How do you solve a problem like Blunty?
So if you were the proposed News Standards Body, how would you regulate Blunty?
The News Standards Body, in case you didn’t notice, is the new organisation proposed by the Convergence Review this week to regulate news and commentary, regardless of platform.
Blunty, in case you didn’t notice, is the video blogger who this week went viral after he filmed a guerrilla marketing demo outside Apple’s Sydney store apparently as a coincidental bystander, but later admitted he’d been put up to it by BlackBerry.
The proposed new regime has three criteria for the sort of content that would be regulated: The content service enterprise (or media owner as we used to call such things) has to have control over the content; there have to be a large number of users of the content; and thirdly they receive a large amount of revenue from supplying that content to Australians. In addition, it has to be professional content.
That’s why Blunty is a good example – he’s an official YouTube partner. That gives YouTube control over his content. Those who sign up to the partnership – for which they share advertising revenue with YouTube – have to abide by a strict set of terms and conditions set by YouTube. Second, yes, there are a large number of users – in Blunty’s case that one controversial video alone has had half a million views (albeit not all Australian) in less than a week.
And yes, Blunty is a professional. This content is how he makes his living. He even talks in his (it seems to me grudging) confessional follow up video about being a camera pro.
To complicate matters, the Convergence Review’s initial pronouncement is that YouTube’s parent company Google does not make sufficient revenue against professional content to be classified as a content service enterprise and covered by the new rules.
Which seems highly unlikely.
Blunty has had 181m video views to his channel to date. As another Aussie example, that’s dwarfed by the excellent Natalie Tran’s Community Channel 425m. There’ll be a lot of Aussie eyeballs within that – and a lot of preroll, overlay and display ads delivered against them.
Hell, even Mumbrella’s Mumbo Report channel – where we put the professional content we shoot ourselves – has had a third of a million views. (As a partner, I think the Ts&Cs probably prevent me from revealing our revenue share from this.)
By these definitions, it’s interesting to see what Google had to say on the matter in a blog post back in February:
“Australian content is certainly booming on YouTube. A new class of Aussie artists and entrepreneurs is making high-quality videos that are racking up tens of millions of views across Australia and the world, and many of them are earning enough to quit their day jobs.”
And that’s before we get into the many branded channels – chock full of professional content (who makes the stuff? Often ad agencies) and with YouTube pulling in dollars against it.
Obviously there are plenty of grey areas around the definition of professional content, and the definition of what YouTube has genuine control over (I’d argue partner channels is a good place to start).
But no matter how you calculate it, I’d argue that YouTube will easily generate more than $50m against this professional content.
Which is awkward, because it was very convenient for the Convergence Review to be able to claim that while it wanted to regulate all platforms, YouTube/ Google happened to not qualify.
Under the Convergence Review criteria, I reckon it does.
(Not that I think that YouTube can be regulated like other media. In principle maybe it should be; in practice it’s impossible.)
So let’s follow the logic a a little further.
Let’s go back to Blunty.
Clearly, he’s offering commentary.
But in this case, we’re into very murky territory if the News Standards Body were to attempt to regulate a complaint about his video if you attempted to hold him to the same standardas as journalists.
He may argue now that he didn’t actually tell his subscribers that he was at the Apple Store by coincidence. But he certainly implied it so heavily that any reasonable person would draw that conclusion.
If I was a regular subscriber, I would feel misled.
And there would certainly be journalistic ethics at stake if a newspaper columnist was to tell his or her readers they thought a stunt might be a guerrilla campaign for Apple’s Siri service when they knew with totally certainty that they were misdirecting them. Or that they were thrown out of the store when they weren’t.
But there again, this interesting point is made by the Convergence Review:
“In particular, it seems reasonable that only those organisations that have committed to an industry self-regulatory scheme for upholding journalistic standards of fairness and accuracy should be entitled to the exemptions from the provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 concerning misleading and deceptive statements.”
Which does put the likes of Blunty in an interesting position. Would you rather be in breach of journalistic ethics with the News Standards Body? Or get a legal letter from Apple accusing you of making misleading and deceptive statements?
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Which agency is advising Blackberry? Or who failed to counsel them against this bad idea?
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So he thinks people are idiots because of how they reacted to a deliberately odd marketing campaign that was encouraging people to speculate on it? OK, whatever. If he had been as in the dark as everyone else, I dare say he might have made some of the same speculation, too. Gotta love his holier-than-thou attitude about it all.
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The Convergence Review basically decided that only certain organisations have influence and that influence is a function of reach and/or profitability.
Unfortunately this is complete nonsense and gets disproved regularly, as this Blunty incident has shown.
Their recommendations are politically expedient and practically implementable, however fail the most important test of all – they are not going to ever be effective.
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Question for YouTube. You effectively employ Blunty, you make money from his content and you pay him. As the CEO of Energywatch showed, you can’t draw a line between their business and what they do in social media.
So YouTube, what is your position on endorsing Blunty when his latest Twitter entries are as below:
‘Nate Burr @BluntNate
But aside from women being crazy (yo), they’re also pretty much the awesomest thing to cuddle…. Except kittens. So yeah, whachagonnado?
Nate Burr @BluntNate
But yeah…. Women… Amiright!? … Chicks be nuts yo.
Nate Burr @BluntNate
“don’t you realize that word can be offensive?” – Indeed I do you stupid cunt, that’s why I’m using it… I mean to cause you offence. Retard.
14h Nate Burr @BluntNate
Dear every rectum clenching cunt who loves to run around telling folk which words they’re allowed to use… 1.Get a life 2.eat dicks fucktards’
Is YouTube going to end its association with Blunty before the mainstream media get a hold of this, or are they going to continue to provide a revenue stream to a misogynistic, vile human being? And YouTube, you may wish to have checked his background prior, a quick internet search provides some interesting reading.
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Google search done. Wow, just… wow. I don’t want to say any more.
But what I can say in general is I just don’t understand the appeal. Why do people watch this? He seems to hate everything and conclude that everyone, but him, is stupid.
I wonder if he’d say half this stuff to people’s faces, rather than a video camera?
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Some people out there thought Blunty’s video *wasn’t* part of the ad campaign?
I agree this is another good example of why the convergence review is so out of date. (Even the name convergence is out of date — it should have been the “divergence” review).
But I wouldn’t be overly worried if Blunty isn’t covered by the new standards body becos the Internet usually figures this stuff out pretty quickly and calls “bullshit”.
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it’s amazing reading that feed.
i too am confused as to who watches it, reads it etc. ugly, hate filled ranting is easy to access simply by turning on AM radio.
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The question about regulation is an interesting one, and I certainly don’t have any answers to that, especially since the platform it’s published on ‘YouTube’ is not Australian.
As for those surprised by Blunty’s following and why, it’s worth reviewing the who’s-who of online commentators. They range from Radio National style to late back radio talk back full of fruity language and controversy with audiences counted in the hundreds of thousands or millions.
Blackberry must be delighted. The reach and number of repetitions of ‘wake up’ have probably exceeded their wildest expectations.
When Scott Rhodie and I worked with Blunty on Paramount Pictures Australia’s “The Watchmen” movie campaign we achieved over 11 million views. He was thoroughly professional and always respected NDAs imposed, even when he was bursting to tell the world.
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I’m amazed you’re evening bothering to give anything the Convergence Review says any credence whatsoever. Several of the initiatives proposed in it are impossible to implement because of the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement (which would take an act of war to repudiate). Several other ideas (allowing the umpire to amend the rules as they go) are impossible to make work in the context of retaining shareholder value in businesses (and then theres the little matter of who appoints *that* gatekeeper anyway).
The entire report is a half-assed piece of work by media insiders who don’t know enough about technology, foreign affairs, telecoms, privacy, or pretty much any of the important issues impacting on our screens today. They also clearly don’t actually spend much time online.
The Government called for the review to give the Murdochs et al a bit of a fright – not to actually *do* anything that would startle the horses. Now that’s done, can we just treat the review as it really is – a stupendous waste of time and money. I’ll be glad when the budget comes along so the media forget all about it.
As for the less-than-charming Mr Blunty. Y’all seem to be making the same philosophical mistake the Review made: you don’t have to subscribe, or watch. Who cares what this doofus does? Being outraged about it reminds me of the excellent XKCD cartoon: “Something is *wrong* on the Internet.”
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