Reason Magazine - Contributors

Digital Doubts

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 EST

Every television station in the country is required to shift to digital broadcasting in the next seven years, following broadcast standards developed and approved by the federal government. The broadcast industry is spending billions of dollars to implement the Federal Communications Commission's orders; more than 100 stations reaching 50 percent of the American people now transmit digital signals, and over 100,000 digital TV receivers have been shipped to dealers since August 1998.

The idea is simple enough: Use the government to speed up and coordinate the adoption of the next generation of broadcasting technology.

In January, the Sinclair Broadcast Group performed independent field tests for digital broadcasting in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The result: In many parts of the cities, digital high-definition TV sets received no pictures at all.

Oops.

The problem is with "MultiMate" distortions, which on analog TV sets cause "ghosts"--outlines caused by television signals bouncing off nearby buildings and walls. The new digital standard was designed to be ghost-free, but in many cities it not only got rid of ghosts, but eliminated the pictures altogether.

Another problem: Most cable systems are not technically able to relay the signals, which means that the roughly 60 percent of households with cable will not be able to show high-definition pictures any time soon.

Oops again.

What went wrong? In establishing the new standard, the FCC's field tests evaluated digital TV reception using 30-foot antenna booms on trucks, not the antennas used by most American viewers. And neither the government nor the industry tested digital reception indoors--that is, where most people watch television.

Meanwhile, in each location tested by Sinclair, all the stations could be received by an inexpensive two-inch Sony Watchman. "It is sobering that a Watchman costing less than $100 outperformed digital TV sets costing several thousands of dollars," comments Mark Hyman, Sinclair's head of corporate relations.

So what happens next? Sinclair and some other broadcast groups want the FCC to amend the digital standard. But so far the commission, like all too many high-definition TV screens, is silent.

Falling for the Gap

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Mon, 01 Nov 1999 00:00:00 EST

The New York Jets have just won the Super Bowl. It must be true: There's a story on the front page of The New York Times, and there are color pictures in Sports Illustrated. And indeed it is true. Or, rather, it was true, a few decades ago. Only a truly inexperienced sports writer would suggest that the New York Jets are the current champions of the NFL.

Did you hear that the Dow Jones industrial average has topped 1,000? That, too, is old news, as even the most junior financial writer must know.

How about this one: There is a broad and widening gap on the Internet between white and minority Americans. This familiar claim, often asserted as a fact by policy makers and digerati alike, is also based on old information. Reinforced by White House press releases and presidential candidates' speeches, the idea is so ubiquitous that even the usually well-informed have come to believe that white Americans are online and minorities are not.

Not so. It may have been true in 1996 or 1997, when the Internet was only a few years old as a popular medium and personal computers cost thousands of dollars. But today, with dirt-cheap Internet access and computers approaching the costs of television sets, assertions of a "digital divide" or "racial ravine" are as correct as identifying Joe Namath as football's current MVP or pinning last week's Dow at 1,000.

Misled by stereotypes, misinformed about survey techniques, and misdirected by interest groups, the media have treated the "digital divide" as a crisis requiring government intervention. As a result, billions of dollars might be spent to address needs that no longer exist.

To understand how this happened, start with stereotypes. East Coast journalists typically equate "minority" with "African American," portraying the country as divided between black and white. This view omits the fastest growing minority group, Hispanic Americans, who in just a few years will be the largest minority group in the country.

Confusing "minority" with "African American" also leads journalists and analysts to forget that it is not among whites but among Asian Americans that Internet and computer use are approaching levels of penetration comparable to those of the telephone, television, and indoor plumbing. So even using the old survey data, it was always inaccurate to claim that minority Americans were not online in large numbers.

But the issue of dated information is crucial, especially because a year or two in "Internet time" is the equivalent of a decade for older media. The findings of the most frequently cited "digital divide" study, released last summer by the U.S. Department of Commerce, were presented and widely reported as new information. The study was actually an analysis of surveys in 1998 and earlier. When it was released, more-current information was already available from market research firms, but only a handful of news organizations reported the newer data.

The Commerce Department study made page one headlines with its conclusion that the United States faced a "racial ravine" dividing online white Americans from information-poor minorities. "For many groups, the digital divide has widened as the information `haves' outpace the `have nots' in gaining access to electronic resources," it said. "Between 1997 and 1998, the divide between those at the highest and lowest education levels increased 25 percent, and the divide between those at the highest and lowest income levels grew 29 percent."

That sounds impressive, but if you look more closely you may spot a crucial methodological flaw. Among reporters for the major daily newspapers, only John Schwartz of The Washington Post noted the problem. "Last year's study did not collect information about out-of-home access," wrote Schwartz. "It is not possible, therefore, to say whether the digital divide is growing based on access from all places." In other words, the Commerce Department's claim of a "widened" gap was not supported by the data it cited, because the surveys asked different questions from year to year.

"We never stated that we have any information about widening with regard to anywhere access," says Larry Irving, who directed the government study before he resigned as assistant secretary of commerce. "But certainly we can prove the in-home access gap is widening."

Yet according to every survey taken in the last few years, Americans get their online access at work and at school in far larger numbers than at home. According to The Internet News Audience Goes Ordinary, a 1999 report from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 62 percent of employed Americans go online through their jobs, and 75 percent of students go online from their schools. The Commerce Department study reported only on use of personally owned computers, thus excluding the millions of users (including this writer) who are online every day but do not own a computer. This is like assuming you don't need a driver's license unless you buy a car.

Regardless of whether the questions in the federal survey were correctly phrased, they were asked in 1998. Surveys conducted this year have found not only that minorities are not falling behind but that they are catching up.

"If you missed Christmas [1998], you missed a big surge," says Ekaterina Walsh, author of The Digital Melting Pot, a report based on 1999 data collected by Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Quite a lot of people got cheap PCs. We were surprised ourselves, because we were projecting lower numbers for online penetration and commerce [than the study found]. Even a month made a big difference." Walsh adds that the federal report may undercount or ignore WebTV, which in 1998 was one of the lowest-priced devices enabling consumers to go online.

"I think we did miss a certain amount of information with regard to lower-priced PCs since December," concedes Irving, the former Commerce Department official. But he stands firm on the question of whether the department's study was misleading because it tracked only computer use at home. "No one has been tracking out-of-home access, as far as we know," he says.

Larry Irving, meet Bob Mancuso. Mancuso, marketing manager for Nielsen Media Research in New York, says his firm produces a regular report on out-of-home Internet access and use. Forrester Research also provides tracking data on out-of-home use.

The Orlando Sentinel was one of the few newspapers that noted the problem with focusing exclusively on Internet use at home. The Sentinel also reported inconsistencies among the 1994, 1997, and 1998 federal surveys, noting that the earlier surveys did not even ask specifically about computer ownership; they asked whether respondents owned a modem. Sentinel reporter Maria Padilla also quoted comments from Walsh and other researchers challenging the government's conclusions. "Race has nothing to do with whether you adopt technology or not," Walsh told Padilla.

Donna Hoffman, an associate professor of management at Vanderbilt University who studies Internet access and popularized the term digital divide, says racial differences do indeed disappear when you measure access and use, rather than modem or computer ownership. "We do not find gaps in usage, given access," Hoffman says. But she defends the federal study because, however shaky its conclusions, it could have an impact on the policy debate, encouraging government spending on computers for poor people (a policy that Irving also favors). "Getting PCs into the homes of all Americans is critical," she argues.

Hoffman concedes that the research by Nielsen and Forrester, using 1999 data, was more current than her studies and the federal government's, which were based on data from 1998 or earlier. But she says older data are still useful. "We track events over time the better to understand the evolution in access and usage," she says. "We have learned an enormous amount about technology usage by carefully studying these events over time. The fact is that the data show a digital divide for those time points. The data also allow us to understand the likely impact of policy initiatives."

There is no shortage of those initiatives. Within hours of the federal report's release, President Clinton, Vice President Gore, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Urban League all announced programs to buy computers for minority Americans.

But the recent data from Forrester and Nielsen suggest that such programs may be misdirected. According to Forrester, Hispanic Americans were slightly ahead of white Americans in computer use earlier this year, and African Americans were closing the black-white gap at a rate that could lead to parity within the next 12 months. In terms of Internet use, the truly disadvantaged may well be Native Americans, who were not covered by the federal report. Data from the Black College Communication Association and other sources also indicate disparities between educational institutions, including lower Internet access at predominantly minority colleges and universities. This, too, was lost in the focus on home computer ownership.

"Questions of colored folk and cyberspace are often plagued by overstatements of the bad news, understatements of the good news, and misplaced concern about the importance of computers," says Omar Wasow, an MSNBC commentator and founder of BlackPlanet.com and other black-oriented Web sites. "For example, a few years ago people were concerned that women were dramatically underrepresented on the Internet. Yet because women were signing up at America Online and other access providers at an incredible clip, in a few short years women have practically achieved parity in their online access.... The critical statistic is not what are the current rates of usage but rather [what are] the current rates of adoption."

Wasow cites the history of another electronic medium. "We forget that once upon a time televisions were a rare and expensive device that only a few households were lucky enough to possess, and now every home has nearly a TV per person," he says. "Over time, most advanced technologies that are available only to an elite few become widely dispersed among the broader population."

In other words, there is no debate about the television-rich vs. the television-poor in America. Every American who wants one has a television set. And now that some personal computers cost less than TVs and Internet access is cheaper than cable (or even free), the data do indeed show that every American who wants one is getting a PC.

But the media echo chamber has drowned out updated information with old studies and stereotypes. Even informed technology observers have mistaken last summer's federal report for current information. In the cover story for the August issue of Yahoo Internet Life magazine, Farai Chideya of ABC News wrote that "the average Web user is different from the average American: more likely to be white or Asian...and less likely to be Latino, black or a blue collar worker." Her source? That Commerce Department report, based on interviews in 1998.

"Although middle-class blacks and other minorities are getting online in substantial numbers, there remains an enormous disparity between whites' computer use and blacks'," wrote the usually perceptive Internet observer Jon Katz in a late-summer column on the Freedom Forum Web site. His source? The new edition of the widely respected book Technology and the Future, edited by Albert Teich, the director of science and policy programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And what was the book's source? The Commerce Department study. So Mayor Giuliani, where's the ticker-tape parade for Joe Namath?

Is Your Site Accessible?

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 EDT

Some day soon, you may open your morning newspaper and discover a few features are missing:

Sports scores will be mostly gone, with only the home teams' games and national championship results reported.

The color weather map will be replaced by a black-and-white version with 1950s-era isobar lines.

The stock tables will have been dropped in favor of lists of the five most active stocks traded, and perhaps the day's biggest winners and losers.

What will have happened? Under an order from the U.S. Department of Justice, your local newspaper will have been forced to drop those and other features because they are not accessible to people with disabilities.

So say goodbye to small type (too hard for some to read), thus ending comprehensive lists of sports statistics and securities trading. And of course that weather map has to go: It's not accessible to the color-blind.

Sound crazy? Does the Justice Department really have the power to review the design of newspapers? Well, maybe--though not yet the print versions. It may well be assuming the power to review any newspaper's online design.

Webmasters, Uncle Sam wants you to make your Web site more accessible to those who are blind, deaf, or otherwise disabled. And it's not a suggestion: It's the law. The new rules are mandated by a little-known provision of the Workforce Investment Act enacted by Congress last year. Under Section 508 of that law, the new rules will apply later this year to all Web sites operated by federal agencies, by anyone doing business with the federal government, and by many--perhaps all--state governments.

But those guidelines might also soon apply to everyone who puts up a Web site anywhere in the country. For now, the Section 508 rules will be voluntary guidelines. But members of the new federal Web site commission were quoted by the trade news service Ziff Davis in April as asserting that companies and individuals who do not adopt the rules "voluntarily" could soon face a legal mandate to comply--or be exposed to lawsuits filed by any disabled individual who could not read all of the information on a site.

Section 508 is one of those laws that sounds as controversial as apple pie: It simply requires that Web sites be adjusted so that disabled persons can read them. Web site designers will be required to restructure their content, design, and underlying technologies to allow individuals with disabilities "to have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access to and use of the information and data by such members of the public who are not individuals with disabilities." Who could object to helping the disabled?

But the real question is: Just how should the Internet be "fixed" to be more accessible? The new federal Web site committee established by the U.S. Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (the people who regulate wheelchair ramps and hallway widths) offered its answer in May, drafting new rules for online publishing. Provisions required that streaming audio or audio files be accompanied by simultaneous text, including, "where appropriate, in tactile form"; that streaming video be captioned; that the use of color to convey information be restricted; and that webmasters "provide at least one mode that does not require user vision" by formatting all information so that it is compatible with braille and speech synthesis devices.

Other regulations ban touch screens, prohibit moving text or animation (unless the user can go to a static display with the same information), and require all Web sites to "provide at least one mode that minimizes the cognitive, and memory ability required of the user."

Web site problems that need fixing were discussed in an attachment to a memorandum from Attorney General Janet Reno that explained the new law. "For example, a system that provides output only in audio format would not be accessible to people with hearing impairments," reads the explanation, "and a system that requires mouse actions to navigate would not be accessible to people who cannot use a mouse."

So say goodbye to streaming audio and video, unless you can provide simultaneous text translation. Say goodbye to graphical user interfaces, unless you can provide simultaneous keyboard commands--available in braille and audio.

Who is affected by the new rules? Advocates of last year's legislation say it applies only to federal Web sites. That may (or may not) have been what Congress intended, but that is clearly not what is being planned. For example, the U.S. Department of Education asserts that "states which receive Federal funds under the Technology Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1988, are required by that Act to comply with Section 508." Those words open the scope of the law to every state.

The people drafting the rules believe they should apply to everyone. Who are they? As is customary, the federal government asked interested individuals to nominate themselves to serve on the drafting committee. In this case, Section 508 required consultation with "public or nonprofit agencies or organizations, including organizations representing individuals with disabilities." Not surprisingly, most of those appointed were representatives of such groups as the American Council of the Blind, the American Foundation for the Blind, Easter Seals, the National Association of the Deaf, the National Federation of the Blind, and the United Cerebral Palsy Associations.

Members of the committee assert that the federal government has the power to regulate the form and content of online information--as opposed to print, where the government does not have such power--because the federal government paid for the development of the Internet. "The Internet is subject to market forces, but it didn't start through market forces, it was started by the federal government," said Jenifer Simpson, a committee member and manager of technology initiatives at the President's Committee on Employment of People With Disabilities, in an interview with Ziff Davis. Simpson added that the rights of the disabled must prevail over other considerations. "This is really a civil rights issue," she said.

And if online publishers decline to adopt the committee's new guidelines voluntarily, the guidelines could become mandatory under federal law for all Web sites, according to both Simpson and Judy Brewer, another committee member who is also director of the Web Access Initiative.

Janet Reno believes the new law covers more than just Web sites. "The scope of Section 508 is expansive," she wrote in the memorandum describing the law's jurisdiction, and "potentially includes all telecommunications devices (including telephones, voice-mail systems, pagers, facsimile machines, and related technology) and any technology used to convey, transmit, or receive any kind of information."

The new rules will become final early next year, but it is already possible to see how they would work. For those inside the government, Attorney General Reno announced the creation of a federal Web site (www.508.org) to help Webmasters ascertain whether they are in compliance with the new law. But this site was only accessible from government computers--specifically, according to the attorney general's memorandum, from .gov and .mil domains.

For everyone else, the Web Access Initiative developed and published its own set of proposed guidelines that could be adopted as federal law (www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT). The first guideline requires Web sites to supply text alternatives for all images and graphics. "Thus, a text equivalent for an image of an upward arrow that links to a table of contents could be `Go to table of contents,'" the provision reads. A second provision bars the use of color to convey information unless explanatory text is also available, because "people who cannot differentiate between certain colors and users with devices that have non-color or non-visual displays will not receive the information."

Other requirements prohibit using multiple languages on the same page, because that can hinder translation by braille readers, and discourage the "use (or misuse)" of tables and other formatting that "makes it difficult for users with specialized software to understand the organization of the page or to navigate through it." Yet another provision requires webmasters to "ensure that moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating objects or pages may be paused or stopped" and to design all pages so they are "usable by people without mice, with small screens, low resolution screens, black and white screens, no screens, with only voice and text output, etc."

Another Web site lets online publishers test their sites using some of the suggested guidelines that soon may have the force of federal law behind them. The Center for Applied Special Technology (www.cast.org) has posted free software it calls Bobby, illustrated with an image of a jovial waving policeman. That cheerful logo doubles as a seal of approval that can be downloaded and used by Web sites that meet Bobby's accessibility guidelines. Bobby has already flunked a number of widely used Web sites, including the White House site, where the software identified "13 accessibility problems that should be fixed in order to make this page accessible to people with disabilities."

Bobby may be waving with his right hand, but in his left hand, not visible in the logo, may be a billy club: Section 508.

TV Worth Selling

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Sun, 01 Nov 1998 00:00:00 EST

Are public television stations quietly being privatized?

Without much attention, several have been and more may be on the way. Many date the privatization of public stations to the 1995 sale of WNYC-TV, a PBS affiliate owned by the city of New York. Dow Jones paid the city more than $200 million for the station and promptly converted it to a business-news format. Today, the station serves as the East Coast flagship of Paxson TV, the seventh national commercial television network, which began broadcasting in August.

A few weeks before the Paxson network's debut, PBS stations in Buffalo and Albany were bought by Sinclair Broadcasting, which already owned 54 commercial television stations, for $56 million. If the federal government approves the sale, Sinclair will convert both stations from public to commercial programming. And yet another transfer, of a PBS station in Pittsburgh, is awaiting federal approval.

One might think PBS is bemoaning the loss of stations in four Eastern markets, but one would be wrong: Public television officials note that even if all of these sales are approved, there will still be one PBS station left in each city. And that is the concept: one PBS station to a city.

PBS says there are still 22 cities which have two or more public television stations, and the network would be quite happy to concentrate its resources on just one station in each market. But those extra PBS stations have become more valuable to commercial owners.

Decades ago, there were just the ABC, CBS, and NBC networks. Most broadcasters believed television could sustain only three or four stations in each city, so they gave away "surplus" stations for a song--or less. Now, with Fox, WB, UPN, Paxson, and, coming soon, Barry Diller's new network, there is a demand for eight commercial network affiliates in each city, so the hunt is on to find new stations.

The U.S. public television system, built over the last 30 years by billions of dollars in taxpayer funds, has discovered it can reap tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars per city by downsizing. This trend may give the concept of the public television fund-raising drive an entirely new meaning.

Wiring the Gaps

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Wed, 01 Jul 1998 00:00:00 EDT

An article in the April 17 Science spawned a flurry of stories on evening newscasts and newspaper front pages describing a huge Internet gap between white and black Americans, with whites having access to (and using) the Internet far more than African Americans. The data on which the Science article was based, however, were far more interesting, and far more positive, than most of the stories suggested.

The report was based on Nielsen data from 1996, which in the dynamic world of online usage should be considered history (however interesting) rather than news. But even these data offered a number of surprises: African Americans were more likely to be on the Internet than whites once they reached a household income of $40,000. At this income level, blacks were also far more likely than whites to work with computers on the job (77 percent vs. 59 percent).

And when the data were collected in 1996, many more blacks were online than the media had reported. "Five million African Americans have used the Web in the United States as of January 1997," wrote researchers Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak, "considerably more than the popular press estimate of one million."

Harris Survey Unit data collected last winter and published in the April/May issue of The Public Perspective further confirm that racial and ethnic gaps in Internet usage are narrowing: The racial composition of U.S. Web users was 75 percent white and 19 percent African American and Latino, which author David Birdsell described as "statistically indistinguishable from Census data on the general population."

The Web has grown from 13 million U.S. adult users in the fall of 1995 to more than 58 million, which means that 30 percent of American adults are now online. And the much-ballyhooed online "gender gap" is closing as well: Birdsell notes that while men outnumbered women in cyberspace by a 3-to-1 ratio in September 1995, by last winter 44 percent of active Web users were women.

The Broadcast Giveaway

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Wed, 01 Apr 1998 00:00:00 EST

"We have to address the real reason for the explosion in campaign costs: the high cost of media advertising. I will--for the folks watching at home, those were the groans of pain in the audience--I will formally request that the Federal Communications Commission act to provide free or reduced-cost television time for candidates who observe spending limits voluntarily." So said President Clinton in his State of the Union address.

And so, over the groans of his listeners in Congress, he told the American people watching on television that he planned to require broadcasters to make campaign donations of commercial time to political candidates--or, more precisely, to candidates approved by the major political parties. What the president did not tell Americans watching on television was that he had already appointed a commission last year to do just that. The Advisory Committee on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters, more widely known as the Gore Commission, is charged with creating a series of new "public interest obligations" for broadcasters. Since October, it has been deciding how high a price television stations must pay, in free political advertising time and other "public service" costs, to keep their licenses.

Of course, that's not exactly the way the White House wanted the commission to be viewed by the media in general and broadcasters in particular. But consider the president's own words last June, when he announced the appointment of the panel's co-chairmen, Les Moonves, president of CBS Television, and Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute: "For years," Clinton said, "I have supported giving candidates free time....Now we're working to make it happen. Today I'm appointing two distinguished Americans to lead a commission that will help the FCC decide precisely how free broadcast time can be given to candidates, as part of the broadcasters' public interest obligations." The president described the donation of air time to political candidates as "the least we can ask of broadcasters."

But even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who thinks air-time donations are a good idea, has mixed feelings about letting the FCC, which licenses TV and radio stations, make such rules. "What prevents them from then saying, `You've got to give free time to the next FCC hearing, or the Commerce Committee chairman's next speech'?" he asked The New York Times. "Where does it end?"

McCain said only an act of Congress can obligate broadcasters to donate commercial time. But many legal scholars question whether even Congress has that power. Professor Rodney Smolla, who teaches at the College of William and Mary Law School, wrote what many believe is the bible of First Amendment law, Free Speech in an Open Society. At a January forum on the Gore Commission organized by the Media Institute, a media policy think tank, Smolla said the government will have difficulty requiring campaign donations of air time as a retroactive condition for the frequencies it has already awarded. And even if it were not retroactive, according to Smolla, the courts would let the government mandate the donated time only if judges accepted the notion of broadcasting as "a public discourse utility," a view that has usually not prevailed, especially in recent years.

There's an even larger picture to consider. The fundamental technology of broadcast television is changing with the advent of digital broadcasting. In return for opening up part of the spectrum for digital transmissions, the government has imposed certain conditions on broadcasters. For years, researchers believed that digital television was so complex it could not be squeezed into the existing band of conventional television channels established decades ago. But in 1993, what once was viewed as impossible became reality, and digital television moved from a dream into a new broadcast service--and a new business. (Digital TV will operate in the same band, and within the same channel numbers, as existing TV.)

By the end of 1999, most television stations will be required by the government to start transmitting on a second channel using a new digital television standard. Although no one is yet making television sets for consumers to receive these new signals, the FCC has required that every television station purchase new transmitters, build new transmitter towers, and broadcast new digital programs.

Some politicians and many public interest groups characterize this expansion of the television dial as a "giveaway" to broadcasters--President Clinton has said the new channels are "worth billions." And indeed, station owners in major cities are eager for the change, anticipating larger advertising revenue.

But for television stations in smaller towns and rural areas, the new equipment may be a mandate to lose money. Station owners will be required to buy the same transmission equipment whether they are in the largest U.S. television market, New York City, or the 211th, Glendive, Montana. It seems unlikely that Glendive's 5,000 households will support enough new advertising revenue to pay for the expensive new transmitter towers, transmitters, control rooms, and antennas any time soon.

The new digital channels will change forever the idea of a "television channel." At first, everyone assumed digital television would be just like current television, only with sharper, clearer pictures. But then Fox and other broadcasters realized the new digital frequencies can actually accommodate up to five simultaneous live video feeds, so one digital channel can carry as many as five different television programs. The picture is not quite as clear as if the entire channel is devoted to one program, but for most programs, broadcasters expect viewers to accept slightly lower picture quality. In any case, a split digital signal will be as good as or better than what everyone is watching now.

Once digital transmitting is in place, instead of simply tuning into channel 20, you will be able to check out channels 20A, 20B, 20C, 20D, and 20E. In major cities that have 10 or 15 over-the-air stations, that could mean 40 to 60 new television channels. Broadcast television will be able to offer a range of choice similar to that of cable television.

Enter the Gore Commission, charged with defining "public interest obligations" for the new channels. Donating free ad time to political candidates is only the first "public interest" category: Lobbyists are forming a line to add new mandatory programs for children, for health information, and for every other conceivable "public interest." Coming soon to a TV set near you: Hour after hour of new programs selected by the FCC in Washington. And every television station in the country will be required to broadcast them.

We have already seen how well mandatory programming does not work. Last year, every television station was required to run "educational" programming for children. These are not such familiar good-for-you shows as Sesame Street--which did not meet the new federal definition of "educational" programming. (Sorry, Big Bird: the new rules define "educational" programs as only 30 minutes in length.) No, the government required broadcasters to develop new programs to meet the new standards.

So broadcasters dutifully added dozens of new "educational" children's programs, such as Science Court on ABC and Ghost Writer Mysteries on CBS. The unanimous verdict is now in: According to The Washington Post, all of the new programs are failures--every one. Across the country, the reaction was a massive flipping of channels away from the new "educational" programs. The new federal program guidelines did not result in anything kids might actually want to watch.

Faster than you can say spinach, children tuned out the federally inspected programs on broadcast TV and switched to Nickelodeon and other cable stations. Kids also turned off the tube entirely: Fox is the only network holding onto its children's audience, and new ratings research this winter showed Americans between 2 and 17 years old are watching five hours a week less television than their parents watched when they were kids. (This includes broadcast and cable, but not use of the TV for videocassettes or video games.)

Never ones to rest on their failures, federal programmers came back with still more from the Washington dream factory. This time, the politicians want to start by ordering broadcasters to run the politicians' own programs--anything from slick campaign ads to Ross Perot staring into a camera lens for 30 minutes. Though they wrap the proposal in idealistic rhetoric peppered with such phrases as "public interest obligations" and "free time" for political debate, it is, of course, nothing of the sort. True debate and discussion is the last thing most political candidates want to put on the air, unless they are far behind in the polls--and then the front runner will almost never agree.

Broadcasters already saddled with federal requirements that they buy new, unpopular "educational" programs will now be required to donate hours of television time to politicians, so the politicians can produce "public interest" programs promoting their re-elections. With the wave of a Washington commissioner's hand, mudslinging political commercials have been transformed into "public interest" programs that broadcasters must run for free. Then again, as the president might say, it's the least we can ask of broadcasters.

Of course, the networks offered free time to political candidates in 1996, as they have in every recent election. Television stations and networks also broadcast many hours of public affairs programming, debates, and special programs. And under existing law, stations are already obligated to sell commercial time to political candidates at a deep discount.

But that is not exactly what President Clinton and other candidates want. What they want is free air time for their campaign commercials. What's more, they want to ban anyone else from running political commercials. So the Gore Commission will try to devise a way to make certain no one except major party candidates will have a voice in future elections. No other individual, club, union, or company would be able to buy air time.

The rationale for restricting who can make political ads was explained at the Media Institute forum by Paul Taylor, who heads the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition, which is lobbying for donated commercial time. "Candidates are the only actors in the drama [i.e., elections] that voters hold accountable on election day," Taylor said.

So, he continued, the ideal system would have broadcasters donate "air time directly to candidates or indirectly through parties." The voters--the other "actors in the drama"--would have their speech rights limited sharply or eliminated entirely. Only in Washington could stifling political speech on TV be defined as a step forward for the "public interest."

And TV is not the end of the story. Live and recorded news and entertainment are now staples of the World Wide Web, and sound over the Internet is already as good as FM radio was in the 1970s. Within a year or two, the jerky video pictures transmitted over the Net will be smoothed out into something that will look very much like television. Since the Gore Commission's mandate was limited to suggesting regulations for the new digital broadcasting frequencies--and in light of last year's U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the Communications Decency Act--the Internet would seem to be plainly off-limits for federal program regulators.

But is it? In a public hearing on January 16, both of the Gore Commission's co-chairs toyed with the idea of trying to regulate not just television but the Internet as well. "Are we dealing with networks?" asked Moonves. "Are we dealing with cable? Are we dealing with local stations, be they independent? Are we dealing with America Online? When we make suggestions and recommendations about what the public interest obligation is, how far do we go? We're looking at a brave new world here. How far does our reach extend?"

"While our mandate is digital television broadcasters," Ornstein observed, "I don't see how we can avoid addressing in some fashion the much larger question of how the public interest is served by all of these different entities and try to make sure that there is a better balance struck."

Consider where such expansive logic can lead. In all likelihood, political commercials (or "public service" programming) will not attract many viewers; Internet surfers would similarly resist federally mandated Web sites for candidates. So to help spread the word, the Gore Commission, extending the reasoning behind free TV time for candidates, might impose "public interest" requirements for other media, such as newspapers and magazines.

After all, the argument could go, publishers received all of those federal subsidies and preferential postal rates over the years, similar to the "giveaways" to broadcasters ("worth billions"). They make their paper by cutting down trees that are sometimes grown on federal lands, and they deliver their periodicals over the public roads, which are perhaps worth even more than public airwaves. And newspapers make billions of dollars in profits, so they can afford to give space away. Isn't it time for publishers to give a little back to democratic society, to finally do something in the "public interest"? They could start by giving free space--pages of it--to political candidates.

Indeed, a future Gore Commission might well conclude, that would be the least we could ask of them.

Hats Off to Unofficial Journalism!

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Sun, 01 Feb 1998 00:00:00 EST

"The notion of wearing a press card in the band of my fedora, the way I saw it done in the movies or in illustrations in comic books, struck me as a wonderful way to live one's life, and I never wanted to be anything else but a reporter with a press card."
--Charles Kuralt, (c)1997 "Interview a Journalist," The Newseum

It was all so easy then.

Walter Lippmann was the reigning columnist, Edward R. Murrow's
voice boomed out, "This is London," and on the big screen, Humphrey Bogart played the no-nonsense, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, two-fisted newsman ("journalist" was considered pretentious). No doubt Bogart had a rack full of fedoras.

It was more than enough to inspire Kuralt and a generation of teenagers who dreamed of crusading page-one remakes or romantic foreign assignments in London or Paris, where the job required a trench coat and a fedora.

Now, the big newsrooms are smoke-free environments littered with empty Evian bottles where cigarette butts used to be. The newsmen have been replaced by journalists, or at least reporters, most of whom now are not men.

And instead of the gelatin-print black-and-white clarity of Charles Kuralt's youth, we have the muted ambiguities and confusing convergence of the Internet, where no one knows if you are a dog, let alone a journalist.

So who is a journalist, anyway? And does it matter?

Of course, we recall the world of Kuralt's youth through the gauze of nostalgia and late-night movies. There was considerable confusion then. Edward R. Murrow may have won the awards, but the number-one news program on radio was anchored, as we would say today, by a fast-talking vaudeville entertainer greeting "Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea." Walter Winchell wore a fedora, but there was spirited debate whether he was a newsman, an entertainer, or just a gossip.

In other words, Walter Winchell was the Matt Drudge of his day.

Matt Drudge, for those who do not follow arcane journalism debates or the annals of libel law, lives in Los Angeles and files reports on the Internet. Just like Winchell, Drudge brings us a fast-paced pastiche of inside gossip, rumor, innuendo, and, oh yes, news. Just like Winchell, Drudge has a big following. Just like Winchell, Drudge is sometimes wrong. So is The New York Times.

But one mistake landed Drudge in serious trouble, on the wrong end of a libel suit. It is not important to know the details of the error, and of Drudge's subsequent admission of error (at the Times, they call it a "correction"). It is important to note that journalists have the protection of the Bill of Rights, and specifically the First Amendment, and the courts have given the media a pretty wide berth to publish or broadcast what editors believe to be the truth, in the public interest.

But Matt Drudge does not have an editor. Matt Drudge does not even claim to be a journalist. In fact, he says he is not a journalist. But he does wear a fedora, at least for his publicity photos.

Does freedom of the press belong to someone who says he is not part of the press? Wait, it gets even more confusing. When Lippmann was writing his column, it appeared in respectable newspapers with professional editors and prominent publishers. When Edward R. Murrow and Walter Winchell were on the radio, they appeared on respectable networks with professional editors (for Murrow, at least), backed by prominent broadcast barons.

But Matt Drudge's work is not in a respectable newspaper or on a national broadcast network. It appears on the Internet. Anyone anywhere in the world can read it. You can link to it via America Online, but the important point is you can link to it from anywhere in the world, for free--Drudge on demand, worldwide.

So when Matt Drudge is sued, who is his publisher?

In the age of the Internet, we are all publishers. Everyone can publish stories good and bad, true or false, over the free worldwide distribution medium of the Internet. You don't need to wear a fedora. You don't even need to go to journalism school.

So how do the courts know who enjoys the constitutional protections of press freedom? The easy, cynical answer used to be that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. But now we all own one, or we can walk down to the public library, or Kinko's, and use one for free or for a nominal charge.

So if freedom of the press is for those who own one, freedom of the press now protects us all. Of course it always did, but some journalists claimed the First Amendment belonged just to them, not the public, so it is useful for the Internet to have rendered moot that narrow interpretation of the Constitution.

All of which leads to what may be an even more interesting issue: How do governments all over the world know who is licensed to practice journalism?

But wait, you may say, in most countries, and certainly in the United States, journalists are not licensed by the government.

Yes, they are.

If you live in New York City and want to cover that traditional first assignment of cub reporters, the police beat, you will be required to obtain a license from the government.

They call it a press credential.

It is a small shield, renewable annually, and if you don't get it, then you don't get it--the story, that is. There may be 8 million stories in the naked city, but without the government journalism license, you will not be permitted anywhere near the big ones.

For the truly well connected, New York issues special license plates with the letters NYP. This lets you drive your car right up to the scene of a crime, or an election, or Times Square on New Year's Eve. And the city sets aside special NYP zones where only cars with those special government press licenses can park. In New York, where a garage space can rent for more than a small house in some other cities, this is not just a convenience. A favorite game around town is spotting a new NYP zone and guessing who lives nearby.

Surely this is innocuous, some say. The government would not favor one newspaper over another, or one radio station over another.

Guess again.

The New York Times and CBS News could get credentials by the drawer-full for their reporters. But for years the "alternative" newspapers in New York City were denied city licenses--er, credentials. And journalists not employed by one of the big news organizations were almost always out of luck.

So one solution was to let the journalists themselves grant the licenses.
And just as with the other self-rating, self-regulating, self-censorship media schemes of the 1990s, the government could say it was not an official government act. The journalists made me do it.

The result is predictable to students of economics: Journalists themselves limit other journalists' access to news stories. Sometimes it has not been pretty.

On Capitol Hill, the licenses--er, credentials--are handed out by the journalists in the press galleries. Until the 1940s, women and minority reporters were barred from covering Congress not by government edict but by the press itself. It took pressure from newly elected minority congressmen to force the white male press galleries to issue licenses to people who did not look like Humphrey Bogart or even wear fedoras.

In more recent memory, Bloomberg Business News was refused credentials to cover most of Washington. Michael Bloomberg delivered his news on computers, not on newsprint or over the air, so he could not be a journalist, or so the argument went. Bloomberg's competitors were in effect keeping a new competitor out of the market.

As Bloomberg tells the story, he finally gave the material from his news service to The New York Times for free, so he could point to his articles in the newspaper. And then everyone said, oh, yes, you must be a journalist, and Bloomberg received his credentials.

Can Matt Drudge get a license to cover the news? Can he get that piece of paper that lets him interview a member of Congress, or a member of the New York City Police Department at a crime scene? Not likely.

So who is a journalist? Whoever the government says is a journalist.

Under certain scenarios, this could also mean the government would decide whether we can ever see the work of those not officially designated as journalists. Here is how it would work:

The Clinton administration has suggested that everyone on the Internet (at least in the United States) should submit to content ratings, all so America's children can be protected from unwanted words and images. To avoid First Amendment problems, journalists would be exempted from the proposed ratings systems. The ratings would be "voluntary," of course, as are the ratings that have been imposed on the television networks--ratings which also exempt journalists.

But who would receive the official "journalist" exemptions from the ratings system? Who is a journalist?

This is not an academic question but a commercial one. Much of the revenue that supports journalism online, as in print and broadcasting, comes from advertisers. The result of losing or not getting the journalism license would be smaller potential audiences, less advertiser interest, lower revenue, and therefore less chance of survival--or existence to begin with. Such a system would in effect be an electronic "prior restraint," a practice that has repeatedly been ruled illegal when the government has tried to use it against newspapers.

On television and online, the mainstream conglomerate news services would of course be classified as news. But on television, Hard Copy, Inside Edition, and other syndicated reality-based programs might not be classified as news. Oops: Inside Edition just won the prestigious George Polk Award for investigative reporting. Back to the drawing board. But Matt Drudge need not apply.

Consider an explicit abuse of the power to license journalists, this one from South Africa 10 years ago, when journalists who opposed apartheid, often grouped under the label "alternative press," were simply refused licenses to report the news. The system was described at a conference of African editors in November by those who'd had firsthand experience with the editors who issued press licenses in the 1980s.

"The alternative press could not get credentials from these `self-regulating' bodies," said Kanthan Pillay, now managing editor of the daily Cape Times of Cape Town. "The overall effect of these regulations on the press was a disaster." When he was challenged by some journalists at the conference, who said journalists should license themselves, just like doctors, Pillay's response drew applause: "The right to express yourself is not part of being a journalist. It is part of being a human being."

You don't even need to wear a fedora.

Hong Kong Blues

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Sun, 01 Jun 1997 00:00:00 EDT

It's so gloomy," said a longtime Hong Kong media watcher. She was referring to the overcast sky and drizzling rain, seasonable weather there in March.

But with less than 100 days until the British hand over Hong Kong to the Beijing government on July 1, that climate has also settled over Hong Kong's media. And the forecast suggests that the clouds won't be lifting any time soon, either. Although Beijing's designated ruler for Hong Kong, Tung Chee-Wa, has said that freedom of the press will be preserved, he seems to be thinking in terms of the mainland's definition of open dialogue.

Consider these snapshots from the March 19 issue of a leading English-language daily newspaper, the Hong Kong Standard:

A front-page story about negotiations over whether advance units of Chinese air and ground forces will be on armed patrols--before July 1.
Inside, on page 2, a brief story about the release of anti-Beijing protesters on bail pending their trial later this year--under Chinese rule.
Deeper inside, a story about Tung Chee-Wa's claim that it is currently illegal for anyone to say, "Down with the Queen." Chris Patten, the colony's present governor, said Tung was misinformed.
A short item on the last set of Hong Kong stamps featuring the image of the British queen, an event that led to lines outside of post offices, as thousands of people stood for several hours to try to buy what are soon to become collectors' items. (The Hong Kong government's Commission against Corruption is investigating charges of speculation. They were shocked --shocked!--to find collectors trying to buy the new stamps at face value so they can turn an easy profit after July, when their value is likely to skyrocket.)

But the most interesting barometer of media climate was the front-page news on March 17 that Xinhua had just announced it would end its high-profile defense of Beijing policy. In the rest of the world, Xinhua is known as the official Chinese news agency. But in Hong Kong, Xinhua has also served as Beijing's diplomatic outpost, issuing Chinese visas and other official government documents. When the voice of Beijing and its official representative in the crown colony announces it will no longer speak out, there might be more there than the statement's text suggests.

One veteran Hong Kong journalist provided the interpretation: Who needs official propaganda when China no longer has any critics in the Hong Kong media? He's right. The Hong Kong media have become, to echo Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the journalists who don't bark. One by one, the newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters have imposed self-censorship, deleting any language that could be construed as even mildly critical of any Chinese policy.

Not to worry, says another journalist, who asks that his name not be used. It's not ideological. It's not political. It's just business, he explains. News organizations have too much invested in Hong Kong to risk offending the new rulers.

Judging from the Standard's response, which is typical, the result is predictable: What do you do when Beijing suspends all travel visas from April to August for relatives and other visitors from China? Just print the official statement; don't go any further.

Need to write an editorial on politics? Criticize the British and Chris Patten, the British governor: "Patten stirs for the sake of doing....He has nothing to do." But remain eerily silent on Tung and his superiors in Beijing.

Politics has even been largely removed from the front pages, in favor of huge play every day for stories on bookies trying to fix horse races (shocking, shocking), a sprinkling of stories on the U.S. political fund-raising improprieties, and an endless variety of police-blotter stories.

As recently as last year, this was not the case. Independent reporters and editors at Hong Kong's news organizations wrote strong stories about China and Chinese politics, albeit sometimes in code. But the code was not too subtle, and Beijing did not need an Alan Turing to translate the articles. Now even the coded stories have receded from view.

Milton Mueller, a Rutgers professor and widely respected expert on Hong Kong media regulation, is in the colony to study the changes in the media as July 1 approaches. He also has a U.S. passport and is planning to leave, so he can speak more freely than he can while in Hong Kong. "People simply are being very cautious about who they are associated with and what they say and who they say it about," said Mueller at a March conference held by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan international media research foundation.

Mueller cited the case of Jimmy Lai, the publisher of Next magazine and one of the best-known and most outspoken journalistic critics of Beijing policies. Lai once said he would go down fighting, as a matter of principle. Now he has reversed himself, saying it is for the good of his staff.

What happened? Lai was trying to take his highly successful publishing company public on the Hong Kong stock exchange. And he told Lesley Stahl of CBS's 60 Minutes that the day after his Hong Kong newspaper called one influential Beijing pol "a turtle's egg" (a not-too-polite way of questioning the identity of one's father), the Chinese government confiscated Lai's businesses, scaring away his financial backers.

If there is a free news medium left in Hong Kong, it would seem to be the Internet: In January, the Hong Kong government announced it was going to back away from all of its previously announced proposals to regulate on-line content, opening the digital world to free expression.

But self-censorship is as strong online as over the air or in print: Mueller and others report Internet service providers are growing reluctant to do business with critics of the Chinese government, or to host sites that are critical of Beijing. They want to stay in business after July 1.

Ah well, not to worry: It's not ideological. It's not political. It's just business.

Fertile Imagination

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Sat, 01 Jul 1995 00:00:00 EDT

President Clinton and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are struggling to deal with the fallout from the number-one issue of the day: the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

The president and some members of Congress are calling for sweeping powers of surveillance, to keep undesirable domestic groups under control. Others are drafting anti- terrorist legislation to address the threat of sabotage from abroad. All say they are working to protect the nation from those who would kill innocent children, and even babies.

These approaches, however, ignore the common thread that runs through the two major acts of terrorism in recent U.S. history, the Oklahoma City bombing and the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. This common thread is what enabled criminals to manufacture the terrible devices that killed and maimed dozens, including innocent children and even babies.

This common thread is fertilizer.

The Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings were the product of cheap and readily available fertilizer. Criminals and deranged individuals can walk into fertilizer stores throughout America, put down their cash, and walk out with fertilizer to build hideous devices of death, no questions asked.

How many more urban terrorist catastrophes must be seared into the nation's conscience before action is taken? The federal government can act--if it has the will--to confront the peril by placing this hazardous substance under immediate and strict federal control.

There are a number of approaches that might work. The most effective, of course, would be to outlaw completely the production, sale, and use of fertilizer. This would go a long way toward eliminating the potential for terrorist bombs, but it might have unfortunate side effects, since peaceable citizens would be affected.

Indeed, we must recognize that most people use fertilizer for legitimate and peaceful purposes. And law- abiding fertilizer users should be assured that they will not be denied access to and use of fertilizer. It is only the lawless users of fertilizer who must be targeted. A complete ban would unduly penalize the majority of Americans, who obey the law and use their fertilizer properly. A sensible middle ground between a draconian total ban and today's unregulated lawlessness must be found.

One such solution would be to limit, not ban outright, fertilizer sales. This would prevent undesirable and disturbed individuals from purchasing this dangerous substance. For a start, convicted felons and the mentally ill could be barred from access to fertilizer. And prohibiting the export of fertilizer or its sale to foreign nationals would keep fertilizer out of the hands of overseas terrorists.

Thankfully, modern technology can be employed to make certain that fertilizer only reaches legitimate users. Those who want to buy fertilizer might be required to obtain Fertilizer Control (FC) cards from the government. These cards would limit sales to legitimate customers and keep fertilizer out of the hands of murderous terrorists. Fertilizer ownership must be treated as the privilege that it is, not a universal right.

For the convenience of law- abiding Americans, FC cards could be obtained when we obtain or renew our driver's licenses--President Clinton would do well to propose a Motor Fertilizer Control bill. And to minimize inconvenience to legitimate fertilizer buyers, the FC cards should be equipped with high- tech magnetic stripes or computer chips so they could be swiped through FC terminals in each licensed fertilizer dealer for instant background checks.

This would focus attention where it is due: on the malefactors who buy fertilizer with only evil in mind. And in all candor, we know who they are. Arab terrorists are easy to spot, and they must not be able to obtain FC cards. After all, Arabs all live in the desert, where, as we know, they have no legitimate reason to use fertilizer. Right- wing hate groups are likewise easy to spot because they usually cluster in isolated parts of the Rocky Mountains, the southwestern desert, and other places where there is no topsoil to speak of. So there is no reason they should be allowed to purchase, possess, or sell fertilizer.

Urban gangs are another example, since we know those who live in cities have no lawful need for fertilizer. To deal with urban gangs, major American cities, starting with New York and Washington, could be encouraged to exceed the federal FC standards with tough municipal ordinances mandating strict local fertilizer control rules. (To protect city residents who might use fertilizer in their flower pots or garden plots, small amounts of fertilizer might be exempt from federal and city controls.)

Then there is a problem of financing the fertilizer initiative: Because of the federal budget deficit, Congress could pass along the cost of the program to states or local governments. This is one area where a federal program could best be carried out by localities. Who better than one's neighbors should decide whether you should be allowed to have fertilizer?

Still, in the end, the fertilizer problem must be recognized as a national problem. And as such, it should be the focus of a coordinated inter- agency federal effort. Fertilizer is used to grow crops, and some traces could find their way into food eaten by innocent children (including babies). So the Food and Drug Administration should be part of the federal joint fertilizer strike force, perhaps to license fertilizer manufacturers. The FDA could be empowered to seize all fertilizer produced by unlicensed companies, and to confiscate all of those companies' profits, retroactively, to deter those who would be tempted by corporate greed to conspire with terrorists.

And because fertilizer can damage the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency could be enlisted to help in the detection and enforcement effort. The Justice Department, too, could add fertilizer to the list of substances under the jurisdiction of the Drug Enforcement Administration, because of the DEA's experience in hunting down and arresting traffickers in dangerous substances.

The U.S. Postal Service, too, can be enlisted. Just as they already seize explicit depictions of sexual acts, postal workers could be empowered to seize explicit depictions of fertilizer and fertilizer- related acts, and to keep fertilizer information out of the hands of would- be terrorists.

Since some evildoers may choose to use private mail services, federal authorities may also need to examine UPS and Federal Express shipments to check for violations of FC. And the FBI may need to eavesdrop on telephone traffic, to learn who may be conspiring by fax or conference call to obtain illicit fertilizer.

Similarly, with the rapid growth of Internet, the proximity of university Internet terminals to college chemistry laboratories, and increasing use of Internet by innocent children (including babies), all online communication must also be monitored.

But among federal agencies, the Treasury Department must take the lead through an expanded Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Fertilizer. The BATFF would be able to build on its existing network of enforcement offices around the country, easily adding fertilizer to its list of hazards from which the American public must be protected.

There will, of course, be naysayers and nitpickers who will claim this is some infringement of their constitutional rights. Nonsense: Nowhere in the Constitution is there any explicit right to own fertilizer. Some, perhaps including the American Civil Liberties Union, may try to construe fertilizer ownership as protected by the constitutional privacy right. But such an alleged right is not found in the Constitution, and its existence is at best ambiguous.

In any event, the Constitution was written long before fertilizer was used by criminals to create explosives, and as legal scholars tell us, it must be a "living" document. The Constitution can only be interpreted as permitting the government to maintain order through fertilizer control.

Besides, the politics of fertilizer control will be irresistible. The narrow technical argument of musty academics and legalistic extremists will be swept away by television news clips showing the dead and injured, especially the horrifying images of innocent children (including babies) who were maimed and killed by these heinous instances of fertilizer abuse.

This should sweep through Congress and be signed by the president by autumn. And then the nation can turn its attention to another threat to the nation's children, an annual threat that has silently crept up on the nation, as stealthily as the most insidious Arab terrorist.

That threat is ice.

Every winter, hundreds fall through the ice that forms quietly, imperceptibly, on rivers, lakes, and ponds. Many children (including babies) can die gruesome deaths by drowning. Congress can act to address this menace and have a bill on the president's desk by midwinter. There is no time to lose.

Remote Control

info@reason.com (Adam Clayton Powell III) — Tue, 01 Mar 1994 00:00:00 EST

When Nelson Mandela was released from a South African prison three years ago, one of his preconditions for participating in national elections was the abolition of government control of television. Although South Africa is scheduled to hold its first nationwide vote open to all races this April, all TV newscasts in South Africa are still broadcast from government-owned television headquarters in Auck-land Park. Even more important, all news on all of the television channels is scrutinized by one department, under one editor at the central studio. The more some things change in South Africa, the more others stay the same.

The centralized structure of South African television mirrors the centralized structure of state security and control. Just as the white minority government created a central security bureaucracy to enforce apartheid laws, so it also created a central broadcasting organization, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, to produce and transmit all authorized television. When television came to South Africa in the mid-1970s, years after it was a staple in most of the world, the government viewed it (not incorrectly) as a dangerous, revolutionary tool, a window through which even the poorest rural villager could glimpse the fruits of a free society and a free economy. Not surprisingly, all television news explicitly favored the government.

All programs were produced or acquired by the National Party, which has ruled South Africa since 1948. The "Nats," dominated by Afrikaners, viewed the SABC's nearly 6,000 jobs as part of the political spoils system. While the National Party never won more than 55 percent of the vote in a time when only whites could vote, the Nats were able to exercise absolute control of SABC appointments under a winner-take-all arrangement. Even with the impending election and the probable electoral rebuke of the National Party, SABC remains very much a Nat stronghold. Of 61 managers, one is black, one is an English-speaking white, and the remaining 59 are Afrikaners.

SABC has responded to calls for more diverse programming in several ways, none of which can be mistaken for setting up a thriving marketplace of ideas. Last spring, David Frost hosted a series of special political programs. Viewers can now see CNN in bits and pieces, and Britain's Sky News channel is carried for part of the day. Recently, the network has purchased a few news programs that were not produced in its own newsroom, notably the talk show Future Imperfect and a short series of news programs produced by the muckraking Weekly Mail.

Meanwhile, the only commercial television license has been awarded to the country's major newspaper publishers, who promptly turned their network into an HBO-like movie channel. Although one might expect otherwise from a company owned by newspaper publishers, the network does not produce any newscasts.

Although it's clear that massive political change is coming to South Africa, the future of its state-run television enterprise has yet to come into focus. As political reforms got underway, there was much excited talk of fairer political coverage on television, of shows produced by leftists, centrists, and rightists, of new networks to be owned by blacks, whites, Asians, and coloreds. But in spite of the talk, SABC retains its monopoly. Illegal radio stations broadcast news and music--and commercials--but pirate television stations have yet to appear. If anyone has anything to say to the millions of South African voters who watch TV news, there is only one place to say it.

While it's hardly surprising that the Nats have attempted to maintain control of the airwaves, the slow pace of television reform is potentially a major problem for the new South Africa. As George Gilder noted in Life After Television, television is a "totalitarian medium" because it locates power in a few broadcast centers that originate programs for mass audiences. Such a "master-slave architecture" tends to cause severe bottlenecks of the knowledge necessary for the proper functioning of a democracy. How can people make well-informed choices if there's little or no access to information?

As long as a top-down authoritarian structure is still in place, the opportunity for abuse is ever present. A future government could decide to continue shaping the news and to continue using the country's television monopoly to control political debate and discussion. Without a fundamental structural change, dialogue in South Africa may once again turn into a monologue.