September 2008

Europe Takes Aim at Sexual Stereotyping in Ads

In Madison Avenue's mind's eye, women are still preternaturally obsessed with the cleanliness of their kitchen floors, while men ruminate constantly about which shaving products will render them more attractive to the opposite sex. The European Parliament has set out to change this. Last week, the legislature voted 504 to 110 to scold advertisers for "sexual stereotyping," adopting a nonbinding report that seeks to prod the industry to change the way it depicts men and women.

Zimbabwe bloggers shine a light on their troubled country

With most of Zimbabwe's independent newspapers shut down by President Robert Mugabe's authoritarian regime, bloggers and cyberactivists fill the vacuum. It's a world peopled with intelligence agents from the old white-led Rhodesian government, pumping out news updates; fleeing journalists who have parachuted into the wide, blue freedom of the Internet; and emigres who left the country 10 or 15 years ago but can't get it out of their systems. But the most compelling blogs are from the people who have stayed home.

Demand Free Press, Free Speech at Conventions

[Commentary] Now that the Republican National Convention is done, the rush to get on with the business of the fall campaign makes it easy to neglect the serious civil liberties and freedom of the press concerns raised by the arrests that occurred in St. Paul during the convention. But what happened on the streets of St. Paul is just as important -- and just as troubling -- as what happened inside the city's Xcel Center. More than 800 people were rounded up by police forces. Many of those detained were, by all account, merely exercising their first amendment right to assemble in protest against their government -- or, in this case, their governing party. Of those arrested, roughly two dozen were working journalists. When security forces paid for with more than $50 million in US tax dollars detain reporters and photographers who step out of the cloistered confines of the convention hall to tell the full story of politics and protest in a convention city, it is not just journalism that is under assault. The Constitution, itself, takes a battering.

Obama vs. McCain on media policy 2008

[Commentary] Over the course of history, media and communications policies have sometimes proven the very mark of a government. The future of the Internet and the way Americans communicate will be shaped profoundly by the 2008 election. It will be a legacy for the victor. What are Sens McCain's and Obama's positions on how Americans communicate and get information -- and what role, if any, does government play in overseeing that process? Both campaigns have "tech plans" that include plenty of feel-good generalities. But behind them lie fundamental differences between the candidates and a rift between their main advisers. The essential difference lies in the view each candidate takes toward private power over the public media. McCain and his advisers put their faith in the private sector's ability to provide a full and healthy information environment, and regard most government intervention as counterproductive. Camp Obama, meanwhile, believes in the need for serious oversight over what it perceives as real potential for abuse. This philosophical divide will translate into real differences over the next four years. Ultimately, most of the difference in Obama's and McCain's media policies boils down to questions about whether the media is special and a dispute over how much to trust the private sector. Camp McCain would tend to leave the private sector alone, with faith that it will deliver to most Americans what they want and deserve. The Obama camp would probably administer a more frequent kick in the pants, in the belief that good behavior just isn't always natural.

McCain Campaign Quietly Starts Buying Ad Time On The National Networks

In an unusual move, the McCain campaign has quietly started buying ad time on the national networks, a strategy that for the most part hasn't really been pursued on a large scale in presidential campaigns for at least two decades. Since Friday, the first day after the GOP convention, the McCain campaign has purchased at least $500,000 worth of time on the national nets, with an eye towards advertising nationally during daytime TV shows, says Evan Tracey, who tracks ad buying for the Campaign Media Analysis Group. Among the shows McCain has bought time during, according to Tracey: The Price Is Right, Guiding Lights, and Days of Our Lives. "It's really outside the norm," Tracey says of the McCain camp's buying. "Presidential campaigns have by and large skipped national programming for the last several cycles." Tracey points out that presidential campaigns haven't really invested heavily in national ad buying since the late 1980s.

AP Hits Palin for Not Taking Questions

Since being picked by Sen John McCain and nominated by the republican party, Gov Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) has had little interaction with journalists. None of the candidates in this race has been so shielded from the media, so protected from any spontaneous situation, and Palin's unvarying remarks give the impression that she and her message are being tightly controlled. As before her convention speech, McCain's campaign is briefing Gov Palin for her first TV interview. Her only interaction with the media was a brief conversation with a small group of reporters on her plane Monday -- off the record at her handlers' insistence. Associated Press reporters were not on the plane, but an aide told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said. By comparison, her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden, has been campaigning on his own for weeks, at times taking questions from audiences. He was interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. His campaign appearances have touched on a range of issues.

Young Adults Overwhelmed By Election News Online, Study Says

Young adults often click away from 2008 election news online because they feel news sites bombard them with too much information and too many choices, according to a new study released by Northwestern University's Media Management Center. "To serve and attract this important group, news organizations need to develop online election resources that are specifically designed to minimize this "too much" sensation," said Michael P. Smith, executive director of the Media Management Center. The report found that while millennials are interested in the elections and want information about the candidates and issues, they don't want to spend much time following day-to-day developments. However, they do appreciate news sites that help them—and other new voters—understand the basics about the candidates, issues and election process. Among other research findings and recommendations: 1) Millennials prefer to get election news from and trust sites that are in the primary business of news. 2) They don't particularly like commenting about the news online or reading comments. 3) Attempts to infuse the news with social networking features, amateur content, humor and youth oriented content can backfire if they diminish the seriousness and professionalism young people expect from news Web sites.

NAB: Wilmington Stations Receive 226 Calls

According to the National Association of Broadcasters, the four major network-affiliate stations making the switch to all-digital broadcasting in Wilmington (NC) Monday received a total of 226 calls from viewers about the switch. Wilmington has an estimated 13,000 over-the-air, analog-only households -- the ones that would obviously be most affected by the end of analog broadcasts. The NAB said only one of the calls to the stations was from a viewer who was surprised by the switch, with the rest from viewers who had set up their DTV-to-analog converter boxes incorrectly, needed help adjusting their antennas or had other problems receiving a digital signal, and some who were still waiting to receive their $40 government subsidies for the boxes. In a release on the calls issued by the NAB, Andy Combs, general manager of WWAY-TV, said the lesson from those calls was that stations "need to urge their viewers to upgrade early so they can have their converter box ready to go and determine whether signal reception will be an issue in their household. Many reception issues are generally easy to resolve, but in some cases, in some areas, folks may need a better antenna. It's best to figure all of that out ahead of time." But Combs added, "By and large," the Wilmington consumer-education campaign by broadcasters and the FCC "got the job done." Nancy Zirkin, executive vice president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, pointed to early reports showing that "many residents were still not prepared for the transition" and pointed out that "the financial and human resources spent in the Wilmington area to best prepare its residents for the pilot transition will not be replicated in every vulnerable community." Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez -- whose telecommunications-policy arm, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is overseeing the digital-TV-to-analog converter-box subsidy -- said, "The success of the digital switch in Wilmington shows that word is getting out and that combined private-public partnerships can effectively work."

Wilmington Transition Issues: Programming Converter Boxes

The majority of trouble calls made by Wilmington residents dealing with the Sept 8 digital TV transition test were prompted because local viewers had not properly programmed the converter boxes they bought, according to data collected by a group of university students monitoring the market. Eleven communications majors from Elon University of North Carolina are helping with trouble calls to local broadcasters and at the Time Warner Cable call center in Wilmington. Most of the 130 calls handled by the students involved programming a converter box or repositioning an antenna. 50% of the callers were over-the-air only television viewers.

Border TVs Don't Speak Same Language On Analog Cut-Off

A group of English-language stations along the border with Mexico say they don't want the option of continuing to broadcast in analog for up to five years after the Feb. 17, 2009 switch to digital. That stand exposes a rift between Spanish-language and English-language stations on the border. The DTV Border Fix Act, which was co-sponsored by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), would allow qualified TV stations within 50 miles of the border to broadcast in analog until 2014. In a letter to the leadership of the House Commerce Committee, executives from almost a dozen stations say that allowing certain broadcasters to delay the transition for up to five years, as would the DTV Border Fix Act, "threatens to put viewers along the border in a state of limbo." The bill would make the continued analog broadcasting optional, and has numerous caveats, including that the stations could not interfere with DTV stations, could not interfere with public-safety communications and could not prevent the auction of public spectrum. But one general manager says that the reality is that if some stations continue in analog, the rest will be under competitive pressures to do so as well, which would result in a confusing transition and additional expense by the stations who have to continue to simulcast. The DTV Border Fix Act passed by voice vote in the Senate and is awaiting House action.

Benton

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