Category Archives: The Media

I think that the omnipresence of hate radio and TV is one of the great poisons of contemporary politics. So it’s very encouraging to see signs that the shine is coming off some of the icons. DO NOT MISS MS-NBC’s Keith Olbermann’s disemboweling of Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, clip courtesy of onegoodmove. (While there, check out the other great video captures.)

This is right: Hullabaloo: Gentleman’s Agreement. That’s the “what he said” part of this post.

Isn’t it odd that major corporations foster so much hatred on the air? It’s clear that Limbaugh and the Fox types are not joking. They are not even “joking”.

So it’s nice to see someone doing something to strike back. I suspect that Chris Matthews would not have been my top choice, or probably even one of my top three, for an advertiser boycott, but you start where you are. And where we are right now is An Open Letter to Chris Matthews.

So here’s what I did. I wrote emails to Intuit and to Toyota because I’m a long-time buyer of their products. And I also used the comment form on their web site. And I said that, much as I like their products, I wouldn’t buy again until they disassociate themselves from this filth. For Toyota it’s a car. For Intuit it was TurboTax: I said I would switch to Tax Cut (I didn’t say I would drop Quicken, because the truth is I probably wouldn’t).

That was last night. This morning I got a phone call from a very concerned marketing VP at Intuit. That’s the company that doesn’t do tech support and never answers my email about bugs in Quicken. She just saw my email and she want me to know that Intuit is very concerned about my opinion, that this is the first she’s heard of this and of course they are concerned. She’s put in a call to the marketing people, but of course Intuit has no control over what shows its ads run on.

I suggested to her that in fact networks make accommodations all the time if a sponsor doesn’t want to be on a show, and if her people were telling her different, maybe she should ask some questions.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking there were over 100,000 visits to the Open Letter site before I got there. I can’t really be the first person to actually write to Intuit, can I? (Although I used the web comment form as well as email, so who knows?). But never mind. I take her to mediamatters.org and to the An Open Letter to Chris Matthews site, and she professes amazement. I say that while Matthews has a First Amendment right to say what he likes, I am a Democrat, and I find it very offensive to have Democrats compared to terrorists. And if Intuit is paying for that with their ads, I think they are responsible for it and they’re associated with it, and I don’t want their product any more.

And so Ms. VP says she’ll call me back if the ad policy changes. I say I’d love it if they change the ad policy,and I look forward to hearing from her soon, and we part best of friends. Or something. And I’m not holding my breath, but who knows.

I’m going to be on Sirius Satellite Radio (nothing but the big audiences for me!) tonight at about 7:05pm east coast time, talking about the “Unitary Executive,” or how to decode Judge Alito when he says “if it’s unconstitutional, then the President can’t wiretap you in defiance of a statutory command” [translation: he hasn’t said anything, since he believes in a theory that says it is (sometimes? often? always?) constitutional anyway].

The show is called Young Turks and carries the slightly ominous subtitle “We Don’t Make the News. We Make the News Sexy!”

How on earth they will achieve that with me I can only nervously imagine. But for those who, like me, don’t have a Sirius Satellite Radio (‘Howard who?’), or even a joke one, I’m told you can listen to the live online feed.

It’s all about trust, right?

Buried well inside the Miami Herald’s local section is a small story headlined, “Herald columnist faces contempt-of-court charge“.

It seems that Herald columnist Ana Veciana-Suarez, who writes a column on the hardships of middle-class family life and childrearing, is accused of lying when she failed to disclose her father’s 1974 conviction for conspiring to distribute cocaine. Veciana-Suarez, then a high school student, was the only witness in his defense.

The issue arose when she was called for jury service in a 2003 civil trial and, as is usually the case, the potential jurors were asked about their experiences with the justice system. The failure to disclose is a misdemeanor, albeit one that could theoretically cause a mistrial.

The Herald’s article is surprisingly coy about Veciana-Suarez. There is no sign that the reporter on the story even attempted to interview her, not even a ‘no comment.’ Her lawyer is quoted however, as saying, that Veciana-Suarez plans to admit she erred in failing to disclose the information about her father.

There’s also a quote from Miami Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler, ”Ana has kept the newspaper fully apprised about this legal proceeding, which has not yet reached its conclusion,” Fiedler said. “Until then, it is premature for us to take any action affecting her assignment as a columnist and staff writer.”

That’s quite an odd quote. Contrast the treatment of DeFede when he admitted to a possibly illegal recording of a conversation (arguably felonious, arguably a misdemeanor, arguably not illegal at all) with a friend and source (links). The Herald didn’t wait for the conclusion of the legal proceedings then. Heck, it didn’t even wait to see if charges were filed (and ultimately they weren’t).

Contrast what DeFede got, which could charitably be called the bum’s rush, with the treatment of Veciana-Suarez, who apparently now, long after the fact, admits (or plans to admit) to lying to a judge so she could serve on a jury, an offense that I would think is of substantially greater potential public cost (retrials are expensive) and even moral turpitude, which I think was completely absent in DeFede’s case.

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If they can’t find anyone better, I’m going to be on American Public Media’s (NPR) Marketplace later this morning, at least in the West Coast edition of the Morning Report. The interview was prompted by an article in the Wall Street Journal. No, not yesterday’s piece by Jess Bravin which quotes me on Alito and the Unitary Executive. The subject was today’s article by Dionne Searcey and Amy Schatz, “Phone Companies Set Off A Battle Over Internet Fees; Content Providers May Face Charges for Fast Access; Billing the Consumer Twice?”,

Large phone companies, setting the stage for a big battle ahead, hope to start charging Google Inc., Vonage Holdings Corp. and other Internet content providers for high-quality delivery of music, movies and the like over their telecommunications networks.

BellSouth Corp. said it is in early talks with Internet movie companies and at least one gaming company with the aim of striking agreements on fees to guarantee fast content delivery over the Internet. Movielink LLC, a joint-venture of five major movie studios that offers movies to consumers over the Internet, said it has discussed the issue with BellSouth. Meanwhile, AT&T Corp. executives have expressed support for charging companies to ensure that their content gets priority delivery, and Verizon Communications Inc. Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg yesterday said he might favor reaching deals with companies to do the same. “We have to make sure they don’t sit on our network and chew up our capacity,” Mr. Seidenberg told reporters.

The phone companies envision a system whereby Internet companies would agree to pay a fee for their content to receive priority treatment as it moves across increasingly crowded networks. Those that don’t pay the fee would find their transactions with Internet users — for games, movies and software downloads, for example — moving across networks at the normal but comparatively slower pace. Consumers could benefit through faster access to content from companies that agree to pay the fees.

My main point in the interview with Janet Babin (although you never know what part of the tape they will use…) was that we can’t trust the market to sort this one out, as we might usually want to, do because — due to regulatory choices by the current administration — there isn’t true competition for the provision of household broadband. Instead most consumers face a monopolist or at best a DSL/Cable duopoly. If we had true competition at the consumer endpoint we at least have some hope that the outcome would preserve the public goods aspects have interoperability and a place for the small and quirky.

So for me the issue isn’t exactly regulation to achieve “net neutrality” except as a second best. The issue is keeping the consumer from being made captive in the first place.

Update: They used a short quote. But identified me as “William” Froomkin. (I’m told it will be fixed for the second feed.)