The internet shines when it comes to fact-checking, largely because it doesn’t rely on items catching the eye of an overworked editor or reporter, but because those who are deeply involved with issues care enough to spread the word.
The latest example is Michael Geist’s response to Warner’s Summer Blockbuster: a decision by the entertainment giant to stop prescreening its blockbusters in Canada, because there are too many nasty camcorder-toting pirates up here.
Geist knows his stuff. And his stuff includes math, so he’s able to point out that Warner Brothers’ claim that 70 per cent of camcording of new releases is done in Canada is a number that doesn’t add up.
Warner Bros. astonishingly now claims that 70 percent of camcorded movies have been traced to Canada over the last 18 months. Given the claims of 20 percent, 23 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent, and 50 percent did not make the requisite impact (in fact, the USTR even rejected the movie industry’s request to escalate Canada on the Special 301 Watch list), we now get a blockbuster number of 70 percent. Of course, just yesterday the head of the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association told the Industry Committee that the number was between 20 – 25 percent. Moreover, with New York City taking 40 percent of the camcording claims and with Spiderman 3 apparently appearing on China streets weeks before the previews in Canada, the numbers just don’t add up.
Of course they don’t add up. The entertainment giants just keep making stuff up and putting it out there. I suspect it’s part of the continual campaign to bring every country in the world into line with the American view on copyright, digital copy protection and “intellectual property.” American laws that cover those fields might as well have been directly written by the entertainment industry: they are that far out of whack.
Some in the media don’t buy into this in a major way. I did a Google News search at the two main providers of the news story, AP and CP, both contained quotes from Geist. Interestingly, Global here in Canada, basically just rewrote the WB press release. So did the CBC. And the BBC. And Variety. And the Hollywood Reporter.
Given that, thank goodness for the ‘net and the fact-checkers.
TAGS: FACT-CHECKING, JOURNALISM
