Despite Reports, TIME Still Not Advocating Internet Driver’s Licenses

Michael, thanks for mentioning this. I appreciate it. I’d like to see your swamp team and hers cross-link and collaborate on stories (have said so many times). Barbara took a lot of heat in the first post from commenters, but “Kiviat provided caveats”. She had doubts about this idea and made them clear yet still got rants about we-need-unlimited-net-anonymity.

I’d missed this little controversy. Glad to know it’s not true, buy why is it not true “of course?” I’d love an explanation of that (perhaps it’s so obviously odious that Time wouldn’t do it?)

Speaking of Internet censorship, here’s some interesting news:
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011302908.html
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Good to see Google doing this but it doesn’t seem like it’s for the right reasons.

Would one have to pass a rigorous competency exam to get said license? If so, who at Time can I contact to support such a proposal? Imagine an internet where forwards of forwards of forwards and text written in all caps is an explicit offense that is punishable by law. Oh the wonder that would be.

MS: There is a legitimate intellectual debate regarding anonymity on the internet. Some people believe that (to the extent it exists now), anonymity should remain for internet activity. Others believe that irresponsible online behavior poses sufficient social hazards that a more formal method of tracking users and machines should be created.

Rather than joining the debate in good faith and arguing a position, you have attempted to misrepresent the claims of one side by shouting “conspiracy theorists!” at the top of your lungs.

Sadly, neither you nor anyone else at Time has any interest in challenging the widespread acceptance by many Americans, including Republicans at the highest levels of government, that warnings regarding the Earth’s climate system, there is a massive, global conspiracy being perpetuated by many of the smartest and most renowned scientists on the planet.

That’s right. According to MS, it is a legitimate to believe that entire scientific departments at our most respected academic institutions are actively attempting to mislead the world and are creating a phony hysteria apparently in exchange for an undefined and unproven financial windfall to be realized when the world shifts to an unnecessary green energy economy.

But those who express concerns about a potential policy, that has admittedly been discussed favorably at Time.com, must be banished to the Sphere of Deviance. (Ha! Ha! Stupid tin-foil-hat wearers!)

…Kathy, I don’t know if MS is being snarcastic or dead serious about “of course”. Barbara Kiviat reported the idea but the story went viral. I suspect many outside bloggers / commenters misread it because she didn’t advocate the idea: she had doubts.

Mr. Scherer, please tell us more about this “fun conspiracy”:

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/the-ceremony-of-innocence/

“must be banished to the Sphere of Deviance”
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You know what?
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It’s really great to see more of Jay Rosen’s language (link to Rosen’s piece “Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press “) pop up in response to pro journos’ rants.

1.) The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn’t, but they think so.) Hallin: “This is the region of electoral contests and legislative debates, of issues recognized as such by the major established actors of the American political process.”
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Here the two-party system reigns, and the news agenda is what the people in power are likely to have on their agenda. Perhaps the purest expression of this sphere is Washington Week on PBS, where journalists discuss what the two-party system defines as “the issues.” Objectivity and balance are “the supreme journalistic virtues” for the panelists on Washington Week because when there is legitimate debate it’s hard to know where the truth lies. There are risks in saying that truth lies with one faction in the debate, as against another— even when it does. He said, she said journalism is like the bad seed of this sphere, but also a logical outcome of it.
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2. ) The sphere of consensus is the “motherhood and apple pie” of politics, the things on which everyone is thought to agree. Propositions that are seen as uncontroversial to the point of boring, true to the point of self-evident, or so widely-held that they’re almost universal lie within this sphere. Here, Hallin writes, “journalists do not feel compelled either to present opposing views or to remain disinterested observers.” (Which means that anyone whose basic views lie outside the sphere of consensus will experience the press not just as biased but savagely so.)
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Consensus in American politics begins, of course, with the United States Constitution, but it includes other propositions too, like “Lincoln was a great president,” and “it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can succeed in America.” Whereas journalists equate ideology with the clash of programs and parties in the debate sphere, academics know that the consensus or background sphere is almost pure ideology: the American creed.
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3.) In the sphere of deviance we find “political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.” As in the sphere of consensus, neutrality isn’t the watchword here; journalists maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. The press “plays the role of exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda” the deviant view, says Hallin. It “marks out and defends the limits of acceptable political conduct.”
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Anyone whose views lie within the sphere of deviance—as defined by journalists—will experience the press as an opponent in the struggle for recognition. If you don’t think separation of church and state is such a good idea; if you do think a single payer system is the way to go; if you dissent from the “lockstep behavior of both major American political parties when it comes to Israel” (Glenn Greenwald) chances are you will never find your views reflected in the news. It’s not that there’s a one-sided debate; there’s no debate.

I’ll bet Michael Scherer finds the fact that his posts are being littered with Rosen really irritating.

…please tell us more about how much you’re paying TIME to advertise your blog here.

Really, enough with the blog-whoring.

I totally agree that there is a real, rational debate here. Not trying to dismiss it. I am dismissing the TIME magazine role as a supporter of one side or the other. That is the conspiracy.

Thank you so much for this clarifying response to critical commentary, Michael Scherer.

And using “password” as a password should be considered criminal negligence.

Since I consider this another Michael Sherer tabloid posting. I’ll expose this little bit of Democrat PORK which recently passed in the Democrat controlled House.
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http://fxn.ws/bENrAd
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Simply, I just ask why?