The other true crime

THIS POST HAS BEEN CORRECTED & UPDATED:

I spent the morning watching the non-stop coverage of the arrest of John Mark Karr, 41, in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. All the usual experts suspects have been trotted out to spout their opinions on this guy's motives and psychological make-up. On Fox News around noon, I heard them actually peculating speculating that the suspect's confession was bogus and that Islamic terrorists were involved. SWEAR TO GOD!

Why this story led last night's edition of CBC-TV's The National -- Radio-Canada's Telejournal has far more serious priorities -- beats me. (A commenter below correctly points out that the AIDS conference and the drowning of a little Q uebec boy were ahead of the JonBenet story on the National. My bad. What I should have written was, why this story "preceded'' others.) There's a freaking war on! In fact, there are lots of them!

Anyway, here's part of today's pulpware effort on the subject of the media coverage of the case.

Tried and convicted by the media, and aided and abetted by an incompetent police force, the Ramseys were guilty! guilty! guilty!

That despite the fact that, aside from Patsy's wish to see her daughter high-kick in her own beauty pageant footsteps, there was nothing in this family's history indicating anything untoward.

But Patsy's mania for her daughter's winning Miss This or That ribbons was enough to do the trick.

For the better part of a decade, it was impossible to escape the unrelenting coverage.

JonBenet's luridly painted little face, Grand Ole Opry-style big hair and voluminous dresses became indelible and iconic images of the 1990s.

The videos of her prancing and dancing her way across stages were played and replayed by CNN, Court TV and the then weeks-old Fox News and MSNBC.

It was the Ramseys' great misfortune that both Fox and MSNBC had been born in the wake of the last "true crime" media feeding frenzy, the mother of all cable coverage marathons, the O.J. Simpson case, and they were determined to cash in on JonBenet's murder.

What's more, primetime was still filled with trashy tabs and more than a dozen network newsmagazines.

Of course, it must not be lost on anybody that JonBenet was white, and pretty, and her parents rich.

As we have seen with other cases — for example, the 2002 Elizabeth Smart abduction, which occurred at the same time as the African American Alexis Patterson, 7, was snatched from her tenement in Milwaukee — blondes get more play.

The JonBenet case also fuelled, and was fuelled by, the then-nascent World Wide Web. Entire sites are dedicated to the murder, to advancing various theories, to examining the evidence, and, most grisly of all, to presenting the autopsy photos.

And so, it became a multi-media perfect storm of pointing fingers.

The column has itself provoked a media feeding frenzy. Ironic, no? I have so far turned down five TV interviews and three radio gigs on the matter but I will be doing 10 CBC Radio One drive home shows across Canada between 3 and 6. Listen for me in Ottawa, Calgary, Halifax, Yellowknife, Toronto, St. John's, Victoria, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

And yeah, I have a bad cold.

UPDATE: Editor & Publisher has a couple of good analyses on this.

The first is a look at how a journalism professor played a key role in the arrest. But far more interesting is this examination of how the media -- once more -- are rushing to judgement.

Is the press going overboard in its coverage of the latest twist in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case -- and suggesting, too early, that the suspect suddenly in custody, John Karr, is guilty?

The front page headline in New York's Daily News today, for example, read: "SOLVED." The lead in the main arrest story in Denver's Rocky Mountain News reads: "The decade-long search for JonBenet Ramsey's killer came to a startling end in Thailand on Wednesday."

The same paper, in a headline over an editorial, declared, "Arrest is warning against rush to judgment." It meant the wide belief that one of the girl's parents may have killed her, but the same might be said about the early media coverage of the Karr arrest.

Investigators in Thailand told the Associated Press today that Karr has made several dubious statements to them, including claims that he picked JonBenet up from school the day she was killed and that he drugged her. Actually, she was on Christmas vacation at the time, and there was no evidence of drugs in her body during the autopsy.

Much of the media has downplayed assertions by Karr's ex-wife that he was with her in Alabama at the time of the murder.

Boston University journalism professor Fred Bayles, a longtime national writer for The Associated Press and USA Today -- among other subjects, he covered the O.J. Simpson murder probe -- told E&P today: "The latest chapter in the JonBenet case offers a journalistic cautionary for both the past and the future.

In fairness, as I noted earlier, some media have already begun to question Karr's confession. That's fine. Trouble is, they'll be milking this one for a long time -- and, instead of closing the books on JonBenet's murder, this arrest may have merely opened another lurid media chapter.

UPPERDATE: Media coverage covers media coverage!

Why there's blood on my walls

CORRECTED TO FIX THE LINKS!

When Tom Tomorrow is as good as this -- available free with if you go through the ads on Salon -- then I just have to share it with you.

More Tom Tomorrow here.

Monkey see, monkey do

Want to see how the media twist things, or at least exploit them to serve their own purposes? Then check out the interview Stephen Colbert did last week with U.S. Congressman Robert Wexler (D-Florida).

The uncontested incumbent thought he could have some fun on TV because he's a shoo-in but that didn't stop, first, Fox News from twisting the comedy segment for partisan purposes and second, the rest of the media monkeys jumping into the fray.

All the video evidence is available at Salon.com which is free with a one day pass.

The original Wexler "I like cocaine because it's a fun thing to do'' segment is here.

Then here's what Fox did with it.

Finally, here's the rest of media horde, who prove themselves to be lightweight twits.

And these are the people who are informing Americans?

No wonder they believe there are WMDs in Iraq.

Future shock

OttawaWatch has some pretty plausible predictions about the future of Canada's media.

Here's one, about the National Post.

The National Post has about six weeks left. CanWest's bonds are under review. They are already at junk status. A reduction in rating from BB would drive up the interest rate on any new bonds or any that expire and must be refloated. That is a fatal situation for a company as heavily leveraged as CanWest. Since CanWest is made up of a TV network, the National Post and some zero-value Internet properties, there's only one place to cut to satisfy the bond raters. Six months ago, I thought the NP would shrink back to a tabloid Financial Post. Now, CanWest doesn't have the money for a re-jig or to take that risk.

And here's one about Torstar, which owns the Star which owns this blog (but not me).

I'm sure we will see the sale of the Sun chain to TorStar, as it's a bad fit for Quebecor. The printing company simply doesn't have the management depth to run the newspaper chain or any real interest in the cities it serves.
The Star could use the Sun chain to kill off the freebie threat, skimming off any asets of value for the Star and turning the Sun chain into a line of better-quility commuter freebies in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Winnipeg and Edmonton. Quebecorp, with connivance of Sun managers and staff shareholders, managed to snatch the Sun from the Star's grip. Perhaps the Sun shareholders have lived to regret that.

I wouldn't bet the mortgage on some of his prognostications but they make for some interesting reading.

All the news fit to squeeze

The New York Times will be easier for me to have and to hold on Sunday mornings. That's because it's shrinking its pages by one-and-a-half inches width-wise next year. So much for the good news.

The bad news is that it's cutting 250 jobs, all apparently in production, as well as its ''news hole.''

The newspaper's plans include closing a printing plant in Edison, N.J. The plant's workload will shift to another in New York City, the article said, estimating the moves would save the company $42 million per year. The job cuts account for about one-third of the Times' total production work force of 800, the newspaper said.

The reduction in the size of its pages would mean a loss of 11 percent of the space devoted to news, but the newspaper plans to add pages to make up for about half of that loss.

"That's a number that I think we can live with quite comfortably," Executive Editor Bill Keller was quoted as saying. "The smaller news space would require tighter editing and putting some news in digest form."

Just what the world needs -- more journalism in ''digest form."

Report retort

Since the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communication published its final report on the Canadian news media last month, many of you wrote to me asking me when I would ''weigh in.'' To be honest, I thought there would be little point in adding anything to what the Star's editorial board had to say -- three editorials, no less! -- since I agreed with virtually every word of it produced. So I decided to take a step back and see how the media covered the media report, figuring it would produce much more interesting grist for my mill.

I was not disappointed. Which is to say, they acted just as I had expected them to act.

So, without further ado, here's some of today's treeware column on the subject, as published in the Business section. I've tossed in a couple of links.

On June 21, the day the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communication published its final report on the Canadian news media, there were two pertinent stories in the papers.

One got front-page headlines across the country, was the target of countless columns and editorials, was screamed over the airwaves, debated on hotline shows and in the blogosphere and was the focus of the committee's news conference that day.

The other? It was buried in the business pages.

The former was CBC-TV's decision to bounce its flagship newscast, The National, one hour later throughout the summer to accommodate a simulcast of ABC's The One: Making a Music Star. Pundits are still bloviating about it, even though it's going to affect only Tuesday nights, and only in certain time zones.

The latter story was Sun Media Corp's announcement that it would be cutting 120 positions across its newspaper chain, shutting down its research libraries everywhere except Toronto, slashing its political coverage, dumping local lifestyle and entertainment writers for one big merged and converged happy journalistic family in Toronto.

Now I ask you: If you're reporting on, or commenting on, a Senate study of media concentration, which story would you find more relevant? An American simulcast on CBC-TV, or the radical consolidation of Canada's second-biggest newspaper chain?

And yet, in all those thundering editorials and news stories about the Senate report, most of which dismissed its findings while chastising CBC, not a single one referred to the bloodbath that had just happened at the Sun papers.

Which tells you all you need to know about Canada's giant media corporations.

It's also a perfect illustration of why the Senate Committee began studying them three years ago when there were alarming signs that concentration was stifling opinion in this country...

The column says it all, except for one thing: When the corporate media claim that there are lots of news alternatives available via Google and Yahoo, they're talking out of both sides of their ... hats. It won't be long before they take serious steps to prevent the search engines to stop ripping them off from using their material.

The terrorists have won ... and are in the White House

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED -- and a big Canadian howdy doody to all you charming Little Green Footballers who are leaving comments about my supposed dildo use! (Shows what a bunch of goofballs you are.)

Because of one thing or another -- professional and personal -- I have been inexcusably neglectful of the outrageous situation in the US of A regarding the political fallout following the New York Times' reports on the Bush regime's tracking of private bank records in its so-called war on terror. Apologies.

The upside is that I can now afford to bring you the more thoughtful pieces (and some bonus fun stuff) on the issue -- specifically, the Bushite war on the Times and several other news organs -- rather than chase the ambulances as they roared by.

For those not fully caught up, the Star's Tim Harper had a good primer last week.

The tension between George W. Bush's White House and The New York Times has largely bubbled beneath the surface, a battle of wills between a secretive administration and a newspaper that has launched almost daily anti-Bush grenades from its editorial pages.

Until now.

Republicans are accusing the paper known affectionately as the Old Gray Lady of treason, giving aid to the enemy and imperilling American lives.

It is, by most accounts, an attack on the media unmatched in its bitterness since Richard Nixon fought the Times and The Washington Post over the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the Post's Watergate coverage.

This time, the paper's alleged crime was publishing details of a secret anti-terror government program that tracked international bank transfers through a consortium known as SWIFT.

As Robert Scheer sees it, this is a jihad on the media.

The Bush Administration's jihad against newspapers that reported on a secret program to monitor the personal-banking records of unsuspecting citizens is more important than the original story. For what the President and his spokesmen are once again asserting is that the prosecution of this ill-defined, open-ended "war on terror" inevitably trumps basic democratic rights in general and the constitutionally enshrined freedom of the press in particular.

The stakes are very high here. We've already been told that we must put up with official lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the unprecedented torture of prisoners of war and a massive electronic eavesdropping program and other invasions of privacy. Now the target is more basic--the freedom of the press to report on such nefarious government activities. The argument in defense of this assault on freedom is the familiar refrain of dictators, wannabe and real, who grasp for power at the expense of democracy: We are in a war with an enemy so powerful and devious that we cannot afford the safeguard of transparent and accountable governance.

It's been fascinating to follow the media reaction to the threats against the media made by the White House ... and the media. There's been virtual silence from the mainstream editorial boards.

As numerous Bush administration officials, congressional Republicans, and conservative media figures continue to attack The New York Times and other newspapers for their decision to publicly disclose the Treasury Department bank-tracking program, major U.S. newspapers' editorial boards have largely remained silent on the issue. According to a Media Matters for America review, 15 newspapers -- not including The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which also initially reported the program -- have so far editorialized either in support of the papers' decision to run the story or against the criticism they received for doing so.

So where were the hundreds of others of papers?

Meanwhile, the right-wing echo chamber that pretends not to be part of the mainstream in the U.S. but, sadly, is. Very much so. Consider:

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, MSNBC'S "THE SITUATION": I think "The New York Times" hates Bush. I think they probably go out of their way to hurt Bush. I think they would probably even reveal things they shouldn't reveal in order to hurt Bush.

BILL O'REILLY, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL'S "THE O'REILLY FACTOR": The "New York Times" may have reached a tipping point. The paper is chock full of far left columnists, and now its news pages could be damaging national security.

Media Matters has a good round-up of the offenders here. Below, three examples.

Rush Limbaugh, syndicated radio host: "I think 80 percent of their subscribers have to be jihadists. If you look at The New York Times and the kind of stories they're leaking and running and the information they're getting, it's clear that they're trying to help the terrorists. They're trying to help the jihadists." Limbaugh added that he thought that "80 percent of their subscribers have to be jihadists." ... [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 6/27/06]

William Kristol, editor, The Weekly Standard: "I think the Justice Department has an obligation to consider prosecution. ... This isn't a partisan thing of the Bush administration. This is a U.S. government secret program in a time of war, willfully exposed for no good reason by The New York Times." [Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, 6/25/06]

Ann Coulter, right-wing pundit: [R]evealing a classified program, which no one thinks violates any laws ... that has led to the capture of various terrorists, and to various terrorist money-laundering operations. If that is not treason, then we're not prosecuting anymore." [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 6/26/06]

More on the rightwingdingaling regurgitation of White House talking points here and here.

One talk show host even sanctioned the possible execution of Times editor Bill Keller:

San Francisco talk show host Melanie Morgan believes that Times editor Bill Keller should be jailed for treason for approving the publication.

The maximum penalty for treason is death.

"If he were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber," Morgan, whose show airs on KSFO-AM, told The Chronicle on Wednesday. "It is about revealing classified secrets in the time of war. And the media has got to take responsibility for revealing classified information that is putting American lives at risk."

But not all conservatives see it that way. I was amazed to discover that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, for instance, came out on the side of freedom of the press.

Scarborough: You gotta admit-it’s frightening. More so to us who know how Washington works and know how power can corrupt and know how power can be abused. I believe friends, we are in dangerous times for those of us who believe like Thomas Jefferson-that Washington is not to be trusted with unlimited police power.

(H/t to Ron Saba for that one.)

But most of the rightwingers came off like the wing nuts they are. Check out this ''debate'' between California talk show host Bernie Ward and Texas talk jock Chris Baker  on MSNBC. Or as Calitics puts it,

Baker:  Time of War!  New York Times Treasonous! Bush Haters!
Ward:  Should the government control what a newspaper prints?
Baker:  Time of War!  New York Times Treasonous! Bush Haters!
Ward:  Answer the question.  Should the government control what a newspaper prints?

[Repeat until Baker loses his mind, calls Ward names, and storms off because his Rove-approved talking points aren’t working.]

(H/t to Rachel Marsden for that one.)

But seriously ...

First amendment lawyer Glenn Greenwald has a long but very strong analysis here.

The media is guilty of publishing stories which might harm the political interests of the President, not which could harm the national security of the United States. But Bush supporters recognize no such distinction. Harming the "Commander-in-Chief in a time of war" is, to them, synonymous with treason. Hence, we have calls for the imprisonment of our national media for reporting stories which tell terrorists nothing of significance which they did not already know, but which instead, merely provoke long-overdue democratic debates about whether we want to be a country in which we place blind trust in the administration to act in total secrecy.

Last, but not least, Don Waller says it ALL here. (Emphasis is his.)

Dear Media,

I hope you all enjoy lying in that bed you've made.

All those years of making excuses for George W. Bush's ineptness, inadequacies, and illegalities have earned you absolutely nothing. You brushed aside his lack of experience and intellectual incuriosity in 1999 and 2000, mostly because you didn't like Al Gore. Your behavoir gave him a much better position from which to steal the 2000 election.

You bought the spin from Bush's minions, ignoring the crisis that was taking place in Florida after the election. You believed every lie they came up with, from 'The votes have been counted and re-counted and re-counted' to 'Al Gore is trying to steal the election,' and you decided that letting Bush take office (in the most literal sense possible) was 'best for the country.'

You papered over the fact that he was scared out of his mind on September 11, 2001 - to the point where he flew to Idaho to hide - in favor of painting him as a 'resolute leader.' You swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, every lie that came out of the White House in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq - in many cases embellishing the lies to make them sound more plausible.

You let the elite members of your profession use their positions as opinion-shapers to shove cooked intelligence down the throats of the American public. You placed that cooked intel on the front pages of every newspaper and magazine in the country, and you played that cooked intelligence at the top of every hour on your cable news outlets.

You never once asked, 'Where is Osama bin Laden?'

You followed him, with your TV cameras, to every single place he went to vent his spleen about terrorists, giving him hours and hours of free face time to repeat his lies. You ignored that people were being arrested for speaking against him, that his audiences were hand-picked, that protestors were being put in pens at great distances from every venue in which he ever appeared.

You bought 'Mission Accomplished' by the pound. You cleared the shelves of 'shock and awe,' exhausted the stocks of 'smokin' 'em out,' drank gallons and gallons of GOP Brand Kool-Aid. You 'embedded' youselves with the military and took everything the military told you at face value - even if it directly contradicted reality as we know it.

You reported staged events like the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue as if they were real news events. And even after the American public started to wise up and wipe the terra-dust from their eyes, you still insisted upon calling him a 'popular president.'

You helped his employees ruin the reputations of fine men who served this country honorably - letting them compare a man who gave three limbs in service to this country with Osama bin Laden. You took a highly-decorated war veteran - you know, the kind of person that you all love to say you 'support' and 'honor' - and ran his reputation into the mud, somehow making his exemplary service seem shameful.

You justified Bush's expansion of executive power to the point where we don't even need Congress, giving them their new job of stage managers for completely meaningless staged events like the Terri Schiavo fiasco or railing against gay marriage and making sure nobody burns an American flag or dares utter the words that Iraq is bleeding us dry, killing our kids and destroying our reputation as 'the good guys,' worldwide.

You made excuses for his illegal spying on the American people. You offered weak justifications for his naked power grab, you laughed off the fact that his second-in-command shot a man in the face.

You made Ann Coulter socially acceptable.

And after all this, Bush and Cheney and Congress and Coulter and every wingnut pundit, whom you've coddled and accomodated every step of the way, show their appreciation how?

They want to muzzle you. They want to imprison you. They want to try you for treason.

I'd print some more but he gets into what the Bush regime has done to the media in terms I can't use here.

The one good thing in all of this is that more and more Americans are starting to see that the Bushies are acting like cornered rats on their own sinking ship.

But, before they go down, they'll try to take what made the States so great with them.

UPPITY DATE: For all of you claiming that the Times' story was news to the terrorists, read this.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: You know what I don't get? Why the righties don't understand that financial transactions were being tracked well before 9/11 -- and it was no secret. But they'll say anything to prop up their fearless service-avoiding leader.

Anyway, I am updating this post because I believe it gives the impression that I am a big fan of the Times, the paper that helped make the Bush case for war by publishing all those phoney-baloney weapons of mass destruction stories.

In fact, I am more in line with David Corn, who calls the Times' ''timid."

what if everyday it had a box on the front page listing all the attacks and bombing within Iraq the previous day? Reuters keeps (and posts) such a list. Anyone who read this sort of roster on a daily basis would have a tough time accepting Bush and Dick Cheney's never-ending claims that progress is being made. Or what if the Times—as it did with the victims of 9/11—printed profiles of every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, placing one a day on the front page? Such a reminder of the cost being paid might well undermine the war effort by causing more people to question the value of this military venture. Or what if the newspaper ran a daily account of how much the war is costing, not in blood, but in taxes? (Representative Jack Murtha, the Democrat hawk who turned against the war, recently put the tab at $450 billion and noted this was $445 billion more than the cost of the first Gulf War.)

There's plenty more the paper can do to discredit Bush. It often treads lightly when the president or the vice president says something untrue. Two weeks ago, Dick Cheney claimed in an interview that there were 250,000 Iraqi soldiers "now in uniform, equipped, trained, in the fight." That was a whopper. In February, the Pentagon noted that the number of Iraqi battalions ready to fight on their own was zero. (The Defense Department then stopped releasing figures on the battle readiness of Iraqi security forces). After Cheney made those remarks about the Iraqi military, did the Times rush out a front-page article reporting that the vice president was misleading the public about the centerpiece of the administration's Iraq policy? No. Keller missed another chance to deal a blow to the administration's war on terrorism.

As Corn concludes, those who believe that the Times is a hotbed of anti-Bushism don't read. I would go further. I would say they they're blind, or Little Green Nutballers.

And now, I gotta go launder my burka.

From scoop to nuts

Political strategist Robin Sears has a terrific analysis of the news media today in the Hill Times. He covers all the bases, from Watergate to the VRWC (vast right wing conspiracy), and even touches on the current situation in Ottawa.

Stephen Harper plays a long game and surely believes that revenge is a dish best served well chilled. No, his media campaign fits his game plan precisely.

First, he knows that the only people less loved than politicians and aluminum siding salesmen are the media. And he knows that among his target audience this contempt runs to violent hatred. His target voters see Maclean's magazine–now, under editor Ken Whyte, under its most conservative and Conservative management in its history–as part of the "vast left-wing media conspiracy" because it publishes unflattering cover photos of the PM.

Second, he knows that to a greater extent than any prime minister before him, he does not need the gallery. Every Ottawa pundit who says, "He'll fold when he is in trouble," misunderstands how the media and political world has changed. Stephen Harper's target voters read few newspapers, not because they are stupid but because they are young. The youngest among them hardly watch television news; their lens on politics is blogs, news sites and Maxim magazine.

Finally, he knows that it is not the PMO that will bend. The gallery will. Media owners are already deeply unhappy at this unseemly spat. Discussions about a compromise through intermediaries are under way.

Which is why, I believe, Stephen Harper has done us all a great favour. We have come to the end of the post-Watergate era in political journalism.

The centre – made up of a handful of nightly newscasts, rich big-city dailies and their star political journalists – cannot hold. It is doubly harassed: by declining audience and revenues and therefore relevance, on the one hand; and by the explosion of ankle-biting, semi-professional digital competitors on the other.

Where has the growth centre in print media been? In trash celebrity journalism and soft porn.

In television it is completely unreal reality TV. Radio risks becoming a satellite-borne digital jukebox. As in most of the developments at the nexus of politics and journalism in recent decades, it was the American hard right that saw this first.

<SNIP>

It is time for both sides to look at the real world and make some changes.

Neither politics nor political journalism sits as close to the centre of people's lives as it did a century or even a generation ago. To win attention and respect from a more sophisticated and skeptical public means going upmarket, not down. The wrong-headedness of most media moguls in understanding why so many have defected from politics and the media is painfully clear.

What can one say about The Toronto Star's launch of a trash celebrity magazine as its major editorial investment this year?

This should be required reading for every programmer and news director in the country.

You can't be neutral on this

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Here's today's pulpware column on the issue of ''net neutrality'' -- now in the news in the U.S. I have posted the whole thing because I wanted to add some links, as well as impress upon many of you whose eyes may glaze over (as mine did when I first got into it) that this is important stuff.

If you're like many Canadians, you hate the way you have to take — and pay for — TV channels you never watch just to get those channels you do watch.

What's more, there are channels you do want, but can't get at any price.

Now imagine this sort of thing happening with the Internet.

Depending on your service provider, say Bell Canada, you might find yourself unable to subscribe to a voice-over-Internet service such as Skype because it competes with Ma Bell.

Or say it's Rogers: You might want to download the BBC News. But, because Rogers wants to reserve bandwidth to transmit its Blue Jays games, the Beeb slows down to a crawl.

Or maybe you want to transmit a large file — a video of a university lecture, for example — via BitTorrent. The "traffic shaper'' at your ISP says no, that bandwidth is for our movies.

None of this "preferred routing'' is on the horizon for Canadian consumer.

Yet.

But proponents of Internet freedom are casting a wary eye south. On June 8, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new media bill: the ironically named Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act of 2006.

The House did so while torpedoing an amendment that would have prevented cable and phone companies from rigging their networks "to block, impair, degrade, discriminate against, or interfere with the ability of any person to use a broadband connection to access . . . services over the Internet."

In other words, the COPE Act contains no guarantees of Internet equality.

That's called "network neutrality,'' or "net neutrality" — and the effort to maintain it has created an unlikely coalition whose members include the Gun Owners of America, Amazon, Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Vonage, the Christian Coalition of America, MoveOn.org, Microsoft, National Religious Broadcasters, the Service Employees International Union, the American Library Association, AARP, ACLU and every major consumer group in the U.S.

In short, everybody but the guys who own and control the wires — and the politicians and lobbyists who love them.

"Any law enforcing `Net Neutrality' would be a terrible blow to Internet freedom,'' said Alex Epstein, a fellow at the far-right Ayn Rand Institute, in a statement. "Just as cable companies have a right to apportion their bandwidth between Internet and television data, so Internet providers have a right to apportion their bandwidth between standard and premium Internet data."

COPE passed much — but not exclusively — along party lines, with virtually every Republican and a majority of Democrats voting to support the ginormous broadband providers (the Comcasts, Coxes, Time-Warners, and Verizons etc.) who have lobbied with tens of millions of dollars against net neutrality.

Now, it must be said that, to their credit, the Big Guys helped build the information highway. But they also did so to enormous profit as others provided the content that made consumers want to sign on.

But now the broadband providers want to dictate who drives on their information highways, how fast they go and what kind of vehicle they use.

Their argument is that they need maximum flexibility in order to keep building the networks and keep "innovating."

Except for one thing: The innovations have not come from the cable guys or the phone giants. They have come from individuals working in their basements and their garages.

"Network discrimination alters the fundamentally open architecture of the Internet and forces innovators to negotiate with network operators before they can get into business — ending the era of `innovation without permission,' as Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, calls it," said Mark Cooper of SaveTheInternet.com. in a statement last week.

"Getting rid of network neutrality will make the current open Internet more closely resemble the closed world of cable television," added Jeff Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy. "Content that will dominate will be what is associated with the big phone and cable companies. Other content providers will be confined to the Internet equivalent of a dirt road. And it's not just PCs but also information going to mobile devices and such that will be affected."

Why do broadband providers want control?

Because they're also providers of so-called "triple-play services'' — voice, video and data — and they want to reserve the bandwidth for their products.

There's also revenue potential in getting content providers to pony up for preferential treatment. For example, in order for MSNBC's news site to load as quickly as Time Warner's CNN does, it would have to pay up.

Nobody says providers should be prevented from making profits. They could charge more for their services, for example — although consumers, who don't have access to a truly competitive market, could get gouged.

But at least Web users would have a choice, albeit a limited one, and could switch providers.

On Thursday, the COPE bill is to go before the Republican-controlled Senate where, from the looks of it, it will be passed.

If it does get through, what can Canadians look forward to?

"If they don't get that (net neutrality) provision in the U.S., there won't be a direct effect on Canadian consumers," explained Star columnist and Internet law expert Michael Geist in an interview. "But in terms of the broader impact for innovation and the like, there would certainly be an impact here.

"And it would likely embolden even further the Teluses and the Bells and the Rogers to push their plans for greater discrimination."

Netizens, time to stand on guard.

Some additional thoughts:

The broadband providers, who have lobbied hard to ensure there is no net neutrality, have set up dummy sites such as this. They raise the evil R-word -- regulation -- to make it seem as if the government will regulate the Internet. Which is patently untrue. Here's a debate between the IP lobbyist Mike McCurry and net neutrality proponent Paul Misener of Amazon.com which took place last Friday. McCurry got creamed.

But oh how the Republicans buy into his arguments. I was much amused -- although mostly disgusted -- by their obvious ignorance of the issues at stake as reported here.

South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint, a vocal free-market proponent, likened new federal net neutrality mandates to "the government telling retailers how to do their business" — that is, what to stock on their shelves and which merchandise to give more prominent placement. "We actually want some discrimination today to force better products and better prices," he argued, warning that new regulations would lead to "commercial suicide".

Of course, as I note in the column, Democrats voted against the net neutrality provision as well.

Here's a dissenting view from Internet expert Andrew Kantor who doesn't see the need to enshrine net neutrality in legislation.

Network providers need incentive to build faster pipes. And knowing there's a market for them (entertainment companies, Web hosting companies, etc.) — provides it. But if can't make money by offering a better product, why would they bother building one?

Finally, a regular reader and emailer and expert at U of T. wrote this morning with still another perspective. Here are his thoughts, edited for clarity because he used a lot of text message abbreviations.

Wash'n Post had a fairly convincing editorial re this last week: They have interests on both sides of the fence, but argued that there should be enough commercial compet'n to prevent abuse & if not, then the US Congress can take another look at regulating it.

The real problem with the services you describe is cost of new infrastructure: When every Joe Fanboy out there wants to watch the World Cup final, there won't be enough bandwidth for them, let alone the rest of us. So far, the I/net is like a Victorian road with everyone walking or biking; universal VoIP & streaming video will require the equivalent of an H401 & it's not clear how that willbe paid for or whether it's physically feasible. Wireless I/net may help to some extent, but not at the routeing level.

Anyway, it's good to alert Canadians to the dangers of US spill-over.

Although this issue is getting substantial coverage in the alternative media and tech circles. Lefty/progessive bloggers have also been writing about it. But I have to wonder why bloggers on the right haven't been all over it. Or why I haven't caught anything on TV ...

UPPITY DATE: Some compromises are said to be in the works. But I don't think that there can or should be any on this issue.

UH-OH DATE (20/6/06): Looks like Shaw Cable is up to no good.

Canada-based cable provider Shaw Communications handed Vonage more bad news in the form of a "Quality of Service Enhancement." Vonage customers, presumably not the ones suing Vonage over its abysmal IPO, who connect via Shaw's services have the "opportunity" to upgrade their VoIP service for a small fee. Otherwise, they can expect static.

For an additional $10 per month Shaw will provide a quality of service (QoS) feature that will enhance these services when used over the Shaw High Speed Internet network. Without this service customers may encounter quality of service issues with their voice over Internet service…peer to peer music or video downloading can create periodic loading at the expense of other Internet applications.

When Vonage complained in court, calling the QoS a "thinly-veiled VoIP tax," Shaw defended its right to relegate Vonage to a connection vulnerable to delays and "inherent limitations" while reminding the public that Shaw also offers a VoIP service, which just so happens runs automatically with the aforementioned QoS.

We need to enshrine net neutrality in Canada and fast.

I'd Rather not wait

Mary Mapes, who lost her job at CBS in the wake of the Sept. 2004 60 Minutes blogostorm over Preznit George W. Bush's National Guard service record (or lack of it or however you want to interpret his comings and going during a war in which 50,000 -- mostly -- draftees were killed), has a vigorous defence of Dan Rather here today. (I added some links.)

That first anonymous analyst (who turned out to be a Republican activist lawyer) raised questions about the memo using only a single shot of a faxed document digitally transmitted to his computer screen. Those kinds of transmissions radically change the way a document looks. His analysis was worthless.

The laundry list of problems that critics claimed they saw in the memos has turned out to be bunk. There never has been any definitive proof that they were forged or falsified in any way, despite a multi-million dollar investigation into the story by Viacom. The reasons we put them on the air remain valid: the content of the memos was corroborated by people familiar with Bush, his unit and his commander; the dates, times and details intricately matched what we know of the record; and two experienced and respected document analysts, who examined copies that had not been faxed or digitally recreated, concluded that the papers showed every indication of being real.

I don't believe we will know the truth about the memos until after the Bush team is out of office and people with information are no longer afraid to come forward.

Viacom, CBS's parent company, never did care whether the story was true or not. They just wanted rid of it. Among other things, they had multiple issues pending before the FCC and various other arms of the administration and our story was no help to the company in its quest to squeeze every last dime out of what used to be the public airwaves. Firing longtime employees in an attempt to get back into the administration's good graces was simply a business decision. It had nothing to do with journalism or the crucial role that critical reporting is supposed to play in American democracy.

Amazing how, after all these years, and all the lies, and how low Bush has sunk in the polls, the MSM still won't touch the fundamental story.

Meanwhile, the geniuses at National Review Online offer this for intelligent criticism.

Keep watching the skies, Mary. The truth is out there.

Did Mapes, Rather and CBS screw up? No doubt about it.

But were their basic assertions wrong?

I'm with Mapes: We'll find out soon enough.