Net Neutrality: Medium or Message

While everyone’s attention was focused on the potential for a government shutdown, House Republicans passed a bill to repeal federal rules barring Internet service providers from blocking or setting different prices for some uses of their networks. According to the Associated Press, in voting to repeal rules on “network neutrality” set down by the Federal Communications Commission, Republicans claimed that the FCC lacked the authority to impose such rules.

“The FCC power grab would allow it to regulate any interstate communication service on barely more than a whim and without any additional input from Congress,” said Rep. Greg Walden (R, OR), a sponsor of the legislation. The vote along party lines to pass the bill, H.J. Res. 37, was 240-179. This is the same House that voted 228-192 on a bill to defund National Public Radio last month. It is yet another bill unlikely to pass in the Senate and doomed to a presidential veto if it should.

The concept of “net neutrality", according to the New York Times, holds that companies providing Internet service should treat all sources of data equally. The debate centers on whether those companies can give preferential treatment to content providers who pay for faster transmission, or to their own content, “in effect creating a two-tier Web, and about whether they can block or impede content representing controversial points of view.”

Before the House took up a joint resolution condemning the new Internet access rules, Verizon and MetroPCS brought a lawsuit to court that challenged the FCC’s pending rules to keep Internet service providers from blocking access to certain Web sites or applications. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit rejected the suit as “premature.” Although considered by some as a first-round victory for the F.C.C. and its chairman, Julius Genachowski, the real battle over the commission’s attempt to regulate broadband providers has only just begun.

In a recent meeting with Wall Street Journal reporters and editors, Genachowski said, “I don’t see any circumstances where we’d take steps to regulate the Internet itself.” He added, “I’ve been clear repeatedly that we’re not going to regulate the Internet.” In trying to craft new rules that would require phone and cable companies to treat all legal Internet traffic that flows over their lines equally, the FCC had proposed a draft of “net neutrality” rules last fall. “The communications line piece is something that we have historic responsibility for [in] promoting competition and promoting innovation. So that is the distinction,” Genachowski said.

Internet service providers, of course, say there’s no need for the government to step in, as do other opponents of the FCC.

Freedom Works called the FCC rules “job-killing regulations [that] would involve significant new controls on the Internet that would have significant implications for investing in innovation and broadband deployment.” In urging passage of HJR 37, it posted, “The FCC should respect this fact—and the careful separation of power laid out in the US Constitution—and not make such sweeping law where the legislature has not.” Naturally, anything that conservative organizations and Republicans don’t like, out comes the Constitution.

Another organization, Americans for Prosperity went as far to charge that “Chairman Genachowski, a long-time executive at Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp, one of the leading corporate beneficiaries of net neutrality, is currently attempting FCC’s second foray into Internet regulations.” The fact is that no FCC commissioner may have a financial interest in any FCC-related business.

Consumers Union opposed the legislation. “Internet providers should not limit your choices to their preferred sites,” said Parul P. Desai, the organizations policy counsel. “Key stakeholders – from consumers, to small business, to civil rights groups and religious organizations – have overwhelmingly voiced support for Open Internet rules as well as the FCC’s authority to implement and enforce them.” Unfortunately, they did not refer to the Constitution in their opposition.

Democratic policymakers called free and open communications “a vital part of American democracy.” At the Free Press’s National Conference for Media Reform, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) said she was pleased by Democratic opposition to the GOP-backed resolution, which cleared the House under the cover of the looming shutdown. “No one should be guarding the gate on the Internet,” Pelosi said. She added that the resolution isn’t likely to gain support in the Senate. “I don’t think this bill is going anyplace.”

As I pointed out in Blogcritics two years ago, there is a difference between a regulation and a law. As an independent regulatory agency, the FCC has the power to impose regulations at any time without action by either the executive or legislative branches. The new regulations, which the FCC calls its Open Internet Order, are the rules that House Republicans attacked.

Once again House Republicans have backed a losing proposition as they did with their attempt to defund National Public Radio. The GOP opposition to Net Neutrality regulations favors corporations over consumers. At least we know where they are coming from. This time it is not about the message. This time it is about the medium and the corporations that own it. It is another win for losing.

Article first published as Net Neutrality: Message or Medium on Technorati.

NPR and AFRTS Won't Be Chopped

On Blogcritics, where my NPR piece appeared, someone commented, “No other broadcast entity is supported by the government (except its propaganda outlets like V of A and Radio Marti . . . ” I had to reply.

Actually there is. AFRTS, Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, is part of the Department of Defense.

As a graduate of the Defense Information School, which trains all AFRTS personnel, let me assure you that AFRTS is in no danger of being defunded. It broadcasts Rush Limbaugh as part of its “stateside radio and television programming, "a touch of home,” to U.S. service men and women, DoD civilians, and their families serving outside the continental United States.” Those are places like Afghanistan and Iraq, among others.

Don’t forget that House Republicans held an emergency session on HR 1076 waiving O'Keefe’s misleading editing, distorted quotes, and untruth and promoted his tape as gospel. The emergency was on. They won.

The bill has no chance in the Senate. The president has a pen full of veto ink. NPR will continue to receive federal funding, as will the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, those “frivolous” institutions recently trashed by the Arch Republican Sarah Palin.

By the way, AFRTS is available in Sweden and Israel.

Someone commented that they were “concerned that AFRTS has become an Establishment propaganda tool which is financed by the taxpayer” and asks about it’s scheduling. Again, I had to reply.

First and foremost let me point out that the service is for Armed Forces and Department of Defense personnel serving the United States overseas, not in the continental US. For scheduling, you should look to AFN, American Forces Network, which is a part of the Department of Defense (DoD).

Second, one could argue that AFRTS is an establishment propaganda tool, that establishment being the federal military/industrial establishment, once again the DoD. One could also argue that the context in which the word “propaganda” is used must be considered. The context usually depends on what side one is on.

Third, with regard to scrutiny and budget trimming, that goes directly to the DoD Budget itself, which is Holy to Republicans. They would just as soon burn an autographed picture of Ronald Reagan than to touch the so called Defense budget. But that is what would have to happen before any cutting of the pittance paid for media.

In 1947 the DoD, the acronym for United States Department of Defense, is what became of the Department of War, which was founded in 1789. It has the largest budget of any US Department headed by a single secretary. Its budget is more than 4.5 % of Assumed Nominal GDP and accounts for more than 21% of the US Federal Budget. One wonders if it would be so much if it was still called the Department of War.

Name changes and propaganda give us the US Navy as a "Global Force for Good". Good aiming, see CNN. While I am at it, the job of the US Army and US Marine Corps is not peace keeping. Their job is to seek out an enemy and to destroy it.

Take it from a former US Army propagandist [Awards winning Military Journalist]. But, I digress.

Hidden Tape Emergency

House Republicans held an emergency session on HR 1076, the NPR funding cut. What was the emergency?

A hidden camera captured NPR executive Ron Shiller saying that NPR would be better off without federal funding. But that’s not all. Shiller also ripped into the tea party movement as a bunch of “gun toting racists,” adding “and not just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic.”

Republicans have had NPR on their agenda for years and a phenomenal and bogus tape by James O'Keefe became their next big deal. O'Keefe claims to be acting in the tradition of undercover investigative muckrakers. But the GOP’s new majority seized O'Keefe’s misleading editing, distorted quotes, and untruth and promoted it as gospel. The emergency was on.

Here is an interview with O'Keefe.

As I wrote on Blogcritics, when you can listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity for free, who needs NPR? It reaches 33 million listeners through its member stations, with its 36 bureaus and offices around the world, and local coverage produced by more than 270 independent NPR member public radio stations across the country. Republicans hate that. In the House of Representatives they voted their conscience, and this tells us everything we need to know.

It’s not about the money. It is all about the content. The GOP doesn’t like NPR content because they are focusing on a small percentage of it that they disagree with. I am sure Rush Limbaugh agrees with me.

The left politics or right politics argument that is being bandied about is referred to as the False Dichotomy Fallacy, which excludes anything in the middle. The majority of NPR programming is neither left nor right. NPR stations broadcast programs ranging from A Prairie Home Companion and The Thistle & Shamrock to Car Talk and Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me. The news programs Fresh Air and All Things Considered must drive the GOP nuts.

There is nothing like a tempest in a tea party pot, which is what the new House majority seems to be all about. Their emergency meeting on NPR funding is just one of many items on a growing list to stuff that they know is doomed to successful failure. There are health care bills they know they can't pass, abortion bills they know they can't pass, climate bills they know they can't pass, and budget bills they know they can't pass.

The voters that elected them must really be impressed with the amount of time, money and energy their House GOP representatives have spent on defending the Defense of Marriage Act, recklessly accusing Muslim Americans of disloyalty, and pushing culture-war bills related to vouchers, English as the 'official' language, and 'In God We Trust.'

NPR's funding would have been an issue whether or not O'Keefe made that tape. Senator Saxby Chambliss agrees about that, but also says, “You know, an awful lot of conservatives listen to NPR. It provides a very valuable service.” The Georgia Republican also thinks that “total elimination of funding is probably not the wisest thing to do.” He is being politically kind.

Other than NPR stations, radio is owned by the right. Television is owned by the sponsors. That’s why journalism and television have become as oil and water. Television journalism has become an oxymoron. The reason is that television is show business.

“Mack, guys like you [journalists] are like icing on the cake. We don’t really need you,” the Sales Manager of WJCL TV, Savannah, said to me after I got pulled off of a story I was working. “If it doesn't sell beer or cars, it doesn’t go on the air.”

As to news presenters, they are their own little institutions. They are actors playing the rolls of journalists. They are talking hairdos. The scripts they read are becoming more and more shallow, almost vapid. Their script writers are too lazy to use Google.

Incidentally, if you think that one broadcast or cable news organization is any better than another, please think again. Aside from NPR and PBS, all other “self-respecting news organizations” ask themselves two basic questions. Does it sell beer? Does it sell cars?

O’Keefe’s productions sell both.

The Fair in Fairness

“Dear Mr. Liberal,” wrote an opinion writer in Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel, “Why do liberals claim they're for free speech but want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, which could stifle conservative talk radio?” That is the latest drum beat of the self proclaimed center-right. I found the question irresistible. “Mr. Liberal replies,” I responded. “Liberals do not. We [liberals] have better things to do than to try to hush Rush Limbaugh or stifle Sean Hannity, like listening to NPR.” I thought I was being cute, as I bated the commentator.

But, nooooo.

A young Republican shot back, “Yes, but ‘you’ liberals do not write the rules, vote on them, pass them into law...Nancy Pelosi liberals do.” She continued that it “is not about Hannity and Rush, both of whom I loathe. It is about slowly choking off the First Amendment. It is sickening how vocal liberals are with their incredible amount of misinformation.”

Let me share another point of view, that of Michael Reagan in his blog, Michigan Redneck II. “P.S. My dad, President Reagan, killed the ‘Fairness Doctrine.’ As a result, this rule change allowed Rush, Hannity, and me to have radio talk shows — that’s why the new proposal to bring it back is being called the ‘Hush Rush’ bill. Now the liberals are dying to shut us up.” He is seeking contributions, too.

“The Fairness Doctrine is the last of my concerns for broadcast news. I would settle for some proper grammar and sentence construction here and there,” one of my former radio colleagues, Gary Nelson of WFOR TV4 Miami wrote. “About the vitriol on talk radio,” Gary continued, “in doing a piece the day after the election on Bush losing the Hispanic vote, I interviewed a Colombian-American voter who said he had been a Republican all his life and had never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. He said the ‘mean-spirited’ attacks on Obama changed him. ‘Rush Limbaugh cost John McCain my vote,’ he said.”

“That's why we now have right wing and left wing media. Some are even in the middle,” a voter on my “Fair in Fairness Poll” wrote. “Let people decide who to listen to. It should not be confused, but often is, with the Equal Time rule. The Fairness Doctrine deals with matters of public importance; the Equal Time rule only deals with political candidates.”

Thank goodness for the Internet and 1st Amendment, without which I would have no one to bate (aa-aa watch it!) nor the freedom to do it.

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To view comments on the Fairness Poll, go to

http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=4251