The fledgling news site vox.com’s (no relation to this site) purported “simple” mission, according to its founder Ezra Klein, is to “explain the news,” as he noted on his Facebook page:
Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Our mission is simple: Explain the news. Politics, public policy, world affairs, pop culture, science, business, food, sports, and everything else that matters are part of our editorial ambit.
Our goal is to move people from curiosity to understanding:
Given its stated mission, one has to wonder then, if giving voice to right-wing anti-copyright talking points, under the guise of journalism, fulfills this goal?
This morning as I enjoyed my morning coffee I came across a piece on Vox by former Washington Post columnist Timothy B. Lee. Since I’ve written about Mr. Lee’s columns in the past (when he touted the sham study by a Mercatus-backed website piracydata.org) I was a bit skeptical when I read his headline, “How Google money is helping turn the political right against strong copyrights.”
In writing about Mr. Lee last October, I took issue with a Washington Post column that trumpeted piracydata.org’s* dubious findings that blamed distributors, not online thieves, for the growth of online piracy. I noted at the time that Mr. Lee’s piece should be taken with a huge grain of salt given his (undisclosed) ties to an anti-copyright think tank.
Too bad their original graphic (and data) contained errors–a fact belatedly pointed out by the Washington Post’s Timothy B. Lee in his story which featured the provocative headline, “Here’s why Hollywood should blame itself for its piracy problems.” Lee updated his piece (and changed his headline):
Correction: The original data supplied to us by PiracyData.org was inaccurate. It showed 1 movie available for rental and 4 available for purchase. In fact, 3 are available for rental and 6 are available for purchase. We regret the error…
It’s a shame Lee didn’t also disclose his former ties to the libertarian Cato Institute and Google.
At the time, I wasn’t the only one to cast doubt on Mr. Lee’s journalism. In a piece published in the Columbia Journalism Review, “A piracy defense walks the plank at the Post,” Ryan Chittum questioned Mr. Lee’s reporting:
There are many problems with Timothy B. Lee’s Washington Post blog post on Hollywood’s supposed culpability for the theft of its own movies, beginning with the morally unserious jujitsu deployed in arguing that Hollywood is culpable for the theft of its own movies. The Mercatus- and Cato-connected editor of the Washington Post tech blog that aims “to be indispensable to telecom lobbyists and IT professionals alike, while also being compelling and provocative to the average iPhone-toting commuter” also had a major correction that undermines the entire premise of the piece and reveals its one-sided reporting.
Fast forward to today’s story. Mr. Lee, now writing for Vox, has given us a piece that once again manages to deftly advance anti-copyright memes. At first blush the title is disarming in that seems to take Google to task for its growing lobbying clout, yet if one actually reads the work it’s actually a clear effort to amplify the talking points recently spouted by notorious anti-copyright shill Derek Khanna in a recent Business Insider piece, “It’s Time To Confront the Anti-Copyright Lobby.” Khanna argued that, “We know the costs of continuing extremist copyright policies completely removed from the Constitution’s original public meaning; the American people deserve better then politicians selling out to Hollywood.”
According to Mr. Lee, this right-wing “shift” against copyright “seems overdue.”
Conservatives have long loathed Hollywood for the liberal values promoted in its movies and for the tendency of Hollywood celebrities to make campaign contributions to Democrats. That might be why Republicans broke ranks more quickly than Democrats in opposing the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act in 2012.
There are also genuinely conservative arguments for reining in the excesses of the copyright system. A recurring theme in both Khanna and Bell’s writing is that today’s laws are far more generous to copyright holders than those that existed in the early years of the republic. Bell and Khanna emphasize that the Founding Fathers viewed copyright as more a government-granted monopoly than a form of property rights.
Mr. Lee is certainly free to write about the debate over copyright legislation, and he appears to have learned the lesson that it’s important to disclose his affiliations with anti-copyright organizations (or risk be outed by the CJR) as he included this caveat in paragraph 3 of his piece.
And, to be clear, I’m not an impartial observer to this debate, having written about copyright issues for both Cato and Mercatus.
However, given his close ties political interests with a stake in the very topic he examines, readers should digest his piece with the skepticism is deserves and appreciate why he insists on characterizing Hollywood’s ongoing efforts to protect its creative products as a “copyright agenda.”
Lee reveals his hand when he concludes with a summation that, while not as biting, clearly mirrors the sentiments expressed by Mr. Khanna:
And internet companies like Google will only become more important to the American economy in the coming years, so Hollywood’s copyright agenda is going to increasingly face bipartisan skepticism on Capitol Hill.
In taking a not-so-veiled swipe at movie industry concerns, Mr. Lee also conveniently fails to mention that independent artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors etc. share Hollywood’s “copyright agenda.” This omission reveals another reason his superficial analysis remains suspect. When he writes about copyright, whether in the Washington Post or Vox, Lee’s predictable, myopic and simplistic condemnations of big Hollywood seem knee-jerk in nature.
Why is it that when writing about copyright reform writers/bloggers like Mr. Lee never seem to acknowledge, nor explore, the fact that “big” Hollywood employs thousands of little people and what the vitality of movie manufacturing means to them? They also routinely fail to include the perspectives of a vast number of small creators in the United States whose livelihoods depend on copyright. Why not admit that there are interests besides Hollywood that have skin in the game?
Surely there is room for discussion over revisiting copyright terms, etc. but given that the mindset of insiders like Khanna and Lee–who continue to author pieces that paint discussions regarding copyright reform in broad brushstrokes of black versus white–there’s little chance of that happening. By ignoring the very existence of (most) creators who depend on copyright, such posts become nothing more than a megaphone for memes generated by the very “think” tanks under scrutiny. If Vox editors are serious about “explaining the news” why not publish a piece that covers both sides of the debate–deconstructing the shades of gray that exist–and that all too often, are forgotten in today’s so-called journalism? Help the public “understand” that copyright is a complex issue that deserves to be clarified–not clouded by oblique reportage.
*BTW, it’s interesting to note that piracydata.org’s website hasn’t been updated since late November (2103). I guess now that it’s served it’s PR purpose the site’s “dataset” has gone into hibernation.
