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A look at what's out there on the rest of the web
I apologize for the lack of humor in this month's web.scan, but there's something important I want to discuss. It concerns advertising and censorship -- and this web site.
Update, April 13th: It seems my choice of subject matter was even more timely than I thought. The LA Times has uncovered a plan by Microsoft to make it appear as though they have public support in their fight to avoid anti-trust regulation. The Microsoft plan involves planting fake stories and letters to the editor in magazines and newspapers, and would include paying freelance contributors to put a pro-Microsoft spin on the articles they write for their regular publications. Microsoft have also started a major advertising campaign to try and convince everyone that they're not monopolistic.
Everybody hates Internet spam. Yet many of the senders of spam try to claim that their unsolicited junk is protected free speech - as if the first amendment gives you the automatic right to publish your words at other people's expense. But the real irony is that as I see it, advertising is one of the biggest dangers to freedom of speech. The fact that big corporations can now effectively censor self-expression was demonstrated by several recent news stories.
A school in Georgia, USA was recently bribed into having a Coca-Cola day, during which students would be given corporate PR material and required to advertise and promote Coca-Cola products in photo sessions. Two brave students decided to rebel. They turned up at school in Pepsi T-shirts -- and were promptly suspended.
Freedom of speech in educational establishments? Not for long. Underfunded by government, universities and schools are increasingly turning to corporate handouts in desperation. In Ontario, Canada, schools are now selling advertising space on their computer systems. Companies like Pepsi and Burger King pay a per-screen charge to have ScreenAd ads appear as screensavers. Many schools are also considering deals which would place corporate logos on pens, paper and school buses.
The recent James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies was a masterpiece of corporate advertising, raking in $34 million in advertising fees. BMW and Ericsson agreed to join in in sponsoring the movie -- but demanded that Bond should drive a BMW and use an Ericsson telephone. The writers and producers of the movie were only too keen to oblige. What next -- Bond dining exclusively at McDonalds?
Of course, Bond movies are just entertainment -- but don't think that advertisers flinch from interfering with serious discussion. Big media companies pretend to be fearless defenders of freedom of speech, but the truth is they're only interested in speech which doesn't hurt their financial interests. When the Media Foundation attempted to buy advertising space for a TV commercial, they were told by CNN and Canada's CBC that they would not be sold airtime at any price. Why? Because their ad was highly critical of the fashion industry and the way it uses unnaturally thin female models, giving young women an unhealthy or impossible image to aspire to. Count the TV ads for fashion products next time you watch a show, and you'll soon realise why cosmetics and fashion companies get to decide which viewpoints you are allowed to see expressed during ad breaks.
It's the same sad story with printed media. Esquire magazine is routinely monitored by its corporate advertisers. In particular, in April 1997 a piece of fiction was yanked from the magazine after the Chrysler corporation told the editor that they found it unacceptable. Chrysler have now backed down slightly, and said that they no longer require magazines to notify them of upcoming 'controversial' articles. However, they make it clear that they still intend to stop advertising in publications which offend them. The result? Well, don't expect to see Esquire print any articles about how Chrysler is moving jobs to Mexico.
Publishing house HarperCollins recently decided not to publish the memoirs of Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong. HarperCollins is owned by Rupert Murdoch, of course; and Murdoch has a highly profitable satellite TV business in the Far East. He attempted to reassure people that his business interests were entirely irrelevant, and that the book was simply cancelled because it was boring -- an excuse which he was later forced to admit was false. So why was the book cancelled? Because it was critical of the Chinese regime? Perish the thought. To show how committed they are to freedom of the press, HarperCollins immediately cancelled a second book celebrating the 40th anniversary of Amnesty International.
The idea that corporations wish to be politically neutral doesn't stand up to even casual inspection. In 1996 AT&T spent $2.6 million on political campaigning -- on behalf of the Chinese government. They were the second biggest spender, after Philip Morris tobacco. AT&T and the other corporations behind the US-China Business Council pushed for China to keep its 'most favored nation' status in the USA, and vigorously opposed any attempt to recognize Tibet as an independent nation, or to make basic human rights in China a condition of free trade with the USA. Never mind that the Chinese regime is a brutal dictatorship which has attempted to interfere in US elections; never mind that Amnesty International has documented many cases of human rights abuse by the Chinese military and police -- including arbitrary imprisonment, routine use of torture, and prisoners being raped by guards. No, what's important is that AT&T might make huge profits in China.
Many Christians are unhappy about China's Most Favored Nation status and the promotional activities of the US-China Business Council -- because the Chinese government doesn't believe in freedom of religion. Something to think about next time you pay your telephone bill. (Or do what I did, and change long distance carrier -- but remember to tell AT&T why you've done it. I must admit, it feels odd to be on the same side as the Christians for once.)
So, if TV and the press are told what they can say by their sponsors, what about the Internet? Well, so far it seems the corporate censorship hasn't been too outrageous. Partly this is because the big corporations don't currently see the Internet as particularly important compared to TV and radio; and partly it's because the Internet has proved difficult to control. When everyone is a publisher, it's hard to keep things quiet. The situation might change, though...
A couple of years ago, the Open Text corporation came up with a new money-making scheme. They modified their search engine so that people could simply buy their way to the top of the search results. They seemed surprised when people objected. After all, they said, doesn't the Yellow Pages do the same thing with display ads?
Well, no, not really. The Yellow Pages doesn't pretend to be a listing of everyone's telephone number -- it's just a listing of companies and stores who've paid to be in it. If someone wanted to set up a search engine which just listed paid advertisers, I think that would be a great idea. I'd definitely use it myself. After all, I often pick up brochures or buy magazines just to read the ads. The problem is that when you start mixing advertising with free speech, the free speech starts to get squeezed out.
Suppose you went to a search engine and looked for atheism and agnosticism. If money determined what you got, you wouldn't find the Internet Infidels. You'd get page after page of ads from the Church of Scientology, the Mormons, the 700 Club, and a hundred other religious organizations with deep pockets. Sure, maybe if you paged through all of those, you might find the Internet Infidels somewhere near the bottom -- but if information can be buried like that, what does that imply for freedom of speech and balanced debate?
The answer is that it makes the Internet just like TV, where the people with the money decide what gets discussed, and everything else is buried where nobody will ever notice it. You could go to another search engine -- but if selling the best positions in the results turns out to be a good way to make money, pretty soon all the search engines will be doing it, just like all the TV stations carry ads. (Even the BBC advertises its own spin-off merchandise, and PBS has sponsor credits between the programs.) At that point, if you want anyone to notice and read your web site you'll need a pretty serious advertising budget. And suddenly, the web will be like printed media or TV.
That's not my idea of how the net ought to be. So I started a boycott campaign, and encouraged people to block Open Text's web crawling robot from their web sites. If people browsing the web knew that Open Text's search engine would be guaranteed to miss many of the best sites, hopefully they'd use a different search engine.
Eventually Open Text gave in, and abandoned their plans to sell search result placement. The idea didn't die, however -- take a look at goto.com. They're now auctioning positions in their search results, and claim to have a number of big corporations lined up to buy. Similar scheme, different company. Does someone else want to arrange the boycott this time?
You might be wondering what all this implies about the Internet Infidels; after all, we have advertising on our web pages. Well, so far I'm happy to report that nobody has attempted to tell me what to say, or how to say it. That's the main reason why I write for the net, and not for 'real' publications. But censorship doesn't start with a phone call telling you what to write; it starts gently, insidiously, with a mere suggestion. Like this:
"Would you like your web site to be promoted on our encylopedia CD-ROM? You might get hundreds of thousands of extra readers. We aren't even asking for money. Oh, by the way, some of those jokes in your humor section seem a little bit negative -- is that really the message we want to be giving our readers?
It sounds so reasonable. "If you tone down your more controversial material, maybe the corporate gods will smile on you." But once you start to appease people to try and get more readers, where does it end?
What do you think? Am I a nut for even caring about this? Is 'toning down' our content worth it, if it means we'll get a link to our site from a top-selling CD-ROM encylopedia? What should a publication's policies on advertising be? The Internet Infidels feedback page awaits you. Let's have some dialog here -- after all, this web site is here for you, the readers.
mathew
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Last updated: Wednesday, 30-Nov-2005 17:06:10 CST
