[governance] TIME Magazine's Person of the Year (Battle over WHO must be Transparent)
Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro
salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com
Wed Dec 15 22:54:55 EST 2010
At the heart of the matter, is the "bottom line", Who pays for the ads and
sponsors its publications? Is it susceptible to being banned? Is it afraid
of being "controversial" and I suppose that as a magazine, the editors can
do what they want.
Respectfully, David I beg to differ. I think the issue that Paul raised is
at the heart of the Internet Governance Debate (political basket) even if
indirectly. Yes, the magazine can invoke its exclusionary clause and
exercise its discretion by virtue of the disclaimer that it incorporates but
the resounding message that it sends to its readers is a resounding:-
1) thank you for purchasing Time Magazine, we enjoy bringing you news and
getting you to pay for it;
2) we cannot afford to be seen as "siding" with anyone who is a threat to US
National Security and risk being sanctioned.
This raises issues of "transparency" and if polling takes place via the
internet, then of course it is "discussion" worthy. Below is an article from
the NYT:-
Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Wed, December 15, 2010 -- 9:08 PM ET
-----
U.S. Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks Founder
Federal prosecutors, seeking to build a case against the
WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge
dissemination of classified government documents, are looking
for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an
Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the
information.
Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether
Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc.
Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State
Department files from a government computer system. If he did
so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in
the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents
who then published them.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/16wiki.html?emc=na
On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 4:31 PM, David Goldstein <
goldstein_david at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Oh for god's sake, why can't Time choose someone as their person of the
> year
> different to their readers?
>
> Under what circumstances are the editors and those who chose the person of
> the
> year bound by any reader support?
>
> To think that Time as a magazine, who made it clear they reserved the right
> to
> disagree with their readers, should not be capable of making their own
> choice is
> frankly stupid.
>
> David
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com>
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Rui Correia <correia.rui at gmail.com>
> Cc: Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza <caffsouza at gmail.com>
> Sent: Thu, 16 December, 2010 11:58:15 AM
> Subject: [governance] TIME Magazine's Person of the Year (Battle over WHO
> must
> be Transparent)
>
> 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
P.O.Box 17862
Suva
Fiji Islands
Cell: +679 9982851
Alternate Email: s.tamanikaiwaimaro at tfl.com.fj
"Wisdom is far better than riches."
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