David Akin

We're number one . . .

If you're an enterpreneur, what country would be best to set up your new business in? The conventional wisdom, of course, is that the United States is the most business-friendly country on the planet. But there are at least six countries in the world other than the U.S. where it will cost you much less to set up shop, says global consultantcy KPMG. Canada is cheapest -- that's right, cheapest -- when it comes to the costs a business will incur for land, employees, employee benefits and, yes, taxes. Mind you, Canada's cost advantage has had a great deal to do with the relatively low value of the Canadian dollar versus the American dollar. That, of course, has changed since the beginning of this year. The Canadian dollar has risen by about 17 per cent from January 1 to the middle of June.
That said: The KPMG study has some significant public policy implications for both Canada and the U.S. The KPMG study, for example, would seem to suggest that, compared to the U.S., the tax burden borne by Canadian businesses is hardly onerous and yet, there is enough tax revenue to support a publicly-funded healthcare system. In the U.S., the tax burden is significantly greater and, yet, there is not enough money to pay for a health care system there that could be used for all.
In order, then, the KPMG study says the lowest-cost environments for a new business is:
Canada
The United Kingdom
Italy
The Netherlands
France
Austria
United States
Denmark
Japan

How the Internet should work

Cory Doctorow takes notes of a Dan Gillmor speech:

How Hollywood and Govts want the Internet to work

Like a TV.

One way.

With a "buy" button.

That's their interactivity.

The Queen, defender of faiths

The Sunday Observer is reporting that a report due out soon will recommend that the Queen of England no longer be head of the Anglican Church. Remarkably, the report has been prepared by representatives of what you'd call establishment Britain and seems to have the tacit approval of both the Church of England and Queen's Elizabeth's heir and son, Charles, who says he would like to be known as "defender of faiths". The English monarch is now known as "defender of the faith". This is a radical, modern, and forward-looking proposal -- de-linking a religion from the rule of a monarch.

Media bias

The folks over at Metafilter are yakking about sites, blogs, individuals, etc. who have taken on the role of media watchers. Many applaud these media watchers assuming -- wrongly mostly -- that the media watchers themselves do not have any of the biases or blind spots that the media they are watching have. You get the sense that they are more 'pure', if you will, than the media they are watching, that, if only the Media listened to their site/commentary, the world would turn out right.

One media critic,newspaper baron, Conrad Black, now Lord Black of Crossharbour, long thought the mainstream media in Canada, dominated by The Globe and Mail and the CBC, reflected a namby, pamby soft liberal world view. He spent a lot of time and energy complaining about this but then finally put his money where his mouth was, starting up a national newspaper, the National Post in 1998 with a determination to be on the right side of the political spectrum and 'do media' the way he thought it ought to be done. I was part of the inaugural staff at the Post, leaving just before Black sold the whole thing in 2001. Whatever you think of his politics, you've got to tip your hat to the idea that if none of the newspapers that can get delivered in your area are to your liking, you should start up your own.

But I digress...

Various media commentators say we should be about the pursuit of the truth and so on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As UK online journalist Bill Thompson wrote recently, "proper journalists . . . aim for objectivity while accepting that it is unattainable, and ... are open about who pays them and who they work with."

Many media commentators fail this test. It's an important one. That's because the contract we (when I use we here I'm talking primarily about mainstream daily newspaper or network news journalists) have with our viewers is this: We'll do our best to describe the world around you but bear in mind, we make money by selling advertising space. We hope that doesn't interfere with what we're trying to do but, at least, you know how we make our money so please view our reports in that context.

I think most viewers/readers understand that you cannot 'buy' a story. If you want to get in the paper, you have to make it in on news value alone, news value being the easy-to-define but tough to put into practice idea of anything that most of our readers/viewers would find interesting. You cannot give us money or other favours and expect us to write about you.
Similarly, we do not put things in the paper to feather our own nests. Where I work, we have staff investing policies that prohibit reporters from trading in the securities of the companies they cover or are writing about. We publish that policy in the paper from time to time.
I think most viewers and readers understand that contract. They understand that if we make an error of fact, there are long-established traditions that we will correct those mistakes as soon as possible.

A lot of blogs, Web sites, and publications that claim to be media critics or media watchers don't do that. They don't tell you who pays their bills. They don't tell you if their authors are investing in companies that appear on their site (or back their site). They don't tell you if groups with political axes to grind are behind the site. There are no prominent links to corrections or a corrections policy.

Now, I'm not saying that 'big media' is perfect and that there shouldn't be criticism of the whole bloody system. What bugs me is the holier-than-thou attitude of a lot of 'media critics' who fail to recognize or at the very least publicly disclose their own potential conflicts-of-interest and blind spots.

For at the end of the day, it's really the viewer or reader who ought to decide who best described their world. But in order to do that, the viewer or reader needs to have a good understanding of the news is produced, under what conditions, and by whom.