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This paper was presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in San Francisco August 2006. I am not the author. If you have questions about this paper, please contact the author directly. If you have questions about the archives, email rakyat [ at ] eparker.org. For an explanation of the subject line, send email to [log in to unmask] with just the four words, "get help info aejmc," in the body (drop the ""). (Oct 2006) Thank you. Elliott Parker ==================================================================== Inherited Tensions: The Semantic Struggle of the Public Interest Maria Simone Rowan University Hawthorn Hall 201 Mullica Hill Road Glassboro, NJ 08028 [log in to unmask] work: (856) 256-4500, ext. 3155 home: (609) 484-9502 Abstract This paper reports results from observations and interviews conducted with media activists. The examination focused on inherited tensions from historical interpretations of the public interest standard. These tensions demonstrate concerns about: 1) vagueness; 2) self-interest; and 3) consensus. The researcher argues the public interest provides limited benefit for guiding policy. In order to achieve the spirit of the public interest, advocates should shift discourses to those of media rights and justice. Inherited tensions: The semantic struggle of the public interest One of the longest running debates in media and telecommunications policy centers on the question: What is the public interest? For approximately 80 years, the phrase "public interest, convenience and necessity" has served as a guiding standard in policy, from the Radio Act of 1927 to the Telecommunications Act of 1996�appearing 46 times in the text of the latter, and 103 times in the amended text of the Communications Act of 1934.1 In these key pieces of legislation, as well as others, the public interest has been the source of much semantic wrangling among members of Congress, the FCC, the courts, intellectuals, and members of the public. Indeed, the phrase public interest has inherited a seemingly irreconcilable tension between the individual and the collective, reflecting in some ways the broader tensions found within a liberal democracy (Benhabib, 1992; Habermas, 2001; Rowland, 1997c; Streeter, 1990). The individual dimension promotes economic rights and the market as the natural and rational arbiter of the public interest. The collective dimension connects not to market ideology, but to a social responsibility perspective that emphasizes social welfare and the common good. Throughout history, media and telecommunications policy has often privileged market-based solutions to identifying and serving the public interest (Rowland, 1997b). This trend has resulted in a definition of the public interest that translates to what the public is interested in (Fowler & Brenner, 1982). Perhaps for some, the story ends there. For many, it does not. Policy-makers, researchers, industry professionals, and members of the public continue to invoke a public interest tradition that attests to the social responsibility of the media to serve the common good (Baker, 1998; Barnouw, 1966a; Blanchard, 1977; Hutchins Commission, 1947). For these individuals, a purely market-based definition and application of the public interest might do well to serve individual, economic interests, but it does poorly in meeting the needs of the collective (Brown & Blevins, 2005; Copps, 2003). And so, the debate continues, highlighting the longstanding and unresolved semantic struggle between the individual and the collective that is embodied within the phrase, the public interest. This paper argues the public interest, in its present form and implementation, provides limited benefit for guiding electronic media policy due to these inherited tensions between the individual and the collective. In order to achieve the spirit of a public interest that incorporates notions of social responsibility and collective good, media policy advocates may need to shift their focus to claims of media rights and justice. These conclusions are based on a multi-method qualitative study that employed observations and interviews conducted with media activists in 2005. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which present day interpretations of the public interest exhibit the historical tensions of the public interest, and to identify implications of such findings for policy decisions that are facing Congress at this moment. This study contributes to scholarship in media policy, public interest, and public sphere studies. The findings reported here represent an integral part of this author's larger research project, which seeks to understand the meaning and application of the public interest, as articulated by the primary agents in the policy-making process, which include mobilized members of the public sphere, the focus for this report, electronic media professionals, congressional representatives, and FCC commissioners. The end result of the broader project is to understand these various interpretations, the links between them, and the extent to which the public exerts influence on the decisions reached by policy makers. Yet, the constraints of space force this paper to focus on only one of these groups, specifically mobilized members of the public.2 The focus on this group is appropriate for several reasons. First, a relative dearth of research exists regarding the public's conception of the public interest. While some research examines "everyday" citizens (e.g., Brown & Blevins, 2005; Holman, 2005; McChesney, 1993), the literature as a whole tends to focus on elite agents in the policy making process, including the courts (Benkler, 2000; Crane, 1983; Horwitz, 1994; Ramberg, 1986), congress and the FCC (Brinson, 2002; Friedrich & Sternberg, 1943; Harrington, 1997; Mayton, 1989; Rosenberg, 1949; Rowland, 1997b; R. C. Smith, 1929), the industry (Agee, 1968; Blanchard, 1977; Fallows, 1996; Fowler & Brenner, 1982; Powell & Gair, 1988), and technocratic approaches (Brown, 1994; Held, 1970; McQuail, 1992; Napoli, 2001; Streeter, 1990). Some might argue that the limited research regarding public participation stems from the fact that citizens are often not involved in media policy debates. To be fair, that statement may hold true for some periods. However, in 2003, the issue of media policy was problematized for many members of the public when the Federal Communications Commission attempted to further deregulate media ownership. This action energized the media reform movement, mobilized around a host of issues such as media ownership, net neutrality, copyright, and indecency to name just a few.3 McChesney (2004) maintains that media policy is currently experiencing a critical juncture, the likes of which have not been seen since the 1930s broadcast reform movement. According to a path dependent perspective, "Politics involves some elements of chance (agency, choice), but once a path is taken, then it can become 'locked in,' as all the relevant actors adjust their strategies to accommodate the prevailing pattern" (Thelen, 1999, p. 385). The point prior to taking this "path" is the critical juncture. This point in time is characterized by relatively open choices, the potential for a wide-ranging discussion of possibilities, and susceptibility to influence from a confluence of events and circumstances�some dominant, some subaltern, some completely chance (Thelen, p. 385). The current juncture is characterized by a resurgence of media reform activism, emboldened by the FCC's 2003 attempt to further deregulate media ownership. Furthermore, Congress has begun deliberations to rewrite the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and several bills have been proposed and debated regarding a host of public interest issues, such as the digital television transition and indecency provisions. The resultant policies could set a new path for media policy, or they could solidify further the market-based one we are currently on. The findings of this study can inform decision making at this juncture, by providing a much-needed citizen perspective. Dewey (1954/1927) indicated that a public forms to express concerns about decisions over which they have little control (p. 35). At this critical juncture, media activists and advocates have joined in various groups, sometimes oppositional to each other and sometimes complimentary, to express their concerns about media and its failure to serve a public's vision of the public interest. Yet, the influence of citizens on decision making is not always apparent. Habermas (1998) has developed a model for explaining and identifying the circulation of influence in formal decision-making. This model posits that the outer periphery, which includes members of civil society and discussants of the public sphere, exerts influence only in situations when an issue has been problematized.4 This study takes as a base assumption that the issue of media policy has been problematized, especially so since the 2003 FCC attempt to deregulate media ownership. By examining how the periphery defines the public interest, this study provides one important component for understanding how the public may or may not exert influence on the decision making center. Due to the limitations of how much can be accomplished in one paper, the actual extent of this influence must be left for future reports. The focus here centers on how the public interest has been problematized by the periphery, and the extent to which this construction corresponds to historical concerns about the public interest. In other words, how has the path from the last 80 years contributed to the discourse of the current critical juncture? Understanding interpretations from mobilized members of the public provides a useful benchmark that allows us to consider to what extent decision makers in the government and the industry consider citizen viewpoints. As such, identifying the public's public interest provides insight into areas of connection and disconnection among decision makers and those that are affected by those decisions. The implications of the findings from this study and the larger project can serve the pragmatic ends of policy, as well as the theoretical aims of scholarship. With this broad overview in place, it is time to look more specifically at the semantic struggle of public interest, rooted in historical tensions that take us back in time about 80 years.5 The Struggle for the Public Interest In the early 1920s, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover convened four National Radio Conferences with the intention of reaching a compromise between the government and business regarding radio regulation. Fausold (1985) explains that Hoover's conferences were part of his broader administrative philosophy, which maintained deliberation among government, business and labor could produce outcomes that would ultimately benefit the public. Yet, Rowland (1997b) argues that these conferences resulted in little more than a capitulation to business interests at the expense of the public interest. At a minimum, these conferences clearly set a tone that the public interest standard would attempt to balance the individual, economic rights of the industry with the collective, social welfare rights of the public. But, what exactly requires balancing? Individual Dimension and Economic Rights The individual dimension of the public interest corresponds to economic rights and market principles of consumer choice, competition, market efficiency, employment, profitability, and innovation (van Cuilenberg & McQuail, 2003, p. 185). The invisible hand of the market determines the public interest through the natural and rational actions of self-interested agents fulfilling individual goals (A. Smith, 1937/1776). Subsequently, the public interest is defined primarily as the aggregate of these individual interests (Hunt & d'Arge, 1973). From this vantage point, the market serves as the superior mechanism for delivering private and public goods (Fowler & Brenner, 1982; Pool, 1983). The public interest is served when consumers demand what they want to view, hear, or read by selecting one media outlet over another. Consequently, ratings and circulation figures become the primary measure of the public interest. The individual dimension attributes a minimal role to the government. The goals of policy�either regulation or deregulation�are to ensure competition and consumer choice, allow for technological innovation, and protect individual property rights (Fowler & Brenner, 1982; Pool, 1983). Advocates tend to support an absolute interpretation of the First Amendment in which individual and corporate rights of speech reign supreme (Mayton, 1989; Owen, 1975; Thierer, 2005). Exceptions to this latter point may include indecency and children's programming. Collective Dimension and Social Welfare Rights The collective dimension emphasizes social welfare. van Cuilenberg and McQuail (2003) identify social welfare values as those which support democratic institutions, including freedom of expression, access, equality, participation, social order, cohesion, and the promotion of pro-social objectives (p. 185).6 Proponents of a collective interpretation maintain that the market is not a perfect mechanism for serving the public interest, defined in terms of social welfare. Some authors point out that the market is not the only or most natural process for ordering a media system (McChesney, 1997). Such an interpretation might seek the ways in which media can support an informed citizenry, aid citizen decision making, enhance the public debate, and provide a diversity of viewpoints (Crane, 1983, p. 121; McChesney, 2004, p. 17). The collective perspective enlists the government, as representative of the public, to make certain that the media are accountable to the functions identified in the previous paragraph (Hutchins Commission, 1947; McQuail, 1997; Schiller, 1996; Sunstein, 2000). As a consequence, this perspective privileges public participation in the policy process, and an affirmative view of the First Amendment, which recognizes both individual rights to speech and collective rights to know (Harrington, 1997; McChesney, 2004; Nickel, 2000; Weiser, 2000, p. 30). For example, governmental policies to promote speech, such as the Fairness Doctrine, fulfill the public interest (Aufderheide, 1990; Goldoff, 1996). It would be incorrect to state that a collective perspective ignores individual rights. Individual rights, such as speech and property, are important; however, these rights should not be emphasized at the expense of collective rights, including access to diverse viewpoints. As this brief overview indicates, the individual dimension of the public interest is associated with economic rights, while the collective dimension is more closely associated with social and political welfare, as it relates to citizens' rights and responsibilities in a democracy. It may be obvious to the reader at this point that these dimensions are not always compatible. By some accounts, this tension has doomed the public interest standard to failure (e.g., Streeter, 1990). The next section explores this topic in more depth. Tension Between the Individual and the Collective Historical tensions between the individual and the collective are apparent in three primary areas. The public interest is: 1) vague, meaningless or useless; 2) used as a guise to mask self interest; and 3) the result of a false or limited consensus. These are discussed briefly. The vagueness of the public interest is a concern from both an individual and collective perspective (Friedrich & Sternberg, 1943; Napoli, 2001; Ramberg, 1986; Rowland, 1997a, 1997b). Barnouw (1966b) identifies concerns of the early Federal Radio Commission regarding the vagueness of the standard, which led to an interpretation of the phrase in narrow technical terms (p. 216). Technical standards, unlike those for content or structure, were viewed as objective, and therefore, politically safe. Then, as now, the public interest in programming and structure has been indefinite at best. Ambiguity has led to competing ideas regarding how to quantify and qualify the public interest (Hundt, 1996; Napoli, 2001; Schubert, 1957; Sorauf, 1957). From an economic standpoint, the vagueness of the phrase results in market uncertainties that harm competition. For social welfare advocates, vagueness may result in contradictory or meaningless policies that shift with the political tide (Goodin, 1996). It should be noted that economic adherents tend to be more concerned with vagueness than do social welfare proponents. Second, social welfare proponents are quite forthcoming in their criticism that the public interest allows political and economic self-interest to trump collective needs (Aufderheide, 2002; Bagdikian, 2000; McChesney, 2004). Rowland (1997b) maintains that the economic dimension has always been privileged in policy, and goes so far as to argue that appeals to social welfare are a rhetorical ploy to cover political and economic self-interest. Some policy makers share this view. In 1961, Newton Minow (1984) chastised the broadcast industry for considering ratings as the indicator of what the public was interested in (for more recent arguments, see McChesney, 1997; Rowland, 1997b; van Cuilenberg & McQuail, 2003). In 1999, former FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani maintained that the public interest is a "'safety net' to protect the public against those broadcasters who might be tempted to avoid their obligations in the absence of a rule" (Tristani, paragraph 6). Most recently, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps (2003) has argued consistently that the public interest is increasingly determined by advertising interests, not those of the public. Third, in attempting to reconcile the problems of imprecision and self-interest, legislation attempts to achieve some sort of compromise between the individual and the collective. Yet, in seeking these compromises, there is concern that the legislation is based on too narrow of an analysis. Barnouw (1966a) argues this was the case with the Communication Act of 1934, which attempted to address the concerns of the industry without allowing equal input from members of the broadcast reform movement (see also McChesney, 1993). Several authors point out that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was developed and passed with limited input from groups and individuals outside of the industry (Aufderheide, 1999; McChesney, 1997). As a result, the public interest becomes based upon a false or limited consensus that tends to emphasize the individual-economic dimension over the collective-social welfare one. For example, Streeter (1990) argues that the market's triumph over the Fairness Doctrine rests with the liberal democratic framework itself, and the tensions between individual and collective rights (p. 48). This conclusion suggests that it is not possible to balance the economic and the social within the public interest standard. Policy works�sometimes unintentionally�to privilege one over the other. As a result, policy represents a false consensus regarding what is in the public interest, primarily because the concept itself is faulty. This researcher does not mean to suggest that the economic and the social are at all times oppositional. In some cases, these dimensions might be seen as less contradictory than this treatment might imply (see e.g., Napoli, 2001, esp. the discussion of the marketplace of ideas, chapter 5). Furthermore, Habermas (2001) has cautioned against creating a false contradiction between the individual and the collective, arguing that "private and public autonomy require each other" (p. 767). Despite these cautions, conflict continues to exist. To understand the current manifestation of these historical tensions, this research project asked: RQ 1: To what extent are the historical tensions between the individual and the collective dimensions of the public interest articulated by mobilized members of the public? The next section provides an overview of the methodology employed to answer this question. Methodology The purpose of this project is to understand how these tensions have manifested themselves, if at all, in the current debates over the media's public interest mandate. As such, the end goal of this study is not prediction or generalizability. The research is located within a critical interpretive paradigm, and employs qualitative research methods to achieve depth. The appropriateness of the methodology is based, in part, on Habermas' (1998) framework for explaining the circulation of power and influence among three agents, alluded to earlier in this paper. First, Habermas notes that mobilized members of civil society and discussants in the public sphere comprise what he calls the outer periphery. Habermas (1998) defines the outer periphery as including "opinion-forming associations, which specialize in issues and contributions and are generally designed to generate public influence, [and] belong to the civil-social infrastructure of a public sphere dominated by the mass media" (p. 355). He also identifies an inner periphery that consists of "various institutions equipped with rights of self-governance or with other kinds of oversight and lawmaking functions delegated by the state (universities, public insurance systems, professional agencies and associations, charitable organizations, foundations, etc.)" (p. 355). Third, individuals and organizations with power to make regulatory and policy decisions belong to the center, which includes members of Congress and the FCC. According to the model, the outer periphery is typically unable to exert influence in a normal mode of decision making. However, Habermas (1998) indicates that when an issue has been problematized, decision making shifts to a crisis or extraordinary mode, and the outer periphery has the ability to influence the center's decisions (p. 357). Furthermore, during moments of problematization, we can achieve a much richer understanding of the ways in which the periphery perceive and articulate various social issues. Given the problematization of media policy, the focus for the present study is to better understand this discourse and the ways in which issues related to the public interest are constructed from the bottom up. This preference for developing a grounded understanding led to research to select a qualitative approach, which would allow the research subjects to express their ideas in their own words. There was a concern that a quantitative approach, while allowing for generalization, might not afford opportunities to consider discourse that does not match already identified categories. However, an approach that allows for generalization might be an appropriate next step. With the theoretical foundation and rationale in place, we turn to a description of the methodological procedures: observations and in-depth qualitative interviews. Observations Prior to conducting all but two of the interviews, the researcher attended the 2005 National Conference for Media Reform, observing panels and discussions that touched on issues related to the public interest. Some of these panels included: "The Telecom Act: Gearing up for the Big One," "The FCC Past and Present" with current and former members of the FCC, "Media Ownership and Consolidation," "Citizen Pressure and Media Policy: Tips from Legislators," and "Visioning a Media System that Serves Our Democracy and Culture." These panels included presentations made by activists, FCC Commissioners and congressional representatives, and question and answer sessions. In addition to taking notes, panels and Q&A sessions were audiotaped. The tapes provided back-up to the notes, which were translated into a summarized narrative following the conclusion of the event. The observations provided a useful foundation for the interviews, as well as an opportunity to observe deliberations regarding the future of U.S. electronic media policy. Interviews Interviews are appropriate to the primary goal of this study, which is to allow respondents to describe their opinions and views in their own words. Patton (1987) explains, "The major way in which the qualitative evaluator seeks to understand the perceptions, feelings, and knowledge of people [�] is through in-depth, intensive interviewing" (p. 11). Furthermore, these interviews allowed the research to tap into what Goodin & Niemeyer (2003) call internal deliberation, or the private reflections of individuals before engaging in group debate (p. 628). The researcher acknowledges that much work on public opinion in both academic and regulatory spheres takes the form of quantitative surveys. Indeed, these data are important and have aided in the formulation of this study. Yet, such polling may not allow respondents to fully articulate their views (Baker, 1998). Sample. A methodological concern for this study was locating a suitable sample. The researcher endeavored to collect a purposeful sample, using a maximum variation procedure (Patton, 1987, p. 52-3). Respondents were selected and recruited based on their participation in some type of media advocacy organization, from grassroots groups, to national, highly organized lobbying organizations and think tanks. These groups are positioned at various points within the periphery with respect to their influence on the center, providing variation in terms of experience and level of influence. Other indicators helped to ensure a breadth of diversity, including: 1) demographics; 2) geographic location (rural, urban and suburban); and 3) political views. In addition to allowing for some measure of "representativeness," this commitment to a relatively diverse sample recognizes the existence of multiple publics within the U.S. public sphere, as noted by several scholars, most notably Nancy Fraser (1992). The sample was recruited from several sources: 1) the 2005 National Conference on Media Reform; 2) internet sources, such as organizational websites; and 3) snowball sampling. In most cases, the initial contact was made with a formal letter, mailed on university letterhead, followed up with a phone call. In other cases, such as a referral, an email or phone call served as the initial contact point. Participation was voluntary, but given the personal nature of the interviews, anonymity was impossible. Participants were informed that their names and organizations would be withheld from the final research report to protect identity. Between April and August 2005, fifty-one organizations were contacted, out of which 22 respondents representing 20 organizations were interviewed.7 In the main, the sample reflects the diversity of periphery groups. Respondents are most diverse in terms of their ages, which ranged from 25 to 69, with an average age of 43. Political perspectives, based on self-identification, include progressive, liberal, moderate, libertarian and conservative. Most interviewees were progressive or liberal (70%), which is typical of the reform movement as a whole. The majority of the respondents were white (82%), male (59%), and from somewhere on the East Coast (77%). The lack of racial diversity may represent what some respondents termed the "whiteness" of the media reform movement as a whole. Additionally, one respondent commented on the gender imbalance of the reform movement and the policy environment in general: "I know that you are probably very male-heavy on this stuff. Usually I'm like the only female name on a list." The geographic disparity may be accounted for by the Eastern states' proximity to the decision making center in Washington, D.C. Procedures. The literature on qualitative interviewing emphasizes "on site" or localized knowledge of the subjects under study (Fontana & Frey, 1998, p. 57-60). For this study, an "on site" location does not exist. However, several activities provided a suitable alternative to traditional ethnographic tactics. These include observations at the 2005 National Conference on Media Reform, discussed previously, and reviews of organizational websites and news articles about media policy. The primary purpose of being "on site" is to provide context for what the respondents disclose during interviews (Fontana & Frey, 1998). In that spirit, these three activities achieved that goal, and constituted a suitable alternative to "being there." Interviews employed a general question guide, providing structure and consistency across the interviews, while allowing for probes. The interviews were audio-taped, with informed consent. Notes were taken with the help of a lap top computer. Each interview was transcribed within 24 hours to ensure a high level of clarity in the transcription. Any problem areas in the audiotape were double-checked against the interview notes. The analysis of each interview began with the transcription of the audio tape, which served to identify emergent themes. The analysis represented a recursive loop, which started with an inductive approach, resulting in several preliminary hypotheses. From there, the analysis became more deductive, by checking the specifics against the newly formed hypotheses. This loop is akin to what Huberman and Miles (1998) call iterative research, which they describe as: a succession of question-and-answer cycles�that entails examining a given set of cases and then refining or modifying those cases on the basis of subsequent ones. Traditionally, the resulting inferences are deemed 'valid,' in the relaxed sense that they are probable, reasonable, or likely to be true�. When a theme, hypothesis, or pattern is identified inductively, the researcher then moves into a verification mode, trying to confirm or qualify the finding. This then keys off a new inductive cycle. (p. 186) This iterative process produced three sets of coding sheets, which permitted consistency of analysis across transcripts, until a "valid"8 set of conclusions were reached. After reviewing the full transcripts several times, key excerpts were extracted from the various interviews and inserted in a table that included the various themes and components identified by the research. This table was then subjected to another round of analysis to ensure reliability and validity. Results The research question asked: To what extent are the historical tensions between the individual and the collective dimensions of the public interest articulated by mobilized members of the public? The findings indicate the public interest continues to be a matter of considerable debate. The respondents have inherited the tensions of the past, and have expanded them in ways that match the current policy environment. Perhaps one of the most widely shared concerns was the belief that self interest�economic or political�was covertly advanced in the name of the public interest. Furthermore, themes surrounding the vagueness, meaninglessness and uselessness of the term continue to exist, alongside the recognition that debates may result in a false or limited consensus regarding the meaning of this nebulous phrase. A senior fellow with a Washington, D.C.-based think tank and lobbying organization was quite frank in his assessment, capturing each of these tensions: This is exactly the subject: what should be the public interest in relationship to future legislation that is expected, and the significant disagreement among different groups, but a desire to come to some consensus? The industry clearly is going to push for a public interest standard like they have in the past. It will be pretty much a meaningless one. But, that way, members of congress will have political cover for saying they got something in return when they give something away. And so the question always is: to what extent do you go along with that? [emphasis added] The remainder of this section considers the results based on the primary areas of struggle. A vague and useless interest. Respondents from both an economic and a social welfare perspective shared unease regarding indistinct guidelines for the public interest. Yet, as with the historical tensions, the exact nature of the concerns varied. Those with an economic perspective were typically concerned about the enforceability, constitutionality, and usefulness of such a vague standard. A senior fellow at a market-oriented think tank, clearly voices this position: Public interest regulation was always hopelessly vague as a regulatory standard, and led to a lot of unintended consequences. And most importantly of all: it was just not a very good legal standard because it wasn't a standard at all. It's the fundamental subjectivity of the public interest standard that I find so disturbing because there is no standard except for three out of the five votes of the FCC. Another respondent from a cable trade organization maintained that the public interest teeters on the edge of constitutionality: "It's about as gentle a term as you could have without being declared void for vagueness in the constitution." Other respondents were concerned that the indefinite parameters of the public interest called its usefulness into question. Some respondents felt the public interest had limited value because it fails to produce substantial reform or because there are more efficient mechanisms, namely the market, that can achieve various public goals. For example, a representative from a cable trade organization felt that public affairs requirements were easily met in the letter of the law, but not the spirit: "The idea of running public affairs shows at six o'clock in the morning on Sunday was and is a joke. People aren't listening at that hour. And, so, you know, numerical guidance doesn't work." Thus, requirements for public affairs programming are virtually useless because they do not result in the intended outcome. Another market proponent saw the uselessness of the public interest as a result of technological change and the number of choices available to media consumers. In a world where 85% of the American population voluntarily opens up their pocketbooks and purses and wallets and purchases cable and satellite television programming, you really have to ask what kind of future does public interest regulation have? He later answers this question by saying, Every time I testify in front of congress or meet with a staffer or anything else, if you want to understand the future of media, you need to sit down and talk to a fifteen year old. And think about and look at how they're consuming media and think about media and understand that all this public interest stuff is just an irrelevant moot debate. For this respondent, any regulation of the media industries beyond what is already stated in anti-trust law is unnecessary, and more importantly, unconstitutional under a strict reading of the First Amendment. For those who share this view, uselessness and constitutional illegitimacy demand that the public interest be rescinded as a formal regulatory criterion. From a social welfare perspective, many respondents were concerned that the vagueness of the term ignored the needs of the citizenry, which in turn implied the relative uselessness or meaninglessness of the standard. A director for a national media reform organization explains: As a guiding standard�to the extent to which it is defined, it serves as a useful metric by which we might at least begin discussions about how the media might be better structured to serve the needs of democracy. To the extent we do not define it, it remains an amorphous concept that is well nigh useless when it comes to creating a system that serves democracy. Here, the lack of a clear definition makes the public interest a useless standard for achieving social welfare goals of information, access and deliberation. In contrast, others thought a bit of imprecision allows a constantly changing public to negotiate its interests as context necessitates. The director of a West Coast independent media advocacy group explains: It's always been an underdefined concept. And, I'm not sure that's a bad thing if left as so. [�] It's not good in itself that it's underdefined. But, it's good that the definition is not static. I think it will always be the case that there are competing definitions of what that means because the public is a plural construction. The respondent recognizes that being "underdefined" can be problematic, but being flexible and open to ongoing interpretation is beneficial. With the existence of multiple publics, this respondent reasons that a flexible standard will allow for the deliberative (re)negotiation of the concept as needed, a view that is noted by Fraser (1992) in her analysis of the role of multiple publics in a socially stratified society. The problem of false consensus. These suggestions for either a definitive or fluid definition of the public interest highlight another concern: false consensus. These concerns are similar to criticisms of Habermas' original focus on a single public sphere constituted by a single public, which some authors rightly recognized as problematic for diversity (Benhabib, 1992; Fraser, 1992). Similarly, a too narrowly defined public interest can ignore the needs of various publics. A media literacy activist supports an open-ended definition of the public interest: It [public interest] needs to be vague, because the public is not one big homogenous thing. They're communities, and you have to look at individual communities�whether it's a local geographic community, or a larger demographic community. It can't be one thing. So, some amount of vagueness is a really healthy thing to have. I don't win discussing the public interest because I think people need to decide for themselves what�or people as a whole as communities need to decide what is in their best interest, but they also have to communicate that back. While advocating for some measure of imprecision in the definition, this respondent also expresses concerns regarding consensus. The telling comment in this excerpt is: "I don't win." In other words, no single person or entity can define the meaning of the public interest because it varies across communities. This theme was repeated in various ways, from the succinct, "I think public interest means different things to different people," to the cynical, "Of course, every group that has fingers in this topic thinks that their viewpoint is for the greater good." This polysemic quality led several respondents to indicate that any attempt to concretely define the standard can result in a false or limited compromise. The uneasiness of this compromise is only compounded when the number of groups included in policy deliberation is limited. The media literacy advocate quoted earlier expresses this notion when she says, "but they also have to communicate that back" (emphasis added). Another example comes from a respondent with a medium-sized cable trade organization: In the policy work we do, the policies, whether regulatory or legislative, are often times framed by very large companies, framed by very large associations, framed by very large interests. And, often times the way that the policies, legislative or regulatory, are crafted are based on the interests of these larger companies and associations. This quote expresses a feeling of being "left out" of the decision-making process. This respondent feels that his organization's concerns were denied full consideration because of powerful lobbying efforts on the part of larger media corporations and trade organizations. For him, the public interest is built upon a false consensus that fails to consider the interests of all. Concerns about representation were voiced by a broadcast reform activist: I don't really use the word public interest in my work. I use justice and things like that, which are much more powerful terms. It's [public interest] kind of a legalistic one. And, who is the public? For this respondent, the public interest is an exclusionary term that frames the debate in overly legalistic terms. For her, it emphasizes individual rights to the detriment of collective rights and social justice. This notion of inclusion in or exclusion from the policy debates also connects to concerns about political and economic self interest. Public interest as self interest. The fear that political and economic interests have co-opted the public interest was a common concern among almost all of the respondents. Respondents held a widespread belief that dominant political players affect the interpretation of the public interest in ways that suit political self interest. A media educator frames the problem in terms of influence from political administrations: "Political administrations change, and the present administration seems less concerned about the public interest than some of the previous administrations." The concern in this passage centers on the influence that may come from political ideology, and as that ideology changes, so does the meaning of the public interest. Another respondent fingers the FCC as a political puppet: Depending on whoever is in charge, whatever ideology happens to grip the party that has the majority on the FCC, that notion of the public interest sometimes has nothing to do with some of the ideals and even concessions that I've talked about here with you. In these excerpts and many more, individuals cite political interference with the public interest. As a result of shifting ideology, one activist advocates for the use of communication rights or the idea of entitlements "because then it doesn't matter who's the head of the FCC or who's in office. You are trying to define standards that aren't going to be shifted with the wind, the political tide." Her perception is that the notion of rights is a stronger discursive claim than that of interest, which has led to claims for consumers' desires, rather than citizens' needs. For some, self-interest is served by the continuing vagueness of the phrase. A senior fellow with a Washington, D.C. think tank expressed his distrust: Public interest is a notoriously vague concept. Many people believe it's meaningless, which is the whole point from the other side [i.e., business]. The broadcasters have never opposed the public interest because they want lots of things from the government, and politicians love to use that because when they give things away they can justify it because the broadcasters are doing something in the public interest. So, even though they tend to attack the specific, the industry and members of congress are strong advocates of the public interest standard, as long as it's meaningless. From this view, the public interest is a rhetorical construction that does little to serve the needs of a public, but much to line the pockets of industry, and pad the opinion polls of politicians. The reader may note similar observations can be found in the literature, most notably from Rowland (1997b). Another respondent describes how corporate interests promote such a narrow rhetorical frame: These public interest standards are a lot of stop gaps. They are a lot of voluntary or pseudo mandatory requirements on broadcasters that have essentially managed to make sure that they are the ones who control the infrastructure over which the messages will reach the public. [...] And they are petty concessions that have absolutely no teeth to them whatsoever. (emphasis added) Said differently, the public interest standard, as a simplistic amalgam of disjointed requirements, does little to structure a overarching social welfare vision. Rather, this respondent maintains that such a narrow view amounts to "petty concessions" that are poorly enforced at best and useless at worst. The current system has evolved, according to some, because of the close political relationship between legislative decision makers and the industry. One respondent explains the development of public interest as self-interest: It's [public interest policy] determined more by who gets the opportunity to lobby, who has unlimited resources to lobby, and that determines the scope of public interest obligations � be it nothing, be it make a lot of money � because the argument's often made, the more money we are making, the better we must be serving the public because they are choosing to watch us. This problem of political pressure relates to access to the policy process, which begins long before the request for public comment is formally offered (Brown & Blevins, 2005, p. 12). Many social welfare advocates charge corporate clout on Capitol Hill with producing a public interest that equals economic self-interest. Interviewees directly or subtly expressed distrust of the public interest as a regulatory standard because it seemed to have little to do with the interests of a public, viewed as a body of deliberative citizens. Said one respondent: I'm skeptical about the whole idea [public interest regulation]. With the media ownership rules, they were trying to come up with this diversity index. You know, there is this whole fixation with metrics, which I see as somewhat problematic. I feel that it is this convenient way that corporations have been able to delegitimize this area of the public interest by saying you have to be able to quantify this and that. I think having some kind of guidelines can be helpful, but I think they need to be more principle centered than metric centered. This activist feels that such claims for metrics can be counterintuitive because some public interest goals cannot be neatly quantified. As such, a focus on quantification serves economic ends, while ignoring social welfare. In this case, the individual dimension has been rhetorically constructed as more legitimate than the collective dimension. In case of market failure, use the public interest. Even among those who expressed doubts about the value of the public interest, many respondents expressed that it continues to be an important mechanism for checking the excesses of a commercial system. One public interest advocate provides an apt example of this position: When you move to national ownership, when you move to consolidation, it [supply/demand mechanism of the public interest] doesn't scale, it becomes entirely profit driven. [�] This unfortunately is one of the problems that everybody thinks the market is so wonderfully efficient in deciding what's profitable. All of the radio companies that underwent this huge consolidation in the '90s and ditched all their public interest obligations and decided that they were going to maximize�they're losing money. [�] So much for the wonderful efficiencies of the market. And, now we as a nation have a crappy radio system. For this respondent, the market is not naturally efficient for achieving social welfare goals, such as those associated with public affairs programming. Consequently, regulation, in the name of the public interest, must be enacted to protect against market inefficiencies. Market failure, according to some participants, results from the desire to increase the bottom line, whether that be through increasing revenues or cutting costs. The following is a representative quote from a media literacy activist: Corporations are acting out by seeing how far they can push it to not do the more expensive things or less profitable things�not necessarily more expensive, but less profitable�that need to be done for the communities that they're serving, and the people that they're serving. They're not going to do that because there's no profit in that because someone decided somewhere that people don't want to know what's happening in their community. But, they do. It's such an incredible disconnect. But, it's always going to be less expensive to produce one piece of mass communication and distribute throughout all these different conduits than it is to create community based programming. This respondent indicates that the market fails to respond to consumer demand because of the costs involved with producing and distributing products that meet such demands. She believes that corporations will do the least amount possible to generate the most possible demand. Such a viewpoint contradicts an economic philosophy that says the market meets public demands. In keeping with this respondents viewpoint, some economists have noted that the market may drive preferences in a manner that does not accurately reflect demand (George, 2001). Others believe the drive for advertising dollars can produce market failure: Commercial [media] structurally is not designed to serve viewers. It's designed to, not in the sense of providing a service to viewers, but in more of the sense of serving them up to advertisers. And, so the public interest role of media is something which needs to be�it's not going to be something that appears because of commercial considerations. It's just not. So, it needs to be supported by a professional mission of news departments and by public interest obligations, regulation, and those things. Both those things have been substantially eroded. Public interest policy in terms of self-regulation and formal government regulation can serve as an important corrective for an excessively commercial system. Without the public interest, there is a concern that the media system will become much less accountable to the citizenry, preferring instead to serve the lowest-common-denominator interests of consumers. In summary, the results indicate that the historical tensions between the individual and collective dimensions of the public interest can be found in the current discourse. More specifically, the ongoing semantic struggle involves overlapping concerns about vagueness, self-interest, and false consensus. For some, this calls the value of the public interest into question, while others maintain that it is the only standard that can correct for market failure. As researchers, what are we to make of the ongoing semantic struggle of the public interest? Implications The results reveal serious concerns that individual, economic rights are deeply eroding collective needs of social welfare. The recurring theme, both in these results and throughout history, of the public interest as a struggle between social and economic welfare reveals deeper, much more problematic tensions that stem from the structure of the United States as a liberal democracy (Rowland, 1997c). This structure places pressure on social institutions, such as the media, to achieve a potentially unattainable balance of individual rights with collective ones (Streeter, 1990). Indeed, this balance was the original promise in any policy area where the government stakes a claim based on the "public interest" (Held, 1970). Yet, as several authors have acknowledged, this promise is often met in the most narrow or basic ways (Goodin, 1996), or it may go unfulfilled (Rowland, 1997a; Streeter, 1990). In the 1920s, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover was convinced that negotiations between business and the government would ensure that the needs of the public would be met, while the individual economic rights of broadcasters were protected (Fausold, 1985). Such a viewpoint reveals that individual rights tend to be narrowly defined in terms of economic parameters, including property rights, copyright, and consumer sovereignty to "choose" (Rowland, 1997a). Thus, the market becomes the primary champion of these individual rights for both the industry and the consumer. What makes the market especially attractive for advocates is not only its protection of individual rights, but its perceived ability to serve the collective through the mechanism of supply and demand. It is here where we see the legacy of Adam Smith (1937/1776) and the invisible hand most strongly. When we understand the problem of the public interest to be a potentially irreconcilable tension between individual and collective rights, we can understand why some individuals view the market as a particularly attractive option. The market offers a "simple" and "natural" process that is free of problematic government intrusion and requires little effort in sifting through the various individual and public concerns about the role of media in society. As Hahnel (2002) bitingly suggests, "Markets are a decision to punt in the game of human economic relations, a no-confidence vote on the social capacities of the human species" (p. 100). How might the center sift through the viewpoints of thousands or even millions of individuals? Indeed, this is a formidable challenge for the center, and explains in part why the market seems to be the more "natural" solution. Yet, the ease of the market does not fully address the uneasiness of those who are concerned about its ability to balance individual and collective interests. The issues resulting from this balancing act have led the periphery to question the relevance of the "public interest" as regulatory language. There is a growing belief that the public interest is no balancing act at all. Economic interests dominate the public interest, allowing for only limited concessions to serve as a thin safety net to ensure that the media does not completely eschew its social responsibility (for policy arguments in this vein, see Hundt, 1996; Sunstein, 2000; Tristani, 1999). Some participants advocate for an expansive view of individual rights that extends beyond mere economic rights. The calls for media rights recognize that attention to economic rights ignores collective welfare. Rights discourses tend to focus on individuals; however, a vision of media rights, as described by those within the periphery, considers the location of the individual within a collective. It is in this spirit that Habermas (2001) asks: "Which comes first: the individual liberties of the members of the modern market society or the rights of democratic citizens to political participation?" (p. 767). He encourages us to remember in answering this question that "private and public autonomy require each other" (p. 767). A rights framework may allow us to consider this relationship. Furthermore, a move toward rights discourse may prove strategically beneficial for influencing the center. Schudson (1998) maintains that the rights-bearing citizen might have more applicability for our current civic situation than the rational, informed citizen, which connects more with the tensions of the public interest. Schudson explains, "It [a rights-regarding citizenship] automatically implies respect for the rights of others and the willingness to engage in public dispute according to public norms and a public language" (p. 309). While a right belongs to an individual person, as Schudson makes clear, considering and deliberating rights forces one to recognize her position within a larger collective. Through rights deliberation, decision makers and citizens alike might "internalize the perspectives of others and cast their appeals in terms others can share, not only to win support but also to conduct a public conversation" (Goodin, 1996, p. 341). Calls for media justice take this argument one step further by demanding direct attention to the collective, acknowledging those areas where marginalization and commercialization threaten democratic society. According to one respondent, the frame of justice is more reflective of the realities that many marginalized groups experience, than is a frame of public interest or rights. As she explains, Rights are what people who already have basic economic rights can say. In other words, people who don't have those rights�who never did have the right to good education, to not be stuck in jail�these people never had those rights anyway, so the language of rights does not work for them. And, similarly, public interest doesn't work. It's like, we don't even have food or whatever, or education, and you are going to talk to me about rights? My first amendment rights or whatever? What does that mean? But, of course, it's very easy to show a connection between being shown on TV as a criminal and being locked up in jail and all the money from the state going to building another jail and not a school. I mean it's not a difficult connection at all to make. It's just the way you speak about it, the language is so important in this, as you obviously know. And, it can turn people off if you use a kind of language of entitlement. It doesn't apply to them at all. Media justice is linked intimately with social justice, an argument that finds a home in the writings from many in critical cultural studies and political economy (see e.g., Bagdikian, 2000; Golding & Murdock, 1991; Hall, 1999; McChesney, 2003; Murdock, 1995; Schiller, 1996). While these observations may be provocative, what are their implications for the future of media policy? This question is considered forthwith. The Future of Public Interest in Policy For many of the respondents, a key remedy to resolving the tension between individual and collective interests is to expand the type and amount of public participation in the policy-making process. Yet, if we are going to seriously examine and possibly promote increased public participation in the policy process, we must consider how that participation will happen. Brown & Blevins (2005) state that a substantial part of the policy process is completed by the time the first public hearing is held (p. 12). Indeed, the public is asked to comment on already existing policy, not to contribute to the range of possible options. Therefore, public participation should be sought from the beginning of the policy process. Some may wonder why such participation is justified in the first place. From a basic level, the public is already rhetorically invoked by all of the major agents in the policy making process. The very connotation of the phrase public interest implies that the needs and desires of a public are considered. Yet, in some cases this appeal to the public may or may not be based on what the public actually articulates as its "interest." Indeed, this appeal to "the public" in words but not in deeds may help to explain some of the tensions identified in this report. Furthermore, citizen involvement would require that members of the public, beyond activists, have a stronger understanding of the media system. As such, widespread media literacy education is necessary, not only for children but for adults as well. Such education would provide a broader understanding of media operations and provide information to citizens about how they can voice their concerns to the various segments of the center. It would seem time, then, to develop ways to incorporate media literacy not only into elementary and secondary education, but also higher and continuing education. We must also find ways to reach adults who do not participate in a formal education system. While the desire to protect children is noble, policy must also consider the parents, guardians and role models for these children. Such a project would require the input and hard work of the brightest minds in research, industry and policy. Most importantly, the continuing struggle between the individual and the collective requires us to rethink the use and value of the public interest in media policy. It might be time to discard this term as a policy standard. This is a frightening proposition because, as many respondents have indicated, the absence of a public interest standard may allow media conglomerates to shirk even the most basic concessions. Yet, this fear is predicated upon the media system staying as it is�a largely commercial system with weak and almost nonexistent public media. The tensions cannot be resolved if we cling to the present media landscape. This environment allows a handful of large conglomerates to take advantage of public resources and receive elite privileges, such as subsidies and access to decision makers, while the benefits offered to the public are slowly eroded (Snider, 2005). McChesney (2004) expresses this idea: Criticizing media owners for their conduct in the hope of improving journalism is misguided; owners are simply trying to maximize returns for their investors. The solution to the problem of the media is to change the nature of the system so that it is no longer rational to produce what passes for journalism today. (p. 97) Part of this change requires a shift in discourse that will allow us to avoid the semantic struggle of the public interest. For over eighty years, the public interest has constructed a system that discursively frames the issues in terms of the individual against collective, economic against social welfare. If we cling to the public interest in name, it may be difficult to achieve its spirit. The researcher recommends a re-visioning of the U.S. media system that allows us to escape the problematic and unnecessary dichotomy between the individual and the collective. It is with substantial hesitation that this recommendation is made. However, it may be time to recognize that citizens' interest is not represented accurately by the public interest. The first step in re-visioning the media system requires that we change the language we use to formulate the media's social responsibility to the public. The public interest, as a discursive practice, contains embodied within it an unworkable compromise that privileges a view of the public as comprised of consumers rather than citizens. Public interest discourse contributes to a hegemonic market-based ideology that privileges economic rights, and precludes any discussion that alternative systems might be feasible and preferable for serving citizens' rights and achieving social justice. The argument here is not to eliminate the commercial media system; such a sweeping change is unlikely and undesirable. It is myopic to assert that everything produced by a commercial media system is "bad." One respondent who posts a media criticism blog said: I always look for the good stuff because people were so emphatically telling me that it wasn't there. Literally, I've had people say, "Oh I hear you write about the good stuff on TV, don't write much, do ya?" There is really good stuff out there, but if you sit there like a squid and don't look for it, and just stay put and watch what comes on, well then, yeah. The vegetative state is, you've arrived. But, if you are willing to look, there's phenomenal stuff. There is value in a commercial media system, yet a parallel, alternative system is required to serve the social welfare needs of democracy. Several respondents, with market and social welfare perspectives, advocated a refashioning of the existing structure of the system so that commercial entities using public resources pay for them. These funds can, in turn, be used to finance a viable and representative public media system. Policy makers may want to consider this option more seriously. A formal and centralized public media system, such as PBS or NPR, is not the only solution to creating a viable public media sphere. Funds can be devoted to developing community media, such as cable access channels, municipal or community wireless networks, and independent community websites, to name just a few options mentioned by respondents. This community-based system would provide a space for "everyday" citizens to become part of the media, developing what Henry Jenkins (2003) has lauded as a participatory "do-it-yourself" media culture. Media and telecommunications policy should consider this vision of the media system as a commons, offering specialized and shared spaces (Benkler, 2000). Such policies could be enacted under the broader framework of communication rights and media justice, as well as through a process that privileges public participation. This call for a re-visioned media system, predicated on a foundation of citizen rights and justice, requires additional research to ascertain the feasibility and practicality of some of these suggestions. The need for some of this research stems directly from the limitations of the present study. First, the present sample could benefit from increased diversity. Future studies may collect additional perspectives from those not represented here, and then engage in a comparative analysis. It would also be illuminating to expand the analysis to the broader public, including those who are not actively engaged in issues of media reform and policy. Such a study would involve time and resources that go beyond the capabilities of a single researcher. Various university research centers and private and public sector think tanks might consider this type of study and the benefits it could provide. Second, research needs to engage with decision makers in government and the industry, which is part of this researcher's larger project. This avenue of inquiry could examine the likelihood of legislative and regulatory acceptance of a system that incorporated an increased level of public participation and a policy foundation in media rights and justice. Encouraging increased public participation, rights and justice means little if such input is likely to be ignored or easily dismissed by legislators and regulators. As several scholars have noted, public input may be ignored if the center does not perceive its legitimacy (Holman, 2005). Yet, if Habermas (1998) is correct, the current mobilization of the periphery should exert some impact on future policy decisions. Third, research needs to consider the ways in which we might expand literacy education to adults. Furthermore, research needs to evaluate the effectiveness of media literacy initiatives. For example, a longitudinal study could examine the impact of media literacy education from youth into adulthood. Such studies might examine how media literacy education encourages individuals to participate in the process of policy-making as well as the active development of media products and content. Research in this area might identify ways that the FCC might better serve an educative function. A coalition of several hundred grassroots, regional and national organizations have developed and signed a "Media Bill of Rights," which asserts the rights of citizens to access an uninhibited marketplace of ideas ("Bill of Media Rights," 2005). According to the preamble of this bill, the "nation's policymakers favor media conglomerates' commercial interests over the public's Constitutional rights, placing America's democracy, culture, and economy at risk." Such a movement indicates that advocacy organizations and the citizens they represent have tired of an economically-informed interpretation of the public interest. In re-visioning the mediated public sphere, we must consider claims of rights and social justice that go well beyond the uneasy compromises that the last 80 years of public interest doctrine have produced. 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Washington, D.C.: Progress & Freedom Foundation. Tristani, G. (1999). Separate statement of Commissioner Gloria Tristani: In the matter of public interest obligations of TV Broadcast Licensees, Notice of Inquiry. June 3, 2004, from http://ftp.fcc.gov/Speeches/Tristani/Statements/stgt935.html van Cuilenberg, J., & McQuail, D. (2003). Media policy paradigm shifts: Towards a new communications policy paradigm. European Journal of Communication, 18(2), 181-207. Weiser, P. (2000). Promoting informed deliberation and a First Amendment doctrine for a digital age: Toward a new regulatory regime for broadcast regulation. In S. Chambers & A. Costain (Eds.), Deliberation, democracy, and the media (pp. 11-23). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 1 Based on a keyword search of the 128-page text of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, available online at http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/tcom1996.pdf, and of the amended text of the Communications Act of 1934, available online at http://www.fcc.gov/Reports/1934new.pdf. 2 Mobilized members of the public may include activists, from the grassroots to the national, lobbyists, and others who actively petition the government in media and telecommunications policy. This report will refer to these groups alternatively as activists, advocates and the periphery. This latter term follows Habermas (1998) and will be described shortly. 3 The researcher does not mean to imply that advocacy groups, such as the UCC, have not been active throughout history. The implication is that the movement has been recently energized and expanded (Costanza-Chock, 2005). 4 According to Habermas (1998), such influence is "characterized by a consciousness of crisis, a heightened public attention, an intensified search for solutions, in short, by problematization" (p. 357, emphasis original). 5 The author acknowledges that the individual/collective tensions of the public interest can be seen in its earliest applications to transportation (Rowland, 1997a). However, in the interest of space and relevance, the focus for this review is applications in media policy. 6 The authors' taxonomy of political and social welfare principles can be viewed as part of what this review is identifying as the collective dimension. 7 The names of these organizations will not be listed to protect the confidentiality of respondents. This is a somewhat small community of organizations, and listing the names of the groups could compromise individuals' identities. 8 Valid is used here in the sense described in the quote directly above it.
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The LUXBEAM LE4910H UV-405 light engine is designed specifically for Near UV wavelengths, and is the optimal starting point for a technology demonstrator or a prototype for an industrial DLP projector for Near UV-applications like Lithography, Rapid prototyping and UV Life science.
The LUXWARE control Software facilitates scrolling sequences that is very useful in e.g. lithography applications.

subset: commoncrawl


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The Leadership Team
Meet the people that are leading the Moovweb team.
Ajay Kapur, CEO & Founder
Ajay has been involved with mobile since 2002, when he left his job investing in startups to write apps for the first smartphones. The mobile companies he founded have created apps downloaded by tens of millions of users and have generated billions of page views. He grew up in SF Bay Area and earned an MBA from Stanford and bachelor's degrees in physics and CS from UC Berkeley.
Tony Russo, Chief Operating and Financial Officer
Tony has been building and managing technology companies for nearly 30 years. Prior to Moovweb, Tony was CFO at Efficient Frontier, a search, display and social campaign management solutions provider which reached nearly $100 million in revenue prior to its half billion dollar sale to Adobe. A California transplant, Tony grew up in Brooklyn. He holds a BA in Quantitative Studies from Johns Hopkins and MBA from Stanford.
Ishan Anand, Director of New Products
Ishan has been launching mobile products for the iPhone since the day it was released, and his work has been featured on TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and LifeHacker. Prior to Moovweb, Ishan worked at Digidesign and his expertise was in multi-threaded real-time systems programming for the computer music industry. Ishan holds dual-degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics from MIT, and is a Siebel Scholar.
Mitch Bishop, Chief Marketing Officer
Mitch is in charge of global marketing strategy and execution, which includes product marketing, lead generation and thought leadership initiatives. Prior to Moovweb, Mitch headed up marketing, the online store and community efforts at DotNetNuke, the world's leading open source WCMS for the Microsoft ecosystem. Mitch also led marketing for iRise, the world's leading software visualization company, where he helped grow revenue and the customer base more than tenfold. He has many years of marketing and sales experience building successful software businesses at Scopus, Sybase, Wind River Systems and Ingres. Mitch holds a B.S. in computer science from the University of Connecticut. He also has a long history in motor sports and sits on the governing council of the non-profit International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC) based in Watkins Glen, NY.
Hampton Catlin, Vice President of Technology
Hampton is the original creator of Wikipedia Mobile (m.wikipedia.org) and is also the creator of several other successful iPhone applications with over 10 million downloads. He is also the mastermind behind Moovweb's crazy new technologies to mobilize the web. Furthermore, he is the inventor of Sass, the world's first CSS pre-processor, and the Haml markup language.
Tarun Desikan, Vice President of Product
Tarun is responsible for the development and execution of Moovweb's product vision. Before joining Moovweb, Tarun was a strategy consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, working with Fortune 500 High Tech and Telecom clients on their business strategies. Tarun was also an early employee at Infinera (Nasdaq: INFN) where he was part of the technology team that built the world's first photonic integrated circuits. He has a Masters in EE and an MBA from Stanford.
Richard Lo, Chief Revenue Officer
Richard brings 25 years of operating experience in early stage, venture-backed companies, as well as a number of the technology industry's largest organizations. Prior to joining Moovweb, Richard led sales and business development for NetBase Solutions and ran enterprise sales at i365, a Seagate company. He joined i365 through the company's acquisition of MetaLINCS, where he was the vice president of field operations. Richard was also vice president of worldwide sales for Trigo Technologies, the leader in product information management. Trigo was acquired by IBM in 2004 and became the foundation for IBM's very successful and fast growing Master Data Management software business. Richard also held executive management positions at several innovative companies including Verity (IPO in 1995) and Brightware (acquired by Firepond). Richard holds a B.S.E.E. with honors from the University of the Pacific and was captain of the Collegiate Crew team.
Laurent Meynier, Vice President of Business Development
Laurent is responsible for business development & fostering our partner ecosystem. Prior to Moovweb, Laurent was a founding member of several startups including a comparison shopping engine, a private incubator and the CEO/Founder of Reveal Technology and Olliance. Laurent was also at Foundation Capital and an early employee at WR Hambrecht+Co, where he was responsible for the Open Source practice. He has a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the UC Berkeley and an MBA from Stanford.
Phil Mueller, Vice President of Customer Success
Phil is responsible for leading the Moovweb services team. Phil is a veteran of four start-ups, including three cloud based SaaS companies in the B2B enterprise space. Having worked at Responsys for the largest companies in the world as both an individual contributor and executive leader, Phil brings a vast amount of client services experience to Moovweb, including customer success, technical execution and team building.


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Click here to download the Free The Children app. Now available for free on your BlackBerry smartphone.After installation, please note:1. Click the 'Free The Children' icon on your home screen. *The icon may appear in the "Downloads" folder.2. The latest content will automatically be delivered to your BlackBerry.Search the BlackBerry App World Store for
We Day Mobile AppPlease direct any support requests to our Tech Support team via email at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Focus Areas:Join Our Mailing List: |
GenesisOver the last two decades, a number of civil society organisations (CSOs) in India have started engaging substantively with budget analysis and advocacy efforts for improving transparency, participation and accountability in governance. While some of these CSOs have adopted the lens of specific disadvantaged sections of population (like, children, dalits or adivasis), some organisations have focused primarily on specific sectors (like, health, education or decentralization). Some of these CSOs have also adopted budget analysis and advocacy as a tool for strengthening their existing interventions for improvements in public policies and processes in a number of sectors. Civil society budget work in India was initiated by Developing Initiatives for Social and Human Action (DISHA), a people-centred organisation based in Gujarat, which used budget analysis and advocacy as a tool to assess the priority accorded to the tribal and indigenous population in the State Budgets of Gujarat. In the 1990s, a few other CSOs across different parts of the country started incorporating budget analysis and advocacy as a tool for strengthening their existing interventions, viz. Centre for Budget and Policy Studies (in Karnataka), Vidhayak Sansad (in Maharashtra) and Social Watch - Tamil Nadu (in Tamil Nadu). In the subsequent decade, a sizable number of CSOs have incorporated budget analysis and advocacy efforts as one of their priority areas of work, while a few new CSOs have been established primarily to focus on government budgets from the perspective of poor and disadvantaged sections of population. |
Budget TrackThis special issue of Budget Track focusses on the key concerns relating to Taxation in India. In keeping with this, we have an interesting mix of contributions that look at some critical aspects such as expanding the fiscal space through taxation, tax havens, tax exemptions in India and more People's Budget InitiativeA civil society coalition, which campaigns for the inclusion of people's movements, grassroots organisations and national and international NGOs in the policy processes that determine the priorities underlying government budgets in India. |


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This is our third night here at the hotel and while showering, the shower chair my husband was sitting on broke off of the wall. One of the screws that had been holding it to the wall tore a 3 inch long gash in his back. He's lucky he didn't need stitches and we came with a well prepared first... More
- Official Description (provided by the hotel):
- Located in the heart of Paris near the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides Hotel, Le Tourville Hotel with its 30 newly refurbished rooms (in June 2012) welcomes you in a cosy and Néo-Classic atmosphere. ... more less
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I wanted to try incorporating a midriff cut out in my dress. I finally got to it this week and I love the result! I think the key hole is small enough to be fun to wear but not overly revealing or embarrassing. I wanted to create a piece that's unique but not trashy:p
It might be because I am making a wedding dress that I chose white for one of these dresses. I think this dress would be perfect for an engagement photos, or as a gateway dress!
I modified the pattern I drafted for sweet heart cut out dress which I made previously. The sleeves and top back panel are modification of the Tara pattern from BurdaStyle. I think these flatter sleeves are super cute and fairy like. I adjusted the length of the sleeves so it sits better with the front top panel.
Read more here
cotton, zipper
Sep 2, 2011, 04.42 AMby jwick5
So cute. I love the movement in the sleeves. The cut-out looks awesome. I looks perfect for a very fancy picnic- one where you most definitely do not actually sit on the ground.
Sep 1, 2011, 05.27 PMby tirrs
so lovely
Aug 31, 2011, 10.27 PMby nouvellegamine
this is spectacular. the fabric, the pattern, everything. great job!
Aug 30, 2011, 09.25 PMby Tata O
perfect dress!!!
Aug 29, 2011, 09.33 PMby susanne2011
supercute! you did an awesome job!
Aug 29, 2011, 03.49 PMby suribabe
Sweet, cute. I love the high waist and the sleeves.
Aug 29, 2011, 02.47 PMby magdamagda
sweet and spicy!
Aug 29, 2011, 01.32 PMby max
This is just too CUTE!!!
Aug 29, 2011, 10.48 AMby ilksen bahşi
very nice and I think , you look like good angel.
Aug 29, 2011, 10.16 AMby mollykatherine
so pretty and angelic!
Aug 29, 2011, 09.44 AMby Hugs-and-Kisses
I think this dress is beautiful! The idea to incorporate a cut out feature, but in the midrif, is unique! I hope you don't mind if I utilise this concept within some of my future projects :D xxx
Aug 29, 2011, 11.17 PMby Vivat Veritas
not at all! i'd love to see your version!! xx
Aug 29, 2011, 07.54 AMby weatherwitch
this is so lovely and it looks amazing on you!
Aug 29, 2011, 07.35 AMby Dee Durrant
Super cute – Love the flutter sleeves and the cut out.
Aug 29, 2011, 07.16 AMby poppykettle
Very pretty – I adore fluttery sleeves!
Aug 29, 2011, 06.24 AMby toupinette
gorgeous!!!!!!!!!!!!! wow!
Aug 29, 2011, 03.29 AMby calicocouture
Very beautiful and airy feeling! The cutout is tastefully done and adds interest. I love the fluttery sleeves.
Aug 29, 2011, 02.35 AMby tessi
VERY pretty and you did a lovely job!
Retro Pattern
Dive back into 1956 with this stylish two in one pant suit pattern!
Member Project of the Week
Get inspired by printed floral bustier dress with flounce! It is so summery.
Editors' Pick
The style is cool and sporty beach wear that can be worn anywhere!
Pattern of the Week
This pencil skirt is perfect for everyday wear! We love it in floral.
Editors' Pick
This collection will make you shine in front of the camera!


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Store > TCHURBOR
TCHURBOR 0 remaining Urban Ethnic - Mask Dance Printed Hand-Dye - Persimmon/GoldUS $8.75
Rust, Auburn, Copper, Sunset Orange, Black, Persimmon, Gold MetallicIndulge your color passion and feel the thrill of the exotic at the same time with this wonderful hand-dye filled with jeweled colors and lively tribal designs. These undulating diamond stripes surrounded by a fascinating mask pattern and etched with glimmering gold metallic will definitely take you on a quilting adventure! Hand-dye with overprint and gold metallic, masks are about 2", from the 'Urban Ethnic' collection by Textile Creations.
Quantity: yardsMinimum 0.5 yard;increments of 0.25 yard


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Control the Negative!
The Negative
If you are in our gym at any point in time, you will often here me yelling, "control the negative" again…and again…and again thoughout a typical training session. Typically this session involves 8-10 young males that are 14-17 years of age. Why do I yell this? Because the lowering or "negative" (eccentric to you Mr. Fancypants) portion of the lift is the most crucial component, if you are interested in actually getting bigger and stronger. If you are concerned with just "completing a lift" then dive bomb, bounce, twist, and squirm away in order to achieve "greatness."
Legendary strength pioneer Arthur Jones, the godfather of HIT and founder of Nautilus, had a saying, "it's not how much weight you can lift, but how much weight you can lower." Think about that for a second. Let it marinate. How many times do you see someone in the gym "complete a lift" by concentrically lifting the weight, with little or no concern for the negative? Often times, sadly, this load was far too heavy for this individual. I am sure you see this phenomenon all the time! Now how many times have you seen someone lift a weight, under control, that is "too heavy"? Sure, this person may hit muscular failure, but at least he is in control of the weight!
Often times, the load used by most gym goers is far too heavy, and is being lifted in an unsafe manner that is certain to cause undue strain on the connective tissue surrounding the various joints on his body. You may be able to get away with that when you are 19, but if you plan on lifting for life, try doing that in your 30's and 40's…not fun! Better yet, spare yourself the joint pain when you are older, and lift with proper form NOW. Here are some tips, along with some reasons why you should emphasize the negative in training.
1.) Initial movement. I see this a lot with younger clients, but many people have no idea how to lower a weight. They will often spastically "drop" the weight, realize what they are doing, and then slow it down. You can hear the weight plates moving when this is occurring on a barbell exercise. You should be resisting the load as you lower it. Hence the term resistance training. Squeeze it down, and then unleash the gates of hell as you begin to press it back up.
2.) Rep speed. We have all read about the magical "4 second negative" in training. I have never seen anyone use a full 4 second negative, not even HIT guys. Try counting to 3 in your head as you lower the resistance smoothly. This usually amounts to about a full 2 second descent. Don't look like an elevator stopping at 3 different floors as you count to 3. Also, do not count to 3 at the top, and then plummet to the bottom. Be smart, and lower the resistance evenly throughout a full range of motion. Check out the video below of pro bodybuilder Shawn Bellon squatting 675x3 with only a belt and knee wraps. Do you think he is going to plummet to the ground faster than a meteor falling from the sky with 700 lbs on his back? Hell no! If it is good enough for a pro bodybuilder, it is good enough for you!
3.) Training Efficiency. When you perform proper repetitions that emphasize the negative, you have to perform far less work to induce size and strength gains, because the QUALITY of the set is much higher. Clients are often amazed at how sore they get from 1-2 sets of properly performed strength training with accentuated negatives. Go ahead and perform 4-5 sets of 10 with essentially concentric only reps, but I would hardly say that this is the most efficient, safe, and effective way to train.
4.) Joint Health. It is a known fact that the eccentric portion of the lift improves tendon strength. We know that when we train using a proper negative, we can't use as much weight. We also know that training in this fashion will eliminate ballistic, "bouncing" movements at the bottom of the lift, preventing unnecessary joint strain. Stronger tendons and joints that feel better? Count me in!
5.) Increased Type II muscle fiber recruitment. Contrary to popular belief, by slowing down the negative you will actually recruit and develop MORE fast twitch muscle fiber than you would without emphasizing the negative. Without going to in depth into the physiology of this, you are capable of producing more force eccentrically than you are concentrically (the "lifting" portion). If you only focus on speed of movement through the concentric portion, you are certainly using your Type IIs, but you are not developing them optimally. By focusing on the negative, and in some cases, performing negative only repetitions, you will maximize the development of your type II muscle fibers, which will in turn allow you to produce more force concentrically.
To learn more about this phenomenon, read up on the Henneman Size Principle.
Lastly, it just looks cooler when you control a heavy weight and dominate it. Slow down your negatives, get stronger, and start growing!
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Wordly Wise, Book 6, Grade 9-Teacher's KeyEducators Publishing Service / 1998 / Paperback
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Product DescriptionThis is the Teacher's Key for Wordly Wise Book 6. Reducedstudent pages have the correct answers filled in with manuscript handwriting. There are four student pages to every Teacher's Key page.
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