Follow the link below to the report by Frederick Mann, the consultant hired to monitor several PBS and NPR shows for signs of bias. The Mann report was also mentioned in an NPR story on All Things Considered that is available on this page.
There are seven segments of the Mann report available in Acrobat format.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4724317
By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 28, 2005; 9:30 AM
Everybody's talking about the Supreme Court's Monday ruling on Internet file-sharing companies and digital piracy, but let's talk instead about the other decision the justices made -- the one that will really affect you.
I'm writing, of course, about the so-called Brand X decision. I wish it were a strike against Phil Collins's claim to jazz-hipster status, but no such luck. In this decision, the court said that cable companies don't have to open their Internet networks to rivals.
Sounds exciting, doesn't it? It is, but not in a good way. The 6-3 decision means that cable Internet providers won't have to face competition from smaller rivals who don't have the resources to build their own networks. And the Baby Bell phone giants, who are required to share their lines, are already clamoring that yesterday's ruling means they should get the same treatment.
That's just what we need -- even less choice. It means that situations like the one that happened to me recently will continue to occur across the country.
Perhaps my own ISP situation is an example of the future of ISP "choice" that the Brand X decision may produce.
I live in Alexandria, Va., where last week I made an appointment to get Comcast to outfit my apartment with broadband Internet access. The first appointment didn't work out; the customer service rep said they called me to reschedule, though I never received a call. The second appointment foundered on similar grounds. By the time I got around to finding a human being to schedule a third appointment, I was ready to go with the competition.
But there wasn't any. The best I could do was splutter about how if this behavior continued, I'd... I'd... I'd choose Verizon DSL. But I didn't want DSL. I wanted cable. I like how reliable it is once it works, and I have enough friends who told me DSL horror stories that I didn't want to take the chance.
You see where this is going.
If the court had ruled otherwise, I might eventually be able to choose a different cable Internet provider. Under the current conditions, however, it'll be just the same old story -- Comcast or Verizon.
I know I'm not the only one out there grappling with a lack of choice in an era of choice overload. In a recent column, I asked you to share your cell phone horror stories. I've received dozens and will publish them later this week. Now I have another homework assignment: Tell me about the indignities you've suffered because your Internet access choices are limited, if you have them at all. I will share them with the rest of the world. Hopefully the six justices who ruled on the side of the cable companies will read it -- if they're not experiencing similar customer service problems with their home Internet access. Send me your stories.
A Closer Look at the Ruling
One good thing about the Brand X decision is that news sources everywhere devoted their resources to covering it, rather than going with feeds from the major newswires -- not that they were lacking. Reuters crack telecom reporter Jeremy Pelofsky produced a solid piece that ran midafternoon Monday that explained how the decision is a vote of confidence in the Federal Communications Commission.
Pelofsky noted that the decision essentially entrusts the FCC with ultimate authority in this case: "The Supreme Court backed a 2002 Federal Communications Commission decision that said cable broadband Internet service was an information service and thus free from most telephone rules, like requirements to lease network access to competitors. FCC officials had argued the move was necessary to spur more investment in high-speed Internet services. But consumer groups and independent Internet service providers like EarthLink Inc. worried that consumers would have few choices to surf the Web without some FCC safeguards. The high court decided that the FCC's decision was reasonable under the Communications Act and that the appeals court did not extend sufficient deference to the FCC as the expert agency to make its decision."
How comforting to know that linguistic obfuscation is all it takes to get the court to wash its hands of this case. On a less facetious note, the decision also affirms the FCC's progress under the Bush administration toward deregulating the Internet and telecommunications markets.
Saul Hansell at The New York Times explained more about the genesis of the case: "The case turns on a rule adopted in March 2002 that called cable Internet service an 'information service' rather than a 'telecommunications service.' The Telecommunication Act of 1996 calls for strict regulation of telecommunications services, subjecting them to taxes and calling them 'common carriers.' Telecommunications services are required to sell access to their networks on a nondiscriminatory basis. Information services, by contrast, are largely unregulated and untaxed. In a case brought by Brand X Internet Services, a small provider in Santa Monica, Calif., the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the commission's interpretation. The appellate court said that part of what cable Internet services provide could be considered telecommunications, and that portion could be regulated separately from the portion that is an information service."
Hansell also wrote about Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent. that the decision allows the FCC to exceed the authority that Congress gave it in such situations. And for one of the first times in my life, I found myself wishing Scalia were nearby so I could shake his hand.
News.com's Marguerite Reardon included this quote from Jim Pickrell, president of Brand X: "The Bush administration has made it clear that they are hostile toward small, independent service providers like us. And we think that is a big disaster for consumers, and a huge win for the monopolistic phone and cable companies, which spend millions of dollars on lobbying efforts." Pickrell also was quoted in the Los Angeles Times, where he said that it seems like "the people in charge of regulation are planning to put us out of business, not 10 years from now but right now."
I can't say that I'm unhappy with Comcast's service, now that I have it. I know that unless the power goes out, it'll be there almost all the time. Still, it's disappointing to know that if Pickrell or someone like him is out there near where I live, he'll need to be as rich as Comcast to give me a better deal. That's not likely to happen any time soon.
Are You Hep to the Jive?
"This s--t's going to be litigated for another 15 years!" So said Wayne Rosso, the not-so-secret agent provocateur of the file-sharing business.
He was answering my question yesterday about what he thought would be the long-term effects of the Supreme Court's 9-0 decision that P2P networks like Grokster and StreamCast can be sued for allowing people to pirate music, movies and software.
Not surprisingly, entertainment industry types hailed the ruling as a victory, while represents Grokster and other file-sharing companies, told me that his group will continue to fight for "exoneration."
A fight is what the file-sharing firms are likely to have. The court, as the New York Times editorial board put it, held that "actively encouraging copyright infringement is illegal, but merely creating new technology is not." Such a ruling is an invitation to the entertainment industry's attorneys to sue anew.
Here's how The Washington Post put it: "The decision hands movie and recording studios a sharper legal weapon in their campaign to try to shut down file-sharing systems that enable hundreds of millions of consumers around the world to bypass retail outlets by electronically swapping music, videos and software programs."
Justice David Souter fueled the fire when he wrote, "The record is replete with evidence that from the moment Grokster and StreamCast began to distribute their free software, each one clearly voiced the objective that recipients use it to download copyrighted works, and each took active steps to encourage infringement."
File-sharing companies insist that their software is used for exchanging freely available works as well, but Souter sounded the get-real call with a surprising reference to a pop group that showed up on the charts long after Tommy James and the Shondells: "While there is doubtless some demand for free Shakespeare... users seeking top 40 songs, for example, or the latest release by Modest Mouse, are certain to be far more numerous than those seeking a free Decameron, and Grokster and StreamCast translated that demand into dollars."
Souter ... Modest Mouse ...? Anyway ...
The Los Angeles Times in its editorial fretted over the court's decision: "Proving whether someone induced someone else to do something wrong is never easy. ... It is entirely possible that, with this case, the court has just exchanged one difficult question for another. It is also possible, however, that the court has found a way forward in a debate that means so much to California. Instead of suing anybody who comes up with a technology with the potential for illegal use, Hollywood will have to prove that the main purpose of that technology is piracy. And instead of defending innovation at all costs, Silicon Valley will have to show some responsibility."
The San Jose Mercury News picked up on that last thought: "In America's litigious world, the decision could give pause to some innovators. Indeed, the court did not say what conduct would amount to inducing copyright violations. Entrepreneurs treading on technology's leading edge will need to have their inventions checked by lawyers -- at least until courts further clarify the issue."
But here's the irony: Despite the court's ruling, online piracy will continue. The Dallas Morning News offered up this expert view: "The ruling ... doesn't mean the death of pirated music, movies and video games. 'Piracy is still thriving,' said American Technology Research analyst P.J. McNealy. He said peer-to-peer file-sharing companies can easily relocate outside the U.S., beyond the reach of American law enforcement. 'It's hard to truly suppress piracy on a global level, and there will always be a market for pirated content,' he said."
Mitch Bainwol, head of the Recording Industry Association of America, said in a neww conference yesterday that this is inevitable. Containment, he said, is the goal, not elimination. After all, without a little piracy, there'd be no one left to sue.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/28/AR2005062800408.html?sub=AR
Commentary: The Lynching of a Lodi Family
by Fernando A. Torres
6/20/05
In less than a week of reckless reporting, the Bay Area media has destroyed a humble Pakistani family and three other men. The carnage was unbelievable. In a frenzied race for ratings, the media descended on Lodi, a small town south of Sacramento, in search of the "terrorist cell" they learned about in a federal criminal complaint.
Everybody took at face value the veracity of an FBI affidavit and the most imaginative headlines started to come out of the editor's brains. The San Francisco Chronicle, northern California's biggest paper, went along with the FBI version with astonishing words: "terror cell, training with al-Qaida, how to kill Americans, terrorism inquiry to spread, number of people committed to al-Qaida have been operating in and around Lodi, to carry out his jihadi mission, targets include hospitals and food stores, and could have poisoned the ice cream."
But under scrutiny, The Lodi Terror Investigation, as the Chronicle put it, could not be sustained on its own merits and crumbled to become just a single count of making a false statement and a simple case of an immigration violation.
Although the paper was careful in citing every quote and fact, it committed the mistake of falling into sensationalist reporting. A terrorist cell in our backyard is a very appealing headline for today's American psyche. Just the word terror can sell a lots of things. It's a word that has become the media's green light to muddy anybody's reputation.
We cannot assert that the desecration and public condemnation of this modest working family was premeditated, nevertheless the social insensitivity shown by the media is extremely worrisome. Not until three or four stories into the coverage did we start to hear the Defense's comments, neighbor's positive remarks, or the human side of the story.
Pictures of bin-Laden were published next to the Lodi men. What does that tell you? What does a Lodi resident now think of her Pakistani family next door?
What happens if the FBI puts out a press communiqué and the media releases it? Thousands and thousands of people will know about it. But what happens if the charges are unfounded, and some "facts" are later erased, as in this case? Who will restore the reputation of the innocent people affected? Who will bring back together a divided community? Who will erase the bigotry stamped on Lodi's walls?
Following, a brief look at some of The Chronicle stories from clips and its web site (www.sfgate.com):
Tuesday, June 7.- The San Francisco Chronicle printed an AP story headlining "four Lodi men detained in possible terror cell." The story is confusing. AP cited the Sacramento Bee citing "federal authorities," and "court documents." Careful in using words such as "possible," "according to," and "they believe," the story is also clear in pointing out that a man is "accused of training in an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan to learn `how to kill Americans'...using photographs of...Bush as targets."
Immediately, in the second paragraph, a father and his son's names are made public. The third and four men's names are also made public. But now the third paragraph said they are detained "on immigration violations." The story's own headline about the "FOUR men" results misleading. The popular words "terror cell" and "al-Qaida" are printed, before their names, in the first paragraph. The association of four innocent men with these words is made. Suddenly we have a terror cell in our backyard. The lynching of the Lodi family has begun.
Wednesday, June 8.- The Chronicle headline keeps insisting: "Two Lodi men arrested in possible terror cell." Four are now down to two. No apologies for the other two. The AP story (01:52 PDT) now cited "published reports" as source of: "younger men allegedly acknowledged that he attended an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan..."
New hair-raising details are provided. AP cites a Sacramento Bee quote by Judge Nowinski who has more information than FBI agent John Cauthen does - "(the father) just returned from Pakistan where he (...) contributed financial assistance to an al-Qaida sponsored program training his son and others to kill Americans whenever and wherever they can be found." What do you think American Lodi residents are now thinking about all of this?
The son is now accused of lying to the FBI. The story citing the FBI affidavit says that he asked (not clear to whom) to come to the US "to carry out his jihadi mission to attack hospitals and large food stores." Is that a preemptive condemnation? The story finished with great affidavit bravado: The father "admitted...he provided a $100 monthly allowance to help his son attend the camp." That is revealing. A good terrorist or a good father. I provided a $100 monthly to my daughter to attend a UC Santa Cruz camp where I have seen students using Bush pictures in a more embarrassing way than a practice target! By now, the media has landed in Lodi full geared. The theater of the absurd of the media-condemnation has set up camp. The merciless crucifixion of an innocent family is now in full swing.
Wednesday, June 8.- (08:31 PDT. AP) The story continues deflating; now the headline reads: "Father, son charged with lying about son's training with al-Qaida." Bylined by Mark Sherman the story adds new and grave comments by Nowinski; the father "was a flight risk and a danger to the community." The other two men are now called "Muslim leaders." The FBI says the son failed the polygraph test, and a machine becomes a key player. For the first time the defense is brought into the tale. Johnny Griffin III is quoted saying everything is "shocking" because "his client 'is charged with nothing more than lying to an agent.'"
Wednesday, June 8.- (19:31 PDT) AP's Don Thompson tries to keep the hip up. Now "a number of people committed to al-Qaida have been operating in and around Lodi." There is a big difference from a "terror cell" to a "number of people committed" and "operating." With an army of operating terrorist, I don't want to get close to Lodi. But such amazing account is played down by Thompson himself in the next paragraph: "...investigators did not have information about any specific plans for an attack, and the father and son were charged only with lying." The story cannot get more confusing and misleading.
Here's another of Thompson citing an FBI agent: "We did not find these guys in the middle of executing a plan. That did not happen." No doubt, by now Thompson is as confused as his readers! But his AP wire, for the first time, gives out a human angle. The working family of an ice cream vendor and cherry picker is described by friends and neighbors as "nice" people.
Wednesday, June 8.- (4:26pm) Lastly, The Chronicle sent two reporters for an "original" story on the case. Although they came back empty-handed, the headline is hardhearted: "...complaint says 22-year-old trained on 'how to kill Americans.'" Besides scorning the accused, the reporters rushed to positive-quoted the accusers: the FBI "investigations had been appropriately and responsibly." Before leaving town, the pair also pays a friendly visit to Lodi's Mayor: "I'm glad to hear that the FBI is staying on top of federal criminal issues...," said the unharmed Mayor.
Thursday, June 9.- Another phony Chronicle headline: "Feds charge father, son with al-Qaida link." The deprecation continues. Those charges are not! The wire keeps repeating the same groundless accusations against the family. This time Bush is quoted saying something the media is NOT doing: "we'll follow up...honoring the civil liberties of those to whom we follow up..." Does this include the family's reputation and honor?
Thursday, June 9.- Another Chronicle exaggerated headline: "Terrorism inquiry to spread (FBI) question Bay Area residents associated with (Lodi) suspects..." This hysterical caption does not stand for the text that follows, for the 11th paragraph says the FBI retracted of early reports by deleting "a number of details" released early. Those "details" were the foundations of the panic-stricken reports by the local media: targets include hospitals and food stores; the name of a friend of the family that supposedly was running the training camp in Pakistan, and that, the son had met "hundreds of (international) attendees" at the Pakistan camp.
Thrown into the story is the name of a 19-year-old kid detained "on alleged immigration violations" not because of terrorists actions. Pictures of the family member are printed with the story. The Chronicle also published a national list of "terrorism-related cases" and included the name of the father and the son(?).
Thursday, June 9.- "Muslim shaken, fearful of backlash as after 9/11" After three days of mud-throwing, conflicting reporting, partial and alarmist FBI-friendly coverage, of culpability by association, of bonding the word Muslim with words such as extremists and terrorists, the SF Chronicle send a reporter to assess the damage inflicted to the Pakistani community in Lodi. This damage did not come with the FBI arrests, as reporter Vanessa Hua wrote, it came with the improper coverage by the local media who blindness followed FBI press releases and rushed to condemn four innocent beings.
Excepting a quote by Lodi Mayor who still believes "any town could have one or two," bad guys, Hua does a fair job in showing the uncertainties and fears the Pakistani community now lives with. Merited Hua quotes of a Pakistani resident: "We are scared because of what happened, how other people will look at us;" "It's sad to see this ruin people's lives."
Thursday, June 9.- (00:05 PDT) (13:30 PDT) Two stories by AP's Thompson (who apparently did not noticed the deletions made by the FBI to its own affidavit) still quoting unproven facts such the plans to attack hospitals and supermarkets. AP continues to use the unconfirmed statement of a number of people committed to al-Qaida have been operating in and around Lodi.
Although the reporter assesses some of the Pakistani community's worries, he still uses dramatic quotes such as the ones by Lodi's Mayor "This would be an ideal place for them (the terrorist) to hide;" or "Come to Lodi and meet our Terrorist." Other voices brought in by Thompson includes someone who "worries (the father) could have poisoned the ice cream," or that a resident "blamed Pakistani service station owner for driving up local gasoline prices."
Friday, June 10.- The Chronicle's internet site carries three AP and one original story. All four of them gravitated around the same facts. One - 00:03 PDT - refers to divisions and power struggles between Lodi's Islamic factions. "The link to Lodi isn't surprising," wrote AP's Thompson, who dug out a LA retired FBI agent for this hysterical quote: "That entire region, all of the area around there, became a very big area of Arab settlement."
The stories are now quoting the lawyers of the family. Better late than never! One of these reports has an FBI agent saying "investigator have found no immediate terrorist threat." The big terrorists-in-our-backyard case continues collapsing.
The Chronicle's own story this day is, to say the least, disgusting. Pure Orwellian doublespeak. The paper keeps the same sensationalist tone of an implied terrorist cell being caught, while saying none of them "has been charged* with any terrorist violation...(and there is)... no evidence that any of them was planning terrorist acts." That would be enough for any sane editor to stop the story dead. But not for the Chronicle which keep and keep going, with paragraphs after paragraphs of FBI bragging, inexistent linkages and spectacular quotes. (* See July 9 Chron's headline: Feds charge father, son with al-Qaida link)
The picture selection is nauseatingly misleading: A photo of a Lodi mosque next to a photo of one of the man arrested, next to a photo of a man who allegedly ran a terrorist camp, next to a photo of bin Laden! Do you find any association here? Anyone?
Saturday, June 11.- Bail Denied for Lodi man - Judge says he is a flight risk. Finally, the man of our worse nightmares, our back-yard terrorist is charged, but, "with a single count of making a false statement." For lying. Yes! For lying just as Bush did when he said that out of the 400 arrests in terrorist investigations more than half have been convicted. (Washington Post investigations revealed that out of those 400, only 39 persons have been convicted!)
Sunday, June 12.- The Chronicle reports that Pakistan officials and Islamic scholars deny the FBI terror camps claims. On the same page, above a different story, another headline reads: Terror arrest devolving to charges of lesser crimes. Inadvertently, this title summarized The Lodi Terror Investigation fiasco.
Monday, June 13.- The Chronicle is silent. There is no reporting on the case except for a hypocritical editorial criticizing Bush for revealing "misleading" numbers of convicted terrorists: "It's that kind of dissembling that makes us cautious about accepting at face value the veracity of terrorist charges leveled against a handful of men in Lodi...more verifiable information is needed before coming to that conclusion."
Whoever wrote these words did not read the paper's own stories for the past seven days! The Chronicle did the very opposite of this editorial's admonition. It did not act cautiously and it did take at face value the veracity of the terrorist charges. No apology followed. For the time being the innocent family and the other men are still sitting in a dirty cell.
Fernando A. Torres is a freelance journalist graduated from San Francisco State University
House approves additional $100 million in funding for Corporation for Public Broadcasting; cuts to children’s programming await Senate action
WASHINGTON -- In a 284 to 140 vote today, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bipartisan amendment restoring $100 million in funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. More than 80 Republicans broke rank and supported the amendment introduced by Reps. David Obey (D-Wis.), Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) and Jim Leach (R-Iowa).
Policy Director of Free Press, Ben Scott, made the following statement:
“In recent days, millions of Americans have signed petitions, sent letters and called their representatives demanding restoration of full federal funding and an end to partisan interference in public broadcasting. In the face of overwhelming public pressure, a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives reversed course.
“Today’s vote is a strong rebuke to the reactionary forces in Washington that have launched a double-fisted assault on the public broadcasting system -- attacking the content of its programs with one hand, while cutting its budget with the other.
“But the fight is not over yet. The appropriations bill being sent to the Senate still lacks more than $100 million needed for children’s educational programming, satellite services and funds to defray the costs of the digital transition.
“The vast majority of citizens support federal funding of public broadcasting -- viewing it as among the most worthy uses of their tax dollars. The Senate should heed the will of the American people, restore full funding, and stop playing politics with public broadcasting.”
[MA encourages you to send similar letters to your Congressional representatives ]
June 23, 2005
Dear Senators McCain and Lautenberg:
Media Alliance, the nation's longest running advocacy organization for media in the public interest, strongly supports the Community Broadband Act of 2005 and applauds your leadership on this critical consumer issue.
The Community Broadband Act would protect local community’s choices to provide high-speed, or broadband Internet access for its citizens. Affordable high-speed access to the Internet is not a luxury; it has become a public necessity. Though the economic benefits of high-speed Internet access are undisputed, most Americans either don’t have access to it, or can’t afford it. It is critical that the Community Broadband Act of 2005 be enacted to reinforce the right of all communities to offer their residents affordable high-speed Internet access. Communities that lack affordable high-speed Internet access will lose jobs as businesses that require it locate elsewhere. Moreover, their residents will continue to face increasingly serious disadvantages in educational and healthcare services.
Today, only 30 percent of American households subscribe to broadband Internet services. The problem is particularly acute in rural and urban areas that either lack access entirely, or have only a single high-cost service to choose from-which is no choice at all. Dominant telephone and cable companies have all too frequently skipped over Main Street to deliver higher returns to Wall Street. Yet without broadband Internet access, Americans in rural and underserved urban areas will be stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide.
Recent studies show that America ranks 16th worldwide in the percentage of citizens with broadband connections, placing our country at a critical competitive disadvantage. Municipal wireless and broadband networks are not only vital in helping realize universal broadband access that will speed adoption rates, they offer a critical competitive alternative in areas served by a single broadband provider charging rates too costly for average consumers. Indeed, in many areas, municipal broadband offers the only hope for competition that will lower prices and improve service-critical steps to achieving the Administration’s goal of universal broadband access by 2007.
We can no longer allow the on-ramp to the Information Superhighway to be blocked for so many Americans. Congress needs to take this common sense step to protect the rights of communities to offer their residents the benefits of high-speed Internet access. If they don’t, monopoly providers will continue to leave millions of Americans behind and the digital divide will only grow wider. Your legislation will ensure that the door to competitive, affordable broadband Internet access remains open to all communities.
We look forward to working with you toward enactment of this important legislation.
Respectfully,
Jeff Perlstein
Executive Director, Media Alliance
SF Chronicle
Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, June 23, 2005
After months of complaints from Comcast customers angry at losing free FM radio service, the cable giant has reversed course and will offer a digital equivalent for residents looking to tune in to their favorite stations.
Comcast said it will offer about 30 free radio stations throughout the Bay Area for subscribers to its digital system. Basic cable subscribers will need to pay $5 a month to pay for a digital receiver to get the FM signal.
About one-third of Comcast's Bay Area customers lost free FM radio in the past year, after the company chose to pull the plug on it in favor of providing more popular features like high-definition television and video on demand.
The move sparked a wave of criticism from some residents in areas like hilly Marin County, where the service was the only way of receiving an FM station.
"On balance, I think it's a good thing that Comcast, a huge company, listened to the community and is restoring the FM stations that people care about to cable," said Pete Franck, chairman of Media Action Marin, which fought hard to restore the service.
Comcast spokesman Andrew Johnson said the free FM radio feature ranked low on customer surveys but shot up to the top five after customers in Marin began protesting in February.
He said the new service must clear some hurdles, regulatory and technical, but should be ready to go sometime in September.
"We said all along we would respond to our customers' demands and deliver the services they want," Johnson said. "It would be counter to that if we said we wouldn't be willing to bring this back."
FM radio, which has been offered by local cable operators for more than 20 years, was targeted by Comcast because it took away available bandwidth that could be used or HDTV or video-on-demand services.
Comcast said it solved its bandwidth concerns by putting the FM service on digital cable, where radio signals don't require as much space. This freed up room and allows for about seven more stations, but forces basic subscribers to pay an additional $5 a month for a digital receiver.
Comcast is using radio ratings and reader surveys to determine which 30 stations will end up on the system.
While some customers worried about the added cost of the service or the eventual lineup of stations, many were just pleased that their dark days in radio silence may be coming to an end.
"It's been terrible," said Tom Kearney, 60, of Healdsburg. "With regular radio, you get some local stations that have hoedown music but no classical or jazz music. I haven't turned the radio on in several months. It will make a big difference."
Midwest Technology Business News
by James Carlini
CHICAGO – Asks adjunct Northwestern professor James Carlini, how much of your telephone bill in the U.S. is spent to keep you behind the rest of the world?
If you add up how much money the incumbent phone companies are spending to squelch network infrastructure progress in America, the number you’ll find is appalling. No one is really keeping track of how much money is being targeted to turn legislators into puppets who will write and pass legislation to protect an old business model.
In a June 17 CNN/Money article by Rob Kelley, the focus is on Thomas Bleha. Bleha is writing a book about the global fight for Internet leadership. In the article, Kelley points out:
Bleha argues that broadband access has implications far beyond the speed of Web browsers. Full-scale adoption of the high-speed connections in Asian and European nations has fueled economic growth, technological innovation and improved quality of life, he said.
“There are myriad benefits across the economy,” Bleha said. “In corporate communications alone, data transfer, collaborative working and telecommuting amount to a big competitive advantage.”
Bleha cited a 2001 study by economist Robert Crandall and telecom consultant Charles Jackson [finding] that widespread broadband adoption could add $500 billion to the economy and create 1.2 million new jobs over a decade.
Fears about falling behind were fanned by a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showing the United States has slipped to 12th place from fourth three years ago in the percentage of people with broadband connections.
South Korea ranked first last year with 24.9 citizens out of every 100 having broadband access. [This is] nearly double the U.S. figure of 12.8, the OECD study said.
While some experts said the U.S. will get stung if it keeps losing ground, other experts said the issues are more complex – and this country much more competitive – than the figures suggest.
“The major impediment to U.S. adoption is price [rather than a] lack of availability,” said Charles Golvin, a senior telecom analyst at Forrester Research.
A month of broadband access costs American consumers $40 to $60 versus $20 to $35 in South Korea, according to Fortune.
SBC recently slashed its monthly broadband fee to $14.95 for customers signing up online. [This is] a figure below what many households now pay for slower dial-up access [and is] a move that could spark a broadband price war.
This whole issue of someone else building network infrastructure has SBC and the other incumbents lobbying for legislative protection. Look at how much money is spent to stifle competition against them.
The compromise that SBC makes in giving DSL a $14.95 price does nothing for creating a real competitive network service that can give Americans any type of advantage for global competition. As I said in an earlier column, I don’t consider DSL to be broadband.
Let’s talk a gigabit or more if we’re talking broadband (especially if we’re looking at something to take us into the future).
Incumbents Lobbying For Protection
There must be some impact of municipalities thinking about “doing it themselves” across the country because the incumbent phone companies are scrambling and sending in dozens of lobbyists to thwart any efforts to build new network infrastructure.
In a June 20 Statenet Capitol Journal article, the following cities are highlighted and the subsequent legislative actions brought forth by lobbyists are noted:
Philadelphia city planners set out to create Wireless Philadelphia, [which would be] the largest hot spot in the nation.
The project, which cost $15 million ($10 million to install 3,000 wireless nodes on light poles and $5 million to cover the two years of start-up operation), will cover 135 square miles of the city and cost an estimated $19 a month to access. [This is] half the average $40 cost to get cable and DSL service.
In response, Verizon lobbied for passage of HB-30. [This is] legislation that would restrict the development of municipal networks in Pennsylvania. The legislation was passed and signed by Gov. Ed Rendell.
[This gives] Verizon the right of first refusal before any community can build and deploy a publicly funded network even if tax payers are willing to foot the bill.
After aggressive negotiation by Philadelphia mayor John Street and CIO Dianah Neff, Verizon agreed to a waiver, which created a non-profit to operate the network [and allowed] the Wireless Philadelphia plan to proceed.
So much for the governor of Pennsylvania. He just signed his state’s death warrant and doesn’t even know it. He more or less said that the people can survive using copper-based technology until the phone company thinks it’s time to upgrade to something else.
Meanwhile, the Koreans and others are eating our lunch. Other incumbent phone companies are also trying to shut down innovation and determination by municipalities to remain competitive. Witness from the same Statenet Capitol Journal article:
SBC pushed for even stronger legislation in Texas. HB-789 would have prohibited a municipality from directly or indirectly providing telecommunications or information services regardless of the technology platform. The Senate struck this provision but the House refused to accept the changes.
The bill died in a conference committee before the legislative session closed at the end of May. Now SBC’s 120 lobbyists must start over in the next legislative season in 2007.
Millions Spent on Prevention
Think about all the money collected from consumers that’s spent to protect those services from competition.
Figure that the loaded salary rate for an SBC lobbyist is about $120,000 to $150,000 a year. Multiply that by 120 and you get a huge amount of money spent to stop progress. That’s $18 million a year in salaries alone. This doesn’t even include lunches, skybox seats, golf outings and all the other enticements lobbyists throw out to help legislators vote their way.
Now add the millions of dollars in political contributions to all the Bell-friendly politicians who go to great lengths to protect their contributors at the expense of choking off everyone else’s global survivability. Check out some of the top industry names like Ed Whitacre of SBC at this Web site.
Even convicted Adelphia CEO John Rigas was a good contributor to both parties to help his cable company. Rigas was convicted of the charges brought against him in the summer of 2004. On June 20, he was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. His company was forced to file for bankruptcy after it acknowledged that CEO Rigas and his two sons took $3.1 billion in loans that weren’t recorded on the books.
He was a major campaign contributor to the Republicans and to individual Republican candidates. In the 1999 to 2000 election cycle, he gave $1.2 million to the Republican Federal Committee of Pennsylvania, $400,000 to the Big Tent PAC, $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, $100,000 to George W. Bush and others.
But let’s not just focus on Republicans. According to OpenSecrets.org, Rigas has also made contributions to Democratic candidates such as Ernest Hollings, John F. Kerry, Paul Simon, Paul Tsongas and Chuck Schumer.
It’s interesting to see that they play both sides. This isn’t a Democratic or Republican issue. This is an American issue. It’s not a cable or phone company issue. It’s a network infrastructure issue.
What about the cost to wage war against a municipality that’s thinking about implementing its own network infrastructure? In one battle alone, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on advertising. What if they took that money and spent it on upgrading fiber infrastructure?
What it Means to You
What this all means to you is jobs, future jobs and careers, security in a global economy and your way of life. Any way you look at it, the protectionism against building a state-of-the-art network infrastructure will doom a whole society for the benefit of a few who want to keep an Industrial Age monopolistic approach.
Free enterprise means buggy-whip manufacturers became extinct when the automobile came along. It should be no different when new network infrastructures can be put in place to replace the old.
Too bad the politicians don’t see the light. Government should embrace moving forward without stifling the country’s global momentum with legislation that virtually protects victrolas in the age of MP3 players.
CongressDaily, By David Hatch
McCain, Lautenberg Take On Telco Firms Over Broadband
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., Wednesday introduced legislation that would permit municipalities to offer low-cost broadband service – putting the legislators at odds with SBC Communications and other telecom giants that oppose such networks.
Their measure, dubbed the “Community Broadband Act of 2005,” would serve as a counterweight to a bill offered in late May by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, that would bar such municipal networks in areas where private companies offer high-speed Internet access.
McCain – who chaired the Senate Commerce Committee until being forced by term limits to relinquish the gavel at the end of last year -- is increasingly weighing in on telecom issues, despite the fact that he does not currently chair any panels overseeing the industry. Last week, McCain teamed with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., in offering digital television legislation – getting out ahead of Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who plans to offer his own DTV bill.
The broadband measure is surfacing as the legislative debate over reforming the nation's telecommunications laws ratchets up on Capitol Hill. While the McCain-Lautenberg measure will be offered as a stand-alone bill, the goal is to add it to a larger vehicle, a congressional source said. The lawmakers expect a counterpart to be offered on the House side.
SBC, which supports the Sessions bill, has argued that local governments should spend taxpayer dollars on more pressing needs than broadband access. Another Bell company, Verizon Communications, has opposed the networks in several communities -- but has not taken a stance on the Sessions bill. Opponents of municipal broadband also say that participation by localities represents unfair competition.
But McCain and Lautenberg argue that that low-income and rural Americans will be left behind unless broadband is more accessible.
"Government should work to open doors to greater technology for the American people, not slam them shut. Our bill will protect the right of communities to offer wireless broadband access to their citizens, creating a powerful tool for education and economic development," Lautenberg said.
The two senators are offering the legislation because they want to remove all barriers to broadband deployment, the congressional source said -- noting that 14 states have enacted laws restricting localities from establishing wireless or wireline Internet systems. It is also a response to recent statistics showing the United States dropping to sixteenth in broadband penetration worldwide.
"We're not trying to get communities to run out there and do this. But those communities that have the need, and whose citizens do not have access to affordable broadband, should have the right to do this," the source added.
The McCain-Lautenberg measure is backed by a host of organizations and companies, including Intel Corp., the High-Tech Broadband Coalition, National Association of Manufacturers, National League of Cities, Rural Broadband Coalition, American Public Power Association and the American Library Association. Free Press, a watchdog group, and the Media Access Project, a public interest telecom law firm, also are onboard.
Companies such as Intel stand to gain financially if municipalities deliver broadband to a wide population -- spurring the sale of computers with Intel chips. The legislation would restrict local governments from discriminating against private firms that want to offer competing broadband services, and would require municipalities to comply with federal and state telecommunications laws.
June 17, 2005
The Guild Reporter
By Andy Zipser, Editor
Linda Foley, President of the The Newspaper Guild-Communication Workers of America, has become the latest target of right-wing extremists, who have mounted a multi-media attempt to force her resignation over comments made May 13 at a media conference in St. Louis. The campaign, started by Sinclair Broadcasting, Fox News and the Washington Times, then fanned by a growing number of bloggers, echoes a similar effort that earlier this year forced the resignation of CNN news chief Eason Jordan.
Foley served on two panels at the National Conference for Media Reform, addressing labor issues and the problems of media consolidation. She analyzed the profit-driven pressures that cause newspaper monopolies, workforce reductions, a commoditization of the news and plunging newsroom morale. She pushed for greater diversity—in viewpoints, coverage, staffing and ownership. And she hammered on the theme that it’s the system as a whole that’s the problem.
But it was an aside near the tail end of her remarks that got all the right-wing attention. Journalists often are blamed for the ills that they report on, Foley said, “particularly from the right of the political spectrum.” And then, as if extending an unwitting invitation to prove her point, she added that journalists aren’t being targeted just verbally and politically.
“They are being targeted for real in places like Iraq,” Foley said, referring to the deaths, detentions and physical abuse of American and Arab journalists. (The full text of Foley’s remarks may be read online at www.freepress.net/conference/=sessions.)
Brief as they were, those comments uncorked a torrent of bile—once the right took notice. Four days after the panel, Sinclair started calling TNG-CWA headquarters with requests to interview Foley. The next day, Tony Snow from the Fox network followed suit. Although both were rebuffed, Fox and Sinclair commentaries May 18 triggered hundreds of e-mails to Foley and the Guild office. Scores of phone callers were so abusive that for a couple of days all calls to Guild headquarters were routed through voice mail.
Then the blogosphere rumbled into action, including creation of the web site foleygate.com (“Watching Left Wing Journalists So You Don’t Have To”) “to report on what will happen to Linda Foley”—presumably as a result of the campaign it began orchestrating. Right-wing bloggers with quaint populist names (“Ankle Biting Pundits,” “Tennessee Rant,” “My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy”) piled on, shuttling around the same few links to Foley’s selected comments while urging all red-blooded Americans to voice their displeasure. More e-mails flowed.
“I would love to hear the proof you have to support your irresponsible claims that the military ‘target and kill journalists.’ If you have proof, then say it. If you don’t have proof, then keep your stupid biased asinine comments to yourself,” wrote David Wiseman. “Listen you piece of human garbage—American soldiers do not waste bullets on crap like you,” chimed in H. Olszowy. “Traitors and scum like you deserve to be shot, but our military has too much pride and courage to waste time on newspaper reporters. It figures however that someone with a union mentality like you would fabricate a story along the lines of CBS and Newsweek. You have zero credibility.”
While few e-mails acknowledged that journalists had been killed or wounded in Iraq, some suggested perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. “Just saw your idiotic comments concerning the collateral damage of journalists in Iraq,” wrote someone with the online name civwar46. “Now my comment. We should have open season on journalists in Iraq. Traitors.” Added Slimpknsanytime: “The mission of the military is to destroy the enemy, his equipment and will to resist. When the military follows this directive it is defining the enemy, even if they are ‘Journalists.’ ”
There’s more at work here, in other words, than just anger at a union leader for trying to defend her members. For the looniest fringe of the right wing, an independent press and its “journalists” are the problem. The irony is that such extremists are trying to prompt the mass media into attacking . . . the media.
The attempt to obscure discomfiting truths with a smokescreen of allegations about the truth purveyor—challenging his or her motives, techniques or basic character—is not new, but in recent years the volume has been ratcheted way up. For Paul Waldman of Media Matters for America, a progressive research and information center that tracks conservative disinformation campaigns, the poster child for such tactics is Ward Churchill, a much vilified University of Colorado professor.
This past January, the extreme right wing stumbled across an essay Churchill had written—more than three years earlier—in which he argued that the money changers at the World Trade Center had suffered the consequences of U.S. military aggression and unjust foreign policies. The result was a blizzard of right-wing outrage, flogged relentlessly by shouting heads like Bill O’Reilly. “Were some people offended by what Churchill had to say? Yes,” Waldman says. “Was he worth hundreds and hundreds of stories? Obviously not.”
But Churchill, Waldman adds, was simply one in a series of cases that the right has leveraged to advance its crabbed view of liberalism. Finding anecdotes that it can pump up to outsized dimensions in an echo chamber of right-wing commentators, talk shows, editorial pages and web blogs, the right transforms the specific into the general. “Linda’s case is one of those they’d like to make into a cause celebre, that the media hate the military, that they’re unpatriotic, blah-blah,” Waldman charges.
Because of such tactics, for example, the question of whether George Bush fulfilled his National Guard requirements was eclipsed by the question of whether Dan Rather used bogus documents in his reporting. The question of how the U.S. military is treating several hundred “detainees” at Guantanamo was shuffled into the background by Newsweek’s retraction of a story that claimed a copy of the Koran had been flushed down a toilet. Legitimate questions about the conduct of the entire “war on terror” have become such lightning rods for right-wing abuse that an official British government memo describing how the Bush administration lied its way into the war on Iraq received scant U.S. media coverage for more than a month after it was first reported in Great Britain.
Indeed, the war in Iraq has posed numerous challenges to Americans’ beliefs about themselves; some respond by denying the validity of any information that doesn’t fit those concepts. The June issue of Editor & Publisher, for example, includes a column describing the right-wing attacks and death threats against freelance television correspondent Kevin Sites—for filming a U.S. Marine shooting an unarmed Iraqi insurgent. “It is important to tell the truth, the whole truth,” Sites contends, in response to critics who claimed the segment unfairly undermined U.S. morale.
The killing of unembedded journalists in Iraq is one of those discomfiting facts, especially when such deaths come at American hands. To be sure, journalists in Iraq—of whatever nationality—have more to fear from the insurgents than they do from the U.S. military. As reported June 6 in a front-page story in The Washington Post, at least 85 journalists and other media workers, the vast majority of them Iraqis, have been killed in Iraq since March, 2003; only 14 of them were killed by American forces.
But “only” 14 is a troubling number nonetheless, and even more so given the government’s repeated unwillingness to objectively investigate the deaths. As recently as April 8, TNG-CWA and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists again sent letters to President George Bush, calling on him to “heed the requests from journalists around the world for an independent investigation into the record number of deaths among media staff covering the war in Iraq.” And, as in the past, the plea was ignored.
The deaths referenced in the April 8 letter won’t come as a surprise to readers of The Guild Reporter: the April 15 issue led with a cover story questioning the apparent targeting of journalists two years ago at the Palestine Hotel, where a single tank round killed two and wounded three. That same day, the article noted, U.S. forces also bombed the Al Jazeera television station—killing one—and attacked Abu Dhabi TV. The Al Jazeera bombing was especially worrisome because the network had provided the U.S. with its station’s coordinates precisely to forestall such an attack.
Such incidents—and the subsequent lack of vigorous inquiry—raise questions about military intentions. Others create the equally troubling impression of a more generalized trigger-happiness, caused by fear or lack of discipline, that places all civilians at risk. On May 24, for example, Aaron Glantz of Pacifica Radio told Amy Goodman, host of the radio program “Democracy Now,” that in covering the war “I’ve had a gun pointed at me by American soldiers numerous times and felt that my life was threatened by an American soldier, simply because they were so scared and trigger happy.”
Moreover, Glantz added, as Western journalists are so intimidated by such behavior that they pull out, “the Iraqi journalists who remain and the Pan-Arab journalists who remain are specifically being targeted by the U.S. military, I believe, when they broadcast controversial material.”
Adding heft to such assertions is the independent Committee to Protect Journalists, which has observed a general U.S. military lack of respect for journalists. For example, a May 12 CPJ statement expressed “deep concern about the detentions of at least eight Iraqi journalists by U.S. and Iraqi military forces,” but in response to its demands for a public explanation of the detentions, a U.S. military spokesman said only that the journalists pose a “security risk to the Iraqi people and coalition forces.” The spokesman would not provide further details or identify the detainees, all of whom work for Western news organizations and none of whom had been charged with any crime.
Rather than focus on such troubling behavior, however, the right-wing extremists find it more useful to abuse those who question the disconnect between our actions and our professed beliefs. “Abuse” is not too harsh a characterization: the attacks on Foley have been personal—“bitch” and “idiot” have been the leading epithets—and simultaneously abstract, a curious blend of invective neutered by its very lack of specificity. At least half-a-dozen Guild locals have been contacted by foleygate.com readers demanding that they seek Foley’s resignation. A direct if vague threat was delivered by a New York resident, who phoned Foley to say he would be in Washington D.C. and was planning to visit her in response to her comments.
Piling on also has been Boston-based writer Hiawatha Bray, who made his bones with the right wing last fall in a sclerotic attack on John Kerry and now has taken to the blogosphere to go after Foley. Although Foley told Bray she’d be glad to speak with him as the Guild president responding to questions from a Guild member, but not for publication, Bray apparently felt he had a right to elicit public comments. “I’ve phoned her several times,” he posted on his web site. “Foley has said that she will make no further public comment on the matter. This won’t do.”
Bray’s response? The launching of a write-in campaign to win a seat on his local’s executive council—a move he explains was inspired by watching Jack Nicholson in the movie “Hoffa.” He ended up getting five votes, of more than 400 cast.
Yet for all the strutting and chest-puffing, a certain note of frustration keeps intruding into the right-wing echo-chamber: the mainstream media just aren’t paying attention. And if the MSM, as it’s typically termed, won’t devour its own, who will play the end-game? As one blogger fretted, “I’m afraid we may be beating a dead horse on this Foley thing. The MSM is just not gonna cover it. And if they don’t cover it, it must not be news.”
Meanwhile, support for Foley also has emerged. The New England District Council, meeting in Portland, Maine on May 22, unanimously endorsed a resolution that declared: “The safety of working journalists is of primary concern to The Newspaper Guild. We support the efforts of TNG-CWA President Linda Foley to promote the safety of journalists in war zones and throughout the world.”
And Aidan White, General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, responded to questions about “Foleygate” by writing: “Linda did no more than speak out, eloquently and strongly, about the fundamental rights of media staff who are the victims of violence. In doing so she does great credit to the IFJ and her union, and the fact that she is attacked vigorously by a prejudiced and ill-informed minority, who are mostly detached from the harsh realities of reporting from conflict zones, illustrates that we are living in an age when the American spirit of tolerance and free speech which has served democracy well for so long is under greater pressure than most of us have seen in our lifetime.
“Foley deserves the support of all journalists for speaking out,” he added. “Certainly, she has the unanimous backing of the world journalists' movement.”
FORT WORTH - Stories about illegal immigration and crime continued dominating television networks' limited news coverage of Hispanics, showing a lack of depth and balance in reporting about America's largest and fastest-growing minority, according to a decade of annual studies.
Of the 140,000 network stories aired from 1995 to 2004, less than 1 percent - an average of 120 a year - were about Latinos. In those 10 years, the networks aired 218 stories about immigration and 218 stories about crime involving Hispanics, according to the Network Brownout Report 2005.
"If we were to compare things between then and now, we could say things are getting worse in the way the networks are doing these stories," the report's author, Federico Subervi, said Thursday as it was released at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in downtown Fort Worth.
Although news organizations often are accused of airing more negative than positive stories about any race or topic, an abundance of negative stories about Latinos unfairly reinforces certain stereotypes in a community still affected by racism, said Joseph Torres, a staff member of the 2,300-member NAHJ.
Others agreed that accuracy and fairness are critical because 30 million people watch the evening news.
"There are images of immigrants as illegal, images of immigrants as desperate and images of immigrants as animals," Otto Santa Ana, a UCLA associate professor, said Thursday, adding that the few positive images are about certain individuals rather than groups.
In addition to the annual study of last year's evening news programs on ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN, the new NAHJ report analyzes network news coverage since the group's first Brownout Report in 1996. CNN was not included in annual reports before 2000.
One positive trend during the decade was using more sources in longer stories about Hispanics, according to the report.
Overall, however, the networks "have marginalized Latinos by relegating coverage of the community to a few topics," the report said.
Networks have focused political coverage of Latinos in the last 10 years on candidates trying to speak Spanish rather than exploring issues important to Hispanics or their political diversity, Subervi said.
And during one network's story about a candidate's effort to reach out to Latino voters, a reporter said, "Oh well, I guess he'll have to learn to dance mariachi," said Subervi, an Austin media consultant and director of the Latinos and Media Project.
Networks can improve their Latino coverage by having more diverse newsrooms, Torres said. Although the networks have not disclosed the number of Hispanics reporters, NAHJ believes the number has not increased much in the last decade.
"NAHJ will leave it to others to discuss the business opportunities the networks are missing by not covering the Latino community," the report states. "Our assertion is that the news media are failing to cover one of the most important stories of our time."
Source:
Associated Press
06/16/2005