A few weeks ago I noted that the networks shut down Boxee's efforts to deliver their content to viewers' TVs via Hulu's streaming web service. I speculated there as to why the networks would not want to play ball with Boxee. There is no question, on the other hand, why the cable companies are frightened of pure IPTV services, and it should come as no surprise that they are actively looking for ways to wall off content from them. Comcast and Time Warner are attempting to lock up cable TV content for online distribution (more details here). This content will be transmitted over the Internet in the same manner that a pure IPTV service would transmit it. The catch is that it will only be available to people who also subscribe to the cable companies' TV service.
Many cable TV programmers are likely to jump at this opportunity, as they've never been able to survive on a purely ad-supported basis and rely on cable carriage fees for about half their revenue. And, of course, even on that basis many cable channels could not survive if they were not tied together in cable tiers with other more popular channels (this is what much of the fight over a la carte cable revolves around). In fact, ESPN got out ahead of this game by trying (with considerable success) to strong arm ISPs into paying for its exclusive online content in a system analogous to a cable carriage agreement. What's next, regulatory battles over a la carte Internet? Oh, Kevin Martin, where have you gone?
On the other hand, for any really successful cable channels, my guess is they could do better by going it alone. This move will necessarily limit their online audience (as big as Comcast and Time Warner are, there are a lot of folks on the Internet who are not Comcast/Time Warner subscribers [though Harold Feld suggests that all MVPDs will be in on this game--anticompetitive conspiracy anyone?]). Moreover, they will be stuck in the position of subsidizing the crappy cable channels just as they have been through cable tiering all along. And if the good channels all flee, this may end up to be a pointless endeavor for the cable companies.
Obviously this move creates one more hurdle for IPTV providers to jump before going head-to-head with cable and telco video services. But it also creates potential net neutrality questions. This article suggests that Comcast will not treat this content any differently from other traffic for the purposes for traffic management or bandwidth caps. But if they or any other ISP were to in any respect preference this traffic, I'm calling it right now: instant FCC smack-down. This is exactly the sort of thing that net neutrality is intended to prevent.
In fact, I think the existence of monthly bandwidth caps at all will soon become highly suspect in the FCC's view. The Comcast Order hinted that monthly caps might be an acceptable network management technique. But anyone who routinely uses an Internet connection to view high def video will chew through these caps (I've seen estimates that HD video requires 4-12GB/hr (depending largely on the type of content), meaning a 250 Gb cap will last between 20-60 hours spread across all PCs and TVs in the household). In essence, monthly caps can be utilized to preference a non-IP-based video service over IP-based competitors.
ps. As you might note from my links here and in the previous post, I've been enjoying Silicon Valley Insider's Dan Frommer on this topic. He seems to be the go-to guy for this stuff.
Showing posts with label The Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Media. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
The New Battleground for IPTV
The battle over net neutrality has always been, first and foremost, a battle about who gets to provide video services over the Internet. As such, I think that what just happened between Hulu and Boxee could have significant implications for the future of telecommunications in the US.
Spurred on by the massive success of YouTube, online video has made huge strides in recent years. We're now seeing multiple competing sources for online movies and TV. One of the last remaining hurdles for these providers to overcome is to make the move from consumers' computer monitors to their televisions. One potential route for this to happen is through gaming consoles. Another route is through dedicated hardware, basically a set-top box that connects to the Internet and serves videos. Boxee makes one such device. The key to commercial success for any such device is access to content, and Boxee had until recently been planning to get content from, among other sources, streaming video provider Hulu. Hulu carries content from numerous TV networks, including Fox, NBC, Comedy Central, PBS, and Sci Fi. One could imagine Boxee, with support for Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and various other sources posing a legitimate threat to traditional cable and fiber video services (e.g. Comcast or FiOS).
The emergence of such a free-standing IPTV service would be an important development that could break the video content market wide open and end the stranglehold that the big cable companies and telcos currently have over it. So it is disturbing to see that the powers that control Hulu (Fox and NBC) nixed Hulu's deal with Boxee. I assume that the scenario played out more or less as Marc Hedlund describes in the article. But it's not entirely clear what the motivation of the content providers is here. I think Hedlund is probably right that the advertising contracts probably work differently for online viewing that for traditional TV viewing, and the the networks have some profit incentive to protect their TV advertising. But this should be a temporary limitation--as new contracts are entered or old contracts are renewed there is no reason why fee structures shouldn't be adjusted to reflect the new reality that Internet video may be viewed on TVs as well as computer monitors. And to that extent, one might think that the networks would have some interest in seeing Boxee get off the ground and build some viewership so that the networks would be able to turn around and sell access to those viewers to potential advertisers. Instead they seem inclined to strangle Boxee in the cradle.
It's possible this is just a negotiating tactic and the networks want to squeeze a few dollars out of Boxee before they acquiesce in the Boxee-Hulu deal. But it's also possible that there are greater philosophical differences at work. It could be that the networks are cozy with cable operators and the telcos (or are frightened of them) and don't want to rock the boat. Or that the networks are concerned about their future in a world of IPTV. There's really no such thing as a "channel" on IPTV. And what, exactly, is a television network with no channels? Ultimately I do think there would be an important role for the networks in an IPTV environment, something more akin to what movie studios do: picking potential projects, then financing, producing, and marketing them. But it would be a big change, and if we've learned anything from the struggles of old content industries on the Internet so far it's that big incumbents are extremely resistant to embracing change. Additionally, even though the networks will still be important in an IPTV universe, they will certainly be subject to new competition. It would be far cheaper and easier for independently produced content to gain an audience via IPTV than it is in the traditional video market.
In any case, if the networks are inclined to fight IPTV, they are in position to set back its progress considerably. Without major network support, IPTV is likely doomed to being a supplementary service to traditional video rather than a direct competitor with it. This would be a bad result for consumers and a bad result for both the telecom market and the video content market, but sadly I'm not sure that it is irrational from the standpoint of the networks. I'm also not sure, at this point, that there is much that can be done from a regulatory standpoint to push the networks towards IPTV, but we should be on the lookout for opportunities to do so.
Spurred on by the massive success of YouTube, online video has made huge strides in recent years. We're now seeing multiple competing sources for online movies and TV. One of the last remaining hurdles for these providers to overcome is to make the move from consumers' computer monitors to their televisions. One potential route for this to happen is through gaming consoles. Another route is through dedicated hardware, basically a set-top box that connects to the Internet and serves videos. Boxee makes one such device. The key to commercial success for any such device is access to content, and Boxee had until recently been planning to get content from, among other sources, streaming video provider Hulu. Hulu carries content from numerous TV networks, including Fox, NBC, Comedy Central, PBS, and Sci Fi. One could imagine Boxee, with support for Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, and various other sources posing a legitimate threat to traditional cable and fiber video services (e.g. Comcast or FiOS).
The emergence of such a free-standing IPTV service would be an important development that could break the video content market wide open and end the stranglehold that the big cable companies and telcos currently have over it. So it is disturbing to see that the powers that control Hulu (Fox and NBC) nixed Hulu's deal with Boxee. I assume that the scenario played out more or less as Marc Hedlund describes in the article. But it's not entirely clear what the motivation of the content providers is here. I think Hedlund is probably right that the advertising contracts probably work differently for online viewing that for traditional TV viewing, and the the networks have some profit incentive to protect their TV advertising. But this should be a temporary limitation--as new contracts are entered or old contracts are renewed there is no reason why fee structures shouldn't be adjusted to reflect the new reality that Internet video may be viewed on TVs as well as computer monitors. And to that extent, one might think that the networks would have some interest in seeing Boxee get off the ground and build some viewership so that the networks would be able to turn around and sell access to those viewers to potential advertisers. Instead they seem inclined to strangle Boxee in the cradle.
It's possible this is just a negotiating tactic and the networks want to squeeze a few dollars out of Boxee before they acquiesce in the Boxee-Hulu deal. But it's also possible that there are greater philosophical differences at work. It could be that the networks are cozy with cable operators and the telcos (or are frightened of them) and don't want to rock the boat. Or that the networks are concerned about their future in a world of IPTV. There's really no such thing as a "channel" on IPTV. And what, exactly, is a television network with no channels? Ultimately I do think there would be an important role for the networks in an IPTV environment, something more akin to what movie studios do: picking potential projects, then financing, producing, and marketing them. But it would be a big change, and if we've learned anything from the struggles of old content industries on the Internet so far it's that big incumbents are extremely resistant to embracing change. Additionally, even though the networks will still be important in an IPTV universe, they will certainly be subject to new competition. It would be far cheaper and easier for independently produced content to gain an audience via IPTV than it is in the traditional video market.
In any case, if the networks are inclined to fight IPTV, they are in position to set back its progress considerably. Without major network support, IPTV is likely doomed to being a supplementary service to traditional video rather than a direct competitor with it. This would be a bad result for consumers and a bad result for both the telecom market and the video content market, but sadly I'm not sure that it is irrational from the standpoint of the networks. I'm also not sure, at this point, that there is much that can be done from a regulatory standpoint to push the networks towards IPTV, but we should be on the lookout for opportunities to do so.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
The Brave New Media World
Henry,
You raise a few interesting points. First, I would just note that your major premise is one that we've discussed a few times at Boys' events, although I can't recall whether you've been present for any of those discussions. It was the subject of a short but prescient book by Cass Sunstein titled Republic.com. He argued, precisely as you have, that proliferation in media sources will fuel self-selection of sources that confirm preexisting biases, undermining our cultural common ground and fragmenting our social beliefs. I think the threat is real, but can be overstated (as I'll discuss further below).
Second, I know exactly what you're talking about with regards to the comment sections on news sites. That stuff is purely toxic. It's even worse than you find on the purely partisan blogs and forums (e.g. DailyKos or RedState). News sites and YouTube comment threads and things of that nature appear to draw the absolute dregs for commenters. It's disturbing to read it, but ultimately I don't think that amounts to much. I suspect that it really is a very small percentage of the people who read the news stories or watch videos who post those comments (and probably with a high percentage of repeat players from one site to another). The numbers of people who participate in sites like DailyKos and RedState are more significant. Of course, those people also tend to suffer from groupthink and hyperbole and certainly represent a fragmentation in worldviews. But again, I'm not yet convinced that this is especially problematic. Their influence is ultimately fairly limited, as each party's Presidential primary this year demonstrated. In both cases the netroots favorites (Edwards for the Democrats, anybody-but-McCain (Ron Paul?) for the Republicans) failed to win.
Ultimately I think the democratization of public discourse via the Internet has been a tremendous win for the public. Contrary to your contention that we've seen a disappearance of sincere public discourse, I think we're seeing the emergence of new and important avenues for public discourse. There is a dialogue taking place on a community of blogs that surpasses in intelligence and candidness anything I can recall from the pre-Internet (or early Internet) days. To name just a few: Andrew Sullivan, Obsidian Wings, Matt Yglesias, Nate Silver, Al Giordano, Dan Drezner, Greg Djerejian, Ezra Klein, Tyler Cowen, John Cole, Cunning Realist, Josh Marshall. This short list covers a pretty broad spectrum of opinions (and certainly there are many others out there). These people are intelligent, generally well-educated, have diverse areas of expertise, and are interested in honest and sincere dialogue. Better yet, many of them read one another (and many other bloggers) and actually engage in back-and-forth discussion.
While the readership of the blogging community is still not at the same level as traditional media consumption, I think its influence is considerable. The bigger blogs (Sullivan, Marshall) draw in the neighborhood of a million page views a day, which is not insignificant. Moreover, that readership is disproportionately drawn from politicians (or at least political staffers), policymakers, and the media. This blogging community has the ability to affect campaign narratives. I think this is one of the reasons the McCain campaign flailed so wildly from one narrative to another over the Summer and Fall. The McCain strategists, all Karl Rove proteges, couldn't understand why their Obama narratives were not sticking the way the Al Gore - fibber and John Kerry - aloof liberal narratives stuck. The bloggers ripped their idiotic narratives to shreds and were quick to pounce if the traditional media went too far astray.
The emergence of this community presents a challenge to Sunstein's predictions. Certainly there is plenty of evidence on the Internet of Sunstinian self-selection and reinforcement of biases. But there is also a conscious acknowledgment among others that in order to be relevant as a thinker and a political writer one must be willing to inhabit the same world as other writers and one must be willing to engage differing views on more than a superficial level. Certainly this creates some tension between the self-reinforcing Freepers and Kossacks and the reality-based bloggers. On the conservative side this tension has spilled over into something like open warfare with the Freepers and Redstaters attempting to expel any conservatives who do not fully acquiesce in the Bush/Rove Republican orthodoxy. It's not clear how this is going to play out, although it seems inevitable that it will end badly for the Freepers, who are at this point quite remote from reality.
To conclude, I think, Henry, that you and Sunstein both had useful insights into the impact of hugely diverse media landscape, but I think the danger here is easily overstated. The broad expansion of the media landscape has occurred because the barriers to publication have dropped to almost nil (case in point: the Boys Weekend Journal), and the elimination of these barriers has also had tremendously positive effects. It does require people to be more savvy in their consumption of, and interaction with, the news, but the Internet has also made a great many people far more savvy about news media than the public has previously been. And the ease of entry into the market and the ease with which consumers can move from one product to another has allowed for something much closer to a true meritocracy than has ever existed in the traditional media. Nate Silver could never have gone from obscure bystander to political media powerhouse in less than a year in the old media market. I would go so far as to say we are entering a renaissance of political discourse. But the interplay between substantial number of people who have defied Sunstein's expectations with the still considerable masses who have conformed to his expectations does warrant continued observation. While relations between the two groups may frequently be strained, I think by virtue of pure merit alone the reality-based bloggers will always remain relevant and important.
You raise a few interesting points. First, I would just note that your major premise is one that we've discussed a few times at Boys' events, although I can't recall whether you've been present for any of those discussions. It was the subject of a short but prescient book by Cass Sunstein titled Republic.com. He argued, precisely as you have, that proliferation in media sources will fuel self-selection of sources that confirm preexisting biases, undermining our cultural common ground and fragmenting our social beliefs. I think the threat is real, but can be overstated (as I'll discuss further below).
Second, I know exactly what you're talking about with regards to the comment sections on news sites. That stuff is purely toxic. It's even worse than you find on the purely partisan blogs and forums (e.g. DailyKos or RedState). News sites and YouTube comment threads and things of that nature appear to draw the absolute dregs for commenters. It's disturbing to read it, but ultimately I don't think that amounts to much. I suspect that it really is a very small percentage of the people who read the news stories or watch videos who post those comments (and probably with a high percentage of repeat players from one site to another). The numbers of people who participate in sites like DailyKos and RedState are more significant. Of course, those people also tend to suffer from groupthink and hyperbole and certainly represent a fragmentation in worldviews. But again, I'm not yet convinced that this is especially problematic. Their influence is ultimately fairly limited, as each party's Presidential primary this year demonstrated. In both cases the netroots favorites (Edwards for the Democrats, anybody-but-McCain (Ron Paul?) for the Republicans) failed to win.
Ultimately I think the democratization of public discourse via the Internet has been a tremendous win for the public. Contrary to your contention that we've seen a disappearance of sincere public discourse, I think we're seeing the emergence of new and important avenues for public discourse. There is a dialogue taking place on a community of blogs that surpasses in intelligence and candidness anything I can recall from the pre-Internet (or early Internet) days. To name just a few: Andrew Sullivan, Obsidian Wings, Matt Yglesias, Nate Silver, Al Giordano, Dan Drezner, Greg Djerejian, Ezra Klein, Tyler Cowen, John Cole, Cunning Realist, Josh Marshall. This short list covers a pretty broad spectrum of opinions (and certainly there are many others out there). These people are intelligent, generally well-educated, have diverse areas of expertise, and are interested in honest and sincere dialogue. Better yet, many of them read one another (and many other bloggers) and actually engage in back-and-forth discussion.
While the readership of the blogging community is still not at the same level as traditional media consumption, I think its influence is considerable. The bigger blogs (Sullivan, Marshall) draw in the neighborhood of a million page views a day, which is not insignificant. Moreover, that readership is disproportionately drawn from politicians (or at least political staffers), policymakers, and the media. This blogging community has the ability to affect campaign narratives. I think this is one of the reasons the McCain campaign flailed so wildly from one narrative to another over the Summer and Fall. The McCain strategists, all Karl Rove proteges, couldn't understand why their Obama narratives were not sticking the way the Al Gore - fibber and John Kerry - aloof liberal narratives stuck. The bloggers ripped their idiotic narratives to shreds and were quick to pounce if the traditional media went too far astray.
The emergence of this community presents a challenge to Sunstein's predictions. Certainly there is plenty of evidence on the Internet of Sunstinian self-selection and reinforcement of biases. But there is also a conscious acknowledgment among others that in order to be relevant as a thinker and a political writer one must be willing to inhabit the same world as other writers and one must be willing to engage differing views on more than a superficial level. Certainly this creates some tension between the self-reinforcing Freepers and Kossacks and the reality-based bloggers. On the conservative side this tension has spilled over into something like open warfare with the Freepers and Redstaters attempting to expel any conservatives who do not fully acquiesce in the Bush/Rove Republican orthodoxy. It's not clear how this is going to play out, although it seems inevitable that it will end badly for the Freepers, who are at this point quite remote from reality.
To conclude, I think, Henry, that you and Sunstein both had useful insights into the impact of hugely diverse media landscape, but I think the danger here is easily overstated. The broad expansion of the media landscape has occurred because the barriers to publication have dropped to almost nil (case in point: the Boys Weekend Journal), and the elimination of these barriers has also had tremendously positive effects. It does require people to be more savvy in their consumption of, and interaction with, the news, but the Internet has also made a great many people far more savvy about news media than the public has previously been. And the ease of entry into the market and the ease with which consumers can move from one product to another has allowed for something much closer to a true meritocracy than has ever existed in the traditional media. Nate Silver could never have gone from obscure bystander to political media powerhouse in less than a year in the old media market. I would go so far as to say we are entering a renaissance of political discourse. But the interplay between substantial number of people who have defied Sunstein's expectations with the still considerable masses who have conformed to his expectations does warrant continued observation. While relations between the two groups may frequently be strained, I think by virtue of pure merit alone the reality-based bloggers will always remain relevant and important.
Monday, October 27, 2008
American Politics
I was just watching a very good MIT panel on Media coverage of the presidential election when I heard a quote (1:56:50) I just had to transcribe and post here. John Carroll says:
I don't own a TV, and I don't feel that either of the major parties comes comes close to representing me, so I haven't been following the election closely. I do however do some occasional reading at the Economist, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. What has gradually given me this creeping, skin crawling, feeling that political discourse has fallen into the abyss, is reading the comments which are ubiquitously attached to online articles. These pain me deeply.
I've been a long time user of the internet. Trolling and flaming on boards, forums, and news sites are nothing new to me. That is, I have a baseline. Yet, of late, I've found the comments on site like those I mentioned above to be particularly discouraging. A very high percentage of comments are incredibly hostile, loaded with vitriol and ad hominem attacks. It really doesn't depend on the article. Left or Right leaning articles tend to draw the predictable attacks from the opposing side (though it's disappointing that these are being phrased less and less in constructive and reasonable ways), but the really scary thing is that the articles that draw the most fire are those that take a neutral or centrist position. That is, the sides have become so polarized that any viewpoint that does not openly align with one camp or the other is fair game for vicious assaults from both.
The above panel helped me to think about why this is happening. The proliferation of the media, the creation of new cable channels and the new media, while adding depth and breadth to the discourse available to the average media consumer, has actually had a tendency to narrow their field of view. There are so many sources of information from any given perspective that a person can read many blogs and news sites, and watch several political TV shows while never actually exposing themselves any alternative viewpoints. While, a few decades ago, there may have only been a handful choices in terms of channels and papers, the very universality of these media sources required that they cater to both sides of the political divide. Today's media sources are so extensively diversified that we can each choose to steep in a carefully selected set of opinions that precisely support the very perspective that we have already chosen to adhere to.
My gut feeling is that this is leading us toward further calamity. I think that this trend toward polarization and the disappearance of sincere public discussion and debate has been underway for some time. I think our current circumstances (the Iraq war and the financial crises, the biggest political and economic disasters in recent memory) are the fruits of this trend. We are reaping disaster, and yet what we are sowing today is far more corrupted and virulent than the seeds that brought us our current sorrows.
I think this relates to what I have described in the past as the anthropomorphization of our problems. That is, we tend to blame the problems we see on the direct action and intention of other people. We implicitly believe that, if we can counteract the actions of these evil people, we can undo the problems of the world. Hence it makes sense to mobilize the base of our party at whatever cost. In our all out war we sacrifice the truth for political expediency. But if the problems are in fact much more complicated than we appreciate, the ends do not justify the means. In fact, the means do not lead us to our ends at all, but rather to folly and destruction.
I would like to think that actual reasoned conversation and argument might actually have some effect on people's perceptions and how they vote. I mean, that would be a giant step forward I think. But I'm not sure that's actually going to happen because the two sides have hardened so much. I think Tom [Rosenstiel] writes about this in his book, that there used to be a shared set of facts that people would argue from. They would agree on some basic facts and then, they would argue from there. I think people don't agree on basic facts anymore and I don't think that anybody allows for the possibility that someone who disagrees with them can have a reasonable point of view, a legitimate point of view. I think it's all about delegitimizing the opposition. I think that that makes a very hard dynamic for anything positive to happen.This inspired me to make a post I've been meaning to add for some time. I've been feeling more and more in the past couple of months that the political climate in the US is becoming fatally ossified and polarized. Political discussion seems to be pretty much dead.
I don't own a TV, and I don't feel that either of the major parties comes comes close to representing me, so I haven't been following the election closely. I do however do some occasional reading at the Economist, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. What has gradually given me this creeping, skin crawling, feeling that political discourse has fallen into the abyss, is reading the comments which are ubiquitously attached to online articles. These pain me deeply.
I've been a long time user of the internet. Trolling and flaming on boards, forums, and news sites are nothing new to me. That is, I have a baseline. Yet, of late, I've found the comments on site like those I mentioned above to be particularly discouraging. A very high percentage of comments are incredibly hostile, loaded with vitriol and ad hominem attacks. It really doesn't depend on the article. Left or Right leaning articles tend to draw the predictable attacks from the opposing side (though it's disappointing that these are being phrased less and less in constructive and reasonable ways), but the really scary thing is that the articles that draw the most fire are those that take a neutral or centrist position. That is, the sides have become so polarized that any viewpoint that does not openly align with one camp or the other is fair game for vicious assaults from both.
The above panel helped me to think about why this is happening. The proliferation of the media, the creation of new cable channels and the new media, while adding depth and breadth to the discourse available to the average media consumer, has actually had a tendency to narrow their field of view. There are so many sources of information from any given perspective that a person can read many blogs and news sites, and watch several political TV shows while never actually exposing themselves any alternative viewpoints. While, a few decades ago, there may have only been a handful choices in terms of channels and papers, the very universality of these media sources required that they cater to both sides of the political divide. Today's media sources are so extensively diversified that we can each choose to steep in a carefully selected set of opinions that precisely support the very perspective that we have already chosen to adhere to.
My gut feeling is that this is leading us toward further calamity. I think that this trend toward polarization and the disappearance of sincere public discussion and debate has been underway for some time. I think our current circumstances (the Iraq war and the financial crises, the biggest political and economic disasters in recent memory) are the fruits of this trend. We are reaping disaster, and yet what we are sowing today is far more corrupted and virulent than the seeds that brought us our current sorrows.
I think this relates to what I have described in the past as the anthropomorphization of our problems. That is, we tend to blame the problems we see on the direct action and intention of other people. We implicitly believe that, if we can counteract the actions of these evil people, we can undo the problems of the world. Hence it makes sense to mobilize the base of our party at whatever cost. In our all out war we sacrifice the truth for political expediency. But if the problems are in fact much more complicated than we appreciate, the ends do not justify the means. In fact, the means do not lead us to our ends at all, but rather to folly and destruction.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
A Positive Story from the Blogosphere
I don't have much of point to make with this post, I just think it is a really interesting story demonstrating the meritocratic impact of the internet and blogging. I'm referring to the meteoric rise of Nate Silver as a respected name in election-year journalism. Silver began as an unknown, posting on DailyKos under the name poblano. Before the voting began poblano penned diaries on a broad variety of primary-related topics. He gained a reputation on the site as a thoughtful and insightful Obama-backer. But it wasn't until late January, after several states were in the bag and super Tuesday loomed large that poblano's brilliance as a number-cruncher really emerged.
A pair of super Tuesday previews (initial diary, updated diary) drew huge amounts of attention, and deservedly so. poblano's previews included polling numbers, but greatly exceeded the depth of analysis offered anywhere in the commercial press, incorporating endorsements, fund-raising, and in-state campaign presence. While some of the delegate spreads were off, poblano correctly called the winner in every state (he considered AL, CT, and MO to be toss-ups). Super Tuesday itself provided a wealth of voting data to be mined, and poblano was soon off to the races, dissecting the results and turning them into projections for the general election. Again, the analysis found here was hands down better than anything I encountered in the commercial press.
Having gained considerable notoriety among political bloggers during January and February, in early March poblano moved off DailyKos to his own website, FiveThirtyEight. There he continued providing projections of the primaries and general election, and he also did something professional political writers never do: hold pollsters accountable. In May, poblano crushed the professional pollsters with his projections for Indiana and North Carolina, identified himself as baseball statistician Nate Silver, and finally began to garner attention outside the sphere of political blogs. Not only will Silver likely be a mainstay of election coverage for the rest of the year (and following election years), but I suspect that he has an awful lot of professional analysts reconsidering their methodologies and approaches to political projection. Oh, and, by the way, the projections for Obama at FiveThirtyEight are looking awfully nice these days.
A pair of super Tuesday previews (initial diary, updated diary) drew huge amounts of attention, and deservedly so. poblano's previews included polling numbers, but greatly exceeded the depth of analysis offered anywhere in the commercial press, incorporating endorsements, fund-raising, and in-state campaign presence. While some of the delegate spreads were off, poblano correctly called the winner in every state (he considered AL, CT, and MO to be toss-ups). Super Tuesday itself provided a wealth of voting data to be mined, and poblano was soon off to the races, dissecting the results and turning them into projections for the general election. Again, the analysis found here was hands down better than anything I encountered in the commercial press.
Having gained considerable notoriety among political bloggers during January and February, in early March poblano moved off DailyKos to his own website, FiveThirtyEight. There he continued providing projections of the primaries and general election, and he also did something professional political writers never do: hold pollsters accountable. In May, poblano crushed the professional pollsters with his projections for Indiana and North Carolina, identified himself as baseball statistician Nate Silver, and finally began to garner attention outside the sphere of political blogs. Not only will Silver likely be a mainstay of election coverage for the rest of the year (and following election years), but I suspect that he has an awful lot of professional analysts reconsidering their methodologies and approaches to political projection. Oh, and, by the way, the projections for Obama at FiveThirtyEight are looking awfully nice these days.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
The Alternate Reality of the Right
In considering the "fighting them there so they won't come here" argument, Matthew Yglesias points out the obvious conflict between symbolism (retreating from Iraq makes us look weak) and reality (staying in Iraq causes us to actually be weak). He seems perplexed by the Right's tendency to "view national security policy as something that takes place entirely at the level of symbolism". This is, I think, not so difficult to understand. American conservatives live in an alternate reality, unable to distinguish between symbolism and reality. To them, symbolism is reality. If you listened to enough conservative radio and watched enough Fox News you'd live in that alternate reality too. Never was this more clearly illustrated than in Ron Suskind's famous discussion with an undisclosed White House official (Andrew Card, perhaps?) about how the Bush administration was in a constant process of creating its own reality. This was never a matter of the Bush administration being able to fundamentally alter the state of the world directly through their pronouncements and news releases, but rather an expression of the belief that if they can control news cycles and assert a concept of reality strenuously enough, everyone else would have little choice but to accept it as real, and the world would adjust itself to the White House's vision. It was Wag the Dog transformed from satire into official state policy. They could reshape reality through symbolism by convincing people that what they thought was true actually wasn't.
Obviously this doesn't work. There are too many competing sources of news and reality does eventually trickle in to displace this fictional presentation. The reality-based community inevitably gets the last laugh, as Suskind pointed out. This is why the administration and their supporters were always so furious about the media reporting on bloodshed in Iraq and missing the "good stories"; the media was deconstructing the administration's carefully constructed alternate reality.
But it's not hard to see why conservatives got suckered into this belief, and why they still can't seem to let go of it. Most conservative news sources are mere propaganda outlets. Witness the old Pew study finding that the more people watched Fox News the more likely they were to believe that we had found WMD's in Iraq or that Saddam was behind 9/11. Or this more recent Pew study that shows that while liberals see Republican presidential candidates in exactly the same way conservatives themselves view them, conservatives, by contrast, see all of the Democratic candidates as raving left-wing lunatics. American conservatives have replaced their own reality with symbolism, so why wouldn't it be natural for them to think the same is true for everyone else? Their own echo-chamber media has relegated them to a world that only exists in their own minds.
Obviously this doesn't work. There are too many competing sources of news and reality does eventually trickle in to displace this fictional presentation. The reality-based community inevitably gets the last laugh, as Suskind pointed out. This is why the administration and their supporters were always so furious about the media reporting on bloodshed in Iraq and missing the "good stories"; the media was deconstructing the administration's carefully constructed alternate reality.
But it's not hard to see why conservatives got suckered into this belief, and why they still can't seem to let go of it. Most conservative news sources are mere propaganda outlets. Witness the old Pew study finding that the more people watched Fox News the more likely they were to believe that we had found WMD's in Iraq or that Saddam was behind 9/11. Or this more recent Pew study that shows that while liberals see Republican presidential candidates in exactly the same way conservatives themselves view them, conservatives, by contrast, see all of the Democratic candidates as raving left-wing lunatics. American conservatives have replaced their own reality with symbolism, so why wouldn't it be natural for them to think the same is true for everyone else? Their own echo-chamber media has relegated them to a world that only exists in their own minds.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Losing the Independent Press and the Price We Pay
Bill Moyers made waves this week with his special report on the role of the press in the run up to the war in Iraq. His story dovetails nicely with PBS Frontline's ongoing series of reports on the state of the press. Both are available online, and well worth watching. I would start with with Part III of the Frontline series, followed by Moyers's Buying the War.
Moyers has few true revelations and little new information, but it is well worth going back and seeing how badly the press got this war wrong, and revisiting some of the more egregious false claims of the pundits. Those pundits, as Moyers points out, are alive and well in American journalism. Many have been promoted. No one has been called to account.
The Frontline report helps to illustrate why American journalism is failing. No one does real reporting anymore, save a few national newspapers, and even they are cutting back. The newspapers are still highly profitable, but their readership and their revenue is in steady decline, and so sacrifices must be made for them to maintain their high margins and keep the corporate overlords happy. This was very much my concern while researching the media ownership rules last summer. Maintaining the prohibition on TV-newspaper crossownership has long been a central goal of the Democrats with respect to the media ownership rules. While I certainly see the value in that policy, for me the financial well-being of our newspapers has to be the top concern. I'm frankly not sure whether they would be helped or hindered by relaxing the cross-ownership rule. But I think we have to be willing to try anything that might preserve our last bastions of actual journalism.
Of course, the Moyers piece illustrates that even when newspapers have the resources to perform serious research they can fail to use them when caught up in the political conventional wisdom (as was the case of the New York Times and the Washington Post with Iraq). The conventional wisdom is created in part by the efforts of political actors (the White House in particular), but also by the media itself when it parrots the lines fed to them by those political actors. When real journalism is a small slice of the news media universe it seems that it is easily cowed by the overwhelming majority of the press for whom statements issued by the White House define reality. There needs to be a critical mass of independent press for news outlets to gain the courage of numbers to be willing to take risks.
Neither of these two pieces paints the whole picture on its own, the business of the news and the politics of the press, but together I think they give us a good look at what has gone wrong. The newspapers have a long way to go before they can recoup their lost hard-copy profits through their online presence. Given how much the internet has shaken up other industries, it's not clear they ever will. If they don't we can look forward to further setbacks to the quality of journalism in the US. We need to start to consider the degree to which quality reporting is a public good. In my opinion, in a democratically governed nation, journalism is the highest order of public good. The public cannot make informed choices if there is no one to inform them. If the market is unable to provide what we need, we will have to explore other avenues.
Moyers has few true revelations and little new information, but it is well worth going back and seeing how badly the press got this war wrong, and revisiting some of the more egregious false claims of the pundits. Those pundits, as Moyers points out, are alive and well in American journalism. Many have been promoted. No one has been called to account.
The Frontline report helps to illustrate why American journalism is failing. No one does real reporting anymore, save a few national newspapers, and even they are cutting back. The newspapers are still highly profitable, but their readership and their revenue is in steady decline, and so sacrifices must be made for them to maintain their high margins and keep the corporate overlords happy. This was very much my concern while researching the media ownership rules last summer. Maintaining the prohibition on TV-newspaper crossownership has long been a central goal of the Democrats with respect to the media ownership rules. While I certainly see the value in that policy, for me the financial well-being of our newspapers has to be the top concern. I'm frankly not sure whether they would be helped or hindered by relaxing the cross-ownership rule. But I think we have to be willing to try anything that might preserve our last bastions of actual journalism.
Of course, the Moyers piece illustrates that even when newspapers have the resources to perform serious research they can fail to use them when caught up in the political conventional wisdom (as was the case of the New York Times and the Washington Post with Iraq). The conventional wisdom is created in part by the efforts of political actors (the White House in particular), but also by the media itself when it parrots the lines fed to them by those political actors. When real journalism is a small slice of the news media universe it seems that it is easily cowed by the overwhelming majority of the press for whom statements issued by the White House define reality. There needs to be a critical mass of independent press for news outlets to gain the courage of numbers to be willing to take risks.
Neither of these two pieces paints the whole picture on its own, the business of the news and the politics of the press, but together I think they give us a good look at what has gone wrong. The newspapers have a long way to go before they can recoup their lost hard-copy profits through their online presence. Given how much the internet has shaken up other industries, it's not clear they ever will. If they don't we can look forward to further setbacks to the quality of journalism in the US. We need to start to consider the degree to which quality reporting is a public good. In my opinion, in a democratically governed nation, journalism is the highest order of public good. The public cannot make informed choices if there is no one to inform them. If the market is unable to provide what we need, we will have to explore other avenues.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Covering the Important News
This made me laugh. What would we do without cable news channels?
Update: And watch this to see CNN's version of the Harris/Sullivan dialogue. It's the proverbial car wreck you can't stop watching... As one of the comments suggests, replace the word atheist with black or Jew, then imagine how this clip plays.
Update: And watch this to see CNN's version of the Harris/Sullivan dialogue. It's the proverbial car wreck you can't stop watching... As one of the comments suggests, replace the word atheist with black or Jew, then imagine how this clip plays.
Monday, November 13, 2006
The Modern Communicational Environment
Hey just thought I'd link to this talk at MIT. It is a discussion with Yochai Benkler and Henry Jenkins about the networked society. I just wanted something to watch over dinner but I ended up watching the whole thing. I had heard of both of them before so I figure they must be pretty big. Whenever I watch this sort of thing I think I ought to be an expert on the future of communication. I don't know whether its my ideas regarding culture, or perhaps my generational perspective, but I never feel people fully grasp the potential of change in the informational structure of society. I always wish I was there to answer the questions. In any case these guys are interesting.
Oh yeah. Check this quote out. It rocks.
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
- Thomas Jefferson, from a Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
Oh yeah. Check this quote out. It rocks.
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
- Thomas Jefferson, from a Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
Sunday, April 30, 2006
What You See/What You Read
What you see: Stephen Colbert hammering Bush and the Washington establishment as Bush smolders and the audience watches in awkward silence. What you read: George Bush light-heartedly mocks himself, is happy to be there. Oh and Stephen Colbert showed up too.. (The Post's similar account.) Blogs have gone gaga over Colbert's performance, but the mainstream media has hardly a word to say about it. It says everything about why blogs have invaded the turf of the regular media. The two-presidents thing was cute, but it was obviously not the compelling story of this event. I don't know who was ballsier, Colbert (who turned and looked Bush in the eye as he glibly delivered some of his harshest lines) or Mark Smith, the president of AP Radio, who invited Colbert to appear.
Monday, April 24, 2006
The Economist
Was just reading this series of articles on The Economist and thought, naturally enough about TBWJ. Though for a bunch of young tech savvy gentlemen such as yourselves the contents may not be shocking, it is a good bit of writing about the new media.
As long as I am linking to The Economist I think I will advertise a couple of other bits of their content there. Not all of their articles are freely available but enough are to make it well worth a weekly visit in my opinion (and they occasionally give you the option of watching an add in exchange for a day pass).
I thought this one was fairly good with regard to the current position of the Democratic Party. Though I have been intending to post a piece with my opinion as to why both of the parties suck so much and why the American people have become so polarized.
Another sweet Economist link is here. It's the original edition of The Economist from 1843 and an excellent argument in favor of liberal trade policies.
One final link. A quote in the media related Economist article linked above referring to Blogs as "the toilet walls of the internet" reminded me of a site I discovered this week. Ancient Roman graffiti.
As long as I am linking to The Economist I think I will advertise a couple of other bits of their content there. Not all of their articles are freely available but enough are to make it well worth a weekly visit in my opinion (and they occasionally give you the option of watching an add in exchange for a day pass).
I thought this one was fairly good with regard to the current position of the Democratic Party. Though I have been intending to post a piece with my opinion as to why both of the parties suck so much and why the American people have become so polarized.
Another sweet Economist link is here. It's the original edition of The Economist from 1843 and an excellent argument in favor of liberal trade policies.
One final link. A quote in the media related Economist article linked above referring to Blogs as "the toilet walls of the internet" reminded me of a site I discovered this week. Ancient Roman graffiti.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Why Do We Care About Dirty Bombs?
I mean I know they've been a part of the scare-tactic arsenal for some time now (the terrorists have dirty bombs! like omigod!!), but hasn't the whole dirty bomb concept been pretty well debunked by now? Apparently not. It seems our border security is being tested based on whether or not they can prevent a dirty bomb from entering the U.S. Honestly, do these people not know how to use wikipedia?
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
A Reporter's Peril
As a Christian Science Monitor junkie, I just wanted to point out the story of Jill Carroll, a reporter working for CSM in Iraq who has been abducted by insurgents. Her interpreter was killed.
A few days ago I was reading an article in the Atlantic that Ryan gave me written by one of their reporters, Nir Rosen, who has "spent sixteen months in postwar Iraq living mostly among ordinary Iraqis." I was somewhat amazed, at the time, that there were still foreign reporters living outside the green zone in Iraq. Given the poor quality of much of our news reporting I am all the more appreciative of the exceptional bravery and talent of reporters from outfits like CSM and The Atlantic. It takes balls of steel. I salute them all (and their Iraqi associates), and I hope and pray that Ms. Carroll makes it out safely.
p.s. Rosen's article, If America Left Iraq, is an excellent and informative read.
A few days ago I was reading an article in the Atlantic that Ryan gave me written by one of their reporters, Nir Rosen, who has "spent sixteen months in postwar Iraq living mostly among ordinary Iraqis." I was somewhat amazed, at the time, that there were still foreign reporters living outside the green zone in Iraq. Given the poor quality of much of our news reporting I am all the more appreciative of the exceptional bravery and talent of reporters from outfits like CSM and The Atlantic. It takes balls of steel. I salute them all (and their Iraqi associates), and I hope and pray that Ms. Carroll makes it out safely.
p.s. Rosen's article, If America Left Iraq, is an excellent and informative read.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
So Stupid It Hurts
So we're planting P.R. pieces in Iraqi media outlets. I can't say I'm shocked. As some of the comments in the story point out, these sorts of stunts continue to drag our credibility through the mud. I can't help but recall the Defense Science Board's insightful Report on Strategic Communication (blogged here). Now a year old, I still believe it to be the single most intelligent document on the War on Terror. The report stated:
"Information saturation means attention, not information, becomes a scarce resource. Power flows to credible messengers. Asymmetrical credibility matters. What's around information is critical. Reputations count. Brands are important. Editors, filters, and cue givers are influential. Fifty years ago political struggles were about the ability to control and transmit scarce information. Today, political struggles are about the creation and destruction of credibility."
There are some very smart people in our government. Sad that nobody pays attention to them. Al Qaeda doesn't need to destroy our credibility. We do it to ourselves, over and over and over again.
"Information saturation means attention, not information, becomes a scarce resource. Power flows to credible messengers. Asymmetrical credibility matters. What's around information is critical. Reputations count. Brands are important. Editors, filters, and cue givers are influential. Fifty years ago political struggles were about the ability to control and transmit scarce information. Today, political struggles are about the creation and destruction of credibility."
There are some very smart people in our government. Sad that nobody pays attention to them. Al Qaeda doesn't need to destroy our credibility. We do it to ourselves, over and over and over again.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Can This Be Real?
Cuz it kind of looks like it is. The U.S. denies it, while the UK seems more concerned with supressing the potentially incriminating evidence, but the story going around is that Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera. In Qatar. And wasn't joking. Reportedly, Blair talked him out of it. I imagine his exact words were something like: "Are you out of your fucking mind, you daft bastard?!" Just when you think you've heard it all...
Update: Howard Kurtz had the same reaction - "can this possibly be real?" His conclusion? No, based on the fact that it would be unbelievably stupid. Like that's ever stopped this administration before... I think the least credible part of the story is the fact that Bush would run it by Blair before he did it.
Update: Howard Kurtz had the same reaction - "can this possibly be real?" His conclusion? No, based on the fact that it would be unbelievably stupid. Like that's ever stopped this administration before... I think the least credible part of the story is the fact that Bush would run it by Blair before he did it.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Another Leak Investigation?
In the wake of the Washington Post's story on the CIA's secret detention facilities, it appears that we may see another high profile leak investigation. The CIA has requested that DOJ investigate the matter and pursue criminal charges for the release of classified information. Likewise (also mentioned in the NYT story) several top House and Senate Republicans have called for a joint Intelligence Committee investigation into the leak. Already several reports are drawing comparisons to the Judy Miller story (see Howard Kurtz's 11/14 column). I think this story would provide an excellent contrast to the Miller story.
The problem with Judy Miller's effort to hide behind press secrecy protection is that the facts of her case flew in the face of the intent of such protections. The idea is to protect whistle blowers and encourage them to bring to light topics, otherwise hidden from the public, that may be critical to the public discourse and democratic oversight of government actions. Judy Miller exposed details meant to crucify one such whistle blower, details that were otherwise irrelevant to the public discourse. Nor was it a simple or direct impeachment of Joe Wilson's credibility or an attack on the substance of his reports. The Plame story was simply an effort create insinuations about Wilson's qualifications and generally besmirch his reputation and possibly (depending on what you're willing to believe about Libby and Rove) to exact revenge by ruining Plame's career. Hardly a lofty testament to the value of an independent press.
The Post's CIA detainee story, by contrast, contained exactly the sort of critical information that the public deserves to see, and should be given every available legal protection. This is not to say that there should be no oversight of how classified information is exposed or that press organizations should not exercise caution in disclosing it (as the Post did in refusing to name the countries where the detainment centers are located). This was information that the public did not know and had no reason to suspect about government policies that go directly to the heart of what our values are and how we conduct ourselves.
This will admittedly cause difficulties for the CIA in its effort to continue to pursue these policies, difficulties that the CIA can claim impair its mission and endanger national security, but these difficulties arise from the outrageousness of the conduct itself. I fail to see how the exposure of this information will in any way impact on the actions of Al Qaeda relative to the CIA, nor the actions of the CIA relative to Al Qaeda, except to the extent that this is now propaganda for Al Qaeda and a source of domestic and international political problems for the CIA. This is not the case of an agent or undercover program that, once exposed, can no longer no long serve the assigned mission. Secrecy is not critical to the function of a prison camp. The exposure of these policies hurt the U.S. and the CIA not because it imposes functional problems, but because the policies are stupid.
The only reason they were likely secret in the first place was probably to avoid political fallout, in both the U.S. and the host countries. That is not, to my mind, a valid reason for government secrecy. If a democratic country allows its government to conceal its actions because the public would not like those actions, something has gone seriously wrong. If some investigation does arise from this leak, I certainly hope that a critical element of that investigation is to discover why exactly the public did not know about these facilities prior to the leak and to inquire into the validity of the profferred justifications for concealing the facilities.
The problem with Judy Miller's effort to hide behind press secrecy protection is that the facts of her case flew in the face of the intent of such protections. The idea is to protect whistle blowers and encourage them to bring to light topics, otherwise hidden from the public, that may be critical to the public discourse and democratic oversight of government actions. Judy Miller exposed details meant to crucify one such whistle blower, details that were otherwise irrelevant to the public discourse. Nor was it a simple or direct impeachment of Joe Wilson's credibility or an attack on the substance of his reports. The Plame story was simply an effort create insinuations about Wilson's qualifications and generally besmirch his reputation and possibly (depending on what you're willing to believe about Libby and Rove) to exact revenge by ruining Plame's career. Hardly a lofty testament to the value of an independent press.
The Post's CIA detainee story, by contrast, contained exactly the sort of critical information that the public deserves to see, and should be given every available legal protection. This is not to say that there should be no oversight of how classified information is exposed or that press organizations should not exercise caution in disclosing it (as the Post did in refusing to name the countries where the detainment centers are located). This was information that the public did not know and had no reason to suspect about government policies that go directly to the heart of what our values are and how we conduct ourselves.
This will admittedly cause difficulties for the CIA in its effort to continue to pursue these policies, difficulties that the CIA can claim impair its mission and endanger national security, but these difficulties arise from the outrageousness of the conduct itself. I fail to see how the exposure of this information will in any way impact on the actions of Al Qaeda relative to the CIA, nor the actions of the CIA relative to Al Qaeda, except to the extent that this is now propaganda for Al Qaeda and a source of domestic and international political problems for the CIA. This is not the case of an agent or undercover program that, once exposed, can no longer no long serve the assigned mission. Secrecy is not critical to the function of a prison camp. The exposure of these policies hurt the U.S. and the CIA not because it imposes functional problems, but because the policies are stupid.
The only reason they were likely secret in the first place was probably to avoid political fallout, in both the U.S. and the host countries. That is not, to my mind, a valid reason for government secrecy. If a democratic country allows its government to conceal its actions because the public would not like those actions, something has gone seriously wrong. If some investigation does arise from this leak, I certainly hope that a critical element of that investigation is to discover why exactly the public did not know about these facilities prior to the leak and to inquire into the validity of the profferred justifications for concealing the facilities.
Friday, July 08, 2005
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
The Bush PR Strategy
From slate: "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."—George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Disaster!! ShunTV Nailed
Bastards. "The MPAA says it wants to encourage legitimate download sites instead." I'm sure you did all of the nonexistent legitimate download sites a ton of good. Thanks.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
The FCC Can't Rule the World (or Take Your Broadcast Flag and Shove It)
As D-day for the odious broadcast flag approaches, the D.C. Circuit took oral arguments today in a challenge to the compatibility requirements by the EFF and other consumer groups. Although they expressed doubts about the challengers' standing, the judges left little doubt how they felt about the broadcast flag requirement. Said Judge Edwards: "Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world. ... You've gone too far. ... Are washing machines next?" Added Judge Sentelle: "You can't regulate washing machines. You can't rule the world." Thank goodness for this bulwark of justice, the D.C. Circuit, bravely protecting our washing machines. Because we all know that regulating the washing machines is the first step to world domination. Anyway, so far so good. We'll have to see what happens with the standing issue though...
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