Llewellyn King: Big tech media monopolize ads, ravage journalism and act as global censors

At a Google advertising seminar in London in 2010

— Photo by Derzsi Elekes Andor

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

The Department of Justice has filed suit against Google for its predatory advertising practices. Bully!

Not that I think Google is inherently evil, venal or greedier than any other corporation. Indeed, it is a source of much good through its awesome search engine.

But when it comes to advertising, Google, and the others with high-tech media platforms, most notably Facebook, have done inestimable damage. They have hoovered up most of the available advertising dollars, bankrupting much of the world’s traditional media and, thereby, limiting the coverage of the news — especially local news.

They have ripped the heart out of the economics of journalism.

Like other Internet companies, they treasure their own intellectual property while sucking up the journalistic property of the impoverished providers without a thought of paying.

While I doubt thatr the DOJ suit will do much to redress the advertising imbalance (Axios argues that the part of Google the DOJ wants divested only accounts for 12 percent of the company’s revenue), it will keep the issue of what to do about big tech media churning.

The issue of advertising is an old conundrum, written extra-large by the Internet.

Advertisers have always favored a kind of first-past-the-post strategy. In practice this has meant in the world of newspapers that a small edge in circulation means a massive gulf in advertising volume.

Broadcasting, through the ratings system, has been able to charge for the audience it gets, plus a premium for perceived audience quality — 60 Minutes compared to, say, Maury, which was canceled last year.

But mostly, it is always about raw numbers of readers, listeners and viewers. In a rough calculation, first past the post has meant 20 percent more of the audience turns into 50 percent more of the available advertising dollars.

I would cite The New York Times's leverage over the old New York Herald Tribune, The Baltimore Sun’s edge over the old News-American, and The Washington Post’s advantage over the old Evening Star. The weaker papers all in time folded even when they had healthy circulations, just not healthy enough. 

Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.,with their massive reach are killing off the traditional print media and wreaking havoc in broadcasting. This calls out for redress but it won’t come from the narrow focus of the DOJ suit.

The even larger issue with Google and its compatriots is freedom of speech.

The Internet tech publishers, for that is what they are, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others, reserve the right to throw you off their sites if you indulge in speech that, by contemporary standards, incites hate, violence or at least social disturbance. 

Conservatives believe that they are victimized, and I agree. Anyone whose speech is restricted by another individual or an institution is a victim of prejudice, albeit the prejudice of good intent.

Recently, I was warned by LinkedIn that I would be barred from posting on the site because I had transgressed — and two transgressions merit banning. The offending item was an historical piece about a World War II massacre in Greece. The offense may have been a dramatic photograph of skulls, taken by my wife, Linda Gasparello, displayed in the museum at Distomo, scene of a barbarous genocide.

I followed the appeal procedure against the two-strikes-you’re-out rule, but I have heard nothing. I expect the censoring algorithms have my number and are ready to protect the public from me next time I write about an ugly historical event.

The concept of “hate speech” is contrary to free expression. It calls for censorship even though it professes otherwise. Any time one group of people is telling another, or even an individual, what they can say, free speech is threatened, the First Amendment compromised

The problem isn’t what is called hate speech but lying — a malady that is endemic in the political class.

The defense against the liars who haunt social media is what some find hateful speech: ridicule, invective, irony, satire, and all the other weapons in the literary quiver. 

The right to bear the arms of free and open discourse shouldn’t be infringed by the social media giants.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com, and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

whchronicle.com

Llewellyn King: Leave Big Tech alone while it’s still innovating

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

When it comes to invention, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

The chances are good, and getting better, that in the coming year and the years after it, our world will essentially reinvent itself. That revolution already is underway but, as with most progress, there are political challenges.

Congress needs restraint in dealing with the technological revolution and not to dust off old, antitrust tapes. With the surging inventiveness we are seeing today across the creative spectrum -- inventiveness that has given us Amazon, Tesla, Uber, Zoom, 3D printing and, in short order, a COVID-19 vaccine – you may wonder why the government is using antitrust statutes to try and break up two tech giants.

Conservatives think big social media companies are unfair to them. Liberals worry about the financial power of the Big Tech companies: The five largest have a market value of over $7 trillion.  

The Justice Department has filed an antitrust suit against Google, and the Federal Trade Commission has filed one against Facebook. The only tools it has are outdated, anti-competition statutes -- some passed over a century ago. Sometime in the future, it may be desirable to disassemble Big Tech companies, but not when they are bringing forward new technologies and whole new concepts such as autonomous vehicles and drone deliveries. These need to happen without government shaking up the creators.

Antitrust laws on the books don’t address the internet age when global monopoly is often an unintended result of success; hugely different from Standard Oil seeking to have absolute control over kerosene.

Policy, though, may want to examine the role of Big Tech in relation to startups: the proven engines of change. When today’s tech giants were in their infancy, it was the beginning of the age of the startup as the driver of change. It went like this: invent, get venture-capital financing, prove the product in the market, and go public. The initial public offering (IP)) was the financial goal.

But the presence of behemoths in Silicon Valley has changed the trajectory for new companies. Rather than hoping for a pot of gold from an IPO, today’s startups are designed to be sold to a big company. Venture capitalists demand that the whole shape of a startup isn’t aimed to public acceptance but rather to whether Google, Apple or Amazon will buy that startup.

The evidence is that acquisitions are doing well in the Big Techs, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t be stifled in time. Conglomerates have a checkered past.

Big companies have a lifespan that begins with white-hot creativity, followed by growth, followed by a leveling of creativity, and the emergence of efficiency and profitability as goals that eclipse creativity. Professional managers take over from the innovators who created the enterprises; risk-taking is expunged from the corporate culture.

That is when government should look at the Big-Tech powerhouses and see whether it is in the national interest to break them up, not on the old antitrust grounds but because they may have become negative forces in the innovation firmament; because whether they are still creative or whether they are just drawing rents on previous creations or acquisitions, they will still be hoovering up engineering talents who might well be better employed in a smaller, more entrepreneurial endeavors or, ideally, as part of a startup. 

The issue is simple: While the big companies are still creating, adding to the tech revolution which is reshaping the world, they should be left to do what they are doing well, from creating autonomous, over-the-road trucks to easing city life with smart-city innovation.

The time to move against Big Tech is when it ceases to be an engine of innovation.

Innovation needs an unruly frontier. We have had that, and it should be protected both from government interference and corporate timidity.

Happy and innovative New Year! Hard to believe in this time of plague, but much is changing for the better.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

Nitric oxide to treat COVID-19? Google-Apple project; convention center as hospital

Boston Convention and Exhibition Center has been transformed (temporarily!) into a medical center for COVID-19 patients.

From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)

As our region and our nation continue to grapple with the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, The New England Council is using our blog as a platform to highlight some of the incredible work our members have undertaken to respond to the outbreak.  Each day, we’ll post a round-up of updates on some of the initiatives underway among Council members throughout the region.  We are also sharing these updates via our social media, and encourage our members to share with us any information on their efforts so that we can be sure to include them in these daily round-ups.

You can find all the Council’s information and resources related to the crisis in the special COVID-19 section of our website.  This includes our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar, which provides information on upcoming COVID-19 Congressional town meetings.

Here is the Aug. 13 roundup:

Medical Response

• Massachusetts General Hospital Studying Possible Treatment – Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) are investigating whether the gas nitric oxide can help treat—or even prevent—COVID-19 infections. The gas, widely used for patients in respiratory failure, has been known to provide additional antiviral effects. The trial at MGH is the only in the country and one of few worldwide. Read more from WBUR.

• Google Developing Contact-Tracing Technology – Google, in partnership with Apple, is working to develop technology to alert individuals if they have come into contact with someone infected with COVID-19. The technology will use contact tracing via Bluetooth signals to determine users that may have been in contact with infected individuals. To maintain privacy, the app would not record GPS location data or personal information. BBC News has more.

• Sanofi Donates 100 Million Doses of Potential Treatment to 50 Countries – After its drug hydroxychloroquine emerged as a potential treatment for COVID-19, drugmaker Sanofi has pledged 100 million doses of the antimalarial drug across 50 countries. In addition to increasing production capacity of the drug, Sanofi has called for coordination and stabilization along the supply chain of the drug to quadruple production should hydroxychloroquine emerge as an effective treatment. More from Reuters.

• Boston Convention and Exhibition Center Transformed into Medical Center – The Boston Convention and Exhibition Center—owned by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA)—has been transformed into a new medical center for COVID-19 patients. The facility, renamed Boston Hope Medical Center, will provide 1,000 beds and other resources for the city’s infected, and will be managed by Partners HealthCare and Boston Health Care for the Homeless. Read more in The Boston Globe.

Economic/Business Continuity Response

• Dell Provides Early Payouts for Development Projects – To assist its research and development partners, Dell Technologies is offering cash payouts for development projects, as well as free training for services necessary to maintain operations. In addition, the tech company is providing no-interest loans and up to nine months of payment deferrals for its customers. CRN has more.

• AT&T Technology Used to Help Disinfect Hospitals – AT&T, using its Internet of Things (IoT) technology, is partnering with technology companies to destroy viruses, bacteria, and spores on surfaces in hospitals. The connectivity from AT&T allows the technology to use ultraviolet (UV) rays to disinfect surfaces and helps the technology optimize performance, lower healthcare costs, and maximize patient and worker safety in hospitals. Read more.

Community Response

• Boston Colleges Offer Residence Halls to Exposed Workers – Supporting a wide variety of employees from facilities ranging from the Pine Street Inn and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston-area colleges are offering their residence halls and campus facilities to workers who might have been exposed to the novel coronavirus. Northeastern University, Emmanuel College, Boston University, Simmons University, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design are some of the schools offering support to workers across multiple industries to protect them. Read more from WBUR.

• Veolia Donates 40,000 Masks to Hospitals –Environmental services company Veolia has donated 40,000 masks to hospitals across the United States and Canada, drawing from its existing stockpile. The masks will provide exposed workers with the protective equipment they need to remain safe while working. The Post Star has more.

Stay tuned for more updates each day, and follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates on how Council members are contributing to the response to this global health crisis.

Llewellyn King: The case against mega-mergers is written in U.S. history

A judge has green-lighted the $85 billion merger of Time Warner and AT&T. Unless the Trump administration appeals and wins on appeal, another behemoth will take the field.

This merger, it is assumed, will lead to a flurry of other mergers in communications. Witness Comcast’s $65 billion bid for Fox, topping Disney’s $52.4 billion offer.

This is heady stuff. The money on the table is enormous, in some cases dwarfing the economies of small countries.

Merging is an industry unto itself. A lot of people get very rich: They are investment bankers, arbitragers, lawyers, economists, accountants, publicists and opinion researchers. When really big money moves, some of it falls off the table into the willing hands of those who have managed the movement.

The fate of the real owners of these companies, the stockholders, is more doubtful after the initial run-up. The earlier merger of Time with Warner Communications is considered to have been disadvantageous for stockholders.

Another concern is the mediocre performance of conglomerates. The latest to have run into trouble is General Electric, which had managed to do well in many businesses until recently.

A more cautionary story is what happened to Westinghouse when it went whole hog into broadcasting and lost its footing in the electric generation businesses. This was spun off, sold to British Nuclear Fuels in 1997, then sold again to Toshiba and later went into bankruptcy.

From the 1950s, Westinghouse it bought and sold companies at a furious rate, until the core company itself was sold in favor of broadcasting. One of Westinghouse’s most successful chairmen, Bob Kirby, told me it was easier for him to buy or sell a company than to make a small internal decision.

In another pure financial play, a group of hedge funds bought Toys R Us and with the added debt, it failed.

In many things, big is essential in today’s economy. News organizations need substantial financial strength to be able to do the job. Witness the cost of covering the Quebec and Singapore summits. As Westinghouse proved by default, big construction needs big resources. That is indisputable.

When growth through acquisition becomes the modus operandi of a company, something has gone very wrong. The losers are the public and the customers. The new AT&T, if it comes about, will still need you and I to lift the receiver, watch its videos and subscribe to its bundles.

Recently, I was discussing the problems customers have with behemoth corporations on SiriusXM Radio's "The Morning Briefing with Tim Farley" when a listener tweeted that I hated big companies and their CEOs and loved big government.

Actually, I’d just spent a week with the CEOs of several companies, admirable people, and I don’t think government should be any bigger than needs be. I certainly don’t think government should perform functions that can be better performed in the private sector.

The problem is size itself.

When any organization gets too big, it begins to get muscle-bound, self-regarding. Although it might’ve been built on daring innovation, as many firms have been, supersized companies have difficulty in allowing new thinking, reacting nimbly and adopting innovative technologies and materials.

If large corporate entities were as nimble as small ones, the automobile companies would’ve become the airplane manufacturers in the 1920s and 1930s. They had the money, the manufacturing know-how and the engineering talent. They lacked the vision. It was easier to be rent-takers in the production and sale of automobiles.

Likewise, it’s incredible that FedEx was able to conquer the delivery business when another delivery system, Western Union, was up and running. But Western Union was big, smug and monopolistic. They had the resources and an army of staff delivering telegrams.

Companies like Alphabet (Google’s owner) snap up start-ups as soon as they are proven. That snuffs out the creativity early, even if it wasn’t meant to, and makes Google even more dominant. I would argue too big for its own good -- and for ours.

Llewellyn King (llewellynking1@gmail.com) is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS.  He is based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

The epicenter of merger mania -- Wall Street, with the New York Stock Exchange draped with the flag.

Past time to confront the digital duopolists

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com:

What to do reduce the corrosive power of the rapacious and unregulated duopoly of Facebook and Google?

One of the worst of their effects is that by gobbling up most of the digital advertising revenue in the United States they are destroying many local news organizations, whose work is essential in providing oversight of public and private institutions. Their demise is a green light for corruption.

David Chavern, CEO of the News Media Alliance, which represents about 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada, in a Feb. 26 Wall Street Journal article (“Protect the News From Google and Facebook’’), touted one way to start rectifying this situation: a bill in Congress sponsored by Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline. The measure would reform antitrust laws to let newspapers and other news media collectively withhold their products from the duopolists at Facebook and Google to pressure them to give those smaller media an adequate return on their investment so that they can employ enough journalists to adequately cover the news.

Why oh why are antitrust laws applied to little publications and not to the gigantic Google and Facebook? Those two empires are in restraint of trade just as much as was the Standard Oil Trust at the end of the last century.

I’m mostly talking about local media; the big national ones, such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times, will be okay.

Llewellyn King: Notebook --The new publishing giants; failing upwards; U.S. gastronomic capital?

When A.J. Liebling said that freedom of the press meant freedom for those who owned the presses, he spoke in a time when there were nearly 2,000 daily newspapers in the United States. Today there are fewer, and they depend on more than presses to stay in business. They depend on the indulgence of Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Freedom of the press now depends on those few companies that own the algorithms on which all publishers depend to get a wider range of readers, even while making no money off them.

The newsboys and newsgirls of yesterday delivered the papers. That is all. The news deliverers of today control the whole publishing world. They can determine success or failure and, as we are seeing, have the power to censor.

William Horsley, a retired BBC correspondent who is involved with media studies at the University of Sheffield and is vice president of the Association of European Journalists, says that the newsboys are now the publishers.

In the billions of words that have been spouted about freedom of the press here and around the globe, Horsley has identified a new and terrible reality about the freedom of the press and along with it, the freedom of ideas.

Quite simply, we now live in an era in which an algorithm buried somewhere in the secret depths of Google can do more to change what we know, think and say than any dictator has been able to achieve.

While the creators of Google, Facebook and Twitter probably did not dream of such power, such control, such hegemony, it has come to them.

The mind reels with possibilities, each more disturbing than the previous, of what would happen if any of the Internet giants fell into the hands of malicious owners or a dictator. Think of the damage if Steve Bannon, who presides over Breitbart, or some like ideologue, were at the helm of Google, Facebook or Twitter.

George Orwell, at his most pessimistic, could not have imagined the existential evil that could await us, courtesy of technology, plus a sociopath.

Dumb Luck, Sir. Dumb Luck.

A professor at Brown University congratulates me on my life choices. He implies that my peripatetic journey through the world, clutching a press card, has been because of sound choices. To which I have to respond, “My life has been one of dumb luck and failure.”

Luck, I say, because it is what determines your being at the right place at the right time. Failure, I say, because it is possible to fail upwards: I have, often.

Had my career been on an even keel, I would have finished high school, maybe gone to university and then gotten stuck in one of the early jobs, making it my “career.” As it is, I dropped out of high school, went into journalism and failed a lot.

If I had kept any of those jobs I failed at, I might have had a duller life: a jobbing writer in Africa, a news writer at ITN in London, the creator of America's first women's liberation magazine (which failed to liberate any women, but liberated all my money) in New York, an assistant editor at The Washington Post, and a trade journal reporter at McGraw-Hill.

So, Mr. Professor, I recommend that you prepare students for the success of failing upwards. Sometimes that goes for relationships and marriages. Do not bivouac too early on life’s open road.

The Gastronomic Capital of the U.S.: Is it Rhode Island?

In France, it is pretty well agreed, the area around Lyon is the gastronomic capital.

In the United States, New Orleans is mentioned. Well I have eaten many a meal in New Orleans, especially during a time when I was making a lot of speeches at conventions in New Orleans. But I have to say that good food rolls in Rhode Island. So much so that smart visitors come to Li'l Rhody on gastronomic tours, including friends of mine, who, like myself, have eaten the world over.

Now there are a few quibbles, to be sure. One big one is that there are woefully few French restaurants in the state, and the Italian influence in the restaurants is pervasive. Also I think that there could be more top-of-the line and regional Chinese restaurants, although a Uighur restaurant has just opened in Providence. Other Asian cuisines -- Korean, Indian, Thai and Japanese -- are well represented.

Still, the eating in the Ocean State leaves New Orleans with a way to go in my book.

{Editor’s Note: Rhode Island does have a few good French restaurants,  such as Chez Pascal, on Hope Street in Providence.}

Llewellyn King (llewellynking1@gmail.com) is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS.

On NPR: ISIS.... and Google?

  This interview includes the idiotic assertion that the same sort of people who want to do a Silicon Valley startup are the same sort of people who want to join #isis.

The people who want to join the latter include large numbers of psychopaths who look forward to killing, raping and destroying, using the excuse of 7th Century Arab tribal barbarism. The folks who have founded the likes of Google are creators.

Let them take responsibility

By ROBERT WHITCOMB

In the appendix of Philip K. Howard's mordantly entertaining new book, The Rule of Nobody: Saving America From Dead Laws and Broken Government, is a well-named collection of proposed new amendments to the U.S. Constitution that he calls the “Bill of Responsibilities.”I over-summarize them here; read the book. Mr. Howard is an engaging writer, using stories (some grimly funny) to get across his strong prescriptions.

Mr. Howard proposes amendments to: “sunset” old laws and regulations; give the president power to far more effectively manage the executive branch — including line-item vetoes and expanded discretion to hire and fire and reorganize operations, all subject to being overridden by a majority of each house of Congress — and widen judges’ power to dismiss unreasonable lawsuits.

Finally, he recommends an amendment to create a “Council of Citizens” as an advisory body to make recommendations on how to make government more responsive to the public’s needs. This reminds me of the Hoover commissions on government reorganization of the late 1940s and the ’50s, named after Herbert Hoover, who chaired them. The composition of this council would be very federalist, with members chosen “by and from a Nominating Council composed of two nominees by each governor of a state.” The idea is to push along the ideas represented by the other new amendments. This is intriguing but the nomination process could get caught in political sludge.

The phrase “Bill of Responsibilities” gets to the heart of what Mr. Howard is saying throughout his book: that we have become so tangled up in laws and regulations that it’s often impossible to exercise authority and take responsibility — the avoidance of which, I would add, is attractive to many people, just as long as they continue to have the perks of their positions. As a result, it’s tougher and tougher to get things done, at the local, state and federal levels, whether it is fixing a bridge, creating a health-care system whose benefits are commensurate with its vast cost, or firing an incompetent bureaucrat.

Admiral Chester Nimitz said during World War II, “When in command, command.” President Truman said of the prospect of Dwight Eisenhower as president: “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike. It won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.” Well, Eisenhower turned out to be a pretty effective president but Truman was fairly accurate: It has always been hard to make government work, and in many ways it’s harder now than 60 years ago because of the accretion of laws and regulations, many of which should have been eliminated or streamlined long ago. A law or a regulation cannot cover every eventuality, Mr. Howard writes: You need judgment and common sense. Fewer laws and more decisions, please!

The problems that Philip Howard tackles remind me of the growing dominance of process over content (or maybe call it substance). You see this in daily life with the increasing time demanded to keep up with endlessly updated computer programs (planned obsolescence!), and the hours needed to fill out tax returns and insurance forms.

Meanwhile, the European Court of Justice has issued an advisory judgment that European Union residents have the right in certain circumstances to make search engines remove links to personal information that people think damages them. It’s “the right to be forgotten,” a cousin of Americans’ famous, if informal, “right to be left alone.”

This will be very difficult to enforce, given the vast complexity of the Web. But I like the idea of taking down the arrogance of Google, et al., a few notches. You don’t have to be much of a “public figure” to be the object of scurrilous inaccurate attacks on the Internet for which the likes of Google wrongly take no responsibility. In the Digital Age your good name can be instantly destroyed on the screen.

The court supported exceptions for “public figures,” especially politicians. But that’s very tricky: Almost anyone can become a “public figure” on the Internet. And is it fair to exclude politicians, etc., from such protection from attacks? Whatever, the European case at least raises the issue of responsibility for content, which the search-engine companies, most notably Google, have tended to avoid while raking in billions of dollars.

***

A college “commencement” is a strange term because it seems much more of an ending, as emphasized by the dirge-like “Pomp and Circumstance.” Sadder is that so many colleges, supposedly refuges of the free exchange of ideas, surrender to demands for censorship by “activists” to block commencement speeches by people (usually with comparatively “conservative” views) whose opinions they don’t like. Cowardly college chiefs fail to take responsibility for protecting one of their central missions -- free and open discussion.

Robert Whitcomb (rwhitcomb51@gmail.com)  is an editor, writer,  fellow of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy and a member of a management-consulting firm in the health-care sector.