FTC: We Will Reinvent Journalism By Force

From my personal blog Fascist Soup (better formatting at blog link):

The Federal Trade Commission has issued a proposal for government to establish total control over all news media. The document’s Orwellian title reads as follows:

POTENTIAL POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS TO SUPPORT THE REINVENTION OF JOURNALISM

The document goes on to list 13 points describing how statist newspaper ad revenues have been cut in half since 2000 because the alternative news media is kicking their butts.

Then we get to point 14.

“There are reasons for concern that experimentation may not produce a robust and sustainable business model for commercial journalism.”

Obviously this means the government must create a “sustainable” business model for them – with your tax dollars.

UH HO! What’s this!

The news is a “public good” in economic terms.

Where have I heard that before? Any time the word “public good” is thrown around by government agents you know mischief is at hand. When government considers something “public,” they automatically assume that means the “public” has the right to control it. – which means THEY have the right to control it.

“consumer demand for public affairs reporting in particular may be suboptimal”

By “suboptimal” they mean that since the public is obviously too dumb to know what they should be reading, government will have to subsidize communist news media with your tax dollars. The free market can not be trusted to provide the correct amount of public affairs reporting.

“it is not too soon to start considering policies that might encourage innovations to help support journalism into the future.”

By this they mean government is going to have to step into the news media market in order to regulate alternative media competition out of the picture so the statist old-guard media can get back to monopolizing the news.

Now we move on to the meat and potatoes of the Stalinist regulations they are seeking to implement in order to shut down alternative media.

Potential Revenue Sources from Changes in Law

A. Additional Intellectual Property Rights to Support Claims against News Aggregators

3. Policy Proposals

Proposal 1: Federal Hot News Legislation.

Some stakeholders have proposed amending the Copyright Act to specifically recognize hot news protection. Advocates argue “the copyright act allows parasitic aggregators to ‘free ride’ on others’ substantial journalistic investments”

Proposal 2: Statutory Limits to Fair Use

One panelist suggested amending the Copyright Act to limit the fair use doctrine that might otherwise protect from copyright infringement the activities of aggregators and search engines, such as the types of search engine activities blessed by the 9th Circuit in Perfect 10. In particular, he recommended legislation clarifying that the routine copying of original content done by a search engine in order to conduct a sea(caching) is copyright infringement not protected by fair use.

Proposal 3: Licensing The News

Finally, some suggest that some sort of industry-wide licensing arrangement be adopted, perhaps with the government’s help and support. Foreign governments have considered how to provide adequate incentives and funding for the news and are exploring, for example, the creation of government-fostered pilot programs to investigate new business models for IP and discourage free-riding. Such programs might enable newspapers and other content providers to experiment with micropayments” and other means to monetize digital content.

So to summarize:

· Ban the ability of blogs to aggregate the latest news.

· Ban the ability of search engines to distribute news clips.

· And the create a licensing scheme for journalists, where one needs to get industry/government approval before one can publish news information.

But there’s so much more!

B. Collaborative Actions and Antitrust Exemptions

Proposals:

Allow news organizations to agree jointly to erect pay walls so that consumers must pay for access to online content.

Allow news organizations to agree jointly on a mechanism to require news aggregators and others to pay for the use of online content, perhaps through the use of copyright licenses.

What they are saying is,

· We should allow the statist print media to organize itself into a monopoly and exempt them from anti-trust laws.

· We should also allow them to force bloggers to pay a fee each time they want to quote news snippets from their sites.

It gets better.

II. Potential Revenues from Indirect and Direct Government Support

This section first reviews the history of government subsidies and then presents proposals that have emerged to date to provide additional government funds to sustain journalism.

B. Proposals for Increased Government Subsidies, Indirect and Direct

· Establish a “journalism” division of AmeriCorps.

· Increase funding for the CPB. (public broadcasting)

· Establish a National Fund for Local News.

· Provide a tax credit to news organizations for every journalist they employ.

· Establish Citizenship News Vouchers.

Citizenship news vouchers would allow every American tax payer to allocate some amount of government funds to the non-profit media organization of their choice.

· Provide grants to universities to conduct investigative journalism.

· Allow the Small Business Administration to insure loans to fund new nonprofit journalism organizations.

· Allow content developed for international broadcasting to be used domestically.

Almost $700 million of taxpayers’ money is spent on content generated for use by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty for international dissemination. This news would be valuable to U.S. citizens as well. A 60-year old law, however, prohibits the rebroadcast of this government-funded international news to U.S. consumers and taxpayers.

· Increase postal subsidies for newspapers and periodicals.

Did you catch that?

Government is spending 700 million dollars of your money on international propaganda and they want to direct that massive government megaphone at the American public. They also want to totally subsidize the news media with your money ON TOP of creating more totally government controlled media sources.

THIS IS INSANE

What country am I living in? The Soviet Union?

The document then goes on to put forth some proposed mechanisms for paying for all this, including:

· A tax on the broadcast spectrum

· A tax on consumer electronics

· A tax on advertising sales

· A tax on internet service and cellphone service.

Then the document goes on to list all manner of cronyism with the tax system and how the tax system can be utilized to prop up failing statist media sources.

Then the document details how government information should be made more accessible to the media.

I kid you not, this is the most Orwellian insanity put out by our government I have ever seen in my life.

This is your criminal communist government in action.

I can not believe I just read what I just read.





[edit on 4-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

Needless to say, this is not the people's will.

Whereas they refuse to state so directly, they are suggesting the institution of a "News" Cartel. One where centralized control of the dissemination of information can be directly overseen by the political/corporate machinery that inhabits our government.

And rightly so.

You see they are correct in at least one part of their premise.

When the power structure co-opted the media years ago, it was to serve a short-term goal. Hence the control they assert is never 'sufficient' in their ever-expanding hopes to control human thought.

Because we are still allowed to talk to each other.

Clearly this 'suggestion' of theirs will be recognized by most able-minded people as yet another tragic example of corporate influence in the halls of government power. And most of us know that the 'politically-appointed' corporate shills that inhabit the regulatory agencies and such are responsible for this kind of approach to government.

I predict: This will be opposed as a "news media" bailout; and supported as a 'protection' of the rights of journalists who no longer observe and report; but will henceforth consider it 'mining' for information that they can "own."

The discourse will be minimalized. The net result will be disinformation and confusion to the point of the people not caring... because 'they have the Internet.' Few will shine a spotlight on the restrictive nature of this, but those who actually benefit the community by aggregating disparate and biased news to render it useful will suffer the lack of such opportunities.

And journalism will officially be dead, as it is redefined as purveyor of a new 'commodity' which will be called news (which belongs to someone)... instead of reality (which belongs to us all.) Propaganda can then reign supreme on the 'public' airwaves and mediums.

People will attempt to conduct their searches for truth until they become outlaws in the process. Doing what many do to find the truth and discuss it will render them into 'threats'...

Stay on top of this story and it's attendant events....

for example: US Government OFFICIALLY attacks Conspiracy Theories!

It all comes together as they squeeze harder and harder...

WTF... The Forth Estate will become the forth branch of the federal government... What has happened here?

The best thing about news is that it is free, which is good because it is often wrong. As for revenue, it already exists. We call it advertising. It sounds like the big boys, NYTimes and others, are pissed because they were slow on the internet band wagon and want their money back. If any of this happens I hope that the constitutional lawyers line up and sue these bastards out of office.

I must disclose that I am a web designer and often am contracted to setup news aggregating websites. So, my business has something to do with my strong views. Oh, and I am also an American. All should be mad about this.

It all comes together as they squeeze harder and harder...

You got that right buddy.

If anyone is interested in learning real facts about intellectual property and copyright from a professional economist / IP lawyer, watch this:

reply to post by mnemeth1

This kind of thing has been batted around in journalist circles in the United States since I was an undergrad. It's not the alternative press that has killed the American newspaper, it's the internet and news aggregation systems like Yahoo News and Google News that pay for none of their content but act a lot like high-end news search programs like Lexisnexis which has since gotten into serious financial trouble.

I agree that something has to be done to save print however I do not believe that the current proposal is the right one. Even though I am a socialist I do believe that this is not the time for a government bailout of the newspapers. The same chicken littles cried that the sky was falling when radio and television news came into mass markets and the papers survived those as well.

Instead I propose that newspapers themselves act on the issue, offering paid subscription websites while still linking their stories to general aggregation systems in order to draw in more potential customers. As the music industry has shown, fighting technology, especially the internet, is a loosing strategy. So people do not want to pay for a paper copy of a newspaper anymore? I say great, imagine how much the companies will save in printing and distribution costs by going to an online format.

As for the taxes on broadcast televisions, in the United Kingdom we require a television license to be bought for all sets that get commercial programming to be bought once a year. This is a lot like automobile registration in the United States and the current cost is £145.50 for 2010 (this works out to $210.84 at the current exchange rate.) The majority of funds from this excise tax go to the BBC and allow our global services around the globe with £3.49 billion ($5.06 billion) that allows the BBC to be the largest media content producer on the planet.

Comparing the BBC behemoth to the American PBS (more or less the equal in your country although a lot of PBS content comes from the BBC and Canada's CBN and PBS is only marginally funded by taxes) is like trying to show the difference between a lion and an ant. The BBC has an annual expenditures budget of between £4 billion and £5 billion ($5.8 billion to $7.2 billion.) The vast majority of this money comes from the British government, while less than a billion pounds comes from commercial ventures such as merchandising from popular shows such as Doctor Who and Top Gear and the sales of episodes to other nations. Primary American network purchasers of BBC programming are PBS, The Discovery Channel, Disney, Adult Swim and SyFy, showing the vast variety of BBC productions.

So with this in mind do I think that the United States should use tax dollars to create something like the BBC in America? Hell no! This is not a matter of cultural preservation for British content supremacy but a simple ideological difference between our nations. The United States has built the world's largest combined media content generation out of a capitalist structure, supported directly by 300 million citizens and secondarily by the entire world. Britain is much smaller (only 62 million people,) in order to compete on a global marketplace for media time we have had to pull together and contribute far more for something that is a mark of national pride.

The capitalist system has served the American media sector very well and should not be messed with. One of the most important things, I believe, for a modern socialist to understand is when the free market does a far better job at something and not mess with that!

The American media landscape is not by any imaginable stretch dying. People are still making incredible money off of the system and quality content is being generated at a rate never seen before. We are all going through a transition, melding the Internet and other online services with our existing media system that is all that is happening in my mind.

"Reinventing journalism" is already being done on a global scale thanks to market conditions and technological advancement. That process should be allowed to play out fully before any government looks at changing their practices. Don't make a half-baked plan halfway through a revolution!

I am a socialist I do believe that this is not the time for a government bailout of the newspapers.

So when in your opinion would it be the "correct" time for government to seize control of the media?

Originally posted by mnemeth1

I am a socialist I do believe that this is not the time for a government bailout of the newspapers.

So when in your opinion would it be the "correct" time for government to seize control of the media?

I do believe that journalism and media in general are vital to the people so in the case of a massive failure of all or almost all outlets would be cause for some form of control, although I would also be for re-privatization as soon as possible if this were the case in the United States. Your nation has done just far too well building a media powerhouse through private industry, and I believe the past attempts at government censorship have proven to only cripple it when attempted. I believe the American media market is one of the strongest arguments that can be made for capitalism being a needed and fundamental thing in the world. Even as a socialist I do not believe capitalism to be fundamentally evil and see a very strong place for it. Innovation and competition must thrive through it, and only when those things fail or the people are being exploited should the government step in and place frameworks, when something isn't broken don't mess with it.

What makes Britain different and somewhat unique in this regard is that the BBC is a national endeavor to further British culture worldwide, so it is supported by the people as a mark of nationalism and unity. Doctor Who, the longest running BBC fiction series is now produced by BBC Wales. BBC Scotland also has original programming of their own that they produce in-house for national and international viewing.

In essence I believe, and probably a large part of this is my own fully admitted bias working for them, that the BBC is more of a massive cultural public works project for the British people than a commercial business. We have in England especially a view of ourselves that is special to the nation that we provide this service to the world as a final lasting and positive legacy of our empire. BBC America even is included in this view of our charge. Take a look at the BBC charter it's actually very interesting for a government-backed Crown Corporation, our first duty is to our viewers worldwide not even to government or the Queen, and the public is who we answer to not the civil service. In practice it actually largely works that way too, not just on paper.

reply to post by ProjectJimmy

"What makes Britain different and somewhat unique in this regard is that the BBC is a national endeavor to further British culture worldwide, so it is supported by the people as a mark of nationalism and unity. "

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. "


Here's what Jefferson had to say about the press:

"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper."
--Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632





[edit on 4-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

Originally posted by mnemeth1
reply to post by ProjectJimmy

 

"What makes Britain different and somewhat unique in this regard is that the BBC is a national endeavor to further British culture worldwide, so it is supported by the people as a mark of nationalism and unity. "

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. "


Here's what Jefferson had to say about the press:

"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper."
--Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632





[edit on 4-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

Haha you know I like that combination of quotes, and I do think Jefferson was right, Xinhua, the national "news" agency of China is a perfect example of that.

As for National Geographic, my undergraduate degrees are in photography and journalism, for everyone with that combination a job at NatGeo is the holy grail.

Going back to what Jefferson said though, I think one of the major falsehoods that the general public has regarding journalism is exactly what goes into making a story. At large news agencies such as BBC News, there are figurative armies of people, the anchors and reporters that the public sees are just the tip of the iceberg. That much is common knowledge, but what that behind-the-scenes army does is not.

My job is as a research and fact checking journalist. I do not file stories, I file reports and make sure stories are factually correct. I provide the context, background and substance behind the story. Every time a reporter or anchor states what some government report says, someone had to read that report, and I would bet my job that it is usually not the person on screen.

In order to make one hour of televised news programming, hundreds of man-hours are needed, and time is the biggest enemy a journalist has. Case in point there was recently a mass-shooting here in Cumbria (a county in northern England,) 12 people were killed and the story has dominated the news here in London. I did not work on the story myself as my realm is international relations, but if one was to print all of the information gathered by the BBC regarding the shooting it would probably come out to literally tons of paper.

Now from these tons of information, stories short enough for time slots must be distilled down, then editors and producers have to fit them into broadcast slots depending on where they will be aired. As I said the story has dominated the coverage here in the UK, but BBC America only aired a small segment on it for the reason that it was not nearly as important to Americans as say the Gulf oil spill.

If we, as journalists could give you the public all of the information we had, we would, in fact it would make our jobs easier to do. However it is not all relevant and the sheer volume of it would mean that the public would be completely overwhelmed by the time it took to get through it all.

When networks like Fox News Channel say "we report, you decide" this is quite misleading. Just for the purposes of time, when we journalists report, we have to decide what are the facts that are most important to our viewers and it is completely impossible for human beings to do that without some bias. So every news story is really a what a group of journalists and editors/producers take on a given set of facts.

The facts can be accurate, completely, but just what facts are reported and what facts are not can change the entire meaning of a piece.

Edit: Remember this is just a function of the nature of news reporting, and must be factored into everything you see before any other kind of bias is even factored in. Once agendas really start coming into play things have a huge potential for getting shady.

[edit on 4-6-2010 by ProjectJimmy]

reply to post by ProjectJimmy


Its not the facts that are in dispute, it is the nature of the stories themselves.

Stories about shootings, cats stuck in sewer drains, Harry Potter, and whatever other total arbitrary nonsense the press deems fit to print make up the vast majority of news stories released by mainstream outlets.

Of the actual real news that is released, 99% of it comes from government press releases.

The reporters then craft a story around the press release or official interview that was granted to them by a government agent. If they behave badly, the government cuts them out of press conferences.

Investigative reporting, like the kind found on news shows such as 20/20, is almost nonexistent today. At least the kind of reporting that actually has some significant impact on peoples daily lives.

This endless bombardment of totally worthless information and fluff is intentionally put forth by the media, which as grown lazy and fat, to distract and obfuscate what is really occurring within government. They are scared about being cut off from the "press release machine" of government.

The inherent danger of allowing government to operate the press does not so much involve what is actually told, but what is not told.

reply to post by mnemeth1


To a point I agree with you, too many news outlets are simply cutting staff in order to maximize profits. They then pad their real news with lots of fluff pieces that really have no business being made. Local television news in the United States I think are the worst offenders of this.

There are still news agencies that do it the old way though, and we do not just rely on press releases. Last weekend I was helping the Moscow journalists try to get Russian officials drunk and friendly enough to tell us what the deal with American military inside of the Russian Federation was.

Around Easter, I went on a fact-finding trip through the United States regarding the patriot movement. There are thousands of other journalists doing exactly these kind of things every day all over the world.

In the case of the Cumbria shooting, I would defend that as a legitimate story, those kind of mass-murders are very rare in the United Kingdom, especially involving firearms. On top of this, the shooter was afraid of going to prison for tax crimes and Cumbria is a very pastoral area of England with only 73 people per square kilometer.

This was an important story for people to hear about in my mind.

reply to post by ProjectJimmy


Funny that you should mention the Russians, for some reason RT is the only news agency that seems to be doing real reporting these days! hahaha

WTF is going on?!

The whole world has turned upside down.

Sensationalism and profits have unfortunately come between the people and decent down to Earth news reporting. It is about trampling over people, running people off the road just to catch a story.

It's become a joke where the media dictates the policy and not The people who watch it nor the Govt whose job it is to remain neutral and independent.

Free, honest, open media has become a thing of the past and this new proposal from the FTC is not Orwellian. That is another word that gets tossed around only when its convenient to do so.

Celebs are tracked and hunted down like if they were a piece of rare meat. Celebs are so scared to death of the media that most refuse to have some sort of normal life as the second they walk out their front door they are getting ran over by some papparazi's car.

The media has become an item of entertainment and leverage instead of a legitimate news organization that every single ones claims to be when in reality they are not.

MSM is the problem. They keep us infighting and distracted long enough to push their agendas through while not caring a yap how or what we think about it.

The idiot box needs to change. The cpu is hurting tv ratings and they know it. More people rely on the internet for their news then the next 2 mediums combined (print and tv) as there is too much war, death, famine, disease, infestation, this idiot dying, this azzhat dying, more famine, more war, more death.

I hope this is the first of many nails in the coffin of The MSM as they've done nothing positive for those they claim to represent and us as well.

Cut off the power by cutting off the purse strings. Real power is excersized that way and no one has to lose their life or cost one red cent in war chest.

I agree it's wrong on many levels.. but it's destine for failure as long as we're free to choose our news sources... the establishment seriously over estimate themselves.

Some contract beef kept my 1st satellite TV service, like y2k-ish, from offering "local channels".. I didn't even care or miss em and pretty much haven't watched 95% of major network programming since. Never seen more than one or two "Lost" or "Idol" episodes.. entire series have come & gone.. "everyone loves Raymond" comes to mind, never heard of it until I got a DVD set as a misguided present. Local sad & pathetic news, lol.. literally never, occasional I'll check out a story on the net..

Let the boring monolith MSM lackeys charge money for the privilege of reading their govt approved & subsidized propaganda vomit.. they'll isolate themselves like a turd floating in the information ocean, then become even more irrelevant/laughable as we click on hassle free alternate sources who offer drastically different opinions..

Then, like true fascists, freedom to choose ends.. the man decides those with the nerve to ignore "official sources" are "terrorists" or "anti-home, fath, er..land militia" being "radicalized" by websites "officials say" are sponsored by al qaeda linked Taliban-nazi-illegal-alien-racist- truth-baggers who hate freedom, crave WMDs, deny the holocaust and want to wipe israel off the map!!

Originally posted by mnemeth1
reply to post by ProjectJimmy

 

Funny that you should mention the Russians, for some reason RT is the only news agency that seems to be doing real reporting these days! hahaha

Yes i agree RT is good but they did nothing when i pointed them in the direction of Holly Greig who was raped a child by member of the judicial system.

You have to smile now the MSM is putting news on the internet and think we are going to pay to view it ! hell i didn't read it when it was free never mind payng for it.

The news will allways get out to the public on the internet even if all the servers have to be moved to Russia and we use secure VPN connections to read it which is starting to happen anyway.

Before any news makes the MSM they spend time trying to decide how to present the news and if they need to put spin on it but place like this get the uncensored news out in seconds and this will continue so long as the mods play fair.

They will need to create WWIII and then use that as an excuse for shuting down the internet because the general public will not except it any other way and the zionists that control the press days are numbered if they sit back and do nothing.

Originally posted by mnemeth1
The document goes on to list 13 points describing how statist newspaper ad revenues have been cut in half since 2000 because the alternative news media is kicking their butts.

The word "statist" never appears in that document. What section of the document do you feel supports statism? Please quote it.

You make several translations that seem to be a bit of a reach... Others that seem to be right on.

I think I really have one point and that is the communal nature of the internet, hell there are also free market aspects to it aswell... At the
core mankind has decided it is ok to share much of its information and entertainment freely, so how can one profit from something that is available for free??? If your OP contained a corporate memo without government input it would be OK would it not? Free market, associations free to profit, protect profit and use power/capital to leverage above others. Is it not in the interests of the giants to keep their positions?
In this realm?

So less the Government involvement, I actually think, in a very rare case, you are defending communal disburse...

Should bloggers beable to use the work of others freely?

Is that not extremely communistic?

I am playing devils advocate, I do not believe the government should fund any news, however I do believe intellectual theft is a huge problem.

Music and literature are being assailed by this practice - peoples work is STOLEN with VIOLENCE, ripped forth without any say of the rightful creator and producer of the works.

Otherwise how is it different from theft?


I really think mankind is in for a very interesting ride

Anyone that thinks we will get honest reporting if government was to fund news sources with our tax dollars is nuts.

All money allocated by government is done on a partisan basis.

Always.

If a politician is spending other peoples money, he will always spend it in a manner that he feels will garner him the most votes.

Politicians and bureaucrats will also do everything within their power to limit any critical reporting on them.

It is impossible to have news that critically attacks government when all of the news sources are funded by government.

The press's primary job is to critically report on government actions. Without that, we devolve into tyranny. This is already occurring right now. With government funding the news, it will totally shut down ANY critical news.

Could you imagine if a blogger had to pay every time he linked a news source?

That is insane.

When was the last time you heard PBS attack the criminal federal reserve system?

When was the last time you heard one of the major networks (which are liciensed and subsidized by government) attack the criminal federal reserve system?

When was the last time you heard the major networks demand Obama's college records? WTF? How can we not know this stuff already?




[edit on 5-6-2010 by mnemeth1]

Its time for a world revolution. Its really time for a change. We need to realise we are not Government's servants, they are our servants. The servant who is ordering their master. We got to fire them.

reply to post by mnemeth1


already posted 24 hrs ago

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