The New York Times updates its readers on the US Federal Trade Commission’s public forums on journalism and how to save it, the last of which will take place this week.
The commission is expected to produce a final study later in the year, but the New York Times report also warns: “the commission could easily sidestep making any recommendations to Congress or invoking its regulatory powers, and instead issue something along the lines of an analysis of its findings”.
Full text of Arianna Huffington’s ‘Desperate metaphors, desperate revenue models, and the desperate need for better journalism’ speech, made at a Federal Trade Commission event in Washington DC – at this link. An extract:
“So now sites that aggregate the news have become, in the words of Rupert Murdoch and his team, ‘parasites,’ ‘content kleptomaniacs,’ ‘vampires,’ ‘tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internets,’ and, of course, thieves who ‘steal all our copyright.’
“It’s the news industry equivalent of ‘your mama wears army boots!’ Although, not quite as persuasive.
“In most industries, if your customers were leaving in droves, you would try to figure out what to do to get them back. Not in the media. They’d rather accuse aggregators of stealing their content.”
The US’ Federal Trade Commission is extending is monitoring of reviews of products and services to blogs.
New guidelines expected to come into force this summer will expand the body’s remit to bloggers offering false claims or who do not disclose conflicts of interest.
An interesting shift in regulatory thinking:
“As blogging rises in importance and sophistication, it has taken on characteristics of community journalism – but without consensus on the types of ethical practices typically found in traditional media,” reports the AP.