TELEVISION
White House Cut Anti-Drug Deal With TV (WP)
INTERNET
Glendening Takes on Internet Regulation (WP)
Judge Says Recording of Electronic Chats Is Legal (NYT)
Editorial Content On Drugstore Sites Draws Questions (NYT)
ANTITRUST
Hey, Remember Microsoft? (WSJ)
MERGER
The Bad Business of Media Mergers (NYT)
TELEVISION
WHITE HOUSE CUT ANTI-DRUG DEAL WITH TV
Issue: Television
The White House has reviewed and made suggestions on television scripts from
programs such as "ER", "7th Heaven", and "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" in an
attempt to help the shows convey an aggressively anti-drug message. In
exchange, the networks were freed from obligations to provide $22 million in
public-service advertising over the past two years, allowing them to sell
that
lucrative time to corporate advertisers. Robert Weiner, spokesman for the
drug control office, said the networks receive advertising credit for each
prime-time program, "which is a very positive message on drugs and is
accurate." Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the nonprofit Media Access
Project said, "The idea of the government attempting to influence public
opinion covertly is
reprehensible beyond words. It's one thing to appropriate money to buy ads,
another thing to spend the money to influence the public subliminally. And
it's
monstrously selfish and irresponsible on the part of the broadcasters."
[SOURCE: Washington Post (page A01), AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz and Sharon Waxman]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43844-2000Jan13.html)
See Also:
IN DEAL WITH TV NETWORKS, U.S. DRUG OFFICE IS REVIEWING SCRIPTS
[SOURCE: New York Times (A1), AUTHOR: Marc Lacey With Bill Carter]
(http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/tv-drugs.html)
INTERNET
GLENDENING TAKES ON INTERNET REGULATION
Issue: Internet/Legislation
Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening will announce today a comprehensive plan to
regulate Internet activity through a set of bills aimed at encouraging
electronic
commerce and expanding online governmental services. The bills would set up
the legal means to sign contracts over the Internet, giving legal
recognition to
electronic signatures. The legislation would also adopt a standardized law
governing Internet transactions. The new laws would also ban unsolicited
mass
mailings and would add Internet communications to the state's wiretapping
law.
Child pornography laws would be expanded to include Internet usage.
State agencies would be required to post their privacy policies on their Web
sites. Glendening also said that he would sign an executive order to ensure
that
all state computers have authorized versions of software programs and that
legislation would crack down on software piracy. The legislation is backed
by
House Speaker Casper Taylor and Senate President Thomas Mike Miller Jr.,
which means it should sail through the legislature with little controversy.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (page B01), AUTHOR: Daniel LeDuc]
(http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/feed/a44832-2000jan14.htm)
JUDGE SAYS RECORDING OF ELECTRONIC CHATS IS LEGAL
Issue: Internet/Privacy
Judge Kathleen M. O'Connor of Spokane County Superior Court in Washington
state has found that the state's privacy law does not apply to computer
communications. Under the Washington Privacy Act there is a very strong
prohibition on the interception or recording of private communications by
phone,
radio, telegraph or other device between two or more people without the
consent
of all of the parties. In the Washington case, the defendant claimed his
e-mail
and chat messages could not be used in a trial because he never gave his
consent to have them recorded. The judge found that the defendant
implicitly
consented to the recording of his e-mail because the defendant chose to,
"communicate via e-mail . . . with the knowledge that the computer itself is
a
transmission and recording device." Marc Rotenberg, director of the
Electronic
Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group in Washington, said he
believed the court's ruling was slippery. "There is a fairly clear line of
federal cases that points to the continued protection of personal
communications,
regardless of the technology at issue."
[SOURCE: Cybertimes, AUTHOR: Carl S. Kaplan ]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/cyber/cyberlaw/14law.html)
EDITORIAL CONTENT ON DRUGSTORE SITES DRAWS QUESTIONS
Issue: Internet/Content
As a growing number of online drugstores are provide additional resources,
like feature articles and health assessment tests, some consumer watchdog
groups are concerned about the separation between electronic commerce and
editorial content. Analysts also worry that people who are not experts
produce much of the content. "You've got an uncomfortable mix of content,
e-commerce and people -- some of whom are desperate--that are looking for
information," said Malcolm Maclachlan, an electronic commerce analyst with
the International Data Corp. "It's a phenomenon that's troubling." A Recent
Jupiter Communications survey of online consumers found that people trust
online information as much or more than information disseminated by other
types of media outlets. This is especially troubling for doctors who fear
the editorial content on drugstore sites could be slanted toward a specific
product or treatment, but Dr. Matthew Naythons, publisher and vice president
of editorial with PlanetRx.com, strongly dismisses this possibility: "Our
content is not slanted. We have a strict wall between editorial and
marketing and advertising and that wall can never be bridged."
[SOURCE: CyberTimes, AUTHOR: Karen J. Bannan]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/cyber/articles/14drugstore.html)
ANTITRUST
HEY, REMEMBER MICROSOFT?
Issue: Antitrust
[Op-Ed] With the recent announcements of America Online's plans to acquire
Time Warner and Bill Gates' promotion of Steve Ballmer to CEO of Microsoft,
it may appear that "the market has been completely transformed since"
government's antitrust action against the software giant began. Success in
the Internet market increasingly requires the provision of broadband
Internet access, notes Liebowitz. Ownership of cable systems that provide
broadband access, therefore, is considerably more important than ownership
of the PC desktop. "With the acquisition of Time Warner's extensive cable
holdings, AOL can once again give Netscape an overwhelming market share if
it wants... Now we are told that the remedy the government seeks is to
shrink Microsoft at a time when the other players in the market are
supersizing," writes Liebowitz. He believes that a breakup of the company at
this moment would deprive consumers of an important option.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (A14), AUTHOR: Stan Liebowitz, (economist at
the University of Texas at Dallas)]
(http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB947805644161352584.htm)
MERGER
THE BAD BUSINESS OF MEDIA MERGERS
Issue: Mergers
Rosenstiel and Kovach suggest that news coverage focusing on whether the
AOL/Time Warner deal will cause reporters and editors to face new conflicts
of interest, misses the point. More easily assessed than conflict of
interest, is the fact that synergy simply doesn't work for news
organizations. Recent mergers, they claim, show that when media companies
synergize their brands, they dilute them. The authors give Time Warner's own
failed experience collaborating with CNN to make prime-time magazines as an
example. A Time Warner executive admitted to a group at the Columbia
Journalism School this summer that "the lesson of synergy at Time, Warner,
CNN is that it doesn't work." Rosenstiel and Kovach compare the merger of
news organizations to a merger of writers: "As a reader, one might like the
work of Tom Wolfe and Philip Roth. That doesn't mean a book they wrote
together would be twice as good."
[SOURCE: New York Times (A27), AUTHOR: Tom Rosenstiel (director of the
Project for Excellence in Journalism), and Bill Kovach (curator of the
Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard)]
(http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/14rose.html)
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