IP: scary

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Worrisome Trouble in the Information Business


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By Jim Hoagland The Washington Post
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WASHINGTON  - Fifty years ago the Chinese people ''stood up,'' in Mao 
Zedong's ringing description of freshly found revolutionary pride. In 
Shanghai some of America's top media bosses have knelt down, eager to 
pursue one more pot of gold by kissing the ring of Mao's 
revolutionary heirs.

Corporate bosses from Time Warner, Viacom and other media firms 
disgraced themselves in Shanghai. They sullied the journalistic 
profession to which they are loosely attached. Their actions were 
redolent of corporate greed and self-abasement. Their deeds and words 
could only confuse the Chinese about the nature and integrity of the 
media companies they now head or covet.

Sumner Redstone, whose Viacom seeks to take over CBS, used a press 
conference in Shanghai to call on journalists to avoid being 
''unnecessarily offensive'' to countries they cover, according to 
news reports.

Gerald Levin, the top executive at Time Warner, co-sponsored with the 
Communist authorities of Shanghai the gathering of 300 of the world's 
leading capitalists. The Sept. 28 conference was part of China's 50th 
anniversary celebrations of Mao's revolution, which is marked 
annually on Oct. 1.
Mr. Levin lavished praise on President Jiang Zemin so fulsome that it 
might have choked even Bill Clinton or Madeleine Albright. He 
presented a statue of Abraham Lincoln - to whom Mr. Jiang likes to 
compare himself for no obvious reason - to a ruler ultimately 
responsible for the jailing or exile of tens of thousands of Chinese 
citizens for the simple expression of a desire to have the right to 
join a democratic political party.

When I first went into Washington journalism, publishers worried 
about young reporters being seduced by the romantic haze surrounding 
Maoists, the Vietcong, Sandinistas, Fidel Castro and other Marxist 
revolutionary movements. Today it is aging CEOs, network presidents 
and publishers who seem most vulnerable to the flattery implied by 
high-level access, the sadistic toughness of authoritarian regimes 
and of course the smell of money.

Why worry about that? Because of the public trust that is the core 
and lifeblood of American journalism. Anything that confuses or 
undermines that trust should be anathema to those who work at all 
levels of my profession. The First Amendment awards duties as well as 
rights, even to CEOs.
I have criticized President Clinton for whitewashing the Chinese 
regime and offering President Jiang an unjustified aura of political 
legitimacy. To ignore some of the most powerful figures in the 
information industry such as Mr. Levin or Rupert Murdoch doing 
exactly the same thing would be unconscionable.

Especially right now.
The Internet, cable television news and the breakneck growth of the 
U.S. entertainment industry into a giant global economic force are 
reshaping the contours of journalism as it is practiced in America 
and abroad. Journalism is increasingly co-opted into the promotion of 
these technologies, and of the bottom lines, egos and talents of the 
swashbucklers who have gained early control of them.

Relentless, unabashed self-promotion has become the essential art of 
the amorphous but pervasive reach of the new technologies, 
contaminating both journalism and its most essential raw material, 
politics. Truth becomes just one element in the mix of values 
presented to audiences and potential buyers of newly issued dot-com 
stock. In Bill Clinton's Washington, truth is not always an important 
element.

In a moment of sweeping change and wavering standards, it is vital 
for corporate and political leaders to show the integrity and good 
judgment they say they ask of those who work for them.
China is not just a value-free market for media companies, as Mr. 
Levin's Shanghai speech seemed to imply. And information is not just 
a commodity, or a political tool. It deserves the protection and 
commitment that the founding fathers wrote into the U.S. 
Constitution. If information is not treated as sacrosanct by the 
industry's leaders, it will certainly not be treated that way by a 
government that freedom of the press is intended to balance.

The Clinton administration has just folded the U.S. Information 
Agency into the State Department, and is launching a harebrained 
scheme called International Public Information that would award 
control of the flow of public information about foreign affairs to 
national security and intelligence types. The dangers of partisanship 
creeping in under the guise of centralization should be ringing alarm 
bells across Washington.

The advance of technology demands enormous changes in the information 
business. It also demands a continuity in values and standards that 
should not come under even indirect attack from those in positions of 
leadership.