The Push for a “PBS for the Internet”
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In that regard, the Internet (aided by inexpensive video gear and editing software) has succeeded far beyond their wildest dreams. The breadth and depth of educational content available just on YouTube is incredible.
The same forces that make it easy to produce and distribute educational content also make it easy to produce and distribute misinformation. This is a problem, but's unclear how a "PBS for the internet" would solve it.
For example, if you look at the one concrete piece of legislation mentioned in the article:
> The Local Journalism Sustainability Act takes a different approach to the government grant model. The bill would, for example, give a tax credit to people who donate to nonprofit newsrooms, or to small businesses who buy advertising at a nonprofit outlet.
It's not clear to me why people wouldn't just choose to donate to or buy advertising in outlets that promote whatever form of misinformation or partisan information that suits their tastes.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Broadcasting_Act_of_196...
The unsolved problem is the demand side, people making better consumption choices. Legislation can't fix this, since the government doesn't have a unified view of what "good" content is, and is heavily interested in promoting various striped of partisan propaganda.
Mr Rogers got broad bipartisan support. Today he's considered "left wing".
I’ve never heard any “right-wing” people, even crazy in-law types, call Mr Rogers “left-wing”.
I personally didn't see shots at Mr Rogers get much further than this weak Fox segment among conservatives, for what it's worth.
At what point do Americans stand up for a bare minimum level of journalism?
And remember, that while Fox might not have gotten far with this particular piece in your experience, they sent this six minute piece out to millions of people. They wrote it, filmed it, and aired it. They never apologised.
He was the definition of pablum; formula you gave to babies. He was outdated compared to Sesame Street and Electric Company, and was almost kitsch just like Bob Ross was. I believe he was lionized more because millenials and zoomers are so overstimulated they crave the opposite now; blandness to the point of sedation.
With good curation, sharing, and sleuthing -- I find the educational content on YouTube to surpass anything+everything even at undergrad college (minus social and minus interactive language classes.) I also used YouTube extensively to supplement grad school course materials, with great success. I realize not everyone learns this way, but many do, and it is freely available now.
While there may be a demand side problem, that can be fixed with better curation facilities. Legislation might not be able to fix this, but it can sure as heck hurt it given some of the current rhetoric.
Unfortunately, if "big tech" is treated as a single entity to be enforced, we'll end up doing something monumentally destructive like losing YouTube as it is now (which I consider an international cultural and educational treasure w/o exaggerating.)
And it's biased because of the "I find". Everyone filters information even subconsciously.
Not really. Nova, for example, has gone downhill quite a bit in the last few years, in that the content has been dumbed down more and more. It tends to candy-coat things and the host will say things along the lines of "golly gee whilikers!" It's a step above Sesame Street, but not by much.
There are some exceptions. The one about the evolution of language was pretty good, although the information content was thin gruel. It's like butter that's been spread way too thin.
scientifically debunked ideas like the idea vaccines cause autism
Ideas with zero basis in reality like the idea that most or all mass shootings are actually faked using "crisis actors"
Political conspiracy theories like the idea that Bernie Sanders would have been the democratic candidate for president, but was cheated by Hillary Clinton.
Misrepresented ideas, like how certain people on the right wing just ignore what critical race theory actually is by redefining it into a farcical straw man argument and then see it everywhere (This is a repeated pattern, see sharia law, migrant carvans, covid safety, etc)
That said, it's absolutely true that it wasn't just democrats pushing the idea that bernie sander's was cheated. It was also russian disinformation campaign. https://www.wired.com/story/bernie-sanders-russia-chaos-2020...
The notion that "misrepresenting ideas" is a form of "misinformation" is chilling. It suggests that there is some privileged point of view regarding any given idea and that anything that contradicts that point of view is "misinformation".
Exactly how do you propose to determine what the correct representation is for any particular idea? Isn't it possible that some ideas are not credible and that criticism of them is legitimate? How do you propose to evaluate new ideas if they can't withstand criticism and competing ideas?
It is awfully convenient to be able to tag criticism of your ideas as "misrepresentation" and therefore "misinformation". It is just one step further to regulate the means of communication so that "misinformation" is prohibited, blocked, etc.
Ideas that can't be defended on their own merits but instead are perpetuated by ignoring, blocking, censuring, or disparaging competing ideas don't seem particularly sturdy to me.
I suppose some gossip could be intentionally malevolent but it's generally not coordinated across multiple mediums and groups.
People also don't generally don't print watercooler gossip out on posters and hang it up in public around their town or state.
Patterns that cause less harm in some context can cause more harm when they're being used by those wanting to intentionally spread misinformation, and when it's much easier for that information to spread to millions of people.
You can find clear bias through sources such as I.F. Stone (active 1950s -- 1970s), or George Seldes (1930s -- 1960s, lived to 1995). Earlier muckrakers included Upton Sinclair (The Jungle and It Can't Happen Here, 1910s -- 1950s), Ida M. Tarbell (The History of Standard Oil, 1890s -- 1920s), and Lincoln Steffans and Ray Stannard Baker (both late 19th century / early 20th).
There's a phenomenal interview with Stone from 1974 on ... Public Television's ... "Day at Night" programme: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g
I've commented numerous times recommending Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism (1909), a short book highlighting the influence of advertising on media. It's short, readable, fact-filled, and available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft
Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922) largely established the model for the "impartial press" (so called, only partially successful as such) during the bulk of the 20th century. It was based in significant part on Lippmann's own experience with failures of the news media in reporting accurately on the Russian Revolution of 1917--23.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.126489/page/n1...
Other authors I'd recommend would be Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent (the title itself is a reference to Lippmann's work), Robert W. McChesney's many books on media, Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly (cited in the famouse Google "Backrub" paper (http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html), Neil Postman's Amusing Ourself to Death, and Edward Jay Espstein, News from Nowhere (https://archive.org/details/newsfromnowheret00epst).
The last looks at television news as of 1971, including the numerous biases built in to the medium through narrative focus, budget constraints, and technological limitations, as well as the pace and scale of operations. Not all of those still apply, though some do, but it does remain a persuasive argument of how even incidental characteristics can profoundly influence a medium.
For contemporaneous criticisms of television, see Edward J. Murrow's "Lights and Wires in a Box" speech, and Newton Minnow's "Vast Wasteland" speech, from the late 1950s / early 1960s.
https://www.rtdna.org/content/edward_r_murrow_s_1958_wires_l...
http://www.janda.org/b20/News%20articles/vastwastland.htm
I've compiled a few further references concerning media generally in a "light reading list": https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...
To be clear, bias need not be conscious or deliberate. There's a great piece by Lippmann on the Russian Revolution that details just how profoundly the press got the story wrong, in large part because they were relying on official sources rather than getting "the street" view (paraphrasing Lippann generously here).
Spin is pretty much always deliberate propaganda. It may not be an outright lie, but the primacy is on persuading or manipulating rather than informing.
From 1960, when many U.S. newspapers were going out of business: “The best thing Congress could do to keep more newspapers going would be to raise the capital-gains tax to the level of the income tax. (Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.)” (p. 706).
[1] https://www.loa.org/books/302-the-sweet-science-and-other-wr...
> and much less discernible spin than current news articles.
It’s much less discernible because you aren’t familiar with any of the topics they are discussing. The best you can do is confirm a particular news article’s biases align with the biases of the current historical record’s biases.
Ask anyone on the half of the country who doesn't vote blue, or necessarily get along with the latest developments in gender identity, of NPR gives their worldview any coverage whatsoever that isn't bashing and negative.
Niche, eh? Have you checked the listener numbers? Yes, Carlson's show on Fox beats all NPR shows, but NPR's prime time shows are consistently among the most consumed daily media events in the USA. Shows like "All Things Considered" generally (but not always) beat out supposedly "trend-forming" cable TV shows.
As for "notoriously biased", that's typically a weasel phrase that means something like "People are saying that NPR is biased". So what do you mean by "notoriously"?
I grew up in a country where the idea of "objective journalism" was regarded as idiotic, and all journalism was accepted to have a POV. By those standards, NPR stands out as one the least clearly biased and most intelligent radio journalism examples around.
What I would consider more important complaints about NPR are the fecklessness of essentially all of its interviews, in which there is an absolute refusal to hold an interviewee's feet to the fire, regardless of who they are or what they have written, said, done or represent. Like most of the US media, they throw mostly softball questions at thos with power, and on the odd occasion that they ask something a bit more pointed, refusal to answer (or just utter evasion) is met by ... moving on the next question.
I care about these general characteristics of NPR journalism far more than I do any particular handling of a particular issue.
NPR is "notorious" because it carries itself with an air of impartiality, while definitely being partial.
Where CNN and Fox are openly biased and understood to be so, NPR and its fans tend to argue that it isn't - but 99% of people making that claim vote blue, and disproportionately towards the Bernie end of blue.
If you had grown up in a country where, as I mentioned, "unbiased journalism" was assumed to be a lie from the start, I think you'd read whether or not NPR "carries itself with an air of impartiality" quite differently.
Most of the actual leftists that I know find NPR to be biased in quite the opposite direction than you seem to. They are irritated by its relentlessly pro-business positions, its endless interviews with conservative politicians, even discredited ones, and its almost complete failure to feature actual left-ish ideas other then when a specific politician (e.g. Sanders or AOC) makes a speech about something related.
I mentioned up-thread that I believe that NPR's bias is not really towards particular political or even social positions, but towards a genial defense of "things more or less as they are". They are a supremely "don't rock the boat (too much)" media outlet, and as a result rarely feature voices and ideas from the edges of the current Overton Window, let alone beyond it.
Not only do you imagine that CNN isn't seen as left (except by the only pillar of right-ness you've named, Fox) - but you know plenty of people who are left of CNN, which is already left of the median voter.
That you think NPR is a status quo defender - when their coverage of anything that touches on culture topics is extremely and consistently progressive - reaffirms that.
Please understand it's fine to be left-wing, but you will see the world as controlled by nefarious powers and agendas if you don't recognise that you are.
For example -they couldn't make a July 4th post without immediately turning it into a People's History seminar with a lecture about women's and indigenous rights.
But when was the last time I heard NPR interview an actual bona fide leftist? I don't think I've ever heard this on any of the flagship shows. Democracy Now, out of WNYC does, but that's not an NPR production. There's an almost complete absence of left politics on NPR (as on American media in general), whereas "due consideration" to equivalent positions on the right appear to be part of journalism's civic duty.
So yeah, they don't exact coddle red-leaning politics and people, but they do seek them out and try to let them have a voice amidst the stories that suggest that they are probably wrong.
Left-leaning politics? Forget that. You're not hearing that on NPR or pretty much anywhere else in this country. BTW, MSNBC is not even the exception that proves the rule.
It seems that much of our public debate is hobbled by an outstanding lack of consensus regarding what is meant by many political terms: right, left, conservative, progressive, liberal, capitalism, fascism, democracy, socialism, and so on.
I don't mention this as a way to suggest your definition is incorrect but just to point out how difficult it is to have a coherent discussion when basic terms are ill-defined.
They've been deliberately obfuscated by those with power and wealth, particularly in the USA since the Progressive period (roughly 1880-1920), when US capital got scared shitless that actua leftist politics might assume power in this country.
It is absolutely in the interest of existing power and wealth that these political concepts be fuzzy, misunderstood and hard to apply. Political scientists don't have much problem defining them in unambiguous ways, but our political culture is full of attempts to obscure their meaning.
I would agree that there's a legitimate argument about whether or not 1-dimensional axes are a useful way to talk about political ideas. There's a lot of merit in the 2D approach that many libertarians like to use. But that doesn't change the fact that these terms are well quite well defined by those who understand the subject matter, and deliberately obfuscated by those who see problems if people were to really understand the differences and purposes of the ideas described by these terms.
"They've been deliberately obfuscated by those with power and wealth" - how? By whom?
> how? By whom?
Goodness. There are so many books on this. You could start with something obvious like Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent", which is about a somewhat different issue but covers the way that the power structures in the US moved the Overton window in various ways to make leftish politics appear out of the mainstream.
This book does a reasonably good job of covering both how socialism itself shot itself in the foot in the US and how it was shot in the other foot by the existing power structures use of propaganda/media:
https://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Happen-Here-Socialism-Failed/dp...
I'm asserting that if there is no rough agreement on definitions then you can't have a coherent conversation.
You seem to be asserting that there is an effort to actively obscure the meaning of these terms, which doesn't negate my assertion.
It doesn't matter why there is no agreement (deception, lack of education, laziness, etc.) without the agreement you can't really have a coherent discussion.
Your assertion that there are some who are knowingly obfuscating language is worthy of discussion but seems like a different (but related) point. I tend to agree with you regarding muddled language, but I'm not so sure about "those with power and wealth" being the cause.
NPR especially is terrible at presenting real journalism. When it's not "both sides get equal time, even if there's only one fact-based side", it's vanity puff piece interviews and similar content, just like for-profit networks. There is also a very real bias in their political coverage toward mainstream, center-right politicians. These days that'd be "centrist" democrats, mainly, but they didn't get the monicker "Nice Polite Republicans" for no reason....
That's a fantasy. The people who provide the money always call the tune, even if it's the government, even if it's donations.
A more effective system is one that does not attempt to deny human nature, but takes advantage of it.
Just as traditional news outlets are reluctant to upset their advertisers. Donor-funded local newspapers are hesitant to upset big local donors. The BBC is awesome at covering non-clickbaity stories that would never get the time of day from a profit-oriented news outlet, but has always gone easy on whoever is currently in power in the U.K.
At the end of the day, quality investigative journalism costs money, that money has to come from somewhere, and it's best if that money comes from many places rather than one. Allocating more money toward publicly funded and donor-funded news in the U.S. would help to counter to the monstrous infotainment media empires that advertisers have built.
Also, have you read or listened to public news recently? It feels like reading a textbook or eating raw vegetables: refreshingly dull. We need more of it.
The narrowing and shifting of the Overton window is precisely due to donor funded journalism. It is just a reflection of the underlying shift in power in the society and economy as a whole.
Public news being dull is actually really bad. It means that there is no real debate. You are being fed what to think.
Tech has gained power and now exerts influence. Education has gained power. Healthcare has gained power.
These days I am more wise to the ways of the world, and it seems clear that had PBS’s intrusion into the free market not driven out private investment in educational television, I could have instead been exposed to superior, corporate-sponsored values. Alas.
I am indeed sorry you didn't get to enjoy Bugs Bunny, Wile E Coyote, Rocky & Bullwinkle, and other corporate sponsored values. You've been deprived.
I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the belief that it's the profit motive that leads to corruption. Even a casual review of history will amply show that government funded news is not independent journalism nor unbiased journalism.
*Not that the CPB is actually owned by the public, but the principle is closely related.
I'm guessing the overwhelming majority of these nonprofit newsrooms will end up being party-aligned so this will effectively be giving tax credits for political donations.
>The breadth and depth of educational content available just on YouTube is incredible.
It seems like the second statement I quoted shows the failure (at least on the Internet) of the first.
When we can have decentralized, or at least widely used non-profit distribution channels like PBS provides for TV, that will be a very good thing.
But as long as the primary distribution channels are focused on raking in the cash rather than providing access to good educational/cultural content for that purpose, the free exchange of ideas is at risk.
E.g.: an educational video will be followed by flat-earth conspiracy video if the YouTube algorithm choses so. This sabotages content producers with – in this case – educational intentions, as the platform will make producers compete for attention.
Also, I believe what's been missing in the discussion is how "empowering anyone to push content" is not in itself a value, and that it's in fact possible to add negative value, at a global scale, at very little cost. This discussion won't happen as it's in platforms best interest to promote engagement, and engagement comes from pure controversy.
If you look at what is happening today, this call for censorship in the name of combating disinformation has actually had no effect on disinformation. Instead, its real intended effect is to consolidate greater and greater powers of censorship in those who seek that power.
You say that, but ISIS propaganda has been soundly defeated outside of fringe sites like GETTR. And sure, GETTR remains a hotbed of terrible disinformation (such as this ISIS propaganda), but without a mainstream audience, its much less of an issue compared to giving it out to everyone on Twitter.
You can't post an ISIS sponsored beheading video on a mainstream site (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter) without the moderators noticing and censoring it in short order.
Also your logic and example are faulty. A beheading video is not disinformation. It is terror. It is a threat to those that oppose ISIS that that would befall them. Also, if you haven’t noticed, ISIS is about to retake Afghanistan. Getting rid of that video did nothing.
https://news.yahoo.com/mapping-advance-taliban-afghanistan-2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict_...
In fact, Taliban and ISIL are at war with each other for Afghanistan right now. In any case, we've been incredibly successful at censoring both of them from our mainstream platforms.
They wish for recruitment, to spread their propaganda / disinformation, and to grow their cause. Its an information war, the same as any other.
The number of US citizens flying out to die in a forsaken war on ISIS's side are miniscule to none. Believe it or not, American citizens were doing this back when the surge was happening.
We successfully disrupted their information campaign and their recruitment. And ISIS / ISIL / Daesh is now fighting for relevance (albeit unsuccessfully, mainly on GETTR).
Americans included of course. But there are recruits from all around the world. Disrupting that recruitment process is one of the shining examples of effective cyber warfare vs ISIL / daesh.
Non-Americans use Facebook, YouTube, and other websites in large numbers.
-------
ISIL is still trying to recruit from the US websites. We just censor the crap out of them so they make no progress. It's in fact, proof that censorship works in practice.
US soldiers killed in Afghanistan is a reasonable proxy for number of soldiers actively engaged, 2009: 310, 2010: 496, 2011: 412, 2012: 301, 2013: 120, 2014: 2014, 2015: 22, 2016: 14, 2017: 17, 2018: 15, 2019: 22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...
Looking at just combat fatalities and the difference is even more obvious. 440 KIA in 2010 down to 11 in 2015.
Really? It took me approximately 15 seconds to find and red ISIS's magazine Dabiq (and not on GETTR, which I had previously not heard of).
. Know about ISIS
. Know they had a magazine
. Actually want to read it
This is different from ISIS propaganda being algorithmically suggested to you from a seemingly normal website like YouTube without you even seeking it out in the first place because some faceless algorithm values "engagement" over everything else.
>>it's in platforms best interest to promote engagement
Agree with of what you said, but I have a quibble with the opening line
The large platforms DO curate content, FAR MORE THAN any news org. Your last line quoted above points out exactly how - they actively curate every shred of content anyone posts, optimizing for 'engagement'.
The fact that truth value, moral compass, or societal value (what ordinary publishers generally curate for) is roughly inversely correlated with engagement (which often follows the basest impulses) is irrelevant to the sociopaths who run those large platforms.
This is exactly why a set of news orgs NOT beholden to the clickbait economy - a 'PBS for the Internet' - could be really helpful.
Having a safe educational website you can easily let your kids use without worrying about it corrupting their brains seems just as useful as having a safe educational TV station was in the '80s and '90s.
Algorithmic advertising driven discovery can incentivize driving people towards radicalization, if that’s what keeps them clicking.
So a system not based on advertising or profit motive could maybe avoid some of those extremes.
Which information specifically do you think is so endemic, that it poses a danger? This isn't the case anywhere in my opinion.
But sure, give Bezos some tax breaks because he invested in the Washington Post... without it probably will become extremely poor.
Also PBS has a great kids games app(s) that are free with games that are fun / no ads.
And PBS kids video app is again free, great content, no ads.
If you're in the US and care about that content, I suggest contributing to your local station. The quality of the content from kids to adult is outstanding. It's not usual for me to browse a few streaming services and just end up watching PBS's content in the end.
Maybe when it comes to the article they mean more accessible? But I'm not sure as they seem to ignore the PBS content available.
Do we need this? Meh.. IDK.
I'm not sure the article really makes it clear what the situation in the first place is, or if they know.
Which I think is perhaps appropriate, if we've got to make a choice between the two. Textual media are a somewhat smaller jump from radio than they are from TV, and also, at least in my area, public radio is already doing a lot more local journalism. The public television station has a fair bit of locally produced programming, but most of it isn't really journalistic.
They also spend a ton of time on ads (if you include promoting their own programs, especially).
I don't love a lot of PBS' current programming, but their historical material is a goldmine.
how do you find one to contribute? definitely interested in that, been binge watching The Great British Baking Show for a while now
The apps are really good and they try to keep relevant content and popular shows on the apps.
https://www.pbs.org/about/careers/current-openings/?gnk=job&...
If you were just referring to the head element of the logo, I do like that element -- it's very recognizable and hasn't changed much over the years. Though I never knew (until looking at the page you linked to) that it's shaped like that because it was originally flipped on the Y axis and used as a 'P'.
Library Library of Congress. Sad.
What they did with PBS logo is simlar to slight redesigns over the years - GE, Lufthansa, AMEX, VISA, MasterCard, etc.
Most PBS stations run infomercials promoting quack medicine. So long as they keep doing that I'll never give them a penny.
Can you give details? I'm wondering if this was something that only a local affiliate did and not something that was PBS sanctioned.
You could make a case for the 1AM slot being quackery and there are definitely more entries like that in the greater schedule but its a very small amount of the content (and ever decreasing...).
Disclaimer: I work for KCTS 9.
EDIT: here's all of the channels: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsdigitalstudios/channels
I agree. Eons and Space Time are both excellent. I just hope they both start making new episodes soon.
I'd note that you can get those without YouTube's tracking/advertising by going right to the source[0] of those series.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS_Digital_Studios [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsdigitalstudios/channels
It’s definitely “unbiased” as long as “unbiased” means “standard US neoliberal views”. I say this as a neoliberal who watches it.
If you are watching news and it doesn’t seem unfair in some way to you, you agree with its editorial biases.
This isn't intrinsic to left or right wing ideologies, there are plenty of areas where nobody has a monopoly on good policy, but when it comes to Democratic and Republican political leaders, The Dems look to scientific consensus (climate change, public health, economic disparities) and factual information in deciding on policy outcomes, while the GOP has a preferred set of outcomes they are looking to support.
But if you view "left", "right" and "center" as having slightly more absolute definitions than the constantly shifting Overton Window, it's not really the same. "pro status quo" in an authoritarian fascist regime would not correspond to "center" on this absolute scale, even if in the context of that society, it might be roughly in the middle of the OW.
I think that climate change denial is one of many ways the GOP has sold its soul in the past 20 years, but the Democratic party takes it as axiomatic that certain climate change interventions are less harmful than climate change itself.
We can reasonably quantify flooding of coastal real-estate, but that is likely to be only a small fraction of the effects. So the overall picture of climate change looks like a giant pile of risk, rather than a clear outcome. The Democratic party has come to a consensus that the best way to treat the giant pile of risk is to treat the cost of allowing it to continue as approximately infinity.
50 years ago it was widely agreed upon that the US (and possibly humanity) faced an existential threat from thermonuclear war. Some people argued that unilateral disarmament was the best solution, but there were other points of view as well.
I would love a world in which the GOP were arguing about which climate-change interventions are not worth it rather than one in which the GOP just pretends that it's not happening (or not related to CO2 emissions).
FWIW The Democratic Party has its own blind spots on policy outcomes with regards to scientific consensus e.g. when it comes to affordable housing. Perhaps the stakes are higher when it comes to climate change, but the number of times I have heard a Democratic politician say "Supply and demand does not apply to X" without any evidence of that is rather mind-boggling.
The Democratic party has a wide range of opinions on how to deal with climate change, but I'd suggest people look at the Party Platform from 2020 to see how it wants to address it.
It includes some bold stuff in terms of changing the US economy towards being zero emissions, but with goals set five, ten or fifteen years from 2020. That's hardly setting the cost at infinity.
https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/202...
It cannot be unbiased when it's corporate supported.
But I think the paper is calling for more than just local news. They want expansive digital properties to supplement all our browsing habits.
If we go back to this original article linked, who gets to decide what is disinformation/misinformation? Funding should not come from the government because that would introduce all sorts of bureaucracy and gatekeeping efforts by political policymakers.
That said, there are definite problems with the ad driven model of YT too. Maybe it's not the model that's the problem but who ultimately runs it.
In my opinion kids should not be on the internet. Not that we can reasonably stop them, but I don't at all believe YouTube is an equivalent to directed quality content like PBS.
Whereas the PBS Kids apps (and Scratch Jr, Kahn Kids, etc) have curated content that I trust. We still limit their screen time and monitor their use by working in the same room, but it's not nearly as risky to let them use it on their own.
Coercing people into making good choices in a non-starter. We need a huge broad based social effort to educate each other on how to be safe. The government can't be trusted to do it for us. We can't just say "coerce the bad guys into submission", because the bad guys will do the same and are better at it.
Kind of forced me to try every plate.
So no, not equivalent, but not necessarily worse.
So since individual stations curate what they fill their airwaves with, they have the option of selecting what content coming from other PBS stations they will broadcast (or not). That provides a bit of a back-stop against truly wild stuff appearing in markets where it won't play without criticism. There isn't one curator; it's many curators with regional scope of influence.
(PBS stations do end up taking criticism, and some of it can be funny. Anecdotally, I know my local station would get complaints that the exercise outfits worn by the people in a work-out show the station syndicated were too revealing. It was the '90s, and these were ankle-to-chest leotards, but people's opinion of appropriate attire varies widely. The station did not cancel the show. ;) ).
Having more tools to easily achieve this would be great.
> who gets to decide what is disinformation/misinformation?
I certainly hope it isn't the authors of this paper, the German Marshall Fund. The GMF funds their own propaganda like the Alliance for Securing Democracy, and they are funded by USAID. USAID overtly does what the CIA used to do covertly. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/02/13/state-backed-alliance-...
But anyway, accusing an organization of having a pro-USA bias isn't a strong criticism against a domestic USA project.
The founder of the site, Robert Parry, uncovered US involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking during the 80s. Nobody denied the facts, but by the time the story came out American political culture had become more conservative (Reaganism) and people weren't as interested in hearing about covert crimes the way they were in the 70s (Watergate).
Parry got drummed out of the journalism for not towing the line and became somewhat bitter. It's not my only source of news, but it can be refreshing to read something that quickly attempts to poke holes in mainstream narratives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Parry_(journalist)
> But anyway, accusing an organization of having a pro-USA bias isn't a strong criticism against a domestic USA project.
There are laws against domestic propaganda. For instance, the CIA is not allowed to plant stories in US media.
The German Marshall fund is part of USAID and USAID was founded by the members of the CIA. They're sister organizations that service the same political goals. It should raise eyebrows that USAID wants to construct a domestic propaganda operation.
Besides, the vast majority of the existing misinformation in the US is coming from for-profit news agencies. You're already allowing people to decide what is and isn't misinformation- would you rather it be rupert murdoch, or a politician that you can vote out of office?
I would agree. In terms of production quality, youtube videos can be all over the map (although the cost of quality continues to decrease), but I'd say that the large-scale commercial broadcasters may well continue to dwindle. Personally, 1 guy (or 2/3) youtube shows are my favorites, they tend to be more charming and cover niche areas.
For newsie news, I find myself using mostly RT in my news reader. There's a POV of course, but they don't carry much US domestic news, which is fine by me.
This is laudable - but it ignores the reality of aggregators and user behaviour in the attention economy. The audience is centralised, and increasingly so. The question becomes: how can a pluralistic public-service ecosystem flourish within that economy?
In the UK the BBC has tried a number of routes for this, including sponsoring local reporters, external linking to local news outlets to try and share their audience and so on. None have really been successful but it's important that they keep trying -- and odd that a piece like this wouldn't mention the BBC at all, come to think of it.
You could design a computer system that feels centralised, but is actually decentralised – like the Fediverse[0] – and have people use that. That'd solve this problem (if you had enough draw and interop to get people to switch).
So does the universe. I don't really think this is a relevant observation, given we're talking about user behaviour.
> if YouTube nodes ban your videos and you have to move to a less popular node, you're facing the exact same problem as you would getting banned from YouTube today.
Except users can move to KnockoffTube and still see YouTube videos. A school could use EduTube or ScholasticTube (hypothetical curated educational-resource sites) and not get recommended “video game unboxing” videos in the sidebar – and they wouldn't have to search on EduTube and ScholasticTube separately, because if something's on one it's on the other (modulo some minor curation decisions).
You could also solve this issue by curating search engines, but there are barriers to that; the idea of a search engine has been around for ages, and yet very few curated search engines exist. (Plus, you still have the “autoplay Flat Earth videos” issue, unless you proxy the video in your search engine, in which case congratulations! you've made a video platform.)
The BBC generally has quite good online services (e.g. news, iPlayer) but would be interesting to see what this project is thinking about.
I remember when iPlayer came out: it was _worse_ than what we were already using (Windows Media Center DVR, BitTorrent from UK TV tracker forums) simply due to the content expiration policy… which is downright Orwellian.
I know it’s the fault of overbearing rightsholders, but it was a dark-day overall because a lot of the UK TV tracker sites became a lot less useful because fewer people were seeding and many sites had a strict “No torrents for iPlayer content” rule to avoid being shut-down.
I wish the iPlayer launched with transparent DRM policies that named-and-shamed whichever rightsholder demanded content-expiration - instead of the blanket policy, even when the restrictions are against the wishes of the rightsholder, ugh.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9793263/Nobody-trus...
Youtube is great. You can learn anything on Youtube... but Youtube is also filled with absolute trash childrens programming that literally rots my kids' brains as they watch it. Thats not to mention the unfathomable child porn rings that were caught time-stamp commenting unintentionally suggestive poses by underage kids...
We need a curated Youtube for the curious mind that doesn't waste my time with 3 minutes of content stretched to 11 mins to get monetized.
Authorizing the CPB to support local reporting could be a bit of a game-changer for the current status quo. I don't know that the rest of the idea would work (there are an awful lot of reasons why Internet media isn't anything like broadcast media), but "subsidizing local reporting as a public good" is an idea I hadn't seen before.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARNet
You can also get extremely cheap access to CARNET via mobile and broadband providers in Croatia. They are CARNET only plans.
Until we figure out how to actually enshrine political diversity, this will end up staffed entirely by people of a certain politics, and will become despised by many on the other side.
Using the CSPAN model, a public good commons of internet services would be carved out through an offset program in Wireless Spectrum auctions and other Telecom Service Provider Licenses and renewals [2]. Maybe if they ever get around to the Big Tech Tax that could help too.
[1]
You must have a TV Licence if you: watch or record programmes on a TV, computer or other device as they're broadcast. download or watch BBC programmes on iPlayer – live, catch up or on demand.
£159 for a colour TV Licence and £53.50 for a black and white TV Licence[2]
C-SPAN is a private, nonprofit organization funded by its cable and satellite affiliates, and it does not have advertisements on any of its networks, radio stations, or websites, nor does it solicit donations or pledges.We agreed on many common points, but could not think of how one would create an NPR-inspired version of essentially Reddit/Digg/Slashdot without first-party curation, which completely kills the idea of a social news aggregate.
I think unfortunately the idea is incompatible without heavy handed moderation. Hacker News seems to attract the rightish crowd, though, so maybe it can be done. NPR attracts the sort of crowd I'm looking for in a social news aggregator.
I'm not a teenager anymore. I'm looking for less memes and more interesting reading that publications of yesteryear seem to produce less and less of each year.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Broadcasting_Act_of_196...
So what would be the purpose? Current trusted platforms are ignored and news outlets that report on ignorant humans with wacko theories defying reality are thriving. One or more additional trusted platform will not make a difference.
#notallnprlisteners #notallnprstations
Other public broadcasters like the BBC and Australian ABC have been into digital, particularly for news and kids content for ages. My kids stream our public broadcaster's kids only channel full of high quality content like Bluey from their devices and have for many years.
Perhap the US needs to open up more to content from elsewhere though there are geo-blocking issues as a lot of public funded content is only free in the local market then sold to foreign markets. So what is on the public broadcaster for me is Disney or Netflix content for others.
https://www.fcc.gov/media/public-educational-and-governmenta...
The distribution side of this was made mostly irrelevant by on-demand services like YouTube - where it still exists it's mostly videography training, or making other local content, with a few channels still playing tapes.
When I hear "PBS for the internet" I think publicly-funded content.
Content on the internet doesn't have pride of place like it does on broadcast media. The internet is about platforms.
"PBS for the internet" should be about creating, first, open standards for content distribution, promotion, and moderation. And then maybe implementing those standards.
Content is basically free on the internet with the right platform. Trying to counter misinformation with good content is boiling the ocean. The better way to spread good content is to create standards and maybe a platform that incentivizes third parties to make good content.
In the article, it says exactly this. Their standards for transparency will be a model for other outlets.
The means of distributing information really transitions when adoption is ubiquitous. Literacy and the printing press, radios, televisions, to PCs and smartphones. The physical later of the network of distribution changes with each transition.
These structures have inherent directionality and balance (or imbalance) in their nodes and connections that have some truly fascinating real-world results on the quality of how information travels, thrives or dies. The question of control and power also becomes an interesting network dynamic.
The Internet is surprisingly more spatial than other media networks. Websites can now provide a connection to actual virtual worlds. Herein, I think, lies the biggest innovation. Now Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit and others have a method to try and reproduce or reinvent a virtual public square or public house!
Broadcast television requires a paid subscription to view online for NBC and ABC and CBS. There are a growing number of companies that I'm starting to see re-broadcast local broadcast TV on the web for free. It really ought to be illegal for these broadcast channels to charge for a digital copy of free broadcast television by all counts as far as I am concerned. I think that's completely backwards.
I also think that social media has largely replaced the public square. It's a gross distortion because of the the skewed shapes and control of these networks. Twitter has literally silenced a president (which I didn't protest), but it is worrisome how these networks can exert so much power over information.
To me, the real "PBS of the Internet" would have to exist as separate networks. I love the article's reference to libraries and other community centers, but I think it falls short in not suggesting something more along the lines of a community _network_ rather than another online service. Examples I would point to are the SNET in Cuba or the NYC Mesh Network. Here in Pittsburgh there is a growing PittMesh network.
I think by creating something controlled and owned by the community that uses it, you decentralize information. This, I think, would encourage local news over conspiracy theories and perhaps provide a sheltering proxy to the the global web.
What an exciting topic. VR feels like a whole other story haha
If anyone would like to read some of my thoughts on these topics, I'd love for you to check some of my writing and leave a comment there. I love thinking about this stuff: https://l-o-o-s-e-d.net/public-internet
I'm independent politically, but PBS is the Fox of the liberals. Completely biased.
https://www.wired.com/1997/06/china-3/
And eventually like this https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Police-State-Undercover-Surve...
A rich media landscape is about diversity of structure, not about having a bunch of news brands by the same powerful groups in society that are simply demographically targeted to different consumers.
Diverse structures producing well funded content. That's how you get a rich media
At this point, to protect democracy and its values, full fledged state sponsored reverse troll farms are what we desperatly need.
A lot of the engagement is simply led by fake accounts piloted by humans and thus realistic enough to break the organic engagement detection model.
Creating positive content is not enough to win this war. Only using the same dirty tactics as the autocrats will allow democracy to survive.
I understand your metaphor but I think it's closer to the paradox of intolerance, you generally escape it only by having to be intolerant to the most intolerant.
I love public media and have worked in the public media industry, and what I think what we really need is PBS for conservatives.
Can you name a _single_ conservative PBS/NPR host or program? Was there a _single_ time in the past 5 years they gave any legitimate consideration to the viewpoints that 50% of the country hold, or acknowledged the material conflict underlying their ideology?
It's no wonder that a) Republicans are constantly pushing to cut public media funding and, more worryingly, b) that conservative-minded people end up going down the Alex Jones/QAnon/Alt-Right/Whatever rabbit hole, due to the total void of any rational discussion or intelligent and honest media leadership for the conservative and working classes.
PBS is consistently rated as a reliable and unbiased source of information. You think it's a "liberal lifestyle outlet", but what evidence do you have to support this claim? What is your unbiased alternative?
Maybe you should watch this series ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4aNmdL3Hr0&list=PL8dPuuaLjX...
Not quite -- PBS is rated reliable but biased left: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/
Another theory is that reliable corporate media is stocked with university graduates, and universities have also gone left.
> Would be interesting to see what this chart would have looked like 15-20 years ago.
Indeed, I think most of these were centrist news organizations 15 years ago!
Often they're lumped together as "yet another liberal" with PBS .... but they're more and more often the only ones covering those ares / giving voice to folks out there media wise.
I'd say that there are certain flavors of political thought that have an unfolding utopia built into them. With enough of XXXism, an optimal state is reached.
It's an exercise for the reader to determine which sorts of philosophy of human organization have that notion built-in.
Let me therefore try to clear up that ambiguity by offering a solution to your exercise: The most dangerous political philosophy is ethno-nationalism.
I'm simply making the point that some political systems imply moving towards an ideal goal, others do not.
It isn't like monarchies (by far the most common setup) are moving towards some ideal beyond stability. Communism most certainly was viewed as a work in progress.
(side note: I'm sick of the term 'dog whistling'. That term itself implies a belief system.)
As for economic systems, I suppose you could say that the philosophy of communism is more future-looking than capitalism, but that is largely due to the fact that capitalism has already been implemented whereas communism has arguably never been fully implemented.
For comparison, suppose there are people out there who think that society was organised best under feudalism. They would support a move towards reinstituting that system, presumably in stages, so they would be equally "utopian" as the communists except they would have the benefit of an existence proof that their ideal society was achievable and sustainable (at least given certain initial conditions).
Fascism has also been tried before, and there are probably more people who support its return in some form than support the return of the feudal system. I can imagine its supporters suggesting that their policies would lead their nation towards an idealised future too, so I don't think that utopian thinking is common across the political spectrum and becomes more pronounced the further from the status quo its adherents want to take society.
(Side note: I'm also not a fan of the term "dog whistling", as I find it slightly ambiguous. For what it's worth, what I meant by it is that you were attempting to signal to like-minded people what it was you were really trying to say, without "saying the quiet part out loud". There might be good reasons for that on a forum like this, but I decided that the topic of your comment was potentially too important to not be subject to scrutiny).
PBS presents a lot of history and art. I wouldn't consider either of these politically charged in their presentation. Again, maybe I'm just missing it, but I watch a lot of PBS programming.
Firing Line[0]
>but I can't name a single liberal show either.
Frontline[1]
The thing is that William F. Buckley, Jr. (who originated Firing Line), were he alive today, would be demonized as a RINO and closet socialist by those who claim the mantle of "conservative" today.
Mostly because those who claim to be "conservative" aren't. Rather, many (not all) are radical reactionaries and not at all conservative.
Feel free to disagree, but if you look at the policies and priorities of such conservatives as Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes, the only policy priorities that have been retained by those who currently claim to be conservative are support for big business, hatred of anything non-white, and bible-thumping morons.
Everything else (small government, individual rights/liberty, equal opportunity, etc.) have fallen by the wayside.
Feel free to disagree. Or don't and take the easy way out. But there's a reasonable and reasoned discussion to be had in that space. If you don't participate in that, the loss is yours.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firing_Line_(TV_program)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontline_(American_TV_program...
Which is fine, btw. Just worth knowing.
If you mean NPR needs to carve out some time dedicated to a particular political view, then perhaps your perception of them is the rest of the time they present an opposite view? In these highly politicized times perhaps it seems that way since people have trouble agreeing on things that are widely accepted and based on science, as one example. So any news that presents that as fact will naturally be dismissed as biased by anyone who disagrees. Personally I don't think it's really incumbent upon NPR to create more air time for that kind of disagreement; they should stick with the facts. People who disagree with fact-based journalism already have many other outlets and are (IHMO) disinclined to seek out anything that will challenge their views.
Even so I daresay if someone is on a journey to find and listen to opposing viewpoints, the person who finds NPR to be a bastion of liberal values would be far more challenged by listening to Pacifica. If someone wants to really hear viewpoints left of center, they should try listening to Democracy Now for a week.
To give some examples, Bob Garfield and Brian Lehrer were openly hostile towards Trump in such a way to disparage all of the people who voted for him, which was half of the country. Now, this isn't actually the thing I have a problem with, and I think I actually prefer it when hosts wear their hearts on their sleeves. But, you could never find the level of distain of Obama for his drone strikes, surveillance and massive wealth transfers to the rich that you could find of Trump for his racist demeanor, xenophobic immigration policies and massive wealth transfers to the rich.
A lot of my opinion is from working on the inside. Public media in the US, at least in the urban areas where I worked, is staffed _exclusively_ by Warren-type Democrats. They really believe that there is a correct view of the world, and that it is to be socially liberal and economically conservative - manifest through complex policy. Any other opinions - notably Bernie-ism or Trump-ism, are populist and to be dismissed as unserious.
Sometimes I wonder how weird and wild a government run social media company would be. Open to US citizens only, identity verification required? No rules other than actual speech laws? No anonymity?
I'm not suggesting that Usenet itself would serve as a model for a revived social discussion platform. But whilst it existed, it was supported in large part on the (publicy-funded) ARPANET, and through publicly-funded educational institutions (both public and private research universities relying strongly on government research funding, regardless of tuition income). In general parameters, it resembles the structure proposed in TFA: government funding, multiple independent institutions, many local and trusted serving their local communities. (Students, staff, and faculty rather than residents for the most part, but again, broadly, along the lines of what's being suggested.)
Except, wait, what, PBS isn't free? Don't we already pay taxes?
What is surprising to you that beneficiaries of philanthropy are happy to report and promote philanthropy?
It's not like they try to cover up his "sins", or that the channel doesn't report on the latest gossip about his marriage just because it's "news".
'Twenty years ago, journalists scrutinized Bill Gates’s initial foray into philanthropy as a vehicle to enrich his software company, or a PR exercise to salvage his battered reputation following Microsoft’s bruising antitrust battle with the Department of Justice. Today, the foundation is most often the subject of soft profiles and glowing editorials describing its good works. '
There's been open mainstream speculation of that "PBS sold its soul" to the Koch Brothers:
As David Sirota, the author of the PandoDaily expose, wrote in its aftermath, PBS doesn’t stand for “Public Broadcasting Service” anymore. As it becomes more addicted to big-bucks donors, it risks becoming the Plutocrat Broadcasting Service.
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-xpm-2014-feb-17-...
Tiny Spark is the podcast of Nonprofits Quarterly, and has dedicated numerous episodes to the question of funder influence.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/podcasts/
Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, and Robert W. McChesney are voices on the left who have called out corporate / fundraiser bias on the part of PBS, NPR, CPB, and other public broadcasters in the US. McChesney notes:
Public broadcasting today is really a system of nonprofit commercial broadcasting, serving a sliver of the population. What we need is a system of real public broadcasting, with no advertising, one that accepts no grants from corporations or private bodies, one that serves the entire population, not merely those who have high-brow tastes and disposable income to contribute during pledge drives.
https://site-cbc.radio-canada.ca/documents/impact-and-accoun...
Members, corporate underwriting, and distribution fees each provide a bigger percentage of its revenue than the federal government https://publiceditor.bento-live.pbs.org/publiceditor/blogs/p...
This can't be mentioned without also mentioning that the UK enforces a yearly license (so, a tax) on anyone who watches OTA TV, and they're known to be a bit scummy and heavy-handed about it.
> Revamping the structure and role of public media could be part of the solution to shoring up local media, decentralizing the distribution of quality news, and constraining Big Tech platforms' amplification of harmful or false information.
Instead of creating another single content creator who can come with their own biases, what I would rather see is a government-run platform. The motivation above about constraining amplification of harmful or false information sounds too close to amplifying only what information the government wants to put out (in other words, propaganda). I would rather see a platform because it could be free of information control and censorship from a small set of Silicon Valley conglomerates.
Why? "way to shift the power dynamics in today's information wars." So PBS, NPR, etc were originally created to participate in information wars. Sort of like government funded propaganda? Is that what she is implying here?
"constraining Big Tech platforms' amplification of harmful or false information." That's strange. Because Big Tech platforms amply authoritative sources - which most likely includes PBS.
https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/the-four-rs-of-responsib...
I'm all for more competition. More options. It isn't healthy that we have such concentration of power in a few "algorithms". Not sure the "PBS of the Internet" will challenge it no more than C-SPAN challenged cable news.