NPR: Hype and Paranoia

What was once a small, rather silly rant about NPR's linking policy on their web site has bloomed into a full blown tech news story. I'm not going to bother rehashing what everyone else has done an admirable job of covering already. But I will offer a personal perspective, as someone who once worked inside public radio.

Of all the quotes from NPR's ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin in the Wired article, this one was all to familiar:

Still, NPR will continue to require that every site -- whether it's commercial or not, advocates a position or doesn't -- still ask permission. Why? "Because we want to keep track of who's doing it -- so says our law department."

Ahhh yes, the law department. Why would NPR and their lawyers be so overly protective of themselves as to instate a silly hyperlinking policy? Paranoia.

See, here's the deal. People who are employed in top tier positions for public radio and television often suffer from a debilitating fear of stepping on people's toes. The reason? Public broadcasting has always been a whipping post for moralists, lawmakers, conservative journalists, and politicians. It being a public organization, the recipient of public tax money, politics plays an unnatural roll in the day to day operations of the networks.

Public broadcasting's very existence comes into question every single time a local, state, or federal government budget comes up for renewal. Depending on the administration in office, and the efforts of public broadcasting lobbyists, the line item for support of public broadcasting is always a hair away from being obliterated. Instead of wiping out their monetary support, tax money has steadily declined year after year, forcing public broadcasters to ramp up their fundraising efforts to levels that borderline on the obscene, and downright tacky.

In their effort to raise additional funding, public broadcasters have gently fallen into the groove of American corporate branding, gladly accepting money from private businesses. For the most part, the marriage has been successful, and non intrusive. But NPR, like most public broadcasters, has to be very, very careful who they chose to accept advertising (er, *cough*, underwriting) revenue from to avoid political conflict.

But all control is lost on the web, where hyperlinking ties together people and web sites the world over. A radical, left-wing political group could link to an NPR news story just as easily as a radical, right-wing political group. If a non-web savvy politician or moral watchdog were to find a web site created by an "offensive" group linking to NPR content, they could assume the groups have a relationship of some kind. And that causes trouble.

Asked if a link from someone's noncommercial homepage would bother the company, Dvorkin said: "It depends on your homepage -- what if you're an advocate for left-handed socialist diabetics? We wouldn't want to give support to advocacy groups."

So NPR's legal department cranks out a linking form for webmasters to receive permission before linking to NPR's online content.

Do they really expect people to use it? Probably not.

Then why bother? Because by providing the form NPR legally insulates themselves against any controversy or misunderstandings that could arise from questionable groups associating themselves with the network. The perfect alibi, if you will, and nothing to get all excited about.

Comments

Posted by: Greg at June 22, 2002 5:29 PM

Posted by: jeremy w at June 24, 2002 10:45 AM

Posted by: Derek at June 24, 2002 3:47 PM