Monroe E. Price

Media reform : democratizing the media, democratizing the state

Using examples of media from a range of countries in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa including Uruguay, Poland, China, Indonesia, Jordan and Uganda, Media Reform considers the social and cultural implications of a free and independent media.

New Technologies and International Broadcasting: Reflections on Adaptations and Transformations

International broadcasters, like all media institutions, adjust to reflect the existence of new distribution technologies. Technological change is part of a new media landscape that has rendered older definitions and contexts of international broadcasting insufficient. The pace and extent of adjustment differs among the players. Adaptations range from the superficial to the highly integrative and, on the other hand, from the merely adaptive to the pervasively transformative. Can one compare, among institutions, how this process takes place and what factors influence the patterns of accommodation? Theories of organizational structure shed light on which factors lead international broadcasters to which path. This article considers U.S. international broadcasting as a model to tease out some of these factors, among them organizational complexity, political influence, and control and contradictions embedded in institutional purpose. In this scenario, technological adaptation can mask a critical need to address institutional transformation.

End of Television and Foreign Policy

The transformation of television has altered the capacity of the state to control the agenda for making war, convening peace, and otherwise exercising its foreign policy options. In the age of the state gatekeeper, there was at least the illusion (and often the reality) that the government could substantially control the flow of images within its borders. With transformations in television systems, national systems of broadcast regulation have declined, replaced by transnational flows of information where local gatekeepers are not so salient. The rise of satellites with regional footprints and the spread of the Internet give governments the ability to reach over the heads of the state and speak directly to populations. Both receiving and sending states will have foreign policies about the meaning of the right to receive and impart information and the extent to which satellite signals can be regulated or channeled.

Shattered Mirrors: Our Search for Identity and Community in the AIDS Era

Price (Yeshiva School of Law) examines the social effects of AIDS, how it has begun to change the relationship of citizen and government. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Indian Water Rights in Theory and Practice: Navajo Experience in the Colorado River Basin

Although Indian water rights are of critical economic importance, the nature and scope of these rights remain unclear. The Supreme Court has addressed itself to the issue infrequently, and most commentators have limited their discussions to an exegesis of the appellate arguments rather than engage in an analysis of the broader nature and context of these rights. Reservation water rights are of a very special nature: A right to water does not necessarily include a right to the capital investment necessary to realize the

Orbiting hate? Satellite transponders and free expression

In this article Monroe Price presents an in-depth analysis of the legal consequences of the transmission of “hate speech” through satellite signals in case studies connected to division and conflict in the Middle East. To the author, satellite communication is an area that is poorly regulated and systematized, leaving a large room for maneuvering to powerful groups and governments. Thus, Price deals with the combination of two challenges in the legal literature to define and grasp: the ample categorization of forms of expression that conform “hate speech”, and the underregulated satellite communications.

Strategic communication in asymmetric conflict

This article examines the war of ideas under conditions of asymmetric conflict, focusing on how advantages are achieved through the pioneering use of techniques not available to the other side, and how weaknesses are turned into strengths. Deploying an analysis based on competitive entry into markets for loyalties, the article categorizes the ways groups excluded from national debates can break through and substantially change the distribution of allegiances in a target audience. Four cases are considered: (1) a weak player struggles to enter a marketplace in which entry is strongly regulated; (2) a strong external player seeks to enter or alter a weakly regulated marketplace; (3) a strong state uses asymmetric techniques against another strong state; and (4) weak players struggle to enter a weakly regulated marketplace.

Communications Policy in the Era of Choice and Convergence with Reflections on the Markle Foundation

Advances in information technology have gradually blurred the boundaries among the communications media, raising complex policy issues concerning regulation, intellectual property rights, the role of media in politics, and educational methods. The new information technology has ushered in the era of convergence and choice: convergence in the sense that all communications media are rapidly moving towards becoming simply a different form of bit streams in a digital network, and choice in that monopolies (like telephones) and tight oligopolies (like network television and local newspapers) are rapidly being challenged by new entrants as technological progress has lowered entry barriers. During this period, the Markle Foundation has been the leading supporter of research on the social and economic effects of these changes, under the leadership of its president, Lloyd Morrisett. This essay traces the co-evolution of information technology, communications policy research, and the Markle Foundation.

Cable and Telecommunications

William A. Lucas and Robert K. Yins Serving Local Needs with Telecommunications (Santa Monica, Calif: Rand Corporation Report R-1345-MF, November 1973—

Cable and Broadcasting

3.00, paper). Fred B. Woods The Potential for Congressional Use of Emergent Telecommunications: An Exploratory Assessment (Washington, D.C.: George Washington University, Program of Policy Studies in Science and Technology, May 1974—apparently free on request) Walter S. Baer, Michael Botein, Leland L. Johnson, Carl Pilnick, Monroe E. Price, and Robert K. Yins Cable Television: Franchising Considerations (New York: Crane, Russak, & Co., 1974-=T13.50) Charles G. Woodards Cable Television: Acquisition and Operation of CATV Systems (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974—