“If you’re a journalist and you don’t have an agenda, you don’t have a pulse,” Brian says much later. Sometimes you have to push hard to get [an audience] to give a shit on the things they should care about,” whether its the Sudan, Rwanda, post-Katrina New Orleans or danger to elephants.

Fascinating to hear him toe this line, which must be anathema to many in these hallowed journalistic halls. Brian notes how when working at MSNBC he was not allowed, for example, to put music in documentary work -- something he does regularly now (and a question about which sparked the discussion).

“Ethics, I do have them,” he says, implicitly arguing that advocacy is actually a more ethical position.

Objectivity, I would argue, is damn near impossible. Where you point the camera, even how you frame the shot, let alone the quotes you choose or the point you make when writing, or what-not, are all choices. With a genuflection to Nanda Kumar of Baruch College (where I just guest lectured in his class) I ask: Is Google an objective search engine? No. Choices are made in how to write its algorithm.

Fairness is possible, and disclosure of ones’ biases helps achieve that aim. But objectivity? Ever seen Rashomon?

In 30 years working in news media, I've never encountered a more beneficial cause than the Media Loan Development Fund. So, I've been volunteering some of my consulrting time to it.

The idea behind the MDLF arose during the late 1980s when Yugoslavian broadcaster Sasa Vucinic watched freedom of the press almost evaporate in his country. He worked for B92, which was the independent radio station in Serbia and a thorn in the side of dictator Slobodan Milošević's regime. Unable to find a legal pretext to silence B92, the regime began threatening the radio station's advertisers. B92 began running out of money and Vucinic was unable to find any bank, inside or outside of Serbia, that was willing to loan B92 money to keep operating.

Vucinic never forgot that experience (he gave an videotaped talk about it at the 2005 TED conference). In 1995, he approached billionaire George Soros, who himself grew up under a Communist regime in Hungary, about the idea of creating a foundation to loan money to independent media in countries that have repressive regimes. Soros agreed to setup the Media Development Loan Fund, which is based in Prague.

Vucinic's first MDLF project was a newspaper that during the late 1990s was being forced by the Slovakian government to travel 400 kilometres to print the paper. The newspaper wanted to purchase a printing press, so MDLF loaned it the money. MDLF has since financed 135 projects for 58 independent media companies in 18 countries. When MDLF began, Soros didn't think the foundation would ever see its loans repaid, but 97 percent of the 58 projects have repaid their loans on time.

In 1998, MDLF established the Center for Advanced Media-Prague (CAMP) in 1998 to introduce new-media concepts and solutions to independent media in the post-communist and developing countries. Earlier this year, Patrice Schneider, MDLF's director of development and formerly the Managing Director of Netscape Europe and Deputy Managing Director of Hachette Filipacchi Media, asked several other international new media experts and I to advise MDLF and CAMP about coming changes in new media and new media technologies..

If you have a chance to help MDLF's worthwhile cause, please do so.

On November 22nd, a date which marked my 10th anniversary of consulting full-time about new-media to traditonal media companies, after a speech at the Spanish Daily Newspaper Association's annual meeting, I took the liberty of staying in Spain for the rest of the year as an extended vacation in that country's Canary Islands. (Forgive me, but this long vacation was long in coming. My first vacation lasting more than a week in over five years).

I'm back at work now, and want to start 2007 with a suggestion to news websites:

If our new media is to succeed traditional printed and broadcast media, then it also must assume traditional media's responsibilities about press freedom around the world. The world is now in its second ten years of mass use of new media, and I think the time has now come for new-media journalists and editors to begin assuming the mantle of world press freedom in general.

In 1993, the United Nations declared every May 3rd to be World Press Freedom Day, a day to pay tribute to the journalists around the world who risk their lives by professional choice, in their effort to promote the free flow of information and assertion of press freedom on behalf of all members of society. World Press Freedom day also is commemorated by organizations such as Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Inter American Press Association, International Federation of Journalists, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, International Press Institute, Media Institute of Southern Africa, and the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).

WAN, for example, supplies newspapers with press freedom case study stories, public service advertisements, and even videos, to publish on May 3rds. According to WAN, as of November at least 109 journalists had been killed during 2006 and many more have been imprisoned. WAN is even holding a conference about 'New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension' in Paris on 15-16 February 2007.

On May 3rd, 2007, I think news websites should each devote a story and at least one home page banner ad (even if in rotation) to World Press Freedom. If newspapers can promote it, why can't our sites? Heaven knows, we should be able to do even better than traditional media. And our commitment is only one story and one banner ad on one day a year. Wouldn't it be great to see nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com, guardian.co.uk, dw-world.de, oglobo.com.br, and smaller sites reminding what journalists risk on users' behalf.

As a publishing consultant and former journalist, I'm asking my clients to promote World Press Freedom Day online.

Sincerely yours,

Vin Crosbie

Last month a blue ribbon panel headed by former Netscape CEO James Barksdale and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt took a stab at addressing the future of public service media in a report, “Digital Future Initiative: Challenges and Opportunities for Public Service Media in the Digital Age.” In the Foreword they write: “Our nation’s media marketplace is becoming increasingly fragmented and on-demand…. If today’s public broadcasters can successfully adapt to this new environment, the potential for enhanced public service through digital media is vast…”

From the start public broadcasting in the U.S. was destined to be a political football. On the one hand, the legislation required a "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature." But it also prohibited the federal government from interfering or controlling what is broadcast. This set up an obvious tension where the government that created the CPB would not be able to do anything about a perceived failure to meet its obligation for objectivity and balance without interfering in some way.

In the U.S., where there has always been more choice for viewers than most other places, the Public Broadcast Service network (PBS) has always had very low ratings. And those audiences have been heavily skewed to educated, higher income demographics— the very groups that have access to buying DVDs, premium cable/satellite programming tiers such as the Sundance Channel, as well as books, magazines, etc. Public media’s core constituency, as described by the public broadcasters’ own promotions are “affluent, influential, educated, discerning, and diverse. They are the decision makers and opinion leaders…”  Central Michigan Public Television claims that its audience penetration “runs deeper into upscale households than any other medium. According to surveys conducted by Roper Reports, public television viewers have high incomes and are likely to have invested in stocks, bonds and mutual funds.”

Meanwhile, public broadcast individual contributors have been falling for years. About 4% of households contribute to a PBS entity. The bread and butter of PBS is now available on channels like Discovery, History, Biography. Their aggregate audience is greater than PBS. C-Span, available in nearly 90% of households, provides political coverage that PBS could never dream about.

Viewers everywhere vote with their eyeballs. It’s not widely recognized that in early 1980s videocassette recorder adoption was faster in Europe than U.S. Why? The U.S. had market driven programming. When VCRs became available, Europeans were faster to escape the benevolent programming constraints of public authorities by becoming their own programmers using video rentals.

The “Digital Future” report argues that public broadcasters try to adapt “to this new environment,” in which case they have a future (apparently by tackling the “nation’s literacy and learning crisis.”). That in itself should send a message: if they need to work so hard at finding a media role, then maybe it is time to sunset itself. Indeed, the Digital Future panel could have started out with this point of view: if a public service media organization did not exist today, what are the compelling arguments that would rally the public to support the creation of such a service? As we think about the media landscape for the future, we do need to consider whether a publicly funded entity, with all its baggage, is truly needed.