Does Government think Internet Governable or Not?

It's not so much the reporting confusions as the realisation that the UK is such a long way behind in its thinking about what the voracious, market-snitching, web is doing to every facet of our information society. Including, of course, politics. Obama just announced a CTO America. We so need one.

Describing himself as the 'minister for advertising', Burnham said the industry is facing up to challenging times as old media collides with new media, a release issued by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) said.

Online advertising doesn't have the 'familiar anchors' that regulation has in the traditional media world, said Burnham.

"Government is moving away from thinking online is ungovernable," he said.

"We are in a period when we need to establish societal norms. I don't think we are there yet; we'll get there in a self-regulatory way. The stakes in the ground are not quite there, that is something we need to address together."

If the industry acts responsibly, it will 'get full support of the government', advised Burnham, who said he could see the benefit of behavioural targetting online, but that this would require 'informed consent' and raises issues of privacy and civil liberty.

From Journalism.co.uk.

Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has called on marketers to ensure the internet is safe for children. He says the net is "ungovernable" and web designers and advertisers have a responsibility to the public when creating online campaigns.

Speaking at the Internet Advertising Bureau Engage conference, Burnham says the creative industry must act to allay parent's fears about the content their children view online.

He adds: "Internet advertisers must face up to the challenging and changing world that the internet is rapidly becoming. Children find the internet very comforting and natural. It has fundamentally changed the way we access information. Online advertisers and content publishers must act responsibly to ensure the pages children view are safe and are in the public interest."

From Marketing Week.


Meanwhile, the event organizers themselves:

Rt. Hon Andy Burnham Mp, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

Andy Burnham’s afternoon keynote address to the Engage conference emphasised the significance of internet advertising to creative Britain and the wider UK economy, and called for renewed partnership and cooperation in balancing varying demands to ensure the UK remains a world leader.

Having explained that he was not here to talk about X-Factor, Burnham, opened with the famous Saatchi quote on advertising which he saw as being “where art and commerce meet most closely”. Burnham acknowledged that he was in many ways, “the minister for advertising” and pledged to do more for this great “British industry”.

Moving on to talk specifically about the internet, Burnham outlined the “fundamental changes in the way we access information and entertainment” – some of which have of course brought serious issues for Government.

“Safeguarding children continues to be a concern”, said Burnham, pointing out that we safeguard children playing outside and we have a watershed on TV, and saying that the “stakes in the ground” on regulating online content aren’t quite there yet. “That’s something I think we need to work on,” he said.

Focussing now on regulation, Burnham commented: “The Government is moving away from thinking that the online world is completely ungovernable.” The reason for this he said was that the internet was now so much a part of people’s lives: “The online world has moved from the fringes of people’s lives to the very heart”.

Burnham next acknowledged the role of advertising in the online sphere. “The internet wouldn’t exist in the way it does without advertising. Advertising has a crucial role to play”, he said. Online has been an enormously successful business model, he argued, witnessing “phenomenal pace of change”.

This is something Burnham is keen to build on he says, outlining proposals for building what he called a network of “strong systematic support” around the creative industries which would result in the creation of apprenticeship schemes and the like. He further acknowledged that there is “a bedrock of support I need to put in place.”

From the Internet Advertising Bureau site.

November 20: Europe's cultural heritage gets connected

Europeana – the European digital library, museum and archive – is a 2-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a prototype website giving users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers. The prototype will be launched in November 2008 by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

The digital content will be selected from that which is already digitised and available in Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. The prototype aims to have representative content from all four of these cultural heritage domains, and also to have a broad range of content from across Europe.

The interface will be multilingual. Initially, this may mean that it is available in French, English and German, but the intention is to develop the number of languages available following the launch.

I mean...wow!

There was radio before Russell Brand

From Wired:

Sound effects made these all come across with dramatic impact. Buck's psychic destruction ray was really a Schick electric razor held at just the right distance from the microphone. The sound effects crew could also simulate anything from a regiment of marching robots to a scary rocket-ship crash.

Buck Rogers slept with few pole dancers.

Right might be Wrong

Right-wing critiques of the press are usually filed by ideologues who, rather than trying to improve journalism, are trying to eradicate it, which pretty much sums up the work being done at NewsBusters.

I was reminded of that while reading this utterly predictable complaint about how the liberal media is (surprise!) going to cost John McCain the campaign. Specifically, the NewsBusters item details how when polled informally, journalists as a group often vote Democratic. And, of course (goes the Newsbusters thinking), because they vote Democratic that means journalists report Democratic, whatever that means.

Eric Boehlert in Media Matters.

After the election, the bias

“So what?” Those two cavalier words alone speak to the larger problem. Who cares if “80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election” will vote for Barack Obama? Journalists, their editors, management, the candidates and the American people should care.

Douglas Mackinnon in the NYT.

No Shocks, Just Numbers: Pew on Media choice and the election

Nearly three times as many people ages 18 to 29 mention the internet as mention newspapers as a main source of election news (49% vs. 17%). Nearly the opposite is true among those over age 50: some 22% rely on the internet for election news while 39% look to newspapers. Compared with 2004, use of the internet for election news has increased across all age groups. Among the youngest cohort (age 18-29), TV has lost significant ground to the internet.

More here.


그렇습니다 우리는 할 수 있다

FT makes it a Full House on the BBC

But for all that scrutiny of its content, in the end it may be the BBC’s global commercial activities that finally prompt changes in the way it is funded – with implications for other broadcasters, production houses and content providers around the world.

With 21 offices from Los Angeles to Sydney and Mumbai to Tokyo, Worldwide operates 36 channels reaching 285m homes, makes its own programmes in several languages, sells 60 magazines in 57 countries as well as DVDs and audio books by the million, and manages one of the planet’s most popular websites. Programmes such as Doctor Who, Top Gear and Dancing With The Stars are broadcast on BBC-branded channels and sold to others.

All are part of the raison d’être of Worldwide: to exploit the BBC’s content and make money on behalf of the 25.3m UK householders who pay £139.50 a year for a television licence. Some £200m-£250m goes back to the BBC each year, including direct investment in programming.

But other Worldwide activities are less obviously linked to that purpose. For instance, it publishes editions of Hello! and Grazia magazines under licence in India. Recently, Worldwide bought minority stakes in three UK production companies and one in Australia. Most controversially, it paid £75m for a 75 per cent stake in Lonely Planet, the travel guide company, hoping to use the brand to market thousands of hours of BBC travel and natural history programming.

More on the BBC and the Numbers in the FT.

Collective journalism at its best

New America Media and the Maynard Institute have convened an array of Bay Area journalists, as well as highly respected media organizations and local university journalism departments to form an investigative team to honor and continue the work of journalist Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr., and answer questions regarding his death. Bailey, the editor of the weekly Oakland Post, was murdered on Aug. 2, 2007, while reporting on a story regarding the suspicious activities of the Your Black Muslim Bakery.

More here.

Media and Psychotic Delusion - that old one

A very interesting finding was a significant increase in outside influence and control delusions with technical themes following the spread of radio and television in Slovenia. To the best of our knowledge, no such studies exist with which to compare our results.

Both of these new technical devices, which served as a means to powerfully and quickly disseminate information, apparently became appropriate for 'serving' as a means of influence and control in the eyes of schizophrenia patients.

In the age of paranoia, my MTV wants me: from the always wonderful Mind Hacks.


The Report.

Vanity Fairness?

Strong majorities of the public say the press has been fair to John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But fewer than four-in-ten (38%) say the press has been fair to Sarah Palin. Many more believe the press has been too tough on Palin (38%) than say it has been too easy (21%).

From Pew.

A New news Story?

The pendulum of the Lobby is ready, eager even, to turn against the too smooth, too cool Cameroons.

Guido Fawkes, seasonally, on a media desire for a 'change of narrative.'

"...blog, widgetise and get connected..."

Traditional media people and investors, for example, are happy to spend cash on TV ads, or interruptive online ads, or print ads. Because they get them. They understand that they are to be broadcast and consumed by audiences. And they are part of the audiences that do the consuming.

One of those ROI of social media things. Nostalgia for the experiential world?

Do the mass math

Yet when the sheer number of Media vehicles radically increases, the median number of consumers attracted to any vehicle decreases because the total number of consumers are spread across many more vehicles (the so-called 'fragmentation' of audiences). That tends to reduce the median revenues of those vehicles. Mass Media vehicles try to compensate for this by 'dumbing' the quality of their content, attempting to attract a larger audience by appealing to a lower common denominator and restore larger numbers of consumers.

More wisdom from Vin.