NBC Believes They Own Political Discourse

PoliSciASU writes "MSNBC has established draconian rules regarding the use of the Presidential Primary Debates on the internet. Some examples: '5. No excerpts may be aired after 8:30 pm on Saturday, May 26th. Excerpts may not be archived. Any further use of excerpts is by express permission of MSNBC only. 6. All debate excerpts must be taped directly from MSNBC's cablecast or obtained directly from MSNBC and may not be obtained from other sources, such as satellite or other forms of transmission. No portions of the live event not aired by MSNBC may be used.' Kevin Bondelli talks about why this is 'shameful and wrong'. Voters are missing out on the ability to actually have an engaged conversation about the candidates and their debate performances because of NBC's greed." Alexander Wolfe at InformationWeek and Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine share similar sentiments, and discuss the matter in different ways.

Re:These debates are a waste of space now anyway

[jellie]

I don't remember the debates in 2000 but do remember that the same thing happened in 2004. One person tried to substantiate his arguments with facts, and the other looked like a moron: "Got wood?" and "He forgot Poland" were some of the dumbest statements to come out of a presidential debate. Somehow the media called it even and barely dissected (or remembered) any of the arguments that were presented by either side.

I also think it's also the media's responsibility (as well as that of the citizens) to ask serious questions and to hold the politicions responsible.

Politicians, rejoice!

[Opportunist]

Now you can spin whatever story without fearing that someone might rewind and play again to see in the next election that you bullshitted them. Nobody can prove it anymore, nobody can hold it against you that you are afraid of nukular weapons or that you invented the internet. It simply won't exist anymore. Except, of course, in stories and pages picking at you, but it's easy to discount them as slander and propaganda.

Oh please

[realinvalidname]

In the industry, this is called an "embargo", and it is absolutely typical. MSNBC owns their broadcast of the debate (under copyright law, they're the "creator" of the "creative work"), and these embargoes establish the degree to which they're willing to share their footage with other media outlets, for the sole reason that they depend on others sharing their work with MSNBC under similar terms. That it is a political news event is irrelevant -- similar terms would be used for coverage of breaking news, sports events, etc.

If anything, it's notable that MSNBC is willing to allow use by websites at all. A few years ago, there would be no such terms discussed, or there'd be a simple "no posting online".

If the terms were "take all you want and do what you want with it", the prevailing thinking is that anyone could broadcast or post the event in its entirety, without paying a dime, which would be a severe disincentive to MSNBC's production of it in the first place, which in turn would mean that all the MSNBC staffers and freelancers would be out of a job.

Full disclosure: I worked for CNN for 3.5 years.

Re:Isn't this covered under Public Domain?

[yndrd1984]

You're assuming that this is a government work - it isn't. This is a group of private citizens who are trying to get a government job. Public speeches of (for example) senator Clinton, while she's acting as part of her job as senator (or ones made in public places), would be public domain. Speeches she makes in private (like to the AARP, at a symposium, etc) are not.

Re:These debates are a waste of space now anyway

[aussie_a]

I also think it's also the media's responsibility (as well as that of the citizens) to ask serious questions and to hold the politicions responsible.

Unfortunately many Americans believe that to do this is to not support your troops and is unAmerican.

Re:Oh please

[realinvalidname]

Exactly. And moreover, Network B is usually only allowed to use the footage from Network A for 24 hours after the end of the game. That's why when you see footage weeks or months later, it's usually from NFL Films and not from the other networks.

Re:The news media is just a citizen manipulation t

[whorapedia.com]

This would pretty much destroy any specialists in the U.S. as they would be paid a pittance and they'd move elsewhere.

Where would they go? The UK (NHS is just as fucked up)? Australia (same healthcare as Canada)? I've heard this arguement before from my wife, who is a Dr - but guess what? She's not going anywhere because 1) there aren't many English-speaking options that are better - and that's what most US doctors speak, and 2) her family is here just like the other doctors. There won't be a "mass exodus". Now time for some stats:

16% [nchc.org] of our GDP is spent on healthcare (should be 11%, like the UK or Canada)

31% [nejm.org] of healthcare budget is spent on administrative costs (as opposed to 16% in Canada. Could be waaaay lower with use of technology and insurance reform - the second REQUIRES governent intervention)

84% [cbpp.org] of US citizens are covered by health insurance (should be 100%, again, like in the UK, Canada, Australia - just about every first world nation)

I've lived in Australia, Canada and the US - and have experienced first-hand all of their healthcare systems. Australia was - hands down - the best. I got the care I needed and paid nothing. Emergency room visit? US$45!! US emergency room visit for same problem? US$450. All of that went to insurance. PRIVATE insurance, mind you.

Besides empty rhetoric, what experience do you have? What stats do you have to back up that it could be worse? What good and practical reasons would you have for denying 16% of fellow US citizens basic healthcare? If the Canadian system sucks because it is "socialized" then why do they spend less on healthcare and yet insure a higher percentage of their people? If we could lower the administrative costs through insurance reform and a national databank of healthcare information, we could insure the remaining 16% with no other changes whatsoever. That doesn't even scratch the surface of reducing fraud (The state of Tennesee loses 54M a year in drug fraud (BCBSTN) - a simple webpage where nurses could share information cut that in half in a single year). Guess who had to push BlueCross to do it? That's right... the government. Because BlueCross was making money off of the fraud! All they had to do was charge higher premiums to everyone to cover the cost, and write it off. Fuck your broken system.

Don't fault this diatribe for being about one single sentence in your argument... the fact that you spout such nonsense without knowing the facts throws all of your conclusions in a suspicious light.

Re:Fair Use

[Purity Of Essence]

I would be inclined to agree with you if this were a broadcast network we are talking about. FCC regulations compel broadcasters to cover events like this as part of their licensing agreement. The must cover events that are of broad interest to the people, namely news, political debates, and election coverage. That in a sense makes the networks a proxy of the government and as such the information broadcast should be freely available since we all payed for it in the form of licensing the publicly owned airwaves to the networks. However, even such a broad interpretation falls apart because the only product of the government that must enter the public domain is that which is produced by a government agency. Stuff produced for the government by private contractors is not subject to being placed into the public domain automatically. Further, since MSNBC is a cable network not a broadcast network, the FCC rules don't even apply to them. So MSNBC clearly has the right to restrict their coverage how they see fit. The real problem is broadcast networks not covering these debates in the first place, if they are not. We must not allow them to shirk their responsibilities, that is the real crime here.

Re:Who is it going to be?

[belmolis]

The reason that the "debates" (since they don't really qualify as such) are no longer run by the League of Women Voters is that the League wouldn't give in to the ridiculous conditions that the parties wanted to impose. In 1988 the League terminated its sponsorship of the debates and issued this statement:

The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates ... because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.

The two major parties thereupon organized the present Commission on Presidential Debates. It is a real shame that that they got away with this - the LWV was absolutely right. Any candidate who isn't smart enough, cool enough, and well-informed enough to participate in a real debate without making a fool of himself isn't fit to be President.

Re:Who is it going to be?

[StarkRG]

To a certain extent that's true, but if that were totally the case then there would never have been a revolution. Black people would still be slaves. Actually, chances are that, if people were always as apathetic as they are now we never would have left Africa and we'd all be black... We'd all be living in grass huts and there would never be any wars of any kind.

I think there's always been the seed of apathy, but the last time it was this bad was the dark ages...

And it's really just happened fairly recently. Think about this: Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about whether he had extra-marital relations. Bush and his people have done far worse than that: making up evidence to get people to agree to wars. Using their power to get their businesses government contracts. They've spent months on arguing that a husband should not be allowed to take his permanently vegetative wife off life support. They've taken the bill of rights and wiped their collective asses with it. They've used loopholes to imprison people without due process (They're like POWs so they're not covered by the constitution, but since we're not at war with their governments they don't fall under the Geneva Conventions). And the most we've done is say "Hey, that's not quite right." Nobody with any kind of influence has even mentioned impeachment, you might say that the end of his term is only a couple years away, but remember when Clinton was impeached?

Why is it that since 9/11 people have been willing to lick their own asses if the government told them it'd make them safer from terrorists? Security theater [wikipedia.org] is a rising problem all over the world and yet people just accept it. No liquids or gels? no problem, it makes us safer. No fingernail clippers, yeah, fine. These are all pointless. The only way you're going to have any kind of assurances that people aren't bringing anything dangerous on planes is if you strip them down, give everyone uniforms, keep them in quarantine for a week, not let them bring anything with them and chain them to the floor. Essentially it needs to be like a prisoner transport.

At what point does it get to be too much? At what point do people start revolting?