Bloggers, gladiator TV and the G20 Twitterer (with video)

A farmer sprayed milk on policemen during a protest against falling milk prices outside the E.U.’s headquarters in Brussels, where agricultural ministers discussed its policies at an emergency meeting.
"FTC to bloggers: Fess up or pay up" (cnet news):

Independent bloggers who fail to disclose paid reviews or freebies can face up to $11,000 in fines from the Federal Trade Commission, according to revisions to the agency's "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising" published Monday.

This marks the first time that the Guides document has been updated since 1980.

From an FTC-issued release:

"The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that 'material connections' (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers--connections that consumers would not expect--must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other 'word-of-mouth' marketers. The revised Guides specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service."

The FTC also has its eye on celebrities. "Celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media," the release explaining the revisions explained.

That means, theoretically, that if a celebrity gushes about a new car on his or her Twitter account and it turns out that the car was given away for free, the celebrity could be fined by the FTC.

Word of the FTC's crackdown on blogger endorsements first broke in June and set off a wave of chatter in communities of bloggers who are well used to receiving and keeping free products from marketers and PR agencies--most notably the thriving "mommy blogger" sector.

It's going to be hard to police--there are a lot of bloggers out there, not to mention a lot of different kinds of bloggers, and a lot of marketers.

And as some media critics have pointed out, undisclosed endorsements of freebies have plagued some sectors of the magazine industry for decades now.

"The rise of gladiator TV (Peter Fenn-Politico):

It’s time to cool it. Long past time.

A vocal abortion doctor is murdered at his church in Kansas after being vilified on cable television. A lonely man, ever vigilant with his anti-abortion sign, is gunned down in Michigan. Guns are brought to town meetings, the president is called a Nazi, pictured as Hitler, hanged in effigy. A liberal bites off the finger of a conservative after he has been punched in the face. The president is called a liar by an obscure congressman who suddenly becomes a hero — or a villain, depending on where you sit. In any case, he raises $2 million in a matter of weeks from across the country from those who support his outburst.

And recently Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said that President Barack Obama “has no place in any situation of government. ... He is an enemy of humanity.” Tell me, how does this add to the public discourse? How does this further civil debate on any issue?

For more than a dozen years I have done cable shows, commenting on politics, debating, sometimes hosting. From “Hannity & Colmes” to “Crossfire,” from Glenn Beck to Keith Olbermann, from “Hardball” to “The Situation Room,” I have been on nearly all of them, dating to the early days.

But, folks, times have changed, and we have a problem. The old saying that you can disagree without being disagreeable seems almost laughable now. Each week, I find that many of the hosts — on the left and on the right — have determined that the only way to raise their ratings and increase their exposure is to be more outrageous and angry and vitriolic. And guests follow suit, and blogs get more contentious, and politicians get coverage when they go over the top.

Last year, I wrote Alan Colmes and Sean Hannity and told them I would no longer do their show. I had long since stopped doing Bill O’Reilly’s. It had become the theater of the absurd. The show I was on that put me over the top featured the host bashing Michelle Obama for being anti-American, unpatriotic. Ridiculous.

This is not just uncivil. It is not just downright nasty, as my grandmother used to say. (“Nice people don’t do that!”) It is not just behavior that makes you wince.

I am afraid that I agree with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Sept. 30 New York Times column by Tom Friedman: These actions on the part of talk show hosts and politicians can, and have, led to real violence. When we think back on the history of our country, we don’t have to go back that far to bring back memories of slain leaders, of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone in the ’70s, of radicals who bombed in the ’60s, of the actions of the Ku Klux Klan. Friedman compares the vitriol here to what he saw in Israel prior to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

I just returned from Northern Ireland, where an era of peace has been put in place, much different from the ’80s, when I worked there. While it seems to be going in the right direction, we seem to be headed toward heightened anger and polarization. In both countries, the leaders deserve the credit and the blame. In Northern Ireland, the peace process was brought about by those on both sides toning down their rhetoric and tamping down the violence. In the U.S., we have our talk show hosts — especially the Becks, the O’Reillys, the Hannitys and the Rush Limbaughs — not just disagreeing on policy but calling the president a “racist” and hoping he will “fail.” In all candor, I have grown tired of those on the left as well and firmly believe it is time for my friend Keith Olbermann to retire his “worst person in the world” segment and put guests from both sides on his show.

Don’t get me wrong; I love healthy debate. I feed on the differences over policy and philosophy, and I will debate the color of our carpet. But we need to strive every day to be civil to one another, to understand different points of view, to not question motives, to battle back on issues but not raise the decibel level from disagreement to violent opposition.

I do believe we can disagree without being disagreeable; I do believe that gladiator TV is headed toward inciting violence. The pundits, the politicians and particularly those who govern the 24/7 cable news channels have a responsibility to tone it down, to pull back, to become more civil.

America deserves it. Let’s not have an act of unspeakable violence before we ratchet down our rhetoric.

ACLU: "Arrest of G20 Twitterer part of ‘war on demonstrators’" with video fron CNN (03:51). (Raw Story):

When the FBI staged a terror raid on the New York home of 41-year-old Elliot Madison, they were not looking for weapons of war, deadly chemicals or the keys to unlocking a nefarious terror plot. Instead, they came looking for books, files, data, film and something called the "instruments of crime."

According to officials, the search was instigated after Madison was found in a Pennsylvania hotel room on Sept. 24, listening to police actions during Pittsburgh's G20 summit, then Tweeting to protesters seeking to avoid authorities.

Vic Walczak, legal director for the Pennsylvania ACLU, sees the FBI's action as pure "intimidation," and part of a "much bigger war on demonstrators" in Pittsburgh.

He made the remarks during a Monday interview on CNN's Newsroom.

"What you have here is folks who are charged with hindering apprehension of people who were engaging in criminal activities," he said. "The criminals identified in the warrant are protesters against the G20. Their crime? They were demonstrating in the street without a permit."

Madison, who has widely been described as an "anarchist" by media parroting FBI claims, is a social worker in New York who holds two masters degrees from the University of Wisconsin.

Walczak continued: "The police said, 'Get out of here,' and apparently they did. Somebody was trying to help them not go where the police are. Instead of saying 'thank you, you're helping these folks disperse,' they now get charged with what is really a felony."

In other words: "Be careful what you twit for, because your 140 characters could land you in the slammer," quipped Andrew Belonsky at Vallywag.

"Though the FBI says so, it's not entirely clear from the complaint that Madison's tweets were actually illegal," noted Ars Technica. "Madison's lawyer told the New York Times on Saturday that he and a friend were merely 'part of a communications network among people protesting the G-20.' As implied through the Times piece, Madison's tweets merely directed protesters as to where the police were at any given time and to stay alert. 'There’s absolutely nothing that he’s done that should subject him to any criminal liability.'"

Eileen Clancy with I-Witness Video added: "There are myriad examples of governments in other countries cracking down on activists who share information on the Internet. After Moldova's short-lived 'Twitter revolution,' journalist Natalia Morar was charged with organizing an anti-Communist flashmob and spent three weeks under house arrest. In Guatemala a man was charged with advising in a Tweet that people should take their money out of a corrupt government bank. According to Hadi Ghaemi, who runs the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, many people have been arrested for Internet activity in Iran."

"This is the first time we've heard of charges like this against people who are using Twitter [...]" said Walczak. "If this happened in Iran or China, where we know Twitter has been widespread because people in this country have been relying on it to find out what's going on. If it was used there, we'd be crying foul, we'd be calling it a human rights violation. And when the same thing happens in this country, all of the sudden it's a crime. There's a real problem here."

Copies of the search warrant and Madison's lawyer's motion for return of seized property were posted to the Internet by the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, available here.

This video is from CNN's Newsroom, broadcast Oct. 5, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com