Slovinian academic, Slavoj Zizek published a typically brilliant piece of work in the London Review of Books about the crisis in Ukraine. "Barbarism with a Human Face," 8 May, 2014. LRB
Everyone can read it and rejoice in the historical knowledge Zizek brings to the discussion: especially the history of Lenin versus Stalin. More importantly, the analysis offers a picture of the drivers of the current situation, where the expansion of Russia into Ukraine is, according to Zizek, following a crypto-Stalinist model of a unified Russia ("Socialism in one country revisited," perhaps?).
Zizek offers a mountain of evidence about the Leninist program of cultural independence for the regions that Stalin undid. Unfortunately, Zizek forgets the messy domain of culture.
Sure it may be preferable for Ukraine to be connected with progressive, liberal (that is "tolerant") Europe, rather than conservative, illiberal Slavic life. Every emancipated person still enjoying the benefits of the Enlightenment movement celebrates the wonders of human dignity against the eastern methods of culture, says this line of argument. (And one with which I agree). That hardly resolves the culture question, which is about a counter hegemonic move by many people in the Ukraine to align themselves with Russia because that is the culture with which they feel comfortable. Surely, a Leninist like Zizek should support such a claim?
Add to the cloudy cultural mix the way the Internet generates "ideological grooming," and it is no surprise that political positions in conflicts like Ukraine and many others around the world harden in seconds, like lead poured out of a furnace. The theory is that the singularity of voices on the Internet consolidates opinion, especially when only one opinion is read or watched over and over. Thus culture becomes ideology by any other name - values are elaborated, reinforced, Balkanised in anti-liberal ways.
Consequently, the news that the Russian Government has launched an Internet register for users, suggests that the uprisings in Ukraine have an Internet component.Russia Quietly Tightens Reins on Web with Bloggers Law
The report by the New York Times May 7, was about censorship of the web.
"The idea that the Internet was at best controlled anarchy and beyond any one nation’s control is fading globally amid determined attempts by more and more governments to tame the web. If innovations like Twitter were hailed as recently as the Arab uprisings as the new public square, governments like those in China, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and now Russia are making it clear that they can deploy their tanks on virtual squares, too."
There is strong American bias in this report - that is, the implicit claim that free speech in America can be applied universally. There is nothing wrong with this Enlightenment approach, except that it is given a preferential treatment in the discussion, as if everyone knows and supports free speech, as an abstract objective, regardless of how it collides with political realities. This default position, is part of the cultural calculation as well.
As it turns out, the New York Times article is about censorship, which in the countries mentioned, is not about what Americans imagine to be free speech, but the more challenging matter, anti-government activity organized through the Internet. This is the case in China, which has a remarkably liberal policy to on-line media and communication, just as long as it is not political.
Consider a counter US example: Americans organizing anti-American activities which are considered terrorist acts-in-planning, have been blown to smithereens by drones. Those people have been blown up because other people working in institutions of the US Government read their emails and listen to their speeches verbally attacking the US. This surveillance leads to maximum use of deadly force by the US Government, without judicial due process - "extrajudicial killing." It has even been discussed in relation to the use of drones on American soil against Americans! Rand Paul debatesThis link between surveillance of digital communication and killing has been a controversial matter now for several years and presents an approach that is not in accordance with the popular US belief that everyone has speech rights. Congressional debate
Russia has a tradition - contrary to many Western approaches - that government can be authoritarian in its practices. From the Tsars to Stalin to President Putin. This is Russian culture. It is not Enlightenment culture, as preached or practised in the west, but something quite different. (This is why Zizek quotes Lenin on the vast amount of "spadework" needed to bring Russia into Western Europe.)
Would it be possible to say that US Government surveillance of citizens is Puritan culture revisited, an approach that predates Enlightenment?
The relationship between Zizek's Leninist history, the Russian Internet register and US approaches to free speech are to be found in the messy stuff of culture, to which there are few clear answers except the need for tolerance of many cultures. But that hardly helps anything.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Internet Dimensions - Alcatel-Lucent projections + Bell Labs return
The Alcatel-Lucent Joint Ordinary and Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting scheduled for Paris on May 8, 2014, makes instructive reading for many reasons: the company continues to be slow to innovate and barely keeps up with its competitors; there are massive debts, profit seems unlikely to be a strong point of this year; the European economy has not allowed the firm to leap onto new initiatives and unfortunately it must look to the US for sales. The 8.1 percent increase in wireless access division activity was good news for 2013.
Many people were part of the companies Alcatel and Lucent in the late 1980s into 2002, as the US and global telecommunication markets were liberalised. Those people enjoyed the spoils of the telecoms boom followed by the bursting Internet bubble. The latter had little to recommend it!
The company includes some of its own analysis into the projected size of the digital technology population. Two data sets make eye-boggling repeating:
Finally, to reinforce the importance of the change in the dimensions of the Internet, Alcatel-Lucent has announced that it is significantly increasing its research capability. The page 18 paragraph begins with the following phrase: "refocus and unlock innovation." It is going to be a "new engagement model for Bell Labs Research," to move it "closer to the portfolio life cycle." Yes that's right, Bell Labs is back!
The outcome may be to offer more granularity to the firm's understanding of the growth of the Internet, particularly knowledge about the subsets of users and the fragmentation of applications.
For media analysts, the report suggests a continuing huge move to digital stuff and not just big data. It means more innovation theory is required.
Many people were part of the companies Alcatel and Lucent in the late 1980s into 2002, as the US and global telecommunication markets were liberalised. Those people enjoyed the spoils of the telecoms boom followed by the bursting Internet bubble. The latter had little to recommend it!
The company includes some of its own analysis into the projected size of the digital technology population. Two data sets make eye-boggling repeating:
- by 2017 3.9 billion people are expected to be on line. This is a 720% increase from 2012.
- Between 2012 and 2017 there will be a 440% increase in data centre traffic.
Finally, to reinforce the importance of the change in the dimensions of the Internet, Alcatel-Lucent has announced that it is significantly increasing its research capability. The page 18 paragraph begins with the following phrase: "refocus and unlock innovation." It is going to be a "new engagement model for Bell Labs Research," to move it "closer to the portfolio life cycle." Yes that's right, Bell Labs is back!
The outcome may be to offer more granularity to the firm's understanding of the growth of the Internet, particularly knowledge about the subsets of users and the fragmentation of applications.
For media analysts, the report suggests a continuing huge move to digital stuff and not just big data. It means more innovation theory is required.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
New Corporation, The Guardian, Public Media: trends
Importantly for public policy analysts,news about News Corporation is comprehensively reported in The Guardian. This liberal-left newspaper, now with electronic sites in the UK, the US and Australia and online readership of up to 10 million daily, has an interest in circulating information about public media, even while it is a private company.
It's holdings are complicated. The Guardian was based on a model initiated as the Scott Trust, which until 2008 provided security to the firm. In line with commercial pressures and privatization generally, the 2008 move away from the Trust was market centric. Wikipedia Short version The shift to a Limited arrangement for The Guardian financial structure put the paper more directly into the market space, thereby privileging competition and reducing its philosophical role as a public good. Little or no profit concerns gave way to a lot of profit / performance concerns.
History determines two trajectories that are part of The Guardian's orientation: 1. As a quality liberal newspaper The Guardian comprehensively reports on the media; 2. The Guardian is in a survivalist competition with News Corporation, which is personalised around the Murdoch Family, mostly the grand per Rupert Murdoch.
Reports on News Corporation's behavior in Australia have been consistently strong, as noted on occasion in this blog. February 2014, December 2012
A report on April 1, was not an April Fool's joke. It offered a detailed exploration of the conflict that has emerged in Australia between public interest / liberal media and News Corporation. The opportunity to unpack that collision is the kind of reportage that has become a key component of The Guardian's recent traction in Australia and earlier, in its coverage of the News of the World hacking scandal - a News Corporation story par excellence.
The news report, "Mark Scott: News Corp Papers Never More Aggressive Than Now," took as its ammunition a presentation by Mark Scott the Managing Director of the Australia Broadcasting Corporation at The Centrer for Advancing Journalism at The University of Melbourne. Scott report
There are excellent critiques of News and their domination of the Australian market. The real story is about monopoly practices and how some media outlets in Australian capital cities are open to control by News newspapers: especially Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart. For access to the advertising pipeline, being the only newspaper in town offers excellent sources of revenue to the newspaper. Monopoly in this sense is great - if you are the monopolist!
Monopoly practices are complicated when the media layer is thrown into the mix. As News has argued in the past, there is not really a monopoly because of the Internet.
Perhaps Kim Williams should now be seen as the "poor boy" who was sent to do his bosses bidding, arguing this line.
He was CEO of News Corporation in Australia until just before the last Australian Federal election, and did himself no good when he shilled this line of argument: "The internet makes all sorts of news available ergo there is no monopoly, there are other news sources everywhere." Running this line in response to the Australian Independent Media Inquiry recommendation for a News Media Council (a kind of Review Board for balanced content and coverage) was irritating at best for those critics who saw monopoly practices at work, and absolutely inexcusable for democrats who wanted traditionalist non-ideological news.
(Some people still believe in objectivity in news coverage...As a student of journalism at The University of Queensland in the late 1970s, we were already talking about the problem with that approach.)
What should media analysts make of Mark Scott's comments?
A. As a conservative, his comments indicate concern about News Corporation's business practices from inside the business community.
B. The report indicates that a line has been crossed, where criticism of liberal and public media in Australia is now part of the News Corporation approach.
C. Models of media management are rapidly changing under the combined weight of News Corp's aggressive push to maximise its market reach. (See Scott's comments on Fox in the US and market segmentation, as a business case).
D. Ideological forces and self interest are becoming more conspicuous thanks to Murdoch.
E. The Internet continues to remake news media.
F. Looking at News Corporation's news coverage, it magnifies its audience interests to the detriment of other opinions, by directing the audience from Fox TV to News Corporation newspapers to its own Internet sites. In Uprising I referred to this as "ideological grooming."
G. Australia offers special conditions in its political economy. The News Corp. Wall Street Journal is a different newspaper to Murdoch-owned media outfits in Australia and the UK...
Conclusion
The Guardian is an important source of information and analysis about News Corporation. It's view is helpful for researchers seeking to understand the new media ecosystem.
Media studies gets more exciting with the Internet.
It's holdings are complicated. The Guardian was based on a model initiated as the Scott Trust, which until 2008 provided security to the firm. In line with commercial pressures and privatization generally, the 2008 move away from the Trust was market centric. Wikipedia Short version The shift to a Limited arrangement for The Guardian financial structure put the paper more directly into the market space, thereby privileging competition and reducing its philosophical role as a public good. Little or no profit concerns gave way to a lot of profit / performance concerns.
History determines two trajectories that are part of The Guardian's orientation: 1. As a quality liberal newspaper The Guardian comprehensively reports on the media; 2. The Guardian is in a survivalist competition with News Corporation, which is personalised around the Murdoch Family, mostly the grand per Rupert Murdoch.
Reports on News Corporation's behavior in Australia have been consistently strong, as noted on occasion in this blog. February 2014, December 2012
A report on April 1, was not an April Fool's joke. It offered a detailed exploration of the conflict that has emerged in Australia between public interest / liberal media and News Corporation. The opportunity to unpack that collision is the kind of reportage that has become a key component of The Guardian's recent traction in Australia and earlier, in its coverage of the News of the World hacking scandal - a News Corporation story par excellence.
The news report, "Mark Scott: News Corp Papers Never More Aggressive Than Now," took as its ammunition a presentation by Mark Scott the Managing Director of the Australia Broadcasting Corporation at The Centrer for Advancing Journalism at The University of Melbourne. Scott report
There are excellent critiques of News and their domination of the Australian market. The real story is about monopoly practices and how some media outlets in Australian capital cities are open to control by News newspapers: especially Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart. For access to the advertising pipeline, being the only newspaper in town offers excellent sources of revenue to the newspaper. Monopoly in this sense is great - if you are the monopolist!
Monopoly practices are complicated when the media layer is thrown into the mix. As News has argued in the past, there is not really a monopoly because of the Internet.
Perhaps Kim Williams should now be seen as the "poor boy" who was sent to do his bosses bidding, arguing this line.
He was CEO of News Corporation in Australia until just before the last Australian Federal election, and did himself no good when he shilled this line of argument: "The internet makes all sorts of news available ergo there is no monopoly, there are other news sources everywhere." Running this line in response to the Australian Independent Media Inquiry recommendation for a News Media Council (a kind of Review Board for balanced content and coverage) was irritating at best for those critics who saw monopoly practices at work, and absolutely inexcusable for democrats who wanted traditionalist non-ideological news.
(Some people still believe in objectivity in news coverage...As a student of journalism at The University of Queensland in the late 1970s, we were already talking about the problem with that approach.)
What should media analysts make of Mark Scott's comments?
A. As a conservative, his comments indicate concern about News Corporation's business practices from inside the business community.
B. The report indicates that a line has been crossed, where criticism of liberal and public media in Australia is now part of the News Corporation approach.
C. Models of media management are rapidly changing under the combined weight of News Corp's aggressive push to maximise its market reach. (See Scott's comments on Fox in the US and market segmentation, as a business case).
D. Ideological forces and self interest are becoming more conspicuous thanks to Murdoch.
E. The Internet continues to remake news media.
F. Looking at News Corporation's news coverage, it magnifies its audience interests to the detriment of other opinions, by directing the audience from Fox TV to News Corporation newspapers to its own Internet sites. In Uprising I referred to this as "ideological grooming."
G. Australia offers special conditions in its political economy. The News Corp. Wall Street Journal is a different newspaper to Murdoch-owned media outfits in Australia and the UK...
Conclusion
The Guardian is an important source of information and analysis about News Corporation. It's view is helpful for researchers seeking to understand the new media ecosystem.
Media studies gets more exciting with the Internet.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Stopping social media - Is this evidence of its impact?
Speaking at Dublin City University in February 2014, my presentation was titled: "Uprising: What happens next?"
I addressed the political chaos in Egypt where reports of the influence of Social Media and the impact of the Internet have been strong. In my view Social Media has been generating hyper-fragmentation among interest groups in society, giving rise to "ideological grooming" which continues apace.
Researchers are notoriously brave or reckless in theorizing technological determinism in the quest for democracy. Count me in that lot.
Now there is evidence of real impacts as opposed to marketing claims from techo-boosters parading as researchers - I know the terrain is complex, but the point is worth making less researchers become corporate shills. (definition of shill: a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty).
Turkey Prime Minister quote:
"We are determined on this subject. We will not leave this nation at the mercy of YouTube and Facebook," Erdoğan said in an interview late on Thursday with the Turkish broadcaster ATV. "We will take the necessary steps in the strongest way."
Read the report here. Stopping social media in Turkey
Then this from SXSW -
"Eric Schmidt to dictators: 'You don’t turn off the internet: you infiltrate it'."
I addressed the political chaos in Egypt where reports of the influence of Social Media and the impact of the Internet have been strong. In my view Social Media has been generating hyper-fragmentation among interest groups in society, giving rise to "ideological grooming" which continues apace.
Researchers are notoriously brave or reckless in theorizing technological determinism in the quest for democracy. Count me in that lot.
Now there is evidence of real impacts as opposed to marketing claims from techo-boosters parading as researchers - I know the terrain is complex, but the point is worth making less researchers become corporate shills. (definition of shill: a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty).
Turkey Prime Minister quote:
"We are determined on this subject. We will not leave this nation at the mercy of YouTube and Facebook," Erdoğan said in an interview late on Thursday with the Turkish broadcaster ATV. "We will take the necessary steps in the strongest way."
Read the report here. Stopping social media in Turkey
Then this from SXSW -
"Eric Schmidt to dictators: 'You don’t turn off the internet: you infiltrate it'."
The pursuit of televisual happiness: Public interest, net neutrality, regulation
Significantly serious claims have been made following the announcement that Comcast is planning to buy up and consolidate large chunks of the broadband infrastructure by purchasing Time-Warner for $45 bn. The result is likely to be new price regimes for its customers. ZDNet The commercial imperatives of Comcast will provoke, say the critics, the end of net neutrality, as Comcast plays favorites with its preferred content providers - mostly NBC-Universal and (maybe) Time-Warner, which it owns or will own. Ah, the luxury of vertical integration.
Here is the snap-shot picture from ZD-Net's Larry Dignan.
That's part of the business case.
Content providers and public interest activists are outspoken about the ability of Comcast to control the cost and speed of content from innovators such as Netflix and Google, which rely on the cable and internet providers to get their programs to consumers.
The larger point is this: the national communication infrastructure is changing. In fact, it may be accurate to say it is disappearing.
And why? The Internet is the vehicle by which national systems of regulation have been turned on their heads. Historically, as I showed in Uprising, the business interests of the computer industry operated in an unregulated space. As digital switching devices were gradually incorporated into the telecommunications voice network, the computer industry brought their business approaches to telephony. They expressed an unregulated, market-first approach, not a public interest orientation. The shift away from regulation toward a kind of cowboy communication, where the guy with the fastest business proposition won, was undertaken in a series of commercially driven moves to deregulate. (The Computer Inquiries, 1974, 1984, 1994.) Like ranchers, or silver and gold miners in the wild west, small chunks of the vast telecommunication enterprise could be claimed by entrepreneurs, in a winner-take-all shoot out for digital freedom. ("Information just wants to be free.") Thus the end of the regulated national infrastructure. Thus innovation agility in the market place obsession in computer technology which drives Silicon Valley and its progeny.
If you don't have regulation with a centrally located legal code, you cannot have a national infrastructure in the public interest.
In short, the infrastructure of the US national telecommunication network overseen by national regulators such as the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has been gradually made redundant against the business logic of American free enterprise. Originally, FCC regulations were to make voice services universal and affordable - to bring together the entire nation. (Media and journalism academic James Carey showed in Communication as Culture (1989) that the national culture was embodied within communication). Slowly, consistently, (regulated) telecommunication services (voice telephony) became (unregulated) information services (Internet).
With the Comcast acquisition and opposition to it, there is every reason to believe old regulatory theory will be applied to keep the content flowing and to make us happy. The Guardian reported results from a court case, noting that the court "reaffirm[ed] that the commission had authority to regulate broadband access under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the FCC will use that authority to review how it can bring back non-discrimination and no-blocking regulations while complying with the order." Italics added.
Bringing back non-discrimination and non-blocking is a way to guarantee televisual equality, in the constructivist language of mainstream US law.
Here's the thing: Everyone agrees that consumers should be happy and nothing is more unhappy-making than not being able to get your favorite TV program. This is an important cultural aspect of telecommunication policy making - the pursuit of televisual happiness. (In the 1936 Telecommunication Act it was the pursuit of audio-telephone happiness.)
Cultural aspects of telecommunication policy express the core of American values, constitutionally codified in that telling, yet ambiguous phrase, "the pursuit of happiness." My view is that happiness as conceived in this regard is unattainable, which is why the phrase is so perfect. It is in the "pursuit" that American culture revels, not the realisation of happiness.
Customers, end-users, will probably have the costs of content of the new Comcast network passed to them. The possibility here is that the price tiering that already exists based on end-users ability to pay, will become more segmented. This is what stands out in the ZDNet report and the Comcast case - how quickly this deal will be profitable as costs are passed to consumers who will pay up, while the business costs of both companies are reduced through the merger and reduction of competition. (Comcast reports EBITDA margins of 41.1% and Time-Warner 36.1%. It's a good business!)
Those in wealthy neighbourhoods and cities will: a. have the ability to pay - be able to accept the cost increases; b. have the infrastructure in their neighborhoods because they are the neighborhoods where people can pay the higher fees. (Quick question on the relationship of the national infrastructure to national culture: how many people are watching HBO specials in minority and poor neighborhoods, where HBO is not part of broadcast television or basic cable? This split needs more discussion: the culture of the upper middle class and the other.)
There is a third consideration for public interest reasons: the Federal Communication Commission has signalled the introduction of regulations in the new vertically integrated scenario.FCC Chair on regulating The carriers, such as Verizon, hate this. And rightly so. Regulation undoes the cowboys, it can insist on the public interest which becomes a tool for public discourse about the infrastructure, the nation and culture.
One other matter of note: Watch the FCC and its opponents closely in the debate about reintroducing regulation. What happens in the FCC can translate into national infrastructure debates outside the US.
Here is the snap-shot picture from ZD-Net's Larry Dignan.
That's part of the business case.
Content providers and public interest activists are outspoken about the ability of Comcast to control the cost and speed of content from innovators such as Netflix and Google, which rely on the cable and internet providers to get their programs to consumers.
The larger point is this: the national communication infrastructure is changing. In fact, it may be accurate to say it is disappearing.
And why? The Internet is the vehicle by which national systems of regulation have been turned on their heads. Historically, as I showed in Uprising, the business interests of the computer industry operated in an unregulated space. As digital switching devices were gradually incorporated into the telecommunications voice network, the computer industry brought their business approaches to telephony. They expressed an unregulated, market-first approach, not a public interest orientation. The shift away from regulation toward a kind of cowboy communication, where the guy with the fastest business proposition won, was undertaken in a series of commercially driven moves to deregulate. (The Computer Inquiries, 1974, 1984, 1994.) Like ranchers, or silver and gold miners in the wild west, small chunks of the vast telecommunication enterprise could be claimed by entrepreneurs, in a winner-take-all shoot out for digital freedom. ("Information just wants to be free.") Thus the end of the regulated national infrastructure. Thus innovation agility in the market place obsession in computer technology which drives Silicon Valley and its progeny.
If you don't have regulation with a centrally located legal code, you cannot have a national infrastructure in the public interest.
In short, the infrastructure of the US national telecommunication network overseen by national regulators such as the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has been gradually made redundant against the business logic of American free enterprise. Originally, FCC regulations were to make voice services universal and affordable - to bring together the entire nation. (Media and journalism academic James Carey showed in Communication as Culture (1989) that the national culture was embodied within communication). Slowly, consistently, (regulated) telecommunication services (voice telephony) became (unregulated) information services (Internet).
With the Comcast acquisition and opposition to it, there is every reason to believe old regulatory theory will be applied to keep the content flowing and to make us happy. The Guardian reported results from a court case, noting that the court "reaffirm[ed] that the commission had authority to regulate broadband access under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and the FCC will use that authority to review how it can bring back non-discrimination and no-blocking regulations while complying with the order." Italics added.
Bringing back non-discrimination and non-blocking is a way to guarantee televisual equality, in the constructivist language of mainstream US law.
Here's the thing: Everyone agrees that consumers should be happy and nothing is more unhappy-making than not being able to get your favorite TV program. This is an important cultural aspect of telecommunication policy making - the pursuit of televisual happiness. (In the 1936 Telecommunication Act it was the pursuit of audio-telephone happiness.)
Cultural aspects of telecommunication policy express the core of American values, constitutionally codified in that telling, yet ambiguous phrase, "the pursuit of happiness." My view is that happiness as conceived in this regard is unattainable, which is why the phrase is so perfect. It is in the "pursuit" that American culture revels, not the realisation of happiness.
Customers, end-users, will probably have the costs of content of the new Comcast network passed to them. The possibility here is that the price tiering that already exists based on end-users ability to pay, will become more segmented. This is what stands out in the ZDNet report and the Comcast case - how quickly this deal will be profitable as costs are passed to consumers who will pay up, while the business costs of both companies are reduced through the merger and reduction of competition. (Comcast reports EBITDA margins of 41.1% and Time-Warner 36.1%. It's a good business!)
Those in wealthy neighbourhoods and cities will: a. have the ability to pay - be able to accept the cost increases; b. have the infrastructure in their neighborhoods because they are the neighborhoods where people can pay the higher fees. (Quick question on the relationship of the national infrastructure to national culture: how many people are watching HBO specials in minority and poor neighborhoods, where HBO is not part of broadcast television or basic cable? This split needs more discussion: the culture of the upper middle class and the other.)
There is a third consideration for public interest reasons: the Federal Communication Commission has signalled the introduction of regulations in the new vertically integrated scenario.FCC Chair on regulating The carriers, such as Verizon, hate this. And rightly so. Regulation undoes the cowboys, it can insist on the public interest which becomes a tool for public discourse about the infrastructure, the nation and culture.
One other matter of note: Watch the FCC and its opponents closely in the debate about reintroducing regulation. What happens in the FCC can translate into national infrastructure debates outside the US.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Strange data - Ukraine readers on the public interest
This week has been momentous for the Ukraine. In Europe - or at its doorstep - live ammunition has been used against protesters, killing perhaps hundreds.
And this week, more people than ever in Ukraine read my blog. It was the blog about public broadcasting and the public interest. It is 16 people so far, a tiny number. However the "surge" in readership suggests an interest in the relationship between the state and public broadcasters, between private interests and government.
This is the political economy of media.
There are differing sets of questions and concerns:
Why is this framing important? Here is a guess that is not reflected in most media reports I have seen and heard: Ukraine is cursed with an unfortunate geography: close to Russia and its transformation and Slavic culture (closed and traditional) while also close to Western Europe and drawn to the west's social and economic approaches to governance and culture (open and disruptive).
How could public interests be served by broadcasters in such a cauldron of competing cultural interests? I suspect this is the pressing issue for policy makers in a country that is currently tending towards eastern styles of autocracy, while looking to the west for liberal models of development and democracy.
To readers in Ukraine - please stay the course in pursuing the public interest. It will probably be a model that I don't recognise because there is no single model of the public interest and public broadcasting. Every nation needs its own national broadcasting system to suit its democratic purposes.
And this week, more people than ever in Ukraine read my blog. It was the blog about public broadcasting and the public interest. It is 16 people so far, a tiny number. However the "surge" in readership suggests an interest in the relationship between the state and public broadcasters, between private interests and government.
This is the political economy of media.
There are differing sets of questions and concerns:
- how government media institutions respond to vested interests;
- how public broadcasters respond to governments;
- and a third set of interests is what private media companies do.
Why is this framing important? Here is a guess that is not reflected in most media reports I have seen and heard: Ukraine is cursed with an unfortunate geography: close to Russia and its transformation and Slavic culture (closed and traditional) while also close to Western Europe and drawn to the west's social and economic approaches to governance and culture (open and disruptive).
How could public interests be served by broadcasters in such a cauldron of competing cultural interests? I suspect this is the pressing issue for policy makers in a country that is currently tending towards eastern styles of autocracy, while looking to the west for liberal models of development and democracy.
To readers in Ukraine - please stay the course in pursuing the public interest. It will probably be a model that I don't recognise because there is no single model of the public interest and public broadcasting. Every nation needs its own national broadcasting system to suit its democratic purposes.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Is the public interest served by public broadcasting?
IN the past couple of months several news articles and print media discussion pieces have assessed moves against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) the national public broadcaster. Late in January, the ABC's journalism was called into question by the Prime Minister Tony Abbott, for its coverage of refugees seeking to escape into Australian territorial waters from Indonesia. Abbott statements
It was a nationalist-centric set of comments, is notable for the way it constructs the ABC's role as one that should offer preferential reportage of Australian interests:
"Prime Minister Tony Abbott has berated ABC News, arguing that it is taking ''everyone's side but Australia's'' and that journalists should give the navy the ''benefit of the doubt'' when it comes to claims of wrongdoing."
Following this outburst, and a somewhat less subtle one last year from Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who asked if the ABC was promoting the national interest. Bishop the role of public broadcasters has become a hot target for conservatives. The ideals of a public broadcaster like the ABC are independence and criticism, hallmarks of the modernist model of society.
The ABC is about to be reviewed by the Federal Government in an "efficiency study," following several accusations that the broadcaster if biased against the country and towards the left. Efficiency study (In this scenario, the political left has been effectively reconstructed in the public imagination by conservatives as liberal, creating the impression that liberalism - tolerance - should be strongly contested, even overturned). This case has been been promoted by conservative think tank IPA - an Australian privatisation protagonist, with close associations with Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation. Together these two institutions have created a pincer movement influencing public opinion. It hardly qualifies as public opinion though, and needs to be redefined when the opinion is singular or mono-tonal in its views. Comment from IPA
Inevitably, the ABC (and its privatised partner Special Broadcasting Service, SBS) will survive, having been suitably disciplined.
The move to curtail public broadcasting has not been restricted to Australia, with a 10% cut to National Public Radio (NPR) late in September 2013. NPR 10% staff cut In the US there is consistent drip of negative commentary and political action against NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), resulting in the steady loss of public funds from Congress for the broadcasters. Endless campaigns for donations and sponsor advertisements have become part of the flow from public broadcasters in the US. Symbolically, the public is reduced by the campaigns to endless requests for support of itself, to tell its non-commercial stories, to investigate, critique and report. One exception being college radio stations.
The moves against public broadcasting opens two related perspectives, which are obvious and will not be considered in detail here:
1. The public interest aspect of public broadcasting;
2. Organised private interests as opponents of public broadcasting
There is a larger point for media and communication scholars and users: How to make sense of public broadcasting in the era of privatization.
This discussion is engaging for public interest theorists who believe in and support liberalism's core ideology, tolerance. The irony is that liberalism as applied to public broadcasting has shown itself to be a complicated beast. The tolerance that is at the centre of public broadcasting - the ideal of a diverse society fully represented and sustained by the national broadcaster, to paraphrase the founder of the BBC, Lord Reith - allows the intolerant to reject tolerance. In the public broadcasting present, tolerance for divergent views is treated with intolerance by opponents of tolerance.
This is a larger issue that hardly gets to the core of contemporary political economic theory, much less democratic visions of the relationship between the state and its citizens. The point is that any certainty about public broadcasting as a public good is open to questions that are driven by the private economic interests of for-profit media owners and political interests who (frankly) are intolerant. of diversity and difference.
The arguments are of interest to those people who seek to understand the new media and communications order in the internet era, because many of the arguments against public broadcasting emerge from internet-based libertarians. Namely, the Internet is a superior source for all news and information, it is ubiquitous, universal and open to all. Why take tax payers' money to fund public broadcasting when commercially viable internet providers can offer the same services?
Here is the IPA line, taken from the article cited above, which mirrors a News Corporation line:
"If there was ever a case for a taxpayer-funded state broadcaster, it doesn't exist today. Australians have at their fingertips access to more news from more varied sources than ever before. Online, every niche interest and point of view is well covered. And as private media companies continue to struggle with profitability, the continued lavish funding of the ABC only serves to undermine their business model further."
Readers of this blog will be familiar with this line of argument from News Corporation. When the Australian Independent Media Inquiry (Finkelstein) recommended in February 2012, a News Media Council to offer a review of journalistic performance, News Corporation was keen to offer the argument "the Internet is the solution." (Final Finkelstein Report)
Margaret Simmons from The University of Melbourne, Centre for Advanced Journalism offered a constructive summary of Finkelstein - which indicated key points in the debate. Yet her summary like many others failed to mention the gorilla in the room, the ideological master stroke of those people and organizations opposed to public broadcasting - the Internet. (Margaret Simmons Summary). To add to this "gorilla" are questions about the nature of the public interest in a society without public broadcasting alternatives. More works needs to be undertaken to explore this ideological shift - that is, the Internet as private provider and a mechanism used to anchor arguments against public interest institutions. It is an important and complex discussion.
At other conjunctures, it is pretty simple. This brings News Corporation in its news configuration, not its television side, to the table. John Birmingham writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, 12 December, 2013, generated the headline "Simple as ABC: Murdoch out to crush ABC." Simple as ABC
Always always always there is power and money to be considered; the power of a conservative government in the short term, the wealth, power and interests of the Murdoch family and their media properties over the long arc.
It was a nationalist-centric set of comments, is notable for the way it constructs the ABC's role as one that should offer preferential reportage of Australian interests:
"Prime Minister Tony Abbott has berated ABC News, arguing that it is taking ''everyone's side but Australia's'' and that journalists should give the navy the ''benefit of the doubt'' when it comes to claims of wrongdoing."
Following this outburst, and a somewhat less subtle one last year from Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who asked if the ABC was promoting the national interest. Bishop the role of public broadcasters has become a hot target for conservatives. The ideals of a public broadcaster like the ABC are independence and criticism, hallmarks of the modernist model of society.
The ABC is about to be reviewed by the Federal Government in an "efficiency study," following several accusations that the broadcaster if biased against the country and towards the left. Efficiency study (In this scenario, the political left has been effectively reconstructed in the public imagination by conservatives as liberal, creating the impression that liberalism - tolerance - should be strongly contested, even overturned). This case has been been promoted by conservative think tank IPA - an Australian privatisation protagonist, with close associations with Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation. Together these two institutions have created a pincer movement influencing public opinion. It hardly qualifies as public opinion though, and needs to be redefined when the opinion is singular or mono-tonal in its views. Comment from IPA
Inevitably, the ABC (and its privatised partner Special Broadcasting Service, SBS) will survive, having been suitably disciplined.
The move to curtail public broadcasting has not been restricted to Australia, with a 10% cut to National Public Radio (NPR) late in September 2013. NPR 10% staff cut In the US there is consistent drip of negative commentary and political action against NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), resulting in the steady loss of public funds from Congress for the broadcasters. Endless campaigns for donations and sponsor advertisements have become part of the flow from public broadcasters in the US. Symbolically, the public is reduced by the campaigns to endless requests for support of itself, to tell its non-commercial stories, to investigate, critique and report. One exception being college radio stations.
The moves against public broadcasting opens two related perspectives, which are obvious and will not be considered in detail here:
1. The public interest aspect of public broadcasting;
2. Organised private interests as opponents of public broadcasting
There is a larger point for media and communication scholars and users: How to make sense of public broadcasting in the era of privatization.
This discussion is engaging for public interest theorists who believe in and support liberalism's core ideology, tolerance. The irony is that liberalism as applied to public broadcasting has shown itself to be a complicated beast. The tolerance that is at the centre of public broadcasting - the ideal of a diverse society fully represented and sustained by the national broadcaster, to paraphrase the founder of the BBC, Lord Reith - allows the intolerant to reject tolerance. In the public broadcasting present, tolerance for divergent views is treated with intolerance by opponents of tolerance.
This is a larger issue that hardly gets to the core of contemporary political economic theory, much less democratic visions of the relationship between the state and its citizens. The point is that any certainty about public broadcasting as a public good is open to questions that are driven by the private economic interests of for-profit media owners and political interests who (frankly) are intolerant. of diversity and difference.
The arguments are of interest to those people who seek to understand the new media and communications order in the internet era, because many of the arguments against public broadcasting emerge from internet-based libertarians. Namely, the Internet is a superior source for all news and information, it is ubiquitous, universal and open to all. Why take tax payers' money to fund public broadcasting when commercially viable internet providers can offer the same services?
Here is the IPA line, taken from the article cited above, which mirrors a News Corporation line:
"If there was ever a case for a taxpayer-funded state broadcaster, it doesn't exist today. Australians have at their fingertips access to more news from more varied sources than ever before. Online, every niche interest and point of view is well covered. And as private media companies continue to struggle with profitability, the continued lavish funding of the ABC only serves to undermine their business model further."
Readers of this blog will be familiar with this line of argument from News Corporation. When the Australian Independent Media Inquiry (Finkelstein) recommended in February 2012, a News Media Council to offer a review of journalistic performance, News Corporation was keen to offer the argument "the Internet is the solution." (Final Finkelstein Report)
Margaret Simmons from The University of Melbourne, Centre for Advanced Journalism offered a constructive summary of Finkelstein - which indicated key points in the debate. Yet her summary like many others failed to mention the gorilla in the room, the ideological master stroke of those people and organizations opposed to public broadcasting - the Internet. (Margaret Simmons Summary). To add to this "gorilla" are questions about the nature of the public interest in a society without public broadcasting alternatives. More works needs to be undertaken to explore this ideological shift - that is, the Internet as private provider and a mechanism used to anchor arguments against public interest institutions. It is an important and complex discussion.
At other conjunctures, it is pretty simple. This brings News Corporation in its news configuration, not its television side, to the table. John Birmingham writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, 12 December, 2013, generated the headline "Simple as ABC: Murdoch out to crush ABC." Simple as ABC
Always always always there is power and money to be considered; the power of a conservative government in the short term, the wealth, power and interests of the Murdoch family and their media properties over the long arc.
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