---BREAKAWAY CIVILIZATION ---ALTERNATIVE HISTORY---NEW BUSINESS MODELS--- ROCK & ROLL 'S STRANGE BEGINNINGS---SERIAL KILLERS---YEA AND THAT BAD WORD "CONSPIRACY"--- AMERICANS DON'T EXPLORE ANYTHING ANYMORE.WE JUST CONSUME AND DIE.---
Friday, February 8, 2013
Wi-Fi “as free as air”—the totally false story that refuses to die Journalism goes wrong and just keeps getting worse.
again ...get your info from as many different sites as U can :o ...except the "main stream" .....over & over & over ... "they" R failing us ! ALL of us.
Wi-Fi “as free as air”—the totally false story that refuses to die
Journalism goes wrong and just keeps getting worse.
Yesterday, a representative from Current TV's Viewpoint show
contacted some people at Condé Nast, the owner of Ars Technica. Current
TV was preparing a story about "the FCC’s proposal to create free
Internet access with the creation of 'super Wi-Fi' networks across the
country," this person said, and the show needed a tech journalist to
talk about it on the air. Uh-oh.
If you read Ars or
follow wireless tech, you already know what goes wrong in this
anecdote. Yes, this week saw a story become a national sensation—free
Wi-Fi for everyone! A virtual Oprah Winfrey would descend from on high
and bestow free Internet connections onto us all, eliminating the need
for pricey home Internet service and cell phone bills forever.
The frenzy began Monday morning when the Washington Post reported
that "the federal government wants to create super Wi-Fi networks
across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could
use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone
bill every month." Best of all, network access would be free. "If all
goes as planned, free access to the Web would be available in just about
every metropolitan area and in many rural areas," the Post reported. The clear implication: this was a bold—and entirely brand-new—plan.
Unfortunately, the piece was basically nonsense. What had really happened was in fact unbelievably boring: the Post simply
observed an incremental development in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
(NPRM) at the Federal Communications Commission over the issue of
incentive auctions that might free up some additional unlicensed
spectrum for so-called "White Space Devices" (read our explainer)
operating in and around the current over-the-air TV bands. (I told you
it was boring; in addition, the basic debate over White Space Devices
was actually settled in 2008.)
From this thin material, which basically consisted of Internet
service providers and tech companies sniping at each other in long legal
documents, with no decisions being made by anyone and no new proposals
of anything, the Post then reported—on the front page, above the fold of the country's eighth-most highly circulated newspaper—that the FCC plan could lead to free Internet for most US residents.
While the long-running White Spaces debate might improve Internet
access in the US, it will absolutely not lead to free Internet for
everyone. And yet the idea that FREE WIRELESS INTERNET might soon
blanket the country shambles on, zombie-like.
(Not) setting things right
After the Post piece, the story spread like wildfire, repeated in both mainstream media and tech publications. One of my favorite examples
said, "The Federal Communications Commission wants to make the Internet
as pervasive and free as air" with a nationwide Wi-Fi network "so
expansive, fast, and strong that everyone could make VoIP calls and surf
the Internet for free."
It got a little better when sensible people joined the fray. Ars took
a tough line against the original report, but we were hardly alone. Dan Frommer quickly debunked the myth. So did Paul Waldman of The American Prospect, Karl Bode of DSLReports, and Jerry Brito of the Technology Liberation Front. Sam Gustin of Time later weighed in with a wrap-up of the whole mess, as did TechDirt. Former Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen and Andrew Sullivan of the noted political blog The Dish also helped spread the word that this was a myth.
Yet three days later, the story lives. The Post wrote a "follow-up" article
but never corrected its original account. A number of news sites did
make prominent corrections to their original stories; many others didn't
bother, and their pieces still link back to the original Post
article. The story threatens to keep spreading as PR firms try to
promote their client's services with press releases touting the FCC's
free Wi-Fi plan (example).
And as I noted at the beginning of this article, Current TV was
preparing a story that would reiterate the FCC's plan to blanket the
country in free Wi-Fi more than 48 hours after the "new" idea had been
whacked with the Shovel of Reality.
Since Current TV was looking for a reporter to talk about the great
free Wi-Fi on the air, I said I would do it. But when I told them in
advance that there is no new free Wi-Fi plan, they killed the segment
before we could do an interview. (Hilariously enough, Current TV's own
website had already reported Tuesday that
"The FCC Really Has No Free Wi-Fi Plan," but I guess the TV producers
on staff hadn't seen that.) I don't blame the producers for passing on
the story, of course—we do it at Ars all the time when something isn't
what it first seemed. But an opportunity to set the record straight was
lost.
The end result? The story is still out there. Three days after anyone
who knew what they were talking about debunked the free Wi-Fi myth,
three days after the Post was notified of its mistake, the false story is still published on the Post website and many other sites as if it were true all along. Here's a sampling of articles (emphasis on sampling) that remain online in more or less their original, incorrect form:
Business Insider: Telecom Corporations Are Trying To Stop The Government From Offering Free 'Super Wi-Fi'
Daily Caller: FCC wants free Wi-Fi for all
(This one has a tiny update at the end noting that the "veracity of the
original story by The Washington Post is now being disputed by industry
experts," with a link to a new story. That's textbook "false balance.")
Motherboard: The FCC Wants to Blanket the Country in Free Wi-Fi (Update) (This is another one with an update at the end, which only indirectly suggests the story might not be entirely true).
The FCC process underlying all these stories is actually quite
complicated. A simple way of explaining it is that the Commission is
preparing an incentive auction in which TV broadcasters would give up
some of their long-held airwaves in the 600MHz band. Some of these
airwaves could be sold to private interests, and others could be made
"unlicensed," meaning they could be used similarly to today's Wi-Fi
services but cover larger geographic areas because of their lower
frequencies. This would add some airwaves to the "White Spaces"
movement, which uses empty TV broadcast channels to provide Internet
access, sometimes for free, sometimes for pay.
Municipalities could use the extra airwaves to provide network
services, or commercial interests could use them to build out
networks—unlicensed spectrum can be used by anyone. But White Spaces has
already been around for several years, and there's little reason to
expect that any new auction will lead to an explosion in use along the
lines predicted by the original Post story. It's not even clear
when the auction might be held. The only recent development was the FCC
taking comments from tech companies.
A difficult debunking
Among the most troubling questions from this episode is why the
Internet's ability to spread information at gigabit speed didn't result
in the story being killed.
I became involved in this story in a way I didn't expect. After
posting my own debunking Monday night, I tried to spread my story and
the stories from fellow debunkers to turn the tide against the
inexorable spread of this free Wi-Fi myth. It didn't work.
I ended up talking to the Post reporter on the phone and e-mailing with the Post's ombudsman. The ombudsman told me that the FCC confirmed to the Post that
the "free Wi-Fi" story was correct, which is odd, because I also talked
to people at the FCC who said the exact opposite. Similarly, a TechCrunch reporter wrote that "my contact at the FCC told me that there was no such plan" as the one reported by the Post.
The Post reporter was genuinely nice and seemed eager to
correct the record, but the execution was lacking. She followed up with a
more realistic piece titled "Five things to know about 'free' public Wi-Fi."
It explains some of the realities of the situation, such as the fact
that the FCC won't be building any networks itself and that whatever
networks are built won't necessarily be used to provide free Internet
access.
The Post's follow-up story was all well and good, but the
original story was never corrected or retracted. (The followup said the
original "sparked a lot of questions from readers," but didn't reveal
that it was flat-out wrong.) In addition to getting the front-page
treatment, the initial Post story was coupled with a cringe-inducing video
titled "FCC offers path to free Internet access." A host begins the
spot by asking, "What if Wi-Fi didn't come from a router in your living
room but instead from powerful TV antennas? And better yet, what if you
didn't have to pay for it? That possibility could become a reality
across the US thanks to a new proposal by the Federal Communications
Commission." (Have I made it clear that the proposal is not new and never required "free access," either?)
FCC
Chairman Julius Genachowski. No, this man is not going to replace your
home Internet and cell phone connection with free Wi-Fi.
The Post reporter went on NPR
Tuesday, spreading the free Wi-Fi myth. After listening to the piece, I
contacted NPR to let them know they had it wrong. I never heard back.
Just like the Post, NPR didn't correct its first story. And just like the Post again, NPR made things more confusing by writing a follow-up
titled "Viral story about free Wi-Fi spotlights mostly hidden policy
war." (Money quote: "Basically, there is no new FCC plan that will in
the relatively near future lead to an explosion of free Wi-Fi.")
Look, I've been a journalist more than half my life. I spent years
writing for newspapers—I know how this works. A journalist gets a story
completely wrong and doesn't want to believe it. Instead of correcting
the original story, a "follow-up" gets written to give the appearance
that no correction is needed—the issue just needs to be explained in
further detail. The real purpose is to avoid correcting the record while
implying that the original story wasn't wrong.
What should the Post have done to set things right? The best
example comes from a Mashable writer named Alex Fitzpatrick. He
initially wrote a story repeating the Post's account, titled "Government Wants to Create Free Public 'Super Wi-Fi.'" When he realized his mistake—an honest one that many others made after reading the Post article—he wrote a follow-up titled "The Government Is Not Building a National Wi-Fi Network."
The piece ended with the words "Mashable apologizes for any confusion
created by our earlier reporting on the subject" and the original piece
was updated to say that "The government is not building national Wi-Fi
networks. Mashable regrets the error."
It doesn't get any more clear than that. Fitzpatrick called it
"a learning experience for a young reporter," an honorable way of
saying that when you get it wrong, it's your responsibility to make it
right.
If only the country's eighth-largest newspaper followed the same code.
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