November 2009 Archives

A mythology about the relationship between American government and the news business is again making the rounds, and it needs a corrective jolt.

The myth is that the commercial press in this country stands wholly independent of governmental sustenance.

Here's the jolt: There's never been a time in U.S. history when government dollars weren't propping up the news business. This year, federal, state and local governments will spend well over $1 billion to support commercial news publishers through tax breaks, postal subsidies and the printing of public notices.

And the amount used to be much higher.

All day. Annenberg Room 204.

WASHINGTON – Any day now, if published reports are accurate, cable giant Comcast will celebrate Thanksgiving not by dining on turkey but by feasting on peacock:  Comcast is set to acquire NBC from General Electric. However, reports in the past few weeks touching on the financial performance and prospects of NBC Television raise an interesting question:

Why does anyone really want to buy NBC?

And why does Comcast, in particular, really want to buy NBC?
 

USC Annenberg School for Communication and the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy present the annual Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting. This year’s honoree is David Fanning, founder and executive producer of Frontline, the weekly PBS series that remains as the only regularly scheduled investigative documentary series on television. Frontline has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including 39 Emmys and a special Emmy Award for excellence in documentary filmmaking; 23 duPont-Columbia University Awards; 13 Peabody Awards; and 10 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. This year’s program also honors Dean Ernest J. Wilson III, who has been elected chairman of the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the non-profit corporation created by Congress in 1967 to support public broadcasting. CPB is the largest single source of funding for public television and radio programming and invests in more than 1,000 local radio and television stations. Reception follows program. RSVP required. To RSVP, click here.

3:00 p.m. Davidson Continuing Education Conference Center.

It would be better for NBC Universal to be owned by a media and entertainment company like Comcast than by a conglomerate like General Electric, says media executive Peter Chernin. He was the featured guest Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 at the annual Communication Leadership CEO Series, presented by CCLP in partnership with USC's Marshall School of Business and USC Spectrum.

Chernin has been advising Comcast in its planned acquisition of NBC Universal. He did not receive compensation for his role in the talks other than a charitable donation made by Comcast to Malaria No More, a global health organization that Chernin chairs and co-founded.

Most of what you read, see and hear about Afghanistan is not meant for you. The words, optimistic and pessimistic, right and wrong, all the leaks, all the numbers of troop estimates, costs and polls are aimed at an audience of one: the president.

It is very hard to get to chat with any president. But any president has to know what is in the big three of American newspapers (or their Web sites): The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal. And those papers right now are filled with shouting and whispering to President Obama. The latest shout, a big one, is the leaking to the Times of cables to the State Department from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who also happens to be a former military commander of American troops in the country.

Former U.N. Deputy Special Representative to Afghanistan Peter Galbraith criticized the U.S. government’s handling of the war in Afghanistan and said because of the country’s recent presidential election, he does not recommend sending more troops.

"The core issue is that Obama's strategy relies on having a reliable partner,” he said. “A president who is not believed to be legitimate is not a reliable partner. We have to remember that troops are a valuable resource, and if the resource cannot be effectively used, it shouldn't be used. As you can see, I'm not wildly optimistic."

Policymakers and analysts are calling on the press to dig much deeper into the strife that engulfs Afghanistan, and to provide better analysis on the policy options now before President Obama as he weighs whether to send thousands more American troops.

Former Ambassador Morton Abramowitz, who previously headed the State Department’s intelligence unit, accused the press of “hit-and-run” coverage that has substituted for serious consideration of policy in Afghanistan. His observations, along with presentations and dialogue among top journalists, scholars and government officials, were presented at the inaugural Global Communication Leadership Forum, held November 6-7 in Los Angeles.

Issue 1: The Shield Law

(Note: This is the first in a series of posts about this topic by Kelsey Browne & Ariel Fox)

What is a blogger?   The myriad ways in which blogging takes shape make definition difficult.   Ranging from online diaries to overt advertisements to community newssites, blogs send forth a wide range of varied speech into the world.   How should this speech be regulated, and how should such regulations be reconciled with the First Amendment?   As with non-internet speech, questions of who the speaker is, and what the context and subject of the speech is, remain paramount.  But these questions –particularly the speaker's identity and in what context he or she is speaking—become quickly complicated by technology and its ability to blur lines and spaces.

Blogs run the gamut from the most classically protected political speech to less protected commercial speech.  Within this realm there are students speaking, employees speaking, and people speaking who have no desire to reveal their identities.   Some blogs and bloggers are easy to categorize, but many are not.   Bloggers are thus a diverse and disparate group.  This disunity can frustrate blogger efforts to effect legal, legislative, and regulatory schemes that treat them in a manner that is fair, consistent, and transparent.    In an effort to better understand bloggers and their constitutional rights, we will be exploring how bloggers have fared with the First Amendment, and how, in an ideal world, the First Amendment would apply to blogs and bloggers.