The usual suspects (Lessig, Salon, Gillmor, free software blogs) are floating a myth to the effect that Big Media are hiding proposed FCC rule changes from their viewers. Let’s see what we can find in five minutes of looking for the story.
MSNBC: Broad media ownership rules floated
ABC: Fed Ruling Could Make More Media Monoliths
CBS: Media Giants Want Room to Grow
CNN: nothing.
Fox News: FCC Proposal Would Ease Media Ownership Restrictions
Another myth bites the dust.
Now what about the rules? The criticism generally makes the same point, whether it’s from conservative Bill Safire or Bushwacking Salon: fewer voices. Given that we only have two today – Fox News and the rest of the right against the East Coast Establishment and the rest of the left – I don’t really see that happening. Media companies are still going to compete for eyeballs, and if there’s only one media company in the world, then departments are going to compete for eyeballs. So that doesn’t persuade me.
There are some potential benefits that could come from more streamlined and efficient news-gathering, however. To give one example, you used to be able to get fairly decent coverage of state government from TV, radio, and print almost anywhere in California, but today you only get it from the Sacramento Bee. Oh, the LA Times, the Frisco Comical, The Union Trib, the Register, the CC Times, and the Murky News put up a front, but their coverage is episodic and incoherent to all but insiders who’ve been studying for years.
If the Bee were part of a conglomerate that included papers in LA and Frisco, their Sacramento coverage would be part of the deal, and if they were connected to TV and radio stations, it would probably penetrate to the mass audience that doesn’t read a daily paper.
News companies used to live and die by local and regional stories, depending on wire services for state, national, and global coverage, but the wire services aren’t cutting it any more, for reasons I don’t entirely understand. So our media is moving in a new direction, where news companies depend more on broadly-based audience for news with a particular attitude. So you’ve got your Fox News fans with their conservative point of view and your ABC News fans with their progressive point of view, happily enjoying news that reinforces their beliefs. So markets are defined differently these days, thanks to cable and satellite and the Internet, than they were in the days when the existing FCC rules were drafted, and that’s just a fact.
Having invested money in researching and reporting a story, why shouldn’t Fox and ABC be able to present it to radio and newspaper audiences as well as their TV audience? After all, these are just different delivery vehicles serving the same public. Outside the US, the myth of impartial news has no standing; you know when you pick up a paper in France, the UK, or India where its bias lies, and you interpret accordingly.
This isn’t too much for the poorly-educated American public to do for themselves.
Another interesting aspect of this story is the criticism of the belief that the Internet can ever be a check on the networks. The Internet can’t, in its present form, deliver broadcast-quality audio and video, but isn’t this exactly as the very critics of “MediaCon” have said they wanted it to remain? (I’m referring to the “World of Ends” concept that the Internet is perfect and shouldn’t be improved.)
An enhanced Internet capable of carrying broadcast-quality programming is a technical possibility. If we were to have that, what would the objection to relaxed FCC rules then become? There has to be one, because bigger is always badder, in this analysis, even when it isn’t.
Mr. Bennett — a couple of points to make:
To claim that the end-to-end design “World of Ends” idea to mean that the Internet is “perfect and shouldn’t be improved,” would be to misrepresent it to barely make your minor point about the Internet and its influence on the “MediaCon” decision.
You rationalize not caring so much about the FCC decision.
You say “if there’s only one media company in the world, then departments are going to compete for eyeballs.”
Am I correct in understanding that you’re implying that the individual *departments* in such a fictional “One” company will compete with other branches of that same organization ? Are you implying that you might expect that the TV, newspaper, and radio branches of One company will adequately report from multiple and sometimes differing perspectives on the same news story ?
Are you joking ? You’re expecting people to believe that One media company will allow it’s own departments to compete with each other, for the sake of being fair, balanced, and producing many perspectives ?
Your prediction is already being shown as we speak. There are already examples of companies like ATT who own both cable *and* broadband services placing limitations on those services (i.e. a limitation on how much video you can stream over an ATT broadband connection) so they won’t compete for each other. And that’s just the services themselves…you think that a news organization won’t share or re-use content across it’s media outlets ?
1. “The World of Ends” argues that the Internet’s architecture, if not precisely perfect in every detail, is at least optimal, which is to say that it’s so robust that all new services required by Internet users can be provided at the ends without any modification to the middle.
I take issue with that claim, and believe that media services and telephony can’t be provided over the Internet as reliably as over the Telco net because the Internet doesn’t provide efficient multicast or a connection-oriented network layer option as the ISO/OSI suite did.
2. If you’ve ever worked in a capitalist enterprise, you will have seen people competing with each other for promotions. This will continue, whether there is one media company or a thousand.
3. AT&T has sold its cable and Internet business to Comcast. The limitations on upstream data traffic grow out of customer requirements and the nature of broadband cable plants, not on a conspiracy by AT&T – which owns no television networks – to create a monopoly in favor of something the don’t own with something else they don’t own either.
I hope that’s clear.
I understand some of your points, but would like to make some of my points clearer as well.
about 1: the way that I have always understood it in various works, the end-to-end architecture of the Internet was the original design philosophy, but of course in reality, the Internet has evolved away from that e2e design, and that’s what much of the fuss is about. Of course I don’t think that anyone is arguing that the Internet, in its current or original form, was perfect. The e2e design is just that…a design. While it’s something to achieve, “perfect” e2e is not realistic, but is an unachieveable optimal. There is nothing (and as far as I know, anyone technically qualified to say so) saying that striving to keep towards an e2e design will prevent a reliability that approaches or surpasses television or telephone networks.
The value of the e2e design is being overlooked when looked in that light. The ability to develop and deploy reliable services that can compete with television and telephone services can certainly fall within the e2e framework. Designing the network to be “dumb” doesn’t mean that it can’t be built or further developed to be even more reliable than traditional means. QoS and ATM are not the *only* ways of providing reliable, connection-oriented services.
Also, nothing in the e2e design philosophy says that the OSI model need be used.
In addition, the e2e design paradigm doesn’t say anything about not modifying the ‘middle’, only allowing for the control of content be at the ends. I think that’s where you’re having trouble understanding it.
about 2: People in companies booking for promotions is quite different than ensuring that the various outlets of a megamedia company will provide an aqeduate number of perspectives on the same story. You yourself have implied that different TV news agencies currently lean one way or another…(“Fox News fans with their conservative point of view”) so you think that departments within the same company would provide differing or unbiased reporting ? Come on. Such a belief would be naive.
If you’re not aware of it already, there is a New York Times piece today (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/arts/25RICH.html?pagewanted=2) about this subject, and has even quoted Barry Diller (former chairman of Paramount, Vivendi and Fox) as saying “We will be in a position where our society will be harmed”
about 3: My example of how different services and media outlets compete (or rather, don’t) was a poor one, and I should have backed this up with some background. The constraints that cable broadband providers have placed on streaming video is pure PR, and has no technical meaning. I am surprised that you haven’t heard these arguments before. I’m not talking about the current state of ATT/Comcast, I’m talking about when ATT was both providing cable TV service and broadband connectivity. It is a matter of conflict of interest for the company, not technical limitations.
Daniel Somers said, when asked about whether ATT would permit the streaming of video to computers, that “[W]e didn’t spend $56 billion to get into the cable business to have the blood sucked out of our veins”
(link is here to that quote: http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:zV1ftTCAa28J:www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctg895.htm+%22daniel+somers%22+%22blood+sucked%22+usa+today&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)
there were/are many other cable broadband providers that did NOT have a limitation, including Comcast right now. There is no limitation or “10 minute collar” currently.
My point (which is really besides my main point about refuting your MediaCon argument of ‘no big deal, they’ll just compete within departments and that way provide diverse reporting’) was that this WAS the case with broadband video and cable TV being owned by the same company. There was no competition allowed between the two outlets. Now that my point is clear (and long-winded) I’ll say that the analogy I’m making is a bit of a stretch, but I don’t think I need too much help with making the MediaCon argument.
You don’t understand the technical issues, smitty45.
The Internet makes connection-oriented service available at level 4, in the TCP, but not at level 3, in IP. This prevents applications from working that depend on the real-time, properly sequenced delivery of data packets (not just reliability in the sense of not crashing).
Such applications include telephony and video. Popular network layer protocols such as X.25 provided this kind of service before TCP/IP was invented, but it was too hard for the Internet’s designers to cope with, and didn’t add value to ftp and e-mail, so they blew it off and invented a philosophical justification for doing so – “end-to-end” – which is so much horse shit.
Similarly, there are technical reasons why running the upstream path on a cable system as fast as the downstream path is extremely expensive. Downstream, there is only one customer for the bandwidth, so there is no multiple network access problem; packets are addressed to several consumers, but only sent by one, so he can use full bandwidth. Upstream, there is a problem with mediating access to the channel among several users who potentially want to use it at once, so a protocol exists that provides for sharing.
Since this is a fixed slot TDM protocol, it’s inherently less efficient than the downstream protocol. So even if the provider took off the throttle, you wouldn’t be able to use all 30Mbs for yourself. The throttles are there to ensure that all users have fair access to the medium for the things that most normal people want to do, and that doesn’t include running a website from their home. And no, the cable company isn’t going to take channels away from TV so that every customer can have his own upstream channel all to himself. Buy T1 if that’s what you want; $500/mo will probably do you.
we’re talking about two different topics at this point, and I want to clarify that they are: 1-e2e’s value and 2-media ownership=bad/good.
about #1 –
while I have only 10 years experience as a network and systems engineer, I’m well aware of the technical issues. My point in bringing up the e2e discussion was not to make the popular point that MediaCon is irrelevant, because we have the Internet. My issue was with your dismissing the e2e principle. Yes, I’m aware of how the tcp/ip suite works, and yes, I’m aware that currently, video broadcast quality can’t happen on the Internet unless it’s using a more reliable lower layer, such as ATM. I’m not arguing about whether or not a home user’s cable modem can produce broadcast-quality video. I’m not sure how you got that. Nor am I arguing that cable TV users should have the ability to an upstream channel. TCP/IP is not a requirement of the e2e principle, and TCP/IP does not equal the Internet, either. Having said that, just because the main protocol suite of the Internet doesn’t support video doesn’t mean the e2e design is flawed (as it doesn’t mean it’s perfect either). You’re still thinking that the e2e can’t take modifications to “the middle”, which is wrong.
while I’d like to argue these technical points with you, it’s not my main point for commenting, and I’d like to stay on the following point.
(#2)
my point (which I said was poor) about (past) ATT’s cable/broadband (and Daniel Somers’ comments) was to help illustrate my point that relaxing the rules of media ownership can be a bad thing, and you seem to dismiss that fact. It’s more likely to be a bad than good, and that is agreed, across almost all political parties and almost all professional industries. Your answer to whether it will provide only fewer and more consolidated ‘voices’ (opinions, perspectives, influenced by their owners) seems to be that you don’t care.
Or rather that you somehow believe that the nature of modern corporate culture will take care of providing diversity in media reporting. That there will be enough people looking for a raise in a megamedia company across the newspaper, radio, and TV departments, and that fact (magically ?) means that they will provide differing and diverse perspectives on the same story.
What happens when it’s clear that the people who get raises are people who tow the company’s party line ?
What happens when the news story is a scandal about a subsidiary company owned by the megamedia corp (which happens quite often) ? You’re actually under the impression that investigative reporting into such a scandal would be rewarded with a raise ?
If you want to dismiss media ownership as not a big deal, I’d go with some other reason. You may think that impartiality is a myth in the US, but you cannot deny the diversity in coverage, as you have pointed out on your blog.
p.s. CNN is _still_ not carrying the MediaCon story, even in its archives.
I’m glad you’re backing away from your technical claims about the Internet’s defective design. To carry video, it needs a connection-oriented network layer service, and the E2E bigots acknowledge that this would break the E2E architecture: there should be no prioritizing of packets, according to them, so Spam has to have the same priority as video that you paid for, obviously a poor network design.
As to whether departments of a single organization compete with each other, you should examine NewsCorp. If you did, you would find radically different spin on such subjects as Israel by different elements of the company: Fox News is pro-Israel, and Sky News is just as anti-Semitic as the rest of the European media. The New York Post is a sensationalistic tabloid, but the Times of London is sober and middle-of-the-road. These companies are a lot more interested in making money than they are in forcing your thoughts into a little box.
Most of the concern about loosening of ownership rules comes from journalists who fear that increased efficiency will lead to layoffs, and from anti-Bush factions that oppose the President in all things as a matter of principle, but there are some old-fashioned socialists in the game as well.
But my point here is to show two things:
1. There is no blackout.
2. An end-to-end Internet can never compete with TV, but a real-time Internet could.
…and (putting the two together) the evident contradiction in the thinking of those who oppose a more robust Internet and also oppose loosening of ownership rules. These people are Luddites.
Your responses to my comments sure would be helpful if they actually had anything to do with what I’ve commented on.
To be even clearer:
-I have not argued that there *IS* a blackout in the media about covering the relaxing of FCC media ownership rules. You must be arguing with someone else about that. Feel free to do that, but I agree that there is not a blackout. Maybe not the greatest coverage, IMHO, but not a blackout.
-I never said that the Internet could compete with TV. Not once.
as to the media ownership rules, you apparently haven’t been reading enough. The opposition to the loosing of rules are not just coming from journalists. In fact, there are surprisingly few journalists and media management (Barry Diller one of the few) that oppose it, considering how affecting this decision would be. There are Senators from the Right, Middle, and Left. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colorado….Republican FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin…Tom Petri, R-Wisconsin…the list goes on. So it’s not just “lefty” journalists, as much as you’d like to think so, Richard. It’s politicians from ALL sides, local AND federal, all with various reasons to oppose this decision.
You’re obviously not worried about the media having a diverse set of voices and opinions. Your only proof of it being nothing to worry about it thus far has been:
-that outlets in the same media company (newspapers, TV, radio) will get bigger raises if they provide a more diverse (even differing) slant or perspective on new stories than their fellow departments, and therefore that’s enough incentive for it to happen. I thought you might be joking, but I’m now convinced that you _actually_ believe this. All I can say at this point is: good luck with that.
-more “proof” you give is that since companies like NewsCorp own different TV companies, with different ‘agendas’ (SkyTel and FoxNews), there’s nothing to fear from one company owning everything in the US. What’s your point here ? That because a company owning both lefty and righty media outlets are proof that a consolidation of opinion and perspective won’t happen if it was allowed ?
There was a reason why these rules were imposed in the first place, Richard. These rules have found support in some of even the biggest media companies in the past, because they know that it’s good for businesses all around, and good for producing quality content. One needen’t look further than ClearChannel to see the effects of gross overgrazing in media ownership.
If you can’t see why this isn’t just a “sky is falling” or “leftist” argument, then I can’t help convince you otherwise. Not everything is liberal vs conservative, Mr. Bennett.
p.s. note I’m not commenting on your e2e beliefs. There is value in the e2e design, and if you can’t see that, then fine. I’ve never claimed it was the ultimate in networking philosophies, or a ‘silver bullet’ to networking’s flaws. My only aim was to only give credit where credit is due.