Sometimes the media gods do us a big favor by giving us a clear example of how corporate media is occupied by Wall Street. In this case we are presented with two different covers of the same issue of Time Magazine that ran domestically and abroad. Reading between the lines it shows how scared the media elites are of pushing the idea of revolution at home. And just as the disconnection between the US State Department’s support for the Arab Spring overseas versus the various crackdowns against the Occupy movement throughout the US is not casual, no doubt the editors at Time are nervous about the idea of revolution in Egypt further inspiring the locals. This makes the alternate title, “Why anxiety is good for you,” that much more interesting. Surely their editorial choice reflects a great deal of anxiety.

H/T to CommonDreams.org for the heads-up.

Hmmm. This EcoAd campaign is a new effort by EcoMedia,* a project owned by CBS (yes, the mega media corporation CBS). The way it works is that partners advertising on CBS can get a little synthetic leaf logo on their ad to indicate they are participating in something vaguely green. A portion of the ad sale goes towards some community sustainability project.

In the language of EcoMedia’s Website:

“The bottom line: EcoMedia’s sustainable media model, recognizable to consumers as our EcoAd, is a classic win-win. It’s advertising that does more for companies, more for communities, and more for the environment.”

But what exactly do they mean by “sustainable media”? Let’s look at an example:

If you can’t see the video, click here.

If you are at all versed in the problem of global climate change, it’s a real stretch to see on what planet this constitutes ecological advertising. Fundamentally, the only real sustainable media is media that challenges the idea of growth and neo-classical capitalism. I can’t imagine how this kind of consumerism and sustainability are compatible. Nor do I see mega-corporations like CBS really interested in undermining the economic model that makes them rich.

This would be utterly comical if it were not so dangerous. Car culture is the leading reason why we have climate change. Branding straight-up planet destroying consumerism as eco-friendly is so unconscious it boarders on insanity. Never mind. It is insane.

I poked around the Website to see if they had any standards or criteria for the kinds of ads or companies they would do business with. No such luck. No definition of sustainability, no explanation of ethics.

So if BP wanted to run an EcoAd, would EcoMedia do it?

I don’t want to be a pure negationist by asserting that no good can come from this. I’m sure the organizations who get funding from the program deserve it. But from the standpoint of someone trying advocate real sustainable media that promotes cultural change, this kind work really poisons the water (sorry for the cliched metaphor, but it’s appropriate). In particular, by muddying the concept of sustainability it makes it more confusing to advocate for real ecological media to counter the pro-growth consumer consciousness that is at the root of the CBS’ business model. Not only do we have to undo the damage of normal car ads, now we have to deal with this mind frak. Fortunately, this campaign is so clearly lame, hopefully even half-witted, TV colonized zombies can see through this deception.

If you feel compelled to do something about this foolishness, you can click over to the Center for Environmental Health to participate in a campaign trying to stop this nonsense.

* Not to be confused by the great book by Sean Cubitt.

Unfortunately, this goes in the opposite direction of where we should be heading. Internet competition did drive down the cost of many CDs, but not from the majors. The majors continue to gouge customers with exorbitant retail pricing, which has driven customers to piracy. There is no reason a CD should be more than $6. So when we get to the plus $15 range, who should bother? Smart artists are hip to the emergent culture of their customers and have gone to appeal directly to their fans to allow them to volunteer their price (i.e. Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, to name a few big acts). (Here is an interesting pricing analysis from the view of an artist on eMusic, and this take on the company’s economics.)

It may be that in the background eMusic is feeling the heat from streaming services for mobile devices. Since I’m not a “smart” phone user, I don’t know how this works exactly, but I believe that the paradigm is for people to pay a monthly fee for access to the streaming cloud. I’m still old school enough that I prefer to own my tracks and have them on my hard drive. I’ve been burned by Net services when they go out of business. When I pay for something I also like the illusion of a tangible object. Moreover, I liked eMusic because it was not what the major’s offered. What is to keep me there now?

Throwing fans under the bus for growth is yet another example of capitalism’s dumb rationality, in particular the logic of media companies that are no longer satisfied with stability and slow growth. It used to be if a newspaper netted 5% growth during the year, that was dandy. The steroid economy will no longer tolerate such incremental stats, and must zoom along at 20-30% every year. That puts a big demand on people, resources and especially the Earth. This kind of insanity really has to stop. Why eMusic caved into this logic is unclear. But inhabiting Manhattan’s economic reality bubble may have something to do with it. I’ve certainly had enough of it. Such behavior definitely makes me appreciate piracy much more.

The majors are a dying dinosaur. Rather than show vision and leadership, those guiding the eMusic ship have gone way off course. They have headed the Siren’s call, and may end up sinking the operation. Judging from the multiple complaints on their Facebook page and rants from Indy music Websites, I can’t imagine what calculous eMusic is using. Maybe they are guessing that raising prices will cover the loss of loyal customers. But in an era of affective economics, the incalculable value of loyalty, trust and goodwill is something very hard to come by. Sorry eMusic, it was fun while it lasted.

Wooster Collective posted these images from CNN’s ad campaign in Turkey, “Stories with the full background.” Aesthetically this is by far one of my favorite marketing stunts (see my book cover to understand why). The thing is, why don’t they run ads like this in the US? I think the answer is self-evident. The US press is generally chckenshit to be too honest at home, but will present a different face abroad in order to appease the generally oppositional view of the US overseas. This kind of two-faced approach is a disservice to the American public and also points to the ethically crippled state of corporate media.

I don’t subscribe to satellite or private service in Italy, and only have access to public TV, for which I pay a 100 Euro annual tax. RAI (pubic TV) is only broadcasting one World Cup game a day, which means I have missed many matches, including last night’s crucial game between Ghana and Uruguay. The Net in Italy is now thoroughly filtered so I cannot access live streams from the BBC or ESPN. This is all because the big media monopolies have agreed to gate off large chunks of media, essentially privatizing a global event that arguable belongs in the planetary public sphere.

Incidentally, who pays to train the national teams competing in the World Cup? We do! This is like corporations patenting inventions from public universities.

Burlusconi and Murdoch are big jerks!

(Hear Clay Shirky rhapsodize on the Internet’s “cognitive surplus,” the kind of thing that a.aaaarg.org provided for free thinking folks like us.)

Anyhow, there is a larger drama at play, which is about the war of e-readers and who has the right to read what and under what conditions. As Mitochondrial Vertigo argues, we should pay attention to the battle between Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad, both of which I find to be rather scary devices when it come to books and copyright. This is part of a bigger war over the future of the Net, which every concerned citizen should get caught up on by reading Jonathan Zittrain’s The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It (you can download the book for free here).

Here’s a choice quote from Mitochondrial Vertigo:

“The minds of the future lie within the Kindle v iPad wars, the habits of our thinking, our cups of coffee, and our licking of the page turning. The nice thing about technology, it always does MORE, it lets not only the cat, but its fleas and its dreams out of the bag. As Macmillan attacks file sharing in order to secure as much leverage as it can in its battle with Kindle and Amazon, the frayed hem edge of our complexity is showing. We must also reflect upon the fact that ‘We demand more content, faster (cheaper)!’ is what is behind many of our complaints when file-sharing is restricted, a demand worth inspecting.”

On this last point (demanding more faster and cheaper), it may be the case we want all our information/entertainment to be free and that has depended on a trade-off to allow ad creep into the vestibules of our lives. The alternative, DRM, makes pimping my eyeballs the better deal. Selling out screenspace to advertising is most certainly a Faustian pact, and it’s naive to assume that everything should be free just because we want it to be that way. On the other hand, as an old school punk, I feel like a barter economy keeps our culture honest. I’m never going to make money on my books anyways. What’s important is performance–what Radiohead and other rock bands have finally figured out as they watched their corporate overlords sue fans to recoup discretionary cocaine funds.

The money thing will have to be worked out, one way or another. Meanwhile, as long as I can show up and teach, and at the end of the day go home to eat a fresh meal and sleep in a warm bed, I’m happy. But for that we need public education–another seemingly lost cause these days. Quite honestly, my own profession is collapsing like all others, and it’s hard for me to foresee who will pay for education when growing food will increasingly become a priority. As a brown thumb, I wonder if being an intellectual will be relevant in the future. I can only hope.

Truth Emergency: Inside the Military Industrial Media Empire | The Media Freedom Foundation:

A global dominance agenda also includes penetration into the boardrooms of the corporate media in the US. In 2006 only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. Four of the top ten media corporations in the major defense contractors on their boards of directors, including:

William Kennard: New York Times, Carlyle Group

Douglas Warner III, GE (NBC), Bechtel

John Bryson: Disney (ABC), Boeing

Alwyn Lewis: Disney (ABC), Halliburton

Douglas McCorkindale: Gannett, Lockheed-Martin.

Given an interlocked media network, it is safe to say that big media in the United States effectively represent the interests of corporate America. The media elite, a key component of the Higher Circle Policy Elite in the US, are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, the controllers of news and information content, and the decision makers regarding media resources.

Portals (Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc.) have enabled guided Internet experiences, but Disney now takes it one step further. Its new Netpal notebook computer is entirely a computerized Disney environment. From ZDNet:

Developed with parents and kids in mind, the Disney Netpal has a reinforced mechanical design and, naturally, a Disney user interface. In addition to “more than 40 robust parental control options,” the Netpal sports an 8.9-in. LCD display, Wi-Fi, Windows XP Home and kid-friendly software featuring Disney characters.

I suspect these designer-brand net computers will be the wave of the future. We’ll move from generalized branded operating systems, such as Apple, Microsoft or Google, to more specifically designed interfaces that reflect particular styles and brand loyalty. Just as the skateboard industry has a variety of designer and custom boards, I foresee a slew of custom net systems. But I imagine that for now they will be mostly from high end (that is, well-endowed) corporate media brands (I’m sure Warner Brothers has one in the works), because the front-end design aspect must be prohibitive.

Is this Disney’s answer to the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project and its XO Laptop? Probably not, but it’s instructive to compare the two systems. Though the XO has its own custom operating system, it is open source, a guaruntee required by founder Nicholas Negroponte. Consider the 5 guiding principles of OLPC:

1. Child ownership

2. Low ages. Both hardware and software are designed for elementary school children ages 6–12.

3. Saturation

4. Connection

5. Free and open source

Also compare the high-minded mission of the OLPC with Disney. Guess which one cites radical educators like John Dewey and Paulo Freire as the inspiration for its interface? Perhaps only the Magic Kingdom’s dungeon guards would recognize these names.

It should be said this is not a clear case of good vs. evil. OLPC has its detractors and there is one particularly disturbing anecdote concerning a comment made (before the OLPC program was developed) by Negroponte during a radio interview with neo-Luddite Chellis Glendenning. When his utopian vision of the digital world was challenged by the fact that computer hardware production was causing babies to be born without brains in Mexico, he said it didn’t matter. The toxic waste of computer manufacturing and disposal remains a blind-spot enabled by its outsourcing from the core to the periphery and from lack of sufficient dialog about the problem.

PS Interesting how Disney’s deliberately amateurish Netpal intro video is intended to make it feel personal and endearing as opposed to cold and flashy. Where’s the magic?

Via Nonapaley.com