October 2010

Colbert-Stewart rally raises question: Where is journalism headed?

[Commentary] If you thought the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear " coming up on Oct. 30 in Washington was just a date for some good laughs and maybe hot entertainment, think again. It is also shaping up as yet another event in the ongoing dialogue about where journalism is headed in the brave world of new media, where points of view are welcome.

National Public Radio deemed the rally a political event and reminded reporters to not attend unless they were covering the event. Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington then weighed in, blasting NPR's position as archaic and untenable in today's world. These days, transparency - not what she calls a "false objectivity" - is the new guiding star for journalism.

Jeff Cohen, founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College in New York and founder of the media watchdog organization Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), says Stewart and Colbert are doing more to cultivate the democratic spirit when they poke fun at leadership than the mainstream media is doing in their reports. "I've been scrutinizing the media for decades, and I would say it is a rough time for traditional media but great for journalism," Cohen says. "The main reason mainstream media is under siege is because on major story after major story, they got it wrong," says Cohen. "It's not because reporters marched in Washington," he says. "It's because of the botched reporting in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and the totally missed financial crisis. The independent new voices have blossomed because of their content failures."

Broadcasters caught in political crossfire

Candidates facing blistering attacks from television and radio ads are fighting back by demanding that stations take down ads that contain false claims.

Station owners and their lawyers said they're seeing more demands that they take down ads, often threatening lawsuits or complaints to the Federal Communications Commission. "Each year it gets to be a bigger and bigger problem, and that's just a function of ads are getting more and more aggressive, and more money is coming in from non-candidate groups," said David Oxenford, a Washington attorney who represents broadcasters and who is the editor of BroadcastLawBlog.com. Although political ads are generally protected by the First Amendment, protests can succeed in blunting the attacks. The Federal Communications Commission doesn't keep statistics but "is not seeing an increase in political advertising complaints," said Janice Wise, an FCC spokeswoman. She said the FCC has never taken action against a license for the content of ads. But Oxenford said threats of action -- lawsuits or FCC complaints -- have risen steadily.

Ads bombard airwaves in gubernatorial races

Television advertising to influence governors' contests has doubled compared with 2006, as wealthy candidates, political parties and a slew of special-interest groups pump millions into 37 races, an analysis of political commercials shows.

Outside groups have emerged as bigger players, spending nearly $28 million from Sept. 1 to Oct. 7. There were triple the number of ads such groups ran in the same period in 2006, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising. Overall, gubernatorial candidates, political parties and others spent $162.2 million to air 293,000 commercials during the five-week period. That's twice the number of ads broadcast four years earlier. "These are historic spending levels of advertising," said Erika Franklin Fowler, the project's co-director and an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. "The sheer volume of advertising is one prime indication that both sides understand how high the stakes are."

Which Election 2010 race has run the most TV ads? Not the one you'd expect

In an election season that has buzzed with stories from Delaware to Alaska, it is Wisconsin that, by one important measure, has been in the eye of the storm. More television ads ran in the US Senate race in Wisconsin than for any race in any other state, according to the Wesleyan Media Project at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

Between Sept. 1 and Oct. 7, 18,256 ads aired, which researchers say averages to one ad airing somewhere in Wisconsin every two minutes. Nevada came in second with 17,777 television ads aired during the same five-week period. The race between Sen. Russ Feingold (D), a three-term incumbent, and Oshkosh businessman Ron Johnson remains close, according to Pollster.com, which shows Mr. Johnson leading Senator Feingold, 50.8 to 44.6 percent. Close races usually result in a war for television airtime, which becomes essential when races are close and fought "at the margins," says Erika Franklin Fowler, director of the Wesleyan Media Project. Moreover, the high volume of television ads is evidence that the coffers of both campaigns are healthy, says Charles Franklin, a cofounder of Pollster.com and a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

A Favorite Villain in Election Ads: New York

With less than two weeks to go before the election, dozens of races remain too close to call. But one clear loser, already, is New York City. More than 200 candidates around the country have run ads demonizing the financial industry or Wall Street, often trying to tie an opponent to a culture of greed and government bailouts. But the taint is also spreading to the city itself, which is being portrayed in an unflattering and unsettling way.

Top Corporations Aid Chamber of Commerce Campaign

Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce kicked off a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation's financial regulations. Dow Chemical delivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed rules that would impose tighter security requirements on chemical facilities. And Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon, a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands, donated more than $8 million in recent years to a chamber foundation that has been critical of growing federal regulation and spending.

These large donations -- none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber, a tax-exempt group that keeps its donors secret, as it is allowed by law -- offer a glimpse of the chamber's money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall's Congressional elections. They suggest that the recent allegations from President Obama and others that foreign money has ended up in the chamber's coffers miss a larger point: The chamber has had little trouble finding American companies eager to enlist it, anonymously, to fight their political battles and pay handsomely for its help.

How $50 million in donations led KCET to split from PBS

In 2004, KCET-TV, the PBS affiliate in Los Angeles, enjoyed what seemed like a stroke of unimaginable good fortune. Like most public television stations, KCET struggled for funding, but in that year it began raking in generous grants for preschool programming that would eventually total $50 million. The gifts were the largest in the station's history, and the programs, "A Place of Our Own" and its Spanish-language companion, "Los Ninos en Su Casa," went on to win Peabody and local Emmy awards and later aired on PBS stations nationwide.

The oil giant BP had kicked in half the money, and in gratitude KCET bosses renamed their historic Sunset Boulevard soundstage BP Studios. But over the next few years, the golden egg hatched an albatross — one that directly led to KCET's surprising announcement earlier this month that it would exit PBS effective Jan. 1, thus leaving the nation's second-largest media market without a flagship public television station and marking the first defection of a major market station from the national network. As BP was grappling last summer with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that badly tarnished its reputation, the unintended aftermath of its charitable giving had already begun to engulf PBS and the West Coast pillar of its national system. Under the network's complicated dues structure, which operates similar to a progressive tax, KCET would eventually see its dues to PBS soar more than 40%, from $4.9 million to nearly $7 million annually, in wake of the new grants.

The irony of the windfall is that even though it left the station flush with money, KCET could use none of it to settle its account with PBS. The grants came with the stipulation they could not be used for such administrative costs. And around the time the higher payments came due, KCET's major funding streams began drying up amid the tumbling national economy.

Online booking causes tax war

The last time you went on vacation or hit the road for work, chances are you scanned the hotel bill but barely gave the taxes that were tacked on a thought. Yet those taxes, paid for occupying a hotel room, are at the root of battles being waged in courts across the U.S. between online travel booking sites and cities and states that say they're not getting their fair share.

The crux is whether occupancy taxes should be based on the discounted rate online companies such as Expedia and Orbitz negotiate with and pay to hotels, or the higher, retail room rate actually paid by guests. Online travel companies pocket the difference as their fee. The discrepancy over the proper tax amount has led some local governments to rewrite ordinances and to at least 40 lawsuits filed by those on both sides of the issue. Government officials say cities are losing an estimated $1 billion a year in revenue that would go toward promoting tourism and in some cases, paying for schools, law enforcement and other municipal services. Those dollars are especially important during the current economic downturn, some say, when treasuries are lean and every penny counts. Online travel companies, meanwhile, have taken their case to Capitol Hill, where they're lobbying for federal legislation that would declare that the taxable amount should not include their fees or income.

NTIA Identifies Federal Spectrum For Reallocation

The head of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration said that his agency has recommended that 115 megahertz of spectrum now controlled by some federal agencies be reallocated for commercial mobile broadband use.

During a speech at the Federal Communications Bar Association, NTIA Director Lawrence Strickling said the recommendation is included in a report for freeing up spectrum that is being reviewed by Obama administration officials. The plan is aimed at helping the administration meet a five-year goal, included in the FCC's national broadband plan, for freeing up 500 megahertz of spectrum for wireless broadband technologies. Director Strickling said the report, which will provide more detail on freeing up spectrum to meet the administration's goal, is working its way through the interagency evaluation process and would be released "soon."

If the NTIA recommendations are accepted, it will be up to the FCC to implement them, Strickling noted. After the speech, Strickling told reporters that "more and more" federal spectrum users will have to find new ways to share spectrum, saying the days when big chunks of prime spectrum could be auctioned off for commercial use are gone. He also stressed the need for research and development into ways to make better use of existing spectrum.

100 megahertz is held by the Department of Defense and used primarily for radar systems for naval vessels.
15 megahertz is held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and used for weather balloons and satellites.

Unleashing America's Invisible Infrastructure

Speaking at the Federal Communications Commission's Spectrum Summit, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said:

One of the most important components of the National Broadband Plan is that it recognizes how central wireless broadband is to our future. Mobile has tremendous potential to grow our global economy, opening new markets for U.S. businesses. More than 90 percent of the world's population has access to mobile networks. Our invisible infrastructure also supports breakthrough tools to improve education and health care such as ever-updating e-readers that can replace outdated textbooks, and remote monitoring devices that help diabetes patients track their glucose levels. But we are at an inflection point. The explosive growth in mobile communications is outpacing our ability to keep up.

If we don't act to update our spectrum policies for the 21st century, we're going to run into a wall - a spectrum crunch - that will stifle American innovation and economic growth and cost us the opportunity to lead the world in mobile communications. Spectrum is finite. Demand will soon outpace the supply available for mobile broadband. This is not the first time I've said this. And it won't be the last. The coming spectrum crunch is a vital strategic and economic issue for our country, and a vital consumer issue since increased congestion will lead to growing consumer frustration with their mobile devices. It's clear: We are standing at a crossroads. We are looking at two potential futures. If we act thoughtfully and execute on a strategic vision to ensure the highest and best use of this precious national resource, we can drive billions of dollars in private investment, fueling world-leading innovations, creating millions of new jobs, and enabling endless new products and services that can help improve the lives of all Americans. If we don't, we will put our country's economic competitiveness at risk, and squander the chance we now have to lead the world in mobile.

The choice is clear: We have to pick the path that promises jobs and economic growth, innovation and opportunity. We must close the spectrum gap.

Benton

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