As everyone knows, the nation's scam artists, monopolists and market-riggers have all gone into hibernation during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. This has given the Federal Trade Commission the breathing room it needs to intercede in an arena where its role is, at best, unclear.FTC's Shallow Dive into Journalism's Future (Thanks, Dan!)This week, the commission is holding a two-day workshop entitled How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? -- the purpose of which is 'to explore how the Internet has affected journalism.'
The commission has discovered that the advertising model which once supported many kinds of journalism has eroded. Quoting several economists, the workshop notice says 'public affairs reporting may indeed be particularly subject to market failure.'
Market failure? What about the market failure -- which as far as I can tell never got any attention from a succession of FTC people during the past half-century -- of the monopolies and oligopolies created by media organizations during that period? The public affairs journalism was, for the most part, a modest spinoff of the extortionate advertising prices they charged when they had near-absolute market power to charge anything they wished. Only when there's real competition does the FTC get interested.
FTC solves all other problems, decides to fix news
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Text is duplicated. Of course, someone else will be in before me and you'll probably have it fixed by the time my comment posts, but hey. Duty as a citizen and all that.
I think they mean the trouble with journalism is the pesky reporters calling out the advertisers (or the advertisers friends) on their bad behaviors.
Truly a 'stop the presses' moment.
I saw the federal government doing highway maintenance on I-35 the other day. I guess that means they've already solved world hunger and built a permanent colony on the moon.
What a sophomoric fallacy! There's more than one guy in the FTC.
What a sophomoric fallacy! There's more than one guy in the FTC.
What a freshman miss. Why is the FTC looking into content in the first place? Their mandate is elsewhere.
Although it's true that the internet is not solely to blame for the downfall of newspapers, and the FTC will most certainly not provide an answer, the question worries me: "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?"
I agree with David Simon: you can't have serious coverage of dangerous warzones or boring townhall meetings unless you have an organisation that can pay people to do it. I think that, for all the good the internet brings us, we might be losing something as well. I don't have a solution, I wonder if any of the smart people here do.
News was doomed the moment it was forced into being a profit center.
I'd rather them answer the question, "Why do huge corporations/ organizations cling to failing business models?" The FTC has to have better things to do with heir time, like look into the Comcast/ NBC merger or the Ticket Master/ Live Nations merger.
Did anyone see the footage of the protest where someone organized the TeaBaggers to go protest in front of CBS, ABC, CNN, and other TV news networks? They had signs, and told passersby all these news networks were biased, and they needed to get their news from the only objective, fair, and balanced news network: Fox.
I am skeptical about the FTC's chances of 'fixing' the problem, but maybe they can at least enforce better delineation between news and "opinion" shows.
Great piece on regulatory capture in the current Harpers.
At the risk of becoming mister retweeter, I'll mention that The Awl pointed toward Talking Points Memo's paradigm glimmer the other day.
In other news, the FTC regulations on mandatory disclosure on blogger payola take effect today: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2009/12/new_blogger_payola_rules_begin.html
Somebody at the conference ask them if they plan to apply the same rules to print, TV, and radio.
>Somebody at the conference ask them if they plan to apply the same rules to print, TV, and radio.
err, you know where the word payola comes from?
I went to that link for Washington Post. Turned off my ad-blocking software, and saw 5 (FIVE!) banner ads on it. For one page view. Just like to point out that bit of irony there...