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Is anyone else losing track of what year this is?

The calendar says 2012.

Every time I pick up the newspaper and read about the controversy over contraceptives, I swear we're in a time warp.

Why is birth control up for grabs? Didn't we settle that issue decades ago?

The controversy over abortion I can understand. We will always have people who oppose abortion. They believe it is the taking of a human life and will continue to fight for making abortion illegal.

But arguing against health care coverage for birth control?

Wouldn't those same people want as much birth control available as possible to prevent abortions?

Last month the New York Times carried this front- page story: "More than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage. . . . Nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30."

And we're appalled by a 30-year-old law student who doesn't want to get pregnant?

I've always taken the position on abortion that I believe the silent majority takes: We want to honor both the unborn and the mother. We want the anti-abortion people and the abortion-rights people to work to make abortions unnecessary. Get rid of abortion by making it obsolete. Having the best access to the best birth control is a good start.

See more here:
Insurance coverage for birth control is worth discussion, but not war: Regina Brett

Syrias army is too large and too well equipped, and recent defections not nearly important enough to slow the growing crisis there, US intelligence experts told The Washington Post today.

Diplomatic pressure on President Bashar al-Assad is having little effect, the officials said, and the only hope for a quick resolution to the bloodshed is economic sanctions.

That leadership is going to fight very hard, one official said in The Post. The odds are against them, but they are going to fight very hard.

In the most comprehensive, telling comments since the Syrian uprising began a year ago, three senior US intelligence experts said those closest to Assad are remaining steadfast.

More from GlobalPost: Syria: Kofi Annan's call for talks rejected

The experts said the Syrian army has increased its attacks on civilian sites such as mosques, hospitals and schools to kill Free Syrian Army forces they believe are hiding there.

Restraint has been lifted, one official said, according to The Post.

CNN said recent defections from Assads government and military are having little effect, and there are reports Al Qaeda is complicating the situation by infiltrating opposition forces.

US experts dont know the extent of Al Qaedas presence, CNN said, and arent sure the terrorist organization is even welcomed in Syria.

Poor organization is hampering the uprising, the officials said, and poor communications make it difficult to mount a sustained attack.

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Assad regime in control, US intelligence says

A couple of years ago, with Amazon steadily pushing down the prices of e-books, the fortunes of the big book publishers were sinking fast. Then Apple (NSDQ:AAPL - News) came along and helped enable publishers to set their own prices for their e-books across platforms. That model, known as agency pricing, has helped keep big publishers afloat in a time of major transition. But its also sparked controversy and legal battles, including threats this week of a lawsuit by the Department of Justice against Apple and its publishing partners. So who should be able to set e-book pricesthe major publishing houses or retailers like Amazon? (NSDQ:AMZN - News)

Well, theres been some debate on that question this week at the our office, with two of our writers taking opposite sides. So we decided to let them thrash it out on the site! Below, Mathew Ingram and Laura Owen debate the merits of the agency-pricing model.

Mathew Ingram [MI]: To me, the debate boils down to whether agency pricing is a justifiable and/or sensible approach by publishers to what is happening in their industry. In a nutshell, I would argue that while it might be understandablein the sense that the Big Six are afraid of Amazons growing power in the book business, and want to protect their book margins as much as possibleit is neither justifiable nor (in the long term at least) sensible or advisable.

Theres no question that being a major player in a market that is in the process of being disrupted is not pleasant. Amazon is doing everything it can to not just drive down e-book prices but to disintermediate publishers in a number of other ways, including signing up authors to its own imprint. If you are a giant corporation that is used to controlling the marketplace to a large extentboth in terms of supply and in terms of pricingthen watching a new competitor wrest some of that control away from you is hard to do.

That said, I think agency pricing is unwiseand not just because it has attracted antitrust attention from the U.S. government and the European Union, among others, but because it isnt in the long-term interests of either readers or (I would argue) of publishers themselves. There is a growing body of evidence that lower prices can boost sales of books by orders of magnitudewhich suggests that publishers might actually be shooting themselves in the foot by trying to hang on to higher prices.

Laura Owen [LO]: I think agency pricing actually is in the interest of any reader who supports a vibrant book-buying marketplace that is not dominated by one companyi.e., Amazon.

You say that publishers are giant corporations, but Amazon is much, much larger than any single book publisheror any other book retailer. Because of that, it can undercut chains like Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS - News) on price. It does so consistently on print books and on e-books that are not regulated by agency pricing. In fact, Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch has said that Barnes & Noble has been able to remain competitive in the e-book gamethe company currently has a 26 to 27 percent market share in the e-book marketbecause of agency pricing.

Some may say, So what? I dont feel any loyalty to Barnes & Noble. With the closing of Borders, though, Barnes & Noble is the only remaining bookstore in many communities. Then there are the independent bookstores, which are definitely struggling as well. Through the American Booksellers Associations partnership with the Google (NSDQ:GOOG - News) eBookstore, the indies can sell e-books through their websites. Because of agency pricing, theyre able to offer e-books from big-six publishers at the same price as Amazon. In this way, agency pricing can keep book spending within a community instead of sending it all to Amazon.

In addition, with the impending launch of sites like Bookish (which is quite delayed at the moment), book publishers are getting into selling direct to their customersa move that will be incredibly good for the business. But efforts like that wont go very far if Amazon is consistently undercutting them on price.

MI: Thats a great point, Laura. You are right that agency pricing does to some extent protect independent booksellers, or allow them to compete on more equal footing with Amazon, and I am as much in favor of a competitive bookselling marketplace as I think you are. I also recognize the fact that Amazon is a gigantic corporationand perhaps even one that is using books as a loss leader for other productsand there are risks of having a lot of market power concentrated in the hands of single entity.

Go here to read the rest:
E-Book Smackdown: Who Should Control Pricing—Publishers Or Amazon?

The Australian newspaper on the printing press at the News Ltd plant at Mile End in Adelaide. Picture: Brett Hartwig Source: The Advertiser

A LEADING Australian ad buyer believes proposed media reforms would mean the same limits on free press as experienced in Russia and Cuba.

Speaking at a Queensland University of Technology business leaders forum in Brisbane yesterday, Harold Mitchell said the reforms proposed by the independent media inquiry were "crap", designed by people who did not understand free choice.

"Firstly, they believe that there should be no freedom of the press, but, you know, through all the centuries the greatest way a society can ever continue is by having a free society," he said.

"You control thoughts and it just won't happen."

Founder of Mitchell & Partners, Mr Mitchell is executive chairman of Aegis Media Pacific, a company that buys commercial space on all media for some of the world's biggest brands. Mr Mitchell told the QUT forum some of the reforms proposed could have an equivalent effect to jailing newspaper editors who offend vested interests.

"Now, what sort of a world are we living in when that would be a notion we should have?" he said.

The report by retired judge Ray Finkelstein QC proposes sweeping regulation of newspapers, urging the Government to set up a taxpayer-funded body to regulate all news across all media: A statutory watchdog to set standards and handle complaints.

After the release, Kim Williams, chief executive of News Limited - publisher of The Advertiser - questioned the role of government in the proposed body. "The spectre of a government-funded overseer of a free press in an open and forward-looking democracy like ours cannot be justified," he said.

Mr Mitchell also railed at the inquiry's suggestion that some newspapers might need government subsidies to preserve quality journalism.

Read the original here:
Media reforms 'bad as Russia, Cuba'

The lopsidedness of the ownership and control of the mainstream media injures the democratisation process in Malaysia, observes Mustafa K Anuar.

Aliran executive committee members at Dewan Sri Pinang to put forward their submissions on electoral reforms to the Parliamentary Select Committee

Introduction Media, society and democracy

Democracy entails the freedom of citizens to express their views in the public domain. It provides them the opportunity to exercise the right to engage in discussions or debates and to offer criticism that collectively contributes to the common good of a society. This public dialogue is crucial to the notion of citizens partaking of a decision-making process in a thriving democracy. It is in this context that the role of the mass media becomes prominent because they are expected to provide the necessary platform for public discourse. But in order for citizens to express themselves adequately, it is important that they all have easy and equal access to the supposedly free and responsible media.

The role of the mass media in society becomes all the more crucial and urgent when general elections emerge. This is because the media, if free and fair, would bring about a situation where the voters can make an informed choice about the contending candidates in the general elections. The electorate would be able to get sufficient information about the competing candidates and political parties particularly from a fair and independent media. However, as we all know, the mainstream media in Malaysia are not fair and independent to start with. This has got to do with the laws governing the media as well as the ownership and control of the media.

The state of the Malaysian mainstream media

The restrictive laws that govern the media are principally the Printing Presses and Publications Act (1984) and the Communications and Multimedia Act (1998). These are laws that help shape the print and electronic media in the country so that those who own the mainstream newspapers, television and radio stations are closely aligned to the ruling party, and in turn are inclined to be BN-friendly.

Although there are many newspapers, radio and TV stations in the country, they are however owned by a select few, namely Media Prima, Huaren Holdings and Utusan Melayu group, among others, all of which are BN-friendly.

The lopsidedness of the ownership and control of the mainstream media injures the democratisation process in Malaysia because the Opposition invariably gets little, if any, access to the mainstream media. Worse, the past general elections witnessed the demonisation of the Opposition by these media.

The media and general elections case studies of 1990, 1999 and 2004

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Free, fair and equal access to the media