Category: hypocrisy

Knight Foundation and a Grant for Viacom’s MTV: Funding a giant on its Journalism advisory committee

We have long had concerns about foundations funding media conglomerates to provide public service content. So, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s recent award of $700,000 to MTV was troubling for us. The grant, part of Knight’s News Challenge awards, was so MTV can create “a Knight Mobile Youth Journalist (Knight “MyJos”) in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to report weekly – on cell phones, and other media – on key issues including the environment, 2008 presidential election and sexual health.” Viacom’s 2006 revenues were $11.5 billion. Don’t you think there’s enough left over to pay for the mobile journalism program! The idea that MTV should be subsidized for contributing to public service is wrong-headed. Besides, MTV is engaged in such mobile activities to help build up its brand so it can earn more online advertising dollars.

Journalism foundations such as Knight–and J-Schools–should be holding the media industry’s editorial feet to the fire, shaming them to spend more money on serious journalism. Knight should not be funding media conglomerates whose owner resides comfortably in Beverly Hills. Meanwhile, it what raises some interesting questions about “insider funding,” we note that Viacom’s MTV VP Ian Rowe serves on the Knight Foundation advisory committe for journalism. Rowe is quoted in the Knight Foundation press release announcing its News Challenge grants as a grantee spokesperson.

PS: What timing. Broadcasting & Cable just reported that Knight is again teaming with Viacom’s MTV to give away $500,000 to support “young people who have ideas for pushing journalism into the digital age.” It’s called the “Young Creators Award.” We hope all the money has come from Viacom. By the way, Knight and media beat reporters should be asking what MTV is doing with the data it can collect from mobile users. Will it engage in targeting for its other products? In what ways are the Knight supported work designed to build up the commercial role of MTV? How much is such pro-social ad campaigns worth to Viacom’s bottom-line?

New York Times Co. & Behavioral Targeting: When will the paper really cover the privacy and related threats?

The New York Times Co. has long been a leader in the online advertising field. But it has consistently failed to cover/meaningfully report on the implications of what it has been doing and intends to now do. The emergence of online advertising is one of the most important stories affecting our society, in my opinion. More than privacy is at stake, although that issue should be at the forefront of our concerns. We have spoken to reporters and others at the Times about the lack of coverage. We believe that there is a major problem at the paper seriously examining this issue (which, frankly, the paper shares with other major news organizations that also use behavioral targeting technologies, including USA Today and the Wall Street Journal). As we have stated before, the Times Co. is also on the executive committee of the board running the key online advertising issue trade lobbying group working to protect the industry from criticism and policy safeguards.

Yesterday, the New York Times Co. announced a partnership with behavioral targeting firm Revenue Science. The release from Revenue Science explained that: “Revenue Science, Inc., offering the most widely adopted, powerful, and flexible targeting platform for digital media, today announced that The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) has selected the company to provide its best-in-class behavioral targeting capabilities for NYTimes.com, About.com and IHT.com.

The addition of The New York Times Company increases Revenue Science’s roster of leading media brands, which includes the Wall Street Journal Online, FT.com, Nikkei Net and Reuters. Revenue Science’s ability to reach high-value audiences makes it the industry’s premier targeting provider.”

Here’s what Revenue Science says it provides its clients. Tell me, after reading it and other information on its website. Don’t you think it cries out for a very serious story, with continued follow-up? There also must be consistent disclosure from the Times and its news outlets as it covers the online ad industry that they are both politically and financially involved with the issue.
From Behavorial Science (excerpt): As a Revenue Science advertiser, you can take advantage of our Revenue Science Targeting Marketplaceâ„¢ with our Audience Connectâ„¢ solution. Audience Connect enables you to find key audiences for your message across thousands of sites in the Revenue Science Targeting Marketplace, using any of these proprietary targeting techniques:

  • Search Re-Targeting™—You spend a large part of your budget driving search traffic to your site. Once they get there, are they staying? How valuable would it be to reach them again? Now you can find out.
  • Re-Targeting™—Use sophisticated re-targeting technology to move your prospects through the buying cycle.
  • Reach—Segment and qualify people based on interests, behaviors, workplace attributes, geography, and results.
  • Behavioral Segments—
    • Revenue Science Behavioral Segments
      Revenue Science Segments enable advertisers to reach high-quality audiences across the Revenue Science network. Revenue Science provides marketers with access to hundreds of distinct behaviors within each segment. Our industry-leading targeting platform identifies the specific behaviors that best achieve your campaign goals and optimizes your campaigns to use only the strongest-performing behaviors. We offer segments in automotive, travel, technology and finance to name a few.”

CDT’s Privacy “Report”—Full Disclosure is Missing

CDT has long been an ally of the various data collection companies it purports to oversee on behalf of consumers. It’s funded by a number of them. In fact Microsoft’s Bill Gates helped raise money for the group just last March.

The report released today fails to address the wide-ranging privacy threat coming from the major search engines and their advertising clients. It fails to acknowledge that it’s only because of policy-related pressure from privacy advocates—including the FTC complaint filed last November by my Center for Digital Democracy and US PIRG—that there have been modest corporate changes. [As well as the work of these two groups and EPIC in the case of Google’s proposed merger with Doubleclick, and the role of European Commission authorities]. CDT’s report also fails to acknowledge that it’s because of the unprecedented series of mergers in the data collection sector over the last few months, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL [$33.4 billion in the first half of 2007 alone, according to Ad Age. sub may be required.] —and the subsequent US and international regulatory scrutiny—that has created the “pressure” to bring about a few modest changes in data collection and retention practices. Without real advocates pressing—and regulators taking up their demands—we would have no changes at all (as minimal as they are). The marketplace’s approach isn’t protecting consumers.

Most troubling is that CDT fails to acknowledge that the widespread and evolving role of interactive advertising practices by these companies—including behavioral targeting, “rich” immersive media, and virtual reality formats—pose a serious threat to privacy and personal autonomy. It is not just the “bad” actors that require federal legislation, as CDT’s report suggests. If all Americans are to be protected online, the entire industry must be governed by federal policies designed to ensure privacy and consumer protection.

Here is a comment from my colleague Jennifer Harris: “When a group – with as close ties to the industry as CDT has – calls for government oversight, it is necessary to recognize just how much slack the online advertising and marketing industry has been given with our personal information. The main point is that consumers are at risk; updated federal consumer protection policies are essential to an environment that increasingly uses personal data as its commodity.”

FCC Chairmen and the Revolving Industry Door: A Higher Standard is Required

The list of former FCC chairs working in the media and communications business–either as lobbyists, consultants, or investors–is in illustration of why the commission is badly in need of reform. One day a chair is overseeing a media company–or a policy directly affecting it. The next day–after they leave office–they are working for the company or the industry. We really require FCC commissioners who are independent of the media and communications industry–before and after they leave the commission.

Michael Powell took a job as senior advisor at the buy-out firm Providence Equity Partners. Since he joined the firm, they have acquired–in whole or part–TV stations, a spanish language network, other media properties. Take a look at this report from the Los Angeles Times about the Orange County Register and note the role of Powell’s Providence. The deal was made prior to Powell joining the firm, but he’s there now, while these layoffs are happening [my italics]:

“Newsroom staffers described a morose — and tense — newsroom. Dragging out the layoffs for a week, they said, seemed particularly cruel and stressful.

“The way they’re doing this is just horrible,” one longtime staffer said. “It’s like, ‘Thanks for everything. Get out. Here’s some boxes, start packing.’ ”
…In 2004, privately held Freedom Communications Inc., parent of the Register, worked out a $1.3-billion buyout deal that saw more than half of the members of the founding Hoiles clan cash out their holdings and private equity firms Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners purchase nearly 40% of the shares. At the time, insiders said the investors borrowed a little less than $1 billion and provided about $400 million more in private capital to finance the deal.”

Then we have former Clinton appointed chair Reed Hundt engaged in his favorite twin occupation of media industry guru/investor. Hundt had been helping lead the effort by his Frontline Wireless company to have the commission approve policies compatible to his interests. Even former Reagan-era FCC chair Mark Fowler is working with Hundt’s Frontline.

FCC reform should be at the top of the public interest policy agenda, esp. with the future of democratic communications at stake.
source for Powell/Provide/OC Register story: “O.C. Register lays off workers: The newspaper will also trim news space to reduce costs as its revenue decline.” Kimi Yoshino. Los Angeles Times. Aug. 7, 2007.

Yesterday, the FTC sent out a release announcing its November town meeting on online advertising and privacy. The hearing is in response to the formal complaint my group Center for Digital Democracy and the USPIRG filed last November.

It’s clear that the FTC is fearful of really tackling the privacy and consumer-manipulation problems intrinsic to the online ad field. Behavioral targeting, which we also address in our complaint, is just the tip of the proverbial data collection and target marketing iceberg. Policymakers at the FTC, the Congress, and state A-G’s must do a better job in addressing this problem. Chapter seven of my book covers the topic, along with recommendations. As we noted in our statement yesterday, CDD has given the staff at the FTC a ton of material since November, further making the case for immediate federal safeguards. There is so much at stake regarding the future of our (global) democratic culture and its relationship to online marketing. We hope others will join with us and raise the larger societal issues, in addition to the specific online ad marketplace concerns.

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The 700 MHz Auction: It’s about Online Advertising, Mobile Targeting, Commercialism and Threats to Privacy

We are glad Google is pushing a more open system for wireless. Cable and the phone monopoly want to run a closed shop. But we also believe that Google ultimately has the same business model in mind for wireless. Google wants access to more mobile spectrum so it can advance online advertising via data collection, profiling and one-to-one targeting. Missing in most of the debate about wireless is how can we ensure the U.S. public has access to non-commercial and community-oriented (and privacy-respectful) applications and services. There should be well-developed plans simultaneously advanced with the auction that will ensure the spectrum really serves the public interest (we see some have made such proposals). Such spectrum should be community-run and help stimulate a new generation of broadband public interest content and network services. But we fear that all that will happen is that Google and others will further transform what should be public property into a crazy maze of interactive [pdf] advertising-based content. This will further fuel a culture where personal consumption takes further precedence over the needs of civil society.

Google Buys More Lobbyists and Influence

excerpt from Washington Post: “…Google went on a hiring spree and now has 12 lobbyists and lobbying-related professionals on staff here — more than double the size of the standard corporate lobbying office — and is continuing to add people. Its in-house talent includes such veteran government insiders as communications director Robert Boorstin, a speechwriter and foreign policy adviser in the Clinton White House, and Jamie Brown, a White House lobbyist under President Bush.

Google has also hired some heavyweight outside help to lobby, including the Podesta Group, led by Democrat Anthony T. Podesta, and the law firm King & Spalding, led by former Republican senators Daniel R. Coats (Ind.) and Connie Mack (Fla.). To help steer through regulatory approvals in its proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, an online advertising company, Google recently retained the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.”

from: “Learning from Microsoft’s Error, Microsoft Builds a Lobbying Engine. Jeffrey H. Birnbaum. June 20, 2007

PS: And that’s before Johanna Shelton, former aide to Rep. John Dingell and FCC Commissioner Adelstein, starts working for Google on Monday!

Why is the Knight Foundation Giving a $700K Grant to Viacom? So MTV Can Sell Ads and Collect Data?

The Knight Foundation’s “News Challenge” has announced its grants. But one which raises questions is the $700k grant to Viacom’s MTV. First, the idea that one of the most financially-successful media corporations, with billions in annual revenue, requires a grant for public service boggles the mind. But beyond the pure outrage of Viacom seeking a grant (and taking money away from a well-deserving non-profit or start-up), are the questions which Knight and Viacom must address. The 700 K grant is for a MTV project that will “cover the 2008 presidential election with a Knight Mobile Youth Journalist in every state and the District of Columbia who will create video news reports specifically for distribution on cell phones. The weekly reports will be voted on by the public, and the best will be rebroadcast on the MTV television network. By enabling young adults to report on issues that interest them and distribute those reports on their most commonly used digital medium, the cell phone, MTV hopes to compel leading presidential candidates to address issues important to this demographic and to mobilize you adults to register and vote.”

What happens to all the data Viacom collects from young users? Will it be stored in Viacom’s data-mining operation for subsequent targeting? What kind of behavioral profiling or other data collection techniques will be used? Will MTV “serve” ads to these users? Will these ads be based on the data collection? What will MTV do with such revenue?

You get the picture. The Knight Foundation should be calling on the major news and media conglomerates to support projects which illustrate the potential of the new media to serve democracy and journalism. It should not be funding the fabulously wealthy to do what they long ago should have done with television–and should be now be doing with new media: financially supporting public interest programming.

PS: Note to enterprising journalists. Viacom, we believe, has pursued the foundation grant-seeking route before, to good results for it’s already fattened bottom line. There’s a bigger story here.

Congressional Dems Helping Media Consolidation?

When heavyweights like Sen. Dick Durbin, Rep. Rahm Emanuel and others in the Illinois Congressional delegation write to the FCC Chairman about the Tribune Company’s request for media ownership waivers, it’s not so subtle message is: help this giant constituent out, asap!” The May 18th letter, urged Chairman Martin and the other Commissions to act “expeditiously and to avoid administrative delay.” “We believe that prompt consideration of the merits of the Tribune Company applications is in the public interest and would be very grateful if you would give this matter your personal attention and act upon these applications in a timely fashion.” They were joined by former Speaker Rep. Denny Hastert (a total of 14 out of 19 members of the state’s delegation signed the letter). Broadcasting & Cable magazine explained [reg. may be required] that “Tribune has to file for transfer of control applications for its TV stations as it moves to take the company private. Some of those stations have been operating under a waiver of the FCC’s newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule.”

While the letter says the lawmakers don’t take a position on the merger-related request, it serves as placing pressure on the FCC to help out Tribune. Such a request, of course, should receive a complete and in-depth review by the agency, and not be rushed through. But the Durbin/Emanuel/Hastert letter suggests that many from both political parties–as usual–are inclined to help out powerful media companies. The letter from Durbin and the Dems should have said: FCC, we’re worried about media consolidation and you better take your time and do this right!

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