Back in the 1980's when I was a wee lad, there was a program on NYC public access TV produced by Paper Tiger Television. They would examine a media institution like the NY Times and reveal it's ownership and management structure down to the board members and their own leanings - left or right. Here's what the TV Museum says about them:
"In 1981, the Paper Tiger Television Collective formed--a changing group of people that came together to produce cable programming for the public access channel in New York City. Drawing upon the traditions of radical video, Paper Tiger Television invented its own home-grown studio aesthetic using rather modest resources to make revolutionary television. Many of Paper Tiger's half-hour programs are live studio "events," faintly reminiscent of 1960s video "happenings." The show's hosts are articulate critics of mainstream American media who examine the corporate ownership, hidden agendas, and information biases of the communications industry via the media in all of their forms."
Now, we need the same thing. Not just a broad knowledge of how Wikipedia works (and Encyclopedia Brittanica) so we know what kind of trust to bestow upon it, but the new emergent Web 2.0 landscape. We all know Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace (and we seem to be okay with that). What about Facebook?
This video from Vishal Agarwala looks at the VC trail behind Facebook along with the terms of use statements to paint a pretty suspicious picture. Should we be worried? And who is Vishal and what is her agenda? She seems to be a Use Interface designer in Florida. The video has had almost 40,000 views up until now. It seems to be driven by information discussed in 2005 within the CommonGroundCommonSense progressive community. Okay but who are they? (I hate it when sites that have a clear agenda don't have an about us page that names names - makes me wonder)
Even if I presume the information is all true and accurate, I am not sure if there is enough to draw a significant conclusion. In the incestuous world of VCs, someone involved in government-driven venture capital is invested in Facebook?
Paper Tiger had a track record or built one. And they associated with some of the better known critics of that generation. That gave them credibility. Without that, this well-produced video is just a shot in the dark.
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