Regards,
Norm
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|| TechWeb News
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|| Friday August 7, 1998
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|| http://www.techweb.com
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|| A CMP Service
||
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A Call To Arms: Fund Noncommercial Media On The Web
By Brooke Shelby Biggs
Enough already! Enough decrying the sad state of commercial media.
Enough griping about public television and radio selling out to big
business. Enough whining about the Internet being overrun by huge
corporate media conglomerates.
The time has come for concerned Netizens to take it upon themselves to
develop an alternative to these polluted media. Doubtless a grassroots
effort could develop the kind of public-media network envisioned by the
originators of PBS and NPR, but with a more dependable funding source
than, say, Congress. Something that exploits the vast resources of
academia, independent media, and the arts, and that exists
independently of big business and government. Something that truly is
in the public interest -- something that is also both of and for the
Internet.
There aren't many role models to which we can look, however. The
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has an unfortunate legacy
system, created in 1967 by a Great Society-era Congress that was
interested in federally subsidizing public media to counteract the
increasingly commercial nature of existing programming. But in the
crisp political winds of the 1980s and 1990s, members of Congress began
to disagree about how much money public media should get, what exactly
constituted "the public interest," and whether they should care.
This has left public broadcasting in America standing in fishnet
stockings, turning tricks for commercial businesses to bolster the
meager contributions it gets from private foundations, pledge-weary
members, and dwindling federal allocations. The potential corruption by
these commercial interests is immense; PBS affiliate KQED in San
Francisco learned this the hard way when it was caught accepting money
to produce a documentary on a local wine maker named Robert Mondavi,
from Mondavi himself. Supposedly "commercial-free" programs on PBS,
NPR, and PBS online are lousy with full-length ads halfheartedly
qualified with voice-overs admitting "a promotional fee was paid" for
them.
So how can anyone foster creative and innovative content on the Net
without going hungry, selling out, or begging for government favors
with the inevitable political strings attached? By starting with people
and organizations who have the same ideals at heart, we can pool our
talent and resources to create a network at least as great as the sum
of its parts, while maintaining our dignity.
In forming a new public media, the worst mistake leaders of this effort
could make is to assume that because traditional public broadcasting
has failed to keep the political and commercial tigers at bay, it
offers no lessons or has no role to play. The idea upon which CPB was
founded is still relevant, and perhaps more desperately applicable now
than 30 years ago: The public needs and deserves a source of
information, education, and community development free of commercial
pressures and political influences.
We're fortunate the Net is still a relatively new medium and there's
still time to explore the possibilities. The Net maintains certain
advantages over television and radio, particularly its lack of
technical limitations such as spectrum scarcity, licensing, and many of
the financial barriers to entry involved in traditional media. We could
establish a public network for a fraction of what it cost Congress and
CPB to do the same in the '60s. We can also be sure that, even if
commercialism gets worse before it gets better on the Net, there will
always be "room" online for an alternative.
The problem is, not everybody's voice is heard equally online, despite
what the digital visionaries would have you believe. With all the
choices online, you have to buy the attention from those who
essentially broker eyeballs. Portals -- websites or services that offer
a broad array of resources and services -- such as Yahoo, Netscape
Netcenter, and Microsoft's Start sell premium placement in their
Internet guides. Hence, when you search on the keyword "zine" online,
you're unlikely to see a link to some college student's bright labor of
love unless you know it's there on page 50 of your search results;
meanwhile, you're almost guaranteed to see Michael Kinsley's
Microsoft-powered Web magazine Slate, or Time Warner Turner's online
venture Pathfinder.
And yet, though you may not be able to find them, there are pieces of
this public network scattered across the Net already. There are
independent filmmakers, nonprofit educational programs, independent
newswires and Net radio shows, museums, research institutes, schools,
and public libraries. We simply need to unite the thousands of small
efforts in one powerful, accessible, and visible network.
But how to finance it? There are two general schools of thought,
neither of which is terribly appealing: government subsidy or corporate
underwriting.
Andrew Shapiro suggested in The Nation in June that a federal tax on
"gatekeepers" (such as Yahoo, Microsoft, and Netscape) or federally
mandated placement of public sites on those gateways might be the
solution, because they largely control which sites we see and don't
see. He also suggests a subsidized independent gateway -- an agency
modeled on CPB or National Endowment for the Arts, one assumes -- to
the Internet.
In a recent column for the Web zine atnewyork.com, Web Development Fund
founder Marc Weiss suggested another possible strategy: A voluntary
"tax" on companies that depend on the health of the Internet for their
livelihoods.
Large Results From Small Tax
For companies such as Microsoft, Intel, or Cisco, Weiss suggests just 1
percent of their after-tax profits could support a vibrant public
network. He argues these companies should view such a voluntary tax to
be in their own interest: "There's an ecology of the Web no less than
an ecology of organisms on the planet. Before there was commerce on the
Web, there were thousands of micro-organisms (also known as Netheads)
experimenting to find its uses. It's always the pioneers, the poets,
and the prophets who show the way for the rest of us. Far from
outliving their usefulness, we need them now more than ever. Public
spaces on the Internet are the fertile soil in which new ideas can take
root and bloom."
Both fine ideas, yet essentially flawed. It would be difficult and
unwise to depend on government to support this public network, for
several reasons. First, there's the recent history of Congress'
willingness to withhold funds or to put unwieldy limits on content.
Second, Congress' motivation in the '60s to create CPB was based on the
need to reserve space for "public access" and "public-interest
programming" in a medium where "space" (as in room on the dial, known
as spectrum) was scarce. Online, space is limitless, and therefore
needs no federal regulation. Third, expecting this or any foreseeable
Congress would pass a new tax -- especially one for what is,
essentially, a social program -- would be naive. Besides, this medium
is borderless -- the U.S. government should not and cannot hold sway
over it exclusively.
The idea of private financing from corporations is both endearingly
idealistic and downright frightening. The culture of the Web is so
cut-throat competitive and libertarian that to expect
no-strings-attached charity from its major players is absurd. Assuming
one could persuade technology corporations of the existence of a
"common good" beyond the free-market (a huge leap of faith), the
temptation to lean on the nonprofits for their own benefit still would
be more than the corporations could resist. Even the argument of
sponsoring public-interest Web content for the positive PR doesn't
protect against such pressure.
There are, perhaps, other options. The most obvious sources are private
foundations for the arts and media, which are all that keep PBS and NPR
alive. Nations with stronger government support of the arts -- such as
Australia and Canada -- are prime candidates to become financial
backers. Also, perhaps in exchange for some programming authority, we
could look to private universities and alumni associations. Instead of
funding piecemeal efforts by small groups as they now do, those groups
might be interested in pooling resources to create a unified effort by
artists and community organizations around the globe.
Of course, the common thread through it all is money. How to get it,
who to get it from, who decides how to spend it, how to spend it
productively, how to make certain its sources don't color the network's
independent public mission. Just because it won't be easy doesn't mean
it isn't worthwhile. Imagine: The arts might return to people's living
rooms, from which they've been largely absent since PBS began
sacrificing them in favor of airing "World's Scariest"-style disaster
documentaries nearly 'round the clock.
We need this public network because it may be the only hope left for
noncommercial programming in our times. I imagine Fred Friendly, who
quit CBS News in 1966 when the network cut away from Vietnam hearings
to air an old I Love Lucy rerun, would agree. Commercial viability
should not be the only measure of media's social value. The idea that
the media should only deliver what the people want assumes the people
understand something better is possible. It's time to show them it is.
Brooke Shelby Biggs is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet &
Society at Harvard Law School. She is also a founding member of the
Technorealism group and writes a column for The San Francisco Bay
Guardian.
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Copyright 1998 CMP Media Inc.