ARTS & FARCES internet

Before the internet and the age of the continuous news cycle, putting out bad news late on a Friday afternoon was a fairly effective organizational news management strategy. That’s no longer the case, but the University of Minnesota hasn’t gotten the memo. In an effort to bypass the continuous news cycle, Karen Himle, the University’s vice president for university relations, issued a half-assed apology for censoring Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story, without informing the documentary’s producers or funding agencies. But apparently after considering academic freedom repercussions “I am sorry for this mistake, and I accept responsibility for my decisions and actions in this matter,” writes Himle in the University’s statement from President Robert Bruininks with regard to the matter.

The apology is half-assed because Himle apologizes only for “... not immediately initiating a process that more broadly engaged academic leadership and other university experts to fully evaluate the options and to then make a shared decision as to the best course of action…” And we don’t know the entirety her decisions and actions are with regard to this episode of the University’s censorship, conflict of interest, and stifling academic freedom.

Bruininks expresses similar regret about not convening a group to reach a consensus about any necessary action with regard to the film and maintains that academic freedom is paramount in the lede of his statement: “One of the hallmarks of my 40-plus years at the university is a steadfast commitment to academic freedom. This value is the cornerstone of all great American universities. I have defended academic freedom at many levels throughout my career.”

Bruininks’s statement comes, not unsurprisingly nor coincidentally, with the University’s release of internal email in response to media requests under the Minnesota Data Practices Act.

The Minnesota Daily, the University of Minnesota student newspaper, was slow on the uptake of the controversy surrounding the University of Minnesota’s censorship of Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story, a documentary on the river and agriculture, pollution, how midwest runoff created a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, and sustainable solutions. Karen Himle, the University’s vice president for university relations, canceled the premiere of the film and its airing on Twin Cities Public Television (TPT). Himle is married to John Himle, president of Himle Horner, a public relations firm that represents the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council, and owns a corn and soybean farm in Nebraska.

In a 20 September 2010 story, Jessica Van Berkel and Taryn Wobbema got Himle to go on the record, something no other journalist in town has managed to accomplish. Van Berkel and Wobbema report Himele as saying “her concern began when she saw a commercial sign for Organic Valley’s dairy farm.” So, Himle’s concerns are clearly of an editorial nature, not scientific validity as University spokesperson Dan Wolter originally claimed.

Organic Valley is a farmer-owned co-op based in Wisconsin. With more than 1,600 farmer-owners, it’s hard to throw a rock in Wisconsin farm country without hitting an Organic Valley sign. “Typically, in an institutional documentary you wouldn’t see a commercial interest,” Himle told Van Berkel and Wobbema. The Daily reporters also cite Greg Cuomo and Abel Ponce de Leon, both College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) associate deans as saying the film was “lopsided” (Ponce de Leon) and “‘dramatized’ the relationship between farming and river pollution and ‘vilified’ agriculture without a strong understanding of how it works” (Cuomo). CFANS Dean Al Levine told Minnesota Public Radio on 17 September that the film “vilifies agriculture.” So, at least the CFANS deans are reading from the same script.

Van Berkel and Wobbema quote Levine as denying any outside influence in canceling the release of the film: “No one to my knowledge heard from anyone in big ag about this at all.”

In a stunning investigative piece, Molly Priesmeyer, writing for the Twin Cities Daily Planet, exposes a possible conflict of interest at the University of Minnesota. The University has canceled the premiere and public television airing of Troubled Waters: A Mississippi River Story, a documentary on the river and agriculture, pollution, how midwest runoff created a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, and sustainable solutions. The University claims lack of scientific review as the reason, but Priesmeyer cites Shanai Matteson, the film’s assistant producer and community program specialist at the University’s Bell Museum, as saying “the film was also reviewed by as many as 12 prominent university scientists, including Jon Foley and David Tilman (both from the of U of M’s Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior department); Robert Diaz, a professor of marine science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and an expert on “dead zone” issues in the Gulf of Mexico; Eugene Turner, a zoologist at Louisiana State University who has done extensive research on wetland pollution and coastal erosion; and Nancy Rabalias, another LSU professor whose research has dealt extensively with pollution issues in the Gulf of Mexico.”

In an update, Priesmeyer tracks down a lead provided by an anonymous source and finds that the University’s vice president of University relations, Karen Himle, is married to John Himle, the co-founder and principal of Himle Horner, the public relations firm that represents big agriculture in the state. As a side note, the Horner in Himle Horner is Tom Horner, current Minnesota Independence Party gubernatorial candidate. The film’s executive producer, Barbara Coffin, who’s also coordinator of public programs at the Bell, was informed of the cancelation by a letter from Karen Himle’s University unit. Coffin told Priesmeyer that the University unit was also responsible for canceling the public television airing. The University presumably owns the rights to the film, so TPT is harmless and without recourse in this issue.

John Himle was executive director of the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council, the state’s biggest promoter of industrialized agriculture and corporate farms, from 1978-82. The Agri-Growth Council fights vigorously and notoriously against local-control agriculture in the state.

Brian DeVore, writing for the Minnesota Environmental Partnership’s Looncommons, notes, “McPhee [the film’s director] and the others involved with the film project were very aware of how controversial the dead zone issue is. Just as there is a small, vocal group of global climate change deniers out there, business and political forces within the agribusiness community claim there is no connection between Midwestern farms and dead oysters in the Gulf. This, despite an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to the contrary.” [Link in original.]

Astute—or at least awake—media critics and journalists have been warning about Apple’s heavy-handed approach to “acceptable” apps in the company’s iTunes store for quite some time. The walled garden just won’t fly anymore. Apple recently went on a puritanical rejection spree, rejecting more than 5,000 apps that were deemed “objectionable.” These apps, it’s important to note, were not pornographic. To make matters worse, Apple accepted similar material from corporate publishers like Playboy.

But now Apple has irrevocably stepped over the censorship line, by removing Stern‘s—a German corporate weekly—app without notice. Stern had offended Apple’s sensibilities when it published a section on erotic photography.

But that’s not all. German corporate daily Bild also aroused Apple’s censors with a naked woman in the PDF version of the printed newspaper. Spiegel Online has the story of Apple’s “moral police” and “purity law.”

So, is it naked people that Apple has a problem with, or Germans?

When Apple’s arbitrary and inconsistent censorship is combined with Apple’s ridiculous iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (.pdf 684KB) unearthed by a Freedom of Information Act request (NASA released an app) by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the company’s past attempts at censorship, it’s reasonable to ask what publication restrictions Apple’s going to implement next.

This is intolerable. I’ll continue to use Mac laptops because Apple can’t control what applications I can run or what media I can view. If I was on the fence about buying an iPad, Apple’s ham-handedness certainly resolves the issue.

Donata Hopfen, Bild Digital’s chief executive, told Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz, “Today they censor nipples, tomorrow editorial content.” Diaz notes that the Association of German Magazine Publishers has asked the International Federation of the Periodical Press to make a complaint against Apple. That’s a good first step, but it’s not nearly enough. Apple should be allowed to carry whatever apps it likes in its iTunes store. But absolutely not if the company is allowed to restrict app and publication sales exclusively to its iTunes store. The solution is simple: Legally forbid Apple from restricting where app developers and publishers are allowed to sell their wares.

Yesterday Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner agreed to censor the internet at the behest of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The story that didn’t get told is just how the corporations were going to go about the censorship task. Declan McCullagh, writing for c|net news.com, tells that story. And it’s every bit as troubling as expected.

Time Warner will cut its customers access to the entirety of Usenet. Never mind that there are more than 100,000 Usenet newsgroups and Cuomo’s office found only “88 different newsgroups” containing illegal material.

Sprint will cut access to the alt.* hierarchy of Usenet newsgroups, more than 18,000 individual newsgroups. “Ditching all of those means eliminating perfectly legitimate conversations,” McCullagh writes.

Verizon’s game plan is less specific, but McCullagh reports that the company intends to eliminate some “fairly broad newsgroup areas.”

Instead of cutting access to the fewer than 100 newsgroups found to contain illegal material, the internet service providers chose the ham-handed approach: censoring entire hierarchies within the Usenet structure, or even Usenet in its entirety. Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty project, compared the service providers’ action to “taking a sledgehammer to an ant.”

McCullagh points out that internet censorship in the US is far from a new concept. Pennsylvania tried five years ago but a federal judge overturned the law shortly thereafter, citing “prior restraint on protected expression and that its ‘extraterritorial effect violates the dormant Commerce Clause’ of the US Constitution.”

The core problem with this arrangement bears repeating: This agreement challenges the long-held idea that internet service providers are immune from liability for third-party content carried on their networks. This idea was codified in the 1996 Communications Decency Act which specifically grants such immunity. In 1997, the US Supreme Court overturned the law, ruling that the internet is uniquely entitled to the highest protections offered by the First Amendment.