Category: Business

We surmised a few days ago that the opponents of the FCC’s new ownership rules weren’t as interested in promoting media diversity as in silencing conservative voices. As if on cue, Moveon.org has launched a “media monopoly” fundraiser aimed at Rupert Murdoch:

Ironically, the campaign’s name betrays its purpose: Media Monopoly seeks to recreate the three network liberal monopoly of the 80s, before Murdoch shook up the system with an alternate view.

These folks do my work for me.

Brian Linse’s upset with the NY Times grave-dancing and general criticism from journalist bloggers:

Burning question of the day: What the fuck are Mickey Kaus and the journo-bloggers going to write about now that their favorite pinata, Howell Raines, is history? And more importantly, will anyone give a shit?

I guess the guys who are on the “inside” can be forgiven a bit of grave dancing glee, but we do have our limits. Where is the thoughtful and forward-looking analysis from guys like Kaus, Welch, and Layne? I love these guys, and they are all friends, but I’m disappointed in all of them. Anyone want to talk about what bringing the evil “liberal” Lelyveld back might mean? How about the impact that these events might have on the NYT’s traditional role as the drum major that most of TV news coverage follows? How about all the questions that I’m not smart enough to ask, but that we rely on our journalism pros to think of?

Dudes, FYI: Nobody outside of journalism geek circles gives a shit about the gossip!

Brian, FYI: it’s OK for journo-bloggers to write about journo stories on their blogs; that’s what they’re there for, and that’s why we like them. Techno-bloggers blog the inside baseball on tech, movie bloggers do the same for Hollywood, etc, etc, etc – that’s how the blogosphere works, people write what they know.

The sour grapes emanating from your corner has the plaintive and piquant frisson of one whose ox has been gored. You really can’t expect those who’ve been complaining about the Times’ liberal bias for lo these many years only to have their claims denied by partisans (like yourself) to be silent and dignified now that their analysis has been proved correct.

Losing the argument is a bummer, dude, but shutting up the winner or trying to foreshorten his gloating isn’t an option.

Link via Jarvis, Insta.

UPDATE: Brian clarifies that his beef is that the triumphalism is obscuring larger questions about the Times’ future. Fair enough, but who can say what happens next? The next turning point is the selection of permanent replacement for Raines, since Lelyveld is merely an interim boss, and once that’s been made public, we probably will be commenting on what comes next. There’s already been a lot of commentary on who follows Raines, and we’re pretty sure it’s not Andrew Sullivan.

You’ve probably already seen this bit from the LA Times:

And, in the end, it was the new world of Web sites, blogs, online editions and e-mails — not Raines — that set the pace of his exit.

… but let’s not forget that it was also the Internet that enabled Jayson Blair to plagiarize far-flung sources, so it’s really a matter of Internet self-correction, and a lot larger than a few blogs.

See Roger L. Simon: IF YOU RAN THE NEW YORK TIMES and cast your ballots. Mark Steyn seems to be the consensus choice for a spot on the Op-Ed pages, but Hitchens, Sullivan, Lileks, and Hanson are close behind.

It’s very nice that Raines and Boyd have stepped down from the Times, where the entire paper had become an extended editorial rant on Raines’ obsession du jour, ranging from rich white Southern golfer ladies to imaginary Bush criticism from the likes of Henry Kissinger, but it doesn’t do much for the cause of media diversity. The Times was losing circulation and credibility under Raines, and had he stayed on the job for another year, it would have been regarded as just another paper. Now they’ll be able to pretend to reform while doing pretty much the same as always. As Ben Domenech points out, the Times’ credibility recession began under acting exec editor Lelyveld.

I never did like sacrifical lambs, but I also don’t like biased media that pretend to be impartial. If the Times were really serious about reforming itself, it would have been Maureen Dowd’s head on the block alongside Raines, not Boyd’s.

Speaking of Jarvis, this little post just might spark a little controversy:

As for the anti-big-media bashing we’ve seen from webloggers — inspired lately by the FCC and by the New York Times screwups — I’ll argue that they are essentially jealous. Webloggers are nanomedia moguls with big-media aspirations. Most of them are conservative or libertarian and thus should abhor regulation, even of media. But in this case and this case only, they endorse regulation. Why? Because they hate big media. And they hate big media because it has the resources and the distribution and the audience they don’t have. Hell, big media pays; blogging doesn’t.

Isn’t it odd that only a tiny number of bloggers favor media deregulation?

Maybe Dave Winer* is right, and warblogs are so last week. We need a new kind of blog, so this whole thing doesn’t degenerate into a bunch of teenaged girls all trying to be Rebecca Blood, so how about wood blogs? Woodblogging is manly, world-changing, technical, and already established, so it’s got all the ingredients of The Next Big Thing.

And besides, nobody ever booed a woodblogger off the stage like they do some people I could name. What kind of moron invites a commercial software merchant to keynote an Open Source conference anyway?

See also: Carnell’s comments.
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*Winer’s still upset that blogging didn’t go mainstream until Sept. 11, 2001, and when it did it was on the back of Blogger, not Radio. Such is life.

Ken Layne is devoted to Katy Johnson, Miss Vermont. It’s his kind of story, by gum.

Here’s your Google cache link for the sordid details. Sorry, judge, but Google doesn’t do censorship, even when it should (not that that rule applies here, mind you.)

Now for a little wet, um, cat:

(“Pussy” is not the polite word to use here, of course.)

After watching the FCC ownership rules hearing on C-Span, and listening to as much of the commentary by folks like KKK alumni Fritz Hollings and Trent Lott as I could stand, I came away with the belief that the uproar over these rule changes is groundless.

Lawrence Lessig said: “The FCC will liberate the networks to consolidate because the FCC feels pressured by the courts” and some other stuff, but the rules expressly forbid mergers or takeovers between the Big Four TV networks, so that’s clearly hooey. The big changes were easing of the limit on local stations a network can own (which brought existing ownership into compliance) and relaxation of the rule prohibiting newspapers, TV, and radio from being owned by the same company in the same market. ClearChannel doesn’t gain by the rules, and may have to shed some stations.

So if the opposition to these rules isn’t rational – and at least some of it isn’t (Susie “Medea” Benjamin, trust fund activist, got herself arrested again at the hearing), then what’s it based on? A lot of folks were comfortable with the way things were in America when TV news came from the three networks plus CNN, the same stories with the same liberal/centrist spin. Then along came Rupert Murdoch and we got the Fox News Channel, the New York Post, and the Fox Network, and the traditional liberal agenda got some competition. Fox isn’t always, or perhaps even often right, but it is a counterbalance and a different point of view.

The opponents of the rule change are scared that people like Murdoch will alter the media landscape at the level of local print news and broadcast news, an area still controlled by the liberal oligarchy. I hope they’re right, because I’d like to have a TV channel or a daily paper in the Frisco Bay Area with a centrist or right-wing orientation, and it certainly appears that we’d never get one under the old rules.

I don’t believe for a minute that opponents to these ownership rules from the left care about diversity of opinion, which is sure to be enhanced by allowing Murdoch to buy more media properties in more markets. More power to him.

The news blackout of new FCC media ownership news continues apace. The only live coverage of the hearing itself will be on C-SPAN, starting at 9:30 AM EDT, and only available to people with access to cable TV, satellite TV, or the Internet. Obviously, the evil VRWC doesn’t want you to know what’s going on, right?

UPDATE: Howie Kurtz discussed the pending rule change today on his “Reliable Sources” show on CNN; he clearly didn’t get the memo. Shhh…..Howie, this is supposed to be a secret.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lou Josephs blogged it live. Local radio ownership rules were actually tightened, much to the dismay of Clear Channel, and newspapers were allowed easier access to TV and radio stations. I don’t see why this was a big deal.