ACLU v. Clapper took a long time to get to the right answer. And that’s OK.

It’s not really a surprise that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in NY would find that the NSA cannot legitimately use the shield of the Patriot Act to cover its continuous and pervasive data collection. Neither should it be a surprise that it took so long to get here. The courts, after all, are not the speedy actors of our system, in fact, the alacrity of the judiciary is really in third place, close behind the legislature and far behind the executive.

That being said, it seems that the pendulum, pushed wildly out of place by the events of September 11, 2001 and continually propelled by our fear of unknown technology, is starting its slow swing back toward something like a normal state where privacy and dissent are able to push against authoritative overreach. Part of this is because public opinion is slow, legislation is slow, and, as we said above, the courts. who are supposed to weigh our values against our actions, are slow.

In its own attempt to weigh those values, the Second Circuit reaches back to the Church Committee as its intellectual forebearer – because this is the last time that we had to bring secretive intelligence agencies back under control.  Now, same as then, we are not willing to trade off values. We are not willing to trade values like privacy or liberty for vague promises of security (put aside the fact that we haven’t seen evidence that the NSA’s activities enhance our security). To do otherwise would be to create a Ship of Theseus problem with our republic – keep replacing values and when does it become something wholly different from the country we though we knew and that we’ve struggled for generations to perfect?

After almost 15 years, we’ve come to the point where we can definitively say that the trade the NSA is offering is a bad trade and we reject it. And this is all to the good.

[this is one of a series of posts that I did while a student in Nicco Mele‘s class at Harvard in 2013]

Techno-Utopians exist because new technology almost always brings the promise of a new, hopefully better world. This is especially true of the disruptive technologies of the Internet, which seem to hold the opportunity to disrupt rapidly calcifying class structures throughout the world.

But why haven’t Internet technologies had more of a leveling effect? Are they really so different from everything that’s come before when it has become clear that the elites have co-opted largest share of technological gains to support their own position. Sure, there has been a shuffling of the elites with nerds-from-privileged-backgrounds rising and the standard bankers, dictators, and CEOs forced to make room. If all the Internet has done is allow the children of millionaires to become billionaires, there’s a lot more it can do to change society.

Part of the problem, the thing that turns our utopia into a potential distopia, is that traditional elites have been, by far, better positioned to take advantage of the new technologies than the people at the bottom of the social ladder – and these vested interests have used those technologies, not to level the playing field, but to shore up their own positions. The Internet held the promise of allowing people, regardless of class, to take control of their own destinies by forming new and strong networks to help them advance their own interests. It is fundamentally important to ask why that hasn’t happened yet (if it hasn’t), whether it can, and if so, how.

[this is one of a series of posts that I did while a student in Nicco Mele‘s class at Harvard in 2013]

What’d I read?

This week’s readings dealt with the disruptive impact of Internet technology on mainstream journalism, mostly newspapers.

First up, Nicco Mele’s The End of Big describes how the era of big newspaper conglomerates is essentially over. The problem, this chapter points out, is that professional, watchdog-style journalism is vitally important to accountability within our self-governing republic. Luckily, Mele describes several potential models for the future of professional journalism. [Full Disclosure: the author of this book is going to grade this blog post]

“Readings from News Execs” by Dave Winer makes the case that the people running large newspapers don’t understand how the internet will affect their business models. His metaphor of the cardboard box is very useful: if the box is the editorial structure and its filled with news, the execs think they can simply take that box and move it from the print space to the internet space, but that’s not going to work for many of the reasons the other articles in this section flesh out.

Patricia Gray’s article “Owner Mark Cuban Trades Stocks on Sharesleuth’s Findings Before They’re Published” in Wired fleshes out one alternative journalism model in which very wealthy special interests finances the kind of journalism that interests him. This is exactly the type of journalism we need to be done, but it raises serious questions about the motives of the parties involved.

Our friend Clay Shirky’s blog post on “Newspapers and the Unthinkable” is, like the Winer piece, an interesting description of newspapers’ “forward thinking” as really just attempts to preserve current business model. His framing shift is an important one – we shouldn’t worry about saving newspapers, rather about saving journalism and saving society. The business model can go, we need that content, though.

Peter Daou’s article introduces the notion of the Triangle, an interesting take on the relationship between internet journalists and “the old guard” of MSM and establishment figures. Daou convincingly argues that, in order to spread one’s message, political figures need to establish a triangular alliance, a unifying blogs, traditional media, and the political establishment.

Finally, Dean Starkman’s “Confidence Game” attempts to counter the Shirky-style future-of-news (FON) consensus by spelling out the important societal role of professional journalism. The article functions as an apologia for institutions like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Was it any good?

Mele’s point that professional journalism is complicit in it’s own downfall is an especially powerful one. The average mainstream newspaper in the run up to the 2003 Iraq War and the 2008 Financial Crisis certainly “abdicat[ed] its traditional duties as objective, impartial newsgathering organization[].” Just as striking is the recurring theme of the vital importance of professional journalism in ensure that the people can hold their government accountable. It’s therefore a great relief that the chapter ends on a hopeful note, describing potential methods of protecting professional journalism while the newspaper business as we know it slowly collapses.

I wish Clay Shirky had answered the burning question of why someone would want to pirate Dave Barry’s columns. That being said, he did a  better job than Winer did of describing why newspaper owners’ opinions are so retrograde. His (and Mele’s) contention that print journalists’ work is used by everyone and is important is a valid one, while the related notion that “‘[y]ou’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!’ has never been much of a business model” puts the entire downfall of the newspaper industry, which supports such an important societal function, into context.

The Triangle article is great, but it fails to predict (and really, it should’ve) that the battle for Bush’s legacy does not end with him leaving office. In a world where there are so many voices so willing to keep harping on a theme, this is impossible. Things that used to be considered givens are now up for grabs again. So legacy is really a constant battle of revision in which the triangular alliance one has established to make policy or political headway has to be constantly stoked to defend the history you’ve made, apparently forever.

I actually agree with Starkman’s point (if you can find it) that journalists should be empowered and that good journalism involves knowing the issue you’re covering (borrowed from Rosen). That being said, his style is so snarky and off-putting, his straw men so obvious, and his conspiracy theory (that Jarvis and Shirky are out to get him and professional journalists) so weird that I wouldn’t blame anyone for stopping after section two.

So?

In another class, we’re discussing the importance of framing as a way of getting issues in front of the global community. In a nutshell, framing is a concept taken from cognitive psychology: we see the world through “frames” which are points of view loaded with moral and ethical constructs reaching deep into our basic ideas about how the world is meant to work. I think these articles set up an interesting framing question.

If we frame professional journalism as a business model, then, as good capitalists, we can rejoice in its downfall as transactions costs plunge and amateur journalists eat the professionals’ lunch. This, I think, is Starkman’s problem. He’s defending for-profit institutions by claiming public good. I think that its quite a stretch to say that the only way to ensure the public good of journalism is by continuing a clearly inefficient, monopolistic business model.

If, on the other hand, we look through the Shirky/Mele frame – which I think is generally right – then professional journalism should be nurtured as a public good. The newspaper industry as we know it is welcome to fail, but journalism itself must be preserved. The problem then becomes ensuring that the new versions of journalism are trustworthy. Like so many things relating to the Internet, the answer is to encourage diversity and transparency. Corporate or wealthy interests may well bankroll some of the new journalists, but as long as the reader is sufficiently apprised of the conflicts he or she can consider the validity of his or her source. Diversity is then important to ensure that everyone has a plethora unbiased (or at least differently biased) news sources to read.