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Benton media news digest
– October 2007
DIVERSITY NOT ENOUGH
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Steve
Villano, Cable Positive the industry’s anti-AIDS organization]
[Commentary]
Last week was Diversity Week in the
cable industry. If one statement crystallized how
much more work needs to be done in that area, it
was MTV president Christina Norman’s bold
assertion that even MTV — long considered an
industry leader in creating a more diverse
workplace—was still “only rounding second base.”
For people with a disability — like HIV — and for
gays and lesbians, sitting on second base would
be a pretty lofty perch. Just getting on the
playing field is frequently an issue. Throughout
the two days of the NAMIC Conference, the terms
“the disabled,” or “GLBT” (gay, lesbian,
bisexual, transgender) were rarely mentioned, if
at all, as qualifications for the definition of
“diversity.” Of all the major speakers throughout
the week, only ESPN/ABC Sports’ George
Bodenheimer, who received the Kaitz Foundation’s
corporate diversity award on behalf of his
network, expressed an inclusive vision of
diversity when he said that his network would
continue to be sensitive to issues of “race,
gender, orientation and disability.”
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6485555.html
EFFECTS OF TOO MUCH TV CAN BE UNDONE
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Anita Manning]
Parents who fear television is rotting their
toddlers' minds may find it's not too late to
head off potential problems by turning off the
tube and taking it out of their children's rooms,
a report suggests. Researchers at Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health report that
it's not only how many hours children spend in
front of the TV, but at what age they watch that
matters. Among the findings: Children who watched
two or more hours of TV a day at 30-33 months old
but had reduced TV watching by the time they were
5½ had no significant social or behavioral
problems. Those who didn't watch much TV as
toddlers but were heavy (two hours or more daily)
viewers by age 5½ were having problems with
social skills. Those who had been sustained,
heavy TV watchers from age 2½ to 5½ had deficits
in social skills as well as behavior, including
problems with attention and showing aggression.
Parents reported that 40% of children at age 5½
have televisions in their bedrooms, a factor that
was linked to sleep problems and may also "dampen
the intensity with which children react to
stimulation (or) changes in their environment,"
says Kamila Mistry, lead author of the report,
which is in the October issue of the journal Pediatrics.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20071001/d_kidstv01.art.htm
TECHNOLOGY HAS TEENAGERS AND PARENTS TALKING
[SOURCE: Reuters]
Families may not sit around a table together for
a meal as much anymore, but High-Tech" parents
are now communicating much better with their
teenagers and giving them more freedom, says
child psychologist Richard Woolfson. "Now we have
today's high-tech family where family
communication takes place by email, internet,
webcam and mobile phone as well as face-to-face
of course," he said. That has another beneficial
side-effect, Woolfson said in his survey for the
T-Mobile phone company. Parents are now able to
contact their kids much more easily and children
have become more confident and communicative.
"This means that parents are less worried about
their children's safety because they feel
reassured," Woolfson said. And the generation gap
is not suffering. "Even grandma and grandpa have
entered the world of cyber space to keep close
contact with their children and grandchildren,
all of which can only be good news for everyone," Woolfson concluded.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL2883732020070929
INTERNET TAX REVOLT
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary]
It turns out there may be an
exception to Congress's otherwise unbridled
passion for higher taxes. A rebellion late last
week in the Senate means that a permanent ban on
Internet taxes could still make it to President
Bush's desk this year. A four-year extension
authored by Democrat Tom Carper of Delaware and
Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee was
scheduled for markup last week. The duo want a
bill that would allow states and localities to
tax the component parts of Internet access
service, even while claiming that the assembled
product was tax-free. Moments before this
consumer-unfriendly bill was to be considered
last Thursday, however, Chairman Daniel Inouye
abruptly cancelled the markup. Pro-Internet
lawmakers, led by Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and
New Hampshire Republican John Sununu, had
assembled the votes to replace Mr. Carper's
pseudo-moratorium with their strong, permanent
tax ban. If Mr. Inouye keeps trying to push the
phony moratorium, Mr. Wyden tells us that he now
believes he can move the real deal through the
Finance Committee, which also enjoys
jurisdiction. The Wyden-Sununu permanent ban
would give investors a strong incentive to fund
broadband investment that will empower consumers
with a faster Internet. America now has 213
million Internet users, and letting state and
local politicians impose multiple taxes will only
slow its growth. The antitax forces deserve
support from Senate leaders, as well as from the White House.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119120181406044346.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
(requires subscription)
ONE GIANT LEAP
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Peter Zimmerman, King's College London]
[Commentary]
Fifty years ago this week Sputnik 1
entered space, and the history books, as the
first man-made satellite of Earth. It was a
Soviet, and not an American, achievement. In all
probability the Eisenhower administration was
actually glad to have been beaten into space. In
deepest secrecy, the U.S. was working on another
satellite program -- a system intended to take
close-up photos of Russia and replace the U-2
airplane. The U.S. worried that the Soviets would
object to any satellite flying over their
territory, and would claim that Soviet
sovereignty reached to the stars. Since Sputnik 1
orbited over the U.S. without objection, the
right of satellites to pass peacefully was firmly
established before the first military spacecraft
was launched. The humiliation caused by being
beaten into space had other consequences.
President John F. Kennedy, attempting to seize
back the initiative, declared on May 25, 1961,
that the U.S. would "[land a] man on the moon and
bring him safely back to the Earth" within the
decade. Apollo 11 landed on the moon on July 20,
1969, and returned safely on July 24. But the
importance of the space race for the country was
far greater. In the wake of Sputnik, Congress
quickly passed the National Defense Education Act
(the first federal law aiding education
generally), contributing large sums to the
education of scientists and engineers -- and even
linguists. Students were encouraged to choose
scientific careers. Many, including me, did. The
young men and women who studied science during
the post-Sputnik boom created our world. Two
fields of science, high-energy particle physics
and space research itself, pushed forward
technology by asking for ever-smaller
electronics, ever-faster computing and
ever-faster transfers of data. If your calling
plan lets you telephone Europe for two cents a
minute, instead of the $12.95 for three minutes
it cost me in 1965, thank Sputnik and the
geostationary communications satellites that
followed in its wake. If your calling plan lets
you telephone Europe for two cents a minute,
instead of the $12.95 for three minutes it cost
me in 1965, thank Sputnik and the geostationary
communications satellites that followed in its
wake. If your weather forecasts are generally
accurate, that's because of the huge amount of
data gathered by weather satellites, and the
electronics originally built so that more
functions could be crammed onto a single
satellite. And if you didn't get lost on last
weekend's trip, nor have to ask directions,
because your SatNav plotted your route, the GPS
system is just one more in the constellation of Sputnik's descendants.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119120328700544377.html?mod=todays_us_opinion
(requires subscription)
HIGH-TECH CULTURE OF SILICON VALLEY ORIGINALLY FORMED AROUND RADIO
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: Tom Abate]
Silicon Valley's technological awakening began
almost a century ago when, not long after the
great quake of 1906, the Bay Area - and
particularly the Peninsula - began innovating
with the then-hot technology of radio. "The San
Francisco Bay Area was a natural place for
interest in radio because it was a seagoing
region," said Timothy Sturgeon, an industrial
researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology who described this radio period in a
paper, "How Silicon Valley Came to Be." Lécuyer
and Sturgeon argue that, roughly 30 years before
Hewlett and Packard started work in their garage,
and almost 50 years before the Traitorous Eight
created Fairchild, the basic culture of Silicon
Valley was forming around radio: engineers who
hung out in hobby clubs, brainstormed and
borrowed equipment, spun new companies out of old
ones, and established a meritocracy ruled by
those who made electronic products cheaper, faster and better.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/09/30/MNDTSEMSJ.DTL&type=tech
BACKPACKER TURNS MYANMAR ACTIVIST VIA FACEBOOK
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: David Fox]
A chance encounter in a Myanmar coffee shop
turned teenage backpacker Alex Bookbinder into a
political activist at the forefront of an
Internet campaign that has attracted tens of
thousands of supporters. Bookbinder, 19, is the
creator of the "Support the monks protest in
Burma" campaign on the Internet social networking phenomenon "Facebook."
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSSP28941720070929
MONASTERIES ENTER INTERNET AGE
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Sue Zeidler]
A monk's life is still a simple one of prayer and
austerity, yet many monasteries have moved online
for business, communication and even headhunting
purposes. Indeed, many monasteries have jumped on
the Internet bandwagon to sell a broad range of
wares such as books, music, incense, edibles and
wearables. A simple Google search using the
words, "monastery" and "online store" yields 1,060,000 results.
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0923261120070928
WILL A GOOGLE PHONE CHANGE THE GAME?
[SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Roger O. Crockett]
Could we soon see an ad-supported cell phone
service? It may be coming in the form of a Google
phone. Wireless industry consultants and
marketing executives with knowledge of Google's
plans say it has been showing prototypes of a new
phone to handset manufacturers and network
operators for a couple of months. Its plans have
been kept top secret, but Google is expected to
tap a company on the Pacific Rim that specializes
in mobile design and manufacturing to build a
handset to its specs. Google could then apply its
expertise in operating software and user
applications, says Paul Catalano, a partner at
consultancy RelevantC Business Group. Google
officials won't talk about phones, and industry
sources don't expect one before the second half
of 2008. Still, Google has made it clear it has
an interest in wireless. It is experimenting with
wireless broadband networks in a couple of U.S.
cities. In August, CEO Eric Schmidt announced his
intention to participate in a federal auction
early next year of the sort of radio spectrum
that would help pull off a phone service.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_41/b4053084.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories
TS CREATORS CALL INTERNET OUTDATED, OFFER REMEDIES
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Bobby White bobby.white@wsj.com]
There's a growing debate over whether the
Internet's current infrastructure is sufficient
to handle the explosion of bandwidth-hungry
services such as Internet telephony and video. In
a recent report, Cisco calculated that monthly
Internet traffic in North America will increase
264% by 2011 to more than 7.8 million terabytes,
or the equivalent of 40 trillion email messages.
If such Internet traffic continues increasing,
many believe networks could crash or at least
slow to a crawl. Today, information travels the
Web by being broken into tiny bits called
packets, which are routed through the least
congested pipes to their destination. Once the
packets arrive, they are reassembled into their
original form. The problem is that the increasing
size of files, such as video, has begun
overwhelming some equipment handling the traffic,
resulting in errant or lost packets. To tackle
the problem, a slew of start-ups are producing
gear and software to accelerate Internet traffic
or to increase the network's capacity.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119128309597345795.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
(requires subscription)
* Our fraying Internet infrastructure (Commentary)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/01/EDGBSAN5C.DTL
GOOGLE: SEARCH AND DATA SEIZURE
[SOURCE: The Nation, AUTHOR: Jeff Chester]
Google is far more than the digital incarnation
of Madison Avenue in the twenty-first century. It
is the engine driving us into a new
communications era, in which interactive
marketing will significantly shape our lives. The
company is aggressively expanding its advertising
role, building out a sales team poised to partner
with the biggest brand advertisers on the planet.
Google is pitching its souped-up interactive
advertising system to global corporations so they
can better blend marketing messaged into the
news, information and entertainment we consume.
Google's message to Madison Avenue is that its
technology can leverage tremendous insights about
global consumers of products and information, and
can deliver the right interactive marketing
messages to consumers at precisely the right moment.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071015/chester
AN ANALYSIS OF THE NET NEUTRALITY DEBATE OF 2006
[SOURCE: Professor Jeffrey A. Hart, Indiana University]
In 2006, a major telecommunications bill failed
because it did not include guarantees for
something called Ånet neutrality. The purpose
of this paper is to describe and explain the
politics behind the net neutrality debate of 2006
and to predict its likely future course.
http://www.indiana.edu/~globalm/pdf/apsa07.pdf
'HOWL' TOO HOT TO HEAR
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: Joe Garofoli]
Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal
Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's Beat-era
poem "Howl" was not obscene. Yet today, a New
York public broadcasting station decided not to
air the poem, fearing that the Federal
Communications Commission will find it indecent
and crush the network with crippling fines.
Free-speech advocates see tremendous irony in how
Ginsberg's epic poem - which lambastes the
consumerism and conformism of the 1950s and
heralds a budding American counterculture - is,
half a century later, chilled by a federal
government crackdown on the broadcasting of
provocative language. In the new media landscape,
the "Howl" controversy illustrates how indecency
standards differ on the Internet and on the
public airwaves. Instead of broadcasting the poem
on the air today, New York listener-supported
radio station WBAI will include a reading of the
poem in a special online-only program called
"Howl Against Censorship." It will be posted on
www.pacifica.org, the Internet home of the
Berkeley-based Pacifica Foundation, because
online sites do not fall under the FCC's purview.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/02/MN0PSIM67.DTL
FROM STATE DEPARTMENT, ALL THE NEWS FOR INQUIRING MINDS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Al Kamen]
This is what we've all been waiting for! No more
media filters and distortions! The State
Department is in the blogosphere, and says it
"offers the public an alternative source to
mainstream media for U.S. foreign policy
information." The blog, launched last week and
called "Dipnote," is "taking you behind the scenes."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/02/AR2007100202033.html
(requires registration)
THE NETTLESOME NET
[SOURCE: The Christian Science Monitor, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary]
Burma's uprising was crushed last
week with both bullets and shears. The junta
first cut phone lines to keep protesters from
organizing. Then it hit Internet servers to block
images and reports of its brutality from reaching
the world. Such a crackdown on communications was
easy in Burma (also known as Myanmar). Its phone
lines are crude, and less than 1 percent of the
population has Web access. Many closed societies,
such as Burma, North Korea, and Cuba, have been
blocked from completely joining the Information
Age. Their leaders wouldn't stay in power long if
dissidents could fully use blogs, e-mail,
minicams, Facebook, text messaging, and other
digital marvels to challenge the authoritarian
regimes and expose their atrocities.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1003/p08s01-comv.html
ELECTIONS/POLITICS & MEDIA
TECHPRESIDENT, THE INTERNET CITIZENRY'S NEW CENSUS TAKER
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Jose Antonio Vargas]
"The holy grail of online politics is converting
online enthusiasm to offline results," says
veteran journalist Micah L. Sifry, as he sits in
his colleague Andrew Rasiej's spacious SoHo
kitchen. Rasiej and Sifry are founders of
TechPresident.com, a one-stop site for anyone
trying to make sense of the Internet's influence
on 2008 presidential politics. It's a diverse,
bipartisan group blog written, read and dissected
by the who's who of the growing online political
digerati -- made up of academics and young
political operatives reared on the Internet, all
Web-savvy enough to know the difference between
MySpace and Facebook. And TechPresident is like
the Census Bureau, tracking the number of YouTube
views, MySpace friends and Facebook supporters of
each candidate. But, more important, it tries to
put them in context -- what the numbers could mean for campaigns and voters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/02/AR2007100202188.html
(requires registration)
TECH GIANTS POKE AROUND FACEBOOK
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Jon Swartz]
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo... who will invest in,
if not own, facebook, the social-networking
site? Last week, there were reports that
Microsoft is in preliminary talks with Facebook
about a 5% stake -- worth anywhere from $300
million to $500 million. Google is also
reportedly interested in an investment. Last
year, Yahoo and Viacom made bids to buy Facebook.
Facebook could be worth as much as $6 billion
today, Bear Stearns analyst Robert Peck says. He
expects privately held Facebook to post a profit
of about $30 million on revenue of $140 million
this year, and register a $70 million profit on
revenue of $358 million in 2008. He predicts $6 billion in revenue by 2016.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20071003/facebook.art.htm
WELCOME TO THEIR WORLD -- ALL OF IT
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Jessica Guynn]
A growing number of people are turning cameras on
themselves and on their worlds, broadcasting the
results in real time. Lifecasting comes naturally
to today's youths, who are used to living their
lives in public, posting details of every hookup
and breakup on their Facebook or MySpace pages.
Anyone with a laptop, webcam and Internet
connection can do it. As with any new medium,
people are trying to figure out the rules of
etiquette. The budding phenomenon raises
questions about the privacy of people who may not
want to appear in the live streams, as well as
copyright implications of, for example,
broadcasting music that's playing in the
background. But companies such as Los
Angeles-based Ustream and Justin.tv in San
Francisco are racing to become the dominant
purveyor of such live, unfiltered programs. In
the last year, the technology behind live
streaming has become so cheap that start-ups such
as Mogulus, MyStreams and Veodia can afford to
give it away in hopes that they can make money
through the mainstays of TV's reality shows: advertising and product placement.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-justintv3oct03,1,6221731.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage
(requires registration)
ABC NEWS OPENING ONE-MAN FOREIGN BUREAUS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Paul J. Gough]
After two decades of cutbacks in international
bureaus, ABC News is bucking the trend by
creating one-person operations that will
dramatically boost its coverage in Africa, India
and elsewhere. The small offices, staffed by a
reporter-producer with the latest in hand-held
digital technology, cost a fraction of what it
takes to run a full-time bureau. But the work
they file will be featured not only on
ABCNews.com and ABC News Now but also
occasionally on such ABC shows as "World News
Tonight" and "Good Morning America."
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=industryNews&storyID=2007-10-03T055739Z_01_N03445107_RTRIDST_0_INDUSTRY-ABCNEWS-DC.XML
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(c)
Benton Foundation 2003. Redistribution of this email publication -- both internally
and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this message:
Communications-Related
Headlines are compiled, summarized and edited by Rachel Anderson (rachel@benton.org),
Andy Carvin (andy@benton.org) and Charles Meisch (charlie@benton.org) of the Benton
Foundation -- we welcome your feedback. Based in Washington DC, the Benton Foundation's
mission is to articulate a public interest vision for the digital age and demonstrate
the value of communications for solving social problems. Other projects at Benton
include:
Digital Divide Network (www.digitaldividenetwork.org)
Digital Opportunity Channel (www.digitalopportunity.org)
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