Other People’s Money

I agree that Sinclair is handling this badly but the alternative of censorship is even worse. The same would be true if the FCC tried to ban the blatantly pro-Kerry election eve political broadcasts of the Sundance channel.

The punishment of the market, in the form of the fall in stock, is more than sufficient.

I learned last night that Putnam Investments voted against the reelection of the entire Sinclair Board at the May 2004 annual meeting since it failed to meet their independence requirement, but they didn’t respond to the board’s reelection with a sell order and are now paying the price.

“I agree that Sinclair is handling this badly but the alternative of censorship is even worse.”

Who has suggested “censorship?” Colin Powell’s son says the FCC won’t interfere with the broadcast. The strongest suggestion I’ve seen from the Kerry side is that Sinclair shouldn’t air the program without offering Kerry equal time. The only serious attempt to stop the broadcast has been through a threatened advertiser boycott – a market forces strategy if there ever was one. Personally, I suspect the cancellation of regular programming to air this propaganda piece will gain Kerry more votes than he loses.

Personally, I suspect the cancellation of regular programming to air this propaganda piece will gain Kerry more votes than he loses.

Wishful thinking. Propaganda does work. It may very well cost him the election. SBV stuff worked for them in July/August, so they’re playing the same card again.

Some commenters here got offended when I suggested that Putin’s Russia isn’t much worse – lol.

Note to Ted Barlow: that’s quite an anti-intellectual streak you’ve got there. If you think the Sinclair situation is not comparable to the Fahrenheit 9-11 or CBS News situations, don’t choke off all speech on the topic; say so and explain why.

Your unwillingness to do so is closely related to the fact that you are wrong, at least in part. CBS News is also a production of a publicly-owned company (ie, Dan Rather is also playing with “other people’s money”) and CBS News also broadcasts blatantly political material thinly disguised as news on publicly-owned airwaves. In short, the two are directly comparable.

Actually, I never suggested censorship. All I said was that the two companies were not in the same position, and it was a mistake to say so. There are a number of ways to deal with that, like the now-moribund equal time rule.

There are also a number of reasons that the use of spectrum by corporations to broadcast one-to-many information is not like the use of land by corporations for farming or other purposes, and to compare the regulation of the use of spectrum to Soviet communism is a red herring at best.

George, on the other hand, is broadcasting information on bandwidth that is owned by private persons who specifically told him not to do that. I think Ted told you not to do that because the comparison of CBS’ negligently inaccurate report to Sinclair’s broadcast of an hourlong ad by a bunch of proven liars is a fucking joke, but I can’t read his mind.

I don’t think that Sinclair management did a rational risk-benefit calculation here. Nevertheless, this isn’t as obviously stupid as some observers seem to think.

If Kerry wins, yah, it’s possible Sinclair could be spanked a little. But not much. The FCC has already said it doesn’t see a problem here. So, at worst, an election-law violation… and we all know how rigorously those are enforced.

Meanwhile, if Bush wins, Sinclair is in great shape. The administration may or may not favor it obviously and directly, but it will be favored nonetheless.

Doug M.

And to Matt: you’re right. It’s their website, and I disobeyed a clear rule.

But before I relieve you all of my tedious nitpicking, let me make a distinction here. There are some websites out there (Eschaton springs to mind) that are totally uninterested in fair debate, or even in hearing information that might impinge on the worldview of the writers and their commenters. They are deliberately one-sided echo boxes — which is, of course, entirely their right.

Crooked Timber, on the other hand, appears to pride itself on intellectual rigor. The positions of the writers of this site are not always (though sometimes) in line with my own, but they are always well supported — and usually open to debate.

I don’t think Ted would prefer to join the former group of websites, but his pre-emptive comment above was a step in that direction. (As is, by the way, the use of profanity in lieu of a coherent argument.)

I find it hard to take all these arguments seriously – just because I can’t imagine the CT crowd adopting this line if it were Ted Turner imposing an anti-Bush movie.

Paperweight:

Let me start with a question. Who is “the public” and who speaks for it? Right now, it is the appointed bureaucrats at the FCC, like Michael Powell. Next year, it will be a similar board controlled by pro-Kerry hacks.

The “public” (e.g government) did not develop the airwaves. Private broadcasts did. The politicians nationalized the airwaves during the 1920s under the leadership of Secretary of Commerce, and later President Herbert Hoover. Previously, the courts were in the process of bring order to chaos by adopting the principle that broadcasters had gained private title to clearly defined wavelengths of the spectrum through a process of homesteading.

Interestingly, from the beginning the Federal Communications Commission (then the Federal Radio Commission) used its power to curb dissent. For example, an important test case in 1930 involved Bob Shuler, a broadcaster in Los Angeles, who was on the air before the FRC was even created. His station was shut down in great part because of his anti-Hoover/anti-Hearst broadcasts. The FRC did not even claim to be regulating scarcity.

Let’s assume, however, that the system of governmental control of the airwaves once served a useful purpose as a means to ration scarcity. If that was once the case, it is no longer true.

Today, in an age of cable and satellite the myth of public (government) ownership of the airwaves has become a complete anarchronism, and a dangerous one at that is being used to justify censorship. It makes more sense give back the broadcast spectrum to private owners. After all, they were there first!

Is this realistic right now? Perhaps you have a point that it is not but IMHO that does not provide a rationalization for censorship by the likes of Michael Powell.

As someone who thinks about media policy more or less full-time, two things strike me as bizarre about how people view these debates:
1) Media ownership is inevitably invoked as an underlying problem. In fact there’s a lot of research that shows that large scale ownership has its problems, but one of its benefits is it tends to professionalize the media. The debate over Sinclair is unusual in that it acknowledges changes in fairness doctrine law to be more relevant than changes in ownership law.
2) How it’s taken for granted that different standards ought to be applied to different media. While there are different legal standards for different media, this is only so for path-dependent reasons, so invoking legal standards presents is/ought problems. For instance, earlier in the thread there was a distinction between broadcasting and other media — specifically the idea that broadcasting ought to be more highly regulated than other media because it uses public airwaves. This is pretty silly. I get the Sundance channel via satellite, that is to say over the public airwaves. Even if I had cable, the local cable provider would probably be getting their feed from a satellite dish so the airwaves are still involved. I bet someone here is creative enough to make an argument that even internet radio is dependent on public property.
Here’s another way to put it. Under pressure from groups like the American Family Association, the FCC has basically pushed Stern from FM to satellite, which he imagines to be an unregulated paradise of licentiousness. But if Sirius radio ever gets substantial market share, the AFA will push the FCC to remember that subscriber-only digital spectrum is still spectrum.

Paperweight:

Your distinction between cable and regular broadcasts is flawed in another sense. Polticians are already talking about extending the reach of of the FCC to include those entitities. As long as FCC exists (and people of good will recognize its right to censorship boradcast content) this scenario is always possible.

George:
The question of “who’s worse” is entirely subjective, pretty silly and beside the point anyway…

If this is, indeed, the case – if the question “who’s worse” is so silly and entirely subjective – then why was everyone so outraged recently at Egyptian TV broacasting miniseries based on “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”? Sounds like it was merely the same as Dan Rather expressing his opinions.

I think the issue on Sinclair forcing the broadcast of the anti-Kerry sock-you-mentary isn’t one of ‘censorship’ per se. While many of us would prefer not to have this kind of propagandistic ‘film’ (and perhaps libelous- a non-Kerry camp vet filed for libel this week against the producers) shown on the public airwaves, I believe the FCC regulation talks about equal air time. The Kerry camp has been pushing for Sinclair to follow the anti-Kerry film with a pro-Kerry film, but Sinclair has only offered to interview Kerry afterwards. An interview is clearly not the same as a propaganda film, hence no balance, hence no equal air time. Sinclair has been vocal in attempting to turn this on to the Kerry camp, saying simply that Kerry “refused” the interview, without mentioning that it probably wouldn’t fulfill the equal air time requirements, and certainly is not balanced.

Gabriel-

I don’t know why you spend a lot of time on this stuff, but I’ll gladly defer to your consideration of the following:

Isn’t there an explicit contract difference between broadcast & the other media? I mean, yes, the argument can be made that none of these systems rely on privately-owned wires running from provider to consumer, but the reality is that the existing rules are different. Pay cable has more freedom than free cable has more freedom than broadcast. If the FCC up and decided no more F-bombs on the Sopranos, no amount of rationalization about satellite transmissions would quiet the ensuing shitstorm.

As I understand it, cable arose when the Fairness Doctrine was still in place, and was (explictly?) exempted from it. Despite the demise of the FD, the principle has continued. Cable licenses say nothing about The Public Interest, do they?

Ted, if you don’t see a difference between “punishing” members of the administration for disagreeing with the administration publicly and “punishing” Sinclair for its speech against John Kerry, there’s not much I can do to help you. Suffice it to say that one is inconsistent with our core constitutional values and the other is not, and for good reason.

Incredibly, your response repeats the assertion that you’re more worried about your mutual fund portfolio than you are about our free speech rights. If you think that Sinclair is inviting a risk of retribution from a hypothetical Kerry administration, why would you ever support such an administration? The lesson seems to be: protect civil rights, and your portfolio will turn out okay.

abb1: okay, you got me. At some point the content becomes important, regardless of the media. But are you really arguing that Stolen Honor is over that line? Is it really racist hate speech?

The most I’ve seen alleged is that it’s politically motivated and not balanced. I haven’t even heard anyone claim that it includes any actual lies or falsified information, as the infamous 60 Minutes segment clearly did. (If anyone is making this claim, please let me know — though critics are probably at a disadvantage since it hasn’t aired yet [I think].)

If your beef is with the program’s content, attack it on those grounds, rather than making the less-than-honest “public airwaves” argument. But of course, once you’re talking about content, head-to-head comparisons with other media products (like, say, Fahrenheit 9-11) become possible.

But are you really arguing that Stolen Honor is over that line?

Sure I do. It demonizes the Vietnam war protesters in the same way The Protocol (I gather; never read it) demonizes the Jews.

According to what I read about the film, it pretty much directly accuses Mr. Kerry of being responsible for the torture of American POWs in Vietnam and, incredibly, for prolonging their imprisonment.

Is it over the line or is it sorta like Dan Rather kinda being obviously pro-choice?

Why is using the public airwaves to advanced a plainly partisan position such an issue now? Bill Moyers has been doing this on PBS more than a decade.

Ted –

Yeah, that 10-K is pretty interesting. If you read on down to about page 39 or so, it starts saying…

Key officers and directors have financial interests that are different and sometimes opposite to those of Sinclair and Sinclair may engage in transactions with these officers and directors that may benefit them to the detriment of other securityholders.

(…and blah blah and…)

The Smiths exercise control over most matters submitted to a stockholder vote, and may have interests that differ from yours. They may, therefore, take actions that are not in the interests of other securityholders.

Sinclair’s stock price has been drifting south for quite a while now, with no end in sight. I can’t think of any rationale for Sinclair’s behavior in this matter that makes fiduciary sense, but according to the 10-K, I guess that’s just tough luck for shareholders.

There has been some conspiracy theorizing to the effect that this Stolen Honor contretemps is part of an arrangement that has nothing to do with Sinclair, or the broadcasting industry at all. Google Sinclair and Jadoo.

One so often hears corporations denounced for forsaking social activism in favor of shareholder return. It’s refreshing to hear the opposite argument aired so thoroughly.

But I agree with Bull et al that the proliferation of media technology (cable, satellite, internet, etc) has diluted the status of broadcast TV as this inviolate public good that must be regulated.

The proliferation of media technology has done NOTHING to make more television spectrum available so that people who want to broadcast can have stations.

Here’s a better idea – why doesn’t Sinclair give up their broadcast licenses and simply become cable channels or Internet publishers, and then they can put on what they want for anyone who wants to subscribe to it?

There are plenty of people who will be willing to help them do it, especially the giving up the licenses part.

David T. Beito wrote, As I point out, private broadcasts were there before Herbert Hoover and company nationalized the airwaves in the 1920s in the name of the mythical public thus your contract argument does not hold water. If it applies at all, it would be against the federal government which “forced” its way in and changed the rules of the game after the fact.

Uh huh. And suppose the federal government hadn’t declared the airwaves a public resource. Now suppose entity X claims ownership of a chunk of spectrum in my locale. Why should I respect that claim?

bull wrote, This whole “public airwaves” thing reminds me of the Soviet Union’s refusal to privatize land. Same logic.

Lack of privatization as a bad thing depends on what you mean by “privatize.”

Certainly collectivism is an inefficient way to undertake economic activity.

It doesn’t follow, however, that private owners should be granted control of natural resources for little or nothing in return. Rather, owners should remit all or most of the economic rent arising from control of the resource to the government, acting on behalf of the community; see the Geolibertarian FAQ for details.

George-

The line isn’t between slanderous/libelous propaganda and honest propaganda – that’s what libel laws are for (although, truthfully, US law makes libel prosecutions effectively impossible for public figures). The line is between news and propaganda. And yes, it’s a blurry line, but a real one nonetheless.

Contrary to your characterization, the recent 60 Minutes segment included no counterfactual information, except when they vouched for the authenticity of the documents. If you’ll think back, you may recall that no one ever questioned the substantive content of the memos – only the typeface. One memo discussed the grounding of GWB for failure to perform. That actually happened, and the dubious provenance of the memos did not retroactively negate it.

So, in sum, the 60 Minutes story told a story of dereliction of duty by the President as a young man – a story that has not, in fact, been well-covered by the media; no evidence has been offered to counter the central claims, merely to put into question some nonessential corroborating evidence. That strikes me as news.

In contrast, the SwiftVets are plying tired old accusations (slanders?) that have been publicly aired for over 30 years. In doing so, they repeatedly, blatantly mischaracterize Kerry’s testimony, describing Kerry’s act of quoting fellow vets as accusing those vets. Aside from highly dubious statements about what VC torturers did or did not say, that is the essence of this propaganda – to say that someone who quotes another’s confession is somehow falsely accusing that other. This isn’t news – it’s nonsense.

Finally, regarding Kathy Willey, because this is really critical to understanding accusations of “media bias:” this woman went on 60 Minutes at the height of the Clinton witchhunt and accused Clinton of sexual harrasment – not consensual sexual relations, the only acts Clinton had or has ever been shown to engage in, but illegal harrasment. It was a blockbuster interview, with magazine pieces and headlines and thigh-rubbing pundits. To this day, freepers and the like include Willey in their litany of Clinton’s “crimes.” And this is what Ken Starr’s successor determined about her:

“Following Willey’s acknowledgment of the lie [to the FBI], the Independent Counsel agreed not to prosecute her for false statements in this regard.”

That quote is from USAToday, which, together with Newsweek and NPR, was the ONLY media outlet in the United States that reported the complete disgrace of this accuser. Next time you think about “liberal media bias,” just recall Ms. Willey, and the way that every media outlet except those three went into the tank on her case, allowing her outrageous accusation to stand. When people like james say PBS must be illegally biased because they air Bill Moyers, recall that Willey’s story was bruited about on PBS, but her discredit never was. No television network – including that evil ol’ CBS, which put her on TV in the first place – ever informed its viewers that they had been deceived, and that a major liberal had been smeared. A little hard to square with the notion that Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings are Democratic apparatchiks, is it not?

Some folks here might be interested in Joe McCarthy’s instrumental role in the creation of the Fairness Doctrine. If not the father of that doctrine, he certainly qualifies as a founding father:

“In 1949, the FCC had formally articulated a Fairness Doctrine….The commission said in the Fairness Doctrine that stations could editorialize on the air, as long as their overall coverage provided ‘reasonably balanced presentations’ of current issues. McCarthy interpreted this mean that anytime anyone on television took a stand on a controversial issue, an equal and opposing opinion had to be presented. He sold the public on this view and cajoled the individual stations and networks into accepting it, giving him free access to television on the flimsiest of reasons. In November 1953, after much huffing and puffing, McCarthy even received ‘equal time’ to reply to a TV speech by former President Harry Truman.” Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik, Watching TV: Six Decades of Television (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 87.

David T. Beito wrote, Okay, I’ll bite. Lets completely privatize those “chunks” of the spectrum that were privately held before the advent of the FRC in 1927.

You fail to get the point.

No private entity had any right to “hold” spectrum, then, now, or anytime in the future.

Suppose private party X claims a band of spectrum. Why do I for one have to respect that claim?

Wow, these threads grow like bamboo when you’re not looking.

Just a quick response to jroth:

Thanks for the info on Willey. I hadn’t heard all that (mostly because I never cared about all the Clinton witchhunt stuff). But you’re right in that there are lots of examples of media outlets going live with stuff that later turns out to be unfounded — for instance, the doctored photo of Kerry at a protest with Jane Fonda, much ballyhooed on Fox — and then not apologizing. In that respect, CBS News rises in relative credibility but not in absolute credibility.

(Btw, do you not see how silly it is to argue that that 60 Minutes report did not include any “counterfactual information”? They used a fraudulent document to try to prove something that is otherwise unproved: that undue influence was exerted to help Bush while he was in the Guard. That the unproven claim has not itself been disproved is of no significance. Seriously, this line of reasoning has been so thoroughly and appropriately mocked (ie, Prove I’m Not the Queen of the Space Unicorns) I’m surprised that anyone would try it any more.)

But all this strengthens, rather than weakens, my original point, which was: one can find innumerable examples of media outlets of all types (print, broadcast, cable, film, books, radio) being biased, unbalanced, lazy, nasty or just plain incompetent, whether in the service of right, left or just their own ratings. But until this Sinclair brouhaha, nobody has ever claimed that a media outlet did not have the right to air their program. To do so in this case, on narrow process grounds not applied to comparable cases, is, as I said at the very top of this thread, hypocritical.

Ha ha, davec. That’s very clever.

Are you aware that the Wall Street Journal editorial board has its own show on PBS right now? The most biased, mendacious, dishonest editorial board in the country is rightwing, and they get an hour a week on PBS.

Before you waste our time with “The NYT is just as bad,” consider the WSJ and NYT on Whitewater. The only difference was the amount of spittle on the WSJ pages, but both vituperously attacked a Democrat for the better part of a decade. I have yet to see a WSJ editorial attacking Bush even mildly, much less with the vitriol “liberal” Raines displayed month after month after month under Clinton.

Definition of balance: ctiticizing both sides according to the merits.

Conservative definition of balance: criticizing Democrats.

There is an established precedent that the homesteader or first user gains title.

Just because there’s a precedent doesn’t make it right.

There was also millenia of precedent that people captured in war could be made slaves.

Under the logic of your “precedent,” the first person who went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean could claim ownership.

As to your question, I suppose you could apply it to any sort of private property.

Wrong. You clearly have no understanding of classical economics, which divided the factors of production into three:
* land (and other natural resources);
* capital; and,
* labor.

The context in which I’m speaking is that of land. Exclusive ownership of land is conceptually distinct from ownership of the fruits of the other two.

It really doesn’t get us anywhere does it. For example, I could easily ask why I should respect your claim to your house?

You’re conflating two different issues.

First, how are claims guaranteed?

Second, which claims ought we to grant moral force?

The clear answer to the first claim is that government guarantees claims of ownership. It’s one of the foremost roles of government.

The answer to the second question is that as a start, we should consider as plausible claims of ownership of the fruits of one’s own labor. On the other hand, the notion that private agents should be granted exclusive ownership of (scarce) natural assets, with the right to charge others Ricardian rent for their use (and without remitting that rent, or the greater bulk of it, to the community), cannot be a rightful part of any morally coherent theory of justice. Those advocating such ownership schemes are essentially advocating aristocracy. Why don’t you educate yourself by reading Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL
Libertarian??

Otherwise you’re going to continue to embarass yourself with your feudalistic pronouncements.

fdl wrote, Seems to me that the use of broadcast spectrum is strongly analgous to grazing leases — a rivalrous public good if i have the lingo down correctly.

It’s a rivalrous good, yes.

But there are many goods which are rivalrous but not like spectrum.

The point about spectrum is that it’s a scarce natural resource. That is, not only is it rivalrous, but it was produced by no man.

So, for example, a tool produced by a (capitalist’s) factory is a rivalrous good also. However, the tool was itself a product of capital and labor; and more such tools can be manufactured, by others. This is not true of scarce natural resources, the primary example of which is land. (Apparently classical liberals referred to all scarce natural resources as “land” in the abstract.)

For more info, these links are good:
* The link I posted above on “royal” libertarians; and,
* This primer on land value taxation.

Jroth:

You clearly paid closer attention to all that stuff than I did, but you misread my post. I said that they key claim in the fraudulent document (the one that got all the publicity) was “that undue influence was exerted to help Bush *while he was in the Guard*” [emphasis added]. I recall the word used was “sugercoat.” Maybe all that other stuff you mentioned is true (none of it is inconsistent with what I’ve read), but to my knowledge, it has never been shown that any political or other pressure was put on Guard or other officials to “sugercoat” or otherwise influence the official record of Bush’s performance. I was referring to that unsupported allegation in particular when I said it was silly to claim that nothing “counterfactual” was presented.

luis wrote, It’s probably worth noting, liberal and others, that no technologist seriously thinks broadcast spectrum is a rivalrous good anymore.

Wrong. Look at the recent NEXTEL controversy.

You’re confusing “spectrum is being used more and more efficiently” with “spectrum is not a scarce resource.”

David T. Beito wrote, What is your alternative system for regulating the airwaves. Trust in the FCC, assorted poltiical hacks, or BushKerry (the status quo)? Now….there’s an aristocracy!

Uh, actually it’s not. It’s called a “democracy”.

The government should lease much of the spectrum to private parties for limited times. The leases would be priced by competitive auction, so that scarcity rent could be recouped by the government.

Some parts of the band would be reserved for e.g. first responders, the military.

There are of course details, like whether the lease would enforce something similar to a “fairness doctrine,” or whether some chunks of the spectrum should be reserved for nonprofit use.

The main point I’ve made in these posts is that the value inherent in a chunk of spectrum representing capitalization of future scarity rents should not be given away to private parties.

Note that this “Georgist” solution to the question of the allocation of scarce natural resources is not a collectivist one.

How much this differs from the current regime, I don’t know. Elements of it appear to already exist.