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United States News Title: Associated Press Boss: Corporate Media Needs to Adapt “New Realities” of the Internet It certainly was interesting to hear Tom Curley, head honcho of the Associated Press, describe his corporate media compatriots as “gatekeepers” during a speech at a fundraising dinner for the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship, a program at Columbia University for business “journalists,” or maybe that should be script readers in training. Curley’s lament centers on “the troubles they are experiencing in adapting to the new realities of the news business being wrought by the explosion of Internet use,” as ever increasing numbers of people are flocking to the internet for news, leaving the corporate media—largely burdened with out-moded and expensive paper and television-based technologies—in the dust. In addition to admitting such, Mr. Curley said the “first thing that has to go is the attitude… Our institutional arrogance has done more to harm us than any portal.” It should be noted that Curley was not talking about simply “any portal” but rather the corporate equivalent of his increasingly moribund “news organization,” that is to say “online portals such as Yahoo Inc.” and, although not mentioned, Google. Both dutifully serve as censors in China. Moreover, according to the BBC, “Yahoo has been accused of releasing data that led to the jailing of online writer and corruption critic Li Zhi for eight years in 2003, and to the imprisonment of reporter Shi Tao in a separate case,” a claim Yahoo vehemently disputes. Note: this video includes explicit language Google, on the other hand, not only works hand-in-hand with the Chinese dictatorship but also energetically censors content and listings in the West. “Researchers at the highly-respected Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University have found that the company is actively removing sites from its database, and that this censorship is going unnoticed,” writes Bill Thompson. “Google spokesman Nate Tyler said on tech news program ZDNN that the sites were removed to avoid the possibility of legal action being taken against the company, and that each site was removed only after a specific complaint from the government of the country concerned.” As Thompson notes, Google is essentially acting as a government censor, never mind its flaccid declaration that it is only steering clear of legal problems. “What is happening is that a government is saying to Google: ‘we don’t like that website—so drop it from your database’ and the company is acquiescing…. The people running the website aren’t told. The people looking for the website aren’t told—they aren’t even told that this policy exists.” Call it the “going down the memory hole” syndrome where—not unlike Orwell’s Winston Smith—the government destroys politically incorrect information. In the brave new world envisioned by Tom Curley and his associates, however, information deemed politically incorrect will not be incinerated until “not even the ash remains,” as Orwell had it, because it will not be allowed to appear in the first place—or if it is allowed, it will be relegated to the “dirt road,” at least until the corporate media Borg-hive controls all modes of expression. “AT&T has hinted that it plans to charge Web companies a kind of toll to send data at the highest speeds down DSL lines into its subscribers’ homes,” Farhad Manjoo explained last April. “The plan would make AT&T a gatekeeper of media in your home. Under the proposal, the tens of millions of people who get their Internet service from AT&T might only be able to access heavy-bandwidth applications—such as audio, video and Internet phone service—from the companies that have paid AT&T a fee. Meanwhile… anyone else… would be forced to use a smaller and slower section of the AT&T network, what Internet pioneer Vint Cerf calls a ‘dirt road’ on the Internet. AT&T’s idea, its critics say, would shrink the vast playground of the Internet into something resembling the corporate strip mall of cable TV,” a meticulously patrolled venue where alternative media is unwelcome. “Not long ago, the idea that corporations could use their power to gain control of the Internet might have sounded ridiculous,” writes Dan Kennedy. “The Internet, after all, is an open platform, with a capacity that is, for all practical purposes, infinite. Even with the media giants’ setting up vast websites and pulling in huge numbers of eyeballs, there was nothing to stop ordinary citizens from pursuing their own projects. Right?” Well, sort of. In fact, the Internet may not be as impervious to the depredations of Corporate America as we might have thought. In his book Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy, published earlier this year, veteran media activist Jeff Chester traces the long, dispiriting history of media regulation in the United States and predicts that, if we’re not careful, the Internet—like radio and television before it—will be handed over to business interests by elected officials dependent on their campaign contributions and by regulators hoping for lucrative industry careers once they leave government service. Back in 2005, Business Week predicted the blogosphere, now allegedly dominated by “political mobs,” will be gobbled up—or maybe that should be “googled-up”—by corporate big fish. If “recent history is any guide, most [independent blogs] will wind up in the bellies of the blog-minded Internet giants—led by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft…. The big companies have what the bloggers lack. Scale, relations with advertisers, and large sales forces.” Of course, after this rapacious consumption process is complete, Microsoft will not allow “political mobs” to post articles detailing how the William H. Gates Foundation funds eugenics. Only corporate-friendly content will be allowed to pass through the gatekeeper’s turnstile. “Our focus must be on becoming the very best at filling people’s 24-hour news needs,” Curley lectured his ivy league audience. “That’s a huge shift from the we-know-best, gate-keeping mentality…. Readers and viewers are demanding to captain their information ships. Let them.” Of course, these “information ships” will be manufactured by transnational “entertainment” and “news” corporations—and the rabble, the “political mobs” now vexing the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck and their corporate taskmasters will not be allowed access—that is unless we make a stink and put an end to their attempt to sanitize and make politically correct—for advertisers, shareholders and government—the only truly free and unbound communications medium on the planet.
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