"Watching the Watchdog"

Dunbar’s “Spinning Door” theory addresses the tendency of FCC officials to take high level jobs in the industries they were once charged with regulating. Dunbar says, “The truth is that such moves from government to industry and back again are utterly routine at the FCC—standard operating procedure” (p. 133). This kind of relationship between FCC officials and industry is unethical and this union is often advantageous for all parties involved. When Powell’s former senior legal advisor, Susan Eid, moved to Hughes Electronics Corp, company president and CEO Chase Carey said “Her vast public policy expertise and in-depth knowledge of the Beltway undoubtedly will serve Hughes well in our nation’s capital” (p. 133).

Additionally, big corporations pay millions of dollars to have FCC officials flown out to lavish conferences at the industry’s expense in order to speak on or merely observe panels. This gives the industry a unique opportunity to develop more than merely a business relationship with FCC officials. This practice calls into question the ability of FCC officials to remain objective when considering proposals from industries that paid for them to be wined and dined in places like Las Vegas or London.

The FCC various industries also conduct closed doors meetings (termed “ex parte”) where the meeting is not recorded and no minutes are taken. This allows for industries to lobby FCC officials for deregulation without the prying eye of the public.

Even Powell, the former chairman of the FCC says that the industry’s influence over the FCC sometimes goes too far. In the article “The Fight for the Future of Media” earlier in the book, Newman and Scott describe Powell’s attempt to further deregulate the industry and allow for a single corporation to own media monopolies in cities. Since the article “Who is Watching the Watchdog” in 2003, there was a degree of public outcry in response to Powell’s proposed plans and on June 24, 2004 the U.S Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the FCC’s attempts to privatize commercial interests. This shows that people are becoming more aware and more outspoken about corporate control of the media. Though the rebellion is slow, awareness is the first step to reform and it seems to me that people are starting to more often question issues of media control and people are starting to feel like they are more entitled to have input in the media than people have been in the past.

Capturing Cool

Successful advertising campaigns are becoming harder and harder for corporations to achieve. With today’s ability to use TiVo to bypass completely television commercial advertising, companies are losing revenue fast. Additionally, consumers are becoming more and more skeptical towards blatant advertising. To combat this, companies employ people to study society and individuals and figure out how to design a campaign that would best appeal to the desired demographic.

The PBS Frontline documentary “Merchants of Cool” discusses how the current most desirable demographic is teenagers because they want to be cool and are therefore easily impressionable and with their large disposable income they make the perfect consumers. Companies often focus on the idea of “cool” for their campaigns in order to appeal to this challenging demographic. The idea of “cool” is a difficult concept to cash in on. Cool is ever-changing and once something cool is used too much in the mainstream for corporate purposes it becomes entirely uncool and is then an ineffective campaign. Because it is so hard to capture and market the essence of cool, companies have increasingly tried to forge an emotional connection with their products in the minds of consumers.

Neuromarketing, lovemarks and creating the association between a lifestyle and a product are all ways that companies try to convince consumers that they have a deeper bond with a product than they do in actuality. Because consumers have become skeptical and jaded towards traditional marketing strategies, companies are trying to tap into the unconscious portion of people’s minds. This technique is both effective and scary. The unconscious, by definition, is beyond the realm of what the individual can actively control. When advertisers create an emotional bond with their product that impacts consumers on an emotional, unconscious level, the consumer has no way of combating of this association and often is unable to pinpoint why he feels a certain way about a certain product but just knows that he has to buy Nike sneakers because Nike isn’t just a sneaker, it’s athleticism.

“Cool hunters” are culture spies that can penetrate society in a way that corporations are unable. They live amongst the target consumer demographics and they find out what things appeal to them in order to translate these ideals into an effective market strategy. Some companies use focus groups in which they invite teenagers to talk about their lives in general and use that feedback to improve their campaigns.

Some companies are more manipulative than that. Under the radar marketing firms such as Cornerstone don’t waste their time asking for feedback from their demographic. Cornerstone sometimes pays employees to enter into teen chatrooms and fraudulently poses as members of their target demographic while singing the praises of their product. They also pay hip-hop artists to endorse their product subtly. Consumers see their favorite hip-hop artists casually drinking Sprite and they are more effectively persuaded to consume Sprite than they would be if they were watching a Sprite commercial on television.

Product placement is also an effective way for marketers to subtly get their products into everyone’s mind. Some scenes in movies are created solely for the purpose of subtly endorsing a product. I recently watched another documentary on product placement and this documentary gave the example of John Candy in one of his movies. In the scene he is sitting on a train with a friend and eating lunch. He casually turns to his friend and asks “do you want a Coke?” His friend replies “No thanks,” John Candy finishes his lunch, they arrive at their destination and the scene ends. The scene didn’t seem at all out of place in the movie. It didn’t interrupt the flow of the plotline and it didn’t seem unnatural. This scene, however, was inserted into the movie solely to advertise for Coke. Because characters in movies have to wear real clothing and drive actual cars and eat at actual restaurants, it is impossible for movies to avoid subtly referencing various brands, but it is becoming increasingly harder to tell if a movie or a television show is referencing brands in a way relevant and justified by the context or if we’re actually just watching an exceedingly long commercial, in actuality.

Across media marketing is another way that companies can subtly wheedle their product into the minds of consumers. Many corporations own media conglomerates over many different media mediums. Time Warner, for example, is one of the largest corporations in America. When Time Warner’s popular movie Twister was released into theaters, Time Magazine (a magazine often considered highly credible and without agenda) coincidentally featured a cover story about Twister. Because the frequency with which the media discusses particular topics guides what topics society considers of import, this was a brilliant strategy to try to garner interest in both the new movie and the magazine. A consumer watches Twister and thinks “hey, I liked that movie, but I don’t really know much about tornadoes—oh hey, I can read more about them in Time magazine!” or a consumer reads the article in Time magazine first and sees an advertisement for the movie and thinks “I just happened to read an article about Twisters and they’re pretty interesting. Wow, what a coincidence that there’s also a movie about them out right now that I can see. I’m going to buy a movie ticket.”

Companies are increasingly using more tactics that fall below our conscious awareness. This selling of brands as lifestyles or forging of intense emotional associations is a way for companies to sell their product to consumers without consumers even being aware that they’re being marketed to. Because consumers are becoming more skeptical and aware of corporate campaigns, these manipulative marketing strategies are currently the most effective way to sell their products to consumers and to ensure that their product is always first and foremost in a consumer’s thoughts. As with all campaigns, consumers eventually become aware and the campaign dramatically loses its efficacy. Eventually the time will come when the majority of consumers will realize and protest current concepts in advertising and marketing. Neuromarketing, under the radar marketing and guerilla marketing are going to be the advertising strategies of the future. People are unable to control their unconscious; so what better a way to ensure the success of a product than to forge such a strong emotional product bond that people become slaves to their unconscious desire for Nikes— any company can make a running shoe, but only Nike sneakers make athletes.

Wirelessing the World Quiz

1. CWNs are Community Wireless Networks that allow free wireless access for the community. This allows for equal access to information for all people in the community regardless of socio-economic status. Within society there is a digital divide separating those who have access to new technologies and media information and those who do not. Those with affluence are able to afford computers with high-speed internet access which provides them with a large advantage over communities of low socioeconomic status who can not afford this access. CWNs provide everyone access to the same high-speed information, creating information equality for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds.

2. Internet users spend a very small percentage of their time on the internet actually using the bandwith allocated to them by their internet service providers. Because ISPs know this, and consumers often do not, providers often oversell their bandwith and consumers are forced to pay higher prices for bandwith that their providers know they will never use. Bundle packages and interoperability also allow businesses to sell products only compatible with other products that they sell. This not only allows businesses to sell more of their products to consumers that truly believe that they can only buy same-brand products for maximum efficacy but it allows corporations to maintain monopolies and push smaller competitors out of the market.

3. Corporations who have the money to spend are able to pay huge premiums to control new technologies before future competition has the opportunity to afford these new technologies. These corporations then make back the money they spent on the premiums by jacking up the prices for their consumers. On example of this is Motorola's buying of XtremeSpectrum (an Ultra-Wideband (UWB)) in 2005. Before this product was even properly tested and before standards were officially set, Motorola purchased thus UWB in an effort to secure its authority over UWB protocol standards. Because these large corporations essentially own the market smaller competitors are forced to declare bankruptcy. The corporations that forced these competitors under then buy the assets of these failed ventures (as T-Mobile bought out MobileStar in 2001) giving these corporations an even stronger monopoly empire and resulting in fewer large corporate conglomerates owning more and more of the wireless market.

The Perpetual Debt Cycle

4. What needs be changed to allow the creation of a "sustainable economy"?

The video “Money as Debt” discusses the fact that because the general population has no conception of the term ‘exponential’ the fact that the U.S. experiences 3% economic growth per year appears to be a good thing and convinces the masses that our current system is working and working well. Because the 3% is a 3% increase from the previous year’s total, this is a 3% exponential increase. In order for the economy to sustain its similarly exponentially increasing amount of debt, it must continue to grown economically exponentially as well—which calls for the exponentially increasing consumption of a limited amount of economic resources. Because the growth is exponential and the amount of available resources is limited, it seems that in the current system there is no way to sustain our lifestyle forever.

“Money as Debt” proposes several ideas that could help us move away from this debt cycle and the resulting rampant consumption of our resources and move towards a sustainable economy.

One idea is to advocate for honest money which the video defines as gold- or silver-based money. This would seriously limit the amount of fake money that banks can produce because all of the fake money produced by the bank would need to include some element of value in the form of gold or silver. Currently, banks manufacture millions of dollars in paper money. Because we have an essentially unlimited supply of paper, the banks can essentially print off as much money as they need to finance the inexhaustible amount of loan applications on which they depend to run their empire.

Another interesting idea is the concept of a local exchange trading system. The banks print off enough money to cover the cost of the loans allocated but not enough money to cover the high interest rates associated with these loans. This results in an economy in a perpetual cycle of borrowing just enough money to never be able to pay back the debt in full. In a local exchange trading system banks loan with no interest. Instead of depending on the practice of usury (formally considered an immoral practice) to make money off of money loaned, banks could require the debt be paid by labor. A certain amount of work would have a specified monetary value that would allow the individual to pay off his or her loans while simultaneously benefiting the community rather than solely benefiting the banks and perpetuating the economic debt cycle.

The video “Money as Debt” calls for change and makes the argument that the current economic system is essentially a form of slavery. The only difference between this new form of slavery and its historic connotations is that under the current form, it is impossible to distinguish as a form of slavery because the relationship between the citizen and the bank is an impersonal one, whereas in the traditional idea of slavery there is a clear identification of master and slave.

The FCC

1. Do broadcasters use radio and television to quickly and effectively respond to the local communities needs and interests? Give examples to support your answer.

Television largely does not respond to local communities’ needs and interests. Most Television networks are owned by large corporations that have more to gain from catering to the interests of as many viewers as possible at once which makes addressing interests of the local community almost impossible. There are some public access stations but they seem to be mostly an empty gesture. Local public access channels generally serve the purpose of humoring high school or college students looking to practice their broadcasting skills. Rarely do my local public access channels address the real concerns of the community.

Radio stations address community interests more than television. Radio stations broadcast over a much smaller area than television stations and can provide more audience-specific information. The audience is often encouraged to call in and give feedback. Despite these things, however, most of the bigger radio stations have frequencies that broadcast over the area of multiple communities and so often the information isn’t specific to an individuals particular community. Additionally, the information broadcasted by radio often mimics the messages of the more impersonal television media.

2. Are there certain kinds of local programming (Public Media Values) that should be available, but are not being provided by broadcasters? what could some examples of these be?

Mainstream media has a vested interested in fighting open access to the airwaves because allowing broader access to the media could destabilize the old media system by which mainstream media corporations benefit. The smart radio that Newman and Scott reference could be one way of making public media values available. Smart radios would allow for the representation of communities which are underrepresented (if represented at all) in mainstream media.

3. What could the Federal Communication Commission do to promote localism in broadcasting? Explain three of these examples of public-service-oriented projects that are already in process across the US.

In an attempt to provide affordable and ubiquitous access to media a municipal broadband systems and community wireless network project seems to be one of the most promising routes. One of the largest endeavors is Utah’s UTOPIA (Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency) project. Utah proposes the installation of fiber-optic cables in the homes of its citizens that allows for the capability of high-speed digital television and telephone services. Another public-service-oriented project in the works are community wireless networks that would allow access to broadband information in especially rural areas, for example, where there are not yet any wired networks. These public-service-oriented projects are important because without the help of local governments it will be impossible for all Americans to obtain affordable telecommunication services.

Candidacy and Corporate Control

The current presidential campaigns illustrate many of the points McChesney makes in his article "The Emerging Struggle for a Free press." One of McChesney's main points is that the media is owned by corporations with eyes for profits only. These corporations give financial support to campaigns in return for favors if the candidate they purchased wins the election. In watching the presidential debates it is clear that while the candidates claim to be seriously concerned with the middle-class American, the vast majority of the issues discussed revolve around the economic crisis primarily affecting the extreme upper-class. Is this truly because they fear the top-down effects that will eventually hurt the middle-class if the wealthy corporations fail? Or is it more because the financial backing for each candidate's presidency will be severely impacted if their corporate sponsors go under? It's difficult to know for sure, but it is interesting to note that problems affecting the lower-class (a class more concerned with being able to afford basic necessities than funding political campaigns) are rarely discussed in comparison to the frequency with which issues relating to big businesses are addressed.

The government essentially gets to decide which problems are considered most pressing to the public with the frequency with which they address specific issues. The more a topic is discussed, the more important the public believes it is- after all, why would the government and the media be wasting our time with stories of little value? In the same way that the corporate-owned media decides what issues are pressing to the public, they also decide which issues are of so little concern that they aren't worth addressing publically. As a result, issues not addressed by the news media generally fall under the radar of the common man. The candidates dedicate a lot of time to talking about issues relating to foreign policy, the economy, and increasingly the environment, but seldom do they address issues relating to free press and media monopolies. If big corporations own the media as well as fund political campaigns, it follows that if candidates want to afford their campaign costs they may tend to overlook the issues surrounding corporate media control.

Issues like corporate control of the media are not reported while the media is inundated with slanderous stories and negativity about both candidates. McChesney criticizes the media for only giving the public what they think they want. People are attracted to stories of betrayal, dishonesty, questionable pasts and media mishaps and these are precisely the kinds of things that are often reported of the candidates. News stories are just as likley to be about Obama's possible secret Muslim faith as they are to be about Obama's economic policy, but which story is really of the highest interest to the general public? This election and its media coverage are distorting the issues and convincing Americans that they care more about news stories regarding Sarah Palin's pregnant teen daughter than they do about Sarah Palin's ability to be Vice President.

Steve Kurtz

Knowledge and dissemination of information plays a pivotal role in today's society, but apparently only when that knowledge is possessed and disseminated by those deemed as experts. Steve Kurtz, an amateur scientist and artist-activist headed a project that intended to make the general public aware of the questions surrounding genetically modified food. Because the questions Kurtz encouraged the public to ask was contradictory to the government's general agenda, Kurtz was prosecuted to the fullest extent and his research and projects confiscated. Kurtz's status as an amateur as well as the US PATRIOT ACT enabled this injustice to occur and to continue over such a long period of time.

Kurtz's status as an amateur scientist and artist put him in a unique position to share his research with the general public in a way that was well-received. Unfortunately, his amateurism was also partially the basis of the accusation. When police discovered research equipment in his house they called the FBI with suspicions of terrorism.

The US PATRIOT ACT allowed the government to search Kurtz's house, phone conversations and emails. They discovered that the materials in Kurtz's research came from Dr. Robert Ferrelll. Because the government had little else to go with, Kurtz and Ferrelll were both charged with mail for neglecting to fill out the necessary paperwork. Since the inception of the US PATRIOT act this "crime" carries a much stiffer penalty. In the unwarranted search of Kurtz's house they also found an invitation to his art show that included Arabic writing. This finding allowed the government to formulate an accusation of terrorism.

Because of Kurtz's status as an amateur he had little credibility as far as the FBI and other government officials were concerned. Because of his status as an activist and the nature of his research government officials were encouraged to go to extreme lengths to prosecute him, ending his research as a byproduct; and because of the US PATRIOT act the government has successfully effectively stifled Kurtz's research. Fortunately because of the overwhelming public support of his cause Kurtz's research has been stifled, but not his message.

Hopefully this case will set a precedent for other cases of this nature, which are sure to arise in the future of this age of surveillance.