The threat to local access

When the euphemisms start piling up, the best thing to do is to take a closer look. The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy will hold a public hearing tomorrow on the Massachusetts Cable Choice and Competition Act. Well, gee, who could be against such a thing? In fact, the bill represents a massive assault on local media by the telecom giant Verizon. It’s also part of a nationwide campaign. The Web site SaveAccess.org is tracking the issue here and elsewhere.

The legislation, described in the Globe last Friday by Laura Colarusso and the subject of a Globe op-ed today by Nolan Bowie, would strip cities and towns of their right to regulate the franchising of cable television operations in their communities. Instead, all regulation would be carried out by the state. Such a change could result in less local programming — the government meetings, school plays, church services and community bulletin boards that don’t exactly compete with “American Idol,” but that form a vital part of the local media scene.

Because government-mandated funding formulas are based on the number of subscribers in a given community, larger cities such as Boston, Cambridge and Somerville have vibrant local public-affairs programming as well. Boston even has a daily newscast and a weekly political talk show, as I described in a story for CommonWealth Magazine earlier this year. State regulation wouldn’t necessarily result in the immediate demise of such funding mandates — but it would make getting rid of those mandates a whole lot easier.

So what’s going on? Traditional cable providers — now mostly bought up by Comcast — played by the old rules, winning approval on a town-by-town basis. Verizon, which seeks to offer cable television over its phone lines, wants to catch up quickly, which is why Verizon officials are complaining about the lengthy delays sometimes imposed by local officials. Comcast, at least for the moment, seeks to keep the current regulatory regime in place — after all, it already has the licenses it needs, so anything that makes life more difficult for Verizon gives it a competitive advantage.

In fact, there will be more competition and more choice for consumers in communities where Comcast and Verizon go at it head to head. The problem is that transferring the regulatory process from local communities to the state could well result in fewer mandates for cable providers to put money into local programming. It could quickly become a race to the bottom, as Comcast would rightly cry foul if Verizon were allowed to get away with making less of a commitment to localism.

The traditional cable providers are fighting just as hard as Verizon. Recently I noticed a commercial during a Red Sox game from a group called Keep It Local MA. It was a warm, gauzy appeal to keep cable television the way it is today. Its Web site looks like it was designed by Norman Rockwell. But if you do a “whois” on keepitlocalma.com, you’ll find that it’s registered to something called NECTA.

A little Googling quickly reveals that NECTA is the New England Cable and Telecommunications Association, “a six state regional trade association representing substantially all private cable telecommunications companies in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont” that “has represented the interests of the cable telecommunications industry before state and federal regulatory agencies, in the Courts, the Legislatures, and before the Congress of the United States.”

So yes, all the players are looking out for their best interests. It’s just that, in this particular case, the traditional cable industry’s interests happen to line up with those of consumers.

The time will come when there will be no logical rationale for regulating television delivery — it will all be Internet-based, and the closed cable systems of today will cease to exist. For now, though, if regulators stop requiring cable companies to pay for local programming, then it will disappear.

The legislation, Senate #1975, is online here. The media-reform organization Free Press offers online resources here. The principal sponsor of the bill is state Sen. Steven Panagiotakos, D-Lowell, whose contact information is online here. The Massachusetts Muncipal Association, which opposes the bill, has a resource guide online here.

Correction: Media activist Chuck Sherwood writes to tell me that Keep It Local MA is more than an astroturf campaign: “Just to make sure you understand, even though KIL-MA is registered to NECTA, it is in fact a network of opponents to the Verizon Special Interest bill that includes, Mass Access, ACM-NE, Mass PIRG, the Mass Municipal Association and their Mayor’s Association, and behind the scenes Free Press.” So noted.

The Sadr solution?

Maybe it’s because it seems as though Moktada al-Sadr is going to win anyway, but I’m intrigued by Bartle Breese Bull’s op-ed in the New York Times, “An Enemy We Can Work With.”

Sadr is certainly not going to bring liberal democracy to Iraq, but we’re long since past that notion. In Sadr’s favor: he and his family were bitter enemies of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and his father was killed by Saddam; Sadr’s movement of the dispossessed has far fewer ties to Iran than does Iraq’s Shiite elite; and, at least according to Bull, Sadr has privately, though grudgingly, lent his tacit support to the American occupation.

There is not going to be a good outcome in Iraq. Bull points the way to a possible least-bad outcome that we could live with.

Funding crisis hits MediaChannel

The MediaChannel, a nonprofit watchdog organization founded seven years ago, is in danger of going under by the end of June.

The organization was begun in 2000 by two former Boston journalists, Danny Schechter and Rory O’Connor. Schechter recently released a new documentary, “In Debt We Trust.” O’Connor is a founder of NewsTrust, a social network that rates news stories and organizations.

Here’s an excerpt from MediaChannel’s fundraising appeal:

“It is sad to have to shut down an important service in the public interest because our not-for-profit site can’t attract sufficient resources to support a very small staff or to pay necessary bills including rent, server fees and utilities,” said Danny Schechter, co-founder of the international web platform that launched February 1, 2000. “The ultimate irony is that MediaChannel has never been better — its traffic is up and its impact strong, as is the quality of its timely and diverse offerings, which include original reports, blogs, videos, features and media news from across the world.”

MediaChannel may not get as much attention as Media Matters for America, which also analyzes the media from a left-of-center point of view, but with a more partisan political edge. But it does good work, and it would be a shame if it disappeared.

Also banging the tin cup: Christopher Lydon’s excellent public radio program, “Open Source,” which lost its funding from UMass Lowell last year. Clea Simon has the update in Wednesday’s Globe.

Mr. Fussy writes a correction

With apologies to Alex Beam, by way of Roger Hargreaves.

The Globe today publishes a correction that is superfluous bordering on confusing. It reads:

Based on incomplete information on a congressional website, a graphic with a Page One story about a plaque commemorating the origins of gerrymandering wrongly said Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry and state Senator Israel Thorndike attempted to keep their Republican friends in power. They were members of the Democratic-Republican Party, also known as the Jeffersonian Democrats. The Republican Party was not founded until the 1850s.

But as anyone who’s studied American history should know, the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, was universally known in its early days as the Republican Party. This Wikipedia entry gets it right despite being from, you know, Wikipedia. And hand it to Wikipedia again, which correctly notes that the Republican Party started to be called the Democratic Party around the time of Andrew Jackson’s presidency.

If the Globe’s editors thought they needed to clarify this at all, instead of calling it a “Correction” they should have trotted out an old standby from years past: “Amplification.” Mr. Fussy really would have liked that.

Multiple choice on evolution

When it comes to evolution, Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback‘s not going to say one thing to one audience and a different thing to another audience. No, sir. He’s going to say many different things to the same audience, as he does today in his New York Times op-ed. Brownback doesn’t believe in evolution. Except that he does. Sort of. I guess.

Hot air over a Cape Wind book

Has WGBH‘s Cape Cod radio station, WCAI, been suppressing news about a new book that takes a favorable view of Cape Wind, the controversial proposed wind farm? It’s a claim that’s been rattling around for the past few weeks. Now the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly takes a look. And though he finds no definitive proof, he does dig up some interesting tidbits about power, money and potential conflicts of interest.

You want conflicts of interest? Well, you’ve come to the right place. I’m a paid contributor to another outpost of WGBH, “Greater Boston with Emily Rooney.” The editor of Cape Cod Today, Walter Brooks, who’s pro-wind farm and who first alerted me to this story earlier in the month, is a friend of Media Nation. Walter and I have appeared together on WCAI to talk about online journalism.

So it’s just as well I’m taking a pass on this. Read Adam’s story and decide for yourself.

A libel case is dropped

If you’re trying to make sense of the news that the Islamic Society of Boston has dropped its libel suit against the Herald, WFXT-TV (Channel 25) and several other defendants (Globe story here; Herald story here), I suggest you read this backgrounder from November 2005, written by Mark Jurkowitz when he was with the Phoenix.

The shorthand version: The Herald and Channel 25 reported that the Islamic Society, which is trying to build a mosque and cultural center in Roxbury with an assist from city officials, has had some uncomfortably close connections with certain Islamist radicals who are, at the very least, soft on terrorism. The Islamic Society denied the allegations.

The Globe was not named as a defendant even though columnist Jeff Jacoby has written several columns on the subject, the latest of which appeared on April 25. It’s a must-read.

This is a pretty convoluted saga, involving not just a suit but also a countersuit, which was also dropped this week. The case also encompassed some angry rhetoric between members of the Islamic and Jewish communities. Even though the libel case has been dropped, we almost certainly haven’t heard the last of this matter.

The winner here is the First Amendment. Libel suits should not be used to squash discussion of important public issues. Perhaps the reporting on this matter fell short of perfection, but, as my man Louis Brandeis liked to say, the solution to alleged bad speech is “more speech, not enforced silence.”

Correction of the day

From the New York Times:

An article last Wednesday about a decision by the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, to remove at least five members of Community Board 6 who oppose the Atlantic Yards development project — which Mr. Markowitz supports — misstated the reason for the absence of a response by Mr. Markowitz. At the time the article was being reported, Mr. Markowitz could not be reached by his aides because he was on a ship at sea, had no telephone access and was not regularly checking his e-mail messages. He did not “refuse” to comment.

Dr. Shaughnessy is in

Why does he do this? In his Globe column today, Dan Shaughnessy insinuates that the Red Sox were lying — or at least blowing smoke — about what was really wrong with Josh Beckett between May 13, when he hurt his finger, and last night, when he made a successful return. Writes Shank:

He appeared to be bound for a start in the All-Star Game in San Francisco before suffering an “avulsion” on his right middle finger while throwing a pitch against the Orioles in what turned out to be the most memorable game of this young season (a.k.a. the “Mother’s Day Miracle”). Remember, boys and girls, this was not a blister — it was an avulsion.

Shaughnessy, of course, presents no evidence. But reports have been pretty consistent that Beckett did not get a blister, a problem that plagued him pretty consistently when he was younger. For instance, here is what the Globe’s Amalie Benjamin reported on May 17:

Beckett suffered an avulsion — a torn piece of skin below the pad on his right middle finger — in the fourth inning Sunday against the Orioles. He has experienced similar skin problems in the past, though the Sox are careful not to characterize the injury as akin to the blisters he developed with the Marlins.

Medline Plus defines “avulsion” as “a tearing away of a body part accidentally or surgically.” That doesn’t sound like a blister, either.

A small matter, obviously. You just wonder what’s rattling around Shaughnessy’s brain when he types this stuff.

Will Kerry save Edwards?

Only John Kerry can save John Edwards now. Will he? It depends on who is telling the truth.

I am not an Edwards fan. However, I admire the way he has resolutely refused to exploit the death of his son Wade. Now a new book by Democratic political operative Bob Shrum tells an ugly, ugly tale. My former Phoenix colleague Michael Crowley of The New Republic finds (sub. req.) the relevant excerpt, involving the period when Kerry was considering Edwards as his running mate:

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he’d never told anyone else — that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before — and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn’t pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

Crowley does point out that there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest Shrum’s devastating tale may not be true, writing, “When I asked one person close to Edwards about it, he argued that Shrum’s account makes no sense because Edwards had publicly recounted similar versions of the funeral home story before — and thus wouldn’t possibly have claimed on either occasion that he was telling it for the first time.”

Fair enough. But what gives this legs is that Kerry — who, after all, isn’t running for anything — now has the power to make or break Edwards. If Kerry denies it in firm, straightforward language, then the Edwards campaign survives, and Shrum will henceforth be known not just as a loser, but as a liar as well. But if Kerry confirms it, or refuses to discuss it, then Edwards might as well pull out.

By the way, if Kerry does confirm it, why on earth did he go ahead and put Edwards on the ticket?

Oh, and another thing — Edwards may not be all that big on gays and lesbians, either.