5 ms·

The FTC Confuses Newspapers With Journalism

30 points by cwan 16y ago

eli 16y ago
The FTC "has not endorsed the idea of making any policy recommendation or recommended any of the proposals in the discussion draft" http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/06/is_the_government_pushing_a_dr.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/06/is_the_...
- dminor 16y ago
  The document in question is merely a set of discussion topics. "We anticipate that different participants in the roundtables at which this document will be discussed will criticize some or all proposals, improve others, and add ideas of their own. The purpose of this document is precisely to encourage such additional analyses and brainstorming." It's for an upcoming roundtable at the National Press Club. The actual document is here: http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-discussion.pdf http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-d... The public can also contribute ideas here: http://public.commentworks.com/ftc/newsmediaworkshop/ http://public.commentworks.com/ftc/newsmediaworkshop/
- metageek 16y ago
  More than that: all (I think) the proposals came from outside the FTC, and the draft points out problems with some of them.
ZachPruckowski 16y ago
The core problem is the "Eat Your Broccoli" Problem. In-depth and globe-spanning reporting is essential for a running democracy, but everyone would rather spend their money on American Idol than American Morning and would rather read about celebrity domestic scandals than domestic policy. The cross-subsidy system worked well in the 20th century to avert this, but that's out the window. We need to either create a new cross-subsidy system or we need to find a way to charge people for news directly. And let's not forget Craigslist if we're casting blame on why the Internet killed newspapers. The classifieds section got decimated by it. "Here, they confuse journalism with newspapers, and an informed public with newspaper jobs. In fact, Americans have never been better informed or more engaged." This is not new or unique to newspapers. It's a fallacy common to pretty much every sinking industry. "but the FTC is an 'independent' agency run by people appointed by the Obama Administration, which has been antagonistic to an Internet it cannot control" When has the Obama Administration been antagonistic towards the Internet? Aside from ISP-promoted wackaloon conspiracy theories about how Net Neutrality is actually censorship, where is the argument (much less evidence) for this? I mean, I realize this is The Heritage Foundation, but come on. Way to trash a great article with a nonsensical partisan jab.
- coreymull 16y ago
  Part of the problem is that "American Morning" is not that much better than "American Idol". In fact, I think I'd rather watch the latter; at least it's somewhat entertaining.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  " The cross-subsidy system worked well in the 20th century to avert this..." I dispute this notion. My reading of 20th century tele-journalism is that if anything it was a step backward even from the standards of the 19th century. Granted, it gave many people the perception of being informed about the world, but in practice I believe it fell far short of the mark. More to the point, I don't think today's standards of journalism are particularly lower than those 50 years ago, for example. However, the difference in cultural perspective and in the available alternate channels of data make the low quality of modern journalism much more obvious.
  - ZachPruckowski 16y ago
    >My reading of 20th century tele-journalism Quality may have gone down during the 1980s and later, but that's unrelated to the fact that we had advertising and classifieds and entertainment shows to offset the cost of journalism.
- gyardley 16y ago
  Well, the same author has a recent column in National Review Online about this: http://article.nationalreview.com/434022/obama-vs-the-ipad/mike-gonzalez http://article.nationalreview.com/434022/obama-vs-the-ipad/m... The article includes two quotes from President Obama. The first from a commencement address: You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations . . . information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. The second is from an interview with CBS News: There’s one last point I gotta make, Bob, and that is that I do think part of what’s different today is the 24-hour news cycle and cable TV and blogs and all this. They focus on the most extreme elements in both sides. They can’t get enough of conflict. It’s catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment, I think it makes it more difficult to solve the problems the American people sent us here to solve. Constructing an 'antagonistic to the Internet' argument on the basis of those two quotes seems somewhat, well, challenging - but those seem to be the primary sources.

30 points by cwan 16y ago

eli 16y ago

The FTC "has not endorsed the idea of making any policy recommendation or recommended any of the proposals in the discussion draft" http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/06/is_the_government_pushing_a_dr.html http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/06/is_the_...

dminor 16y ago
The document in question is merely a set of discussion topics. "We anticipate that different participants in the roundtables at which this document will be discussed will criticize some or all proposals, improve others, and add ideas of their own. The purpose of this document is precisely to encourage such additional analyses and brainstorming." It's for an upcoming roundtable at the National Press Club. The actual document is here: http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-discussion.pdf http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/jun15/docs/new-staff-d... The public can also contribute ideas here: http://public.commentworks.com/ftc/newsmediaworkshop/ http://public.commentworks.com/ftc/newsmediaworkshop/
metageek 16y ago
More than that: all (I think) the proposals came from outside the FTC, and the draft points out problems with some of them.

ZachPruckowski 16y ago

The core problem is the "Eat Your Broccoli" Problem. In-depth and globe-spanning reporting is essential for a running democracy, but everyone would rather spend their money on American Idol than American Morning and would rather read about celebrity domestic scandals than domestic policy. The cross-subsidy system worked well in the 20th century to avert this, but that's out the window. We need to either create a new cross-subsidy system or we need to find a way to charge people for news directly. And let's not forget Craigslist if we're casting blame on why the Internet killed newspapers. The classifieds section got decimated by it. "Here, they confuse journalism with newspapers, and an informed public with newspaper jobs. In fact, Americans have never been better informed or more engaged." This is not new or unique to newspapers. It's a fallacy common to pretty much every sinking industry. "but the FTC is an 'independent' agency run by people appointed by the Obama Administration, which has been antagonistic to an Internet it cannot control" When has the Obama Administration been antagonistic towards the Internet? Aside from ISP-promoted wackaloon conspiracy theories about how Net Neutrality is actually censorship, where is the argument (much less evidence) for this? I mean, I realize this is The Heritage Foundation, but come on. Way to trash a great article with a nonsensical partisan jab.

coreymull 16y ago
Part of the problem is that "American Morning" is not that much better than "American Idol". In fact, I think I'd rather watch the latter; at least it's somewhat entertaining.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
" The cross-subsidy system worked well in the 20th century to avert this..." I dispute this notion. My reading of 20th century tele-journalism is that if anything it was a step backward even from the standards of the 19th century. Granted, it gave many people the perception of being informed about the world, but in practice I believe it fell far short of the mark. More to the point, I don't think today's standards of journalism are particularly lower than those 50 years ago, for example. However, the difference in cultural perspective and in the available alternate channels of data make the low quality of modern journalism much more obvious.
- ZachPruckowski 16y ago
  >My reading of 20th century tele-journalism Quality may have gone down during the 1980s and later, but that's unrelated to the fact that we had advertising and classifieds and entertainment shows to offset the cost of journalism.
gyardley 16y ago
Well, the same author has a recent column in National Review Online about this: http://article.nationalreview.com/434022/obama-vs-the-ipad/mike-gonzalez http://article.nationalreview.com/434022/obama-vs-the-ipad/m... The article includes two quotes from President Obama. The first from a commencement address: You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations . . . information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. The second is from an interview with CBS News: There’s one last point I gotta make, Bob, and that is that I do think part of what’s different today is the 24-hour news cycle and cable TV and blogs and all this. They focus on the most extreme elements in both sides. They can’t get enough of conflict. It’s catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment, I think it makes it more difficult to solve the problems the American people sent us here to solve. Constructing an 'antagonistic to the Internet' argument on the basis of those two quotes seems somewhat, well, challenging - but those seem to be the primary sources.