Media Grunt: Michael Bazeley

We’ve been using Brightcove a lot more to publish video (1, 2) at the Merc, and there is so much to like about it. But fer cryin’ out loud, can we please do something about these annoying Flash behaviors. Brightcove’s editing control panel is written entirely in Flash, which means a) if you ever hit the browser’s back button while you’re in the middle of doing something, you go back to the previous web site you were on and lose all your work to that point, and b) you can’t cut and paste into or out of Brightcove when you’re adding descriptions or other meta data to videos. These are relatively minor things in the grand scheme of things, but they can add up to be real productivity killers. Argh.

UPDATE: Brightcove’s Bob Mason points out to me that cut-and-paste works fine in Safari and Firefox on the Mac. I was using Camino, where it does not work. So I stand (mostly) corrected. And kudos to Bob, the company’s CTO, for taking the time out of his busy days to trade emails with me about this.

Google has egg on its face today after an employee for the company’s health advertising team ripped Michael Moore’s new film “Sicko” on a corporate blog — and then had to apologize. “Moore’s film portrays the industry as money and marketing driven, and fails to show healthcare’s interest in patient well-being and care,” wrote Lauren Turner in the first blog post. Turner went on to tout Google AdWords as a great tool for companies to manage their reputations through “issue management campaigns.”

What struck me most, though, was not the first ill-conceived blog post, but Turner’s follow-up, “oops” post. There Turner argued that advertising is a perfect place for companies and advocates to debate issues. “Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore’s movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry, advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.”

Three years ago, Google seemed to be singing a slightly different tune. Then, the environmental group Oceana bought Google search engine ads criticizing the environmental practices of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. One of the ads did not even mention Royal Caribbean by name. But Google pulled the ads because they violated an unpublished policy prohibiting ads that “advocate against other individuals, groups, or organizations.” The line from Google back then was that you can’t use AdWords to go negative on someone.

Now we have an advertising account planner suggesting that ads be used for public debate. Great idea. But are we really to believe that Michael Moore can “challenge the healthcare industry” without advocating against some person or entity? And vice versa. It seems inconsistent. And gray. And muddied. (See this email thread to see how Google’s own employees struggle with this policy.) As search engine expert Danny Sullivan noted in this Nation article in 2004, “Advocacy groups are going to be by their nature anti-something.”

Google is free to accept or reject any ads it wants. And it should aggressively police its ads for hateful speech. But maybe now - as we head into what will surely be a contentious presidential campaign - the company should clarify the type of advocacy ads that are and are not allowed.