to AT&T's legions of lobbyists, some predict this merger will sail through Washington. But with so much at stake, perhaps it’s time for our regulators and representatives to put away their rubber stamps and say enough is enough.

Without Internet freedom guarantees, new media will soon become ruled by the same lumbering, discriminatory corporations that dominate old media.

The New Media Monopoly

Originally published at AlterNet

The race is on to control the future of American media. Unfortunately, those vying for the prize are a limited cadre of corporations hostile to the public interest.

On one hand, there are the remnants of the 1984 breakup of Ma Bell -- four formerly Baby Bells that now dominate the multibillion-dollar marketplace for telecommunications. Over the past 10 years, these have rapidly morphed into massive corporations by swallowing up smaller competitors and positioning themselves atop the heap.

AT&T's announcement earlier this week that it plans to acquire BellSouth is a stunning development in the unrelenting shift toward fewer choices and bigger companies -- essentially stitching back together the monopoly that ruled telecommunications three decades ago.

The aim of AT&T's $67 billion merger is to assemble a new behemoth to dominate the "triple play" of modern communications: voice, video and data. In the near future, all new media -- telephone calls, radio, television or the web -- will travel via a broadband connection to your home. The corporations that control this network are racing to gobble up as many competitors as possible before consumers complete the new media shift.

Left behind, of course, is the American public. As large telecom companies merge and jockey for position with the cable industry over the most lucrative broadband markets, the communities at the edges have been left on the wrong side of the digital divide.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 60 percent of households with incomes over $150,000 annually have broadband access, compared to just 10 percent of households with incomes below $25,000.

These corporations have done a lousy job rolling out their services to rural areas and low-income urban communities they've deemed unprofitable. As a result, America has fallen from third to 16th place in penetration of high-speed internet services per capita.

But even those who can afford to pay for connectivity are increasingly subject to limited choices at higher prices. According to a Free Press report late last year, the number of Americans who have only one or no choice of broadband provider is near 50 percent.

Meanwhile, the cost of broadband in other countries has dropped dramatically as speeds have increased. On a per megabit basis, U.S. consumers pay five to 25 times more than broadband users in France and Japan. Nations such as South Korea, Finland, and even Canada have much faster internet connections at a lower cost than what is available here.

Not only are Americans being offered limited choices at higher costs than other countries, the cable and telecom companies that control access to the "pipes" now want to control the content and services that are delivered to customers.

Consumer advocates and internet rights groups are especially concerned about AT&T chief executive Edward Whitacre's outspoken resistance to the principle of "network neutrality," a standard that ensures all users can access the content or run the applications and devices of their choice without discrimination from internet service providers.

"I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network," Whitacre told the Financial Times earlier this year. "Now they might pass it on to their customers who are looking at a movie, for example. But that ought to be a cost of doing business for them. They shouldn't get on [the network] and expect a free ride."

In December, BellSouth's William Smith told reporters that he would like to turn the internet into a "pay-for-performance marketplace," where his company could charge for the "right" to have certain services load faster than others.

What this would mean for you is higher costs, fewer choices and less control.

AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and others could block you from viewing a favorite podcast or blog, cut off internet phones unless we use their service, or force you to download MP3s from their company store by slowing access to outside music sites. The profit motive of a few corporations would supplant the freedoms of all users, determining which features end up shaping our digital future.

These types of corporate schemes discriminate against those of us who rely on the internet as an accessible tool to spread new ideas, spark innovation and encourage dissent.

Now AT&T executives are asking regulators at the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission to rubber stamp their merger. They argue, incredulously, that bigger is better for consumers.

At a moment marked by America's precipitous decline in the global ranks of communications leaders, the Justice Department and FCC should correct our problems -- not exacerbate them. This merger must be stopped.

AOL Admits Defeat in War on Spam

Today, an unlikely coalition of more than 50 groups, representing some 15 million people, launched a campaign to fight AOL's new pay-to-send email scheme.

In addition to Free Press and Electronic Frontier Foundation, coalition members include Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, MoveOn.org, Gun Owners of America, the Association of Cancer Online Resources, the Humane Society, the AFL-CIO, RightMarch and others.

Cumulatively, these groups count more than 3 million AOL subscribers as members, or in excess of 15 percent of AOL's customer base.

While the organizations occupy almost every corner of the political landscape, we're united in opposition to AOL's plan to make large group e-mailers pay to bypass the email service's Swiss cheese spam filters and get guaranteed delivery to the inboxes of AOL customers.

AOL's Spam on Spam

AOL's pay-to-send plan is the latest media snake-oil scheme, designed to give users the impression of improved service while serving no one but the company’s bottom line.

In fact, the AOL pay-to-send plan could make spam worse. As AOL turns its attention to revenue generating email it has a cash inducement to let its free-to-send service grow increasingly unreliable.

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham presents his company's new regime as a boon to end-users, stating -- misleadingly -- that a certification system will protect user inboxes from spam. This isn't true. AOL subscribers will receive certified email in addition to the regular traffic that clutters most inboxes.

"We continue to provide exceptional service to all email senders who conform to our antispam guidelines," Graham writes in a rebuttal to our campaign. "In fact, CertifiedEmail serves as a valuable, new standard and threshold for the delivery of legitimate email that will serve as a guidepost for other email senders to follow and adhere to."

Nice try, Nicholas. AOL hasn't solved the spam problem at all; they've merely created a second tier for delivery, one favoring those who can afford to pay AOL's express rate. The other tier -- which has been increasingly compromised by AOL's inability to distinguish honest email from spam -- will remain in place. It may get worse, even, as AOL tries to "incentivise" more users to move from the free lane to their toll road.

The Façade of Good Intentions

You would think that AOL could better spend its time and energy improving the existing spam filters. Apparently not.

According to Andrew Lochart of the email service provider Postini, AOL's effort "badly misses the mark" because it will lead to more spam in user inboxes. "It guarantees delivery of paid-for bulk email based on the sender paying, not based on users' preferences," Lochart told Red Herring. "In other words, it will allow more, not less, unwanted email through to users."

David Hughes, chief executive officer of email security company Reflexion Network Solutions, said AOL's proposal "violates the democratic principles of the Internet and many people will see this as a transparent attempt to develop a new revenue stream despite the company's façade of good intentions."

In truth, AOL is attempting to profit from its own incompetence. By adopting the pay-to-send plan, AOL is declaring defeat in the war against spam. But instead of waving a white flag, AOL has asked legitimate senders to pay for its failure by buying an easy pass to users' in-boxes.

Where's the benefit in that?

But that's just the half of it.

As I mentioned earlier today, AOL's email tax is one salvo in a two-pronged assault on a free and open Internet. On the one hand, we have large cable and telephone companies that are now seeking to become the gatekeepers to Internet content and services. (for more on this visit NetFreedomNow.org). On this front we have large email providers that want to turn email communications into a privileged realm for those who can afford to pay a corporate tax.

These are the first steps onto a slippery slope that could dismantle the net freedoms that Americans have come to know. These types of corporate schemes discriminate against those of us who use the Internet to spread new ideas and spark innovation and dissent.

Reversing the Revolution

The Internet has evolved to be the most democratic medium in the history of communications – more accessible even than Gutenberg’s press. At its core is its ability to level the playing field for all comers.

The brilliance of this end-to-end network is that the intelligence resides at the edge of the network; the wires in between simply pass information between individual users. Those who run the network’s only job is to move data — not to stifle user innovation by selecting which users to privilege with higher speeds and "guaranteed" delivery.

If corporations like AOL get their way today, they’ll stifle the spread of independent ideas that we've come to expect online and shift the digital revolution into reverse.

Network Neutrality: Dead on Arrival?

Network neutrality, a principle that ensures the free flow of ideas online, appears dead on arrival in Washington as big media once again wield influence over our elected politicians.

The numbers tell the story. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, AT&T and other telephone and cable companies are among the top contributors to the re-election campaigns of a number of house Telecommunications Subcommittee members, including Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who has received more than $12,000 from AT&T executives, employees and their family members. Comcast associates tipped in an additional $10,000 equaling Upton's contribution from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA).

And hands aren’t clean on the other side of the aisle either. AT&T, Comcast and NCTA have tipped more than $100,000 into the campaign war chests of Telecommunications Subcommittee Democrats as well.

The corporate largesse is paying dividends. Sources inside the House of Representatives revealed earlier this week that all language pertaining to network neutrality has been struck by subcommittee from the latest draft of the Telecom Act.

According to the National Journal, the Telecommunications Subcommittee is likely to drop all references after lawmakers failed to reach consensus on the issue. If the Journal report is correct, the DC bottleneck is the net result of the full-tilt lobbying by AT&T, Comcast, BellSouth and Verizon.

In addition to the money spent to fill campaign coffers, they have funneled tens of millions of dollars to lobbying efforts, industry friendly think tanks and political junkets, waving a strong hand over all sectors of the political process -- at the local, state and federal levels.

By lining their pockets with telco dollars, certain lawmakers have opted to turn their backs on network neutrality and abandoned their posts as guardians of our public commons. They've decided that committing a crime of omission is better than standing up to the corporate powers that be.

A Telecom Act without network neutrality would hasten the Internet's demise -- effectively ridding our online experience of the governing principle that until now fostered the free flow of ideas and made the Web a beacon for democratic ideas and business innovation.

A Telecom Act without an enforceable rulebook would leave this democratic medium to the whims of predatory telephone and cable companies. The stage is now set for these conglomerates to play gatekeepers to all online content and services -- turning our net freedoms into their net revenues.

If the nation's largest ISPs are allowed to discriminate against the flow of web traffic, The New York Times editorial board wrote on Sunday, "the Internet providers, rather than consumers, could become the driving force in how the Internet evolves."

The profit motive of a few corporations would supplant the freedoms of all users, determining which innovations end up shaping our digital future. The threat is real. These companies could block us from viewing a favorite podcast or blog, cut off net phones unless we use the company service, or force us to download MP3s from their company store while slowing access to other music sites.

AT&T, Bell South, Comcast and Verizon make massive campaign contributions. They're used to getting their way in the halls of Congress. And they don't want network neutrality to stop them from getting their way online.

Only a public outcry can restore this founding principle, before it becomes a footnote in the history of the Internet’s fall.

It's time Americans who feel strongly about an open and free Internet told our elected representatives to reverse course. Net neutrality is an issue where the public's interest cannot be outflanked by massive telcos and their well-oiled politicians.

Is Network Neutrality DOA?

NetFreedomNow is now gathering 100,000 signatures in a campaign to pressure Congress to save network neutrality.

This public push is especially urgent now. Sources inside the House of Representatives just revealed their intention to strike network neutrality from the latest draft of the Telecom Act.

According to the National Journal, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is likely to drop all references after lawmakers failed to reach consensus on the issue.

If the Journal report is correct, the DC bottleneck is the net result of the full-tilt lobbying by AT&T, Comcast, BellSouth and Verizon. These corporations have convinced enough pliant members of Congress to discard with neutrality safeguards altogether -- effectively ridding the Internet of the governing principles that until now fostered the free flow of ideas and innovation.

A Telecom Act without network neutrality would leave the future of the Internet to the whims of predatory telephone and cable companies. The stage is now set for these communications giants to play gatekeepers to all online content and services -- turning our net freedoms into their net revenues.

Not good.

To that end, The New York Times editorial board wrote on Sunday:

If access tiering takes hold, the Internet providers, rather than consumers, could become the driving force in how the Internet evolves. Those corporations’ profit-driven choices, rather than users’ choices, would determine which sites and methodologies succeed and fail. They also might be able to stifle promising innovations, like Internet telephony, that compete with their own business interests.

AT&T, Bell South, Comcast and Verizon make massive campaign contributions. They're used to getting their way in the halls of Congress. But it's time Americans who feel strongly about an open and free Internet told our elected representatives to reverse course.

Put enforceable network neutrality principles into our telecommunications laws and regulations by taking action now at: www.netfreedomnow.org

Net neutrality is an issue where the public's interest cannot be out-flanked by massive telcos and their well-oiled politicians.

Striking the Spark for a Net Revolt

Here are my notes from the network neutrality call I hosted on Friday with Stanford University’s Lawrence Lessig, Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy and my colleague at Free Press, Ben Scott. The audio file is now available here.

I’ll be writing and posting a 1,000 word op-ed on this in the next couple of days. For a sampling of some of the best podcasts, blogging and other reporting coming out of the event, check out:

1. MediaGeek's outstanding analysis of network neutrality and what's at stake in Washington.
   
   
2. At the National Journal, Beltway Blogroll's overview of the blogosphere's response.
   
   
3. Sandhill Trek's call to arms to stop ISP providers from taking Americans "even further into a second class swamp of deteriorating end-to-end service."
   
   
4. Bob Morris boils net neutrality down to "three flash-point issues."
   

As major communications companies plan to control and profit from our broadband future, bloggers, independent media makers and their audiences need to remain vigilant and encourage a real debate about protecting the free flow of information and ideas.

Free Press has started to convene monthly blogger calls at the intersection of media and policy. With this series, we hope we can spark a serious debate about what the future of the Internet -- and all digital media -- will be.

Here are some memorable quotes from the first call.

Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School:

"What's happening here is not that people have been calling for new regulation of the Internet. What's happened is that there has been a radical change in the underlying regulatory infrastructure for telecommunications."

"Last August the FCC took the final step to remove those principals of neutrality from any part of the broadband network... that neutrality principle has been central to guaranteeing that outsiders can begin to build new applications and content for the Internet."

"All of the major innovations in the history of the Internet are by non Americans and kids, right, these are outsiders. That's because the architecture of the Internet, built upon this value of end-to-end neutrality, invited outsiders in to innovate. Now that's threatened by this change. What will happen when this principal of neutrality is removed from the network is that the network will increasingly auction off the highest value chunks of broadband network to the highest bidders. The next generation of applications and services will find it harder to compete against today's applications and services."

Jeff Chester, founder of the Center for Digital Democracy:

"The future of the Internet and our entire digital media environment is at risk with profound implications for democracy, civic participation, dissent and equity... We need Congress to step in now to help save the Internet's democratic and competitive potential."

"The cable and telephone industry have successfully led a political campaign to get to this place. They specifically want to undo the public policies that support the open end-to-end architecture that's been at the core of the possibilities for the Internet."

"They have a huge incentive now to discriminate because the government has now created as a result of their lobbying a broadband monopoly controlled by either the cable or telephone companies."

Ben Scott, policy director, Free Press:

"Now is the moment when legislation on the future of the Internet will be written, If there's ever a moment for a ruckus to be raised and the public to become seriously involved in the details of how Congress makes policy to decide the fate of the Internet, now is the moment."

"We need to bring as many people into the biggest possible movement we can muster to register with policy makers and the mainstream media that this issue of network neutrality is of central importance to us and that citizens and consumers will not stand for a Internet that's turned into the private property of the telephone companies and cable companies."

Lessig:

"If business were as usual, [the telecom companies] would win this. But there have been important instances where grassroots resistance has actually stopped major changes in public policy... I think a similar thing could happen here. If there really were a grassroots opposition to this, that raised a lot of anger and passion around it, I think there are a lot of politicians who would pick up on it.

"One thing I saw at the hearing, when I was testifying, is that it just didn't sit right, either with Republicans or Democrats, to imagine the Internet changed into a place where you basically could control what people had access to, or the networks had the right to control what people had access to. There really is an opportunity to do something successful in this context if there really were a movement."

The Fleecing and Flogging of Americans

The Cold Warriors of old were seasoned practitioners of the fine art of propaganda. But their overblown manipulation and intimidation of the media would never pass muster in today's hyper-clogged information age.

Don't get me wrong; manipulation and intimidation still occur. They just take on more subtle -- and, as a result, more insidious -- appearances.

This White House is a new master of the form, and they have found a way to pay for their deception. They are quietly picking the back pockets of U.S. taxpayers to turn around and sell Bush’s political product back to . . . U.S. taxpayers.

The tab for the fleecing and flogging of Americans comes to at least $1.6 billion. That's the amount seven Bush administration agencies spent from 2003 through mid-2005 on hundreds of contracts with advertising agencies, PR firms, and individuals, according to a Government Accountability Office report released yesterday.

The GAO report carefully itemizes this administration’s preference for pre-packaged reporting at the expense of real news and information – in a scheme to make U.S. taxpayers pay for their own deception.

The report found that White House public relations spending goes well beyond the practices of any prior administration. The contracts included $2.5 million to present the Army's strategy in the global war on terrorism; $86 million to explain the new Medicare prescription drug benefit in a bilingual ad campaign; and a $6.3 million agreement to help the Department of Homeland Security educate Americans about how to respond to terrorist attacks.

Fixing the Facts

This is not the first we’ve heard about this. Last September, GAO auditors scolded the White House for squandering American tax dollars to hire fake news reporters and unleash a pre-packaged news blitz in advance of the 2004 elections. That GAO report found the White House violated the law by hiring pundit Armstrong Williams to appear before the cameras and tout Bush’s education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, while interviewing administration officials on the air.

The White House continues to deny that the government's practice of feeding TV stations prepackaged fake news, which don’t disclose the government as the source, amounted to "covert propaganda."

Yesterday’s GAO finding shoots down that sophistry. "No amount of money will successfully sell the Bush Administration’s failed policies, from the war in Iraq, to its disastrous energy policy, to its confusing Medicare prescription drug benefits," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said following the release of the report. "The American people know the Bush Administration is on the wrong track and the White House PR machine won’t change that fact."

Propaganda Track Record

The question now before Congress and the Department of Justice is whether this spending merits the enforcement of long standing prohibitions against "covert propaganda." The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 forbids the domestic dissemination of government-authored propaganda or "official news" deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy. The law singles out materials that serve "a solely partisan purpose." The GAO has already found at least four separate occasions that Bush administration agencies violated this and other federal restrictions.

A recently inserted provision into an annual spending bill would require federal agencies to include a "clear notification" within any prepackaged news story that was paid for by the government. Though this new legislation still floats somewhere between a Senate committee and the floor.

Given its track record, it’s more than likely that the White House has set other illegal propaganda efforts loose in the media mainstream. We just don’t know about them yet.

The Public Eye and Prosecutor's Sword

While the compounding evidence is damning, the GAO lacks the teeth to enforce laws against the ongoing abuse. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has final say over executive branch legal matters. And GAO and Justice Still don’t see eye to eye on covert propaganda, specifically on the issue of unidentified video news releases.

Much of this has been left to the public to do what our elected and appointed officials are unwilling or unable to: pressure our government to stop using our money on propaganda. In October, Free Press unleashed a public campaign to do just that. In less than a month, nearly 40,000 concerned citizens signed letters to Congress and the Justice Department, urging Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "to prosecute these crimes to the fullest extent of the law."

Justice should never be delivered by popular fiat – but it's essential that our elected officials and their appointees understand that the public is watching. As more evidence comes into view, we're able to assemble a case against an administration that has gone too far, involving a systemic and quiet campaign to raid the public till, manipulate the Fourth Estate and turn the electorate in favor of an unpopular president.

Bush Budget Pumps Propaganda, Slashes PBS

The most recent twist of Bush's budgetary knife lays bare the White House's real information priority: Fake news trumps honest reporting.

READ THE FEB 9, 2007 UPDATE TO STORY

ON MONDAY, President Bush released plans to inject more tax dollars into the government's propaganda machinery while slashing the budget for the nation's public broadcasters.

Bush's proposed 2007 budget calls for a $671.9 million for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency that supervises all US government non-military propaganda. Bush’s budget also cuts by more than $53 million money set aside for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the agency that allocates federal money for NPR, PBS and other federally funded media.

The amount allocated to the BBG is a 4.3 percent increase from the agency's 2006 budget with monies specifically "targeted to the war on terror," according to a Monday news release. These tax dollars would flow to government mouthpieces including the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

The propaganda earmark exceeds Bush's proposed federal budget for public broadcasting by more than 90 percent. The White House proposal seeks to slash the CPB's 2007 appropriation from $400 million to $346.5 million.

The budget also proposes to "zero out" an additional $65 million that local public broadcasters had requested to help pay for digital TV conversion and the costs of upgrading public broadcasting's satellite interconnection system. These cuts would hobble NPR and PBS stations' ability to deliver the investigative reporting and in-depth news and information that's absent from the programming of their commercial counterparts.

This twist of Bush's budgetary knife lays bare the White House's information priority: Fake news trumps real reporting.

And who better to deliver the news than propaganda errand boy Kenneth Tomlinson. The disgraced former public broadcasting czar still retains a seat atop the BBG.

"In the post-Katrina budget environment, we are fortunate to get an increase that strengthens our role in the war on terrorism," he said in a release from the propaganda agency. Tomlinson's duplicity is laid on thick here. You may recall he was shown the door at the public broadcasting agency last November after an internal investigation exposed Tomlinson’s efforts to impose a Bush-friendly agenda on PBS, NPR and other publicly funded programming.

We thought we had seen the last of Ken then. Not so. The latest White House move still puts Tomlinson on the receiving end of Bush's propaganda dividend.

Koppel's Crusade

In his first week as Frank Rich's stand in at the Times, Ted Koppel laments the decline of television news and the rise of what he calls "boutique journalism" -- news that is tailored to suit advertising's most profitable demographic.

The increased sensationalism and subjectivity of the news (think Fox News Channel) is not about bias but bean counting, Koppel writes. "The accusation that television news has a political agenda misses the point... It is not partisanship but profitability that shapes what you see."

He continues:

Most particularly on cable news, a calculated subjectivity has, indeed, displaced the old-fashioned goal of conveying the news dispassionately. But that, too, has less to do with partisan politics than simple capitalism. . .

Even Fox News's product has less to do with ideology and more to do with changing business models. Fox has succeeded financially because it tapped into a deep, rich vein of unfulfilled yearning among conservative American television viewers, but it created programming to satisfy the market, not the other way around. CNN, meanwhile, finds itself largely outmaneuvered, unwilling to accept the label of liberal alternative, experimenting instead with a form of journalism that stresses empathy over detachment.

Koppel repeats Nicholas Lemann's argument, made in last week's New Yorker, that the nostalgia for an era of harder-hitting broadcast news was not due to a lost generation of aggressive broadcasters like Edward Murrow, but because the regulatory environment 30-40 years hence forced broadcasters to better serve their public.

This era of journalism, writes Koppel, "was in the days before deregulation, when the Federal Communications Commission was still perceived to have teeth, and its mandate that broadcasters operate in 'the public interest, convenience and necessity' was enough to give each licensee pause."

"He should also have said that it was the lobbying done by his own network bosses -- unreported by him and his TV news colleagues -- which directly led to the FCC's abandonment of encouraging the public interest," counters Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy. "The FCC's raised eyebrow only occasionally contributed to a more responsive TV news environment."

Koppels' right on one score though. In the last twenty years -- with the demise of the Fairness Doctrine and the reluctance of a corporate-friendly FCC's to hold broadcasters to account -- we've seen an explosion of bottom-feeding, bottom-line news.

In most cases this market driven info-product devolves quickly to the type of news twaddle that has sent many a serious journalist packing.

An example, as media analyst Andrew Tyndall noted in his survey of news stories from election year 2004, is the abundance of celebrity news against the relative scarcity of news that Americans say, in poll after poll, matters to them most. According to Tyndall, broadcast and cable news stories about Martha Stewart, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson in 2004 far exceeded time newscasts devoted to presidential candidates' stances on the economy, health care and the war on terror.

In the public debate, this crisis in journalism is explicitly tied to the dangers of consolidating media ownership and the corruption of regulators by Big Media. Ultimately, the question must be asked: Does a commercially-driven media even have the ability to serve the needs of a self governing population?

"Indeed, in television news these days, the programs are being shaped to attract, most particularly, 18-to-34-year-old viewers," writes Koppel in the Times. "They, in turn, are presumed to be partly brain-dead — though not so insensible as to be unmoved by the blandishments of sponsors."

Think what happens to these same viewers when it comes time to vote, and the fact that less than half of them (41.9 percent of those who were registered in 2004) even bothered becomes horrifyingly real.

It's a vicious circle. The cheerleading news coverage of the war in Iraq, both before and during the conflict, has also led to widespread public disaffection. Post-election discoveries of pundits that received lucrative, undisclosed contracts from the Bush Administration to push unpopular policies further undermined American confidence in the fourth estate. A lack of confidence and engagement in the media further distances Americans from the political process. No public voice in politics allows corporations to run ram shod over our legislative process.

The exposure of economic influence on the reporting of major newsrooms – as detailed by Koppel in today’s New York Times – delivers not just a near fatal blow to the credibility of our "free press" but also to the future propsects of a participatory democracy.

Aloha to Local News

In a final act of defiance, the anchor at Honolulu Fox affiliate KHON-2 gives management a piece of his mind, before they pull the plug.

THE BIGGEST THREAT to the type of broadcast journalism that Edward R. Murrow championed in the 1950s comes today not from Congressmen of the Joe McCarthy mold, but by way of the industry itself. Profit-driven broadcast owners have strangled off local reporting to line their pockets with more advertising dollars.

This crisis in journalism is explicitly tied to the dangers of consolidated media ownership and speculation. We all suffer when media corporations trample public service and local journalism in their drive for larger profits.

Joe Moore, a veteran newscaster at Fox's Honolulu affiliate, KHON-2, can speak well to the issue. On Thursday, he anchored the station's newscast as sweeping newsroom layoffs were taking effect. As a small concession from management, Moore was allowed to write and read his sign off to viewers. Courtesy of NewsBlues (a newscaster gossip site), here's the transcript:

Finally tonight, this has been a difficult day for most of us here at KHON2. It was the final day on the job for our general manager Rick Blangiardi, who refused to carry out the mass firing of over one third of our station employees as ordered by our new owners, who will take over tomorrow.

The firings are not a matter of cutting excess fat to improve efficiency; they will be a butchering of an already lean workforce that will remove muscle, bone, and vital organs.

A small percentage of the people fired will be replaced by automation, the rest will severely reduce our ability to serve the community in the manner in which you, and we have become accustom.

The new owners have changed the name of their company from SJL to Montecito. It is a virtual company, with no office building, that specializes in buying and selling TV stations. Their business plan for KHON2 calls for an immediate, drastic, across the board reduction of personnel in order to slash the payroll.

At the same time, the plan calls for a huge increase in advertising revenue to be generated by a sales department that is already far exceeding industry standards. In short, it is not a plan used by a quality broadcast company to foster a long-term commitment to its employees, or to the viewers it is charged with serving.

It is the sincere hope of all of us, who have worked long and hard to make this TV station what it is today, that the departure of Rick Blangiardi, who stood up for us while he was standing tall for quality television, it is our hope that his departure will not be in vain, that our new owners will reconsider their draconian plan and pledge to the people of this state that operating KHON in the best interest of the people of Hawaii is not only their number one goal, but also their number one priority.

For all of us at KHON2, thank you for joining us this evening, we hope to see you later tonight for our KHON2 news at 10.

The message was not repeated on the 10 p.m. newscast.

CNN Gambles on Bennett

The Cable News Network has added conservative Reagan administration official, outspoken crusader – and gambler anonymous – William J. Bennett to the network’s newly minted lineup of right-wing talent.

Bennett is scheduled to make his first appearance on the network later today commenting on the "Situation Room."

Many remember Bennett from his days moralizing about the evils of homosexuality, pornography and other perceived vices. Others may have read his best-sellers on "virtue,” "moral clarity" and "outrage," which took the Clinton administration to task for behavior unbecoming a president.

Fewer still are familiar with Joshua Green’s 2003 report, which revealed Bennett to be a "preferred customer" at casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas where his losses have been estimated at more than $8 million.

"As gambling spreads, so do its associated problems," writes Green. "Heavy gambling, like drug use, can lead to divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, and bankruptcy."

Where’s Bennett’s sermon on that?

Bennett created more controversy in 2005 when he told listeners to his radio show that aborting "every black baby in this country" would reduce crime. He later defended this statement, saying he was making a hypothetical argument and was not stating his position.

Bennett joins right-radio talk jock Glenn Beck in CNN’s brain trust of upstanding Americans. It was Beck who called Hurricane Katrina victims "scumbags" and said he hated some family members who lost relatives on Sept. 11 because they complained too much.

Beck also blasted grieving war mother Cindy Sheehan as a “big prostitute” for "pimping out the tragedy of her own son's death." He called the father of murdered American Nick Berg "despicable" and a "scumbag" for criticizing President and the war in Iraq after his son's death there.

"It’s exhausting trying to figure out what in the world the game plan is at CNN," Tim Goodman writes of network exec Jonathan Klein’s extreme Fox News Channel makeover. “There’s a sadness here. And it has nothing to do with CNN’s inability to ‘counter’ Fox News with a respectable progressive slate of contributors. CNN used to be a reliable source for national and international news. Now it mostly chases storms and tragedy — and Fox.”

Fox News Drifting Left?

Arch-conservative watchdog Cliff Kincaid worries that Fox News Channel has abandoned its base and is now a propaganda front for "extreme" liberal views -- like the harebrained notion that global warming is really happening.

"Accuracy in Media [Kincaid's organization] has led the way in reporting on concern among conservatives that the Fox News Channel is drifting to the left," crows Kincaid. “Perhaps the most egregious example was the global warming program on Fox featuring Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a ‘special correspondent.’”

According to Kincaid, Fox News Channel has now joined forces with the dark side by reporting on an issue that's accepted as faith by an overwhelming majority of the world's scientific community. As proof of this drift, he offers a handful of email complaints sent to his AIM offices from fellow members of the radical fringe.

"I have abandoned Fox News the same way they have left the conservatives," one laments. "It was too good to last," writes another.

Last December, I was paired on an NPR talk show opposite AIM “media analyst” Roger Arnoff, who called FNC's Bill O’Reilly a strident liberal, while offering no evidence to support this view. I nearly fell out of my seat but recovered in time to clear away some of AIM's smoke.

The left-right banter that dominates much of our discourse about the media is all a matter of perspective, I replied during my turn at the microphone; as someone once said, balance all rests on where you place the fulcrum. AIM places that fulcrum so far to the right that nearly every utterance in the mainstream media is, to them, on par with Chairman Mao’s little red book.

There’s some history behind this. Accuracy in Media (AIM) is a thinly veiled effort to portray all mainstream media as part of a vast left-wing conspiracy. Their pseudo-objective media monitoring is all smoke an mirrors. Real analysis has little to do with it. The organization receives almost all of its financing from a host of conservative foundations. It was launched during the Nixon administration to shield the White House from media criticism on Vietnam and Watergate. The group’s “research” is conducted with a single aim: spreading the gospel of a “liberal media” agenda in an effort to discredit and downplay uncomfortable truths about the right-wing establishment.

Any first-year student of scientific procedure will tell you that placing conclusions before ascertainment of data is not research but sophistry.

Bias a Big Media Side Show

But put aside the endless push and pull over American media bias for now. It's just a side show. Behind the scrim of Kincaid's banter lurks an even more insidious threat to our independent media system: Its destruction at the hands of corporations that put shareholder profits before quality journalism and public service.

The corporatization and consolidation of media has had a stifling effect on independent, diverse and skeptical voices in mainstream media. Our nation’s founders understood that information was the lifeblood of democracy. No matter what you care about most — the economy or the environment, civil rights or gun rights — media influence all issues by shaping the beliefs, values, and opinions of the public. When viewpoints are cut off and ideas cannot find an outlet, our democracy suffers.

Most of the media that we see and hear is produced to make a profit — not necessarily to provide useful information and quality entertainment that accurately represents our society or fosters a healthy democracy. The left-right banter that's become a staple of political newscasting is just a cheap production stunt -- painting a thin veneer of concern over the issues. It's far less costly to pull two pundits into the studio to bloviate about politics, than it is to send actual investigative reporters into the field to talk to real people and get at the truth.

As Big Media companies control more local outlets and streamline their operations for profit, citizens become shut out of the debate over issues that matter to them most.

Profit Trumps Politics

Since 1975, two-thirds of independent newspaper owners and one-third of independent television owners have disappeared. Only 281 of the nation’s 1,500 daily newspapers remain independently owned. The three largest newspaper publishers control 25 percent of daily newspaper circulation worldwide.

Newspapers have been kept away from consolidating even further by a FCC ban on big broadcast companies owning newspapers in the same market. The only newspaper-broadcast cross-ownerships are in large cities, which were grandfathered in when the FCC imposed its ban in 1975. But Now the FCC is considering rules which might do away with this ban. A change in FCC rules will play out poorly for newspapers as the largest players (Tribune, Gannet and Knight Ridder) are now making moves to “synergize” operations across their newspapers by downsizing local newsrooms and centralizing operations.

Consider this:

1. Less than 20 percent of our newspapers are independent and locally owned;
2. In 1983, 50 corporations owned a majority of the news media. In 1992, fewer than two dozen owned 90% of the news media. In 2003, the number fell to a total of six;
3. Minority ownership of broadcast media is now at a ten-year low — a mere 4 perecent of radio stations and less than 2 percent of TV stations are owned by people of color;
4. The number of radio station owners has plummeted by 34% since 1996, when ownership rules were loosened. That year, the biggest radio owners controlled fewer than 65 stations. Today, Clear Channel owns more than 1,200.

Bad things happen when media conglomerates swallow up independent voices: Quality is diminished, local news and investigative journalism disappear, differing points of view vanish, community service becomes an afterthought, and jobs are eliminated. All are sacrificed in an incessant drive for ever-higher margins.

Real Problem: Big Media

Whatever your complaint about media, one thing is certain: There are underlying structural issues at work that give rise to these problems. Attacking a single symptom — such as programming some might say is biased — does not cure the disease. We must look deeper at the root causes . . . and address them.

Through mergers and takeovers, a handful of extremely powerful corporate giants have swallowed up independent media companies, reducing the diversity of voices in the media market while intensifying the conglomerates’ influence.

This process of "creative destruction," as it has been called by some, isn't as egalitarian and organic as you might think. Our media system is not the product of a natural evolution or market forces. It’s the result of policies created by Congress and other decision makers — under heavy influence from Big Media lobbyists.

Through well-financed lobbying operations, media corporations have overwhelming influence in Washington. Media policy is shaped in closed-door meetings with policymakers. So, even though we own the airwaves, they decide how media is created, financed, and distributed.

Radio and television broadcasters spent $222 million to lobby government officials from 1998 to 2004. All told, total lobbying expenditures by Big Media (radio, television, cable, telephone and newspaper companies) from 1998 through 2004 were more than $957 million. In comparison, the oil and gas industry spent $396 million over the same period.

Hijacking Democracy

One of Kincaid’s writers did, essentially, get Fox News Channel right: "It seems to me that a lot of conservative news/political junkies don't understand the nature and character of News Corp and Rupert Murdoch," she wrote. "His news division does lean right, but this I believe has less to do with politics and more to do with business: there was an untapped market for 'fair and balanced' news, and Murdoch wisely hired [Roger] Ailes to help him capture it. Murdoch is a mogul, and he only cares about profits and whatever benefits his company, and if that means appeasing Chinese communists, Saudi princes, or left-wing politicians, so be it."

Ummm . . . well, yes. But there's more to the story.

The media industry and their high-paid lobbyists in Washington work with policymakers to re-shape our media system into a cash cow that fattens the wallets of moguls like Murdoch -- even when doing so isn’t in the public’s interest. The result thus far has been policies that allow for the rampant consolidation of independent local outlets under fewer and fewer owners.

As voters, citizens, and constituents, we have the power to turn this around and influence policymakers to safeguard a media system that serves the people. Many of the public interest organizations that engage Big Media in this fight can’t match the massive funds of the big industry lobbies. We fight, instead, with people power.

The struggle for a media system that provides more diversity, skepticism, accountability, and independent voices in the media isn’t a battle pitting left against right. It’s a movement that seeks to amplify the voices of all Americans by creating a media system for a more dynamic and participatory democracy.

Who would disagree with that.