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NPR Takes First Step To Fight Internet Royalties
jmcharry sent in an article that opens, "After the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decided to drastically increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels for streaming songs online, National Public Radio (NPR) will begin fighting the decision on Friday, March 16 by filing a petition for reconsideration with the CRB panel."
N P Who? Who is NPR? Why should I care? Does NPR run on my Ubuntu machine?
Does this mean that a song will cost $0.06 instead of $0.05 at allofmp3.com?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
NPR has always been the news source for the Left. That's why I listen to it!
Funny NPR should be speaking up for the little guy now. They were the ones who in 2000 put the nails in the coffin of low-power community FM broadcasting by joining forces with the NAB to lobby Congress. (References a gogo).
NPR's only interested now that commercial radio is about to shut down their streaming operations (which are far more popular than commercial simulcast streams). Pardon me if I fail to shed a tear for NPR this time around, even if I also reject the CRB's new webcasting royalty rates.
NPR, you'll never see a fucking dime from me until you stand up for real community radio and reverse your stand on LPFM. I used to be a regular contributor to local public radio stations before your shameless whoring in 2000.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
I guess CmdrTaco got hit with a royalty request, because I got "Nothing to see here..."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
For NPR, which runs off of the contributions of it's listeners, this will put a severe dent in it's finances.
that someone with public interest is starting to yell. I listen to Internet radio only these days. I'm not wanting the RIAA to send me letters of any kind, and standard radio SUCKS thanks to corporate radio. I support the stations that I listen to because the play the music I like, music that I cannot hear on broadcast radio. Now, the RIAA wants to put the only source of music that is worth listening to out of business??? WTF! Broadcast radio will end up being ALL talk radio.
I hope that this brings the whole thing to public attention in a way that is bad for the RIAA in general. This stranglehold that they have on music distribution will end up killing the music business as we have known it. Perhaps that is a good thing, I don't know, but I can say that from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to see the RIAA legally squeezed for monopolistic practices somehow. Yes, I know its not likely, but they do need slapped down hard.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I know, every morning it's like
I'm Karl Castle. This morning president Bush is in Florida to share his reading of "My Pet Goat" with his colleagues.
I mean, is this what qualifies as news?
If you think that NPR is on the right, your head would explode watching FOX.
NPR is very much to the left. Don't get mad at "Morning Edition" for covering the White House just because it happens to have a Republican in it. When the president farts, it's still news.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's not like they are profiting from playing the songs. They're funded with public money already, so the payments for these royalties are going straight from our tax dollars to the music labels. Congress should just exempt them from royalty payments altogether via legislation--problem solved. In fact that would be a net win for taxpayers, since we'd get the same public service at a lower cost.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Appealing to an industry controlled board isnt going to accomplish anything. Not for the little guy. NPR might catch a break, thats about it.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
So what was wrong with not wanting interference all over their signal?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Internet stations that stream almost completely music are being saddled with outrageously usurious fees.
Soma FM predicts their fees will rise from $20,000 today to $600,000 for 2006, and $1,000,000 in 2007.
Loosing stations like Soma would suck. I listen to a little bit of normal broadcast radio (usually just the urban hit station to pick up the occasional deserving top 20 hit), but otherwise its internet only.
NPR has essentially stopped all investigative reporting, as far as I can tell. They mostly read press releases for about a half an hour and then repeat the process.
And I was almost embarassed by the judges so clearly fellating the content industries' expert (Dr. Pelcovits) over his testimony. They took his (bought and paid for) recommendations hook, line and sinker. The only thing the content folks didn't get was a 25% premium on content sent to "wireless" users (they must be friends with Verizon), and then only because the expert didn't suggest that there was sufficient marketplace forces to determine the extent of premium that should be applied to portable devices. The judges repeatedly called bullshit on practically evey point of the webcaster's expert. Maybe they needed a better expert than this Adam Jaffe, or perhaps just someone more persuasive - say, someone with tickets to the final 4, an available hunting lodge, and a few cases of single malt.
I'm a bit surprised that there was little to no discussion concerning the relative changes in the fee structure - and that the content industry basically got every cent they asked for (except the 25%).
I don't know the players, but I'd say that there was some pretty significant bias in the panel before the parties even began to talk.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
As to NPR being to the left, I think that they present a pretty balanced coverage of the news. If anything they cater to a younger audience than CNN and Fox and I think that a lot of the leftist criticism comes from not so much from a political slant but from a generational slant. The style of news and reporting that is geared towards the 45 and under crowd may seem to have a liberal bias not so much from the content but from the tone.
Memo from press office to White House kitchen:
Need more beans on the menu to help with identifying the President with the common man. Only add ham, bacon or salt pork into the beans when no Islamic, Jewish or other anti-pork religious groups on the guest list.
Following the money on this one does not lead straight to the RIAA. The people who are threatened by internet radio are the traditional FM broadcasters and now Sirius and XM in the satellite radio industry.
FM is fueled by big corporate advertising dollars and payola.
Satellite radio is fueled by subscriptions.
Internet radio has a mix of the above and an abundance of free stations sponsored voluntarily by their listeners. Now close your eyes and imagine a world where every car is able to connect to internet radio. The brews big trouble for the traditional and satellite broadcasters.
Having NPR step up to this is good news indeed - while NPR is faaaar from a perfect organization this move certainly wins then some brownie points with me.
The CRB specifically noted that they don't care what your revenues are -- all they cared about was making sure that the recording artists got "fairly" compensated for the use of their songs. That's why they shifted away from the revenue-based payment model to the performance-based one.
I disagree; there is no reason to exempt a certain class of stations from paying for their music. Either you make everyone pay, or (even better) you give everyone an exemption.
this law doesn't just affect over the air radio stations, but all streaming web casts. this is a bad deal, and it is supposed to be applied retro actively to 2006 (which will basically put all streaming radio stations out of business).
you can write your congressman or representative here.
for more info on how this will affect streaming radio, check out www.SaveOurInternetRadio.com. i found out about this through soma fm's news section (soma fm is an internet radio station i listen to, i am not affiliated with them)
You mean there's less reporting and even more sensationalism?
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
NPR is paying for songs. The government gives money to NPR to pay for the songs. So your next logical step is for the government to decide it doesn't want to pay anymore and just take the songs for free? As much as I'd like that in the case of RIAA, I don't think it will go over that well.
Maybe one day when we get over all this IP crap.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
NPR in Detroit is already in the crapper. Our new program director last year fired the two best DJs in the city (Martin Bandyke and Judy Adams)and switched to an all talk format during the day. Bones: They're dying Jim! Kirk: Let them.
Push the button, Max!
They do really, really try to be balanced. But their underlying beliefs poke through. Terry Gross is a good example - she's only a really good, hard-hitting interviewer when her guest is someone that she has an ideological disagreement with. She's not very good when someone like Al Franken comes on - it just turns into a love-fest.
I still prefer NPR to most of the alternative, and really only stray from it when they have the beg-a-thon going on, or when they are doing a 20-minute piece on a harmonica player from Bangladesh.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Reading the article, it's stated that: The suggested new rates would increase to $.0008 per-play for 2006 (retroactively), $.0011 for 2007, $.0014 in 2008, $.0018 in 2009 and $.0019 for 2010.
Then it states: By our estimates, WXPN could be paying about $1 million a year in royalties under the CRB's ruling.
To rack one million bucks in one year, wouldn't you have to play 555 million songs in that one year period? That's about 63,000 per minute. Wow! Those must be some really short songs.
They're funded with public money already, so the payments for these royalties are going straight from our tax dollars to the music labels.
If labels were worthless, artists would not sign with them. YOU may not care about the labels' service, but the world does not (and should not) revolve around YOU. If the artists feel like the labels perform a worthwhile service (as demonstrated by the actions of artists i.e. the artists willingly pay the labels), while shouldn't the labels be paid for their services? The fact that your money is being spent by the government is between you and the government. Why should the labels have to pay because the government robbed you (i.e. taxes)?
Remeber that NPR has a HUGE endowment from Ray Kroc's (founder of McDonald's) window.y Id=1494600
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
They don't need your money or Congress's
You have no clue how bad NPR can get. I live Mississippi where anything with the prefix "public" gets accused of being a part of a leftist conspiracy. The funding here for NPR is SO bad (how bad is it?) they once had a drive time that lasted a month and a half! I would LOVE for the NPR stations here to switch to an all talk format, it sure beats the hell out of the crappy public domain classical that they play here. This is incredibly sad since it was Mississippi Public Broadcasting(MPB) that aired non-stop vital information when Katrina hit--even when their own headquarters was being hit! American Family Radio didn't even do that and they're based way in the north of the state that got a little wind for Katrina. I've talked face-to-face with the director of MPB as she is my neighbor, and she is not an idiot. She's a very capable and dedicated person, but Mississippians are clueless.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
As for it being left, just about every international news source outside of the USA looks that way in comparison to CNN et al - I still can't forgive them using file film of Palestinians celebrating a soccer win on the night of Sept 11 and pretending it was film of them celebrating the mass murder - lazy journalism and incitement to riot thrown together.
Tax-based funding of public radio stations is only
a small amount of their budgets these days; the bulk
comes from people's donations and companies' support.
1) Pass law declaring all musicians are Public Servants
2) Stop paying creators and workers
3) Profit!
Interesting suggestion, but I'd rather see...
1) Halt misappropriation of taxpayer monies
2) Defund government funded political propaganda
3) Freedom!
Thanks for the offer, but I can decide whom I pay for news and music, without instituting your nanny-state to run my entire life.
Actually, NPR doesn't get much public money:
As for the stations themselves:
National Public Radio is public in the sense of being a public service, not in the sense of being primarily funded by tax dollars.
Because non-profit organizations have to pay for everything else. If Wikipedia could somehow get its bandwidth for free, it wouldn't have to do funding drives very often at all. But that's not fair, since bandwidth really does cost money, and somebody's got to pay for it, and the way it's always been done is that non-profits pay for their fair share, just like everyone else. I suppose one could make the distinction that IP doesn't cost money to duplicate, unlike real services or real property, but as far as I know, there's no precedent yet for saying "oh, you're right, this whole IP thing is a bit of a sham, we'll recognize that, but only for non-profits".
Terry Gross is rubbish
Yes, I have heard interviewer threaten to walk out on her because they get abused. Terry is a lesbian, and likes to go after any Republican on gay rights issues. Even when that Republican isn't in office. I have heard her twice ask questions about totally unrelated to the interview topic and get a response along the lines of "Terry I am here to talk about my book on Victoria railroad building, and I am not in office and have never held office. I have no idea what Bush thinks of gay marriage. What is your problem? If you want to ask him, have him on the show." At which point she usually hems and haws and gets back on topic.
Terry is also rarly on anymore. She usually just reruns some interview from someone a year ago. "Terry interviewed Mr. X a year ago. His book is now out in paperback."
Terry really should turn the show over to the her guest interviewers. They are better than she is now. But I assume she makes too much moeny to do that.
The petitions site is: http://savethestream.org/
Just in case you're not trolling, there are quite a few other public broadcasting stations around the world. The BBC (UK) and NHK (Japan) have English podcasts available... CBC (Canada) does too, but I can't find a regularly-updated news podcast for them. I'm sure there's others too.
NPR has been on a downhill slope ever since certain parties decided to put a political appointee as its head rather than a more neutral candidate. Just as John Bolton was appointed to be the US ambasador to the UN despite his dislike of the organization, NPR's current head is doing damage in much the same way due to his own political allegiances.
They're funded with public money already, so the payments for these royalties are going straight from our tax dollars to the music labels
Do you ever actually listen to "public" radio? A few hours of listening during drive time here in the DC area will have you hearing commercials from large associations, corporations, and other underwriting entities (as well as vanity donors) that want the exposure. If public radio's use of licensed material is a part of what brings the audience that those advertisers want to reach, then paying what the producers of that material ask is just a cost of attracting those big-ticket ads and donations.
Anyone who thinks that just because such stations are non-profits that they don't want all the audience and ad revenue they can get is completely misunderstanding the nature of the beast. They have payrolls to meet, and they have to compete to hire the people they want to hire. Just like any other business, they have facilities to pay for, web sites to run, etc... and they want cash. They attract a lot of their cash through advertising, and they price the advertising according to the audience they can deliver to the advertisers. If that means they broadcast, or stream from their web sites, stuff that costs them money in order to then sell that audience to advertisers, then so be it. Gotta spend it to make it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Now I'm no professional on the matter, but as far as I'm concerned artists and labels are getting a great benefit from the increased audience base provided by internet broadcast. I don't see that they have anything to worry about in terms of the current royalty rates as at the end on the day, their audience base has been increased ten-fold at least with the advent of internet radio broadcast. Artists that I would never heard of otherwise have now been brought to my attention, and as a result I have bought CDs by artists that I would never have been aware of if I only had my local radio stations to listen to (which, by the way, are very limited in terms of choice and genre in Australia).
It's nice to see how the record industry treats those who actually *want* to pay for the music they use. Raising the fees 20x - 50x doesn't seem to be the way to treat those trying to do the right thing. And, almost unnoticed, with this decision they've established a system where they get royalties per each play *and* per each listener which I don't think has been possible before.
Go here. Read the first sentence. Eat brownies.
Public money can only be considered private money, if you launder it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering
1) Taxpayers pay out nearly 500 million a year
2) Politians redistribute it to the CPB
3) CPB distributes it to numerous stations
4) Stations buy programming from NPR
5) NPR claims most income is private, and not public supported
I think it's time to establish the seperation of News and State.
My question is, can a station not play the music these licenses cover? Kinda like "podsafe" music. Maybe it's time for NPR to start using Creative Commons music exclusively. If enough do it, artist will begin to release more under CC licenses.
Wow, it never even occurred to me that someone would think of her show as politically oriented. I've heard about 30-40 interviews of hers over the last couple years on my drive home if it happened to be the right time and they were all with entertainers; most of which she seemed worried that they can't think of answers for themselves so she asks these very leading questions and then rambles on giving them their own answer until they realize she isn't going to stop until they interrupt her with their actual answer. :)
I prefer the Diane Rehm show for coverage of politics and news. (Well, the first hour, at least; the second hour is more like Terry Gross' interviews with entertainers.)
The new streaming royalty rates don't increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels, they just increase the royalties collected from streamers. The RIAA (ie SoundScan, and predecessors/competitors BMI & ASCAP) have never paid all of the collected royalties to its rightful owners. Instead, the collection agencies keep it for themselves. I hope you're not surprised.
So it's excellent news that NPR is fighting this move. I hope NPR's entry also encourages other well-positioned orgs to complain. These new rates completely eliminate hobbyist and personal streaming to friends, by keeping the $500 per year minimum fee that is now equal to the per-play fee for supporting many dozens of simultaneous listeners. That minimum should be totally discarded, even more important than lowering the arbitrarily high (but still somewhat affordable, until it rises again over the next couple/few years) per-play rates that also squeeze out noncommercial and small commercial webcasters.
--
make install -not war
I think one of their best is This American Life, a weekly show of snapshots of interesting events of everyday people. Their site has a pretty good description of each show, and you can download the most recent as a good old MP3.
Um, what the hell are you talking about? Not only is she not a lesbian, she's married for fuck's sake.
You want left? Try Pacifica Network News. NPR is middle of the road Volvo & cocker spaniel in conneticut stuff. Probably the problem is that the CNN&FOXes have pushed the right so far into the mainstream that the middle now looks like it is left by comparison.
I love The Diane Rehm Show for news and discussion of current events, especially on Fridays when they do a two-hour panel / call-in discussion of the week's current events.
Left, Right and Center is also a good, weekly discussion-style show over current events. Less listener interaction and too short, but still, generally good commentary.
And Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me is a hilarious weekly quiz / comedy show about current events and pop culture.
I catch all three of these, week-in, week-out. They're fantastic.
It's the perfect pleasure drug in Brave New World, but based on / inspired by an ancient mystical entheogenic drug.
SoMa is a district of San Francisco.
http://somafm.com/about/whatissoma.html has a few more definitions of soma.
Please quit picking on Fox News.
It is more to do with that BBC being the only news agency outside of the Islamic states to actually understand there is more than an Israeli perspective to the Middle East conflict. Admittedly they sometimes verge on being on the Palestinian's side, but heck I can turn on any of 50 other news channels to get the Israeli perspecitve, so I think its very worth while to the other side in a language that isn't Arabic. But I won't hide behind AC status to save my blessed karma.
All is fair in love and war...
Hard to imagine a lot of LPFMs competing directly with NPR for money. These are mostly small college radio stations, community / volunteer programs and vanity broadcasting. I give to NPR *AND* my college and to the local charities. The vast majority of donations to NPR are the standard $35, which likely isn't stopping anyone from giving something to others.
Why did I mention college? We set up the low power station at our college in 1979. The field survey was challenging due to the terrain, but we were able to do it. The interference rule were a bit of a challenge, but IIRC weren't as restrictive but still had to be dealt with. Like most small colleges, the money for the college station is funded directly out of the college budget. The bigger college stations are mostly already NPR affiliates.
I for one am glad NPR is there as well as the LPFMs. No commercial station and no LPFM would have been able to do what they did the other day - a story about conservapedia.com - where they counter wikipedia's perceived liberalism with posts contending that all kangaroos came from the two on Noah's ark. They alone in radio have the stones and the reach to get stuff like this out.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
one stream/station with up to 3000 listener is about $400 per month.
two streams/stations with up to 3000 listener is about $800 per month.
three to five streams/stations with up to 3000 listener is about $1000 per month.
More information about this. Swedish only.
What is "left" or "right" very much depends on where you stand. The problem with comments like this one is that what gets called "left" in the United States would count as some form of "right" in most other places in the world.
Want proof? Think about the last time you turned the dial to the socialist, communist, anarchist media outlets? Oh, yeah, that's right - those outlet's don't exist in the United States. You think that happened by accident?
Further, some people have done an analysis of NPR's guest list that stated the following:
Not only is it biased toward "official sources" and "corporations", it is sexist as well:
and you know what, I will get mad when NPR covers the White House and favors official sources. Why? Because their mandate was specifically to be an alternative to commercial media that would "promote personal growth rather than corporate gain" and "speak with many voices, many dialects." In terms of accomplishing that, it is a miserable failure.Is the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) organization the paid for (via proxy) by the RIAA, or the RIAA private DMCA persecution and enforcement organization?
... they get the right agencies/organizations to up the rates. These organizations and copyright don't represent or protect the artist they exist to exploit the artist and promote their corporatist/plutocrat gluttony for power and control of their customer-base.
... no one appears to notice that the balance is maintained to screew the public [What, HOW?]. As interest goes down ... property goes up and vice ... versa; So, the price can be high, with an adjustable in a short time of the loan-life both property and interest are highly inflated. As interest rates increase on inflation valued property, we proceed into an economic correction of repressive-recession to deplete any liquid assets (money in the bank), then as citizen financial problems and bankruptcies increase houses are sold cheap or foreclosed on, inflation increases decreasing buying power. Anyway, eventually you get back to the start of a "LOW INTEREST" cycle which is good for the folks that can afford a fixed rate mortgage. This is called churning, flipping, scalping ... assets are criminal prosecuted fraudulence in business, but churning, flipping, scalping ... when used by corporatist/plutocrats against the general public without legal or government representation is accepted as legal (well it ain't prosecuted/prevented).
... fraudulent products, pills, and gadgets are advertised and sold to the public and never prosecuted ... if they agree to stop hawking an offending product and introduce a different fraudulent products, pills, and gadgets that can still make money as well as the previous snake-oil products. ... there are far to many examples to list them all here or anyplace.
.... However, we do got the best totalitarian corporatist-socialism system, in which to live and raise your children, in the whole world. China, Russia, Mexico ... are just Wannabees. GOD BLESS AMERICA
This is as fascinating as other, newly legal, global organized crime [AKA: corporatist/plutocrat] activities.
RIAA wants more money
Loan/housing/building companies provide low-rate adjustable loans when the interest is very low, real property has highly [housing market] inflated value
Back 30/40 years ago 15% to 25% loan/credit rates were only obtained from "organized crime" loan-sharks. Today anyone with a credit card can get a legal loan-shark rate from legal federally certified "organized banks". I guess it means the credit card companies pledge not to break your legs or rape your daughter.
Big-tobacco, Fat-diet, sports
This ain't no democratic capitalist society in the USA, EU, Japan
Oh, incase y'all or congress ain't aware yet the general public and government is financially broke. Most poor folks know you can only live a little while on borrowed money before you file bankruptcy for your children and the USA future.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
No offense, but I'd much rather hear from policy makers and experts than what some Joe on the street thinks. If I want that, I can go down to the local bar and chew the fat. I like hearing from politicians and experts in their field because these are the people that I normally have zero access to. Frankly, the categories that you listed are very arbitrarily thrown together. Why would students be chucked into the category with the general public, and experts get chucked in with politicians. Does a grad student suddenly change categories in a year when they become an expert? Very arbitrary.
As for their bias towards men - I'm sure that is true, but it would be much more meaningful if you provided some statistics about how other stations rate. If NPR is better than average, they should be applauded. In the case of experts, I'm not even sure that I'd want equal representation of women since this would misrepresent the role that women play in our society - many fields are still dominated by men. NPR's role is to accurately report, not try to mold society into where we should be.
I agree that "Left" and "Right" are pretty ambiguous descriptions. However, I think most people would agree that NPR is slightly left-of-center in the US. They certainly won't make the people who voted for Nader happy, nor will Fox necessarily make the Limbaugh crowd happy.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
CBC has various weekly podcasts, including regional news highlights podcasts. It might not be what you or I would define as "regular", but they've at least been consistent.
FTFA: "The suggested new rates would increase to $.0008 per-play for 2006 (retroactively), $.0011 for 2007, $.0014 in 2008, $.0018 in 2009 and $.0019 for 2010"
Okay, so if we figure each time you play a song you owe $0.002 (rounding up for easy numbers), and on average you play 10 songs an hour (average 4 minutes each with 20 minutes for commercials/station ID), you're paying $0.02/hour. Over the entire day (and night) $0.48. Over an entire year $170.88... So how do they get from $170.88 to $120,000 (or the millions that some stations are claiming)?
I'm not saying anyone is lying about the cost, I just don't see how the costs are being calculated, anyone care to explain?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
NPR is more balanced than any other Newsmedia in the U.S. You want left leaning, go listen to Democracy now. It's funny, because as the nation swings left and right, NPR is perceived as right or left, respectively. During the clinton impeachment, many were arguing about how npr had swung right. And the underwriting. Get over it. Talking about Merc doesn't make me want pills. At least it's not "go buy a sandwich from mcdonalds!"
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
No offense, but if you'd rather hear from policy makers and experts, they already have dozens of media outlets that serve your needs. The United States needs more diversity of voices. We need more diversity of "experts". We need commentary from more people that are impacted from policies - rather than "expert" that have nothing at stake.
As for your claims of arbitary categories, it's not too hard really. Politicians and "experts" are typically "official sources". "Students" and the "general public" are not. You, yourself, make these distinctions in your own post saying that you prefer to hear "experts" rather than "some Joe" - and when they president farts (a politician, last I checked), it's news. It seems strange to me that you suddenly find the distinction arbitrary when someone else uses it.
Which brings us to what constitutes an "expert". We live in a culture where "experts" are people that write books on topics but don't know the first thing about them from the perspective of lived experience. Military experts who have never been in the military. Policy experts who aren't impacted by and don't know anyone who is impacted by their policies. Politicians than then go into the industries they regulated, or vice versa - because of their "expertise".
Being an expert is a rigged game that many people play for profit. If you like listening to experts, you should first read a book describing how the industry works:
Let's assume NPR is "slightly left-of-center". How does it get "left-of-center" when it follows the party line more than 60% of the time? Is it because other media outlets are following it 70%, 80%, 90% percent of the time? What does this say about the range of discourse we have in the media?
FAIR also has a good discussion of What is Wrong With the News? that identifies the problems as: corporate ownership, advertiser influence, official agendas, telecommunications policy, the PR industry, pressure groups, narrow range of debate, censorship and sensationalism. I think the narrow range of debate is most relevent for our discussion here:
This problem should be addressed everywhere. However, it should first be addressed in public formats - given their mandate and reason for existing, which is to represent alternative voices that don't get heard in mainstream media and to broaden the discourse.
There is nothing wrong with your argument, we are just ideologically opposed.
I already know how people feel about issues, and NPR does plenty of reporting on opinion polls. I want to hear from experts and policy makers. I also want to hear from labor and NGO leaders. However, and am pretty sure that I hear from them quite a bit on NPR... this is why I found the categories to be so arbitrary - why would the head of the AFL-CIO not be in the first category with politicians and experts? I'm not stupid - I realize that many "experts" are anything but. But surely you'd concede that even these faux-experts are better-informed than some man on the street? I'm sorry, but I really don't care what someone with absolutely no credentials at all has to say - I simply don't have enough time in my life to listen to every shmoe with an opinion.
Did you know that most people in this country were opposed to interracial marriage until 1991, and there is still something like a 35% opposition? I tend to not care much about what "regular people" think, because they frankly don't matter. Interracial marriage was made legal everywhere in 1967, back when 72% of the population was opposed. It was forced down the throats of an ignorant populace by the very establishment you decry. I think it also proves that it is much more important to stay plugged in with the pulse of the establishment than it is to keep up with what the masses think. Look at the war in Iraq. Most of the country wants the troops home... it should be open-and-shut, right? But no, congress can't even agree to agree to pull them out at some future date... this result would surprise you if you weren't keeping up with what was going on in the establishment.
Anyway, I think that NPR is left of center... just not very far left. FOX is further to the right than NPR is to the left, IMHO. I don't think that you will see a widely-listened-to radio station embrace either the far left or the far right, simply because there aren't that many potential customers. Though, I have to admit that some of the far-right groups are big enough for niche radio stations. But this is why the internet is so great - you can safely ignore radio and get your news from anywhere you please - even overseas. I love news.google.com because of the wide variety.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And if those stations only get 13% of their funding from CPB, as stated, that means at maximum NPR gets 15% of its money from CPB, directly or through member stations' dues. Less, actually -- according to the 2005 NPR Annual Report (it's a PDF on the link cited in my previous post), 39% of NPR's revenue for that year came from station programming fees.
So that's 13% of 39%, or 5.1% of the total. Factor in the 6% of stations' funding that comes from state and local governments -- again that's 6% of that 39% -- and we have another 2.3%.
So, 1-2% directly from the feds -- let's go with 2% for the sake of argument. Plus 5.1% from the feds via member stations. Plus 2.3% from state and local via member stations. That's just 9.4%, directly and indirectly.
Are you saying 90% doesn't qualify as "most"?
It's a share of voice question. If you are going to talk what share of voice corporations have in the media, then you need to identify the share of voice of different interests - such as organized labor. The question I find more interesting is what is the share of voice for unorganized labor? Who are the "experts" speaking for Wal-Mart, Starbucks and other non-unionized employees?
The problem with the credential question is who gets left out. I don't have time for stupid, uninformed people either, but I have less time for people trying to frame and shape my ideas for me - for their benefit.
Let's also not pretend that civil rights was an establishment move, shall we? Loving v. Virginia struck down laws against inter-racial marriage based on the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified almost 100 years earlier. The law is also has to be consistent in such a way that runs counter to "the establishment".
As for the war in Iraq, I would agrue that the topic of diversity of voices in media is exactly why "the establishment" can continue with their failed foriegn policy. I would wager that more American's still believe the stories they were told about WMD, Iraq/Al Qaeda connections, Iraq as a front on the war on terror than know that Hussien and Osama bin Laden were supported and funded by the U.S. government during the last American "war on terror" that was run by the same "establishment". To say such a thing is to be branded a conspiracy theorist - irrespective of the facts.
Further, if the top 4 advertising holding companies combined with the top few media companies, control the vast majority of the "news" and "information" of the world, just how diverse is news.google.com or even Factiva or Nexis for that matter? To pretend that you can just look elsewhere is to be incredibly niave.
The producers of the The Diane Rehm Show do a good job of finding interesting guests and topics. But Diane Rehm is a miserable interviewer. She sounds brain damaged. It is painful to listen to her. The show is much better when there is a guest host.
"1) The costs are per listener. That's $170/year/listener, now figure they have over 10k listeners..."
That would explain it a bit better. Thanks. And if you're going to post something worth reading... don't be a coward!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Why did it take so long for the 14th Amendment to get enforced? I'd argue it had to wait until the establishment was ready to enforce it. The fact is that for 100 years, interracial couples were not allowed to get married, and 78% of the population support this situation... the point of law used to reverse this situation is not really all that important of a detail.
:) I don't think the problem of voice is a big as you do - I think that what you are seeing is just marginal opinions getting marginalized... in other words, the media's role should not be to influence people's opinions, but to report on them. Of course, this ideal is silly in the real world, and what you see is the big news outlets trying to pander to the biggest demographic that they can, so everything comes out fairly homogenized. Given the limited amount of frequency spectrum, and the costs involved with running a radio station, I'm not sure that a solution exists to mass media being centered on the mainstream.
I'd also argue that there's not too much that can be done about people stupid enough to fall for propaganda, and they aren't really worth having on your side anyway. You can try to control the media and win them over to your cause, but it won't really do you much good in the long run. Look at what can be done in spite of popular disapproval.
As for voice, you are right to a point - there is no organized face of unorganized workers... but in practice, unions do raise the issues affecting unorganized workers. After all, it is in their interest to bring them into the union fold. You certainly hear criticism of Wal-Mart on NPR - not so much on Fox
The nice thing about the internet is that a couple of pissed-off Wal-Mart workers can anonymously throw up a web site with their grievances on it, and with a bit of savvy marketing and a lot of luck they can actually get their voice heard. This was simply not possible pre-internet. The best that they could hope for was a local news crew coming out and giving them 30 seconds of air time, and even that was a long shot.
Of course, the cynic in me thinks that Wal-Mart workers had the ability and time to do such a thing, they wouldn't be Wal-Mart workers. I'm not sure how to give a voice to those people, and it's sort of the age-old disenfranchisement discussion.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Of course you don't hide behind being an AC. Antisemitism is the new black.
The Left's new desire for a Final Solution to Peace in the Middle East is sickening.
What liberal minded person thinks that strapping bombs on your children is acceptable. What ceases fire in the last 40 years has not been broken by the Arabs?
The Arabs don't want peace; they want the genocide of the Jewish race. And they tell EVERYONE that OVER and OVER and OVER. Why doesn't the left believe them? I guess it is a case of a liar never believing anyone else.
Moses wonders around in the dessert for 40 years and finds the only place without oil, and somehow the Jews are the oppressors. The BBC is a racist bigoted organization.
it sure beats the hell out of the crappy public domain classical that they play here
and All-Talk NPR doesn't expose the soft-white, racist, sexist, Euro-centric, underbelly of NPR Classical.
At least that's how it is in Vermont - all dead white guys, all day long (with breaks for news and a 20-minute weather forecast at noon). Maybe other NPR's play other types of classical music representative of our diverse culture?
At least the Jazz is good at night.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)