NPR’s Brian Lehrer today found that there is an issue in 2008, on which many from both the left and the right agree.

It happens about 23 minutes into an interview with Glenn Reynolds of right-leaning blog Instapundit.com and Adam Green of the progressive MoveOn.org Civic Action.

Lehrer had focused the topic on the Internet and presidential campaigns, but the conversation soon turned to Net Neutrality and its impact on what Green called “people-powered” Internet and “people-powered” politics.

MoveOn’s Green said that YouTube and online video are “revolutionizing the way that everyday people can put together political messages and spread them rapidly.”

Net Neutrality is central to this revolution, Green added, calling it an issue that “more enlightened people on both the left and right support.”

Lehrer asked Instapundit blogger-in-chief Reynolds to verify that. Said Reynolds:

“A lot of people on the right who don’t favor Net Neutrality, or are skeptical of it, are worried that it’s going to lead to regulating Internet providers as common carriers the way that you regulate the telephone companies and that that’s a bad idea.

“I understand the point but the fact is that most of them are common carriers, the telephone company that provides my DSL certainly are already. And the genius of the Internet has been that it is a level playing field. When you go to visit my site, when you go to visit the New York Times site, when you go to visit MoveOn.org or whatever, they’re sort of all out there in the same place and you can seemlessly go from one to another and that really does elevate the little guy.

“And the concern, which I think is completely legitimate, is that if big sites can engage in what’s basically payola for better treatement people will start visiting them more because they load faster and start paying less attention to troublesome little guys such as myself because our sites don’t load as well, don’t display as well, and don’t play on the same field.”

Lehrer was surprised by the “loaded” reference to payola, describing the negative impact radio payola has had on his industry. “The old payola scandals were when record companies would pay radio stations bribes in effect to give their records more airplay rather than just going on what was popular,” he said. Lehrer asked Reynolds whether he truly meant to draw such a parallel.

“I was very consciously drawing that analogy, yes,” Reynolds responded.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.-->