Federal Trade Commission Clears Up Misinformation
The Federal Trade Commission has hosted a series of workshops on the Future of Journalism: “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” Recently, the FTC released a “Discussion Draft” on May 24th with the potential policy recommendations to “Reinvent Journalism.”
As expected, more than a few journalists have an opinion about the FTC’s reinvention of Journalism:
What disturbs me most in this section is that the FTC frets about “difficult line-drawing being proprietary facts and those in the public domain.” Proprietary facts? Is it starting down a road of trying to enable someone to own a fact the way the patent office lets someone own a method or our DNA? Good God, that’s dangerous.
Would you believe: major changes to the copyright law, including government licensing provisions; government pilot programs to investigate potential new media business models, antitrust changes to allow media companies to unite on imposing online pay walls, establish a journalism division of AmeriCorps with government underwriting the training of young journalists, tax incentives per news employee, increased funding of public broadcasting, a 5% tax on consumer electronics and/or assessments on users of public airwaves.
Mark Tapscott hope journalists wake up:
Release of the Federal Trade Commission’s working paper on “reinventing journalism” makes it clear that there is no more time for diplomacy about this issue: President Obama is determined to federalize the news industry just as he has banking, autos, and health care.
The Washington Times editorial board mentions how expensive this may be:
The report also discusses the possibility of offering tax exemptions to news organizations, establishing an AmeriCorps for reporters and creating a national fund for local news organizations. The money for those benefits would come from a suite of new taxes. A 5 percent tax on consumer electronic devices such as iPads, Kindles and laptops that let consumers read the news could be used to encourage people to keep reading the dead-tree version of the news. Other taxes might be levied on the radio and television spectrum, advertising and cell phones.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air mentions:
This looks like an attack on blogs — and an attempt to turn back the clock to 1993 in terms of the voice that news consumers have in news delivery.
As The Capitol Burns put out a youtube video about the proposed recommendations.
With press like this regarding the FTC’s proposed regulations many people have become concerned that the government is in effect – taking over the media.
Henry Waxman isn’t concerned about the government “support” though:
Others have raised red flags about the dangers of government support of the press.
I have an open mind on all the above proposals.
Oh okay…never mind then. Might all these concerns be for nothing? I mean, Henry’s cool with it.
Recent press reports have erroneously stated that the FTC is supporting and proposing some of the public comments (for example, taxes on electronic devices, favoring one medium over another).
[T]hrough this document, we seek to prompt discussion of whether to recommend policy changes to support the ongoing reinvention of journalism, and, if so, which specific proposals appear most useful, feasible, platform-neutral, resistant to bias, and unlikely to cause unintended consequences in addressing emerging gaps in news coverage.”
Nothing to see here….move along folks. Just because the title of the official FTC report is “Potential Policy Recommendations To Support The Reinvention of Journalism” doesn’t mean they are potential policy recommendations. Also, despite the footnote disclaimer that says, “It reflects only the tentative analyses and possible policy recommendations assembled by FTC staff in the Office of Policy Planning.” the FTC wants to be clear these are not possible policy recommendations.
These ideas are simply possibilities on “whether” they might consider or recommend the potential policy changes. The process of government control of the media is very complex and the FTC understandably doesn’t want to leave any stone unturned when it comes to new ideas on controlling the media and internet. Think of this draft as a pre-draft draft or as a pre potential recommendation report that really means nothing at all. All those previous workshops since December of 2009 have simply been mere scribbles on napkins so to speak. Or in the FTC’s words, “a compilation of ideas.” They just subsequently took those scribbles of ideas and produced an official draft policy paper on FTC letterhead, sent emails, press releases, web updates, and distributed the paper to the world. Just because an official government agency prints some official looking draft of potential policy recommendations doesn’t mean we should pay any attention nor should we be critical. The FTC would appreciate the public and especially journalists to hold all comments and criticism until the policy recommendations ideas are actual law.
If you have further interest in more FTC “ideas” there will be another workshop on June 15th at the National Press Club. But be warned. There will be no possible policy recommendations discussed even if the FTC releases another discussion draft titled “Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism.”
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