Comcast: Censoring Tweets But Spporting Free Press?

Our readers may recall last week when media giant Comcast threatened to pull all of its funding support from a small non-profit charity because a teenage girl there dared to tweet a criticism of Comcast for hiring former FCC Chairman Baker as its own private lobbyist. Well, Comcast would like you to forget about all that and trust that this time it really will support free, independent press, honestly. 

You see, in order to push through the merger (assisted by Commissioner Baker, of course) between media conglomerates Comcast and NBC, Comcast agreed to "partner with" a minimum of five independent, non-profit news organizations. Ironically, the whole point of independent journalism is to allow reporters the freedom of commenting on stories of interest to the public without concern as to how such stories might affect the profits of corporate giants such as, say, Comcast. And while Comcast might want us to believe that freedom of the press and corporate imperialism are not mutually exclusive, their history of punitive treatment towards critics seems like pretty damning evidence to the contrary.

Reporter Josh Stearns over at Save The News suggests that readers should think twice about assuming that Comcast has the capacity, never mind the intention, to engage in truly free press:

The Reel Grrls example has to be a consideration for nonprofit journalism organizations who are thinking about working with the media giant around these local news partnerships. What happens when one of these nonprofits wants to cover a local telecommunications issue, or do a public interest piece on rising cable rates? Do local reporters have to worry if they tweet about how bad their Comcast Internet service is? If Comcast is watching its “digital footprint” this closely, you can bet it won’t be happy if one of their nonprofit news partners wants to investigate a story where the company is implicated....

If Comcast is willing to threaten a local youth media organization over a tweet, what would stop it from pulling funding from a local nonprofit journalism website over a story? For news organizations looking to get out from underneath the thumb of commercial media pressures that have gutted newsrooms and shaped coverage, these two are too close for comfort. And for the public looking for independent, watchdog journalism, be cautious if there’s a Comcast logo in the corner.

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The CDC Is Prepared For The Zombie Apocalypse

 

Kudos to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention for using a little creativity to educate the public about disaster preparedness. The CDC recently posted a blog article on how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse (and some non-supernatural disasters as well). While a typical post on the site would receive about 3000 page views per week, the CDC briefly crashed their own site when the article received over 30,000 views in just one day. Now that is is how public outreach is done.

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With Media Conglomerates In Charge, Watch What You Tweet

With the ever-dwindling number of independent companies involved in media broadcasting, perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that a cable corporation can threaten to pull all funding for a non-profit organization's summer programs just because someone there tweeted something the cable company didn't like...but that is exactly what happened last week.


Let's rewind a bit to see how this all fell out. The Communications Act of 1943 established the Federal Communications Commission, a government agency charged with regulating broadcasting and media in the United States. In other words, it is essentially the job of the FCC to determine who can broadcast what, when, how, and where, within the context of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, which theoretically gives private citizens the right to say virtually anything without fear of recrimination - even if it is critical of someone in power. Freedom of speech is a concept integral to the ideals upon which the United States was supposedly founded, being the basis by which private citizens can affect the policies and procedures of the government officials they elected. It continues to be taught in schools as if it were a concrete, inviolable right of all U.S citizens. As one Seattle non-profit organization recently discovered, the reality is somewhat more hazy.


The FCC is also charged with regulating competition between the various media corporations. It is the job of the FCC to determine how much of the media market and transmission media (i.e. phone, radio, television, cable, magazines, newspapers, etc.) any individual company can own, theoretically to prevent monopolization of the entire market by only a few companies. Yet many people question the degree to which the FCC effectively deters market monopolization. During the last 30 years, ownership of the media market has dropped from roughly 50 companies to only 6 today; GE, Disney, News Corp, Time Warner, Viacom, and CBS.


Back to the present. Last January, the FCC voted to approve a highly controversial merger between NBC Universal and Comcast Corp, continuing a pattern of inter-merging that has already drastically reduced the number of media corporations active in the U. S., allowing the Big 6 to enjoy near total monopolization of the market here.


Last week, FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who helped push the merger through, announced that she will be leaving her post at the FCC to begin lobbying for the special interests of a private media corporation. I'll give you three guesses which one - actually, you only need two guesses. If you guessed Comcast, congratulations, you understand how politics in America work. Baker will now be on Comcast's payroll, and though she is technically barred from lobbying to the FCC for 2 years, she is free to being lobbying for Comcast's interests directly to elected officials immediately.


Though obviously a conflict of interest exists here, there is nothing illegal about what Baker has done. On the contrary, though direct manipulation of government officials is theoretically outlawed, the short and direct move from government to private lobbying is a frighteningly common one.

Ms. Baker’s swift shift from regulator to lobbyist for the regulated will only add to Americans’ cynicism about their government. The fact that it is legal and that she is just one of many doesn’t make it better. Over a third of the 120 lawmakers who left Congress after the last election have taken lobbying jobs, according to a report by the Center for Responsive Politics. Former F.C.C. Chairman Kevin Martin joined the lobbying firm Patton Boggs soon after he stepped down in 2009.

So what does all this have to do with small non-profit organization in Seattle that aims to empower girls from disadvantaged backgrounds? Nothing, or at least it shouldn't have. But when an member of Reel Grrls, an organization which is funded in part by donations from companies including Comcast, commented on the obvious conflict of interest in moves like Atwell's via her Twitter account (saying nothing that hasn't already been said thousands of times both in and out of FCC hearings) Comcast lashed out, threatening to pull all of the $18,000 the company had already committed to supporting the non-profit.

In an e-mail to Reel Grrls, Steve Kipp, a vice president of communications for Comcast in Lynnwood, Wash., wrote:

“Given the fact that Comcast has been a major supporter of Reel Grrls for several years now, I am frankly shocked that your organization is slamming us on Twitter. I cannot in good conscience continue to provide you with funding — especially when there are so many other deserving nonprofits in town.”

But Reel Grrls must be doing something right, because instead of lying down in the face of overt bullying, those girls put together this video...and, perhaps not so coincidentally, Comcast backed down.

The message to the youth of America: "Freedom of speech" is what corporations say it is. On the one hand, they may devote a miniscule percentage of their operating costs to support local charities that aim to empower disenfranchised youth - in return for good press, of course. On the other hand, don't get so empowered you think you can criticize the people with the big bank accounts. 

UPDATE (5/25/11): Comcast wants consumers to believe that it has a genuine interest in supporting free, independent press, despite its history of backlash against critics. 

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Rumors Of The Food Revolution's Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

Jamie Oliver illustrates his point about the amount of sugar added to school lunches.

Some of you may have tuned in to watch the third episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution only to be faced with a recap of Dancing With Some People. Perhaps your first instinct, like mine, was to think, "Oh $*#!, they finally got him. He's off the air. The Food Revolution is no more. The terrorists have won." No? Just me? Hmm.

Well, fortunately for us cynics, foodies, nutritionally challenged, reality show buffs, or concerned parents, Jamie Oliver is just not that easy to get rid of. Several factors collided to put a break in the contiguous run of the show, but like Arnold Schwarzenegger's bad press, it will be back. ABC executives did pull the show for May sweeps, ostensibly because people would rather watch the Karate Kid get voted off the island than tune in to see which stuffed shirt Oliver can calmly antagonize into near stroke-inducing levels of evasion next. The majority of the press you'll find about the show's "cancellation" seems to be motivated primarily by a counter-movement attempting to discredit the popularity of Oliver's campaign in Los Angeles. Now who could possibly be behind that?

In actuality, show's filming was interrupted not only for viewership reasons, but also by a bit of unanticipated success. In response to pressure following the first two episodes of the season, L.A. Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy publicly agreed to remove flavored milks from the school menus. The rumor mill has it that several episodes are being re-shot to include some of the campaign's recent successes. 

Meanwhile, the Food Revolution has not ceased its public outreach endeavors. During the filming hiatus, Oliver's team is operating a mobile cooking school out of a 70-foot semi (or big rig, or tractor-trailer-truck, depending what part of the country you're from). During all this, the Food Revolution petition to improve the quality and nutritional value of school lunches has gained upwards of 600,000 signatures, well on the way to reaching the goal of 1 million signatures by the end of this season.

Season 2 of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution will return at the end of the month to ABC, which is re-airing the first two episodes back-to-back on May 27th, with new episodes slated to begin on Friday, June 3. You can also view episodes of season 2 on HULU or ABC.com.  If you missed season 1, we've compiled it here. Happy viewing and healthy eating!

Click here to see all posts on Jamie Oliver

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NFL - Leading America's Game Or Holding America Hostage?

If you're like me, even a photo of the Lombardi trophy makes your heart beat a little bit faster. The looming specter of an NFL lockout has me wondering whether the Grinch might not be working overtime this year. Like every self-respecting football fan, some days all I want for Christmas is for my team to have another shot at a Superbowl title. It doesn't matter to us how realistic that shot may or may not actually be, because for us football isn't about realism. Football is about heart. Football is about drive. Football is about good old fashioned want-it more-than-the-other-guy. Football is about the American Dream, and an impending lockout threatens to shove the death of that dream right up our...noses. 

I don't know about you, but I'm just not prepared to cope with that much reality right now. So far I've managed to deal with the recession, the crash of the housing market, the general lack of affordable health care, and a few natural catastrophes through a combination of great effort, a little luck, and an not insubstantial amount of total denial. But take away my any given Sunday and I just might lose some of whatever remains of my grip on reality. I love my town, and my town loves its team of highly padded musclebound testosterone junkies. They shield us from more than the other team. For a few hours a week, they shield us from the helplessness we feel when nuclear plants melt down, the stock market crashes, rivers flood whole states, and the earth tells us where we may no longer stand and remain above sea level. I want them on that wall. I need them on that wall.

But TomDispatch (via Mother Jones) would like me to take a step back and consider what I'm willing to forgo in order to see my men on that evergreen, hashmarked wall this year. What price am I willing to pay, both economically and socially, in order to ensure that my team gets an uninterrupted shot at the Lombardi trophy? And I must admit, because I do not wish to admit, that if I can manage to avoid looking too closely at the price I'm being asked to pay I'll probably pony up a lot more than is actually good for me, for my community, or for the game itself.

Sportswriter Robert Lipsyte pens a thought-provoking article on the nature and economics of professional football, and what we fans are willing to put up with in order to avoid even one season without it. Are we willing to give up the values that founded the American Dream in order to ensure uninterrupted viewing of its most popular athletic manifestation? Read Why The NFL Would Do Us A Favor By Calling Off The Upcoming Season and decide what it's worth to you.

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