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Benton media news digest – 2006 8 Dec: MORE FAMILIES PLAYING VIDEO GAMES BUT CONCERNS REMAIN
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Leah Schnurr]
A new generation of technologically savvy parents are turning gaming
into a family event, according to a new survey, but critics pushing
for greater monitoring of video game content remain concerned. 58% of
respondents in an online survey said they play video games and more
than half this time is spent with their children. The survey found 74
percent of parents are comfortable with video games becoming a part
of their family life and most are familiar with an industry ratings
system used to assess what age group should play certain games and
used as a guide to the kind of content in the games, such as the
levels of violence. But David Walsh, president of the National
Institute on Media and the Family, said the numbers did not represent
parents in general as online surveys are more likely to be completed
by people who are technologically inclined. The survey comes as a
bitter political battle over violent content in video games shows
some signs of cooling with two of the industry's fiercest critics,
Sens Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT), due
later Thursday to join forces with the industry's own rating board in
a nationwide educational television campaign. TEENS AND MEDIA: A FULL-TIME JOB
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Stefanie Olsen]
According to a study released this week, Americans aged 13 to 18
spend more than 72 hours a week using electronic media--defined as
the Internet, cell phones, television, music and video games. Because
teens are known for multitasking, their usage of devices can overlap.
So much technology makes teens feel they are playing a starring role
in their own reality TV show, said Jim Taylor, vice chairman of the
Harrison Group, which conducted the 2006 Teen Trend study. "This
generation is unique," Taylor said. "Teen life has become a
theatrical, self-directed media production." POLL SHOWS IM GAP BETWEEN TEENS, ADULTS
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Will Lester]
A new AP-AOL survey finds that almost half of teens, 48 percent of
those 13-18, use instant messaging -- more than twice the percentage
of adults who use it. Additional findings include: 1) Almost
three-fourths of adults who do use instant messages still communicate
with e-mail more often. Almost three-fourths of teens send instant
messages more than e-mail. 2) More than half of the teens who use
instant messages send more than 25 a day, and one in five send more
than 100. Three-fourths of adult users send fewer than 25 instant
messages a day. 3) Teen users (30 percent) are almost twice as likely
as adults (17 percent) to say they can't imagine life without instant
messaging. 4) When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens
are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail. 7 Dec: LEAN LEFT? LEAN RIGHT? NEWS MEDIA MAY TAKE THEIR CUES FROM CUSTOMERS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Austan Goolsbee]
Most people expect spin from politicians. When
they perceive partisan slant in the news itself,
they typically interpret it as evidence of
underlying bias by reporters or media owners. But
one of the most interesting things coming out of
research on the economics of the media industry
has been the notion that media slant may simply
reflect business rather than politics. New
research by two University of Chicago economists,
Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, entitled
“What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S.
Daily Newspapers” compiles some compelling and
altogether unusual data to answer the question.
Papers like The Washington Times or The Deseret
Morning News of Salt Lake City used Republican
phrases while papers like The San Francisco
Chronicle and The Boston Globe used Democratic
ones. But more important, once the authors had
this measure, they showed that the main driver of
any slant was the newspaper’s audience, not bias
by the newspaper’s owner. A comparison of
circulation data (per capita) to the ratio of
Republican to Democratic campaign contributions
by ZIP code showed that circulation was strongly
related to whether the newspaper matched the
readers’ own ideology. Their measure indicates
that The Los Angeles Times, for example, is a
liberal paper. Its circulation suffers in
Southern California ZIP codes where donations to
Republicans are especially high. The authors
calculated the ideal partisan slant for each
paper, if all it cared about was getting readers,
and they found that it looked almost precisely
like the one for the actual newspaper. As Dr.
Shapiro put it in an interview, “The data suggest
that newspapers are targeting their political
slant to their customers’ demand and choosing the
amount of slant that will maximize their sales.” IF CASTRO HAD A TALK SHOW, IT MIGHT SOUND A BIT LIKE THIS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Andy Newman]
A look at “Ayer en Miami (Yesterday in Miami),” a
radio show aired on WOCN-AM (1450) in Miami. It
includes advertisements from Cuba’s state travel
agency, reports from last weekend’s Fidel Castro
birthday parade in Havana, an admiring assessment
of Soviet-era tanks, and excerpts from speeches
by whichever Castro is running Cuba. It is not a
signal-jamming effort beamed from the Cuban coast
like some kind of reverse Radio Martí. It is not,
compadre, a joke of any sort. It is Francisco
Aruca, onetime Cuban political prisoner turned
Castro admirer, speaking out from a little radio
station on the industrial north side of Miami or,
more often these days, from the comfort of his
home office in the lush suburb of Pinecrest. For
15 years, Mr. Aruca, founder of the first
American company to run charter flights to Cuba,
has doubled as on-air apologist for a man whom
the vast majority of Cuban-Americans in Miami
consider a despicable and murderous dictator. In
doing so, Mr. Aruca speaks to — and for — a tiny
community of committed Cuban-American leftists
who have endured years of public scorn, threats
and, in the not-too-distant past, violence. 6 Dec: LOCAL TV STILL THE NUMBER 1 NEWS SOURCE
[SOURCE: TVWeek, AUTHOR: Michele Greppi]
Local TV is the No. 1 source of news and information among U.S.
television viewers, according to Frank N. Magid Associates' findings
in a national survey. The study, designed to learn how, how often and
why people use an assortment of media platforms, was co-authored by
Magid's director of strategic analysis Bryn Burns and senior
consultant Laura Clark. They sought information that could help the
stations that are Magid TV clients make decisions on how to position
themselves in what they call "today's multiscreen world." Many of the
findings contrast with some new-technology efforts undertaken by
stations. For example, new media offerings have yet to establish
their popularity. Streaming video stories, blogs and podcasts aren't
luring many people to stations' Web sites, according to the study.
Up-to-date text stories are. In addition, a significant number of
people are interested in going to a station's Web site to check out a
story they saw on a local newscast.
5 Dec: IRAN'S WEB CRACKDOWN SHOWS EASE OF GOVERNMENT INTERNET CENSORSHIP
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Christopher Rhoads
christopher.rhoads@wsj.com]
Iran's campaign to shutter popular Web sites and curtail text-message
traffic reflects the growing ability of governments to control online
content inside their national borders. The crackdown is part of a
broader offensive against what authorities consider immoral Western
culture. It has targeted Web sites including Amazon.com, publicly
edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia.com, movie Web site imdb.com and
online video-sharing portal YouTube.com, among others. Some of these
sites are working again, but the clampdown is consistent with a
tightening of online content in Iran dating back two years. The
blockage isn't airtight, as more-savvy Internet users in the country
have access to software and other measures that allow them to get
around government restrictions, Internet experts say. It is uncertain
how long the restrictions will last. Iran is one of a host of nations
that have taken steps to limit access to the Internet or control what
users can see in cyberspace. Others that have taken such steps
include China, Cuba and North Korea. Tehran's recent actions are
noteworthy given the country's flourishing and relatively free
Internet culture in recent years. Iran has an estimated 7.5 million
users, up from 250,000 six years ago. A lively blogosphere emerged in
recent years, as state control of the country's traditional print
media increased. 4 Dec: WHY NETWORK NEUTRALITY WILL BE LAW IN 2007
[SOURCE: Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Jason Pontin, Technology Review]
[Commentary] One of the first technology
controversies that the new Democratic Congress
will address when it meets in 2007, will be
network neutrality. Here's what will happen:
legislators will support new regulation.
Democrats know network neutrality regulation, far
from representing a creeping expansion of
government interference, will simply preserve the
established openness of the Internet. Indeed, the
failure to enact network neutrality regulation
would implicitly authorize the service providers
to override the separation of the transport and
application layers of the Internet. And that
would represent the erosion of the authority of
the foundational Internet standards that has made
the 'Net into the greatest force for economic
expansion and human communications in history.
Sometime early in the New Year, therefore,
Congress will reform the Telecommunications Act
of 1996. They will require Internet providers to
allow consumers access to any application, content, or service. CONTENT AND OWNERSHIP
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Craig Kuhl]
By 2009, more than 108 million digital TV
subscribers worldwide will be accessing thousands
of video-on-demand (VOD) programs and moving
massive amounts of content from device to device.
That expected explosion of special content
delivery holds tremendous upside, and one
enormous danger: piracy. Preventing this valuable
content from being stolen by consumers or
illegally downloaded is now an industry
imperative. It's pushing cable operators,
broadcasters, movie studios, record companies and
their partnering industries -- such as set-top
box manufacturers -- to new content-protection
heights. Next-generation methodologies and
technologies such as the M Card, DCAS
(downloadable conditional-access system) and
digital watermarking are expected to offer a more
effective means of identifying and tracking just
who is accessing the content and how it's paid
for, all under the conditional-access (CA) umbrella. NEWSPAPER CHAIN SEES ITS FUTURE, AND IT'S ONLINE AND HYPER-LOCAL
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Frank Ahrens]
Gannett's newspapers are redirecting their
newsrooms to focus on the Web first, paper
second. Papers are slashing national and foreign
coverage and beefing up "hyper-local,"
street-by-street news. They are creating
reader-searchable databases on traffic flows and
school class sizes. Web sites are fed with
reader-generated content, such as pictures of
their kids with Santa. In short, Gannett -- at
its 90 papers, including USA Today -- is trying
everything it can think of to create Web sites that will attract more readers. PEDIATRICIANS CALL FOR LESS ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Marilyn Elias]
Pediatricians should lobby for a ban or severe
curtailment on widespread school-based ads, and
Congress should prohibit commercials for “junk
food” on TV shows watched mostly by young
children, the American Academy of Pediatrics says
today. The new policy on advertising to kids was
prompted by alarm over rising rates of childhood
obesity in an atmosphere where kids increasingly
are targeted by marketers, says pediatrician
Victor Strasburger, the policy's senior author.
Since the pediatricians last weighed in on the
issue 11 years ago, ads have cropped up
everywhere kids turn: the Internet, cellphones,
video games, school campuses and even school
buses, Strasburger says. Last year, advertisers
spent $1.4 billion per month marketing to
children — 15% more than in 2004, according to
James McNeal, a children's marketing expert and
author of The Kids Market: Myths and Realities.
An Institute of Medicine report last year found
evidence that food and beverage marketing to
children 12 and under leads them to ask for and
eat and drink non-nutritious products that are
high in calories. The new policy calls for
Congress and the Federal Communications
Commission to limit commercials on children's TV
to five to six minutes an hour, a 50% cut from
what's now allowed. The pediatrics group also
called on makers of Viagra and similar drugs to
run commercials only on shows that air after 10
p.m. These ads “make sexual activity seem like a
recreational sport,” while birth control
commercials that could cut teen pregnancy rates
are rarely aired, the policy says. 1 Dec: RAIDING YOUR INBOX
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff]
[Commentary] IN THE LATEST illustration of the
Bush administration's disregard for your privacy,
the Justice Department is trying to convince a
panel of federal judges that the FBI should be
free to read your e-mail without obtaining a
warrant. It's not all your e-mail -- only
messages left on a Web-based system such as
Hotmail or on your Internet service provider's
computers. A 1986 law forbids the interception
and disclosure of e-mail and other online
transmissions without a warrant. But there is an
exception. If the messages are more than 180 days
old, they can be obtained merely with a subpoena
or a court order, which investigators can obtain
more easily than a warrant. The U.S. 6th Circuit
Court of Appeals should rein in the feds and
strike down the provisions of the law that are
out of sync with the technological realities of
the broadband era -- and the privacy expectations of Americans. GROUPS URGE COURTS TO LIMIT FCC'S AUTHORITY TO REGULATE SPEECH
[SOURCE: Center for Democracy & Technology]
As communications technologies converge, courts
must rein in the Federal Communications
Commission's continued efforts to expand its
authority to regulate speech over broadcast
media. That is the key message of two
friend-of-the-court briefs CDT filed this week in
conjunction with Adam Thierer of the Progress and
Freedom Foundation (PFF) in the U.S. Courts of
Appeals for the 2nd and 3rd Circuits. As an
organization focused on the Internet and emerging
digital technology, CDT has not typically
involved itself in the broadcast indecency
debate. But the FCC's increased indecency
enforcement is likely in this age of convergence
to threaten the underlying freedom of other
digital communications. November 30, 2006
Press Release: TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR AIRWAVES
[SOURCE: Seattle Times, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps]
[Commentary] What do Americans want from their
media? As a commissioner at the Federal
Communications Commission, I hear a lot about
this issue. I hear that Americans want to listen
to hometown talent on the radio and to see local
issues and politicians covered on the nightly
news. They want an in-depth look at what's going
on at City Hall and the schools their children
attend. In short, they want to know what's really
going on in their neighborhoods and to see the
essentials of their own lives reported accurately
to the larger world. Even if the future of our
media is not your No. 1 issue, it needs to be —
it has to be — your No. 2 issue. That's because
Americans get their input and develop their views
about all the other critical issues of the day —
the war, jobs, the economy, health care,
education, etc. — from the media. They learn
about them on TV news, hear about them on the
radio, and read about them in the newspaper. I
can't think of any of these issues that wouldn't
fare much better in an open, diverse,
community-responsive and competitive environment. Click here for earler Benton files. (c)
Benton Foundation 2003. Redistribution of this email publication -- both internally
and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this message: Use this tool to search our site or the web. |
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