The Line Between Reporting the News and Promoting the Product

[Note: If I sound a little peevish here, it's because I'm getting into subjects that tend to set me off. Take that into consideration as you read and just discount the excesses. Thanks.]

I took a picture of this eye-catching LA Times ad waiting at LAX for our flight north. (You can double click it to enlarge.) It outlines some of the key flaws of the iPhone. I don't have an iPhone, but I'm one of those Mac users who seem overly attached to their machines. Truly, I never thought I'd have a relationship with my computer, but if it got run over today, I'd go out and buy a new one tomorrow. Even with all the snow leopard trouble I had.

But not being open source and the way they control iTunes are two of the troubling aspects that remind me that Apple is a big for-profit company. Even if they do make much more user friendly machines, they still care about my money more than they care about me. But I was curious about who was suggesting they'd fix these things. So I snapped this picture as J was saying, "Quick, they're boarding" and forgot about it.

Until yesterday morning when NPR had a segment on the Droid campaign. (You can read and/or listen at the link.)

When regular listeners to NPR, not just right wing talk show bullies, characterize NPR as being liberal, I bristle. On social issues they may lean a bit left, but on the issue of the economy, they are thumpingly pro-business and pro-market. Yes, they talk about environmental challenges and they mention labor now and then, but their news shows are heavy with promotional pieces for movies, books, television shows, new techie gadgets, etc. It seems like half their programing is based on calls they get from agents trying to book their clients. Going out and gathering real news takes more work and money. And it's much harder to do an honest negative review when the person you are reviewing is right there with you.

And they tend not to look too closely behind the curtains of corporate America unless someone else has already pulled them back. They've even added business shows like Market Place that implicitly buy into our national infatuation with making money.

Mind you, I think we need to have programs on business and the market. But not ones that echo and promote them uncritically. Rather shows that analyze not just individual businesses, but the whole economy and our assumptions about it. They've done shows that question why regulators missed the then impending economic crisis. Why did NPR miss it?

Schools too should be teaching about business and how corporations are structured and which companies own which other companies and how they manipulate images and emotions to get people to buy, buy, buy. We need to understand, as a culture the conditions under which the market makes important contributions and the conditions which require government oversight and regulation.

But NPR tends to cheerlead more than they do serious critical challenges of our economic assumptions. Listening to Democracy Now, Media Matters, and such programs gives you a sense of how anemic NPR's business coverage is. As I've said in other posts, Richard Nixon, in today's political climate in the US, would make most current congressional Democrats look downright conservative.

NPR, compared to most other mainstream sources of news today, also looks 'liberal' in comparison. But as the Nixon example points out, the political playing field has shifted waaaay over to the right since the election of Reagan; NPR is part of the shift. When All Things Considered began in the early 70s it was a completely new, somewhat irreverent news show. Now they are too comfortable in their mold and boringly predictable and repetitive, with interchangeable broadcasters (most having one of four or five patterns of speech,) and with only rare surprises.

Clearly the weaning off of government funding which forced NPR to seek corporate funding plays a big role here. They used to only say things like "Sponsored by XYZ Corporation" but now they have mini- commercials that tell you about new products and services they offer. It is no longer commercial-free radio, despite the semantic games they play about those words. I also acknowledge that a government financed network does raise other issues. But commercial radio based on advertising, as NPR has also become, has its own set of problems - not the least of which is how to report the news without jeopardizing your funding.

And this piece on Google, Motorola and Verizon's challenge to the iPhone seemed to gloss over one of the major issues about cell phone service - the cost. NPR's tech guru, Mario Alexander tells us it's all about applications.

Applications on mobile devices is really the new sweet spot, so these companies are really going to start competing on who is having the most relevant applications, the easiest to use applications, and the best applications that meet users needs. And so I don't think it's necessarily just about the device. The device is a big deal, but I think it's more about the applications and what you can do with the device.

What about competing on cost and plan simplicity? OK, I think some of the things they talked about were potentially important. Rene Montagne asks why Google is getting into the phone business and Mario says that's all about search.

Google wants to own the search business and the mobile device is becoming more useable for searching for information.

You're finding that more and more people are going to their mobile devices versus going to their computer to find relevant information that they need while on the go. So they want to dominate the mobile market like they've dominated in the desktop market.

But what's main issue?

So the bottom line is we're going to have more choice. You have the iPhone store, the Microsoft place for applications, RIM has a store, Palm has a store. It's going to be a very interesting fall and certainly an interesting 2010.

Choice of what? Not good, inexpensive plans. Montagne then gets close to the important question:

MONTAGNE: And if - what - you just need a phone?

(Soundbite of laughter)

MONTAGNE: I guess they're out there, right?

(Soundbite of laughter)

MONTAGNE: So...

Mr. ALEXANDER: Just to make calls.

MONTAGNE: Well, you know, any tips on how one decides?

In the end Alexander says:

I think it's going to come down to really three things: simplicity with style, useful features, and then the applications that make a difference in your life.

For me, the glaring issue about cell phones is how people in the US have relatively little choice about cost. Sure, there are lots of choices in plans, but all those plans mean a fairly hefty minimum payment and they are all designed to keep adding minutes to your phone experience (just time the voice mail features and add up the all the extra seconds people take waiting for those recordings and then multiply them times the hundreds of millions of calls made every day. There's a reason why they don't say "Leave message now.") There are precious few choices for just a phone with low cost minutes where I can easily keep the costs pretty low. For example this March 2009 LA Times article on a study of cell phone usage found:

When you do the math, you find the average cellphone customer actually pays more than $3 per minute, according to a report being issued this week by the Utility Consumers' Action Network, a San Diego consumer advocacy group.

In Thailand I could buy a relatively cheap prepaid card and call at rates that were, compared to US rates, very reasonable. (Though from 2008 to 2009 it was clear the Thai phone companies are watching how the US companies have made phones into money conduits from customers to companies.) When I ran out of time, I could 'fill up' at one of the ubiquitous phone shops. But in the US, that kind of plan is so expensive per minute that it 'makes sense' to 'choose' packaged monthly plans that have innumerable hidden traps to siphon your money.

These are hard economic times and they're promoting the $100/month product that everyone needs to have that didn't even exist 20 years ago.

But NPR didn't even mention cost competition. The marketing and cost, I guess, is a given and not a factor in the choice consumers have. Why didn't the whole issue of cost and how phones plans are designed come up in this piece? Because this was pretty much a fluff piece promoting how cool phones are. Phones are one of the biggest rackets to transfer money from consumers to the large corporations going on in the US today.