CA250: Mass Comm at Notre Dame College

Immerse yourself in the energetic, innovative and potentially...

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:28:00 -0400

Immerse yourself in the energetic, innovative and potentially illegal world of mash-up media with RiP: A Remix Manifesto. Let web activist Brett Gaylor and musician Greg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk, serve as your digital tour guides on a probing investigation into how culture builds upon culture in the information age.

Biomedical engineer turned live-performance sensation Girl Talk, has received immense commercial and critical success for his mind-blowing sample-based music. Utilizing technical expertise and a ferocious creative streak, Girl Talk repositions popular music to create a wild and edgy dialogue between artists from all genres and eras. But are his practices legal? Do his methods of frenetic appropriation embrace collaboration in its purest sense? Or are they infractions of creative integrity and violations of copyright?

Click on the picture to watch the film.

RiP: A Remix Manifesto

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:26:00 -0400

RiP: A Remix Manifesto:

A bare behind costs $1.4 million and the F- and S- words are...

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:23:00 -0400

A bare behind costs $1.4 million and the F- and S- words are off-limits (but only sometimes): welcome to the confusing world of FCC regulations.

George Carlin would have had a field day with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision on television indecency. The late comic’s famous “Seven Filthy Words” monologue prompted the Court’s 1978 ruling that regulation of indecent speech on publicly owned TV and radio airwaves was OK under the First Amendment.

But despite a media landscape radically reshaped by cable TV and the Internet, the court on June 21 refused to alter its 34-year precedent, finding only that the FCC failed to give adequate notice to broadcasters of rules tweaks that resulted in sanctions for airing Charlotte Ross’ naked rear on ABC’s NYPD Blue in 2003 and swear words by Cherand Nicole Richie during awards shows on Fox in 2002 and 2003.

So now the agency, which polices naughty content only after someone objects and issues fines at its discretion, faces a backlog of about 1.4 million complaints that have accumulated during the nine years the Fox case was pending. And because the Supreme Court and FCC have refused to articulate a clear indecency framework, attorneys say Hollywood still doesn’t have a clear idea of what broadcasters can and can’t show before 10 p.m. (the rules don’t apply to cable or late-night). “It’s going to be difficult, and it’s going to be confusing,” says John Stephens, an L.A. media lawyer. Still, using precedent and the court’s recent ruling, THR can break down where the lines are being drawn.

Profanity

The FCC has declared “f—” and “shit” presumptively indecent, even if uttered as “fleeting expletives” rather than, as Carlin chose to do, repeatedly. “F— inherently has a sexual connotation and thus falls within the scope of our indecency definition,” said the commission in a 2006 order.

Broadcasters, though, say the FCC has not been a model of consistency with regard to language. In fining a San Mateo, Calif., public TV station for airing profanities during a broadcast of Martin Scorsese’s PBS documentary series The Blues, the commission said the two words were “likely to shock the viewer and disturb the peace and quiet of the home.” But it allowed nearly all of Carlin’s dirty words to be used during unedited broadcasts of the Oscar-winning war epic Saving Private Ryan. Deleting offensive words “would have altered the nature of the artistic work and diminished the power, realism and immediacy of the film experience for viewers,” said the commission.

Sex Talk

Fortunately for CBS’ 2 Broke Girls, references to anatomical terms such as “penis,” “vagina” and “testicles” are not indecent. The FCC also denied a complaint over the use of “dick” and “dickhead” in an episode of NYPD Blue, finding they “do not have the same level of offensiveness as the ‘F-word’ or ‘S-word.’ “

But FCC decisions suggest explicit explorations of sexual anatomy are not permissible. In 2004, it fined Clear Channel over Bubba the Love Sponge’s radio show, on which the host discussed the large size of his “balls” as a singer and chorus sang about them.

Sex Acts

Howard Stern racked up about $2.5 million in fines from 1990 to 2004. Suggesting anal sex with a castmember’s wife during a 2003 broadcast landed the shock jock in trouble. “[I]t is clear that the material was designed to shock and pander,” concluded the FCC in fining the program.

Other sexual behaviors likewise have met with commission disapproval, including sex in public places, a teen orgy depicted on CBS’ Without a Trace, masturbation and kissing a bare breast. Fox was fined $1.18 million for a 2003 episode of its reality series Married by America that featured strippers and castmembers engaging in sexual conduct.

The FCC, though, approved a sexually suggestive scene on NBC’s Will & Grace in which Will adjusts Grace’s breasts in her dress. And it ruled in a 2006 “omnibus” order that an explicit discussion of teen-sex practices on The Oprah Winfrey Show was “designed to inform viewers about an important topic.”

Nudity

Frontal or rear nudity (male or female) still is prohibited on broadcast TV, as the flap overJanet Jackson’s 2004 Super Bowl halftime-show “wardrobe malfunction” evidenced. The NYPD Blue depiction of Ross’ naked rear “is titillating and shocking,” said the FCC in imposing a $1.4 million fine against ABC.

Violence

Oddly, violent material falls outside the FCC’s indecency regulation. So the line on what’s too graphic for a CSI murder isn’t clear. But, notes Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters, “Policing mechanisms are in place by networks and broadcasters.” The Sopranos reruns on A&E, for example, were edited to remove graphic violence. And Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, says his group pressured CBS to drop reruns of Showtime’s Dexter during the 2007-08 writers strike. In the end, he says, “The way to success is talking to advertisers.”

Great piece in a recent Atlantic magazine looking back on the...

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:21:50 -0400

Great piece in a recent Atlantic magazine looking back on the 40th anniversary of Carlin’s famous bit—

Forty years and a landmark Supreme Court decision have passed since Carlin first spoke out about the seven words you cannot say on television. But we’re still wrestling with the issues that Carlin raised with his monologue. How should the government define acceptable language? What can we learn from the 40th anniversary of the most famous, foul-mouthed comedic routine shortly before what could be the most substantial Supreme Court decision on profanity to date?

More at http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/05/the-7-dirty-words-turn-40-but-theyre-still-dirty/257374/

On 12 December 1937, Mae West appeared on the Chase and Sanborn...

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:18:32 -0400

On 12 December 1937, Mae West appeared on the Chase and Sanborn Hour with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his monocled knee-pal (dummy), Charlie McCarthy. Stars of stage and screen and airwaves, Bergen and McCarthy had a huge following, and West was keen to promote her latest film, Every Day’s a Holiday. She appeared in two sketches, including “The Garden of Eden” with Don Ameche, and a flirtatious banter with McCarthy. The announcer introduces the meeting as “the romantic battle of the century”, a contest of seduction which the dummy might just prove strong enough to resist. There follows a blistering back-and-forth, during which West describes Charlie as “all wood and a yard long”. This was too much for many listeners (though the studio audience found it hilarious), especially on a Sunday, and the Federal Communications Commission deemed it indecent. NBC banned West (you couldn’t even mention her name) from all their radio stations. She didn’t appear on radio until January 1950.

TIME magazine reports (June 29, 2012)— In Feburary 2004,...

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:17:09 -0400

TIME magazine reports (June 29, 2012)—

In Feburary 2004, Justin Timberlake ripped off a piece of Janet Jackson’s clothing during a Superbowl halftime performance, exposing her bare breast to a TV audience of 90 million. The incident, famously euphemized as a “wardrobe malfunction,” shocked America and prompted an eight-year legal battle that has gone as far as the highest court in the nation.

But that’s where it stops. The Supreme Court announced Friday that it would not review the case — in which the CBS television network challenged a fine levied by the Federal Communications Commission for airing the momentary indecency — allowing a lower court’s cancellation of the fine to stand, SCOTUSblog reports.

The 9/16^th of a second of nudity led to a lengthy series of legal appeals and re-appeals. At the time, the FCC had a formal policy of imposing fines for even the most fleeting instances of indecent words or images. In line with that policy, the agency fined CBS $550,000 — the largest fine ever levied against a television broadcaster.

CBS appealed on grounds that the FCC seemed fairly capricious as to when and how it enforced its policy on indecency, and would even change it without notice. The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found in CBS’s favor.

The Court announced today that it would bypass review of the case, allowing the Third Circuit’s ruling to stand. Chief Justice John Roberts filed a separate opinion stating that he did not believe the FCC had actually changed its policy.

Roberts added that he found Timberlake’s explanation that the nudity was simply a “wardrobe malfunction” unconvincing. The claim that the exposure was a mistake “strained the credulity of the public,” Roberts said.

In a related case, the Supreme Court ruled last week to throw out FCC fines against Fox News and ABC for fleeting instances of indecent language, finding that the networks had not had fair notice of the nature of the fines. The Court effectively sidestepped the issue of whether the fines violate free speech rights.

The controversial 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:14:15 -0400

The controversial 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.

Found this graphic that totally relates to the PBS film....

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 22:33:00 -0400

Found this graphic that totally relates to the PBS film. Multitasking is such an important problem facing our students. (And all of us. I just turned off Pandora after reading this. Oops.)

In class we watched this film—Parts 1: Distracted by...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:50:04 -0400

In class we watched this film—Parts 1: Distracted by Everything; Part 2: What’s it doing to their brains; Part 5: The Dumbest Generation

“All these computers, all these handhelds, all these cell...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:46:00 -0400

“All these computers, all these handhelds, all these cell phones, all these laptops, all these servers — what we’re getting out of all these connections is we’re getting one machine. … We’re constructing a single, global machine.” (Kevin Kelly—from his TedTalk—on the Next 5,000 Days of the Internet)

"New legislation in the Netherlands makes it the first country in Europe to establish a legal..."

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:45:06 -0400

“New legislation in the Netherlands makes it the first country in Europe to establish a legal framework supporting net neutrality.”

- https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/netherlands-passes-net-neutrality-legislation

In class we talked about Net Neutrality (also in the book on pp....

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:44:18 -0400

In class we talked about Net Neutrality (also in the book on pp. 274-5).

From SaveTheInternet.com—

When we log onto the Internet, we take lots of things for granted. We assume that we’ll be able to access whatever Web site we want, whenever we want to go there. We assume that we can use any feature we like — watching online video, listening to podcasts, searching, e-mailing and instant messaging — anytime we choose. We assume that we can attach devices like wireless routers, game controllers or extra hard drives to make our online experience better.

What makes all these assumptions possible is “Network Neutrality,” the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet. Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers may not discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies. But all that could change.

The biggest cable and telephone companies would like to charge money for smooth access to Web sites, speed to run applications, and permission to plug in devices. These network giants believe they should be able to charge Web site operators, application providers and device manufacturers for the right to use the network. Those who don’t make a deal and pay up will experience discrimination: Their sites won’t load as quickly, and their applications and devices won’t work as well. Without legal protection, consumers could find that a network operator has blocked the Web site of a competitor, or slowed it down so much that it’s unusable.

The network owners say they want a “tiered” Internet. If you pay to get in the top tier, your site and your service will run fast. If you don’t, you’ll be in the slow lane.

What’s the Problem Here?

Discrimination: The Internet was designed as an open medium. The fundamental idea since the Internet’s inception has been that every Web site, every feature and every service should be treated without discrimination. That’s how bloggers can compete with CNN or USA Today for readers. That’s how up-and-coming musicians can build underground audiences before they get their first top-40 single. That’s why when you use a search engine, you see a list of the sites that are the closest match to your request — not those that paid the most to reach you. Discrimination endangers our basic Internet freedoms.

Double-dipping: Traditionally, network owners have built a business model by charging consumers for Internet access. Now they want to charge you for access to the network, and then charge you again for the things you do while you’re online. They may not charge you directly via pay-per-view Web sites. But they will charge all the service providers you use. These providers will then pass those costs along to you in the form of price hikes or new charges to view content.

Stifling innovation: Net Neutrality ensures that innovators can start small and dream big about being the next EBay or Google without facing insurmountable hurdles. Unless we preserve Net Neutrality, startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay for a top spot on the Web. On a tiered Internet controlled by the phone and cable companies, only their own content and services — or those offered by corporate partners that pony up enough “protection money” — will enjoy life in the fast lane.

The End of the Internet?

Make no mistake: The free-flowing Internet as we know it could very well become history.

What does that mean? It means we could be headed toward a pay-per-view Internet where Web sites have fees. It means we may have to pay a network tax to run voice-over-the-Internet phones, use an advanced search engine, or chat via Instant Messenger. The next generation of inventions will be shut out of the top-tier service level. Meanwhile, the network owners will rake in even greater profits.

In class we talked about User Generated...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:42:35 -0400

In class we talked about User Generated Content—“Crash the Super Bowl,” Doritos’ annual contest which pits consumer-created spots for the brand against each other for the chance to have one air during the big game, is back.

This year, 6,100 entries were submitted, and today, Doritos revealed the five finalist videos that will compete for consumer votes. This is the sixth year that Doritos has run the contest, with winning videos generally providing much of the buzz for the Internet for the weeks following the game.

This year, just like last, a $1 million cash prize is on the line if a consumer-created video scores the number one spot on the USA Today Ad Meter. The stakes are a little big higher this time around—the maker of the ad that actually makes it to the Super Bowl will get a guaranteed job working on a Doritos brand project with The Lonely Island, the Andy Samberg-helmed comedy group.

……

(USA Today) — But the competition for the Super Bowl’s best commercial was won by an ad about a crafty grandma who slung a sling-wearing baby across the yard — to snatch a bag of Doritos.

This marks the first time that consumers — not preselected panelists rating the ads during the game — picked the winner in the USA TODAY/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter. Online voting, which began after each ad aired in Sunday night’s broadcast, ended at 6 p.m. ET Tuesday. Consumers picked from 55 commercials on which advertisers spent up to a record $3.5 million for each 30-second slot.

But for the Super Bowl’s 38 national advertisers, this was also the Social Bowl. Never mind that they spent upwards of $230 million on just the TV advertising time. The purpose of most of the spots was to drive consumers to share the spots with friends, buzz about them and the brand and then try to find out more about the product.

Edward Bernays also helped the United Fruit Company (today’s...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:15:00 -0400

Edward Bernays also helped the United Fruit Company (today’s United Brands) continue its profitable banana business in Guatemala. The term banana republic actually originated inreference to United Fruit’s domination of corrupt governments in Guatemala and otherCentral American countries.

United Fruit basically paid off governments so it could

exploit labor to produce cheap bananas for the lucrative U.S. market. When a mildly

reformist Guatemalan government attempted to rein in the company’s power, United

Fruit called in Edward Bernays, reportedly paying him $100,000 a year, a huge fee in

the early 1950s.

Bernays created a media and political campaign to recast this new

Guatemalan government as a communist dictatorship—an idea that resonated

throughout 1950s North America. He did this by engineering articles in the New York

Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Atlantic Monthly, Time, and Newsweek that

discussed the growing influence of Guatemala’s communists. He also mailed 300,000

copies of a brochure titled Communism in Guatemala: 22 Facts to American Legion

posts and auxiliaries.

Bernays’s propaganda campaign for United Fruit led directly to

the CIA’s overthrow of the elected government of Guatemala. The result meant decades

of tyranny under a United Fruit–friendly Guatemalan government, whose brutality,

according to some, rivaled that of the Nazis. Bernays apparently never regretted his

work for United Fruit.

In class I told the story of how the White House public...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:10:00 -0400

In class I told the story of how the White House public relations team helped stage a photo-op of Pres. Clinton at Normandy Beach. Here is how it has been described:

In 1994, Clinton, at a commemoration of D-Day on Normandy Beach, allegedly treated onlookers to a interesting spectacle: ”As Michael Hutchison noted, ‘The lone President arrang[ed] a pile of suspicious rocks into a cross on Normandy Beach while a perfectly-framed navy battleship just happen[ed] to float in the background.’ The interesting part of all of this [was] that photos of the beach only minutes earlier had shown no rocks nearby. They had been planted there by Clinton staffers for the phony photo op.” Then, in Normandy Cemetery, Clinton “noticed that the small flag on a soldier’s tombstone had apparently blown over and then rolled itself up; frowning that exaggerated frown and shaking his head in disgust, he unfurl[ed] the flag, plant[ed] it and [saluted] it while photographers [shot] video of this ‘private moment’ from behind the cemetery’s fence.”

The Bush White House was well known as being masters of public...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:09:55 -0400

The Bush White House was well known as being masters of public relations. In 2002 Pres. Bush went to Mt Rushmore to propose the new Homeland Security office. News media cameras were moved to a spot on the mountain that would allow them only one shot—the president appearing to be another president at the famous monument.

In class we talked about how publicists play an enormous role in...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:06:36 -0400

In class we talked about how publicists play an enormous role in modern day politics. I spoke about something that is a bit trivial, but can still generate an enormous amount of news coverage—photo-ops of the president on summer vacation. A few years ago there was an enormous outcry when White House publicists allowed President Obama to be photographed shirtless at the beach. Maybe he was trying to convey his youth and strength? Nevertheless, he was never allowed to be photographed this way again.

By the way, color trends in product and fashion design are still...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:02:33 -0400

By the way, color trends in product and fashion design are still decided by industry insiders.

The Color Marketing Group, a nonprofit organization of about fifteen hundred designers from a wide range of industries, determines the dominant colors for each year. Although dominant design colors are chosen almost two years in advance, advertising copy later generally suggests that the public demanded such colors.

• One of Edward Bernays’s clients was Lucky Strike cigarettes....

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 08:59:54 -0400

• One of Edward Bernays’s clients was Lucky Strike cigarettes. Women weren’t buying

the brand because surveys indicated that the forest-green package clashed with their

wardrobes. The company didn’t want to change the color of the box because it had

already invested money in the package’s look and color. Consequently, to convince the

women’s fashion world to embrace the color green, Bernays did the following:

• Organized a “Green Ball” and hired a well-connected socialite to talk Paris couturiers

into supplying green gowns.

• Talked a leading textile manufacturer into organizing a luncheon for fashion editors,

with the discussion centering on “new green fashions” for fall.

• Convinced historians and psychologists to talk about the significance of green as a

color.

• Organized a “Color Fashion Bureau,” which disseminated the new green trend to the

press.

• Wrote to interior decorators, department stores, art-industry groups, and women’s

clubs—on green paper—about the new trend.

• Got department stores to display green dresses in their windows.

• Got an established gallery to feature a “green” painting exhibition.

• Bernays must have been very satisfied when green became the color of the 1934 season.

FROM NPR NEWS—Somewhere between school and her...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 08:57:15 -0400

FROM NPR NEWS—Somewhere between school and her extracurricular activities, eighth-grader Julia Bluhm found time to launch a crusade against airbrushed images in one of the country’s top teen magazines.

And this week, she won:Seventeen magazine pledged not to digitally alter body sizes or face shapes of young women featured in its editorial pages, largely in response to the online petition Julia started this spring.

“We should focus on people’s personalities, not just how they look,” she told NPR member station WBUR last month. “If you’re looking for a girlfriend who looks like the models that you see in magazines, you’re never going to find a girlfriend, because those people are edited with computers.”

After hearing too many fellow teens in her ballet class complain about their weight, the 14-year-old started her campaign in April with a petition on Change.org. It called for the magazine to print one unaltered photo spread each month. The petition — and a demonstration at the corporate offices of Hearst, which ownsSeventeen — led to more than 80,000 signatures from around the world.

The barrage of correspondence from young girls led Ann Shoket,Seventeen’s editor-in-chief, to invite Julia for a meeting and subsequently put out a new policy statement on the magazine’s photo enhancements.

The New York Times reports that while Shoket stresses the magazine “never has, never will” digitally alter the body or face shapes of its models, her editor’s letter in the upcoming August issue will reaffirm its commitment. Skolet writes that the entireSeventeen staff has signed an eight-point Body Peace Treaty,promising not to alter natural shapes and include only images of “real girls and models who are healthy.”

“While we work hard behind the scenes to make sure we’re being authentic, your notes made me realize that it was time for us to be more public about our commitment,” Shoket writes in her letter to readers, published in part in Tuesday’s Times. The magazine also promises greater transparency surrounding its photo shoots, showing what goes into the shoots on its behind-the-scenes Tumblr.

Transparency and the new pledge don’t necessarily mean every page in the magazine will be au naturel, because so many pages are filled with ads. The companies doing the advertising aren’t making the same no-Photoshop promise, so it’s unclear what the pact means for digitally enhanced advertisements. Calls to the magazine to comment on the policy haven’t been returned.

“This is a huge victory, and I’m so unbelievably happy,” Julia writes on her online petition page.

But the fight against enhanced images of young girls isn’t over. Inspired by the win, two other middle-school activists are taking on Teen Vogue in a new online petition, which, as of this posting, already has more than 11,000 signatures.