“The View From the Phlipside” is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY. It can be heard Monday through Friday around 7:30 AM. The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program. Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moment’s notice. WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed. You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com. Copyright 2013-18 by Jay Phillippi. All Rights Reserved. You like what you see and hear? Drop me a line and we can talk.
Programs from the week of August 12, 2018
This Week’s Podcast
My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Fake Oscar
It is rare that a story leaves me near to speechless. Let’s face it, it’s rare for me to ever be short on words. But the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pulled it off. For the first five minutes, after I heard the news, I was incapable of uttering anything other than “What? WHAT?”
These are the folks who bring us the Academy Awards, the little gold trophy dude named “Oscar”. The concept of the awards has been pretty simple for lo these many years. They recognize work that advances the arts and sciences of the motion picture industry over the last year. That is the high flown ideal of the awards.
There’s a nitty-gritty, down to earth, dirty little fact that enters into this, however. This year’s broadcast in March was the lowest rated of all time. The broadcast has become a snooze-fest and has been losing viewers for a while. This is bad because the Academy actually needs the revenues generated by the broadcast to help pay their bills.
So they are making some changes. One of which is so astounding in its cynicism as to render your humble correspondent capable of only mono-syllables.
Starting in 2020, there will be a brand new category. “Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film”. At first blush, this might seem like a good idea. Some of the most popular films each year never get a sniff of an Oscar nomination, let alone a little golden dude. That’s what I find so profoundly cynical about this new category.
The Academy knows that people want to root for the movies they love. But deep down in their heart of hearts, they just can’t bring themselves to nominate them for “Best Picture”. So they created a new category that they hope will get them off the hook.
But here’s what they’re really saying. Your favorite movie? The one you saw over and over? It isn’t very good. Certainly not good enough. But we need to find some way to make you care about watching the awards. So we’ve created something new. An award that is clearly less than a “Best Picture”. But we’re not supposed to notice that.
The announcement has been met with a storm of criticism. One critic referred to it as a “fake Oscar”.
I think the honest answer is that this is an obvious attempt to pander to the audience. The Academy doesn’t really believe these movies are good enough, but they’re hoping we’ll shut up and watch the show anyway.
Good luck with that.
Who Owns the Feed?
There is an interesting story developing here in Virginia that is rather unusual. But what really grabs my attention is that I don’t think it will remain unusual.
BH Media Group, which is a Berkshire Hathaway company, owns a bunch of newspapers, including The Roanoke Times. If the name Berkshire Hathaway sounds familiar, that’s because it is the company multi-billionaire Warren Buffett.
In this case, the Times is suing a former employee. At the center of the case is a Twitter feed. The employee is Andy Bitter (that’s his name), and Andy used to be the reporter covering Virginia Tech football for the newspaper. Andy has been lured away by the deep pockets folks at the new online subscription based sports media site called The Athletic. He will be covering the Hokies (that’s the college’s team name) for his new employers. But when he left, he took his Twitter feed with him. At least that’s his version of the story.
The newspaper has a slightly different view. Their claim to the court is that the feed was given to Bitter by his predecessor at the paper. Thus, the feed, and its twenty thousand followers, is the property of The Roanoke Times. Those thousands of Virginia Tech fans (as a side note, let me say that folks down here take their college football very seriously. Even when their team is called “the Hokies”), and it is that built in and dedicated group of consumers that are actually the center of the dispute.
The account was created in 2010 by reporter Kyle Tucker, and here’s the pivotal legal language, “within the scope of his employment”. By that standard, all content created by him belongs to his employer. All of this was spelled out in an employee handbook which Bitter acknowledges he read in 2015.
I will leave the legal opinions to others better versed than I. What jumped out at me is that we are seeing a preview of the world to come. Since social media has become such a vital part of the business world, ownership of those channels will be an increasingly important note. Who created what and at what point on the timeline will be the object of more court cases is my bet. Employment agreements may require people to list the social media accounts they have at the moment of their employment and place restrictions on what employees may discuss on which channels.
It’s new territory for the law, and a new potential headache for the media.
On Freedom of Speech
Every year or two I like to touch on the subject of what we think the concept of “Freedom of Speech” means and what it actually is. With the events of the last week, it may be time for a refresher.
The news last week was filled with stories of most of the major social media platforms shutting down a guy named Alex Jones and his website called “InfoWars”. I don’t want to focus too much on Mr. Jones other than to say he is a purveyor of the worst kinds of conspiracy theories and uses language that encourages harassment of and violence against people with whom he disagrees. That is what caused all the big social media sites, with the unfortunate exception of Twitter, to shut him down.
At which point, the inevitable cries of “Freedom of Speech” and “Censorship” rose up once again. Here’s where those criticisms come up short.
First, censorship. By definition “the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, film, news, etc, that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable or a threat to security”. With that in mind, it’s a pretty clear cut case. The social media platforms have deemed the topics unacceptable and censored them. Which is a power we all grant to those platforms when we sign up. It’s right there in the Terms of Service, that long boring legal thing that none of us read. For all intents and purposes, every internet site, including InfoWars, does just that. Reserve the right to censor unacceptable discussion. It’s clear that Jones was way over the line, Twitter’s inexplicable exception to one side.
Now for the Freedom of Speech, usually framed in terms of the First Amendment of the Constitution. The important bit there reads, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”. The Constitution is designed to outline and then restrict the powers of government. As powerful as social media companies like Facebook and YouTube are, they are not yet the government. Again, under the terms of service, the platforms have the absolute right to do what they have done.
You may think it’s terrible, you may believe that Mr. Jones is unfairly put upon. You may decide to never use social media again. All of those are fine.
But what happened to Alex Jones and InfoWars was the result of his own actions, ignoring repeated warnings about the rules of the community.
Those other claims are every bit as suspect as most of his content.
Call that the View From the Phlipside
Copyright Jay Phillippi, 2018
Theme music for “The View From the Phlipside” and “TVFTP – Podcast” is “Hustle”
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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