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[Commentary] Before lawmakers rush to strip crucial funding from public media, lawmakers should pause to consider just how small the investment and how big the return really are.
Public funding in the United States is already far beneath the norm in other strong democracies -- per capita public spending in 14 other democracies ranges from $30 to more than $130. This compares to less than $1.50 for federal funding in the United States. Moreoever, when you add in state and local funding, corporate and foundation donors, as well as individual contributions, the US per capita total rises to just $9. Amount of funding isn't everything. But it does make a difference. The highest quality, most independent public media systems – such as those in Germany, Britain, and the Scandinavian countries – tend to be those that can rely on a steady, substantial stream of public funding, even in challenging economic times. While many of these countries also face substantial budget deficits, there is no serious talk of “zeroing out” public media. The $420 million appropriated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting could be increased 20-fold – bringing it up to the minimal per capita investment of countries like New Zealand, Australia, and Canada – and it would still make up just two-tenths of 1 percent of the US federal budget.
But what is truly remarkable is public media’s role as an engine for democracy – a benefit that should resonate with lawmakers across the political spectrum. What we discovered is the crucial role of public media in creating informed citizens. In countries with strong public media systems, such as virtually all of western Europe, public knowledge about government and international affairs is substantially higher than in countries dominated by commercial media, such as the United States. This holds true across a population’s spectrum of education, income, and race and ethnicity.
[Rodney Benson is associate professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University and the co-author of “Public Media and Political Independence.”]
NPR defunding vote: Don't diminish democracy to settle a political score
Imagine the perfect library book. Its pages don't tear. Its spine is unbreakable. It can be checked out from home. And it can never get lost. The value of this magically convenient library book — otherwise known as an e-book — is the subject of a fresh and furious debate in the publishing world. For years, public libraries building their e-book collections have typically done so with the agreement from publishers that once a library buys an e-book, it can lend it out, one reader at a time, an unlimited number of times. Last week, that agreement was upended by HarperCollins Publishers when it began enforcing new restrictions on its e-books, requiring that books be checked out only 26 times before they expire. Assuming a two-week checkout period, that is long enough for a book to last at least one year. What could have been a simple, barely noticed change in policy has galvanized librarians across the country, many of whom called the new rule unfair and vowed to boycott e-books from HarperCollins.
As Library E-Books Live Long, Publisher Sets Expiration Date
Hospitals have spent millions of dollars adopting electronic medical records, aiming to get a slice of the government's $27 billion in incentives. Now, they need to teach doctors and other staffers to use the records. But performing such tasks as entering orders for medication and taking patients' medical histories by computer requires significant changes in work habits.
And according to a recent Dell Inc. survey of 150 hospital executives, 79% were at least somewhat concerned about training clinicians and hospital staff to use the records properly. To get doctors and care givers -- some of whom are skeptical about the ability of electronic records to improve productivity or patient care -- on board, hospitals are taking a range of approaches, including offering training any hour of the day or night, converting vacant buildings into training facilities and using computer programs to get physicians up to speed quickly. But many "hospitals have underestimated how hard it can be to get full participation by staff," says Sarah Corley, the chief medical officer at NextGen Healthcare, a provider of electronic medical records and a unit of Irvine, Calif.-based Quality Systems Inc. And training is crucial to get federal incentive payments, which require that care providers "meaningfully use" the systems. One hurdle: Many physicians aren't fans of large classroom settings.
Getting Docs to Use PCs
Nearly 80% of children between the ages of 0 and 5 use the Internet on at least a weekly basis in the United States, according to a report released Monday from education non-profit organizations Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop. The report, which was assembled using data from seven recent studies, indicates that young children are increasingly consuming all types of digital media, in many cases consuming more than one type at once. Television use dwarfs Internet use in both the number of children who surf the web and the amount of time they spend on it. The analysis found that during the week, most children spend at least three hours a day watching television, and that television use among preschoolers is the highest it has been in the past eight years. Of the time that children spend on all types of media, television accounts for a whopping 47%.
80 percent of children under 5 use Internet weekly Always Connected: The new digital media habits of young children (read the report)
Ofcom insisted on mobile operators making steep cuts in the amount they charge for connecting phone calls to their networks. The plan will cut mobile companies’ revenue, although it should result in cheaper phone calls for consumers.
The big operators – Everything Everywhere, O2 and Vodafone – will have to cut the wholesale charges they levy for connecting calls to their networks by 84 per cent over the next four years. 3, the smaller network operator, will have to cut its fees by 85 per cent. The wholesale charges represent about 10 to 15 per cent of mobile companies’ revenue, and the big operators have argued strongly against cuts to the fees. Some are expected to consider the case for mounting a legal challenge against Ofcom’s plans. Ofcom said lower wholesale charges should reduce the cost to fixed-line operators of directing customers’ calls to mobile networks. “Ofcom expects these savings to be passed on to consumers in the competitive UK landline market,” it added.
Ofcom demands steep cut in mobile revenues
[Commentary] Contrary to the headline of Harry Jessell’s recent commentary “NAB Needs to Get Spectrum Act Together” (March 11, 2011), the National Association of Broadcasters is indeed fully focused on calculated positioning to protect and improve the public’s terrestrial television broadcast service.
In fact, the very items that Mr. Jessell finds “perplexing” and suggests may be signs of weakness or lack of leadership are actually intentional strategic moves that will have measurable positive effect on realizing those advocacy goals. In the specific cases of expanding the technology advocacy expertise of the NAB staff and the ramifications of the prospective merger of the NAB and MSTV organizations, broadcasters should be cheering enthusiastically, and not get misguidedly drawn into the realm of uneasiness that dominates the tone of the article. Having shepherded the successful transition from analog to an all-digital broadcast television platform, our core belief is that American consumers deserve the best broadband and the best broadcast system possible and that the two can coexist synergistically with each other to the benefit of the public. It’s obvious that the broadcast industry is changing in fundamental ways, driven by technological developments that outpace the ability of traditional business constructs to adapt to them rapidly. Collaboration, consensus building, expanding staff and combining industry resources under unified leadership is our approach to framing the technological future for broadcasters. It’s not really all that perplexing.
[Claudyhead of the NAB Science and Technology department]
Claudy: NAB Doing Just Fine on Technology
President Obama famously promised to run the most transparent administration in history. This week, security experts are evaluating how well the White House has lived up to that pledge. It's Sunshine Week, a time of year when lawmakers and good-government groups grade the administration's commitment to openness. A new Knight Open Government Survey by the National Security Archive found about half of 90 government agencies have changed their approach to sharing information since Obama promoted the idea on his first day in office. That means half still haven't gotten with the program.
Has Obama Lived Up To His Pledge On Transparency?
Google has a reputation as an innovative company, but in fact it owes a lot of its success to acquisitions.
Google basically bought AdSense, the paid search platform that made it a financial powerhouse, from Applied Semantics in 2003. In addition, three of the four non-search businesses that Google has identified as its future -- YouTube, Android, and display advertising -- were acquired and run more or less independently today. The fourth -- enterprise apps -- was helped greatly by the acquisition of Postini. There were also plenty of acquisitions that never paid off. Google is not as bad as Microsoft in this respect, but it does have a couple of embarrassing $100 million mistakes.
Here's the top 15: Android mobile platform; Aardvark social service; Jambool social payment platform; Invite Media ad platform; Feedburner; Like.com; Applied Semantics; dMarc radio ad placement; On2 video compression; Slide social gaming; Postini email security; ITA travel service (pending); AdMob mobile advertising; YouTube; and DoubleClick display ad technology.
Google's 15 Biggest Acquisitions And What Happened To Them
It was a dramatic week. Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi won key victories in the Libyan civil war. After weeks of protests, Wisconsin Republicans found a way to suddenly pass a measure curtailing collective bargaining rights. And passions were stirred by a U.S. House hearing on radical Islam. But on Friday March 11, the devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan commanded virtually wall-to-wall coverage, accounting for more than half (52%) of the overall newshole studied by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
And as is often the case with dramatic breaking news, the disaster was first and foremost, a television story -- accounting for more than three-quarters of the airtime examined on both broadcast and cable news on March 11. Even though it happened on a Friday, the events in Japan registered as the No. 3 story for the week of March 7-13, accounting for 12% of the overall newshole in the News Coverage Index. Given the many dimensions to the story -- including growing concern over radiation from damaged nuclear plants -- there is a strong likelihood it will continue to dominate the news for the foreseeable future. The week’s No. 1 story, for the sixth time in seven weeks, was the violence in the Middle East, driven by the fighting in Libya and more calls for the West to impose a no-fly zone. But at 21% of the newshole, that represents the lowest level of Mideast coverage in seven weeks. A week earlier it was 32%. A related story, the rise in U.S. oil and gas prices, was the week’s fifth-biggest, at 3%.
Earthquake Becomes Major Story
The House Commerce Committee held a hearing on a resolution disapproving the Federal Communications Commission’s open Internet rules.
Democrats on the committee objected to the repeal on the grounds that it is unlikely to pass and because they say opposing network neutrality is bad policy. The committee should not be "wasting time on another partisan bill that is not going to become law," said ranking member Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). He cited Comcast and AT&T acceptance of the rules. "The Republican resolution to repeal the FCC’s open Internet order isn't just a solution in search of a problem – it’s a resolution in search of problem," said Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA). Republicans said phone and cable companies only supported the rules because the FCC backed them into a corner.
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) called network neutrality the "fairness doctrine of the Internet" and said the committee is doing "the right thing" by reorienting policy toward a pro-jobs approach.
House Commerce Committee Considers Network Neutrality Repeal Partisan standoff continues at net-neutrality markup (The Hill) Dems. Republicans Still Strongly Divided Over Net Regs (B&C)