. . . because much of the content relates both to Washington, D.C., and "outside the beltway" -- the heartland, specifically Iowa -- and because after going from Iowa to Washington via Texas and California I subsequently returned, From DC 2 Iowa.
At Long Last: Johnson Disagrees with Doak Newspaper-TV Mergers Are Not in Democracy's Best Interest
I've finally found a reason to disagree with Richard Doak about something.
There is no one in American journalism I admire more than this Register former editor and (actually continuing) columnist, who's now lecturing at Iowa State for some very lucky students. (I just wish he was here in Iowa City.)
Not just for months or years, but for decades, I have been agreeing with virtually everything he's written. In fact, I've urged him to put some of those columns in a book for those who care about Iowa and who might just build a future for Iowa based on his blueprints. (He's so far been too modest to do it.)
Doak's column advocates that we'd all be better off if media corporations were permitted to own both newspapers and television stations in the same town.
For years this kind of media concentration has been prohibited by the FCC even though it has, over the last 30 years, continued to erode more and more of the specific regulations that once defined the Congressional licensing standard: "public interest, convenience and necessity." Now the current industry-dominated agency is proposing to do away with the prohibition. Doak thinks it would be a good thing if it did.
In order to respond to his arguments I must first set out excerpts from them in his own words rather than my characterization of them. I will number what I believe to be a rough breakdown of the categories.
1. More news. "the sum of the news it ["a combined newspaper-television newsroom"] could deliver to readers-viewers would be greater than either part could deliver alone.
The television broadcasts at 6 and 10 p.m. could carry more news because the station's small staff would be augmented by the reporting power of the newspaper's large staff.
The newspaper could broaden its news gathering even more if its reporters didn't have to staff the same events being covered by the TV reporters."
2. Better Web Sites. "Best of all, a combined newspaper-television station could produce a killer Web site.
A local Web site that had both comprehensive text and compelling visual presentation would be unbeatable. A merged TV-newspaper newsroom could create a site everyone in town would automatically log onto first, not only for news but also for community information, entertainment, discussions, weather and links to databases and government agencies.
It would be a convenient, indispensable, one-stop source for text and visual information. Every community should have one.
American communities never will, however, unless the Federal Communications Commission allows 'cross ownership' of newspapers and television stations."
3. Limit numbers, not co-ownership. "Opponents of allowing cross ownership raise the fear of media being concentrated in too few hands. If that's the problem, the way to address it is by limiting the total number of stations a company may own, not by prohibiting the natural convergence of print and broadcast news in local communities."
4. Promote convergence. "Convergence is the right word. It used to be a theoretical concept. Now it's here. The lines are blurring between print and electronic media as they converge onto one platform, the Internet.
* * *
But newspaper staffs aren't great at visuals, and TV staffs aren't great at text. Combined staffs could be, and a lot of unnecessary duplication of assignments could be eliminated in the process."
5. Make media more Wal-Mart-like. "Requiring newspapers and local television stations to remain separate would be like requiring hardware to be sold only in hardware stores and clothing to be sold only in clothing stores, thus denying Wal-Mart the ability to sell both in its supercenters.
The time has come for supercenters of another kind."
6. Blogs eliminate information monopolies. "Another argument against cross ownership is that it would allow one company to monopolize the news in a community. That's an obsolete concept. In an age when anyone with a computer can launch a blog, an information monopoly is impossible.
Having an information supercenter in your community would leave plenty of room for boutique information shops around town."
7. What's good for general media is good for the country. "Of course, it's possible that the motives of FCC commissioners who want to allow cross ownership are not entirely pure. Perhaps they are succumbing to the blandishments of media moguls who want to expand their empires.
If so, it would be an instance of self-interest coinciding with the public interest. A strong merged newspaper-TV newsroom in a community would serve the public better than two weak separate operations, even if media companies made more profit in the deal."
Here's my response to each of these arguments in turn.
1. More news. The track record so far, as A.J. Liebling once observed (in his book, The Press), is that newspapers are like bars. Bars used to offer the "blue plate special" -- reduced price food with the drink. But as monopoly or oligopoly bars took the place of competition, the first thing to go was the blue plate special. Similarly, he observed, the first thing to go, following the merger of newspapers into a local newspaper monopoly, was the news.
There are significant differences between today's five major multi-media owners and the early notion of local ownership of what were then AM radio stations, "integration of ownership and management" as the FCC called it in picking the winners in comparative hearings, or as it was sometimes called, "mom-and-pop" owners.
As many have bemoaned, it is no longer enough that a chain-owned newspaper make a profit. It must make increasingly greater profits each year in order to convince Wall Street that its stock price should increase. Newspapers making 20% and more profit are cutting back on the number of journalists in their overseas and domestic bureaus and becoming even more responsive to the interests of their advertisers and the demographics they want to reach.
Television stations owned by media conglomerates are, if anything, even worse in terms of their solid news coverage, investigative reporting, and community service.
When newspapers, or stations, are locally owned they may still have conflicts of interest, and third-generation owners may be more committed to profit than journalism, but the community at least knows who they are. The owners feel some pressure from their neighbors, country club colleagues, and others in the community to provide a constructive service. Once public ownership takes the place of human ownership those restraints disappear. Many multi-media CEOs -- hired guns all -- probably couldn't even name for you all the properties their corporation owns.
In short, I just don't believe that permitting multi-media conglomerate corporations to own newspaper-television combinations within a given community is going to increase the quantity or quality of local news and public service. (And, although of lesser concern to me, a decline in the number of local media owners has also proven to be bad for local merchants and advertisers who, historically, have found themselves paying much higher advertising rates as media competition declines.)
2. Better Web sites. Doak argues that America "never will [have the "killer Web sites" he desires], however, unless the Federal Communications Commission allows 'cross ownership' of newspapers and television stations."
Virtually every media outlet in the country has a Web presence, from the New York Times and Washington Post, and all the major television networks, to The Daily Iowan -- and, not incidentally, Dick Doak's Des Moines Register. Many, like the Register, already combine online reproductions of their hard copy content with video and still picture features, blogs from their own reporters and other publication-certified bloggers, along with spirited contributions from readers in comment sections for each story and opinion piece. As if this was not enough, the Register also offers an "e-mail newsletter," "news text alerts," RSS feeds, and a new "mobile site" that can provide news on your cell phone. Want to know what's next? The Register is "redesigning" all of this and now offers it for inspection on a beta site.
It's hard to argue that none of this will be possible without a merger of a community's newspapers and television stations -- especially given what the Register is already doing.
Moreover, where there is co-ownership, such as with one of Iowa's few remaining locally owned newspapers and television stations -- The Gazette and KCRG-TV9 in Cedar Rapids -- the owner wisely maintains separate news staffs, and Web sites, for each rather than combining them into one. There are advantages, in terms of quantity and quality of coverage and maintenance of a little more competition, to not merging the two.
3. Limit numbers, not co-ownership. I agree that it would be advantageous to reduce the numbers of stations any one owner could control. I just don't think that has anything to do with the evils of joint ownership within a community.
Initially, as mentioned above, the notion was that an owner would just hold a license to one station. Over the years the limits were raised to what they were when I was an FCC commissioner during the 1960s and '70s: 7 AM stations, 7 FM, and 7 TV -- only 5 of which could be VHF stations. Today, with the continuing erosion of FCC standards, at one time Clear Channel held licenses to something like 1200 radio stations.
There are several, distinguishable, problems associated with media ownership. Conglomerate ownership (owning media and other kinds of businesses in the same market) can influence the owner's coverage of issues affecting its other businesses. Regional concentration can create an undesirable amount of political power in a single media owner. Increasing the number of media outlets a single licensee can control nationally increases its national political power and reduces the number of media voices. Multiple-media owners (those owning book publishing, movie studios, TV networks, cable systems and cable program providers, DVD sales and rental, newspapers and magazines) can use their market power to cross-promote products, unfairly compete, and raise the barriers to entry of new firms and the creative community.
Joint ownership within a community -- whether of newspapers and television, or just multiple radio stations -- is a distinct problem. Ultimately, the only persons with meaningful First Amendment rights are media owners.
There is a distinction between "matters of grace" and "matters of right."
A newspaper may decide to publish virtually all letters to the editor -- whether because doing so helps increase circulation, or as a community service -- as a "matter of grace." But no one has a legally enforceable right to have their letter published -- or their paid advertisement accepted for publication for that matter.
The Supreme Court has ruled, in effect, that with a newspaper's First Amendment right to speak, to publish, goes its First Amendment right to censor all others from publishing in that paper.
Thus, as a practical matter, the fewer media owners in a community, the smaller is the likelihood that there will be a diversity of voices, a competition among those with the potential to do investigative reporting and to stand up to powerful advertisers.
At a minimum, local concentration of media ownership is a different issue, with different risks and compromises, than the issues surrounding the total number of media outlets nationally owned by any single licensee.
4. Promote convergence. Convergence is already here, as my description of the Register's Web site, above, illustrates: newspaper copy created with printer's ink and newsprint and also on computer screens, delivery by newspaper carriers and also by cell phones, bloggers commenting about newspapers' stories and newspapers providing outlets for bloggers.
Convergence has, and will continue to, occur regardless of ownership patterns -- though there will be more of it if the FCC fails to approve the newspaper-TV station merger proposal.
Doak argues that co-ownership will prevent the "unnecessary duplication of assignments" that exists today when a television crew and a newspaper reporter are both sent to cover the same story. But it's that "unnecessary duplication of assignments" that is an "essential duplication of assignments" if we are to maintain a distinction between our media and the Soviet-style single voice that is the preference of dictators.
It is that "duplication" that makes for a marketplace for any product. When it comes to news, it's all that makes possible a "marketplace of ideas."
5. Make media more Wal-Mart-like. Doak writes: "Requiring newspapers and local television stations to remain separate would be like requiring hardware to be sold only in hardware stores and clothing to be sold only in clothing stores, thus denying Wal-Mart the ability to sell both in its supercenters.
The time has come for supercenters of another kind."
I suspect there are a good number of Iowans who are already questioning the supercenters represented by Wal-Mart, let alone "supercenters of another kind." This was probably not Doak's best choice of analogy.
In the context of the news business, "hardware" and "clothing" are more like "sports news" and "city council news." The issue is not whether there should, or should not, be separate sources of each variety of news. The issue is whether their combinations in "supercenters" (called "newspapers" and "television stations") should be combined and then controlled by corporations with the power, and consequences, of a Wal-Mart supercenter's impact on local merchants or whether more, and smaller, locally owned "supercenters" would better serve the needs of citizens in a self-governing democracy.
6. Blogs eliminate information monopolies. Doak says, "Another argument against cross ownership is that it would allow one company to monopolize the news in a community. That's an obsolete concept. In an age when anyone with a computer can launch a blog, an information monopoly is impossible."
That fewer media outlets, and owners, reduce diversity in sources of news is far from an "obsolete concept." And to say that because "anyone with a computer can launch a blog, an information monopoly is impossible" would be laughable if it were not presented as a serious argument.
The Los Angeles Times is the dominant newspaper in what is about an 8000 square mile area with a population, and readership, in the millions. Anyone in the LA basin who disagrees with a position the paper has taken, and who is excluded from the paper's pages, has the option of going to a commercial copy center, running off millions of copies of an 8-1/2 x 11 flyer, and delivering them to every home in LA. Could anyone seriously argue that this option makes the LA Times any less of a dominant information source? (That it is not technically a "monopoly" -- either with or without the availability of blogs -- is really irrelevant to the point that it is clearly disproportionately influential when it comes to LA news and opinion.)
The same goes for blogs. As a blogger myself, I can assure you of that.
7. What's good for general media is good for the country. Doak argues: "Of course, it's possible that the motives of FCC commissioners who want to allow cross ownership are not entirely pure. Perhaps they are succumbing to the blandishments of media moguls who want to expand their empires.
If so, it would be an instance of self-interest coinciding with the public interest. A strong merged newspaper-TV newsroom in a community would serve the public better than two weak separate operations, even if media companies made more profit in the deal."
Doak has it right when he suggests that FCC commissioners are "succumbing to the blandishments of media moguls who what to expand their empires." But I believe he is dead wrong when he argues that "A strong merged newspaper-TV newsroom in a community would serve the public better than two weak separate operations, even if media companies made more profit in the deal" -- for all the reasons I've set forth above. It is precisely the financial community's pressure for the merged, publicly-held company to make "more profit in the deal" (made easier by the elimination of competition) that results in the problem.
Given the media moguls' adoption of the kind of arguments that Doak puts forth, the unwillingness of either members of Congress or of the FCC to argue back, or otherwise stand up to these firms, their lawyers, lobbyists and campaign contributions, and the expected failure of the mainstream mass media to present the issues to the public, it is likely this outrageous change in policy will probably come to pass.
But one cannot help but hear the voice of the ghost of Congressman Luther Johnson calling to us from the 1920s, when Congress was both more courageous and prescient, and reminding us of his warning from the floor of the House:
American thought and American politics will be largely at the mercy of those who operate these stations. For publicity is the most powerful weapon that can be wielded in a Republic, and when such a weapon is placed in the hands of one, or a single selfish group is permitted to either tacitly or otherwise acquire ownership and dominate these broadcasting stations throughout the country, then woe be to those who dare to differ with them. It will be impossible to compete with them in reaching the ears of the American people."
Don't get me wrong. Having fought to get the right for 18-year-olds to vote, and having been so often disappointed at their low turnout, however disappointed I may be at their choice of issue I can't help but be pleased at their organizational skill and level of participation in the referendum vote.
(I'm reminded of the Cheerios commercial. The young child, anxious to help the father deal with elevated cholesterol, brings a bowl of Cheerios and milk to the father's bedside and wakens him. The father says, "That was very thoughtful. Very early, but very thoughtful." That's kind of my reaction to the students turnout -- "That was very energized, participatory and well organized. Very wrongheaded, but very energized, participatory and well organized.")
But I certainly remain disappointed in the University and our City Council.
The University is going to appoint a Task Force??!! You're going to have conversations with students and bar owners??!! You've got to be kidding -- except by now it's so damn obvious what you're doing that you're no longer kidding anyone. This University has gone through hundreds of thousands of dollars from foundations and others for its "Stepping Up" project with no discernible impact whatsoever -- except an increase in the number of students "Stepping Up" to the bar, binge drinking, and then staggering out (or passing out).
Our ever-more-obvious reputation as one of the binge drinking capitals of the nation may help increase our enrollment and income from ever-increasing tuition, but I can't think of any other benefit. And continuing to talk about the problem as if we care, when we obviously don't based on our refusal to do anything, only increases the stench of hypocrisy that hovers over Iowa City like a hog lot's aroma.
There is no shortage of proposals for dealing with alcohol abuse. It's been studied to death -- including the deaths of many students. And educational institutions, and cities, with common sense and a genuine caring for their students and citizens have long since put those proposals in place. What we lack is not proposals. What we lack is the sense of responsibility that would motivate us to implement them.
Meanwhile, the City Council members are in agreement with our University leaders and still backing their friends, the profiteering bar owners. We can offer cheers to Connie Champion, but even she wants to wait a year before "maybe" trying for another ordinance. (And she's the best we've got!)
But while the Council members continue to do this, while they continue to think that TIFs floating on a sea of alcohol is our voyage through economic development to the promised land, they would do well to look at the numbers from this election.
I have enormous respect and admiration for Matt Hayek, his experience, obvious intellectual ability, willingness to serve, and I congratulate him on his coronation. But I think he's dead wrong on this one.
The Press-Citizen quotes him as saying,
It looks like if you factor out the early voting, there was still a split in the community on this issue. Many that voted the day of [the election], voted against the referendum. I think there was not a consensus about how to address binge drinking."
[Brian Morelli, "Non-Student Voters Were Divided on Issue," Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 8, 2007, p. A3.] Were there votes against the ordinance? Absolutely. Was there a split? Yes.
But it's also the case that the support FOR the ordinance among the city's permanent residents was overwhelming by most political standards. There was "a consensus about how to address binge drinking" -- at least a consensus that enforcing the law between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. would be a constructive -- even if extraordinarily tiny -- step in the right direction.
There are 25 precincts in Iowa City. (Based on location, and vote split, 5 of those 25 would appear to be predominantly student precincts.) Of those 25, 8 -- roughly one-third (or 40% of the 20) -- voted 60% or more in favor! Of the 25, 18 -- close to two-thirds (or 90% of the 20) -- voted in favor of the proposal by 50% or more!
Overall, the split on election day for the 25 precincts was 56.9% Yes, and 43.1% No. For the 20 precincts it's nearly 60% Yes -- 58.9% Yes, and 41.1% No.
Are the bar owners, and the multi-thousand-dollar campaign they waged with students, entitled to be heard? Of course. But City Council members should remember that there are permanent residents among their constituents as well, and that we are going to be here long after those students -- and perhaps a goodly number of those Council members -- are gone. We, too, deserve to be heard.
Finley Peter Dunne's "Mr. Dooley," one of the first syndicated newspaper columns, offered the country his famous quote, "No matter whether the Constitution follows the flag or not, the Supreme Court follows the election returns." (This was, of course, long before the Supreme Court actually determined the election returns.)
If only we could get our bar-owner-loving City Council members to do as much.
Fortunately, it was at the end of a bicycle ride, coming into the gravel driveway at our home, that my bicycle simply disintegrated the other evening. No telling how old that bike was -- or how old I would have lived to be had it chosen to leave me in traffic on a busy road instead of on my front lawn.
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, . . . [then] went to pieces all at once, All at once, and nothing first, Just as bubbles when they burst.
For starters, the bicycle had been assembled, like Johnny Cash's "One Piece at a Time" automobile ("I got it one piece at a time/And it didn't cost me a dime"), with parts from prior bikes.
After all, I was brought up at a time when "built-in obsolescence" had not yet been invented and "conspicuous consumption" would have produced more social ostracism than admiration and envy -- even if anyone could have afforded it. Our approach to material things was governed by a little rhyme, said to have originated in New England, though it may have been brought over from old England, a rhyme that was an oft-quoted bit of advice during the Great Depression, and on the home front during the World War II that followed:
Use it up Wear it out Make it do Or do without
Why do I tell this story? Because I don't want to risk someone interpreting what I'm about to say as carrying an overlay of "Now I never would have made a mistake like that." With all my emphasis on logic, analysis and John Carver's approach to board governance, I make all kinds of mistakes -- like continuing to ride an old bicycle long beyond the years when it's still safe -- and might well have been a party to the County Auditor's Office miscount last night had I been in charge.
Having said that . . .
How the hell do you overlook a 2000 vote margin on the "Take a drinking break at 10:00 p.m." ordinance vote? If the vote count on any community's controversial referendum would warrant a check and a double-check before reporting results it would have been this one.
The evening, and the reports of the vote, kind of reminded me of an election some 60 years ago:
"According to the Texas Election Bureau, an unofficial election agency run by Texas newspapers, Stevenson led at midnight by 2,119 votes out of 939,468 counted. 'Well, it looks like we've lost,' Lady Bird told Dorothy Nichols on the phone."
Or so it seemed. The votes kept coming in and the results went back and forth; victory was now declared for Stevenson, now for Johnson, now for Stevenson. After most of the tallies, the governor held a slight advantage. Then, six days after the election, a funny thing happened: 203 votes turned up in Box 13 from the pint-sized town of Alice, Texas. Even funnier: 202 of those votes were for Lyndon Johnson.
Johnson was ultimately declared the winner of that election -- by 89 votes. [There are many sources for this bit of history; this was just the first on Google's list, AskGleves.]
It only took a switch of 89 votes to make these election results an italicized and bold footnote to American history.
What are we to make of a late-hour, 2000-vote swing in the vote count on behalf of the Iowa City's City-Council-backed, illegal-drug dispensing, election-manipulating, irresponsible and greedy bar owners?
[How can I call the bar owners "illegal drug dealers"? Because . . .
1. Alcohol is our nation's number one hard drug by any and all measures: numbers of people involved and affected (alcoholics, alcohol abusers, binge drinkers; plus family, friends and co-workers), percentage of crimes involving alcohol and numbers of persons in prison with alcohol problems, economic impact from absenteeism to property damage, and permanence of adverse health effects -- among others.
2. Alcohol cannot legally be sold or consumed (outside of a family home) by those under the age of 21.
3. Bar owners are operating establishments the sole purpose of which is to profit from the sale and consumption of alcohol, knowing that a significant proportion of the consumption of alcohol from which they are profiting is being done by those who are doing so illegally.
4. Therefore, I contend, they are illegal drug dealers -- with a political and economic power, not unlike the Medellín Drug Cartel in Colombia, to control our City Council and University.]
Kind of reminds me of CitiGroup's failing to notice an $11 billion loss as it was occurring. How do those things happen? Wouldn't somebody notice after the first billion was missing from the petty cash drawer? [See, e.g., Eric Dash, "For Citigroup’s New Head, Focus Is Subprime Tangle,"New York Times, November 7, 2007.]
This is one election fiasco that's going to have to be explained in excruciating detail.
We know of the multi-hundred-thousand-dollar benefit the defeat of the ordinance will bring to the bar owners. For the benefits it will bring to the UI's binge-drinking students -- helped along by the silence on this ballot proposition from their self-censored, see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no-evil, pro-all-business administrators and faculty -- see this morning's video offered by State29, "Cheers!" November 7, 2007.
The Regents have concluded their Halloween meeting, October 31. Are we all better off than we were two days ago?
The newspapers' coverage of the event is relatively sketchy. If you really want to know what all they considered, and had proposed to them on the agenda, check out this Regents' site.
Michael Gartner (and Rose Vasquez) are entitled to credit for their willingness to take a couple of unpopular stands that -- whatever may be your personal preference on the merits -- were research-based and principled. Both voted against the arming of campus police and against raising tuition by 3.2% (rather than the proposed 2%).
Gartner pointed out that putting more guns on campus was a non-solution in search of a non-existent problem -- one that held far more potential for negative than positive impact on an academic institution. The primary problems, he noted, relate to the abuse of alcohol -- a matter local voters might keep in mind when voting on the proposed ordinance November 6.
Aside from the weapons escalation -- in my view, a cheap, pandering response to public demands "something be done" -- I thought the overall security policy document was constructive in its range and detail, going well beyond the arming controversy.
Incidentally, if any Regents, or staff, are reading this: the reproduction of "Weapon-Related Data/University of Iowa" only provides the odd-numbered pages of the document. As a result, some very interesting descriptions of crime scenes and arrests leave a curious reader hanging.
The biggest disappointment for me was the naming policy.
Prior to the policy, during the Wellmark fiasco, there seemed to be a presumption that corporate naming was inappropriate, though chaos reigned and we had no declared specific standards as policy. Now we have simply embodied the chaos and absence of standards into policy, with a suggestion that corporate naming might not be so bad after all.
As I wrote yesterday (and on numerous occasions before) I think we have an even bigger issue that needs to be addressed, and one from which the naming decisions would easily flow, and that is the extent to which we want the University to be a part of, contributor to, and partner with, America's corporate culture generally -- as distinguished from an alternative, an academic, educational oasis through which students briefly travel on their way to corporate America.
That rather major issue aside, I would also repeat my plea that if we are going to take the former path -- which we appear to have chosen when we came to that "fork in the road" -- that we start "haggling over price," especially with regard to an ongoing payment -- as any corporation would expect to pay (rather than a one-time, lump sum for advertising that goes on forever). If we're going "marketplace," let's go marketplace and find out what a reasonable, monthly or annual commercial rate would be for advertising a corporate name in such a prominent way.
A couple of "distance education" stories in this morning's Press-Citizen reminded me of some ideas I've been playing around with for nearly a half-century.
Is it possible to envision a day when Big "E" Education might be provided, and recognized (credentialed), without the participation of institutions like high schools and universities (and law schools) or the necessity for all of the buildings we go on constructing at a cost of millions if not billions of dollars nationally?
A half-century is a long time to be "playing" with ideas like that without ever formulating them into a (pardon the expression) "concrete proposal." But this stuff is outside my normal line of work, far from my highest priority, I've never done the solid research necessary to bring the ideas home, and they're not within my areas of expertise -- not that lack of knowledge or credentials have ever held me back before, especially in this blog.
So let's start with this morning's stories, add some others, and then step back and decide whether we're looking at a trend or merely individual, disconnected, possibly interesting, anecdotes.
"Online" courses and degrees.
A local Horace Mann Elementary teacher, Emily Dvorak, is pictured on p. A1 at her laptop with a caption explaining that she is about to get a masters in education from her efforts online. Brian Morelli, "Giving It the (Online) College Try; More Students Turning to Classes on the Web," Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 31, 2007, p. A1.
The story goes on to note that the number of UI students taking online courses has increased from 280 in 2003 to 2,578 this year. The University offers a number of courses online, as well as a number of undergraduate and graduate degree programs: Nursing, Liberal Studies, and Applied Studies; Educational Administration; and certificate programs in Public Health, Entrepreneurship, and Nonprofit Management.
(For reasons not fully explained, given this trend, and his recognition of the full-bore efforts of Penn State and the University of Illinois, Associate Provost Chet Rzonca "said . . . UI's roots are in being a residential university. 'I don't think we will go into the online business.'"
Although I would have to say that his position is consistent with what I found 10 or 15 years ago when I came back from southeast Asia with a multi-billion-dollar distance education proposal for the University, or returned from Washington with an offer of a multi-million-dollar grant for a telemedicine program, and could find no local interest, let alone support, for either. A proposal for aiding Iowa's economy with "Information Age" industries got a comparable reaction from the Governor's office in the early 1980s -- following which the businesses I had in mind settled in states where they were understood and welcomed, although with no more advantages than Iowa could have provided.)
And of course there are probably thousands of examples of training and certification that are currently being done online, from the required training of IRB members and researchers in the standards for human subjects research, to Microsoft's certification programs, to the online tutorials, help screens and FAQ resources provided for most software packages.
In fact, there is now enough computer-based instructional material available that one can imagine the actual creation of something once suggested by one of my sons for a K-16 software package -- something that could be used by students both in school, and accessed from home. As a kid goes through various "When I grow up I want to be a . . ." phases, by entering "fire fighter," "astronaut," or "rock musician" the program could lay out what he or she would need to learn, year by year, through four years of college, in order to be well prepared for that career.
Although online instruction was a very small part of it, the recommendations of the National Commission on the High School Senior Year including a lot of out-of-building activity -- indeed, enough that, had the school board members been willing to read and discuss the document we could have saved much of the $40 million bond issue focused on putting more high school students in the present buildings, as well as much of the current discussion about who gets to go to which high school.
Finally, there is the related, and growing, "home schooling" movement for K-12 education.
Online and computer-based teaching and research materials.
The headline on the second story is a little misleading, Brian Morelli, "Student Group Spreads Internet; Developing Nations Receive Web Support," Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 31, 2007, p. A3. For some years now, UI School of Library and Information Science Associate Director Clifford Missen (who is not mentioned in the article) has been short-circuiting the Internet. The technological and economic costs of providing Internet connections to educational institutions in many third world countries are often prohibitive. Rather than abandon the effort, Cliff developed a work-around: put content from the Internet on a really big hard drive and provide the drive, or computers with such a drive, to the schools. This gives students access to the content as fast, or faster, than we can get it with our broadband connections.
What else is going on that I think somehow relevant to this overall story?
For those who can more easily get reasonable access to the Internet, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), one of the world's top institutions of higher education, has created an "open courseware" Web site. It explains, "OCW shares free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from more than 1700 courses spanning MIT's entire curriculum." Why are they doing this? As MIT President Susan Hockfield explains, "OCW expresses in an immediate and far-reaching way MIT's goal of advancing education around the world." MITOpenCourseware.
Increasingly, professors everywhere are doing something similar. For example, I not only post a syllabus for my classes to the Web, I "publish" student seminar papers there as well (the response to which sometimes helps in their job search). And while I still assign conventional textbooks, to the extent possible I use original source, up-to-date, Web-published material as assigned reading that saves the students money, the hassle of carrying more weight in their backpacks -- and a goodly number of trees over the years.
Online "national universities."
That research and scholarship are global is not a new phenomenon. It has often been the case that an academic's best friends and colleagues don't live down the street or work down the hall. They may be individuals who live and work in Tokyo, Moscow, or London, who only get together once a year, if that, at international conferences.
Email, listservs, Web sites and blogs have only accelerated the interactions among such colleagues.
I offer a seminar called the "Cyberspace Law Seminar." Others around the country and the world who are teaching similar or related courses regularly interact with one another by means of a "cyberprof" listserv. Of course, it's not the same as having all of us in a single building on one university's campus -- anymore than talking to someone on the phone "is the same as" talking face-to-face over coffee. But clearly the cyberprof listserv creates some of the qualities of a geographically based faculty, a kind of preliminary phase of what could grow into a "national university."
A related contribution of the Internet is something called the Social Science Research Network, and within it the "Legal Scholarship Network" which offers, among many other subject matter areas, an online publication called "LSN Cyberspace Law" -- which contains abstracts of the articles being published by, among others, the "cyberprofs."
Online publications.
Increasingly, publication of all kinds is done on the Internet. This has had a variety of impacts, not the least of which is economic, on publishers of everything from newspapers to academic journals.
This is not to say that all persons, for all purposes, no longer need access to any hard-copy printed material.
But for our purposes at the moment, the point is that from commercial services such as Westlaw and Lexis (and hundreds of others) to the literally billions of Web sites, such as MIT's, where very valuable material is made available for free, for most persons, most purposes, most of the time, whether teaching (or self-study), researching, or writing, the Internet can provide the bulk of what is needed -- and can often do it better than the available hard-copy materials.
Friedman's Flat World and Tapscott's Wiki-Everything.
One of Tom Friedman's catchy titles is The World is Flat. Among other things, his point is that the Internet radically reduces, by orders of magnitude, what economists call "barriers to entry." The costs of creating and displaying a Web page to the world are as nothing compared with building industrial plants or even retail stores. With a Web site, and an ability to outsource many business functions, it's possible for many individuals to create a profitable business. It costs no more to send an email from Iowa to India than from Iowa City to Independence. (Moreover, both are essentially "incremental cost free.")
We've all had the experience of making a call for technical support, or customer relations, that ended up producing a conversation with someone in Manila or Bangalore. Friedman tells of a person in India who is preparing roughly a half-million IRS tax returns for Americans each year.
The education connection? MIT's teaching materials are instantaneously accessible around the world -- as are mine. And The Gazette recently highlighted the extent to which this is really coming home. Kristina Andino, "My Tutor Lives Overseas; Outsourcing Gives Many U.S. Students the Boost They Need," The Gazette, October 22, 2007, p. A1.
The story's lead tells of a 17-year-old woman in Sioux City North High School who was able to go from Algebra II to Calculus without first earning credit for Trigonometry, who went directly to Advanced Physics without taking Introductory Physics. How does she do it? She has a tutor.
The tutor, however, lives in India. "The two connect in cyberspace through a California-based company called Growing Stars," reports Andino.
There are a number of lessons here for our purposes.
1. Just as you can get high quality surgery in Thailand for a fraction of what it would cost in the U.S., similarly a student in Iowa can also get high quality tutoring from India for a fraction of what it would cost in Sioux City -- and, unlike the operation in Bangkok, she doesn't even have to go to India. The schoolhouse, like the world, is flat.
2. Of even greater significance for our purposes, note that she received no "credit" for her efforts, in the conventional sense, either from this "school she was attending in India" nor the one in Sioux City. And yet she received a meaningful benefit from this education in the sense that matters most: she knows the material, moreover she knows how to use it, to apply it. That's the substantive benefit. But she also gets the somewhat more superficial, administrative benefit that she is able to advance to subsequent subjects the same as if she had earned the academic credit at her Iowa school.
Another consequence of a flat world is what Don Tapscott calls, by way of the title of his book, Wikinomics -- "wiki" as in "Wikipedia," the online, collaborative encyclopedia. Tapscott provides dozens of examples that go well beyond online encylopedias, including but not limited to business applications, all the product of online collaborative efforts made possible by the Internet.
There are numerous opportunities for collaborative efforts in education -- among teachers, students and professionals. There have long been tiny steps in this direction, of course, but we are only on the threshold, limited only by our own lack of imagination, with regard to what this could become.
I see all of the examples and trends set forth above as in some ways related. Where they might lead is in part up to us and in part the consequence of technological innovations over which we have little or no control -- or even the ability to imagine.
This is much bigger than "laptops in the classroom" -- as significant a first step as that might be.
I see the possibility of getting more education to more of the world's 6 or 7 billion people than is now possible -- especially women and young girls.
I see the possibility of a testing and credentialing process, or institution -- not unlike the NAEP testing program (National Assessment of Educational Progress; "The Nation's Report Card") -- that could take the place of, and come to be recognized by employers as the equivalent of, a high school diploma or B.A. degree from a reputable institution.
Because I believe that something in the nature of K-12 teachers and college professors are somewhere between useful and essential, I can imagine their providing home visits (as is now done by some school districts for home schooled K-12 students), or their availability to college students on campus for, say, a once-a-month visit, or seminar session.
Change comes slowly in Education. As someone has observed, it took us 30 years to get the overhead projector out of the bowling alley and into the classroom. I have been frustrated with my own efforts here at the UI over the past quarter century.
But, like IBM's rejection of the desktop computer, it may well be that it's not going to make a lot of difference what the UI chooses to do, or fails to do. Those businesses I wanted to bring to Iowa simply went elsewhere, as did the proposals for university-provided distance education. (The UI, years later, did finally accept money for telemedicine.) The UI's "market," its competition, is no longer just its "peer institutions," the Big Ten, or even all of American higher education. The campuses, like the schoolhouses, like the world itself, are flat. Alternatives to skyrocketing student tuition are already here, and more are coming, fast, right behind them.
My earlier objection to the approach to the "naming controversy" being debated by the Board of Regents today (as spelled out at length in earlier blog entries) was that we needed to look well beyond the naming of colleges and buildings and other things at the University to the much broader question of our conception of our mission in an increasingly corporatized society. Are we to be an oasis of learning in a sea of commerce, or are we a ship sailing upon that sea -- like all the other for-profit merchants? Until we address that question, I said, we have little to guide us with regard to the corporate naming of buildings and colleges.
Now I see that earlier suggestion as much too narrow.
It's not what we are going to name the buildings into which we proudly pour millions of federal and state taxpayers' dollars, and the contributions of corporate and private donors. What the Regents ought to be researching, thinking and talking about is where buildings, regardless of name, will continue to fit in their vision of the future of something formerly tethered to Iowa City and called "The University of Iowa."
[Prelude disclaimer: To remove any possible ambiguity, this blog entry is not "about" any given individual. Every adult who has lived in the Iowa City area over the past 30 years -- including myself -- bears some responsibility for the circumstance in which we now find ourselves, whether because of apathy, sense of powerlessness, fear of bar owners' political and economic power, failure to act when they had the power and responsibility to do so, other priorities, support of City Council members who have refused to act (or affirmatively supported bar owners), and so forth.]
I think the supporters of the "10:00 p.m. drinking break" ordinance are using the wrong strategy.
You can't win the votes of underage binge drinkers with an argument as to why underage drinkers should comply with the law. After all, their ability to outsmart the Iowa Legislature and Iowa City Police is as much of the appeal of binge drinking as the joy of passing out in your own vomit.
So I've published in this morning's (October 29) Daily Iowan a Letter to the Editor setting forth the argument as to why a dedicated binge drinker should vote for the ordinance.
It recognizes, as I must, that an ability to violate the law only 20/7 instead of 24/7 is indeed a restriction on one's consumption of alcohol.
But I point out that underage binge drinkers' alcohol consumption is only possible because of the "cowardice, irresponsibility and stupidity" of the adults who support, or refuse to do anything meaningful about, underage students binge drinking: "powerful bar owners, a UI administration on both sides of the issue, a self-censored faculty, and a City Council that refuses to vote."
The point is that underage binge drinkers can't count on those supportive adults always being there -- especially now that the University of Iowa is beginning to get the kind of "disdain and ridicule associated with the indoor rain forest" -- adverse publicity being the primary driving force in administrative decision making.
Have you noted the hypocrisy?
(1) When it comes to the issue of bringing weapons onto the campus in the form of arming campus police with handguns it is suggested that this is desirable because (a) the police advise it would be a good thing to do, and (b) "everybody's doing it" on other Big Ten campuses.
(2) But when it comes to taking a position on binge drinking, while there is rhetoric (as there has been for decades) there is absolutely no meaningful action proposed or taken, notwithstanding that (a) the police advise it would be good to support this proposed ordinance, and (b) what "everybody's doing" -- virtually all Big Ten campuses, as well as our own sister Regents' university in Ames, Iowa State -- is to go well beyond our "10:00 p.m. drinking break" ordinance, and use the common sense, no-brainer approach of banning the entry into bars of those who cannot legally engage in the activity that profits the owners of those establishments.
This kind of all-too-typical administrative behavior always reminds me of a wonderful scene from the feature film, "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," loosely based on an establishment outside of Austin, Texas, many years ago called "The Chicken Ranch." The Texas Governor is under great political pressure from both sides, as you might imagine. Is he going to do anything about it? As one reporter sizes up the Governor's statement: "It's a possible 'maybe.'" Following which the Governor . . . oh, but wait. I don't want to spoil it.
Read the Letter to the Editor, below, and then, below that, you'll find a one-minute, fair use clip from the movie you can watch for yourself. Finally, later there will be references to some of the additional stories about Iowa City's forthcoming (November 6) election and referendum on the ordinance.
Binge Drinkers for the Ordinance Nicholas Johnson October 29, 2007
Binge drinker? Your smartest strategy may be to vote for the 10:00 p.m. ordinance.
This isn’t the “21-only” advertised. Actually, it’s one sweet deal for underage drinkers.
Want to see 21-only? Visit Ames. That’s the way to prevent underage drinking in bars. Keep underage patrons out of bars. Binge drinking’s down. House parties? Sure, but Ames’ common sense controls work for all – including underage drinkers -- as they would here.
That’s “21-only.”
If you were negotiating with some real 21-only folks and they offered you a compromise – “drink ‘til ten, wait, start again” -- you’d be a fool not to take it.
Binge drinking students are blessed with powerful bar owners, a UI administration on both sides of the issue, a self-censored faculty, and a City Council that refuses to vote. But you can’t count on the continuation of such cowardice, irresponsibility and stupidity.
The Iowa City and campus police chiefs, given the impossible task of enforcing the law, support the ordinance. But as everyone knows, given clever students and irresponsible bar owners, anyone smart enough to be admitted to the University can figure out how to drink in bars.
Ultimately, even administrators willing to ignore problems will respond to publicity. The consequences of Iowa City’s serious binge drinking are increasingly bringing the University the kind of national disdain and ridicule associated with the indoor rain forest.
Reject this ordinance and even Iowa City could respond like sensible communities with a real “21-only.” Illegal drinking only 20/7 instead of 24/7 is a restriction. But unless you’re not macho enough to get blotto by 10, isn’t it a whole lot better than not drinking at all?
The following one-minute fair use clip is from the delightful 1982 R-rated full-length musical comedy, "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," staring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton, among a great many other accomplished and well-known actors, and still available for rental and sale. It's based on a true story of a brothel outside LaGrange, Texas, that was ultimately closed down in 1973, following the work of investigative reporter Marvin Zindler of KTRK-TV, Houston. The writing was done by Larry King (whom I remember from Austin in the 1950s), the Governor was played by Charles Durning, and the studio was RKO Pictures. The film is copyright by, presumably, RKO. The use of this very brief clip is for non-commercial, educational and commentary fair use purposes only. Any other use may require the permission of the copyright owner.
Additional stories and commentary from others regarding Iowa City's proposed "10:00 p.m. drinking break" ordinance:
[As a concession to the shortness of life, I have not provided individual links for each story. They can be found at the publications' Web sites, by way of a Google search, or in hard copy from libraries or the newspapers in question.]
Starting with the Press-Citizen (not everything, but a reasonable sample from the past week).
October 29: Hieu Pham, "Police Arrest 4 for Assaulting Officers"; Opinion: Duncan Stewart, "Time to Fight for Our Right to Vomit"; Letters: Lane Plugge, "21 Ordinance is the Right Thing to Do"; Louise From, "21 Ordinance Would Not be Effective."
Special Supplement. "Is 21-Only the Answer? On Nov. 6, the Longstanding Controversy Comes to a Vote," October 27, 2007.
p. C2: "Ins and Outs of Iowa City's 21-only Issue"; "Do You Support or Oppose Iowa City's Proposed 21-Only Measure, and Why?"; Key Players in the 21-only Debate [continued on p. C10]"; "Iowa City 21-Only Issue Timeline [continuing on pp. C3, C6, C7 and C10]."
p. C3: Hieu Pham, "Future of 21 Issue 'In the Hands of the Public."
pp. C4-5: "Downtown Iowa City Then . . . & Now" (maps and statistics regarding number of bars and alcohol-related arrests)
p. C6: Lee Hermiston, "Sides Divided on Impact of 21-Only Ordinance; One Thing's Certain: Few Will Go Unaffected"; Lee Hermiston, "Other Iowa City Bars Mostly Indifferent to 21-Only Issue."
p. C7: Rachel Gallegos, "Ames 21-Only Ordinance 'Piece of a Larger Strategy.'"
p. C8: Editorial, "It's Time for City to Vote 'Yes' on 21 After 10 p.m."; Rick Dobyns, "Bar Scene Has Quadrupled"; Jim Clayton, "A Tipping Point on the Iowa City Horizon"; Jay Christensen-Szalanski, "Considering Economic Impact of 21-Only."
p. C9: Tam Bryk, "Not Enough Options Downtown"; Bob Thompson, "21-Only Won't Decrease Drinking"; Andrew Thomas, "Students Must Get Out and Vote"; Letters: Noah Keck, "Ordinance Would Just Move Problem"; Adam Altman, "University Should be Doing More"; Matthew Theobald, "Ordinance Would Improve Downtown"; plus 5 editorial cartoons from "Patton's Pad," all supporting a "No" vote on the ordinance.
October 25: Rachel Gallegos, "Absentee Ballots Up Over 2005," p. A1.
Letters: Brenda M. Cruikshank, "High-Risk Drinking Not Just for Fun"; Saul Lubaroff, "Support Music and Vote No"; Carrie Z. Norton, "Make Iowa City Better, Vote Yes"; Paul Werger, "Article Show Need for 21-Only."
October 24: Kathryn Fiegen, "Professor: What You Put on Your Sign Matters; Campaigns Show Electability with Number of Yard Signs," p. A1.
October 23: Brian Morelli, "With the 21-Only Proposal on the Ballot, Musicians and Music Lovers Ask, 'Is Nov. 6 the Day Live Music Here Dies? Plan's Critics: Music Caught in Crossfire," p. A1; Hieu Pham, "Anti-21-Only Campaign Spending Big," p. A1.
October 22; Letters, p. A9: Kathie Belgum, "Vote Yes to Save, Improve Lives,"; Amy Fletcher, "Critic Worried About Revenues."
October 20. Lee Hermiston, "21-Only to Affect Police; Pass or Fail, Proposal Will Change Law Enforcement; Most Reported Offense in Downtown is Underage Possession of Alcohol," p. A1.
Letters: Sarah Hansen, "21-Only Will Make Iowa City Better"; Christine Allen, "Iowa City Has a Drinking Problem."
On occasion, the very fact that two related stories pass like ships in the night, each with no reference to the other, is really bigger news than what each reports.
(Not incidentally, the author, Timothy Tyson, is speaking this evening (Friday, October 26) at 7 p.m. in Room C20 of the Pomerantz Center on the University of Iowa campus.)
And just how does the Editorial Board support its rather grand suggestion that everyone in the county should read a book? It says,
"events described in this book are not fictional and are not part of some distant past. The One Community-One Book committee chose Tyson's book for all Johnson County to read precisely because the retelling of this story raises so many still relevant questions about race and identity, about law enforcement and justice, about historical memory and willful amnesia.
And it goes on to quote Washington Post reviewer Jonathan Yardley who tells us that the author's "chief aim is to persuade us that Americans are blind to their own history -- or, even worse, determined to falsify it -- and that they cannot hope to resolve the deepest and most intractable of all the country's problems, race, until they are willing to look history directly in the eye."
Fortunately, this issue of the paper made it onto the newsstands and porch steps of Iowa City.
Because, as a news story in that very same issue of the paper reported, another community paper, with a history of national awards that would be the envy of any commercial publication, was not so lucky. Rob Daniel, "Survey Prompts Pulling of School Newspaper,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 24, 2007.
You see, it turns out that the Iowa City City High Little Hawk newspaper Executive Editor, Adam Sullivan, and his staff decided that rather than just urge their readers to read a book about "the deepest and most intractable of all the country's problems" they would gather some actual data about that portion of the problem that exists within their own high school in an effort to promote some discussion and solutions.
Rather than praising these teenagers' commendable and constructive efforts -- going well beyond those of the county's well-meaning, book-reading adults, focused on problems far from Iowa City 30 years ago -- City High Principal Mark Hanson decided the better course of action would be to seize all the copies of that issue of the paper (without telling Sullivan or others on the staff) in an effort to prevent this recognition of the school's very real racial challenges.
Why? Well, you see, apparently in Hanson's view, the problem in the school was not the pre-existing tension and prejudice between the races at City High, the problem was writing about it. (The story, in fact, reported a survey of student option -- you know, "data gathering" -- that revealed to no one's surprise that 13% of the white students are responding with prejudice to their characterization of an entire race, in short, to a label rather than individual persons with unique personalities.)
Here are my reactions:
1. Principal Hanson's reaction to a newspaper story reminds me of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's reaction to the photographs from Abu Ghraib.
As Secretary Rumsfeld characterized the problem in his testimony before the U.S. Senate, "It is the photographs, the people running around with digital cameras."
The problem, in short, was the public relations impact on American citizens (and possibly the president's re-election), and on Iraqis' "hearts and minds." The problem was not our pre-interrogation techniques, the problem was the pictures of those techniques. No cameras, no problem.
Did Principal Hanson really think it was the newspaper report that caused what this morning's Gazette on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand editorial characterized as "three separate verbal confrontations" -- Hanson's offered explanation for seizing the newspapers? Did he really, like Rumsfeld, think if only there was no newspaper there would be no problem? It sure looks that way.
Had he made any prior effort to gather this data on his own? If not, why not? Was he aware of a race relations problem in his school? Had he done anything proactive to address it, or even to promote discussion? We now know what he is against, but what is he for?
"Just because you can get away with it doesn't mean you should do it."
2. As a lawyer, it is with sadness that I note the extent to which the existence of legal standards can contribute to the absence of moral and ethical restraints -- as well as common sense.
Want a couple examples?
Because alcohol is "legal" and "drugs" are not, we send users of the latter to fill our prisons, and wink at the use and abuse of what is, by any measure, our nation's number one hard drug: alcohol (in terms of numbers of persons impacted, the seriousness of that impact, economic loss, relation to crime, and seriousness of medical consequences).
The UI's athletic program argues there's nothing wrong with its profiting from partnerships with organized gambling. Why? Because gambling casinos are legal in Iowa.
Did Hanson have the legal right to do what he did? Notwithstanding Iowa's legal protections for the free speech of high school journalists, he may have -- though I don't think it's as clear a case as has been represented.
The law says a principal can intervene in the case of a high school newspaper containing material that is obscene, defamatory, or that encourages students to engage in behavior that is unlawful or violative of school regulations.
Clearly, the survey and story violated none of these standards -- indeed, quite the contrary.
It is the final category on which Hanson relied: newspaper content that will cause the "material and substantial disruption of the orderly operation of the school."
There are three arguments one might make as to why he was wrong.
1. As a matter of fact finding, a common sense, colloquial interpretation of the standard would suggest that "three separate verbal confrontations" -- something that probably occurs on occasion among faculty, as well as among students in the hallways, and is sometimes but a prelude to constructive discussion and problem solving -- scarcely constitutes a "material and substantial disruption of the orderly operation of the school."
2. Legally, while I doubt one would win the argument (for a variety of reasons) I think there's a question as to whether this provision is constitutionally "void for vagueness." Under Hanson's interpretation a principal might very well conclude that criticism of the principal, or his or her unpopular policies, would cause "disruption of the orderly operation of the school."
3. Moreover, given the context of the other named standards, one could also argue that conventional principles of statutory interpretation should rule out the possibility this provision provides a carte blanche grant of justification for principals to act on their every whim, or otherwise render meaningless the statutory purpose of providing protection for student editors.
Even assuming what he did was legal, the far greater wisdom is to be found in what Rob Daniel quotes Adam Sullivan as saying: "Legally, he may have been able to do that, [but] just because you can get away with it doesn't mean you should do it."
The Press-Citizen is right. It would be good for all of us to read Blood Done Sign My Name. It might be even better if we were also to read that survey and story in the Little Hawk and reflect on racial prejudice in Iowa City in 2007 as well as in Mississippi in the 1970s.
The Press-Citizen devoted most of its op ed page this morning (Oct. 20) to the subject of "indecency" in broadcasting. It asked that I respond to a column on that page by Dr. Loren Glass. My column is reproduced below -- with a link to an earlier dissenting opinion on the subject that I wrote when an FCC commissioner.
As will be seen from today's column, and the earlier dissenting opinion, there are two distinct subjects here.
One involves literary and artistic freedom generally in our country; the other relates to the FCC's responsibility to enforce laws regarding "indecency" in broadcasting. The differences between Dr. Glass and myself involve the second. What he is attacking, as his title suggests, are actions by the FCC; but what he argues by way of support are reasons for literary freedom generally (as to which we are in more agreement than disagreement).
I knew and supported Allen Ginsberg as well as George Carlin, and Pacifica's New York City station WBSI (a true "fair and balanced" practitioner of the First Amendment, often under attack at the FCC, and virtually never defended by the commercial broadcasting industry, even when Pacifica's Houston station was bombed off the air, twice). But since the Press-Citizen asked that I, like a good law professor, put together the best case I could for the FCC's position, that's what I've endeavored to do.
My column is an effort to bring to Dr. Glass' attack on the FCC the acts of Congress and Supreme Court decisions that impose on the FCC, and broadcasters, standards regarding the unacceptability of "indecency" in over-the-air radio and television broadcasts that virtually all (including members of the Supreme Court) would acknowledge to be unconstitutional if applied to other media.
In the course of doing so, I also raise the matter of what Justice William Brennan characterized in the Pacifica ["George Carlin"] case [FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978)] as the "acute, ethnocentric myopia" of his colleagues -- though I don't, here, use his phrase. (Justice Brennan wrote in dissent, "in our land of cultural pluralism, there are many who think, act, and talk differently from the Members of this Court . . .. It is only an acute ethnocentric myopia that enables the Court to [disapprove] . . . communications solely because of the words they contain." 438 U.S. at 725.) That is to say, in a democracy we have at least some obligation to respect -- that's "respect" not "capitulate to" -- the different values of our neighbors, regardless of whether they be freer, or more restrictive, than our own.
Dr. Glass' column, and his additional comment in today's Press-Citizen replying to mine, on the same page today, are linked from this blog entry just below my column.
The Case for Deleting Expletives Nicholas Johnson October 16, 2007
What are we to make of Dr. Loren Glass’ “@#$% the FCC”?
Not the content. The title.
By deleting the expletive (ironically, one approved by the Supreme Court for public display in Cohen v. California [403 U.S. 15 (1971)] he refutes his very thesis. It is an example of his “pandering to a very small group with a very loud voice” -- his characterization -- for which he criticizes the FCC.
Don’t get me wrong. Among the 400 dissenting opinions I wrote as an FCC commissioner are a goodly number poking fun at a variety of FCC silliness. One dealing with the FCC’s punishment of little college station WUHY-FM for its “indecency” will be linked from the blog version of this column for your entertainment. [Here is that link.]
But the issues are a little more complicated than I then, or he now, reveal.
For starters, the “small group” forbidding indecency in broadcasting is called “Congress.” “Indecency” has been illegal since the FCC’s earliest days -– ironically in the very same section of the Act that forbids FCC “censorship.” In 1948 Congress moved it out of the Communications Act and into the Criminal Code, where it still resides as a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment [18 U.S.C. Sec. 1464 (2004)].
That doesn’t make “indecency” any less vague as guidance for broadcasters, but it does make the agency’s attention to the issue something more than mere “pandering” to “the core constituency of the Republican Party.”
Moreover, however well qualified Dr. Glass may be regarding the tastes and values of the Democrats of his personal acquaintance in Johnson County, I suspect there are a goodly number of registered Democrats in America among the Republicans in that “very small group” offended by indecency.
And therein lies the dilemma for which the discipline of anthropology provides more insightful guidance than either my training in law or Dr. Glass’ field of American literature.
Dr. Glass points out the availability of pornography on some cable channels and the Internet. He’s right. But the Supreme Court says he’s wrong to argue broadcasting should be as free.
For 70% of us TV comes by cable -– whether the Cedar Rapids stations or cable programming sources like Comedy Central. But there’s a difference -– one more easily explored in my Senior College class this month than this brief column. There’s a scarcity of over-the-air frequencies that doesn’t exist for cable. That’s one reason our local stations are licensed by the FCC to serve “the public interest” and Comedy Central is not (but bleeps expletives anyway).
Anyone who pays an extra premium to the cable company for a soft or hardcore pornography channel can’t reasonably complain when they get what they paid for. The same is true for cable generally to a lesser degree -– “lesser” because we can’t yet pick individual “basic cable” channels.
Rabbit ears and rooftop antennas still provide, for free, a wide range of public and commercial stations. We have a choice.
Personally, I prefer individuals’ “censorship” for themselves to FCC censorship for all. Don’t like the cable channel? Don’t pay for it. Worried about the Internet? Get a filter. TV? Get a “v-chip.”
But what of those who’ve done those things and must still live, and raise children, amidst societal values of which they disapprove? Aren’t they entitled to ask the FCC and Justice Department to enforce the criminal law? In a democracy, with an anthropologist’s sensitivity, we can’t simply offer them a poke in the eye with a sharp stick and a dismissive expletive, deleted or not.
We need not permit them to determine what the rest of us can read and watch. But we must honor the different values of their religious communities, their choice of home over public schooling, or their decision, like that of the Amish, to create entertainment from home rather than merely watch entertainment from Hollywood.
I suspect Dr. Loren Glass, like Comedy Central, chose to delete his expletive because he thought it a good idea to respect others’ values -- even though not legally obliged to do so. For broadcasters, respect for others’ values is not just a good idea, it’s the law. __________ Former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson teaches at the University of Iowa College of Law, blogs at FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com, authored the just published book, Your Second Priority, and is teaching a Senior College course on the media.
The paper also published a response to my column by Dr. Glass, Loren Glass, "Glass Responds to Johnson,"Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 20, 2007, p. A17 -- the introductory comments at the top of this blog entry are, in effect, my response to his response.
October 19, 2007, 12:45 p.m.; October 20, 2007, 8:30 a.m.
"21-Only"? Nonsense!
There's lots of action -- or at least discussion -- about the so-called "21-Only" proposal. Why "so-called"? Because it's not about "21-only" at all -- notwithstanding that characterization by supporters and opponents alike.
The Daily Iowan editorializes this morning, with a headline reference to "21-Only," "As most people are well-aware, this election will decide the fate of a proposed ordinance banning anyone under the age of 21 from the Iowa City bars" -- a brazenly inaccurate characterization. Editorial, "21-Only Voting Might Spur Increased Student Engagement," The Daily Iowan, October 19, 2007, p. A6.
Under this proposal the Iowa law would continue to be openly violated in Iowa City's bars up until 10:00 p.m. You may think that's a good idea, you may think it's a bad idea, but it is clearly not "banning anyone under the age of 21 from the Iowa City bars."
A columnist in this morning's Press-Citizen spreads this mischaracterization further by calling it "a proposal that would prevent anyone younger than 21 from entering a bar." Jesse Tangkhpanya, "When Political Opposites Join Forces," Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 19, 2007, p. A11.
Most newspaper stories about the proposal ultimately get around to a factually accurate description, but not before headlines and leads speak of "a 21-only ordinance," Rob Daniel, "Sides Clash on 21-Only Proposal; Few Students Attend Forum," Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 19, 2007, p. A1; "the 21-and-older bar issue," Gregg Hennigan, "Supporters, Opponents Air Views on Bar Law at Forum," The Gazette, October 19, 2007, p. A1; or "21-ordinance," Abby Harvey, "Group Targets 21-Only; The UI Student Health Initiative Task Force Rallies Students, Encourages Voters in Hopes of Defeating the 21-Ordinance, Which is on the Nov. 6 Ballot," The Daily Iowan, October 12, 2007, p. A1.
Bob Patton's editorial cartoon of October 13, 2007, depicts a deteriorating "downtown Iowa City" going down a sewer designated "21-only." Patton's Pad, Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 13, 2007, p. A15.
Even supporters of the proposal have it wrong, as evidenced by one author's assertion that "the 21-ordinance . . . raises the bar-admission age to 21." Christine Allen, "Don't Get Scared by Anti-21-Only Rhetoric," The Daily Iowan, October 16, 2007, p. A6.
So, what are the facts?
Under the present "restrictions" of the City Council, from the time bars open -- 6:30 a.m. on football game days for "breakfast" -- until 10:00 p.m. there are essentially no restrictions on who can enter.
And if the so-called "21-only" proposal passes? That will still be the law!
Think about that for a moment. Calling this a "21-only" proposal is a gross distortion of what it's about, designed to frighten with this characterization those voters who wish to perpetuate the bar owners' profits from operating businesses at which the law is routinely violated.
All the proposition involves is what happens between 10:00 p.m. and closing time. Under the present "restrictions" the illegal provision of alcohol to those who are under the age of 19 can only continue up until 10:00 p.m.
If the so-called "21-only" proposal passes, the illegal provision of alcohol can still continue up until 10:00 p.m., but from 10:00 p.m. until closing time the Iowa law will be enforced.
Iowa law prohibits the sale of alcohol products to anyone under the age of 21.
I'm perfectly willing to consider any independent, reliable data regarding the advantages and disadvantages of lowering the drinking age to 18. (Among other things, setting the age at 18 would eliminate what may be for some students the appealing notion of getting away with something illegal.)
But I don't think arguments that "those old enough to fight for their country ought to be able to buy a beer" have any relevance whatsoever as to why it should be OK to violate the present law -- which very clearly is "21-only." In order to avoid disrespect for law generally, I believe whatever the law may be should be enforced -- until, if desirable, it is changed.
Given that what bars do is sell alcohol, it would not be unreasonable for Iowa City, like a great many sensible cities around the country, to provide that no one under the age of 21 could enter establishments the sole purpose of which is to prosper from the consumption of alcohol by those who enter. Actually, that's kind of a no-brainer if you think about it.
Iowa City's City Council, however, proud of this university community's reputation as one of the underage binge drinking capitals of the nation, with a wink and a nod has been able to expand students' access to alcohol from a mere 7 bars not long ago to 51 today. Think of the profits. Think of the "economic development." Think of the "vibrancy" of the downtown. Wow!
Now those are City Council members worth voting for, aren't they? (The only reason we need the referendum is because the Council members thought it too much of a burden on wealthy bar owners to have to comply with the law after 10:00 p.m.)
It is apparently relatively easy for underage students to obtain alcohol in bars, what with fake IDs, reimbursing legal-aged friends who buy them drinks, and undoubtedly other methods of which I am unaware. Once they have entered the bars it is virtually impossible, with or without the assistance of the police, to comply with the Iowa law.
In fact, if illegal sales were not being made, if bar owners' underage patrons were not consuming alcohol illegally, why would bar owners care if the additional (19- and 20-year-old) underage students had to leave at 10:00 p.m.? Why would the 10:00 p.m. expulsion of those who shouldn't really be there at any time of day have an adverse impact on the economy or "vibrancy" of the downtown? The only reason it might have an economic impact is because bar owners have been flagrantly violating the law all along and would like to be able to continue to do so 24/7.
If this were truly a "21-only" proposal I could understand the bar owners' objections to the loss of such a substantial portion of their total, ill-gotten gain. I wouldn't agree with them, but I would understand.
But the ordinance is not a "21-only" law.
It is rather, it seems to me, an excessively modest compromise.
We have a very serious problem of binge drinking by young students that leads to sexual assaults and other violence, adverse impacts on health including the possibility of more alcoholism than might otherwise exist in their lives, and a devastating impact on their educations -- up to and including more dropouts than would otherwise occur -- not to mention the adverse impact on the community generally and its residents. Critics of Iowa City's lax approach to the law note two student deaths -- one from a student inhaling his own vomit, another from a drunken student falling off a balcony -- plus "drunken driving deaths, countless drunken assaults and attacks and a 2005 Harvard School of Public Health study that states UI has a binge drinking rate of nearly 70 percent." Lee Hermiston, "Iowa's Drinking Called Epidemic; Experts Say Bingi9ng Affects Health Later," Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 13, 2007, p. A1.
As UI Public Safety Director Chuck Green said, "alcohol consumption does exacerbate the problem of assaults and sexual assaults in the community. 'We know there's a whole host of other issues that accompany intoxication. Sexual assaults go up, criminal mischief goes up, assaults go up. Anything we can do to reduce those crimes would be beneficial." And Iowa City Police Chief Sam Hargadine reports, "'After 10 o'clock at night [Iowa City's downtown] has a different personality. And most of it is due to alcohol. Alcohol affects everything we do after 10 p.m.' . . . Hargadine said the downtown area becomes more violent, disruptive and unsafe. There's fighting, littering, uprooting trees and all kinds of mischief-related activities that have alcohol as the common denominator." (The foregoing is from the October 20 piece in Lee Hermiston's four-part series about the proposed ordinance. Lee Hermiston, "21-Only to Affect Police; Pass or Fail, Proposal Will Change Law Enforcement; Most Reported Offense in Downtown is Underage Possession of alcohol," Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 20, 2007, p. A1.)
Here are the two most relevant administrators of law enforcement in the community supporting this ordinance, and providing graphic data and reasons why, and some of the same folks who are willing to support whatever the police want -- from arming campus police to providing more city police officers -- are unwilling to listen to them when it comes to the criminal and otherwise costly consequences of underage drinkers in bars after 10:00 p.m.
(And see also the October 20 letters to the editor: Sarah Hansen, "21-Only Will Make Iowa City Better," and Christine Allen, "Iowa City Has a Drinking Problem," Iowa City Press-Citizen, October 20, 2007, p. A16.)
Iowa City's drinking establishments have, among other things, deliberately set fire to a bar where customers were sitting, staged fights inside the bar, and more recently staged an event described as a "party" at the Union Bar with a "mandate of matching lingerie for cocktail waitresses [that] endangered the young women's welfare [creating] a haven for the objectification of women, an environment in which lewdness is an encouraged standard." Patrick Bigsby, "'Sex Sells' Excuse Sold Out," The Daily Iowan, October 10, 2007, p. A6
A true "21-only" would produce a significant reduction in binge drinking, notwithstanding opponents' canard about it "just going elsewhere" (something that is going on now anyway).
This ordinance will not have such a substantial impact. But it should result in an improvement -- without a significant adverse impact on the legitimate, legal profits of any bar owner. A requirement that bar owners obey the law a couple of hours a day cannot seriously be argued to be a very onerous imposition.
Let's give the proposal a chance. As Iowa City Police Chief Hargadine says, "There's only one way to know for sure [how much it will help] and that's to do it." (From Lee Hermiston's October 20 story.)
But to do that, the media, and the voters they inform, need to know precisely what it is this ordinance does, and does not, provide. And the fact is that no one is going to be voting on "21-only." Not in this town.
October 17, 2007, 7:00 a.m.: Here's an "add-item" for this blog entry and its comments on this, the big day of the Lecture Committee's efforts:
I'm searching for comments to this blog entry either confirming, or disputing, the following story:
Do you use plastic products? It's hard not to in this economy, even after you've made an effort to cut back: liquid containers, plastic bags from stores, throw-away dishes and cups. Do you make an effort to recycle those you do use? If so, do you have any idea what happens to your contributions to plastic recycling?
One of my sons passed along the assertion that 80% of our "recycled" plastic is actually sent to China and burned -- something that's permissible under China's lax environmental laws, but would be banned here.
If true, it means we're (1) being lied to by those businesses ostensibly "recycling" our plastic as an environmentally-friendly effort, (2) poisoning the Chinese, (3) throwing away what I've assumed is a potential source of (or substitute for) the petroleum that goes into plastic, and (4) contributing to pollution and global warming in the name of "recycling."
My wife, Mary Vasey, went looking. She couldn't find anything on Snopes.com to confirm or refute this story. What she did find elsewhere was a report from the Independent and Guardian on the Celsias.com Web site -- "Transnational Trash," January 26, 2007 -- that is consistent (though not identical) with regard to practices in Great Britain.
Help me out. "Enquiring minds want to know." Do you know what happens to Americans' "recycled plastic"? And, if so, what is your source?
The Lecture Committee Wants Your Thoughts
For the next week we're going to try an experiment here in collaboration with the UI Lecture Committee -- a group of the finest undergraduates you could ever find at any major university.
The Lecture Committee is putting on a great event October 17 and would like to have a bit of pre-event discussion here in this blog in the form of "comments" attached to this blog entry.
Here's their announcement:
The University Lecture Committee, the Brookings Institution and the UI Office of the Vice President for Research, are hosting a forum on October 17th entitled "Energy and National Security: The Role of Biofuels in America's Policy Debate." Focusing on the future of renewable fuels as well as the role that energy plays in American policy, the event will include prominent thinkers of the Brookings Institution and notable professors from Iowa's Universities. The forum is one of the Brookings Institution's Opportunity '08 series (www.opportunity08.org) centering on major political issues in states with early primaries or caucuses.
What: Energy and National Security: The Role of Biofuels in America's Energy Economy. When: October 17, 2007 at 7:30 p.m. Where: Main Lounge, Iowa Memorial Union, Iowa City, Iowa
More information about the forum and panelists can be found at http://lectures.uiowa.edu. Questions? Just email them to: lecture.committee@gmail.com.
The Lecture Committee continues:
The forum will center on two major topics: energy security and alternative energy sources, with a specific focus on biofuels, and the role that energy plays in America’s domestic and foreign policy. Iowa’s agricultural economy and heavy investments in ethanol have made it the crucible of America’s biofuel experiment, stimulating research and discussion on the many possible impacts of biofuels. Furthermore, Iowans, as residents of an early caucus state, have the unique opportunity to engage politicians and get issues that are important to them on presidential candidates’ national agendas. Ethanol is a national issue in large part because of Iowa.
And energy is a national issue in large part because of our economy’s dependence on it. Access to energy has shaped our domestic economic policies as well as our foreign policy for generations. But it is now that the issue of energy is coming to a head. Americans are recognizing that we can no longer ignore the increasing instability and hostility to American policies in the Middle East, the threat of peak oil, and the rise of demand from China and India. Furthermore, the popular upsurge of concern over worldwide oil dependence recognizes not only the impacts on our own lives, but also on the lives of the generations that will follow us. Climate change, political stability, and prosperity are all inextricably linked with energy.
I am familiar with Brookings from my time in Washington. The Institution continues to house some of the best minds in America regarding economic and public policy issues. The individuals from the Brookings Institution who will be involved in these panels are especially knowledgeable on the subject at hand: David Sandalow, Michael O'Hanlon and William Antholis. Each has a paper on the subject available from Brookings' "Opportunity '08" series (www.opportunity08.orgon ) under the section "Our World," subsections "Climate Change," "Energy," and "Nuclear Proliferation."
This is an opportunity to participate in an event before it occurs.
So scroll to the bottom of this blog entry, click on "Post a Comment," and let the Committee, the Brookings experts, and the world hear from you!
October 7, 2007, 9:10 a.m., October 9, 2007, 6:30 a.m. (addition of Register editorials)
Thank You, Des Moines Register
The Register did the University of Iowa a big favor this morning.
You see, the UIHC has run into a bit of bad luck with regard to its public relations recently.
First, a patient was permitted to wander off and was later found 800 miles away. I always thought that was a bit of a bad rap. We can't be expected to keep an eye on all of these patients all the time. And besides, it's not like she was lost. She did turn up, after all. Think of all those folks who disappear and are never heard from again.
But some overzealous bureaucrats made a big deal out of it. One was heard to say, "Wha' the ****!" Following which he ordered a general investigation to see what else might be going on at the nation's largest hospital-owned university.
Needless to say, they couldn't find anything. Well, there were those nine dead bodies. But at least they hadn't escaped from the hospital. Call it "locking the barn door after the horses are stolen" if you must, but we do learn. We are, after all, an institution of higher learning. And what we've learned is that if you keep the patients restrained to their beds they can't wander off. Good point. They may die, but hey, you can't have everything. And you can even minimize that public relations damage if you'll just not report the deaths.
Then there was the matter of storing clean and soiled items in the same room. But that's really petty. At least we have clean patient-care items -- which is more than you can say for some hospitals in impoverished third-world countries.
Anyhow, there's been a little confusion regarding the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report.
As is so often the case, the real problems with something like this are not so much about the substance as they are about the institution's response to the substance.
The Register asked for and was given a copy. It has now made the inspection report available online. Much to everyone's surprise, when the paper was asked to give it back they refused to do so, and decided to publish a big expose about it instead.
The paper claims the report contains "dozens" of alleged health and safety violations. I doubt that. After all, it's only 132 pages long. How could "dozens" of violations fit in such a tiny report?
From here on it gets a little confusing. The day the Register's story appeared the hospital held a news conference to defend itself -- but for some reason failed to notify the Register of that fact. The feds (CMS) want the report of its July and August findings to be withheld. But it turns out the inspection was actually conducted for the the CMS by the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals.
Having been reminded that the hospital is, after all, subject to the Iowa public records law, it is now making the CMS report available to those who request it.
But the CMS and State of Iowa officials are continuing to treat the public document as "confidential" and refusing to make it available.
So why do I say the Register has done the UI a favor?
