Journalism 'Reinvention' Smacks of Government Control

Journalism 'Reinvention' Smacks of
Government Control

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/25a913853ecc.jpg[/atsimg]

The FTC released a discussion draft titled "Potential Policy
Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism,"
a 47-page document that outlines a major government push to
rescue the country's flailing media platforms

A list of potential policy recommendations to reinvent the field of
journalism that has been compiled by the Federal Trade Commission is a
"dangerous" overreach of power and a waste of taxpayer funds, critics of
the project told FoxNews.com.

"I find it dangerous for government to have a role in speech because the
government gives and the government taketh away," Jeff Jarvis, an
associate professor at the City University of New York's Graduate School
of Journalism, told FoxNews.com.

"Most of the ideas examined in this are politically untenable," Jarvis said.
"The problem with this is that the FTC is trying to set an agenda here, that
some sort of government intervention is necessary. It's a power grab by the
FTC."

www.foxnews.com...


[edit on 3-6-2010 by boondock-saint]

we've been saying it for decades.
It's finally proven now.
Government take over of
the Free Press.

And guess what?
YOU and I are gonna pay for it
with

a 5 percent tax on consumer electronics, which would generate
roughly $4 billion annually, to pay for increased public funding.

[edit on 3-6-2010 by boondock-saint]

I suppose it was inevitable. We can't have free thinking people spouting "dangerous" ideas and "hate speech". Should be interesting how the herd reacts to this.

Originally posted by Rynocerous7
I suppose it was inevitable. We can't have free thinking people spouting "dangerous" ideas and "hate speech". Should be interesting how the herd reacts to this.

It depends on who is posting.
If it's the gov shills
I expect them to go with the flow
and say how good this is that
they can prevent propaganda and lies
from being disseminated.

And then there's folks like me
who thinks this is just another
chip off the ole constitution.

Is there an antonym to the word propaganda?

It's such an ugly word, and not for the honest and unbiased.

A Michigan state senator is quoted of saying the following "Legitimate media sources are critically important to our government."

There in lies the problem. It is the belief of a large amounts of people and politicians that the media and their exercise of the First Amendment is critical to the Government. This is asinine and obsured if you think about it.

The press, and the media by extention or critical to the People. There is no doubt a continous onslaught of those in power to change this notion to convince the People that a free press is a function of the Government, not of the People.

As they continue to press that agenda, eventually the ignorant masses will begin to believe that a free press is only a function of the Government. Once that occurs, we will see more Government regulation of the free press.

If memory serves, during the Soviet years my impression was that nobody believed the official propaganda and just sort of put up with it with a world-weary cynicism.

I suspect the same would be true of the west if this awful thing passes.

Might be time to dust off our old Ham Radio liscences or something...

I expect them to go with the flow
and say how good this is that
they can prevent propaganda and lies
from being disseminated.




And Cass Sunstein among others will be the ones to decide that which is truth and that which is not. All the way until that "damn piece of paper" no longer exists.

Originally posted by Rynocerous7
And Cass Sunstein among others will be the ones to decide that
which is truth and that which is not. All the way until that "damn
piece of paper" no longer exists.

u have a very valid point.

Glen Beck points out that Sunstein is the most dangerous
man alive.

I am not a big fan of Beck, but I do see his
videos on u-tube occasionally. I don't have
TV so the internet is my only source of
news. And ATS is a fine place to fine
tune those topics into masterpieces

Originally posted by Mr Objectivity
Is there an antonym to the word propaganda?

It's such an ugly word, and not for the honest and unbiased.

lol
the word propaganda was only used
as being from their perspective.
I wouldn't call it propaganda.
I would call it

filling in the blanks

So from reading the Discuession pdf

A. Additional Intellectual Property Rights to Support Claims against News Aggregators
Internet search engines and online news aggregators often use content from news organizations without paying for that use. Some news organizations have argued that existing intellectual property (IP) law does not sufficiently protect their news stories from free riding by news aggregators. They have suggested that expanded IP rights for news stories would better enable news organizations to obtain revenue from aggregators and search engines.

FTC staff discuession draft

They want to find a way to limit search engines and aggregators from skimming news from other sites, or create a "you get it from this ip, you pay them $$ per item" type setup.

and then this gem:

1. Copyright and Fair Use The Copyright Act of 1976 (Copyright Act) grants several exclusive rights to authors or other owners of copyright in “works of authorship,” including the rights to reproduce, display, or distribute copies of the work. 3 These rights, however, are subject to several significant limitations. For example, copyright protects an author’s particular expression of ideas or facts, but does not protect the facts or ideas underlying that expression.4 Thus, news stories as written and news images are protected by copyright, but the information reported in the news stories is not.

suggests they want to copyright IDEAS of what the person is trying to say, rather then the particular way the person is stating his opinions.

Absolutely wonderful. So it will boil down to more taxes for us citizens and then copyrights on articles so we couldn't even copy and past them here, or re-write to give our own impressions.

Am I understanding these two sections correctly, because if I am, this would be orwellian on a roll.


[edit on 4-6-2010 by Cygnis]

Your going to believe a Fox News report about something like this? First of all I'll start with a small quote and the link to the actual .pdf of the FTC discussion. Because my first point is this just pre-emptive propaganda by Fox to create public sentiment against this sort of proposal by blowing it out of proportion and implying the government would directly control news media.

Please Note: This draft does not represent final conclusions or recommendations by the Commission or the FTC staff; it is solely for the purposes of discussion

www.ftc.gov...

Public subsidies for media are not government control. In fact it makes for better news because a publicly funded station does not have to worry about selling advertising time. Government control isn't a worry if you legislate it right, by tying subsidies to concrete things like the number of Journalists you have employed or amount of news programming you have on the air.

PBS, NPR and the BBC have unmatched quality in depth of news they provide. They are all subsidized publicly one way or the other.

Fox News itself is the biggest threat to free information in my opinion. They are more worried about high ratings than actually reporting facts. Shoot Glenn Beck even gets paid to do some of his editorials.

Fox News is also a private corporation beholden to one man's whim, so essentially you're taking Rupert Murdoch's word that this is bad for journalism, a man that many prominent journalists have criticized for being bad for the field.

I would say Fox News is mostly worried that this will boost their competition, they wouldn't benefit as much sense they spend most of their budget employing "personalities" who are great when you're product is info-tainment, but aren't much good for reporting actual news so much as making an issue out of news that's already there.

reply to post by Cygnis


It is much worse that than. They are looking to change the laws surrounding IP to include "facts". In the current legal structure governing IP, quite logically, your story is your story and for someone to take from it, you must be cited.

Now they want claim a level of "propriatary facts", making the actual facts that go into the story covered by IP law.

"
Most dangerous of all, the FTC considers a doctrine of "proprietary facts," as if anyone should gain the right to restrict the flow of information just as the information is opening it up. Copyright law protects the presentation of news but no one owns facts -- and if anyone did, you could be forbidden from sharing them. How does that serve free speech? "

In addition to that, you have tax breaks for news outlets, subsidized reporters, potential 501C3 status for newspapers.

What this amounts to is arguably the most unamerican thing I have heard of in years.

Kagan has some odd views on freedom of speech. Perhaps thats why he is looking to ramrod her onto the court, because these regs will surly reach the court.

Originally posted by Cygnis


They want to find a way to limit search engines and aggregators from skimming news from other sites, or create a "you get it from this ip, you pay them $$ per item" type setup.

This is to prevent content from being stolen from news sites. The only difference here is that you would have to actually visit the originating website rather than the aggregator.

Originally posted by Cygnis

suggests they want to copyright IDEAS of what the person is trying to say, rather then the particular way the person is stating his opinions.

Absolutely wonderful. So it will boil down to more taxes for us citizens and then copyrights on articles so we couldn't even copy and past them here, or re-write to give our own impressions.

Am I understanding these two sections correctly, because if I am, this would be orwellian on a roll.

[edit on 4-6-2010 by Cygnis]

No you misunderstand. They are protecting original information. So if you are the person who discovers a stolen car ring and write a report for your news outlet, other news outlets can't use your story as a source to write a story of their own about the stolen car ring. They will have to go try and talk to the cops or thieves or whoever knows about it themselves.

Basically right now its really hard for an organization selling the "news" as a product to make money. People have never really payed for news, its mostly paid for by advertising but now that print advertising is dying off and internet advertising doesn't pay enough, they are looking for ways to allow news organizations to make money.

Both of these proposals seek to reward the organizations that actually go out and gather news in the streets, versus some that just take the information and rework it into their own news product with out actually doing any journalism.



[edit on 4-6-2010 by thedarklingthrush]

thedarklingthrush, dolphinfan,

It seems that making the actual news groups having to do their own research and reporting would restrict the flow of said information a bit.

Granted I am sure they would be able to get it out, but it would make it harder for such things to go viral.

I am a little skittish on the whole "ip law" thing. seems like Internet censorship to me. Leave my net alone!

Just what everyone needs more tax breaks. At least for Corporate America, and then you have the 4% tax on Electronics for the general public. Lovely.

Yea I agree, Dolphinfan, this is unAmerican. Restriction on the Media, well, hell it's already going on, they don't report 1/2 the stuff foreign n3ews agencies report. Granted almost every single news and media agency is Biased. At least ATS lets us look at it in technicolor.

Yes, I am aware of current copyright laws, and is why I haven't linked an entire article.

wow, I am truly impressed with the way
this thread is progressing. Lots of great
info being discussed here. Thank you folks
for contributing to this thread

Originally posted by Cygnis
thedarklingthrush, dolphinfan,


Yea I agree, Dolphinfan, this is unAmerican. Restriction on the Media, well, hell it's already going on, they don't report 1/2 the stuff foreign n3ews agencies report. Granted almost every single news and media agency is Biased. At least ATS lets us look at it in technicolor.

I disagree completely. This measure is going to ensure that each individual news organization will all be reporting separately on the biggest issues which equals more diverse and varied coverage.

It also means that the same small news stories won't be repeated through all the different news outlets. There will be more since each individual news organization will have its own.

Lastly information will always be able to go viral because this isn't going to create any restrictions about commenting on the news.

This isn't going to threaten ATS or anyone's opinion blog, information will still be able to go viral. People are still going to be able to comment on any information that comes out, they just won't be allowed to use that information, by itself, for their own profit.

These laws aren't going to restrict the flow of information at all they are going to ensure that more information is gathered and disseminated.

I urge to look at the source of this report: Fox news. A private corporation beholden to two things: profit and Rupert Murdoch.

Originally posted by boondock-saint
I don't have TV

I knew there was a good reason I liked you! Some good points made for both sides. I know that a tax on electronics to subsidize journalism is patently ridiculous. That's like a tax on food to subsidize the auto industry, a total non-connect.

They do have a point in that investigative journalism especially by newspapers and tv has just about died. As the media outlets have been more and more under the influence of a few conglomerates, less real news gets out rather than irritate or offend their corporate sponsors.
What we really need is to break up the media monopolies that have been aggregated since Reagan decided to deregulate everything. Trust busting I think they used to call it.
Newspapers are a dying media, why can;t they just face the fact that they are going the way of the edsel? For every old technology that dies a new one springs up to take it's place. We need to look to the future, this is like trying to revive a dying horse. It won't work.

reply to post by thedarklingthrush


oh noes somebody attacking Fox News again.

Is Government Taking Over the News?

I love that header on the web site. It's like asking, "are blueberrys blue this year?" Yes, yes they are, and they have always been.

The media is nothing more than a propaganda machine controlled by the government.