Presidential candidate Howard (“Shorty”) Dean took a break from a day of heavy pandering to minorities, in which he bravely condemned racial profiling at meetings of La Raza and the NAACP, to reach out to Lawrence Lessig’s blog audience with a strong denunciation of Big Media:
The Internet might soon be the last place where open dialogue occurs. One of the most dangerous things that has happened in the past few years is the deregulation of media ownership rules that began in 1996. Michael Powell and the Bush FCC are continuing that assault today (see the June 2nd ruling).
The danger of relaxing media ownership rules became clear to me when I saw what happened with the Dixie Chicks. But there?s an even bigger danger in the future, on the Internet. The FCC recently ruled that cable and phone based broadband providers be classified as information rather than telecommunications services. This is the first step in a process that could allow Internet providers to arbitrarily limit the content that users can access. The phone and cable industries could have the power to discriminate against content that they don?t control or– even worse– simply don?t like.
The media conglomerates now dominate almost half of the markets around the country, meaning Americans get less independent and frequently less dependable news, views and information. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of the fear that economic power would one day try to seize political power. No consolidated economic power has more opportunity to do this than the consolidated power of media.
Of course, it’s good that candidates for office are willing to stick their heads above ground to meet and greet potential voters on the Internet. But the usual routine of telling each audience what you think they want to hear isn’t going to cut it in this medium (you can ask Trent Lott and Howell Raines about that.) Dean copied his post to his own blog, and censored critical remarks from the comments section. Here’s one that was censored:
Good pandering, Dr. Dean, you?ve clearly done your homework, and I respect that.
Concentrations of economic power certainly are a threat to democracy, as we?ve learned in California where we face a huge budget crisis because our elected officials are beholden to the unions, trial lawyers, and casinos who elected them, so I?m glad you?re on the case, and you?ll have my support when you take on these special interests.
Other threats to democracy that have been identified by scholars include the awareness of the majority that they can vote themselves the contents of the treasury (Earned Income Tax Credit, for example) and a potential descent into tyranny predicted by Plato as politicians appeal to the baser passions of the majority. I?m glad you?re on to that one, too.
Under the strict regulation of media ownership we had 20 years ago, the regime to which you?d like to return, we could only get television news from three networks, all of which had exactly the same, elitist, left-of-center, Ivy League orientation. Deregulation brought us Murdoch, the only news organization with a different spin. As you would clearly like to shut down the Murdoch empire, you?re actually an advocate of less diversity of opinion in the media.
Bravo for you – choice is confusing, and it?s much better to have a Big Brother in Washington telling us how to think.
Speaking of censorship, the Dixie Chicks are actually doing fine, selling lots of (copyrighted) records and selling out their concerts, but that right-wing fascist Michael Savage is getting what he deserves, don?t you think? Richard Bennett
Oddly enough, the censors didn’t delete the responses to this comment, which should prove to the skeptical that it was in fact deleted.
So do you trust a guy who practices this kind of censorship on a puny little blog to regulate media with the kind of sweeping powers he says he wants, where he can decide which company is small enough to own each and every single media outlet in each and every market? That’s one of the things you have to decide as a voter as the campaign progresses.
You’re kidding, right? You’re chastising Dean for censorship? Um…gee, thank God we’re getting the straight scoop from the White House.
richard, if you’ll kindly check the comments section on lessig’s blog you’ll notice your comment has not been deleted. your accusation of censorship is false. i find it outrageous that you’ve posted this accusation. if you have any integrity, you’ll correct this post.
in addition, i probably should not have called you a jackass in those comments. i thought about it afterwards (as hindsight is almost always 20-20) and i should have breathed before i wrote.
however, i still take serious issue with your accusation of “pandering”. if you’ve taken a more than cursory look at dean’s record and his campaign, you’d realise he is no panderer. he doesn’t change his positions for each audience he speaks to, and he’s defied conventional wisdom in the past (think civil unions bill) by bucking against the grain with little or no concern for his political career. his positions now are consistent with the positions he’s held throughout the race. if you want to look at a panderer, why not take a glace at john kerry, who can’t seem to decide whether he was for or against the iraq war. or hell, look at george w bush, who panders to the bible-beating radical right wing every chance he gets.
now richard, i don’t expect you to agree with me, but it seems that you’ve got something personal against dean. you deride him as a panderer and then call him shorty. what exactly is your problem?
dean isn’t blogging on lessig’s site in order to issue some policy statement. he’s blogging there to solicit feedback from those who understand IP/copyright issues better than just about anyone. he is a doctor and he listens, and who better to ask about these issues than a community who knows them inside and out? if you can’t get past whatever prejudice you have against dean in order to take advantage of an opportunity to educate a major presidential candidate on issues which concern you, then why bother participating in the dialogue at all?
Yes, it’s a listening tour.
Anna, I think you missed the point. Richard wasn’t censored on Lessig’s blog, he was censored when the comments got exported to the Dean for America site. Rather than taking all of the comments–something one might expect from a person advocating political dialogue–Dean (or his subordinates) only took the rah rah cheerleading comments, and omitted any that were critical of Dean. (I checked. As of this moment, Richard’s version is still true.) Kind of hard to have a dialogue when all your met with is a chorus of cheerleading.
It’s even worse than that, Greg – I copied my own comment to Dean’s blog, and his people removed it, as well as two other original comments of mine — and they now say it was an accident.
well in that case i’ll certainly take back what i said in the opening paragraph. it was my mistake and i thought you were referring to the post on lessig’s blog. i offer my apology for that one.
i do know that the policy on blogforamerica is to delete any comment that can be construed as hostile or snarky, and your post certainly fits into that category. i am not defending that policy; it is what it is.
richard, i still want to know why you went on the attack, though. i mean, if you have all this experience with technology issues, don’t you think you could offer something constructive to the dialogue? i myself went over to lessig’s blog to try and get a sense of what that community is concerned with, and most of the commenters offered something constructive. i didn’t see that from you. all i saw was snark. if you have a concern, he is there to listen – why not speak up constructively? the way i see it, at least he’s trying to understand. i don’t see any of the other candidates doing that.
oh, one more thing and then i promise i’ll drop this. when people raise censorship issues in relation to blogs, i have this to say. blogs are private property in a public space, and their owners can maintain them however they wish. deleting troll-ish comments (and no, i’m not pointing at you, just being figurative) is one way to maintain that private space. i’m sure that if someone challenged dean on blogforamerica, and it was done civilly, the comment would be left intact.
but when people aren’t capable of raising an issue without resorting to insults or snarky remarks, i can’t really blame them for deleting the comments because arguing back and forth gets us nowhere IMHO.
anyway, thanks for listening.
I’m not questioning the right of Dean to delete my comments from his blog, but I’m saying the willingness to do that doesn’t speak well for a guy who wants to regulate the media. As for my tone, I adapted it to the standards Dean has displayed in his commentary on President Bush; that is, I endeavored to mimic his tone without being any more or any less polite that he is to our president.
That seems reasonable to me.
richard, let me put it this way. i can’t stand what bush has done, but i would never call him a lying jackass to his face. even i have some standards, and i’d find that totally disrespectful. likewise, you were really disrespectful to someone who many consider to be a serious contender for the presidency.
the difference between your comments to dean and dean’s comments to bush is that dean never attacked bush personally. he attacked his policies. it speaks volumes that you resorted to calling dean “shorty” and a “panderer”.
if you have a problem with his policy, attack that. there’s no reason to attack the man. that’s just as bad as me calling you a jackass, and i’ve already admitted that was out of line. do you see my point, sir?
that is why i think you’d behoove the lessig community if you talked about the issues instead. dean’s there to learn, and so are many of us who support him. we are sympathetic to at least some of your concerns (many of us have at least a cursory understanding of the privacy issues on the net right now; i myself do because of the way my company was affected by the patriot act). but there are some blanks that you folks could fill in. i think it would be a waste if you didn’t at least attempt to bring your concerns up, as well as offer productive solutions to the problems.
Everybody knows the Internet is only good for porn and dirty chat. (Just like computers are only good for playing games.) Do you think these media conglomerations will admit to serving up porn? Can they censor it, if that’s the biggest moneymaker on the Internet?
Mike, it would seem counter-productive, for sure. Sometime you’ve got to read Lessig’s The Future of Ideas, it’s the most hilarious thing ever written.
dean never attacked bush personally
That’s not exactly true, anna – he’s called the president a liar and a scoundrel, and that’s not very nice where I come from (Texas).
richard, i’d love to see you link to some quote where dean calls bush a liar and a scoundrel. if you can show me a direct quote, i’ll gladly back off.
and for the record, i’m a texan, too.
You can read Dean’s blog on any given day and see him calling Bush a liar, as he does today by quoting Joe Conason. It’s not a secret, anna.
Anna, aren’t radio stations also private institutions? Especially in the case of the Dixie Chicks, the same companies continued to play the Dixie Chicks on their Top 40 stations, but not on Country stations– because of all the angry calls from listeners when they did play the Dixie Chicks.
It seems that Howard Dean is worried about censorship of ideas that corporations don’t like, even when delivered over their own private property. However, he easily reserves the right to censor ideas that he doesn’t like. Just another hypocrite, another case of “free speech for me but not for thee.”
richard, you’re really reaching aren’t you? i mean, dean has never called bush a liar in any way shape or form. today (i just checked the official blog) was the first time i’ve seen dean directly come at bush and say “take responsibility for this scandal”. is that where your problem lies – with the fact that someone is finally calling out bush for being a bad executive? where does the buck stop in this administration? i thought bush was supposed to be some kind of ceo wunderkind who would restore reponsibility and ethics to the white house. i find it hard to imagine that anyone could argue that he’s truly done that. i fail to see – although i’m sure you’ll enlighten me – how asking bush to take responsibility for this actions is a personal attack.
john, i fail to see the relevance of your post. i’m not talking about tech issues. i’m talking about richard’s use of ad hominem attacks against dean.
What’s wrong with calling Bush a liar? Bush is a liar. Oh wait – I guess *technically* he didn’t lie. Britain did say it. (Depends on what is is, right?(
Bush is a scoundrel. His past questionable business practices alone merit this label. Then there’s his “wild years” or whatever the hypocrite calls them.
George W. Bush – liar, scoundrel, war-monger, adulterer, drunk. HIGHLY qualified to be President, that’s for sure.
Cal Godot, he British stand by the intelligence. You’re not just calling Bush a liar, you’re calling Tony Blair and British intelligence liars as well.
Boy, look who’s insulting our allies now.
Anna, you certainly were talking about censorship above. You specifically defended Dean’s ability to censor comments based on his blog being private property. I think it’s perfectly natural to point out Howard Dean’s hypocrisy. When he censors, it’s ok, but when a private radio station doesn’t play the Dixie Chicks on some stations (but not all) because its listeners complain, that’s bad. What a hypocrite.
British intelligence doesn’t stand by it: British politicians do. And of course they do: they staked their reps & careers on it.
Yep, Blair’s a liar, too. Of course, unlike GW, Blair’s got few Brits fooled. Only in America are people gullible enough to believe the President tells the truth.
It strikes me as a disturbing element of people’s psyche when they can rage on to this day about Clinton’s lies regarding womanizing yet give GW a pass for lying about WMDs. Amazing. It’s either hypocrisy or stupidity, but neither speaks highly of the American character. (I for one at least get to enjoy the consistency of having denounced Clinton for his lies.)
But I guess it depends on what “lie” means.
Richard,
I’ve read the contents of the Dean Campaign link, and agree with your conclusion. Your comment on Lessig’s blog existed when it did not on the Dean blog, for a significant period of time. Apparently the Dean blog managers did not notice the inconsistency of their content, or were not actually attempting to mirror content.
I read your resume. We’ve never actually overlapped, but we’ve done random walks about the same set of lamp posts. X/OPEN,SGI,SRI,IBM-PASC,Telebit,X/OPEN,SMI,HP-COSL,TMC,OSF,…
I can’t recall when so much was made of so little, except of course most industry vapor-ware. Dean’s guest-blog moment was simply vapor-ware. A waste of time.
Eric
The deleted at least three comments I left on their blog, and only restored the one after I complained about it.
“Vaporware” just about sums it up, alright.
I’m not questioning the right of Dean to delete my comments from his blog, but I’m saying the willingness to do that doesn’t speak well for a guy who wants to regulate the media.
“Waaaah! Dean won’t let me post bad things about him on his website! That means he wants to censor America!!”
Groan. What a troll. Just because you don’t let someone defecate in your livingroom doesn’t mean you want to forbid them from defecating, period.
Grow up.