• The New York Times, Monday, August 11, 2008 9:30 AM

Now every sentient human with access to a mouse, a remote or a cellphone decides what's news, says columnist David Carr. Case in point: NBC spent a day trying vainly to plug online leaks of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to protect its taped prime-time broadcast 12 hours later.

Trying to stop foreign broadcasts and leaked clips from being posted online was doomed to failure because information wants to be free and its consumers will find a workaround on any defense that can be conceived.

Ironically, the "jail break of information" didn't damage NBC's precious choreographed broadcast. The four-hour ceremony attracted an average of 34.2 million viewers, the most ever for an opening ceremony not in the United States. Welcome to a media world in which consumers want to be the ones -- not the networks -- to do the programming.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »