Peace Corps Hires Kyrgyz Gunmen

According to Registan.net, the US Government's "Peace Corps" has hired Kyrgyz gunmen to protect volunteers during the current violence in Kyrgyzstan.

It seems that the Peace Corps made an excellent decision in hiring local Kyrgyz gunmen to rescue the volunteer from their besieged building, especially considering that the car was checked for Uzbeks at a roadblock. A Blackhawk full of US Marines or Rangers probably could have rescued them, but not as quietly as the locals did. That’s scary stuff, but of course almost nothing compared to what’s happening to some locals.

As I argued in my Orbis articles, NGOs and groups like the Peace Corps must inevitably wind up supporting warlords, mafia dons, and terrorists. This case is obviously neither the first, nor the last. Of course, the Kyrgyz gunmen are the ones terrorizing and killing the Uzbek minority fleeing for their lives. Your US tax dollars at work...

As I mentioned in my post about Linda Polman's new book War Games, she explains the reasons for this horrible phenomenon (even argues "humanitarian" NGOs would have paid Nazis during WWII if they operated under the same system as today) lie in the underlying immorality of NGOs and Western governments.

Meanwhile, NPR posted this account:

Over two days, ten aid workers gathered in safe houses on both sides of the conflict. When our food ran low, neighbors smuggled us bread and tea and refused to be compensated. But others sent rocks through our windows and demanded bribes. And all the while, bands of young, ethnic Kyrgyz, enraged by rumors of students having been raped, terrorized the streets around us. They ransacked Uzbek apartments. They torched markets and restaurants. They burned vehicles, piled them into barricades, and shot at those trying to escape the city. By night, gunfire and screaming mixed with thunderclaps.

Hired drivers, wearing bandanas, brandishing a hatchet and a rifle, were hired to ferry Moreno and his colleagues to an airfield. For 20 minutes – “20 long minutes,” he writes –- they idled, awaiting directions.

UPDATE: Judging from to R.B. Moreno's blog post, the Peace Corps appears to be in full cover-up mode:

Update (5:30 PM, June 15, 2010) -- The U.S. Peace Corps has requested that this post be removed until further notice.

Memo to Peace Corps HQ: That's sure making a case for transparency, open government, and the public's right to know! I wish someone in Congress would ask the Peace Corps how much they paid the Kyrgyz gunmen, and from which funding allocation the money has been taken...plus, of course, why were volunteers not pulled out before the violence erupted? Also, since R.B. Moreno was sent by the US Government to teach "journalism"...doesn't it set a bad example to make him publicly show that his dispatches are censored by the US Government? Kind of looks like the Soviet system, which we were supposedly trying to change, IMHO.

Twitter Hashtag for Journalism "Reinvention" Pow-Wow is #FTC

BTW, I'm not there, following it on Twitter, instead. After reading the list of participants, I'm glad I stayed home. IMHO, the FTC is appears unashamed to 'stack the deck' with newspaper industry and public broadcasting corporate spokesmodels...

FTC Journalism "Reinvention" Agenda for Today's National Press Club Meeting

They call it ROUNDTABLES ON THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM: How will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?(ht Adam Thierer's twitter): You can read it--and weep--here.

Russia Readying Kyrgyzstan Action

 Acccording to the London Times:

The Kremlin edged closer last night to military intervention in Kyrgyzstan as the number of people killed in ethnic violence spiralled and as many as 100,000 refugees flooded neighbouring Uzbekistan.  

An emergency meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) — the Russian-dominated group of former Soviet states — said that it was sending helicopters and lorries to help the Kyrgyz Government to quell fighting between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that has raged for four days in southern Kyrgyzstan. At least 124 people have died and 1,500 have been wounded, although some witnesses believe the number of deaths is far higher.  

“This is extremely dangerous for this region and for this reason it is necessary to do everything possible to put an end to such acts,” President Medvedev of Russia said, after the meeting in Moscow.

Is BP British Petroleum?

Yes.

It was created by the British government specifically to serve British interests.

From the official history posted on the BP website:

Churchill was a believer. He thought Britain needed a dedicated oil supply, and he argued the case in Parliament, urging his colleagues to “look out upon the wide expanse of the oil regions of the world!” Only the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company, he said, could protect British interests.

The resolution passed resoundingly, and the UK government became a major shareholder in the company. Churchill had ended Anglo-Persian’s cash crisis, and no one had long to quietly ponder the long-term implications of a company entwining its financial interests with a political entity.

Two weeks later, an assassin killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Six weeks after that, Germany attacked France. The Great War had begun. By its end, war without oil would be unimaginable.

Despite its name, the British Petroleum brand was originally created by a German firm as a way of marketing its products in Britain. During the war, the British government seized the company’s assets, and the Public Trustee sold them to Anglo-Persian in 1917.
With that, Anglo-Persian had an instant distribution network in the UK, including 520 depots, 535 railway tank wagons, 1,102 road vehicles, four barges and 650 horses.

BTW, according to press accounts, the British government released the Pan Am 103 bomber in exchange for a BP oil deal with Libya--breaking a promise to the US government that he would never be let go. I suggest the US now ask the British to get him back and turn him over to US authorities for trial...

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal notes BP's Persian connection in today's web post.

Robert Picard: FTC Staff Wrongly Claim Newspaper Losses in Journalism "Reinvention" Document

The media economist and blogger says most newspapers still make money. So why "save" a profitable business with average margins of 12%? (ht Matt Creamer, BreakingMedia)

The FTC’s staff ignores the fact that most newspapers are profitable (the average operating profit in 2009 was 12%), but that their corporate parents are unprofitable because of high overhead costs and ill-advised debt loads taken on when advertising revenues were peaked at all time highs. It also fails to make adequate distinction between longer term trends affecting newspapers and the effects of the current recession. The staff thus blends the two together to give a skewed picture of the mid- to long-term health of the industry.

Registan.net on Kyrgyzstan Violence

Latest updates from Central Asia Watchers on Registan.net.

Meet Israel's Only Friend: Geert Wilders

From the Jerusalem Post, this interview with the Dutch MP:

Geert Wilders, who is demanding a halt to immigration from Muslim countries as the centerpiece of his campaign for the Dutch prime ministership, has hailed Israel for “fighting the jihad” and warned that “the West is next” if Israel is unsuccessful.

“Israel is the canary in the coal mine,” Wilders said in a recent telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post, ahead of Wednesday’s elections in the Netherlands. “The jihad against Israel isn’t against Israel only. It’s against the whole West.”

A year ago, Wilders’s PVV (Party for Freedom) was scoring 28 percent in opinion polls and appeared to have a realistic prospect of winning the elections. It has declined since then, however, he said, as economic issues have become increasingly dominant.

“There’s not a big chance that I’ll become prime minister,” he said.

Nonetheless, the PVV is expected to double its current nine seats in the 150-member parliament, and front-runner Mark Rutte, of the People’s Party for Freedom of Democracy (VVD), said this week that he was not ruling out Wilders’s party as a coalition partner.

Huffington Post: FTC Journalism Scheme "Preposterous"

Glad Arianna didn't drink the FTC Kool-Aid. Here's what Gary Shapiro, writing on behalf of the consumer electronics industry, had to say in the Huffington Post:

Every now and then, Washington advances a policy idea that is so preposterous one would think that medical marijuana has seeped into the corridors of our government buildings and altered our lawmaker's perceptions. A recent Federal Trade Commission proposal to save newspapers and local news providers by implementing a five percent tax on consumer electronics products, cell phones and Internet service is classic absurdity.

Would you donate nine bucks to your local newspaper when you purchase an iPod? Or, could you spare 15 dollars the next time you buy an Xbox to give to your local broadcast news station? The FTC proposal suggests the only way to save these media dinosaurs, many of which have failed to innovate for years, is to add a tax to the consumer that would flow to these media outlets.

Why are local news outlets in such dire straits? Because they let the innovation movement pass them by. Any newspaper could have gotten on board earlier and used new technologies, but they were comfortable and complacent. Most news outlets sat back and let Google, Craigslist, and other online entrepreneurs create innovations instead of innovating themselves.

So now, these news businesses want to tax America's most innovative industry in order to support its least. Put another way, they want to tax the owners and customers of the Huffington Post, the Drudge Report, iPads, Androids and other digital innovators to subsidize an industry whose 2010 business plan involves cutting down trees, slathering them with ink, and hauling them around the city on trucks.

Imagine if this had occurred with other historic technology shifts. If this were the 1600s, Guttenberg would be taxed to give money to the monks. In the 1800s, Edison would be taxed to pay whale oil processors. A century ago car producers would be taxed to support horse and buggy makers...

MORE from Rob Port...bloglawonline...and econsultancy.

Arianna Huffington on Government 2.0

When it comes to information and technology, Arianna is very un-FTC, at least according to her latest post:

Watching the news, it's easy to conclude that "Yes We Can" has been replaced with, "Actually, On Second Thought... We Probably Can't." We can't plug the damn hole, we can't get rid of too-big-to-fail banks, we can't pass an adequate foreclosures bill, we can't pass an adequate jobs bill. The list goes on and on.

Nevertheless, there are reasons for optimism -- even when it comes to the way our government is being run. One of these reasons is Tim O'Reilly, the tech guru CEO of O'Reilly Media. Among other things, five years ago O'Reilly coined the term Web 2.0. And now he's at the forefront of a movement to apply the concept to the way our democracy is run: Government 2.0.

I talked with O'Reilly at last week's Personal Democracy Forum in New York, a don't-miss annual gathering focused on the intersection between government and technology.

We talked about the need to create a new relationship between We the People and those we elect to represent us -- and the crucial role technology can play in it. For O'Reilly, Government 2.0 isn't about every office in D.C. having its own website and posting reams of data. It's about, as he put it in a blog post-cum-manifesto, "a new compact between government and the public, in which government puts in place mechanisms for services that are delivered not by government, but by private citizens."

It's about government as a facilitator, laying the foundation for innovation in self-governance. It's "government as a platform."

Is Bin Laden in Iran?

Al Sharq Al-Awsat says Al Qaeda might be planning its next attack with Teheran's support:

Who knows whether or not Bin Laden is actually in Iran? What’s certain – and this was previously revealed by Asharq Al-Awsat – is that some of Bin Laden’s children are in Iran and the story that is most fresh in people’s memories is that of Iman Bin Laden who left Tehran for Syria after great effort [was exerted]. Today, reports indicate that some Al Qaeda leaders have gone back to moving freely to and from Iran.

The reports indicate that Iran has begun to review its [political] calculations in anticipation of an outbreak of military confrontation with the US or Israel, or even in the case that sanctions are imposed upon it. The danger lies in the fact that this view is supported by many Arab and Western sources to whom I have spoken over the past few months; they all believe that the Iranian military threats are for media consumption whilst the real danger lies in the possibility of Iran using terrorist operations and sleeper cells here and there. This might explain some of the news reports that come out every now and then in our region about the existence of cells, or Iranian spy networks; however many Arab countries, Gulf states in particular, seek to downplay the news in order to avoid escalation with Iran.

What confirms the danger and seriousness of the situation is what an informed Iranian source told the newspaper on Thursday. The source stated that Iran actually used Al Qaeda in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as the informed source said that Tehran’s use of Al Qaeda elements “comes within the framework of Iran playing all the cards it can that could lead to harming America in the region and making it leave.” The source added, “The Iranians used Al Qaeda skillfully in Iraq and Afghanistan. Because of the current situation, it is likely that Iran will change its movements towards Al Qaeda in order to further benefit from it, perhaps in other regions.”

This matter is certainly understandable if we remember that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. However the burning question is to what extent are we prepared for all that?

Let's see, Obama's national security strategy declares that the US is at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates...so if Iran is an affiliate, what does that mean for US policy towards Teheran? Or, to put it another way, what does it mean about the credibility of announced US policies?

A Miracle in Israel: New Offshore Gas Field Holds Estimated 16 Trillion Cubic Feet

According to this AP report:

A U.S. energy company predicted last week that Israel will have enough natural gas to export to Europe and Asia from the offshore field it is developing. The Houston, Texas-based Noble Energy said the Leviathan natural gas field may hold up to 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Noble raised estimates for the neighboring Tamar field to 8.4 trillion, a 33 percent increase. The production is expected to start in 2012.

Hope it is true. IMHO, The world treats countries with oil and gas better than those without...

Daniel Pipes on Turkey

Daniel Pipes says Turkey may have overreached by sponsoring the recent Islamist flotilla attack on Israel:

If Ankara's irresponsible behavior has worrisome implications for the Middle East and Islam, it also has a mitigating aspect. Turks have been at the forefront of developing what I call Islamism 2.0, the popular, legitimate, and non-violent version of what Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden tried to achieve forcefully via Islamism 1.0. I have predicted that Erdogan's insidious form of Islamism "may threaten civilized life even more than does 1.0's brutality."

But his abandonment of earlier modesty and caution suggests that Islamists cannot help themselves, that the thuggishness inherent to Islamism must eventually emerge, that the 2.0 variant must revert to its 1.0 origins. As Martin Kramer posits, "the further Islamists are from power, the more restrained they are, as well as the reverse." This means it might be the case that Islamism presents a less formidable opponent, and for two reasons.

First, Turkey hosts the most sophisticated Islamist movement in the world, one that includes not just the AKP but the Fethullah Gülen mass movement, the Adnan Oktar propaganda machine, and more. AKP's new bellicosity has caused dissension; Gülen, for example, publicly condemned the "Free Gaza" farce, suggesting a debilitating internal battle over tactics could take place.

Second, if once only a small band of analysts recognized Erdogan's Islamist outlook, this fact has now become self-evidently obvious for the whole world to see. Erdogan has gratuitously discarded his carefully crafted image of a pro-Western "Muslim democrat," making it far easier to treat him as theTehran-Damascus ally that he is.

As Davutoglu seeks, Turkey has returned to the center of the Middle East and the umma. But it no longer deserves full NATO membership and its opposition parties deserve support.

Fox News on FTC Journalism Scheme

(ht Washington Rebel)

Charles Crawford on How WWIII Might Start

After taking a survey of current international crises, Charles Crawford explains how the current approach could lead to war:

It is not so much that any one of these problems is uncontainable. It is the fact that they come along simultaneously, creating a sense that the shared understandings and responsibilities which have kept some sense of global order since WW2 are giving way to a new 'grab what you can' attitude.

Western policy-makers in particular are paralysed, bogged down in their economic problems and unwilling to use military force since it is no longer clear (a) that Western military force can achieve victory in the sort of conflicts now breaking out in different places, and (b) what a stable outcome in any one place might look like.

Western hesitation is matched by Chinese, Russian and Indian hesitation. Those powers themselves are struggling as world markets seize up, but they see an historic opportunity for themselves to move into the philosophical space created by Western retreat.

World Wars One and Two were conflicts with global reach arising from European power-struggles. But there was at least a clear context, involving thematic rivalries in an understandable form.

World War Three is different. For the first time in centuries the USA and Europe are unable to set or even define the global agenda, and so face philosophical and psychological defeat. Other powers come to the fore, fighting and redrawing the map - and therefore the rules - as they see fit.

The turmoil is all the more dramatic and vicious for being in a sense anarchic and incoherent, even if civilisational principles are implicitly at stake.

ArsTechnica: FTC Journalism Proposals "Imbecility"

From ArsTechnica:

We get it. These aren't FTC ideas. They're only being circulated to aid discussion. But many are still bad—truly execrable stuff. Let's take a look.

Are you kidding me?

Rein in fair use. Hey, how about passing legislation "clarifying that the routine copying of original content done by a search engine in order to conduct a search (caching) is copyright infringement not protected by fair use"? This, a truly brain-dead idea, would raise "difficult questions about unintended consequences," as the FTC staff put it.

If companies don't want to be spidered by search engines, they can use robots.txt to opt out. Even the FTC staffers know this; why doesn't everyone else?

(If you want to read the original proposal, you can (PDF); it was drafted by a DC lawyer.)

Charge ISPs a monthly fee. Yes, the ideas can get worse, as evidenced by this beauty. One participant suggested:

amending the copyright laws to create a content license fee (perhaps $5.00 to $7.00) to be paid by every Internet Service Provider on each account it provides. He suggests creating a new division of the Copyright Office, which would operate under streamlined procedures and would collect and distribute these fees. Copyright owners who elect to participate would agree to periodically submit records of their digitized download records to the Copyright Office. The Copyright Office could verify these records by commissioning market-by-market sampling by organizations like Nielsen, ARB, and Comscore. He suggests these fees could provide a financial floor that allows publishers to leverage additional income, and would encourage, not discourage, the operation of market forces, and stimulate experimentation and innovation.

Did you follow that? You would pay an extra $5 a month for Internet, and that money would be divvied up to news organizations based on how frequently you visited them during the month. As a voluntary model, this is unobjectionable, especially if such media would then come free of ads; as a mandatory tax on every customer of every ISP in the country, in an era where information overload is a pressing problem, it smacks of lunacy.

According to an FTC footnote, the idea came from Stephen Nevas of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Why does Nevas think ISPs should foot this new tax? Prepare to bang your head on the table in frustration, because this is his answer:

"Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) sell access to free content but pay nothing for the privilege. Only in rare cases do Web users pay for what they download. Just three percent pay for what they use, according to Forrester Research data."

Of course, nothing the ISPs do has any effect on whether a journalistic enterprise charges for its services, or on how those charges are implemented.

Someone stop this man from speaking about the Internet. Please.

Federalize "hot news" law. Copyright does not give news organizations any right over facts about the world, only over the specific words used to describe those facts. But because it is so easy to “free ride” on the expensive work of real journalism by sitting in a cubicle somewhere and rewriting other people's work, some states have passed "hot news" laws that give journalists a quasi-property right over their stories for a short amount of time.

One proposal would recreate this at the national level. In the current media landscape, however, this would create huge problems. Though the big players who are most likely to complain about hot news misappropriation like to play the victim (and some truly are victims), we live in a world in which major stories are routinely unearthed by bloggers and citizens and small newspapers and big players. Everyone shares, everyone copies.

As the FTC noted, "News organizations and writers, including print, broadcast, op-ed writers, and other commentators, routinely borrow from each other. One panelist suggested that '[m]uch of what is done by newspapers with each other is actually problematic under existing hot news doctrine.'"

Antitrust exemption for paywalls. It's tough to mount a paywall today; one news site can do it, but there are so many other options that it's suicide for all but the most valuable and/or niche sites. This alone would seem to show that "journalism" is not in crisis, though it's certainly changing as geographic barriers crumble and every news outlet suddenly competes with every other news outlet.

But one proposal would remove anti-collusion rules from news organizations so that they could all get together and jointly work out some kind of paywall agreement. As one backer of this idea put it, "Publishers are rightly fearful that erecting pay walls will only be effective if it can be accomplished industry-wide, and they need an exemption to accomplish these reasonable policies."

As the FTC notes, though, "more recently, it appears that industry requests for an antitrust exemption have abated."

Tax your gadgets. One suggested way to pay for news: slap a 5 percent tax on all consumer electronics and somehow pass it out to news organizations. "A 5 percent tax on consumer electronics would generate approximately $4 billion annually," says the report.

Tax your cell phone and Internet. Others suggest that "consumers could pay a small tax on their monthly ISP-cell phone bills to fund content they access on their digital services. A tax of 3 percent on the monthly fees would generate $6 billion annually. They note, however, this is the least desirable approach because demand for these services is 'elastic' and even a slight rise in price could result in people dropping the service."

UPDATE: Tim Graham's critique here. Gadgetsteria calls the FTC's proposed tax on electronic gadgets "the worst idea I've ever heard." Adam Thierer's Progress and Freedom Foundation analysis here.

Israeli "Gaza Flotilla" Video: "We Con the World..."

Jeff Jarvis on FTC "Reinvention of Journalism"

One of the first to criticize the FTC proposals has been blogger Jeff Jarvis. He posted this on his blog, BuzzMachine:

Still, it’s the document’s perspective that I find essentially corrupt: one old power structure circling its wagons around another. Change? That’s something to be resisted or thwarted, not embraced and enabled. The FTC’s mission in this administration of change — its justification for holding these hearings and doing this work — is to foster competition. Well, the internet is creating new competition in news for the first time since 1950 and the introduction of TV. But the commission focuses solely on newspapers, apologizing that it ignores broadcast — but not even apologizing for ignoring the new ecosystem of news that blogs and technology represent.

“This document will use the perspective of newspapers to exemplify the issues facing journalism as a whole,” the FTC says. And later: “[N]ewspapers have not yet found a new, sustainable business model, and there is reason for concern that such a business model may not emerge. Therefore, it is not too soon to start considering policiies that might encourage innovations to help support journalism into the future.” That is, to support newspapers’ survival. There’s the problem.

Coach John Wooden, Remembered

I received this email from UCLA:

To the Bruin Family:

With the passing of John Wooden, we have lost a true giant and a gentleman, an individual who was perhaps more closely identified with UCLA than any other person in our university’s history. Coach Wooden was an unparalleled motivator and an inspiration to people throughout the world. Those of us who were fortunate enough to meet him will forever be touched by his unfailing wisdom and generous spirit.

Coach Wooden’s record of hundreds of victories and 10 national titles established a gold standard of achievement in college athletics. Both on the court and off, he was a teacher, role model and mentor who guided his players and generations of UCLA coaches and student-athletes to become champions in life. His lasting influence has extended far beyond the campus to include leaders in academia, business and government.

The renowned Wooden Pyramid of Success–a copy of which hangs in my office–encourages us all to value cooperation, loyalty and team spirit. The Pyramid remains one of the most recognized blueprints for competitive excellence, in any pursuit.

Coach Wooden and his beloved wife, Nell, were treasured members of the UCLA family, and the Nell and John Wooden Court at Pauley Pavilion is a lasting testament to their place in our hearts.

John Wooden’s remarkable legacy will stand forever at UCLA. Today, as we mourn his loss, we also extend our deepest sympathy to his daughter, Nan, his son, James, and his entire family.

The university flag in front of Pauley Pavilion will be lowered to half-staff, and a public memorial is being planned. Please visit the UCLA homepage for further information, as well as links to news articles and remembrances of Coach Wooden.

Sincerely,

Gene D. Block
Chancellor

Comments on FTC Staff Discussion Document for "The Reinvention of Journalism"

Although the Federal Trade Commission has announced that its staff proposals to "reinvent journalism" are not proposals--in a June 4th press release--the discussion draft for "the reinvention of journalism" circulated by FTC staff certainly reads like a blueprint for legislation to subsidize the newspaper industry at the expense of bloggers, and new technology in general.

Which may be why The Washington Times (and Matt Drudge) called it "the Drudge tax."

Below are comments I submitted on Friday to the FTC website. The FTC has announced a June 15th all-day discussion session at the National Press Club that is free and open to the public.

I hope some bloggers show up...

Comments submitted to the Federal Trade Commission regarding “Federal Trade Commission Staff Discussion Draft: Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism.”

The FTC Staff Discussion Draft poses a danger to journalism that stems from fundamental misconceptions rooted in mistaken definitions, as well as in a misunderstanding of freedom of the press. “Freedom of the press” does not mean the establishment of special privileges and subsidies for a subset of particularly favored corporations (whether for-profit or not-for-profit) that happen to own newspapers. It means, rather, liberty for any American citizen to print anything he or she chooses.

During the 18th century, the printing press provided the only means of publication available. To share news, one took a letter from a correspondent received by post, transferred it into movable type, and printed it for distribution to the public in multiple copies. Hence, the origin of The Washington Post. Surely, no one would propose a reinvention so that only news received by mail would be considered “journalism.” Of course, newspapers have also printed dispatches from correspondents conveyed by private couriers on horseback. Although the Louisville Courier-Journal is a venerable publication, FTC staff would not argue that only dispatches delivered by Pony Express qualify as “journalism.” With the Marconi’s invention of telegraphy, correspondents could send their dispatches by wire. Since not everyone could afford a telegraph office at home, newspapers could print wire stories and distribute them economically—evidenced in The Macon Telegraph and The Nashua Telegraph. Clearly, FTC staff would not insist that stories must be distributed by Western Union to be news today. Since then, the press has evolved to include broadcast, Internet, and text messages. But the underlying principle is the same. The rights of the press are rights of the People of the United States, not a privilege of sub-group of “journalists.” As evidence, note that the term “journalism” does not appear in the First Amendment, although the word “press” does—Americans can print anything they like.

What is the etymology of “journalism?” The word “journalist” means “one who keeps a journal.” What is a journal? Historically the word means a “daily record of transactions,” or a “personal diary.” From the French root, “jour,” that is, “day.” A journalist, then, would in its most basic meaning be a diarist who lets the public read what he or she has to say, in other words—a blogger, before computers and the internet.

So then, what is the press? A means of printing those personal diaries. And who has a press? Once upon a time, only millionaires and large corporations. Today, anyone with a laser printer, an inkjet printer, a computer, a monitor, an iPhone, a mobile telephone, a Xerox machine, offset printer, or any one of a myriad of advanced technologies that have come to complement the industrial printing press—in other words, anyone who can upload content to a website.

However, these FTC proposals for revisions in copyright, antitrust, and tax law appear designed to favor printed newspapers over new media. They are backward looking, regressive, unimaginative (the FTC’s proposed tax on electronics recycles a fifty-year old proposal the Johnson administration attempted to implement for public broadcasting finance) and would serve to undermine innovation, creativity, and the public’s right to know. Indeed, they would serve to stifle the progress of science and the useful arts.

Today, in the age of the Internet, anyone and everyone can be a journalist. Anyone can print anything on the web. That is progress for freedom of the press and a boon to journalism, not reason to despair.

In privileging established or failing media corporations, many of which are in trouble not due to problems with “journalism,” but because of bad investments, speculation in real estate, or general fecklessness, the FTC staff’s draft proposal calls to mind George Amberson Minafer’s cry to passing motorists in Booth Tarkington’s classic tale of American progress, The Magnificent Ambersons:

“Get a horse!”

Like Tarkington’s protagonist, the FTC appears to consider upstart competitors such as bloggers, websites, search engines, app developers, and new media companies as “riff-raff.”

Unless they wish to meet the fate of George Amberson Minafer, old-line media companies and their FTC supporters need to embrace change, rather than erect walls of government protection, subsidy or special privilege.

For, had the FTC staff’s proposed approach been adopted at the turn of the century, the US Government would have subsidized buggy manufacturers, horsewhip vendors, blacksmiths, and ostlers—paid for by taxes on automobiles and railways; protected by antitrust exemptions; and structured as “hybrid corporations” that would never die.

“Journalism” will survive the death of newspapers and the spread of the Apple iPad, just as it did the death of the mail packet boat, the Pony Express, the Western Union telegram and spread of radio broadcasting—indeed, lower costs of production and distribution, leading to economies of scale, promise a bright future for journalism in the internet age, so long as the FTC does not crush innovation in a misguided attempt at “reinvention” that is sure to discourage imagination and talent from future development of new media.

Therefore, it is my opinion that with the exception of its well thought out proposal to maximize the accessibility of government information through improvements to the Freedom of Information Act, policy recommendations in the FTC Staff Discussion Draft would promote dangerous and negative consequences for journalism in the United States.
---
LAURENCE JARVIK is author of MASTERPIECE THEATRE AND THE POLITICS OF QUALITY (Scarecrow Press) and PBS: BEHIND THE SCREEN (Prima Publishing). He teaches at the Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School, and the University of Maryland, University College. He blogs at LaurenceJarvikOnline (http://laurencejarvikonline.blogspot.com).