Robert Niles: June 2011 archive
The limits of free speech?
June 28, 2011
Journalists are supposed to defend the freedom of speech, no matter what, right?But what happens when someone asks us to defend the right of someone to advocate taking our rights away? What then?
An ESPN.com column last week illustrated why someone's free exercise of speech shouldn't always be celebrated by journalists.
ESPN's Jemele Hill offered a defense of professional football player David Tyree, who campaigned against marriage equality in advance of last week's vote in New York State approving the right of gays and lesbians to marry.
"Tyree's comments have, predictably, generated two reactions: disdain and ridicule," Hill wrote. "I'm going to try a different reaction: acceptance."
Hill never endorses Tyree's position, but she does criticize his critics.
"Tyree is being depicted as an uninformed religious zealot, but at least he's up-front. He helped deliver thousands of petitions against the same-sex marriage bill and joined the National Organization for Marriage at a recent news conference in Albany," she wrote.
"That doesn't sound like someone who is crazy. Rather, it sounds like someone who isn't going to back down from what he believes."
Fair enough. But I don't believe that responsible writers, including Hill, should spend their time with their audiences defending individuals who work to deny rights to others.
The debate over the freedom to marry is a different type of issue than whether to balance the budget by raising taxes or cutting services. Or whether the city or the team should pay for the new local sports arena. This is about whether people are going to have a right, not what they choose to do with it.
Hill references Tyree's religious motivation for his position. Since Hill raised the topic of religion, I'll bring up my religious motivation in writing about this issue.
My religion - Unitarian Universalism - strongly defends the freedom to marry for all people, regardless of sexual orientation. But that's not my primary motivation here. It's something that the former minister at my church told me several years ago:
"The only thing we can't tolerate is intolerance."
An absolutist defense of tolerance becomes an intellectual trap. Tolerate everything, and you must tolerate the efforts of your opponents to silence you, to isolate you, and ultimately to disempower you. Opponents of various rights have grown wise to the irony, and attempted to use it to undermine the rights of others. In this example, Hill effectively argues for accepting Tyree's religious freedom... which he cites to deny marriage rights to gays and lesbians.
Sorry, but while my religion promotes tolerance, I can't tolerate intolerance. More...
5 Comments | 
Archive Link
The latest in the top ad formats for online publishers
June 21, 2011
Let's answer a frequently asked question from start-up online news publishers: What ads should I put on my website? I'm not talking about which advertisers should you allow on your site - let's hope your sales skills will be strong enough to allow you to make such decisions. Instead, we'll talk today about which ad sizes and formats are worth placing on your pages.The Internet Advertising Bureau publishes a standard for online ad sizes, but there have been some changes recently. And Google's followed that by adding new ad formats to its popular Doubleclick for Publishers ad server. So it's time for even experienced online news publishers to take a fresh look at their ad templates.
First, let me affirm my opposition to advertising that blocks editorial content, either on a website or in print. As a reader, I always despised front-page spadea print ads that blocked my first glance at the headlines of the day. Same goes for online. It's one thing for an ad to expand and cover editorial content if I click on it. (If anything, that's better than being sent off to another page or website with a click, IMHO.) But can't endorse of suggest any ad format that blocks editorial content without a readers' consent. So we won't be talking about pop-up or takeover ads today.
Incorporating standard ad sizes in your website design is important because it makes it easier for larger advertisers (who typically run campaigns across multiple sites, and spend a lot of money doing so) to place an order on your site. If an advertiser has to create an ad especially for your site's design, that increases the effect cost of advertising on your site to that customer. You can't expect that unless you're an established, major player in your market. And even if you are, it's good business to try to keep costs down for your customers.
The IAB used to support dozens of ad sizes and formats, but in recent years, has cut down the number of its recommended units to four main "core standard ad units":
- 300-pixels-wide x 250-pixels-tall Medium Rectangle
- 180 x 150 Rectangle
- 728 x 90 Leaderboard
- 160 x 600 Wide Skyscraper
(Yes, Internet old-timers, the 468x60 "full banner" has gone to the great server in the sky, along with the Netscape browser, Usenet and the Whole Internet Catalog.)
As it eliminates old standards, the IAB is implementing new ones. Six "Rising Stars" ad units are under consideration for official endorsement by the end of the summer. They are more interactive ad units, often incorporating Flash or advanced HTML to expand or move ad space upon user interaction, such as a click or mouseover. More...
2 Comments | Archive Link
10 things the US government can do to help digital news entrepreneurs
June 14, 2011
The US Federal Communications Commission last week released its long-awaited report on the future of local news in the Internet era, "The Information Needs of Communities," to a collective "meh" from the digital news commentariat. At best, the report seems to have met or at least exceeded the low expectations that many critics had for it. There's no ill-advised proposal for getting government into the news business, thank goodness, and the report shows a commission that tried to do its homework in analyzing what's been happening in the local news marketplace over the past decade.But let's not dismiss too quickly the federal government's potential role in promoting good news coverage. Here are 10 steps that the US government *could* take that would significantly help entrepreneurs trying expand the news coverage of their local communities. And none of them involve direct subsidies or payments to the news industry.
1. Protect Net Neutrality
The Internet has nearly eliminated the barriers to entry for start-up publishers, enabling the explosion of new information sources across the Internet. If we need better sources of local information, the solution is not to allow telecom companies to extract tolls and demand payments from publishers to allow access from readers. That will merely reduce the number of voices available to consumers while further enriching telcos. Corporate media was cutting local news coverage before the Internet. Silencing websites won't bring back that coverage. It will only reduce the possibility of finding replacements.
2. Expand broadband coverage
The smaller the market, the harder it becomes for a local publication to earn the income it needs to operate as a viable business. The digital divide makes small communities even smaller. Universal access to broadband would make every household part of its local digital marketplace, expanding opportunities for publishers and helping increase the possibility that a professional, responsible news publication in that community could be a financial success. The government can help expand broadband coverage not by caving to the demands of telecos (who are holding broadband expansion hostage to kill net neutrality, for example), but by laying its own fiber lines, establishing public WiFi networks, and by demanding more from companies bidding for broadcast spectrum.
3. Digitize public records and put them online in open formats
You might have noticed that we have millions of un- and underemployed workers in America today, many with digital skills. We also have decades of public records that remain available only in printed form, or in archaic electronic formats. Why not create a WPA-style computer workforce to digitize the nation's public records and to publish them online, in open formats? Not only would this effort put many thousands of Americans to work, it would create a repository of more easily retrievable public information, allowing citizens (and reporters) easier access to our government. More...
2 Comments | Archive Link
It's time for journalists to stand up against Fox News
June 1, 2011
Rolling Stone's profile of Fox News chief Roger Ailes this week provides the latest item in a long line of evidence that Fox News is a morally bankrupt sham of a news organization - a propaganda outlet that engages in intentional lying to advance its partisan cause. If you haven't read the piece yet, do. It's vital media criticism.I've met plenty of journalists who bristle when I criticize Fox News. They've told me that, as defenders of free speech and the First Amendment, journalists should not be in the business of trying to silence other voices in the media marketplace.
But as defenders of truth, journalists also have an obligation to call out voices that intentionally spread lies to the public. Fox News' owners and executives have a right to speak. But they don't have a right to set the public agenda. It's past time for responsible journalists to stand up against Fox News.
Tim Dickinson's piece reviews many of Fox News' offenses against the truth. Don't fall for the line that it's only Fox's commentators who distance themselves from the truth to promote their agenda. Fox newsroom personnel are guilty, too. Fox Washington managing editor Bill Sammon has been caught bragging about spreading lies about Barack Obama, for just one example.
Despite my enthusiasm for Rolling Stone's piece, one article now and then won't cut it. Fox News broadcasts around the clock. An effective industry effort against the organization must hit it every day. Traditional fact-checking efforts and media criticism sites aren't enough, either. There's a huge difference between a news organization that spreads false reports by mistake and one, like Fox, that spreads it by design. The intent behind Fox's mendacity is a bigger story than even the lies themselves.
Okay, I sense the pushback. Many traditional journalists are uneasy with such advocacy. But advocacy is an essential part of journalism - if we're not pushing to teach, to engage and to motivate with our reporting, then what's the use of writing it?
More...
9 Comments | Archive Link
RSS Feed
