With the Australian Federal election firmly decided in favour of the conservative Liberal-National Party Coalition it is time for those of us in media studies to engage in some analysis of the reporting across the media. The approach News Corporation has taken to reporting in its original home base, Australia, is an example of election influencing. Media critics are well aware of News Corporation's interest in boosting conservative causes.
It is fair to say that the defeat of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) government led by Kevin Rudd on September 7 was in the sights of the Murdoch-owned press for many months, and yet in seeking a change of government, Mr Murdoch himself became the news. Even his tweets were reported. Tweets by Murdoch New media such as Twitter, has moved the public into a relationship with media owners as opinion makers, generally unmediated by gatekeepers. In Mr Murdoch's case he can and do say whatever he likes, without editors telling him what to say or moderating his commentary.
The narrative from the News Corporation bunker was one sided: remove the ALP by reporting on the party and their leadership in antagonistic and negative ways, while reporting on the conservatives in supportive and positive ways. It is a well tried path, as Fox News support of the Republican Party and President George W. Bush played out in the 2004 US election. The election coverage in support of the conservatives and against the ALP in the News Corporation Sydney Telegraph tabloid was calculated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Media Watch, a weekly 15 minute television commentary at around 134 anti-Labor articles and headlines out of 293. Media Watch It hardly proves much except that it distracts from detailed journalism.
Peter Botsman put it as follows:
"The media portrayal of the Rudd campaign has been beyond belief. It was a true 1950s ‘we will tell you what is good for you’ exercise. The Murdoch press effectively acted as a storm anchor that pulled back any positive news about Labor in any other media source...." Botsman Working Papers
But the importance of all this is elsewhere. Australian Labor Party supporters - the True Believers as they are called - could have spent more time devising policies that make significant contributions to public welfare, instead of counting the coverage. The media as the story is a function of a narrowing band of policy options. There are distractions everywhere, with little progress made on progressive policies, perhaps importantly on media and public communication debates, that would entail broadening the circulation of ideas through multiple sources. (The News Corporation argument is that the everyone has the Internet, so there's plenty of diversity. Do not be concerned...).
It's business as usual. At least the global aspects of media kicked in to the Australian election to add some stringent colour. There are two examples to this part of the story: the first is an unfounded yet public accusation from a mining tycoon and leader and funder of Palmer United Party (PUP - woof woof!), Clive Palmer, that Rupert Murdoch's estranged wife Wendy Deng was a Chinese spy Litigation central - Clive Palmer; the second that the UK Levenson inquiry followed Mr Murdoch to Australia, in the form of his chief British Labour Party antagonist Tom Watson.Tom Watson Sydney Morning Herald coverage
Both of these "events" put the Australian activities of News Corporation into the global context. In the former case, perversely, in the latter case, critically. No progressive public policy ideas made the light of day in this whirl of media wind.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Uprising in Egypt - Connecting the Internet and muscular liberalism in the mess of global political economy
The theory I proposed in Uprising: The Internet's Unintended Consequences, was that proletarianization is characterized by the unregulated circulation of information on the Internet. This was and is somewhat naive, given what is now known about Internet security thanks to leaks from Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian newspaper and the United States Government's National Security Agency (NSA). NSA Home Page
Everything we submit and see is surveilled, regulated and monitored. The NSA makes this its goal as an institution of the US Government.
The NSA's mission is to "protect US national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information." It has been doing this since Cyber War was first put on the public policy agenda, back in the mid-1990s. I was first alerted to the concept of cyber war by a colleague at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who worked closely with the US military.
Since that time my assumption has been that my work, my movements as an alien and US resident and my communication is surveilled as a matter of course. No surprises there.
Putting more detail into the theory of unregulated information circulation means that while on one hand the Internet offered a public interest kind of freedom to see everything, as long as it could be digitized, on the other hand the Internet offered government and its institutions ways to keep track of everyone through their electronic communication. This "freedom" is now obvious, while earlier it was in an opaque, "black" or unknown public territory - of which there are many. The current context is simply this: the Internet operates strictly within the domain of US national security.
This is and was the freedom of the Internet - the dystopian present's answer to the utopian past of emancipation through the information cornucopia. The ubiquity of total surveillance in the US and beyond, brings to mind the 2006 German film, The Lives of Others, because that film portrayed everyday surveillance in the last years of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a totalizing invasion of every human action, Everyone was an enemy of the state, or at least suspicious. With minor legal adjustments, everyone using the Internet is now a suspect. Indeed, the case can be made that even curiosity will result in punishment - this is the argument from The Who's guitarist Pete Townend, who was arrested and charged with child pornography use. He was curious. (The end of curiosity is a subject for another time).
Which brings me to the current and ongoing crisis in Egypt. The Arab Spring has been sprung because the Moslem Brotherhood and their allies in Hamas and elsewhere - democratically elected governments by the way - are obvious and known through surveillance of their communications. Of course, I can only follow press reports on how the NSA and other security organizations capture Internet traffic and assume that the righteous determination of the US to oppose non-Western political forces has run its own race, outside the jurisdiction of the US Government and the republic's legal institutions, such as the courts.
This leads into the messy business of tolerance in political theory. What will the west, primarily the US, accept in elected governments? There are thresholds. These thresholds are ill defined, until such time as they matter. In the 1930s little was done to stop the Nazis and the Spanish fascists headed by Franco. Yet much was done to stop the communist movement in Russia from 1917. Why stop communism but not fascism? Recall that the US entered World War 2 after it was attacked at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and claimed the victory over the Nazis while in the three years prior, it stood by as millions were sent to their deaths. (Imagine the difference in discourse if we conflated those Jews, Gypsies, trade unionists, socialists and gays killed in Nazi concentration camps with the Russians killed by the Germans? We know that Churchill and the British Government were not too worried about the Nazis attacking the Soviets... )
More recently the Rwandan genocide, or the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia - took a month of Sundays to prompt interventions by the west. Does religion and skin color determine the response of liberalism? If Muslims and communists are being killed and if black Africans are being killed, don't worry about it. Is that how our government's think?
Our government's still think in ways that are at best predetermined. Today, the Internet provides total information that feeds that predetermination. In the past, an action may have been deniable, as diplomats and spies on the ground were relied upon to find out an opponent's position or intention. Then report back with some nuance, time for rumination. Internet time is real time, but the decisions seem eerily in line with earlier history.
Who has come to the defense of the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt? Enter more messiness in global politics and the challenges facing liberalism, the hegemon of political economy. The roots of liberalism as a political force are not without their contradictions. Using surveillance to snoop on the world's Internet population, on governments and any institution deemed worthy of interest is an action considered to be acceptable in defense of liberalism. Think about it! This is a paradox that needs a lot more thought. Internet surveillance then military interventions against elected governments by the west take place in defense of tolerance - liberalism's key philosophical claim.
Look at this comment from Joshua Hersh in a piece from The New Yorker 17 August 2013.
"...Mohammed Aboul-Ghar, a seventy-three-year-old academic and politician who has been a leading figure in Egypt’s liberal establishment, and now represents one of the most confounding elements of the country’s current crisis: the wholesale alignment of old-guard liberals with the military."
Portrait of a Cairo liberal as a military backer
The key paradox of liberalism: interests that close down liberalism as practiced at the ballot box.The Internet will give the west more and more information, offering more opportunities for muscular liberalism that is sclerotic in the way it embodies tolerance. There is something wrong with this picture... will the flow of information help us understand what to make of global political economy and act accordingly? Or is that moment beyond us? If surveillance is the only game in town and drones - another Internet tool - are the preferred option, who dares stand up to this liberalism?
Everything we submit and see is surveilled, regulated and monitored. The NSA makes this its goal as an institution of the US Government.
The NSA's mission is to "protect US national security systems and to produce foreign signals intelligence information." It has been doing this since Cyber War was first put on the public policy agenda, back in the mid-1990s. I was first alerted to the concept of cyber war by a colleague at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who worked closely with the US military.
Since that time my assumption has been that my work, my movements as an alien and US resident and my communication is surveilled as a matter of course. No surprises there.
Putting more detail into the theory of unregulated information circulation means that while on one hand the Internet offered a public interest kind of freedom to see everything, as long as it could be digitized, on the other hand the Internet offered government and its institutions ways to keep track of everyone through their electronic communication. This "freedom" is now obvious, while earlier it was in an opaque, "black" or unknown public territory - of which there are many. The current context is simply this: the Internet operates strictly within the domain of US national security.
This is and was the freedom of the Internet - the dystopian present's answer to the utopian past of emancipation through the information cornucopia. The ubiquity of total surveillance in the US and beyond, brings to mind the 2006 German film, The Lives of Others, because that film portrayed everyday surveillance in the last years of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as a totalizing invasion of every human action, Everyone was an enemy of the state, or at least suspicious. With minor legal adjustments, everyone using the Internet is now a suspect. Indeed, the case can be made that even curiosity will result in punishment - this is the argument from The Who's guitarist Pete Townend, who was arrested and charged with child pornography use. He was curious. (The end of curiosity is a subject for another time).
Which brings me to the current and ongoing crisis in Egypt. The Arab Spring has been sprung because the Moslem Brotherhood and their allies in Hamas and elsewhere - democratically elected governments by the way - are obvious and known through surveillance of their communications. Of course, I can only follow press reports on how the NSA and other security organizations capture Internet traffic and assume that the righteous determination of the US to oppose non-Western political forces has run its own race, outside the jurisdiction of the US Government and the republic's legal institutions, such as the courts.
This leads into the messy business of tolerance in political theory. What will the west, primarily the US, accept in elected governments? There are thresholds. These thresholds are ill defined, until such time as they matter. In the 1930s little was done to stop the Nazis and the Spanish fascists headed by Franco. Yet much was done to stop the communist movement in Russia from 1917. Why stop communism but not fascism? Recall that the US entered World War 2 after it was attacked at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and claimed the victory over the Nazis while in the three years prior, it stood by as millions were sent to their deaths. (Imagine the difference in discourse if we conflated those Jews, Gypsies, trade unionists, socialists and gays killed in Nazi concentration camps with the Russians killed by the Germans? We know that Churchill and the British Government were not too worried about the Nazis attacking the Soviets... )
More recently the Rwandan genocide, or the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia - took a month of Sundays to prompt interventions by the west. Does religion and skin color determine the response of liberalism? If Muslims and communists are being killed and if black Africans are being killed, don't worry about it. Is that how our government's think?
Our government's still think in ways that are at best predetermined. Today, the Internet provides total information that feeds that predetermination. In the past, an action may have been deniable, as diplomats and spies on the ground were relied upon to find out an opponent's position or intention. Then report back with some nuance, time for rumination. Internet time is real time, but the decisions seem eerily in line with earlier history.
Who has come to the defense of the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt? Enter more messiness in global politics and the challenges facing liberalism, the hegemon of political economy. The roots of liberalism as a political force are not without their contradictions. Using surveillance to snoop on the world's Internet population, on governments and any institution deemed worthy of interest is an action considered to be acceptable in defense of liberalism. Think about it! This is a paradox that needs a lot more thought. Internet surveillance then military interventions against elected governments by the west take place in defense of tolerance - liberalism's key philosophical claim.
Look at this comment from Joshua Hersh in a piece from The New Yorker 17 August 2013.
"...Mohammed Aboul-Ghar, a seventy-three-year-old academic and politician who has been a leading figure in Egypt’s liberal establishment, and now represents one of the most confounding elements of the country’s current crisis: the wholesale alignment of old-guard liberals with the military."
Portrait of a Cairo liberal as a military backer
The key paradox of liberalism: interests that close down liberalism as practiced at the ballot box.The Internet will give the west more and more information, offering more opportunities for muscular liberalism that is sclerotic in the way it embodies tolerance. There is something wrong with this picture... will the flow of information help us understand what to make of global political economy and act accordingly? Or is that moment beyond us? If surveillance is the only game in town and drones - another Internet tool - are the preferred option, who dares stand up to this liberalism?
Friday, August 16, 2013
The Amazon arrival - new media anxieties
Amazon dot com owner Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million USD on August 5, 2013. There is a constructive commentary by Lexington in The Economist about the purchase and the future of newspapers, especially when opinion leaders like the Post end up owned by someone like Bezos, someone unkindly described as the billionaire owner of a large warehouse business.What right has a non-communications person to move into newspaper ownership?
(see The New Yorker, August 16 for more pics of this era http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth, scroll down the page)
Of more importance - and a real question as opposed to the faux one above is: what happens to news when it is given the digital treatment by new economy entrepreneurs?
Here are some Lexington suggestions as answers to that question from The Economist, August 10, 2013.
"With luck high-tech types such as Mr Bezos can dream up digital wheezes that attract new readers, while preserving the best of general interest newspapers - their breadth, and the serendipity of stumbling on unexpected articles or opinions. If new proprietors merely finance niche outlets with ever-tinier circulations, their money might do more good elsewhere. Mr Bezos has invested in space travel for instance..."
"Digital wheezes"?! What exactly would that be? I suspect that any connotative analysis of the phrase would suggest that digital innovations are some inferior tool used by the illiterate global hordes. Semiotic analysis has its place. And in this case Lexington's intention appears to be an attempt to wind back the digital in favour of the quality broadsheets, the real deal newspapers of the nineteenth century, or the pre-Internet era. But wheezes?
The endless harping about the end of various print media traditions has two sides:
1. the traditional-literary culturalist always believes in the supremacy of Anglicised knowledge accumulation. The Tory by any other name believes in the good, the just, the right and the entitled: in short, queen and country.
2. the revolutionary visual culturalist for whom the screen is the embodiment of all human achievement, where the eye is the gateway to the ineffable soul of the masses, wherever they are.
Visual Culture is unmaking established sensibilities. Perhaps Bezos knows this and will take the Post to a place that reinvents news within a communication dimension that cannot be recognised at this time. Even Bezos does not know, he intuits. He sees the Arab Spring, the remaking of the police state in Egypt, the fragmentation of existing nations, the vicious movement of totalizing control by limited interests. The perfect conflict that is always visually engaging. The essentialism of visual culture/
Everything feeds the visual desire. This may be the $250 million investment.
(see The New Yorker, August 16 for more pics of this era http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth, scroll down the page)
Of more importance - and a real question as opposed to the faux one above is: what happens to news when it is given the digital treatment by new economy entrepreneurs?
Here are some Lexington suggestions as answers to that question from The Economist, August 10, 2013.
"With luck high-tech types such as Mr Bezos can dream up digital wheezes that attract new readers, while preserving the best of general interest newspapers - their breadth, and the serendipity of stumbling on unexpected articles or opinions. If new proprietors merely finance niche outlets with ever-tinier circulations, their money might do more good elsewhere. Mr Bezos has invested in space travel for instance..."
"Digital wheezes"?! What exactly would that be? I suspect that any connotative analysis of the phrase would suggest that digital innovations are some inferior tool used by the illiterate global hordes. Semiotic analysis has its place. And in this case Lexington's intention appears to be an attempt to wind back the digital in favour of the quality broadsheets, the real deal newspapers of the nineteenth century, or the pre-Internet era. But wheezes?
The endless harping about the end of various print media traditions has two sides:
1. the traditional-literary culturalist always believes in the supremacy of Anglicised knowledge accumulation. The Tory by any other name believes in the good, the just, the right and the entitled: in short, queen and country.
2. the revolutionary visual culturalist for whom the screen is the embodiment of all human achievement, where the eye is the gateway to the ineffable soul of the masses, wherever they are.
Visual Culture is unmaking established sensibilities. Perhaps Bezos knows this and will take the Post to a place that reinvents news within a communication dimension that cannot be recognised at this time. Even Bezos does not know, he intuits. He sees the Arab Spring, the remaking of the police state in Egypt, the fragmentation of existing nations, the vicious movement of totalizing control by limited interests. The perfect conflict that is always visually engaging. The essentialism of visual culture/
Everything feeds the visual desire. This may be the $250 million investment.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
News Corporation - the journalism of silence
Traveling on the San Francisco highway listening to KQED, the National Public Radio station. Too many cars. There's talk back, with articulate, well informed Americans calling in about the President.
Then a caller catches my ear unlike others. Last week President Obama visited Phoenix, Arizona and made some major policy announcement about Freddie and Fannie Mae, including reforms to the housing and loan industry. Not everyone likes the changes, which are seen as privatizing the the loan industry more than it currently is. Obama puts "private capital" at center of housing plan
Housing policies aside, the KQED story was more important for what it suggests about News Corporation journalism. This is Fox News offering coverage to the population of Phoenix to a local Presidential visit, plus a policy announcement.
There was NO live coverage on Fox News in Phoenix.
In all of journalism, silence has rarely been considered a hallmark of the profession. Surely journalism has always been about utterance, presence, presentism, discourse, annunciation, "the record," knowledge, information and entertainment.
What is a journalism of silence?
Absence of coverage raises all manner of questions about journalism and it is generating a position that may be considered new in the field. Not reporting a story as a major event for the local population offers a new strategy in news coverage.
Interestingly, it is not too far removed from the arguments put by News Corporation Australia editors and managers, when they verbally rampaged against the public interest reforms in Australia. Their come-back to critics for why their organisation should not be overseen by a Public Interest Advocate, was that the Internet offered countervailing information to balance any misrepresentations of their news.
Providing no coverage is a deft, yet troubling move. It assumes active listeners and news consumers who will find other sources. It is a position that conveniently does not appear to hold up to journalistic standards, like the ideals of telling the truth - you can't get near the truth if you say nothing.
Then a caller catches my ear unlike others. Last week President Obama visited Phoenix, Arizona and made some major policy announcement about Freddie and Fannie Mae, including reforms to the housing and loan industry. Not everyone likes the changes, which are seen as privatizing the the loan industry more than it currently is. Obama puts "private capital" at center of housing plan
Housing policies aside, the KQED story was more important for what it suggests about News Corporation journalism. This is Fox News offering coverage to the population of Phoenix to a local Presidential visit, plus a policy announcement.
There was NO live coverage on Fox News in Phoenix.
In all of journalism, silence has rarely been considered a hallmark of the profession. Surely journalism has always been about utterance, presence, presentism, discourse, annunciation, "the record," knowledge, information and entertainment.
What is a journalism of silence?
Absence of coverage raises all manner of questions about journalism and it is generating a position that may be considered new in the field. Not reporting a story as a major event for the local population offers a new strategy in news coverage.
Interestingly, it is not too far removed from the arguments put by News Corporation Australia editors and managers, when they verbally rampaged against the public interest reforms in Australia. Their come-back to critics for why their organisation should not be overseen by a Public Interest Advocate, was that the Internet offered countervailing information to balance any misrepresentations of their news.
Providing no coverage is a deft, yet troubling move. It assumes active listeners and news consumers who will find other sources. It is a position that conveniently does not appear to hold up to journalistic standards, like the ideals of telling the truth - you can't get near the truth if you say nothing.
Friday, August 9, 2013
News Corporation, an Australian election, discourse
Media scholars and their colleagues in political economy have often considered the behaviour of the owners media to be one of the most fundamental tests of democracy. In the dominant western model of representative democracy, the prevailing view is that journalists have been entrusted with a level of objectivity in reporting that embodies open tolerance for diverse views of society. Of course, there is a limit to the tolerance which reflects the ideals of the Enlightenment - civility, maturity (of debate), individual self realisation, emancipation, rationality, respect for the law. All of which are open to negotiation. Media scholars, sociologists, philosophers, in fact pretty-well everyone refers to this as social discourse.
When media owners allow their privately held beliefs to overstep the bounds of that discourse and to directly control it, then the discourse is no longer characterised by tolerance. It becomes a directed channel to a limited, (immature) conversation. As I noted in Uprising and elsewhere, the Internet serves to reinforce immaturity - that is the narrowing of public discussion, in some cases facilitating "ideological grooming." If you have one set of values reiterated over and over on an appealing delivery system (all the bells and whistles of the Internet) why bother with tolerance?
This is where fundamentalism finds its richest nourishment.
Following this logic, media ownership has been freighted with unique responsibilities in democracies. These "responsibilities" emerged with the liberalism of the Enlightenment and despite protestations from pedants, are the values that underpin tolerance and about which there is always active debate. What should de tolerated?
What happens when a media proprietor in the Internet era sees his responsibilities as being about the defence of his empire, not about the discourse? To complicate matters, what happens when that mogul's business interests are primarily shifting to new media, even while he has established near-dominance over old media?
Enter stage right - Rupert Murdoch.
These and similar questions have moved into sharp relief with the announcement by the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of a Federal Election, September 4, 2013. Indeed, Rudd accused Murdoch of collusion with the liberal (conservative) leader Tony Abbott. Collusion quote, comment
Suggestions that Murdoch is a serial government-influencer have been well established in media history. His support for Margaret Thatcher was the first major international move by News Corporation and Murdoch to influence the outcome of an election. He had previously supported the Australian Labor Party's Gough Whitlam in 1972, and later turned on him in 1975.
After two weeks of the official election campaign, Kim Williams CEO of News Corporation, Australia resigned. This followed the appointment by Mr Murdoch of Col Allan to oversee the election coverage by News Corporation in Australia.
Williams is the person who made the strongest possible case against media reforms in Australia, arguing against the Public Interest Advocate. (See my blog March 2013 Australian hysteric). Chief of News Corporation Robert Thomson thanked Williams for his efforts - especially on this front:
"He has been a powerful, eloquent and effective advocate for media freedom and freedom of speech in Australia. His leadership against hastily conceived 'reforms' ensured that the vigorous and vital debate that has characterised our country will endure.We all owe him a debt of gratitude for that strong and principled stand." Regulation fight
Taking a principled stand against Public Interest ideals is what Robert Thomson means. He also means that taking one side in a debate, where News Corporation is often the only source of news in Australia, is acceptable and can be defined as "debate."
Media scholars would probably agree that the Enlightenment includes the quest for emancipation from oppression. Oversight of Public Interest ideals is not an offence against freedom, nor a type of oppression, which is what Thomson seems to be suggesting. What he and News Corporation want is freedom to do and say whatever is in their own interests. That hardly rises to the level of responsible media ownership in a democracy.
When media owners allow their privately held beliefs to overstep the bounds of that discourse and to directly control it, then the discourse is no longer characterised by tolerance. It becomes a directed channel to a limited, (immature) conversation. As I noted in Uprising and elsewhere, the Internet serves to reinforce immaturity - that is the narrowing of public discussion, in some cases facilitating "ideological grooming." If you have one set of values reiterated over and over on an appealing delivery system (all the bells and whistles of the Internet) why bother with tolerance?
This is where fundamentalism finds its richest nourishment.
Following this logic, media ownership has been freighted with unique responsibilities in democracies. These "responsibilities" emerged with the liberalism of the Enlightenment and despite protestations from pedants, are the values that underpin tolerance and about which there is always active debate. What should de tolerated?
What happens when a media proprietor in the Internet era sees his responsibilities as being about the defence of his empire, not about the discourse? To complicate matters, what happens when that mogul's business interests are primarily shifting to new media, even while he has established near-dominance over old media?
Enter stage right - Rupert Murdoch.
These and similar questions have moved into sharp relief with the announcement by the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of a Federal Election, September 4, 2013. Indeed, Rudd accused Murdoch of collusion with the liberal (conservative) leader Tony Abbott. Collusion quote, comment
Suggestions that Murdoch is a serial government-influencer have been well established in media history. His support for Margaret Thatcher was the first major international move by News Corporation and Murdoch to influence the outcome of an election. He had previously supported the Australian Labor Party's Gough Whitlam in 1972, and later turned on him in 1975.
After two weeks of the official election campaign, Kim Williams CEO of News Corporation, Australia resigned. This followed the appointment by Mr Murdoch of Col Allan to oversee the election coverage by News Corporation in Australia.
Williams is the person who made the strongest possible case against media reforms in Australia, arguing against the Public Interest Advocate. (See my blog March 2013 Australian hysteric). Chief of News Corporation Robert Thomson thanked Williams for his efforts - especially on this front:
"He has been a powerful, eloquent and effective advocate for media freedom and freedom of speech in Australia. His leadership against hastily conceived 'reforms' ensured that the vigorous and vital debate that has characterised our country will endure.We all owe him a debt of gratitude for that strong and principled stand." Regulation fight
Taking a principled stand against Public Interest ideals is what Robert Thomson means. He also means that taking one side in a debate, where News Corporation is often the only source of news in Australia, is acceptable and can be defined as "debate."
Media scholars would probably agree that the Enlightenment includes the quest for emancipation from oppression. Oversight of Public Interest ideals is not an offence against freedom, nor a type of oppression, which is what Thomson seems to be suggesting. What he and News Corporation want is freedom to do and say whatever is in their own interests. That hardly rises to the level of responsible media ownership in a democracy.
Friday, May 31, 2013
IT tax mess - the carbon tax solution
There is plenty of discussion about the tax rates for IT companies. Since the Congressional Inquiry on May 21, 2013 when Apple boss Tim Cook acknowledged the company's $100 billion untaxable money pot to US Senators, there's plenty to think about for American innovators.
Here are notes on Senator Carl Levin according to The New York Times blogger:
Mr. Cook repeats that all profits made in United States are taxed in the United States. But Senator Levin says Apple made a decision and signed an agreement in 2008 and 2009 to shift most of its profit so that it was not taxed. The result is most of the profit is in Ireland. Senator Levin says “in order to change it, we need to understand it, not deny it.” He says the committee needs to recognize that what is going on is “a huge loss of revenue.” Senate hearing blog - record
The tax rate in Ireland for the sweetheart IT deals is anywhere from 1% to 12.5%. See The Guardian story for some excellent journalism - Apple's low tax hub: Knocknaheeny, Ireland Inside Ireland
Chris Farrell on Bloomberg (On Tax Reform: It's Time To Change the Debate) has come up with a fantastic idea: a carbon tax. For this to work it would need to be made the equivalent of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights! Why not some UN action on this idea?
I would like to see the carbon tax for Information and Communication Technologies attached to my Cultural Digital Facilitation for telecommunication firms so there are no loop holes and it is applied across the board by all nations - no exceptions, a universal human preservation code. (ACDF post).
Add an International Court of Carbon Justice...
Here is Chris Farrell, May 24, Bloomberg Business Week.
The second strategy is far more ambitious and intriguing: Change the terms of debate. Drive the corporate tax rate down to single digits with dramatic simplification. Then, to avoid starving the U.S. Treasury of money, substitute a carbon tax. The corporate rate should be low enough that loopholes would no longer be worth spending political capital defending. The substitution of a carbon tax would also ensure that the federal government isn’t in need of revenue, the pitfall of supply-side calls for simply cutting corporate income taxes. Federal fiscal conservatism is a critical long-term budgeting goal. Why not raise government revenue by taxing something we agree isn’t good—environmental damage—and tax less something we like, corporate profits? Worth a try, no?
Absolutely.
Here are notes on Senator Carl Levin according to The New York Times blogger:
Mr. Cook repeats that all profits made in United States are taxed in the United States. But Senator Levin says Apple made a decision and signed an agreement in 2008 and 2009 to shift most of its profit so that it was not taxed. The result is most of the profit is in Ireland. Senator Levin says “in order to change it, we need to understand it, not deny it.” He says the committee needs to recognize that what is going on is “a huge loss of revenue.” Senate hearing blog - record
The tax rate in Ireland for the sweetheart IT deals is anywhere from 1% to 12.5%. See The Guardian story for some excellent journalism - Apple's low tax hub: Knocknaheeny, Ireland Inside Ireland
Chris Farrell on Bloomberg (On Tax Reform: It's Time To Change the Debate) has come up with a fantastic idea: a carbon tax. For this to work it would need to be made the equivalent of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights! Why not some UN action on this idea?
I would like to see the carbon tax for Information and Communication Technologies attached to my Cultural Digital Facilitation for telecommunication firms so there are no loop holes and it is applied across the board by all nations - no exceptions, a universal human preservation code. (ACDF post).
Add an International Court of Carbon Justice...
Here is Chris Farrell, May 24, Bloomberg Business Week.
The second strategy is far more ambitious and intriguing: Change the terms of debate. Drive the corporate tax rate down to single digits with dramatic simplification. Then, to avoid starving the U.S. Treasury of money, substitute a carbon tax. The corporate rate should be low enough that loopholes would no longer be worth spending political capital defending. The substitution of a carbon tax would also ensure that the federal government isn’t in need of revenue, the pitfall of supply-side calls for simply cutting corporate income taxes. Federal fiscal conservatism is a critical long-term budgeting goal. Why not raise government revenue by taxing something we agree isn’t good—environmental damage—and tax less something we like, corporate profits? Worth a try, no?
Absolutely.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Ethical IT business - The Gartner approach and a Harvard Business School story
The headline might suggest an oxymoron. Ethics and IT business do not sit well together. This is the conclusion to be drawn from the shenanigans of Apple in its tax evading, virtual non-state status. What a crock of a company.
You could say there are Americans and there are Americans. There are two categories.
Type 1: Apple Americans. Their business is always business. They embody the phrases US President Calvin Coolidge is alleged to have said in the 1920s: "The business of America is business." Their specialization is to cut corners, crush competitors, take no prisoners, act as a monopoly whenever possible... that is the story from Standard Oil / Rockefeller to Microsoft / Gates. (It is not only an American story, but if you claim righteousness and world leadership, you are going to suffer intense scrutiny.)
Type 2: Innovative Americans. In most cases they share the same ethic as the Apple folk with clear provisos.They accept the rules. The primary one being that as Americans they gain benefits from society, such as the governance the Government provides in the form of contract law, intellectual property protections, investment in universities for research purposes, and development of civil society through productive employment.
The second type are a class above. Why? Because they act in more than their own self interest. They do that because they know that to act only in their own interest is to unleash barbarian instincts that they have been taught to suppress, redirect and regulate. Of course this is not to suggest that they are soft when it comes to business. This is often misunderstood about innovators. Toughness - intellectual and personal. Probably always flawed.
So why Gartner? As a former employee who had two+ wonderful years as a consultant and researcher in the Raleigh, North Carolina office, I follow the company's plus progress with affection and some pride. It was at Gartner I learned to defer to genuine brilliance in work colleagues who knew American business inside out, but were never bullies, bigots or bastards. Not all the employees were like this, not at all. Some of them were Apples and then some.
I learned lessons about independent perspectives, about keeping your nerve and being supported by the corporation because they believed in their employees. I participated in analyst and researcher meetings where software specialists would crucify Microsoft, describing it as the worst thing that had ever happened to computer software because it held innovation back... oh and it was a monopoly, and thus undermined the aspirations of contemporary capitalism to offer opportunities for innovators. The advent of Google and the rapid shift in computing since Google has shown my colleagues to be correct. They'd say in 2001 that Microsoft has held back innovative software computing by 15-20 years!
This represented independent thinking and business acumen rolled into the best brains in the business.
The second example that comes to mind also highlights the difference between Apple and Innovative Americans. This was an anecdote told to me when I was chairing the Melbourne-Boston Sister City Association. In 2009 the chair of that organization Rob Trenberth went to a Harvard reunion. The global financial collapse was well advanced. According to Rob, the Professoriate at Harvard were in crisis, perhaps even horrified by the realisation that much of the illicit activity undertaken on Wall Street that caused the crash was due to the actions of Harvard Business School graduates. As a result ethics became a key part of the curricula and training at Harvard Business School. (They already had the envious reputation of having had Enron's Jeffrey Skilling graduate from HBS - it doesn't get much worse than that!)
It's a fine line between Apple Americans and Innovation Americans. The concepts that makes Innovation appealing are those where the angels of a better business nature are inscribed in the American belief in redemption through renewal and reinvention.
You could say there are Americans and there are Americans. There are two categories.
Type 1: Apple Americans. Their business is always business. They embody the phrases US President Calvin Coolidge is alleged to have said in the 1920s: "The business of America is business." Their specialization is to cut corners, crush competitors, take no prisoners, act as a monopoly whenever possible... that is the story from Standard Oil / Rockefeller to Microsoft / Gates. (It is not only an American story, but if you claim righteousness and world leadership, you are going to suffer intense scrutiny.)
Type 2: Innovative Americans. In most cases they share the same ethic as the Apple folk with clear provisos.They accept the rules. The primary one being that as Americans they gain benefits from society, such as the governance the Government provides in the form of contract law, intellectual property protections, investment in universities for research purposes, and development of civil society through productive employment.
The second type are a class above. Why? Because they act in more than their own self interest. They do that because they know that to act only in their own interest is to unleash barbarian instincts that they have been taught to suppress, redirect and regulate. Of course this is not to suggest that they are soft when it comes to business. This is often misunderstood about innovators. Toughness - intellectual and personal. Probably always flawed.
So why Gartner? As a former employee who had two+ wonderful years as a consultant and researcher in the Raleigh, North Carolina office, I follow the company's plus progress with affection and some pride. It was at Gartner I learned to defer to genuine brilliance in work colleagues who knew American business inside out, but were never bullies, bigots or bastards. Not all the employees were like this, not at all. Some of them were Apples and then some.
I learned lessons about independent perspectives, about keeping your nerve and being supported by the corporation because they believed in their employees. I participated in analyst and researcher meetings where software specialists would crucify Microsoft, describing it as the worst thing that had ever happened to computer software because it held innovation back... oh and it was a monopoly, and thus undermined the aspirations of contemporary capitalism to offer opportunities for innovators. The advent of Google and the rapid shift in computing since Google has shown my colleagues to be correct. They'd say in 2001 that Microsoft has held back innovative software computing by 15-20 years!
This represented independent thinking and business acumen rolled into the best brains in the business.
The second example that comes to mind also highlights the difference between Apple and Innovative Americans. This was an anecdote told to me when I was chairing the Melbourne-Boston Sister City Association. In 2009 the chair of that organization Rob Trenberth went to a Harvard reunion. The global financial collapse was well advanced. According to Rob, the Professoriate at Harvard were in crisis, perhaps even horrified by the realisation that much of the illicit activity undertaken on Wall Street that caused the crash was due to the actions of Harvard Business School graduates. As a result ethics became a key part of the curricula and training at Harvard Business School. (They already had the envious reputation of having had Enron's Jeffrey Skilling graduate from HBS - it doesn't get much worse than that!)
It's a fine line between Apple Americans and Innovation Americans. The concepts that makes Innovation appealing are those where the angels of a better business nature are inscribed in the American belief in redemption through renewal and reinvention.
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