After a 15 year public policy career in Washington, Center for National Security Studies Deputy Director Lisa Graves is leaving the Beltway for Madison, Wis., where she will head up the Center for Media and Democracy, a government and media watchdog group. Graves was on the front lines on a range of high-tech and privacy issues at CNSS and at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she served as senior counsel for legislative strategy. She testified on Capitol Hill against the Bush administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program; collection of personal financial records and other sensitive information; and military satellite spying as well as on Patriot Act and Freedom of Information Act issues. Prior to the ACLU, Graves worked as chief nominations counsel for Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy when he was ranking member of the committee. CMD's search committee heard from more than 60 applicants and conducted numerous interviews before selecting Graves unanimously. She will replace John Stauber, who founded the nonprofit and its newsmagazine PR Watch in 1993.
Declining advertising and classified sales, waning subscription numbers, the 24-hour news cycle and new competition brought by Internet innovators are among the myriad challenges facing newspapers in the recession-plagued 21st century - and now Congress wants to get involved. On Tuesday afternoon, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy will hold a hearing titled "A New Age for Newspapers: Diversity of Voices, Competition and the Internet." Witnesses include Carl Shapiro, deputy assistant attorney general for economics at the Justice Department; Philadelphia Media Holdings CEO Brian Tierney; journalist John Nichols; Newspaper Guild President Bernie Lunzer; Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott; University of Pennsylvania professor C. Edwin Baker; and Dan Gainor, director of the Business and Media Institute.
Next month, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who chairs the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet will hold a similar hearing to address the issues threatening the news media. The May 6 hearing will be Kerry's first since Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller tapped him to head up the panel. "An independent news media is vital to our democracy," Kerry said in a statement. "It holds power accountable while giving voice to the people and interests who might otherwise never be heard." United States history "is inextricably linked to the narrative of our free and independent press," Kerry said, yet America's newspapers are struggling to stay afloat. "I called this hearing to directly address a problem that for too long has had us turning the other way. Whatever the model for the future, we must do all we can to ensure a diverse and independent news media endures," he said.
Watchdog group Media Matters has launched a new Web site called Financial Media Matters, a project "dedicated to holding accountable those who report on the financial and business industry as well as those who report on labor, economic, and other fiscal matters." The organization created the site because it believes reporters have consistently offered false or misleading coverage of the causes of and proposed solutions for the current economic crisis. "Many journalists, both in the financial and mainstream media, have failed to critically examine the issues and instead have simply repeated partisan spin -- from using the phrase 'Obama Bear Market' to touting CNBC on-air editor Rick Santelli's rant as being 'populist,'" Media Matters said in a Monday press release. Among those in the site's crosshairs: CNBC, Fox Business Network, and The Wall Street Journal. "As people across the country struggle with losing their jobs, losing their homes, and losing their nest eggs, Americans are depending on the media -- especially the financial media -- for answers," Media Matters President Eric Burns said.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers will join House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, House Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Darrell Issa and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., for a Tuesday briefing on legislation they introduced to end a longstanding copyright royalty exemption granted to AM and FM radio stations. The rally organized by the MusicFirst Coalition will feature appearances by artists and musicians from across genres and decades.
The House and Senate Judiciary committees will put executives from Live Nation and Ticketmaster on the hot seat this week as they examine the pair's $2.5 billion merger plan, now under Justice Department review. Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., will chair a Tuesday hearing and the House Judiciary Courts and Competition Policy Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., will follow up Thursday. Read a CongressDaily preview story here (subscription required).
The Property Rights Alliance will unveil its 2009 International Property Rights Index at the National Press Club on Tuesday. The event will be followed with a discussion by a panel of experts on what the rankings means for property rights in the 111th Congress and around the globe. The alliance's annual study measures the significance of physical and intellectual property rights and their protection for economic well-being. The index includes data for 115 countries, representing 96 percent of world GDP.
More than a dozen senators led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking member Arlen Specter wrote to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell this week to protest the NFL Network’s exclusive coverage of football games, which precludes many fans from watching their area or local football teams. "That the NFL would choose to have fewer viewers for select games again this year is an indication of its interest in moving toward a pay television model," the lawmakers wrote.
The NFL enjoys an antitrust exemption, conferred by Congress, and members are concerned that the sports league is leveraging the success of its over-the-air broadcasts to move games to pay TV, to the detriment of NFL fans across the country. Last December, the NFL permitted the final game of the season [New England Patriots vs. New York Giants] to be broadcast on free, over-the-air TV. The game, which drew more than 34 million viewers, was a victory for the NFL and for fans, the letter said. The league has announced that it will return to restricting games to the NFL Network beginning Nov. 6.
European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes topped Ethisphere's "100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics." "Not only did Kroes levy record fines across Europe for antitrust cases, but she proved to American titans such as Intel, Apple and Microsoft that European rules should not be taken lightly," the magazine said.
Kroes is making an early case for leading the list again next year "with her plans to 'fight like hell' to stop price-fixing and ensure companies get the message," as well as indications that she plans on raising fines for antitrust violations even higher next year.
Other notables who made the list include Dell Computer Chairman Michael Dell; Computer Associates Senior Vice President Patrick Gnazzo; Hewlett-Packard Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer Jonathan Hoak; and Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy.
StopBigMedia.com, a coalition aimed at fighting media consolidation, has teamed up with the Harry Potter Alliance to mobilize thousands of fans of the fictional boy wizard. The two groups launched Potterwatch on Wednesday -- an effort that uses the character to illustrate the dangers of allowing big business to swallow up local media outlets.
In the book series, wizarding newspapers like the Daily Prophet put the magical community in jeopardy "by denying Voldemort's return … and ultimately becoming a mouthpiece for Voldemort," alliance creator Andrew Slack said in a press release.
[Disclaimer: I've never read a Potter book or seen a Potter movie so I have no idea what this guy is talking about but I'm sure those of you who are in the know either agree or disagree with his thesis.]
The Potterwatch movement brought together opponents of the sinister Voldemort, Slack said. StopBigMedia.com and the alliance "have come together to create a Potterwatch movement in the real world to fight back against 'Voldemedia' -- the handful of companies that control most of what we see, hear and read every day."
The groups are urging fans to speak out against FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's plan to loosen media ownership rules later this month. Ironically, some policy watchers have whispered that Martin looks a little like the spellbinding whippersnapper. Go figure.
Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, has brainstormed a trio of journalistic innovations into the existence the past year. The new project, Beatblogging.org, went online yesterday, and elements of it will appeal to the technology crowd.
The concept behind Beatblogging is to connect beat reporters with social networks of experts in specific topics who can help them do their jobs better. To test the theory, Rosen recruited about a dozen beat reporters from newsrooms across the country whose editors are on board with the idea.
As it turns out, six of the participating beat reporters will be focused on science and technology topics. The reporters and their topics are:
-- Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle, science
-- Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired.com, digital music
-- Michelle Davis of Education Week’s Digital Directions, technology in the K-12 classroom
-- Brier Dudley of The Seattle Times, Northwest technology companies, like Microsoft and RealNetworks.
-- Matt Nauman of The Mercury News, energy and "green" technology
-- And Stephen Totilo of MTV News, videogames and their makers
You can get more details on each of those projects at Rosen's PressThink blog and follow their coverage over the next year at the Beatblogging site.
[Cross-posted from National Journal's Beltway Blogroll]
The House yesterday passed a bill aimed at shielding journalists and some bloggers from having to disclose their anonymous sources to the government. Technology Daily reported on the development this morning. Here's our summary of the news as reported in other publications:
The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to shield reporters from federal prosecution for refusing to divulge their news sources or information except in a few circumstances. CongressDaily (subscription required), The Washington Post, News.com and the Los Angeles Times report that the vote was 398-21.
Under the bill, journalists engaged in news-gathering activities, including bloggers, still could be compelled to disclose information on sources if needed to prevent an act of terrorism. The House adopted language to let judges consider the public interest in forcing disclosure in cases involving leaks that could be harmful to national security, not just criminal cases.
But the bill has too many restrictions to please Matt Stoller of Open Left. He said the requirement that a "substantial portion" of a blogger's livelihood come from gathering and publishing news will exclude most bloggers, including himself.
This is the latest report from the National Journal/NBC reporters embedded with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states.
MANCHESTER, N.H. - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney isn't a big fan of today's media, but he loves the opportunity that new media give candidates to bypass traditional outlets. That was clear Saturday when a voter in Dover, N.H., asked how Romney would handle liberal media.
Staunch Romney supporter Bill Belles prefaced his question by lamenting that he "watched the current administration go down in flames because it never rebuffs what the media says." He then asked, "How are you as president going to rebuff the media so they don't, in four, five, six, seven years, say, 'Mitt lied'?"
Romney first joked that he had been advised before a speech the previous night: "The only tax increase you'll sign is a tax on newspapers that get stories wrong."
Then he added, "I can tell you this, and that is that there is today not the monopoly in the news that there used to be." He stressed a growing range of outlets and pointed in particular to talk radio, broadcast news and the Internet as avenues to communicate a message. He only mentioned newspapers as an afterthought.
Reprinted from Monday's Technology Daily PM Edition:
More details emerged Monday about a new plan by the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, commonly known as C-SPAN, to greatly expand public access to its catalog of digital video from federal government activities.
The cable industry-financed nonprofit revised its copyright policy last week to allow "non-commercial" copying, sharing and posting of congressional hearings, agency briefings and White House events with attribution -- and more changes are on the way.
Confusion over the network's intellectual property provisions came to a crescendo recently when House Republicans questioned whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had illegally used C-SPAN clips on her Web site. A network spokeswoman insisted that the policy shift was "a year in the making" and was not in response to the flap.
In an interview with Technology Daily, C-SPAN President Rob Kennedy said liberalizing the policy was the first step in an ongoing process. In coming months, he said C-SPAN will "do some things on our site and on the Internet that make our video easier to find and use."
First, the network will open up its 20-year-old vault of digitized recordings so users can search for and stream hundreds of thousands of hours of footage. The streaming video will be technologically protected to prevent viewers from "ripping" directly from the site, Kennedy said.
This year's National Journalism Awards, granted annually by the Scripps Howard Foundation, include a few with technology-related angles, including the top award for investigative journalism.
The Wall Street Journal won the investigative prize for its series on employee stock options. We have linked to much of the coverage in the Journal and other publications in our AM Edition because so many of the companies caught up in the scandal over manipulating stock options are in the technology industry.
This week alone, we have cited stories on: the chairman of Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry handheld device, resigning over the options scandal at his firm; option values being manipulated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to maximize profits; and the dilemma that the Securities and Exchange Commission faces in whether or how to penalize companies for such backdating of options.
The journalism award for the Journal went to James Bandler, Charles Forelle, Mark Maremont and Steve Stecklow.
The award for Web reporting went to washingtonpost.com for its "Being a Black Man" production, which featured videos, Web chats, Web logs, a live webcast and an interactive survey along with the text that was published in the daily newspaper. And WTHR-TV in Indianapolis finished first for excellence in electronic media/TV-cable thanks to "Cause for Alarm," the station's investigation of the failure of the tornado warning systems in Indiana.
One finalist also is worth mentioning to our readers. Laura McGann of AP was the finalist for "distinguished service to the First Amendment" because of her work in uncovering how the Education Department and FBI ran a counter-terrorism data-mining program for five years.
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