Boztopia.com

I woke up this morning to find a bustle in the blogosphere’s hedgerow. It seemed that the Wall Street Journal was leading off today with news that Google had been trying to cut deals with cable and Internet providers to give it a “fast lane” for delivering its services to users. In effect, Google was betraying its support of net neutrality, which (in the simplest of terms) is the ability of any Internet user to access all content equally. If Google was going to cough up dough to get its sites and advertising to users faster, that would spell the dawn of a “pay to play” Internet, where how well your content is received depended on how big your pockets were.

Not content to leave that bombshell alone, the same article insinuated that Google was suspicious of President-elect Barack Obama’s commitment to keeping the Internet free of toll roads and gates:

Richard Whitt, Google’s head of public affairs, denies the company’s proposal would violate network neutrality. Nevertheless, he says he’s unsure how committed President-elect Obama will remain to the principle. “If you look at his plans,” says Mr. Whitt, “they are much less specific than they were before.”

This would be a pretty bad development for progressives and supporters of a free Internet, except for one small detail: It’s not true. The story willfully distorted the details of what Google was doing, and the writers (or their editors) misattributed or flat-out made up many of the quotes from sources in the article.

The dust-up began even before the article saw print. Richard Whitt posted his response the night before, clarifying Google’s plans and claiming he didn’t say what the WSJ claimed he said, noting that Obama’s stance on net neutrality had not changed. Larry Lessig was not far behind, pointing out that his positions have been consistent from day one. David Isenberg then came along and tore the article to pieces.

And so on. And so on. And so on. Finally, Greg Sargent had the novel idea to ask the Obama transition team if his stance on the issue had changed:

Obama transition spokesperson Nick Shapiro told us moments ago that Obama’s position — strong support for net neutrality — hasn’t changed.

It’s also worth noting that in the WSJ’s breathless roundup of all the buzz its hit piece generated, no one noted how two of the principals quoted in the story were very pointedly saying they were misquoted, and the “reporting” of the story was shoddy at best, outright awful at worst.

There’re a few key points to make here:

• People still trust old media, to their detriment. A lot of folks who should’ve known better immediately assumed that the story was on the level, that Lessig and Google had betrayed their positions, and it was the end of the Intertubes as we know it. Even knowing that the WSJ has never been a friend to liberal issues or interests, and knowing that it’s now a wholly owned propaganda arm of the Rupert Murdoch empire (which has plenty of reason to sow discord between Google and its allies on this issue), some normally savvy pundits and prognosticators got taken for a ride. That’s one of the big problems we still have in reshaping our country’s discourse–too many people still rely on traditional media sources to spoon-feed them the truth and accept their premises uncritically, without doing their own research. Remember, the vast majority of reporters, editors, and the like working these stories don’t know much more about these topics than you do, which brings me to my next point…
• The new media gives you the opportunity to fight back. Over the course of a single day, this battle was fought all over the Internets, with all quarters weighing in to give their take. Usually, someone who is misquoted or misrepresented in a newspaper article would have to write a letter to the editor demanding a retraction. Not now. Whitt and Lessig bypassed the WSJ completely and took their opposing points right to their readers, while people like Isenberg dismantled the faulty rationales behind the story on a technical level. That’s the great thing about the digital age–anyone can get in on an issue and make their voice heard, but experience still matters. My expertise on hands-on networking extends as far as hooking up my DVD player or my computer, but when it came to this topic, I learned. I sat down and pored over everything I could relating to network neutrality, packet shaping, QoS, dumb pipes, and traffic prioritizing. If I sound like an expert, it’s only because I had immense resources at my disposal to learn from the experts. I busted my ass to teach myself, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same. Nor is there any excuse for the WSJ to publish such a lamesauce excuse for “technology reporting”– unless it suited their agenda.
• Broadband issues are going to be a key battlefront in the Obama era. Obama has clearly stated his commitment to improving and expanding broadband access to all Americans, which will reap us huge benefits for improving health care, protecting the environment, and enabling the next whiz kid with a big idea to get on the “pipes” and ply their trade in the hope of becoming the new Chad Hurley and Mark Zuckerberg. The old guard knows this–they know that their old models of content delivery, like video-on-demand, are becoming obsolete, and they refuse to go gently into that good night. This article is a clear signal that there’s going to be a fight over who controls the American Internet in 2009, and it’s important we get ready for it now.

I would’ve published this article earlier in the day, but in addition to having a busy workday, I wanted to sit back and see how it all played out. I’m glad I did–this kerfluffle was a good lesson in how old media shapes our discourse still, how new media gives us the power to reshape it, and how the engine at the heart of it all, this wonderful thing called the Internets, needs to be protected and kept free for the good of all.