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[Commentary] Is National Public Radio liberal?
A study conducted in 2004 by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, which found that when you used partisan sources, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 1 (regardless of who was in the White House). Incidentally, that study also showed that NPR relied "on the same elite and influential sources that dominate mainstream commercial news and falls short of reflecting the diversity of the American public." Does that sound "liberal" to you?
Here's the real problem, NPR. No matter how mainstream your audience is in truth, or how balanced you are in substance, or how many opinions you solicit from average red-state Joes, the prevailing feeling is that your style is unmistakably liberal. In other words, NPR, you may not be left-leaning, but you're left-seeming. So please, NPR, the only recourse is to tell the truth. Do the reporting, show us the answers. Stop telling us to listen and decide for ourselves. Because you clearly can't rely on the American people for rationality. That folksy music drowns it out.
NPR needs a backbone
[Commentary] Here is the latest example of House Republicans pursuing a longstanding ideological goal in the false name of fiscal prudence: On Thursday, they have scheduled a vote to kill federal support for National Public Radio.
The bill, sponsored by Rep Doug Lamborn (R-CO) would block all taxpayer dollars that NPR might receive, starting with any of the money given to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Local stations could not buy programming from NPR — such as “Morning Edition” or “All Things Considered” — or any other source using the $22 million or so that they get from the Treasury for that purpose. It would not actually save any federal money; it would simply make sure that none of those dollars go to NPR. “I wish only the best for NPR,” said Rep Lamborn, unpersuasively. He said he simply wants NPR to survive “without the crutch of government subsidies.” This is not a serious bill. Unattached to a budget measure, it will never survive the Senate or a presidential veto. It is designed simply to send a punitive message to a news organization that conservatives have long considered a liberal bastion. The politicized criticism amped up last week when a fund-raiser for the organization was secretly recorded calling the Tea Party a racist organization and criticizing Republicans.
Punishment for NPR
The hidden-camera exposé of shady business practices is a staple of sweeps week on local TV news. But when the target is National Public Radio and the videomaker is a practiced political provocateur, the takedown of a fundraising executive has reverberations well beyond simple consumer outrage.
An 11-minute, edited video of a meeting between supposed Muslim donors and NPR fundraisers, posted last week on the conservative political news site the Daily Caller, was quickly picked up by news organizations. The fundraiser's anti-Republican, anti-Tea Party comments cost the head of NPR her job. Today, the House will likely vote on yanking NPR's public funds — a speedy reaction that few mainstream media investigations achieve. James O'Keefe, the political activist who orchestrated the sting, says his video is investigative journalism. Many journalists say it absolutely is not, because O'Keefe used false identities and misleading editing. The video follows a long, if not always honorable, tradition of muckraking exposés. It also is a stepchild to the political tactic of tracking an opponent with video until a gaffe occurs, then capitalizing on it. The sting's impact was magnified by the quick dissemination-without-scrutiny that is a hallmark of Internet-driven media. An analysis of the video by conservative website The Blaze — which compared the edited version with the original two-hour video — raises questions about O'Keefe's tactics, but also about the news organizations that jumped on the story.
NPR exposé: Shady or enlightening?
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and other large retailers are ratcheting up a political campaign to force Amazon.com Inc. to collect sales taxes, sensing opportunity in the budget crises gripping statehouses nationwide.
The big-box stores are backing a coalition called the Alliance for Main Street Fairness, which is leading efforts to change sales-tax laws in more than a dozen states including Texas and California. Until now, the group has been largely associated with mom-and-pop stores, spotlighting stories of small toy shops and booksellers who argue Internet merchants that aren't legally required to collect sales taxes enjoy an unfair advantage with shoppers. Yet the Virginia-based group isn't just working for the little guys. Many of America's largest store chains—including Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy Co., Home Depot Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp.—are involved in the campaign, lobbying legislators and increasingly taking public swipes at Amazon.
Retailers Push Amazon on Taxes
In the first installment of our piracy Dust-Up, Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, and Andrew Keen, advisor to Arts and Labs, debated how big a risk piracy poses to the entertainment industry. Voicing the opinion of many Internet users and online entrepreneurs, Feld said it was time for the industry to adapt. Keen disagreed and argued for more legal protection, not just for Hollywood but for the independent filmmakers and copyright holders who'll be driven away if piracy continues. Today they face off on whether piracy should be accepted as a cost of doing business.
Says Feld: [L]earning to accept some losses as a cost of doing business, just as retailers do with shoplifting, opens up doors to billions of dollars in new sales. Crushing Napster didn't help the music industry, but embracing iTunes did.
Says Keen: No, nothing -- especially complex legislation over a subject as controversial as online intellectual property -- is ever perfect. But, as a legal scholar, Harold knows better than me that man-made laws are, by definition, imperfect. Yet that shouldn't mean that we surrender to the online thieves by treating piracy as a "cost of doing business" and simply write off the billions of dollars lost every year to the American entertainment industry as an unavoidable misfortune, like a plague of locusts or that proverbial bolt of lightning from the heavens.
Should the entertainment industry accept piracy as a cost of doing business? Part 2
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, has been asked by British ministers to work with broadband companies on guidelines to protect the “open internet”.
Internet service providers will be urged to agree provisions to strengthen consumer rights after this week pledging greater transparency on which sites and services they block and slow down. Ed Vaizey, UK communications minister, said he wanted ISPs’ commitments to go further, after a meeting in central London on Wednesday of telecoms groups, media companies, consumer groups and Ofcom, the regulator. BT, TalkTalk, British Sky Broadcasting, Virgin Media, Google, Skype, Yahoo and Facebook attended. “It is good to see that industry has taken the lead on agreeing greater transparency for their traffic management policies,” Minister Vaizey said of the Broadband Stakeholder Group’s best-practice code. “I am pleased that someone with the expertise of Sir Tim has agreed to work with industry on expanding that agreement to cover managing and maintaining the open internet.” Broadband providers reacted with unease to Minister Vaizey’s proposal. “The challenge ahead is to build a common view on how we safeguard the benefits of the open internet whilst also ensuring ongoing investment and innovation,” said Antony Walker, chief executive of the Broadband Stakeholder Group.
Web creator to help protect ‘open internet’
After toppling Google in the US in early 2010, Facebook became the UK’s number one website at the end of last year – but only for a day. New figures from Experian Hitwise, the online measurement firm, found that social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter then went on to overtake entertainment websites in January, to become the UK’s top internet activity for the first time. But in spite of its rapid growth, Facebook still lags Google in the individual site rankings. After overtaking search last year, social media now accounts for 12.4 per cent of all time online, with total traffic to such sites up 17 per cent last year according to Experian Hitwise.
Brits spend more time on social media than anything else online
Two members of the Senate Commerce Committee urged the Federal Communications Commission to implement data roaming rules that would ensure consumers don't lose wireless broadband coverage when they travel outside their providers' network area.
In a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said data roaming rules are especially important in rural areas, where "many consumers suffer from a lack of adequate wireless coverage." "By establishing clear rules on data roaming, the FCC can help provide certainty to both large and small wireless providers," the senators wrote.
Senators Urge Action On Data Roaming
54% of adults used the internet for political purposes in the last cycle, far surpassing the 2006 midterm contest. They hold mixed views about the impact of the internet: It enables extremism, while helping the like-minded find each other. It provides diverse sources, but makes it harder to find truthful sources. Fully 73% of adult internet users (representing 54% of all US adults) went online to get news or information about the 2010 midterm elections, or to get involved in the campaign in one way or another. We refer to these individuals as “online political users” and our definition includes anyone who did at least one of the following activities in 2010:
- Get political news online – 58% of online adults looked online for news about politics or the 2010 campaigns, and 32% of online adults got most of their 2010 campaign news from online sources.
- Go online to take part in specific political activities, such as watch political videos, share election-related content or “fact check” political claims – 53% of adult internet users did at least one of the eleven online political activities we measured in 2010.
- Use Twitter or social networking sites for political purposes – One in five online adults (22%) used Twitter or a social networking site for political purposes in 2010.
Taken together, 73% of online adults took part in at least one of these activities in 2010. Although our definition of an online political user has changed significantly over time, the overall audience for political engagement and information-seeking has grown since the most recent midterm election cycle in 2006—using a different array of activities to measure online political activity, we found at that time that 31% of adults used the internet for campaign-related purposes.
The Internet and Campaign 2010 TV Still Dominant Source of Political/Campaign News (B&C)
Ever notice that most government websites leave something to be desired in the awesome department? Take for example the crazy mazes that are the Department of Agriculture or Department of Labor sites. Well, at a recent Aspen Institute event on transparency and open government Blair Levin, the former Federal Communications Commission advisor and father of the National Broadband Plan, offered a Swiftian suggestion to make such sites more responsive to the public: allow advertisements on them. “I think we should get rid of the ban,” said Levin “If the government can actually make money on websites, they will treat it as a real resource, and therefore will do things that will encourage people to come to it.”
Whitehouse.gov, Brought to You By Clorox!