[governance] TIME Magazine's Person of the Year (Battle over WHO must be Transparent)

Wed Dec 15 20:08:24 EST 2010

This is really interesting Paul and to me it raises the issues of whether:-

1) there really is a democracy and should we assume that there should be a
democracy?
2) what is the philosophical emphasis of this move by Time?
3)Who determines the governance system within the election of "Time
Magazine's Person of the year"?
4)Who owns Time Magazine?

Kind Regards,

Sala

On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com> wrote:

> For both internet and transparency purposes, Time Magazine's Person of
> the Year choice, in light of its own Readers' Poll results, is
> astounding.
>
> First, Time Magazine's Person of the Year starts with the Time
> Readers' Poll -- which is now closed -- and which shows Assange in
> first place, easily way ahead of everyone else for Time's 2010 Person
> of the Year:
>
> 1. Julian Assange                     382,026 votes, and 92% avg
> rating (all voters)
> 2. Recep Tayyip Erdogan          233,639 (avg rating 80%
> 3. Lady Gaga                          146,378 (avg rating 70%)
> 4. Jon Stewart and John Colber  78,145, (avg rating 81%)
> [snip]
> 6.  Barack Obama                     27,478 (avg rating 58%)
> 8.  the Chilean Miners                29,124 (avg rating 47%).
> 9.  The Unemployed American   19,605 (avg rating 66%)
> 10. Marc Zuckerberg                  18,353 (avg rating 52%)
> [snip]
> See
> http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2028734_2029036,00.html
>
> SO, after the Time Readers' Poll, WHO IS TIME'S PERSON OF THE YEAR?
>
> Well....    There was a "NOTE" attached to the Readers' Poll" to the
> direct effect that  "TIME's editors who choose the actual Person of
> the Year reserve the right to disagree."
>
> And, boy, did Time editors ever disagree with the people that are
> their own readers and customers.
>
> With a publication date of today (December 15, 2010) they chose the
> 10th place finisher, Marc Zuckerbook of Facebook, who got less than
> one vote for every 20.8 votes Assange got from Time Readers' Poll, and
> got only about half the positive ranking of Assange  (52% for
> Zuckerberg, 92% for Assange).
> http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2036683,00.html
>
> But, to me, the biggest contrast and biggest shock, bigger than
> choosing the 10th place finisher over the first place finisher in the
> Readers' Poll, is the stark contrast between #1 Assange and #10
> Zuckerberg on WHOSE transparency should get facilitated:
>
> Assange is all about transparency/accountability for the powerful,
> while Facebook (while it has other functions) is about transparency
> (and necessarily accountability of various kinds) for the average
> people.  Facebook for example, is being monitored by US government
> officials to gather information and intelligence on its own citizens
> in certain contexts.  Things like Facebook make it enormously easier
> for the government to monitor aspects of the private lives of netizens
> who often innocently think they're sharing just with their "Facebook
> friends."
>
> TIME has had Hitler as man of the year decades ago, and routinely
> stresses that selection of a Person of the Year isn't a personal
> endorsement.
>
> But it is telling, isn't it, that if TIME thinks Zuckerberg's social
> media is the wave of the present and of the future, TIME nevertheless
> had to resort to grossly undemocratic means to amplify the cause of a
> Facebook founder and ignore the overwhelmingly more popular cause of
> accountability / transparency for the powerful governments and
> corporations in the USA and around the world represented by Assange.
>
> Simply put, the person that has the power to demand or force
> transparency on the other person or entity (like government) is the
> master, and the one who must yield their privacy pretty much whenever
> asked, and must be totally transparent when required is the servant or
> slave entity.
>
> Despite the "relevance" of Zuckerberg, I find Time's choice to ignore
> its own readers and undemocratically choose Zuckerberg to be chilling
> when the type of "transparency" fostered by Facebook is compared to
> the type of transparency offered and fostered by Julian Assange and
> Wikileaks.
>
> In the Assange/Zuckergerg contrast, the status of ascending masters
> and descending slaves is clear.  Unless, of course, Assange continues
> to win and decisions like TIME's POY debacle are exposed to a form of
> transparency sometimes called robust criticism.
>
> Paul Lehto, J.D.
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Salanieta Tudrau Tamanikaiwaimaro
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