"The specter of pandering ... is grotesque and incredibly disconcerting in a democracy."
The Los Angeles Times has two stories today that update previous posts about Sinclair and Disney.
Many reports in the last week accuse Sinclair, which owns seven ABC TV stations, of preempting Ted Koppel's Nightline coverage of Iraq casualties. Sinclair is openly supportive of the Bush administration and the Iraq war, and has been accused of distorting news coverage to advance the company's relationships with administration.
The Times article groups Sinclair with other corporations such as Clear Channel and Walt Disney, accused of "censoring political thought in order to curry favor with Republican-controlled Washington." The story quotes Charles Lewis, of the Center for Public Integrity: "The problem with Sinclair is that they have both partisan political and commercial reasons to pull their punches in their daily coverage of news events....the public in the cities where they have stations is getting anything but fair or balanced news coverage. The specter of pandering ... is grotesque and incredibly disconcerting in a democracy."
Bill Moyers includes not only Sinclair and Clear Channel, but also Fox News in the group of big media companies that manipulate the news for political gain. Clear Channel openly backs Bush, and has sponsored pro-war rallies.
A related article, "A Real Threat to Expression?" compares Sinclair's actions with Disney's. Disney prohibitied its Miramax division from distributing Michael Moore's documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11" reportedly because the film is too controversial. (The film is highly critical of the Bush administration, and links Bush to the family of Osama bin Laden.) So are Disney and Sinclair just two sides of the same coin? The article argues that, while "it would appear that Moore vs. Disney and Koppel vs. Sinclair are similar controversies," "policically motivated corporations moving to crush the expression of ideas," are really quite different.
According to the Times article, the Disney case is more a matter of "corporate timidity," since Disney does not suppress other dissenting views. For example, Koppel's Nightline aired on Disney-owned ABC, and another Disney subsidiary published a "virulently anti-Bush book," The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them.
Sinclair is completely different, and more Evil, in that the media company has "an unabashedly right-wing slant and a tight hold on the news decisions of its stations." There's no wall between the news office and the business office, which corrupts the news in favor of business and political machinations.
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| Don't Be Evil - restoring the public trust in business, politics and the media |
Fair and balanced news reporting? - 5/08/2004 11:41:00 AM
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"Don't Be Evil" befuddles analysts - 5/08/2004 02:01:00 AM
Google's "Don't Be Evil" philosophy is making the experts' heads spin.
From the L.A. Daily News: [Analysts] say the philosophy espoused by Google's principals smacks of naivete, inflates already stratospheric expectations and could lead to investor disappointment. ... When you start saying things like this, I think you set yourself up for a fall," said Tom Taulli, an author and lecturer at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business...I don't know if there's the killer instinct at Google,' he said. 'There's this egalitarian, humanitarian (philosophy). ... They're going up against some very ruthless competitors. ... "I'd like to think Google can hold true to their guns, and maybe they can help Wall Street understand the importance of long-term strategies," Davis said. "But I know what going public would do to us. ... The quarterly pressures tend to stifle innovation for the long haul." (Jim Davis, SAS Inc.) (SAS is the "most important software company you've never heard of." You might say SAS has a "Don't Be Evil" way of thinking, but they won't go public for fear of losing their culture referred to as "Sanity as Strategy.") |
Charlie Munger in Rare Form - 5/08/2004 01:23:00 AM
The Motley Fool provides excerpts from Charlie Munger's Q&A session with stockholders. Munger is Warren Buffett's right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway, and also chariman of Wesco Financial.
This is a great read for Don't Be Evil because Munger stresses that high ethical standards yield high investment returns. Here are a few snips: We believe there should be a huge area between everything you should do and everything you can do without getting into legal trouble. I don't think you should come anywhere near that line. We don't deserve much credit for this. It helps us make more money. I'd like to believe that we'd behave well even if it didn't work. But more often, we've made extra money from doing the right thing. When I was younger, the... major accounting firms were... quite ethical places and nobody got filthy rich... But in the space of 25 years, they sold out to terrible behavior, one little step at a time. Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step -- and in the end, you're a moral sewer. What happened with Martha Stewart was that she heard some news, panicked, and sold the stock. It turns out that if she's just told the truth [about what she did], she'd have been OK....Were I her lawyer, I would have said, "You know, Martha, that's an interesting story and I'm your lawyer, so I'm required to believe you, but nobody else will. So, you're going to have to come up with a different story or you'll have to tell it through a different lawyer because I don't like losing cases." For more wit and wisdom from Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet, check out these books: Damn Right! Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger Buffett : The Making of an American Capitalist The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America |
Manipulating the Media - 5/06/2004 01:42:00 PM
Many of the recent scandals in politics and business involve governments or corporations manipulating news reporting. Here is a great site to explore this topic in depth.
Eight Major Trends from The State of the News Media 2004: #2: Much of the new investment in journalism today - much of the information revolution generally - is in disseminating the news, not in collecting it. Most sectors of the media are cutting back in the newsroom ... #3: ... there is a tendency toward a jumbled, chaotic, partial quality in some reports, without much synthesis or even the ordering of the information. There is also a great deal of effort, particularly on cable news, that is put into delivering essentially the same news repetitively without any meaningful updating. #4: [News organizations] are varying their news agenda, their rules on separating advertising from news and even their ethical standards ... reinforc[ing] the public perception ... that the news media lack professionalism and are motivated by financial and self-aggrandizing motives rather than the public interest. #8: Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them. And here are a few books that help separate propaganda from truth: Weapons of Mass Deception Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You Media Wars: News at a Time of Terror Manufacturing Consent : The Political Economy of the Mass Media Propaganda, Inc.: Selling America's Culture to the World (see also an interview with the author here.) Who's to say how sinister all this is--it starts to feel like conspiracy theory madness once you start reading. But there's no denying that the quality of broadcast news has deteriorated greatly, and we're a weaker democracy as a result. Maybe the spread of independent media will fill the gap between corporate news and real information, and encourage the big outfits to get to the real news faster. |
Google to split Chairman, CEO positions - 5/06/2004 10:45:00 AM
Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, is no longer CEO of the company. A San Francisco Chronicle story attributes this to improving corporate governance and to "make the board more responsive to shareholders rather than a rubber stamp for management decisions."
The move is designed to improve corporate governance and accountability to shareholders. Google has been criticized for limiting shareholder control by limiting the voting rights of the new shares that will be issued in the IPO. "The point of having a separate CEO and chairman on the board is to create a balance of power," said Paul Hodgson, a senior research associate with Corporate Library, a private research firm in Maine focused on corporate governance issues. The article notes that Siebel and Dell have also split the Chairman and CEO positions. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, was recently forced to relinquish the Chairman post by a shareholder revolt. This study examines the relationship between good corporate governance and investment return, and finds that the more accountable companies are to stakeholders, the higher the returns in investment. Please see our sister site for more on the Google IPO. |
Secrecy, scandal and democracy - 5/06/2004 06:50:00 AM
With the global scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners now saturating the airwaves, it's time to ask why it took 60 Minutes II to briing this to light.
It turns out that the conditions in the Abu Ghraib prison were no secret at the upper echelons of the military, and Bush was briefed on the problems months ago. The Red Cross has been warning of abuses privately for "months." Read excerpts from the Taguba report (graphic descriptions) to see what our leaders knew months ago, but apparently failed to act on. The Washington Post quotes a senior State Department official: "It's something Powell has raised repeatedly -- to release as many detainees as possible -- and, second, to ensure that those in custody are properly cared for and treated," said a senior State Department official familiar with the discussions. The latest issues of Secrecy News says that the Pentagon may have broken the law by classifying the Taguba report so the press and the public could not read it. Secrecy is at the center of many of the biggest news stories this year. The Pentagon prohibits showing returning coffins from Iraq, the Bush administration fights to keep relevant documents from the commission investigating 9/11. These are critical issues of national and global importance. American citizens must have real information to participate in democracy. Was 9/11 preventable? Should we have attacked Iraq? Is the military behaving professionally? How much is this all going to cost us? According to Executive Order 13292, the government may not classify information in order to "conceal violations of law," "prevent embarrassment" or "delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security." Why was the report on prisoner abuse classifed? Bloggers and sites like The Memory Hole are doing an amazing job of getting information into the public domain, so citizens can understand what's really happening. It will take the active involvement of citizens to keep their government from running amok. |
Evils of royalty accounting - 5/05/2004 05:36:00 PM
Robert Kaye writes about his frustrations with the music industry. According to Kaye, the big labels are unfairly withholding payment to musicians, claiming the labels have not recouped their promotion costs:
I think that recouped is my newly most hated word, displacing shareholder value. This means that the label claims that Atomic Dog had not earned enough money for the label to recoup their costs for creating and promoting Atomic Dog. Shoshana was quick to point out that just in the last year Atomic Dog was used in two movies in the last year and was certain to have recouped by now. After much back and forth she finally managed to get the label for fork over some cash. In a separate case, the New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer, strong-armed a $50M settlement from the five big labels for keeping unclaimed royalties. Spitzer was the aggressive force behind the massive settlements with investment bankers over conflicts of interest in major brokerages. The music labels said they couldn't find such artists as Dolly Parton, David Bowie, and Dave Matthews to pay them what they were owed under their contracts. See article in the Washington Post here. The royalty accounting practices of the recording and entertainment industries are infamous for their secrecy, and many artists can't figure out why movies and music make so much money for the corporations, yet appear unprofitable when it's time to pay the talent. The artists argue that the companies have a fiduciary duty to fairly compensate creative talent. Courtney Love made so much noise over this issue, she's known as the "industry's worst nightmare." She eventually inked a solo deal and is reportedly settling her complaints with her label. Salon.com has an excellent piece on Love's epic effort to reform the industry. |
Disney blocks film critical of Bush - 5/05/2004 12:07:00 AM
The New York Times is reporting that Disney has blocked its Miramax division from distributing the new Michael Moore film, Fahrenheit 9/11. There are some reports that Disney fears losing tax breaks in Florida, where Bush's brother Jeb is governor. Disney denies that, but does say that it would be against their interests to offend their customers with an inflammatory film.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a documentary that "links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis — including the family of Osama bin Laden — and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." The title is a take on a novel by Ray Bradbury (and later a movie), Fahrenheit 451. 451 is sci fi story about an "oppressive future" where a fireman must destroy all books because the government fears an "independent-thinking public" (IMDB). [Book, Criticism, PDF Study Guide, DVD] 451 degrees is the temperature at which paper burns. The tagline for Fahrenheit 9/11 is "the temperature where freedom burns." According a post on his website, Moore says: "The whole story behind this (and other attempts) to kill our movie will be told in more detail as the days and weeks go on...this struggle has been a lesson in just how difficult it is in this country to create a piece of art that might upset those in charge (well, OK, sorry -- it WILL upset them...big time. Did I mention it's a comedy?)." Apparently, the documentary will still be distributed outside North America, but there is some question whether it will be released in the United States before the November election. An unnamed Disney executive is quoted as saying, "It's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle." This may bolster arguments of those against media company consolidation. They contend that the information needed by citizens of a healthy democracy is being withheld or distorted by big corporate interests, and that the diversity of viewpoints and opinions is constrained without a vibrant mix of smaller, independent, and unbiased news sources. |
Dilbert on Dysfunctional Capital Markets - 5/04/2004 02:31:00 PM
Here's a funny and irreverent look at scandals in the capital markets.
Scott Adams can communicate in 8 frames what it takes a whole network of journalists to get across. |
Google could change questionable investment banking practices - 5/03/2004 10:11:00 PM
The Washington Post article Events May Signal Change in Stock Offerings, contrasts Google's offering to the verdict rendered today in the Frank Quattrone trial.
Quattrone is a symbol of all that was Evil and Corrupt in the investment banking world--"laddering" or spinning low-priced IPO shares to favored clients, who then make huge windfall profits when the shares are offered to the public. Columbia University law professor John C. Coffee Jr. said Google's decision to award shares through an auction open to small investors indicates that some forces are moving ahead of regulators to address the perception that the IPO process benefits Wall Street firms and their friends rather than the companies going public and individual investors. "I do think we are starting to move away from a system that gives all the profits to intermediaries," he said. Google's offering may change the way investment banks operate: Among other things, it could discourage firms from setting artificially low prices on IPO shares. This practice allows for big one-day price "pops" on the open market and thus big profits for people fortunate enough to hold the initial shares. But such low-balling also often angers the companies going public because it demonstrates that they could have sold their shares at higher prices. Click for more on the Google stock offering. |
Criticizing Google's "Don't Be Evil" Policy - 5/03/2004 09:26:00 AM
Gabe Anderson writes a blog post and letter to Google claiming they violate their own Don't Be Evil motto.
An ocean advocacy group was denied AdWords to promot their site because the ads contained criticisms of Royal Caribbean's pollution problems. Says Anderson, Google should reinstate the Oceana AdWords immediately and show that it supports free expression of all viewpoints, not just those sponsored by corporate interests. Google's motto has always been "Don't be evil" -- this would seem to be a great opportunity to live up to those noble words. Is it possible for Google to have a completely unbiased policy for search results, but still reject ads based on their content? As long as the policy is disclosed and the business side doesn't affect the content side, how is this different from any media or journalism best practice? I certainly don't want to see legitimate criticism and public discourse subverted by corporate interests--It's easy for dissent to be crushed by the profit motive. But should Google be held to a higher standard than other media, its motto notwithstanding? |
GE's Jack Welch Tries to Squelch New Book - 5/03/2004 08:55:00 AM
New Drudge Report article says Jack Welch, former chairman of GE and NBC, tried to influence NBC news reporting.
According to the Drudge article, Welch, who for 15 years held the title of chairman of NBC, tried to shape the news time and again -- to his own personal and financial advantage. One allegation: Welch ordered the President of NBC News, Lawrence Grossman, to stop reporting stories that would negatively impact GE’s stock price. Now Welch is suing to stop publication of the book. |
"The stench of corruption here is extraordinary" - 5/03/2004 07:45:00 AM
Article in My Way News:
Ted Koppel read the list of 721 soldiers killed in Iraq on Nightline. He read their names to honor their sacrifice, and did not make any political statements. But we've seen that the White House has tried to prohibit showing returning Iraq coffins for fear the images would sway people against Bush in this election year. Russ Kick at The Memory Hole filed a freedom of information act appeal to get the images released. Now a media group, Sinclair, which owns a number of ABC affiliate stations, refused to show Koppel and Nightline. Because Sinclair is lobbying for special treatment from the Bush Administration, there's suspicion that they're censoring legitimate reporting to curry political favor. In my book, that's evil. And as you know, Don't Be Evil. My favorite quote: "The stench of corruption here is extraordinary." From the AP: "Free Press, which describes itself as a national media reform group, sent its own letter to Sinclair questioning whether the company's actions violated federal rules governing 'stewardship of the public airwaves.' ... 'No one thinks for a second this decision has anything to do with journalism,' McChesney said. 'It's a politics-slash-business decision that Sinclair made because they don't want to (anger) the White House.' Sinclair, a political supporter of the Bush administration, is trying to curry favor with the White House to bolster chances of gaining changes in station ownership rules, McChesney alleged. 'The stench of corruption here is extraordinary,' he said." |
Warren Buffett praises Google's corporate governance - 5/02/2004 06:54:00 PM
In an article in the Financial Times (London), Warren Buffett, the well respected chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, praised Google's corporte governance structure. Buffett is the second richest person in the world, just behind Microsoft's Bill Gates.
Google's prospectus contains a fairly lengthy "owners manual" very similar to Berkshire's communications to shareholders. Google identifies Berkshire as one of their role models. Buffet says: I am very pleased that the fellows at Google said they were influenced by the [Berkshire] owners manual." "I liked their prose," said Mr Buffett. "It pleases us enormously that other people think it is a good idea to talk to their owners in a very straight-forward manner. I think more companies ought to do it." But Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger, warned about the dangers of IPOs for individuals: "In an IPO the sellers decide when to come to market so it's way less likely that it's going to come at a time that suits you," he said. Charlie Munger, Mr Buffett's outspoken partner, added: "The average person buying IPOs is going to get creamed." From the FT article: Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Google's founders, last week outlined plans for an unusual public auction of their shares using a corporate structure which deliberately challenges traditional Wall Street orthodoxy. Like Berkshire Hathaway, they will refuse to give earnings guidance or aim for stable profits growth, and will create two classes of shareholders to protect management independence. Berkshire's code of ethics (PDF) is not quite as simple as "Don't Be Evil," but at just 5 pages it's one of the shortest and clearest of big companies. It speaks in plain English about conflicts of interest, fair dealing, truth and full disclosure. |
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