CBS vs. Howard Stern

Katrhyn updated us last week on the CBS lawsuit against Howard Stern, a story that we've been following during the semester. She told us that a settlement had been reached, but she didn't have any figures.

Well, today's Washington Post has some figures. One of them is $2,000,000. And it looks like Howard is coming out of this smelling like a rose (well, maybe).

In the settlement, Sirius agreed to pay CBS $2 million. In exchange, Stern gets control of the master tapes of the past 20 years of his shows on CBS, meaning the company cannot broadcast archived Stern shows without paying him.

So Stern's employer, Sirius, pays the money, and Stern gets control of his old shows. (Those might be converted into cash in some way). But we're not getting the full story. For one thing, this story is based on a leak.

However, CBS will receive more than $2 million, said a source with knowledge of the settlement who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements.

Somebody on CBS's side, I'd guess. Apparently there may be more to the deal than we're being told:

Because Sirius is a public company, the $2 million payment will be reported on required Securities and Exchange Commission documents. But Stern is not a public company; therefore, he could make an additional payment to CBS without having to report it, thereby keeping it secret and maintaining his on-air bragging rights over the network.

So let's look at this from the leak angle. It's an out-of-court settlement, so the parties are not obligated to tell us anything. (But of course we want to know.)

One side (CBS Radio) releases a statement, which both sides have probably okayed. It tells us what we could have found out from public records (financial statements). In that release Howard comes looking like the big winner, ego intact.

But then another source, (anonymous -- probably also from the CBS side), hints that there are more payments to be made, most likely from Howard to CBS.

So we end up with a better picture of what actually happened. It's an anonymous source, so we have to question both motive and reliability. But it seems to make sense. And don't forget, Frank Ahrens, who wrote the piece, probably knows exactly what the terms are. He writing this in a way to give us the information without betraying certain facts.

Do this justify the use of the anonymous source?

I Hate Progress!

But you already know that. For example, I love the old-fashioned voting machines that we have here in Connecticut. Apparently they go back to the Roosevelt (Franklin, not Theodore) era. Push the lever down to vote for your candidate. When you're done, pull the lever back, and you've voted. Elegant in its simplicity.

What I don't trust is these here new-fangled eelectronic votin' machines. What's so bad about 'em? Why, I'll tell ya. Any seventh grader worth his salt will be able to steal an election, that's what.

The latest dispute occurred several weeks ago after it was discovered at a test in Utah that someone with a reasonable knowledge of computer code could gain access to and tamper with the system software on a popular brand of voting machine manufactured by Diebold Election Systems.

Oh? you say? That's right, oh!

In California, David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who consults with the state on its elections, said he was "stunned when he found out" about the vulnerability identified in the Utah test and agreed with the "frequently expressed opinion that this is the worst vulnerability that we have ever seen."

But surely nobody would want to interfere with an honest election, is that what you're thinking? Well, maybe a terrorist might. Or. . .

The 2002 Election NH "phone jamming" case revolves around the hiring by the New Hampshire Republican Party of the Virginia-based telemarketing firm GOP Marketplace. Republican operative Allen Raymond, who was president of the firm at the time, then "subcontracted the deed" to Mylo Enterprises Inc., a Pocatello, Idaho, phone bank shop.

Prosecutors allege that 'GOP Marketplace' "was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls" on Election Day, November 5, 2002. Six phone lines that were being run by Democratic "coordinated campaign offices," as well as phones in the offices of the Manchester firefighters union -- which was also doing a get-out-the-vote campaign that morning -- were jammed by 800 computer-generated hang up calls that tied up the lines for 1 1/2 hours.

Voters' rights were violated as the "computer-generated calls went to lines set up for voters who needed rides to the polls in Manchester, Nashua, Rochester and Claremont." The calls were "stopped after then-Republican State Committee Chairman John Dowd ordered a halt because of concerns about their legality."

Last Chance on Old Articles

Blogs to Riches

Study Questions for “Blogs to Riches”

(Due: Monday, May 8, 2006. 40 points)

1. Suppose that Gawker has a good day, drawing 120,000 more pages views than they normally do. How much money would they stand to make that day? How did you arrive at this figure? (I’m not kidding – show your work.)

2. What’s the maximum amount of money that David Hauslaib could be making?

3. What is a “meritocracy”? (It’s okay to resort to a dictionary if you have to on this one.)

4. What measure did Clay Shirky come up with to determine the relative importance of blogs?

5. “The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive.” What term would my brother-in-law, Gary (an Economics professor at SCSU) use to describe this phenomenon?

6. Peter Rojas has become rich – really rich – thanks to his blog, Engadget. But it’s not easy. What’s an average work week like for Rojas?

7. What incident led to Joshua Micah Marshall’s blog (Talking Points Memo) making it big?

8. What formula did Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Dish) use to sustain his blog?

9. Why would you want to buy advertising space on the Busy Mom blog?

10. Blogs are the next frontier in political advertising. Why would one advertiser prefer Daily Kos, while another prefer Talking Points Memo?

11.Boing Boing is currently the number one rated site. How many readers do they have?

12. What is “the record label approach” to blog fame and fortune?

13. What is “the boutique approach” to blog fame and fortune?

14. What’s a good way for a little C-list blog to temporarily gain lots of traffic?

15. How is a blog like a shark? (I know, I know, if it _________, it _______. What does that mean?)

16. How was the Huffington Post “a death knell for the traditional blogger”?

17. What does Elizabeth Spiers think is the ultimate determining factor in whether a blog will survive and prosper?

Nancy Grace

Study Questions for “Nancy Grace: TV Crimebuster”

(For any question marked by an asterisk, do not quote from the article. Be sure to put the answer in your own words.)

1. What happened in Nancy Grace’s life to change her from a potential college English professor to a TV personality?

2*. How does Ms. Grace feel about criminal defense attorneys?

3. How has Nancy been doing, ratings-wise?

4*. Recently Ms. Grace’s staff were sent to a workshop. What were they there to learn about?

5. Nancy Grace was once an assistant district attorney. Was she any good? (How good?)

6*. What trouble did Grace run into (years later) concerning the Herbert Connell Stephens case?

7. What misstatement has Ms. Grace made publicly about the criminal record of Tommy McCoy?

8. How long did the jury deliberate the fate of Tommy McCoy? What has Grace publicly stated?

9. Why was Tommy McCoy spared the death penalty? (What is Ms. Grace’s memory of that event?)

With Friends like This. . .

A conservative blogger responds to Bush's speech Monday night about immigration.

The Internet as the New Public Square

We've been having a lot of flooding here in New England recently. We're doged the bullet here in Connecticut, but in eastern Massachusetts, NewHampshire, southern Maine -- they were inundated.

New England Cable News has set up a new blog where people who need help, and people who want to help, can get together. (I know a lot of you have plans for this weekend, but maybe you still have Sunday free. . . )

It's almost enough to restore one's faith in human nature.

Unpatriotic Behavior

Protesting government policy is not necessarily unpatriotic. It's part of our birthright as Americans. Leaking stories to the press about constitutionally questionable practices is not unpatriotic. It's part of our birthright as Americans.

What Harold Rogers, United States Congressman from Kentucky, did, is not patriotic. It is greedy and self-serving.

In Kentucky Hills, a Homeland Security Bonanza

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: May 14, 2006

WASHINGTON, May 13 — The Department of Homeland Security has invested tens of millions of dollars and countless hours of labor over the last four years on a seemingly simple task: creating a tamperproof identification card for airport, rail and maritime workers.

Yet nearly two years past a planned deadline, production of the card, known as the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, has yet to begin.

Instead, the road to delivering this critical antiterrorism tool has taken detours to locations, companies and groups often linked to Representative Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican who is the powerful chairman of the House subcommittee that controls the Homeland Security budget.

It is a route that has benefited Mr. Rogers, creating jobs in his home district and profits for companies that are donors to his political causes. The congressman has also taken 11 trips — including six to Hawaii — on the tab of an organization that until this week was to profit from a no-bid contract Mr. Rogers helped arrange. Work has even been set aside for a tiny start-up company in Kentucky that employs John Rogers, the congressman's son.

"Something stinks in Corbin," said Jay M. Meier, senior securities analyst at MJSK Equity Research in Minneapolis, which follows the identification card industry, referring to the Kentucky community of 8,000 that has perhaps benefited the most from Mr. Rogers's interventions. "And it is the sickest example of what is wrong with our homeland security agenda that I can find."

Representative Rogers, "whom The Lexington Herald-Leader last year called the Prince of Pork", was on a committee working on an ID card for all Transportation Workers (known as a TWIC) even before September 11. This need became paramount after 9/11. As work on the new ID card was progressing, Rogers "inserted language into appropriations bills that effectively pushed the government to use the same patented green card technology and to produce this new card in Corbin" [in his home district].

What's so bad about that? Wouldn't we expect Rob Simmons or Nancy Johnson to do the same. Well, maybe. Under ordinary circumstances.

Two former Homeland Security officials said they were confounded. They had already identified a more flexible and secure technology known as a smart card, which relies on tiny computer chips embedded into the identification card. Most other federal agencies were moving toward this approach rather than the technology used for the green card, in which data are recorded on a reflective optical stripe affixed to the card.

Rogers wasn't just doing this to bring jobs back to his district.

Starting in 2004, his staff repeatedly pressed the Transportation Security Administration to hire a nonprofit Virginia-based trade association, the American Association of Airport Executives, to help handle background checks that transportation workers had to undergo to get identification cards. The trade association had no connection to Corbin, but it had longstanding ties to Mr. Rogers.

Since 2000, it has paid for trips by Mr. Rogers and his wife worth more than $75,000, including the six visits to Hawaii, four to California and one to Ireland, financial disclosure records show. Last year alone, Mr. Rogers spent a total of two weeks traveling on the association's tab.

Mr. Rogers was one of many members of Congress to take these airport association financed trips, which coincided with industry conferences. But they earned him a ranking as seventh of the 535 members of Congress in terms of travel gifts accepted, in a tally examining the past five years by Political Money Line.

Rogers is getting more than free trips to Hawaii out of the deal.

Executives at LaserCard Systems, Maximus, Shenandoah Electronic Intelligence and a lobbying firm that represents BearingPoint have also since contributed at least $30,000, with their spouses, to Mr. Rogers's political causes, federal records show. All four companies either sold services through Homeland Security for work done at the identity card plant in Corbin or won contracts to test the identification card.

In all, about $100,000 in contributions have come to Mr. Rogers from parties with at least some ties to the identification card effort, records show.

Another business to whom Rogers has funneled contracts, Senture, has donated $12,000 to his campaign, and hired his son.

All of this has cost the government money, but more importantly, time. That there has been no serious transportation related incident in America since 9/11 is no thanks to Harold Rogers, elected by the people of kentucky, who would rather line his pockets than do what is best for America.

Bird Flu: Time to Panic?

Not quite yet. Despite what Betsy and ABC have been trying to tell us, we might be able to stop this things short of 25 million dead. Here's what the Times has to say today.

If you're "too busy" to read the whole thing, here are a couple of high points.

Even as it crops up in the far corners of Europe and Africa, the virulent bird flu that raised fears of a human pandemic has been largely snuffed out in the parts of Southeast Asia where it claimed its first and most numerous victims.

Vietnam began vaccinating its chickens last summer and has not reported any avian flu in humans this year.

Health officials are pleased and excited. "In Thailand and Vietnam, we've had the most fabulous success stories," said Dr. David Nabarro, chief pandemic flu coordinator for the United Nations.

Vietnam, which has had almost half of the human cases of A(H5N1) flu in the world, has not seen a single case in humans or a single outbreak in poultry this year. Thailand, the second-hardest-hit nation until Indonesia recently passed it, has not had a human case in nearly a year or one in poultry in six months.

Encouraging signs have also come from China, though they are harder to interpret.

This doesn't mean that we're necessarily in the clear. . .

"To say the disease is 'wiped out' there is probably too strong, too positive," said Dr. Wantanee Kalpravidh, chief of flu surveillance in Southeast Asia for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, which fights animal diseases. The governments of Thailand and Vietnam "believe they got rid of it," she said, "but they also believe that it might be coming back at any time."

But. . .

But this sudden success in the former epicenter of the epidemic is proof that aggressive measures like killing infected chickens, inoculating healthy ones, protecting domestic flocks and educating farmers can work, even in very poor countries.

George Orwell Would Love This One!

The British author George Orwell, in his famous and influential novel 1984 (it gave us the original "Big Brother"), identified a concept now called doublespeak.

Webster's dictionary defines doublespeak with these words: evasive, ambiguous, high-flown language intended to deceive or confuse.

In his bestselling book Doublespeak, William Lutz notes that doublespeak is not an accident or a "slip of the tongue." Instead, it is a deliberate, calculated misuse of language.

Lutz provides several defining attributes of doublespeak:

• misleads
• distorts reality
• pretends to communicate
• makes the bad seem good
• avoids or shifts responsibility
• makes the negative appear positive
• creates a false verbal map of the world
• limits, conceals, corrupts, and prevents thought
• makes the unpleasant appear attractive or tolerable
• creates incongruity between reality and what is said or not said

As you might suspect, politicians are very fond of doublespeak. Sometimes, politicians need to tell people things that they may not want to hear. So they word it in such a way that it doesn't hurt so much. (During budget cuts, a teacher may be riffed. It's an acronym for "reduction in force. So much nicer than "fired" or sh*tcanned".)

It turns out now that the Bush Administration would like to send back to their home countries some of the people who have been detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the past few years. There's a little problem, though.

A long-running effort by the Bush administration to send home many of the terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied in part because of concern among United States officials that the prisoners may not be treated humanely by their own governments, officials said.

And I thought Bush was funny at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Or with his "Where are the WMD?" skit. But this is just priceless. (Maybe even funnier than Laura's standup routine last year.)

Links for "Blogs to Riches"

If you lost your copy of this article, or if you left it in school, the link is here.

Here are the Study Questions, in cas eyou've misplaced those (although I know that those of you who patronize THS Commedia are not likely to lose things.)

Study Questions for “Blogs to Riches”
(Due: Monday, May 8, 2006. 40 points)

1. Suppose that Gawker has a good day, drawing 120,000 more pages views than they normally do. How much money would they stand to make that day? How did you arrive at this figure? (I’m not kidding – show your work.)
2. What’s the maximum amount of money that David Hauslaib could be making?
3. What is a “meritocracy”? (It’s okay to resort to a dictionary if you have to on this one.)
4. What measure did Clay Shirky come up with to determine the relative importance of blogs?
5. “The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive.” What term would my brother-in-law, Gary (an Economics professor at SCSU) use to describe this phenomenon?
6. Peter Rojas has become rich – really rich – thanks to his blog, Engadget. But it’s not easy. What’s an average work week like for Rojas?
7. What incident led to Joshua Micah Marshall’s blog (Talking Points Memo) making it big?
8. What formula did Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Dish) use to sustain his blog?
9. Why would you want to buy advertising space on the Busy Mom blog?
10. Blogs are the next frontier in political advertising. Why would one advertiser prefer Daily Kos, while another prefer Talking Points Memo?
11. Boing Boing is currently the number one rated site. How many readers do they have?
12. What is “the record label approach” to blog fame and fortune?
13. What is “the boutique approach” to blog fame and fortune?
14. What’s a good way for a little C-list blog to temporarily gain lots of traffic?
15. How is a blog like a shark? (I know, I know, if it _________, it _______. What does that mean?)
16. How was the Huffington Post “a death knell for the traditional blogger”?
17. What does Elizabeth Spiers think is the ultimate determining factor in whether a blog will survive and prosper?

And here are links to some of the blogs mentioned in the article. Warning: note all of these blogs will be "work safe". Proceed with caution (or, if you're at school, prepare to not proceed at all).

Jossip.com

Gawker

Technorati

Boing Boing

PerezHilton.com

Daily Kos

Instapundit

Engadget

Talking Points Memo

The Daily Dish

Gothamist

Busy Mom

Valleywag

Gizmodo

Blogebrity

Pink Is the New Blog

Ultragrrl

Thighswideshut

The Huffington Post

Mediabistro

Dealbreaker