Modeling Policy for New Public Service Media Networks
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Harvard Journal of Law & Technology Volume 24, Number 1 Fall 2010 MODELING POLICY FOR NEW PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA NETWORKS Ellen P. Goodman* & Anne H. Chen** TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION..............................................................................112 II. THE LAYERED FRAMEWORK FOR NETWORKED COMMUNICATIONS........................................................................117 A. Advantages of the Layered Model for Communications Policy .....................................................................................118 B. Advantages of the Layered Model for Public Service Media Policy..........................................................................124 III. A FOUR-LAYER MODEL FOR DIGITAL PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA NETWORKS........................................................................127 A. Infrastructure Layer .................................................................130 B. Creation Layer .........................................................................136 1. The “What” of Public Service Media Content ......................138 2. The “How” of Public Service Media Content .......................146 3. The “Who” of Public Service Media.....................................147 C. Curation Layer.........................................................................152 D. Connection Layer.....................................................................158 IV. POLICY REFORM FOR PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA ..........................163 A. Amend the Public Broadcasting Act To Become the Public Service Media Act.......................................................163 B. Mandate Interconnection Throughout the Network .................167 V. CONCLUSION................................................................................169 * Professor, Rutgers University School of Law-Camden; Distinguished Visiting Scholar, FCC Future of Media Project; Fellow, Center for Social Media, American University. The ideas expressed in this Article are her own and do not reflect any official government position. ** Research Fellow, University of Pennsylvania Law School. For their helpful comments, suggestions, and insights, the authors thank Joaquin Alvarado, Orlando Bagwell, Robert Bole, Jessica Clark, Sally Fifer, Vivian Schiller, Jake Shapiro, and participants at the Yale Law School Knight Law and Media Program Conference on Journalism and the New Media Ecology, the Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Information Policy Luncheon Series, the University of Colorado Silicon Flatirons Digital Broadband Migration Conference, and the New School Conference on Internet as Playground and Factory. The authors are also grateful to the Ford Foundation for its funding support for research for this Article. 112 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology [Vol. 24 I. INTRODUCTION WE RECOGNIZE THE DANGERS OF LAPSING INTO FUZZY-MINDED ECSTASY OVER THE UNLIMITED SOCIAL POTENTIAL OF THE NEW ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGY. [HOWEVER, T]HE OPPORTUNITY IS AT HAND TO BRING US TOGETHER THROUGH THE TEACHING AND INSPIRATION POSSIBLE IN A NONCOMMERCIAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS ALTERNATIVE. FROM THE CAREFUL CULTIVATION OF A PUBLIC DISCOURSE IN ITS MOST EXPANSIVE AND PROFOUND SENSE.1 There is a growing consensus that significant structural change and policy shifts will be necessary to transform the 20th century American public broadcasting system into a 21st century system of public service media.2 Indeed, the 2010 National Broadband Plan, 1. CARNEGIE COMMISSION ON THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING, A PUBLIC TRUST 298–99 (1979) [hereinafter CARNEGIE II]. 2. See AM. UNIV. SCH. OF COMMC’N CTR. FOR SOC. MEDIA, PUBLIC MEDIA 2.0: DYNAMIC, ENGAGED PUBLICS (2009) [hereinafter PUBLIC MEDIA 2.0], available at http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/sites/default/files/ whitepaper.pdf; BARBARA COCHRAN, PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA: MORE LOCAL, MORE INCLUSIVE, MORE INTERACTIVE: A WHITE PAPER ON THE PUBLIC MEDIA RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE KNIGHT COMMISSION ON THE INFORMATION NEEDS OF COMMUNITIES IN A DEMOCRACY (2010); CORP. FOR PUB. BROAD., PUBLIC RADIO IN THE NEW NETWORK AGE (2010) [hereinafter PUBLIC RADIO IN THE NEW NETWORK AGE], available at http://www.srg.org/GTA/Public_Radio_in_the_New_Network_Age.pdf; LEONARD DOWNIE, JR. & MICHAEL SCHUDSON, THE RECONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM (2009), available at http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/system/ documents/1/original/Reconstruction_of_Journalism.pdf; KNIGHT COMMISSION ON THE INFORMATION NEEDS OF COMMUNITIES IN A DEMOCRACY, INFORMING COMMUNITIES 23– 32 (2009) [hereinafter KNIGHT COMMISSION], available at https://secure. nmmstream.net/anon.newmediamill/aspen/kcfinalenglishbookweb.pdf; Steve Coll, Reboot: A Media Policy for the Digital Age, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REV., Nov./Dec. 2010, 28; Ellen P. Goodman, Public Media 2.0, in . AND COMMUNICATIONS FOR ALL: A POLICY AGENDA FOR A NEW ADMINISTRATION 272–74 (Amit M. Schejter ed., 2009); Josh Silver et al., Public Media’s Moment, in CHANGING MEDIA 276–77 (2009), available at http://www.freepress.net/files/changing_media.pdf; see also Reply Comments of Free Press, A National Broadband Plan for Our Future, GN Docket No. 09-51, at 54–65 (Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n July 21, 2009), available at http://www.policyarchive.org/ handle/10207/bitstreams/20225.pdf; JESSICA CLARK & SUE SCHARDT, SPREADING THE ZING: REIMAGINING PUBLIC MEDIA THROUGH THE MAKERS QUEST 2.0 (2010), available at http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/sites/default/files/documents/pages/AIRPerspective20 10.pdf. This issue has also been of growing interest internationally. See, e.g., SHELDON HIMELFARB ET AL., MEDIA AS GLOBAL DIPLOMAT 6–7 (2009), available at http://www.usip.org/files/resources/Special%20Report%20226_Media%20as%20Global%2 0Diplomat.pdf (discussing the value of public broadcasting as a “countervailing power” between the public and private system for new, digital media efforts in public diplomacy); IRIS, PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA: MONEY FOR CONTENT (Susanne Nikoltchev ed., 2010); ORG. FOR ECON. CO-OPERATION & DEV., WORKING PARTY ON THE INFORMATION ECONOMY: THE EVOLUTION OF NEWS AND THE INTERNET 66–69 (2010) [hereinafter, OECD], available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/30/24/45559596.pdf (noting the “important role” public broadcasters play in many OECD countries and the state aid that facilitates it, and citing American efforts to consider increasing resources for public service broadcasting); Graham Murdock, Building the Digital Commons: Public Broadcasting in the Age of the Internet, University of Montreal 2004 Spry Memorial Lecture (Nov. 22, 2004), available at No. 1] New Public Service Media Networks 113 which sets forth national communications priorities for the next decade, calls for a new public service media network, drawing directly on proposals we made to the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”).3 Relentless and intensifying pressure on public broadcast funding makes it even more important to identify minimally necessary functional components of a public service media network going forward.4 The vision of a more inclusive, innovative, and community- oriented network of public service media makers, linked to ubiquitous broadband, has emerged as a potential solution to many problems, including insufficient investments in investigative journalism, a paucity of compelling educational materials, and widening gaps between the information rich and poor. The FCC’s broadband workshops,5 Federal Trade Commission workshops on journalism,6 https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/type/www/116/Theory_OtherTexts/Theory/Murdock_Building DigitalCommons.pdf (“Public Service Broadcasting is a project whose time has finally come both philosophically and practically. [Reinvention of the public domain] requires us to jettison our familiar analogue maps and draw up a new digital chart.”). 3. FED. COMMC’NS COMM’N, CONNECTING AMERICA: THE NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN 303 (2010) [hereinafter NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN] (citing Reply Comments of Ellen P. Goodman & Anne Chen, A National Broadband Plan for Our Future, GN Docket No. 09-51 (Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n Nov. 9, 2009), available at http:// www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Goodman_publicmediacomments.pdf; Goodman, supra note 2), available at http://download.broadband.gov/plan/national- broadband-plan.pdf (“[P]ublic media must continue expanding beyond its original broadcast-based mission to form the core of a broader new public media network that better serves the new multi-platform information needs of America.”). 4. Obama Deficit Commissioners Advise Ending all CPB, PTFP Support by 2015, CURRENT (Nov. 10, 2010, 4:33 PM), http://currentpublicmedia.blogspot.com/2010/ 11/presidents-commission-advises-ending.html. 5. See, e.g., FED. COMMC’NS COMM’N, NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN WORKSHOP: BUILDING THE FACT BASE: THE STATE OF BROADBAND ADOPTION AND UTILIZATION (2009) [hereinafter BUILDING THE FACT BASE], available at http://www. broadband.gov/docs/ws_09_adoption_utilization.pdf (presenting data on the current state of broadband adoption and utilization); FED. COMMC’NS COMM’N, NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN WORKSHOP: DEPLOYMENT — UNSERVED AND UNDERSERVED (2009), available at http://www.broadband.gov/docs/ws_04_deploy_un_transcript.pdf (discussing solutions for reaching and engaging isolated and rural communities with better broadband access); FED. COMMC’NS COMM’N, NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN WORKSHOP: DEPLOYMENT — WIRED (2009), available at http://www.broadband.gov/docs/ws_02_deploy_wired_transcript. pdf (addressing the need to deploy and operate more internet backbone services); FED. COMMC’NS