This is from www.sourcewatch.org.
In the United States, the Republican Party uses a network of conservative foundations, coordinated by the Philanthropy Roundtable, and described in an extensive report (March 2004) by Jerry M. Landay for Mediatransparency.org, supporting conservative think tanks, industry-friendly experts and subsidized conservative media that systematically spread their messages throughout the political and media establishment. Typically, the message starts when conservative voices begin making an allegation (e.g., Democratic candidates are engaged in "hate-mongering" with regard to Bush). Columns are written on this theme, first in conservative media (including blogs), but eventually appearing in mainstream media like the New York Times. This process can be used to turn an unsupported allegation or a partisan talking point into an "accepted fact."
Maureen Dowd, in a New York Times column run on 15 February 2004, described the deceptive condition as one where "the bogus stories ... ricocheted through an echo chamber of government and media, making it sound as if multiple, reliable sources were corroborating the same story."
To influence the media, conservatives have also set up several organizations that serve as recruiting, training and career advancement programs for budding journalists. On university campuses, conservative foundations support several networks of conservative professors, including the National Association of Scholars and the Collegiate Network of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which links and provides funds to more than 70 conservative student papers. The student papers in turn serve as conduits to the mainstream media, through organizations such as the National Journalism Center that provides training, ideological indoctrination and a job bank that helps conservative student journalists begin their careers with internships and permanent job placements at publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, Fox News, Time, Newsweek, and the Associated Press.
Opinion pollsters and image makers such as Frank Luntz, Michael Deaver, Ed Rollins, Wirthlin Worldwide and Zogby International help develop the messages that echo in the echo chamber, by identifying hot-button "cultural" issues such as guns, abortion, family values and the flag that have enabled the party of privilege to position itself as the party with which lower-middle and middle-class voters identify.
Part of the "echo chamber" effect relies not only on repeating a given stance through as many separate channels as possible, but on casting alternative sources of information and opinion as doing the same thing in the opposite direction. Long-standing accusations of the "liberal-dominated media", suggesting that the bulk of mass media today forms some sort of liberal echo chamber, denies the idea that the reverse may in fact be the case.
Although conservatives pioneered the "echo chamber" technique, they are not the only people to use it. The Hill newspaper reported that Kerry campaign officials Joe Lockhart and Laura Nichols asked House and Senate press secretaries "to schedule their bosses on television and radio so that Democrats could create an 'echo chamber' where the sounding of pro-Kerry spin would create its own reality," following the first 2004 presidential debate on September 30.[1]
Examples
- David Brock, a conservative journalist for the American Spectator, received $11,000 in funding from the John M. Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation to support attacks on University of Oregon law professor Anita Hill, after Hill testified before Congress that she had been sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Brock wrote an article attacking Hill and later a book, titled The Real Anita Hill. He later regretted writing the book and wrote a mea culpa titled Blinded by the Right, in which he admitted that his writers were "a witches' brew of fact, allegation, hearsay, speculation, opinion, and invective. ... I didn't know what good reporting is. Like a kid playing with a loaded gun, I didn't appreciate the difference between a substantiated charge and an unsubstantiated one. In fact, Brock stated, "Every source I relied on either thought Thomas walked on water or had a virulent animus toward Hill. I had no access to Hill's supporters, and therefore no understanding of their motivations, no responses to any of their charges, and no knowledge of whatever incriminating evidence they might have gathered against Thomas that was not introduced in the hearing. ... The conspiracy theory I invented about the Thomas-Hill case could not possibly have been true, because I had absolutely no access to any of the supposed liberal conspirators. ... All of my impressions of the characters I was writing about were filtered through their conservative antagonists, all of whom I believed without question."
- Brock also says that the "Troopergate" allegations against Bill Clinton were instigated by Peter Smith, a conservative financier and top contributor to Newt Gingrich's political action committee, GOPAC.
Brock says he received $5,000 initially from Smith to investigate allegations (later proven baseless) that Clinton had fathered a child with an African-American prostitute in Arkansas. "I was programmed to spring to action like a trained seal," Brock recalls in his book. "Peter offered me $5,000 for my trouble, not through the Spectator but paid directly to me by check; getting by on my Anita Hill book advance, I was a whore for the cash. Although accepting a payment like this was most unusual and unethical for a journalist, in my mind it was no different from taking money from politically interested parties like the Olin and Bradley foundations."
- During the 2000 elections, the media echo chamber claimed falsely that Democratic Party presidential candidate Al Gore had pretended he invented the Internet, claimed he and his wife were the role model for characters in Love Story, and repeated a number of other false stories about Gore that painted him as someone with a bad habit of telling lies.
- In the buildup to war in Iraq, the echo chamber repeated and the Bush administration's claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, was tied to Al Qaeda, and that the people of Iraq would welcome a U.S. invasion as "liberation."
- "News outlets ideologically allied with Bush have been happy to assist in confusing the public" "That half or more Americans think Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attack -- perhaps the most media-covered event in our history -- stands as a horrific indictment of U.S. media today. Such levels of ignorance can't be found in other countries." [3] (http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1201-13.htm)
- Newsweek Magazine and NBC television partnered for a week of unbalanced promotion of corporate interests. [4] (http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/tort/media/)
- Major New Study on Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass Destruction (http://www.cissm.umd.edu/documents/WMDstudy_full.pdf) concludes[5] (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0309-12.htm), [6] (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000456632):
- Many stories stenographically reported the incumbent administration's perspectives on WMD, giving too little critical examination of the way officials framed the events, issues, threats and policy options.
- Too few stories offered alternative perspectives to the "official line" on WMD surrounding the Iraq conflict.
- most journalists accepted the Bush administration linking the "war on terror" inextricably to the issue of WMD.
- most media outlets represented WMD as a "monolithic menace" without distinguishing between types of weapons and between possible weapons programs and the existence of actual weapons
- Knight Ridder (March 15, 2004) reported that "A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress
to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles [in major English-language news outlets worldwide] based on information provided by the INC's Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq. The assertions in the articles reinforced President Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein should be ousted because he was in league with Osama bin Laden,
was developing nuclear weapons and was hiding biological and chemical weapons. Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden." [Italics added.]
Telstra's codecutters
The Nationals are busily ranting about the suggestion that Telstra's 'new wave' of mass communications will require subscribers to invest in new handsets (Telstra pressed on rural services).
Telstra has signalled it will move with determination into that realm where all good is dispensed, for a sliding scale of fees, from the internet. This trajectory has some obstacles to overcome, and I sense that, as shareholders start to get the willies, John Howard & Sol Trujillo will be facing each down in a tense re-enactment of one of the 'samurai stare' scenes from the Kill Bill series.
The territory where Telstra is pointing, though not necessarily actually headed, is populated by some heavy dudes. Rupert Murdoch, the Packers, Disney, Microsoft all come easily to mind.
Let's digress just to one side, and have look at one of Microsoft's significant contributions to cultural enlightenment - the Xbox. In Getting Xbox 360 to Market (I hope this is still free access):
... The Xbox operation is centered at two factory sites in southern China, each run by separate contract manufacturers - Flextronics Corp. and Wistron Corp. - as a hedge in case one stumbles. Also near these sites are makers of many of the parts, from cooling fans to capacitors, and the 30 or so pieces of plastic that form the box. Using local suppliers means a lower risk that parts will arrive late. Local parts also eliminate the need to navigate Chinese import rules. Microsoft and IBM started production of the processor -- the heart of the Xbox 360 -- in early July, gradually increasing production over the summer. Those chips now join a parade of other parts flowing to the Chinese factories: hard drives from Japan and Korea; graphics chips that were designed by Ontario, Canada's ATI Technologies Inc. and come from Taiwan; and buttons for the machine's controller from Lacrosse, Wis.
In all, 250 suppliers make parts for the machine. ...
On the other hand, Telstra recently announced, as part of its new strategy, it will make a Bold bid to simplify customer relations (no link; pay-for-view only)
Telstra has outlined bold plans to reduce its 1200 computer systems by up to 80 per cent and declared it would use only "off-the-shelf" computer software in a significant departure from years spent modifying applications.
Their software engineers must have been doing, and still do, a lot of custom coding. A codemaster who is in charge of a circumscribed set of programs will, if he or she is true to the type, come to regard the software with jealousy. It will become a thing of great promise, a guarantee of the 30-year mortgage, so long as the code needs one of a diminishing number of experts to disentangle it. When the know-nothing nabobs threaten to modernise the application, by moving it onto a proprietary program, the codemaster will adopt a defensive attitude. The poor engineer has probably been telling management for years to give him more tools so the programs can be maintained properly, and integrated with safety. But the pleas have been interpreted as ignorant justification to build another self-supporting code base. So a deep rift has been dug between software engineering and management. It won't be bridged by off-the-shelf or out-of-the-box applications, bought at great cost, either. The management of the 'human resources' side of the business will not be pretty, either. Some of the code-keepers will get browned off, and leave. But many will not be equipped to move on and upgrade their skills, and will dig in for the long haul. Under the new Workplace Reforms, enough of them may be able to band together and offer realistic alternatives to the current Board's intentions.
If Telstra is, truly, riddled by so much legacy and proprietary code residing inside systems that cannot communicate with each other with speed and efficiency, then Telstra's days are numbered. The generation of customers that Trujillo is looking at, to buy Telstra's services at peak rates, will not tolerate substandard delivery to their gizmos.
From a review of Xbox 360 as media centre extender:
... I suspect that the release of the Xbox 360 is going to be one of two breakthrough events that take the Media Center concept mainstream. The 360 is a mass-market device (the original Xbox sold 22m units worldwide, and the Xbox 360 will presumably do better than that) that is built from the ground up to distribute digital content around the house. Having a Media Center extender built into a hot videogame console will go a long way to legitimizing that concept. ...
There's lot more on Xbox at Slashdot - Prepping For The 360
For Telstra's future as a retail outlet for Microsoft products, the thing savvy users will want to know about the Xbox is - how easy will it be to grab clips from TV, rip audio files, and transfer them to your iPod?
Google is making it easier to do all of that.
From Google-Mart by Cringely:
... Two years ago Google had one data center. Today they are reported to have 64. Two years from now, they will have 300-plus. The advantage to having so many data centers goes beyond simple redundancy and fault tolerance. They get Google closer to users, reducing latency. They offer inter-datacenter communication and load-balancing using that no-longer-dark fiber Google owns. But most especially, they offer super-high bandwidth connections at all peering ISPs at little or no incremental cost to Google.
Where some other outfit might put a router, Google is putting an entire data center, and the results are profound. Take Internet TV as an example. Replicating that Victoria's Secret lingerie show that took down Broadcast.com years ago would be a non-event for Google. The video feed would be multicast over the private fiber network to 300+ data centers, where it would be injected at gigabit speeds into each peering ISP. Viewers watching later would be reading from a locally cached copy. Yeah, but would it be Windows Media, Real, or QuickTime? It doesn't matter. To Google's local data center, bits are bits and the system is immune to protocols or codecs. For the first time, Internet TV will scale to the same level as broadcast and cable TV, yet still offer soemthing different for every viewer if they want it. ...
Read more about it at Slashdot (Google's Secret Plans For All That Dark Fiber?) and try to decide whether it's fact or fiction.
[added later]
From Deal takes Cisco to the consumer (subscription required)
... With the deal, Cisco will, for the first time, be able to sell digital television equipment that provides high-definition programming, shows movies on demand, and has an array of interactive services. Scientific-Atlanta, the second-largest provider of these set-top boxes, and Motorola, the largest, have effectively held a duopoly in this market.
"Video is emerging as the key strategic application in the service provider triple-play bundle of consumer entertainment, communication and online services," said Cisco president and chief executive John Chambers. ...
Telstra announced Cisco would be one of its partners in weaving the magic carpet.
Trujillo wants more profit from Foxtel
... During his presentation to analysts last week, Mr Trujillo said that his planned $11billion modernisation of Telstra's network and IT systems would help to deliver more Telstra customers to Foxtel. ...
From Telstra's iPTV What Does It Mean:
... Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) either heralds a revolution in the way we'll watch TV or it's been outrageously over-hyped and could be a big flop. However I am tipping that it will be slow to kick off and when Telstra launch their new 3G Network the service will really take off.
To put things in perspective, USA Today has called IPTV an 'infant, unproven technology with a geeky name'. But the ability to pipe TV content over broadband has the potential to turn the broadcasting world upside-down.
IPTV shouldn't be confused with Internet video. It has nothing to do with P2P file-sharing or watching a downloaded DivX rip of Lost on your PC. Nor does it describe watching a low-resolution QuickTime or Windows Media clip in a tiny web-window. Instead, IPTV is all about providing high-quality multi-channel television and streamed/downloadable video, all delivered via the web's IP protocols and displayed on the TV set in your living room. IPTV is happening now. France Telecom's MaLigne TV has been providing live TV and Video on Demand (VoD) since 2004 and FastWeb is doing the same in Italy. There are big plans for IPTV in the US, where SBC is betting $4 billion on the hope that the technology will bigger than big. ...
Telstra and Rupert
From the cited article in Slashdot's How To Write Unmaintainable Code:
In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the simplest changes. Further, if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even guarantee yourself a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell of maintaining the code. Then again, if you followed all these rules religiously, even you wouldn't be able to maintain the code!
You don't want to overdo this. Your code should not look hopelessly unmaintainable, just be that way. Otherwise it stands the risk of being rewritten or refactored. ...
Mark Jones, 'IT's boom time as Telstra spends $10bn' in Financial Review ($2.50):
The embattled technology sector didn't see it coming: a $10 billion shot in the arm from the nation's largest telecommunications carrier. After facing the lingering effects of the dotcom slump for most of this year, suddenly groups such as Cisco, Alcatel, Ericsson, Accenture, Siebel and Kenan have taken prime positions in contracts totalling about $7billion as part of Telstra's next- generation fibre-optic network plans. Now a host of other technology companies is rushing to score a slice of the remaining $3 billion earmarked by Telstra to complete its network transformation. A series of hotly contested tenders is under way at the telecommunications giant, with likely contenders including many well-known suppliers such as IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard. Enterprise software maker SAP and IT services company Capgemini are also hopeful of profiting from Telstra's big spend. But the tenders and signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) are a double-edged sword for technology makers eager to bolster their balance sheets. Telstra, famous for its history of botched technology projects, has firmly shifted responsibility for meeting an aggressive set of deadlines for its network construction to its vendors, and expects significant commitment of international resources by its partners. ...
A letter to Financial Review ($2.50) Nov 22 by Peter Burke, Leura, NSW ('Quality of service the key for Telstra'):
I am not yet convinced that Sol Trujillo has a clear vision of the future. I agree with Jennifer Hewett's scepticism on Telstra's stance on the next-generation fibre-optic network, but I do understand Trujillo's side of the argument ("Plumber threatens to pull the plug", November 16). Then Emma Connors and Mark Jones reported Trujillo as saying that "Telstra's new 'supercharged' 3G network would succeed where other wireless technologies have failed by becoming a technology for the masses. 'How many people use wi-fi or wi-max today? Not a lot. It's not easy to use . . . for the masses'." ("Telstra to build new phone network", November 16). Wrong. Right now, our pre wi-max networks, iBurst and Unwired, are booming, complete technological ignoramuses and all. Unwired will become fully wi-max compatible next year. Wi-max is 4G [fourth generation] now and is at least two years ahead of forthcoming mobile-phone standards like HSDPA [high speed downlink packet access] (3.5G). Australia has the largest installed base of pre wi-max. Why is this so? Could this be related to Telstra's failed ADSL strategy? Using ADSL in Australia, when you exceed a meagre monthly download quota, they charge by the megabyte. Standard practice elsewhere is to reduce the broadband data rate, but charge a fixed monthly fee. On top of this, ADSL here costs about 10 times as much per megabyte as wi-max will cost. Could it be that Telstra installed the wrong equipment in the branch exchanges? Applications that would use the speed of fibre-optics, such as downloading an HD [high-definition] movie, will require a further tenfold drop in price per megabyte to be viable. If this were to happen, however, would it cannibalise Telstra's existing sources of revenue like voice calls? In my view, the key to Telstra's survival is a concept known as "quality of service" that I liken to running an airline. Thirty years ago, most people travelled economy, paid the same price, and about one third of the seats were empty. The airlines found a way to ensure that every seat was sold, and collected extra revenue by adding business class. In an IP [internet protocol] network, voice and gaming data must jump queues and so should pay a premium. So also should big data downloads during peak periods. Does Trujillo understand this?
John Durie in 'Murdoch sizes up Telstra' (Financial Review, $2.50) writes:
... At a fund manager and analysts briefing in Sydney yesterday Murdoch is reported as confiding that Telstra's management knew a lot about telephone and the internet but not a lot about dealing with the Australian government and regulators. The News Corp boss is a master of dealing with the two. Telstra's new management team's obvious ignorance about Australia and its institutions is a huge hurdle, which one would have expected the Telstra board or other managers to help overcome. Maybe the new managers are refusing to listen. ...
Rupert asserts elsewhere that this was the first time he had met Sol. Whoever tipped Sol for the job has done Rupert a favour, though. Hmmmm.
on a much more fundamental level .....
Mr John Rolland,
Head of Customer Sales & Service,
Telstra Corporation Limited. November 21, 2005.
CC: Mr Sol Trujillo, Chief Executive Officer.
Dear Mr Rolland,
Thank you for your letter of November 17, 2005, wherein you thanked me for continuing to use Telstra services in my new home.
Unfortunately, the promptness of the delivery of your letter has not been matched by the delivery of the service promised by Telstra.
As Head of Customer Sales & Service, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the single most important thing to any customer is that supplier PROMISES ARE KEPT.
When promises are not kept, the customer can have no confidence or trust in the supplier: regardless of the quality of their products & technology; regardless of their financial strength & regardless of how many times their CEO or other executives tell them how important they are as a customer.
Mr Rolland, your organization has made a number of service promises to me over the past week & has kept none of them. These included:
· on Monday, November 14, promising to install a new telephone service at my new address by Friday, November 18
· on Saturday, November 19, promising to pursue the completion of the installation & contact me today with a progress update on the matter
It seems somewhat ironic that, coincidental to this experience, I received your letter thanking me for my custom, in particular when you consider that I am unable to place an order for further Telstra products, because of the non-completion of the original telephone installation.
It also seems to me that Telstra will be far more likely to succeed in achieving its ambitions for the future, if it set about establishing a culture where its people understand that keeping one’s word is the most important behaviour that the organization can exhibit. Without that, everything-else is a waste of time.
Please note that, having made numerous calls to Telstra in the past week to try & obtain your services & having received the above empty promises, I now have no intention of contacting you - beyond forwarding this letter.
It will be interesting to see if anyone from your organization contacts me to address these issues & if they do, how long it will take.
Sincerely,
More of same from Moyers
Lewisa, and passers by, check out this speech by Bill Moyers.
Click. Bill Moyers: Muting the conversation of democracy.
Antony Lowenstein has something similar -
Our media lacking true self-criticism
Antony Loewenstein argues the independence of main stream media and influential political commentators is being compromised.
Thanks TG
Thanks TG Kerr.
Amusing yet true cartoon
Too true
Just today, Beazley opens door to four-year term
He wants flexible terms. Can't he read? Fixed, Fixed, Fixed. Three
years.
Ted Rall is good value, too.
great article
We need more pieces like this on the equivalent 'echo chambers' in Australia. Is anyone interested in setting up an Australian version of Sourcewatch?
Sourcewatch
Sadly, ABC's Media Watch is a very paltry imitation of same.
Starting!
I think we should start with the laughably named 'centre for independent studies'. Marion Maddox apparently had an excellent expose on them in her book 'God Under Howard' which I have on order from the library.
Anyone else hear read it & care to share what she had to say about the Centre?
CIS on sourcewatch
There is actually an entry for the CIS on Sourcewatch, but it's only a few lines at the moment - needs expanding. Maybe instead of starting an Australian sourcewatch, we could try to get a few people to expand its Australian content?
I grudgingly admire how cleverly innocuous the "Centre for Independent Studies" sounds - as does the "Institute for Public Affairs" (which should of course be called the "Institute for Privatisation Advocacy").
The closest equivalent on the progressive side in Australia is the Mineral Policy Institute which sounds like the exact opposite of what it is. Very smart. Helps when they try to get information out of mining companies.