Oops November 3, 2009

I kind of thought I already posted this…

It’s certainly nothing new to say or think that news is at all biased.  It’s only human that at some point a reporter will let their personal opinions into a report.  Word choice, included information, omitted information… they all lend to a bias of reporting whether purposeful or not.  Benjamin Franklin’s newspapers certainly weren’t from a place of moderation or facts alone, were they?

 

In truth, the only thing that really matters in these situations is that – and this is a theme I’m sure I’ve beaten to death – today’s audience is stupid.  Well, maybe stupid isn’t quite the correct word but ignorant, gullible, and naive certainly strike closer to the reality of today’s news junkie or neophyte.  Granted, not everyone who watches Fox News or MSNBC are oblivious to the biased points of view or political leanings of their newspersons, but there are (the vast majority of?) people who believe everything that Glen Beck says as truth (the whole truth and nothing but).  We just have to learn to be smart enough to read the facts between the lines.

Back and Forth October 31, 2009

I found Bowden’s article extremely timely. I’m one of the offending members in the audience that has abandoned newspapers and practically never turns on the TV to keep up with my current events. “Post-Journalistic age” is the perfect name for the time we live in. The internet is where we turn now to find out what’s going on NOW. There’s no time lapse; we don’t have to wait for the 11 o’clock news, or the Sunday paper. We can follow stories from start to finish (Balloon Boy, anyone?) as it’s happening. And though Balloon Boy isn’t the stuff of great journalism, it is what audiences eat up. It’s a story that pays, basically.

We all have noticed the shift in the media from unbiased journalism to more sensationalist entertainment. The average viewer’s attention has shifted since the revelation that they can follow the news on their own via the web. TV must offer something flashier, something more, and poor newspapers have nowhere else to go, really, and are dying no matter how solid their journalism or how unbiased their stories. It is completely unsurprising that in order for the media to survive, it has to resort to shock. Coincidence that tabloid journalism seems to have gotten out of hand recently? It is also completely unsurprising that, with the ever-broadening reaches of the internet and the people with access to it, the Everyman has usurped the role of reporter.

Now, I’m hardly suggesting that this is a good thing. It’s the pleasure of having the answer or the information the second the news is being made that simply makes bad amatuer journalism appealing. Why check sources? Why not simply trust the average blogger to be a relatively informed individual? Which must have been what was running through the minds of the television news execs when they incorporated Morgan Richmond’s biased findings into their Sotomayor broadcasts. The fault doesn’t lie so much in Richmond’s corner (who’s blog is obviously slanted hard to the right and makes no bones about it) but with the “credible” news sources failing to follow through with the supposed credo of journalists. 

In any case, journalism as we once knew it is phasing out. Journalists everywhere have to consider what the new medium of the internet means to their profession and how to make themselves trustworthy and failsafe.  The BBC still has my complete support and trust, and perhaps I haven’t paid enough attention, but they never seem to have so many issues absurd stories, with scandalous writers, etc. They seem to set the bar higher, but, since we’re talking out complete disclosure here anyway, that is merely my opinion, not gospel. It’s rarely been an easy road for true journalism, but now especially it will be met with indifference by most. And it certainly isn’t going to make money, which may ultimately ring its professional death knell, and commit it to the public forever. So then, perhaps, it really is in the hands of the Everyman to stop being so damn proud of hearing themselves mutter nonsense into the big vacuum of the internet and get a little more serious and a lot less selfish.

 

Give Us Dirty Laundry October 29, 2009

(Warning: Blog post is brought to you by the beginnings of a cold and my decongestant.  This is kind of all over the place.  My apologies).

 

Mark Bowden’s “The Story Behind The Story” was an interesting read, but I can’t say that I’m shocked and/or appalled at the content in it.  Sure, he may not think that Richmond and Sexton are “thumbsuckers”, but they’re still pretty scummy regardless.  They got the ball rolling, after all.

Now, I get it, political mudslinging has gone on in this country for centuries and it’s never going to stop.  The Sotomayor case is yet another instance of something spiraling to a point of no control because the originators of the edited clips took her words out of context.  Bowden commented:

“And given the fragmentation of news on the Internet and on cable television, Americans increasingly choose to listen only to their own side of the argument, to bloggers and commentators who reinforce their convictions and paint the world only in acceptable, comfortable colors.“

Everybody’s got an agenda.  From political pundits to bloggers, somebody somewhere’s got a point to prove.  I don’t believe Richmond was sitting in his dimly-lit office, steepling his fingers like Mr. Burns and muttering, “Exxxxxcellent”, but he caught a snippet of something (laughter) and eventually molded it to suit his fancy.

I did go to the Verum Serum website (for shits and giggles) to see what Richmond had to say about the Bowden article.  His blog post is here: http://www.verumserum.com/?p=8223.  There’s also a response to an NPR interview that Bowden conducted here: http://www.verumserum.com/?p=8609.  He claims in one of them that Bowden isn’t being fair to him and his post but, well, dig your grave and all of that.

I’m going to let Don Henley wrap this up for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb7GNzzIVIo

How News Survives: How the “free world” makes money for the news organizations. October 29, 2009

“With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.” — Hunter S. Thompson

R.I.P. Hunter.

In 2005, I spent a semester in England, studying journalism at King’s College-London. One of the principles of the course was to compare how British newspapers covered news and events with the methods of American newspapers. Great Britain to date has twelve national newspapers (The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror, Guardian, Daily Sun…) compared to America’s three (New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today). In order to compete, each newspaper is known to have their own political slant (The Guardian more liberal, The Mail more conservative, etc.) in how they cover news. I liked this method and, at that time, thought that targeting readers and niche markets would be the thing that allowed newspapers to survive.

I was utterly clueless and, being as young as I am, don’t even have youth to blame it on.

If The Atlantic piece did anything, it confirmed that partisan coverage is how broadcast and digital journalism will survive. They’re going to pass through the storm of low ratings, ad men hit by the recession who won’t pay and the explosion of “free” with flying colors. They’ll make it because we’re doing the work for them. The “every men” of the blogosphere are doing the research and mining the ‘net for photos, flash video, ancient articles and interviews on Lexus-Nexus, for the fun, for the argument, and, most often, for free.

Organizations like the Judicial Confirmation Network and James Dobson’s Focus on the Family promote the idea that they have large staffs of “committed citizens” working to promote their ideals when in reality, both of them have pared their staff down to a handful of citizens coasting along on little more than fervor. And, more often than not, these low-paid minions are reading the blogs to get the information that will best serve their interests, passing the links and clips up the chain to their slightly-better paid bosses (the ones with their photos on the websites) who then package it so it can be sent to the production assistant that CNN hired to sort through Soledad O’ Brien’s e-mail.

The actual reporting of news will survive as it has for six hundred years and each venue will survive by framing the most controversial image or sound-bite to fit its needs. As in 2005, I won’t spend two minutes mourning for the loss of objectivity where it never existed in the first place. What I object to in all of this is just how low down the totem pole the actual research and legwork is going and how all of the “thumbsuckers” are getting paid while the reporters work for free.

If it is in writing, It must be true – or not. October 29, 2009

I found that The Atlantic piece to be disturbing and scary.  The fact that one individual posted two clips about a person, totally taken out of context, is bad enough, but when the “legitimate” (and I use the term loosely) news takes it as gospel and spreads it everywhere without checking the source, is the day I stop believing in these news sources.  Oh what – I did that already.  I have noticed in the last few years that the majority of news coverage is slanted either to the political left or to the right.  I have not seen unbiased news coverage in so long . . .  This is why I basically only read headlines.  It is enough for me to just read the headlines and ignore most of the verbiage.  It seems that A. J. Liebing’s comments about a one town newspaper being “like a man with only one eye, and often the eye is glass.”  is so true now.  Bowden opines that this is an example of the collapse of professional journalism.  When individuals blog on the web and newspapers and television shows take the blog as truth without checking the facts, they are no longer acting as responsible journalists.

This reminds me of a lesson in United States history from High School. The subject was “yellow journalism” and I went in search of just what that actually meant and how it compares to the Bowden article.  I found several references to the term including

http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/spanamer/yellow.htm

www.pbs.org/crucible/frames/_journalism.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

among many others.  For brevity’s sake I will only quote one:  ”Yellow journalism, in short, is biased opinion masquerading as objective fact. Moreover, the practice of yellow journalism involved sensationalism, distorted stories, and misleading images for the sole purpose of boosting newspaper sales and exciting public opinion.” which came from library.thinkquest.org.  Is this not what we have now?  Consider the boy in the balloon story that just happened.  The press sensationalized the story of a boy in a runaway hot air balloon.  The whole thing was a stunt, so the parents could have their very own realty show. In realty (pun intended) the boy was hiding in the attic following his parent orders. Is this what the world is coming to?

In conclusion, I have that the credibility of todays news reporters, whether print, television, or any other media, is now skewed towards sensationalism, distortion of truth, and anything else it takes to sell newspapers or advertisements.  I realize that the economy is especially bad for the print media with the incursion of the internet into its business model, but honesty and truth should always be in the forefront of a reporters responsibility to his/her readers.

Tell It Straight October 28, 2009

The part of Bowden’s article that resonated with me was the idea that newspapers and newspaper reporters aim to “tell a story straight.” Bowden argues that bloggers and the every-man journalists who post stories online don’t aim to tell the story straight. Instead, these people write to and for people who already agree with them. Interestingly, Richmond claims that he is “determined to add something new to the debate.” Bowden admits that Richmond does not fit the mold of the “thumbsucker” lazy journalist. However, I don’t think it matters that Richmond isn’t a lazy journalist. Richmond may have looked for something new to add to the debate, but he also did what so many other bloggers do and took information out of context. To me, taking information out of context is the real problem with news that is delivered via the Internet and television.

We have turned into a society that consumes its news and information in snippets rather than in whole stories. The Internet delivers our news in a disjointed fashion. One might argue that subscribing to the RSS feed of a respectable newspaper or journal is the same as reading the hard copy of that newspaper or journal. However, I would have to disagree with this. When we only see the headlines on a website, it seems we are more inclined to ignore topics that we think we aren’t interested in. Sure you can read the first sentence or two that accompanies each headline, but even this does not provide enough information to truly determine whether or not the article is worth reading. When you have the hard copy of a newspaper or journal in front of you, you’re more likely to skim articles that you might skip entirely online—you might find something you would have dismissed online interesting. But when you read online, you simply skim and only click on things that you know interest you. This is partially why bloggers can write to and for people who already agree with them—those people are seeking out articles that agree with them.

When we only read our news this way, we end up taking in snippets of information out of context—we miss the whole story. Richmond’s video clips of Sonia Sotomayor are proof of this. This is why we must read blogs and other information that is posted on the web by people who are not associated with established newspapers, journals, or other news sources with a grain of salt. While it’s great that everyone can have a voice these days and that conversations can occur among strangers, the fact remains that newspapers and journalists have an obligation to “tell a story straight.” Journalists are trained in the art of collecting information, finding legitimate sources, backing up facts, etc., and this is what makes them more trustworthy than the every-man journalist. Whether you agree with a journalist or the views of a newspaper or not doesn’t matter. They have one goal in mind, and they don’t create articles for people who agree with them.

What’s most disturbing about the situation with Richmond is that news channels all over the country played his clips, and they played them out of context. Television and cable news programs are directly competing with the fast pace of the Internet, and in doing so, they seem to have let their standards go.  The world of Web 2.0 is making it increasingly difficult to know who or what to trust. This seems like a good argument for saving our newspapers.

News Should Surprise Us With Something New October 28, 2009

The journalism of traditional media outlets, including our news stations and newspapers, is collapsing.  No longer is tomorrow’s morning paper or tonight’s nightly news the destination for today’s top story.  This is because news outlets are no longer showing the fresh angles, unseen clips that makes “news” news, and keeps us watching.

News should “show the world something it hasn’t seen, surprise it with something new, and you fundamentally alter its understanding of things (Bowden).”  In Bowden’s day, traditional media outlets did just that; they showed the world something new.  Today, most stations and papers are showing the same thing, and it is what we already viewed earlier in the day.  Now that information is literally at our fingertips at any time, professional journalism has found in a new media.

Bowden’s article reminded me of something I read recently by Clarence Page, Obama outs Fox News.  Fox news was trying to show a new angle, different from what all of the other stations were showing.  And because of this difference, Obama and his administration chose not to speak to them.  When greater powers are controlling the news that is shown to the public, we do not get the whole story.  This, to me, is part of the reason why we are turning away from the traditional news stations.  As Bowden said, we want to see something we have not seen, the range of perspectives on a story, not just one.

Journalistic Integrity, Military Intelligence, Jumbo Shrimp, and Safe Sex October 28, 2009

Why does it come as a surprise to any one that political hitmen influence the news, or that all news, like history, mind you, is slanted? As long as you remember that all news is biased, and that journalists are as shady as salesmen, who are far more interested in their byline and reputation than the truth, it will be easier to accept that you are being lied to on every news channel. You just never know how much.

This development is nothing new. In 1954, Dr. Sam Sheppard is accused of murdering his wife  (His story is the basis for the TV show, “The Fugitive.”) and the media wanted him in prison.  The Cleveland Press wrote, “Why isn’t Dr. Sheppard in Prison?” It is because this (mis)trial of the media, notably the reporters, that an accused is labeled as “alleged” from now on.

However, although we are inundated by several different kinds of news stories, but on the bright side, we have many choices for our news sources that ever before. Once upon a time there were only ABC, NBC, CBS, and WGN. Now we can choose which side our news is slanted. If you like the left, go with CNN, MSNBC, and the Daily Show. If you like the right, there is Rush Limbaugh, FOX, and NewsMAX. Then we have our bloggers, who are trying to become as legitimate as the old reporters you only see in movies. When the line between reporter and paparazzi, between the New York Times and TMZ is blurred, why would you want to be called a reporter? The days of the great reporter are part of the museum set.  Just because the medium has changed, allowing more people to become “reporters,” the message hasn’t. All news is biased and that’s a fact.

citizen journalist October 27, 2009

back when towns weren’t one-paper towns, the internet didn’t exist.  yet there was still a good deal of information exchange.  labor movements newsletters, women’s rights newsletters, the black press, and immigrant newspapers flourished.  yeah, the internet is killing the newspaper, but that isn’t necessarily a horrible thing.  There is sincere reporting to be found – if not more.  NPR has all sorts of text-based information whereas it once only auditory.  I’d imagine the chicago tribune, the new york times, and l.a. times still need journalists – whether the article they write appears on the web or in print first is irrelevant.  If i were into “the news”, i would gladly pay for a subscription to an online newspaper (a paper sunday edition would be a bonus to incite me, for sure).  but i’m not, so if an event or incident does perk my interest, i want info immediately, not a day late and a dollar short.

Just as anyone with enough gumption to make an indie film or press their own record, so can anyone with the tools and means (and should they not be able to?) become Citzen Journalist.  if distruting a independent newspaper/letter was as cheap, reached as wide as an audience and as quickly as infomation can be consumed through the internet, they’d probably still be around.  one might argue that indpendent press was obsolete before new media came along, but at least it was reclaimed in some form.  all this is not to say one can go blindly into cyberspace and consume all they read without regards to truth or sources.  but neither should one take the redeye, la hoy, the tribune, or the DePaulia without a grain of salt or two.  being an informed citizen about where news comes from, including being somewhat knowledgeable about the political economies of the media, is a responsibility of the reader akin to the ethical code of a journalist.  i’m not saying one type of journalism – professional or citizen – is better or worse than the other, but i do think there is room for both.

salivating dogs October 27, 2009

I love the idea of hybridizing fiction and nonfiction: to me,  television and other impersonal media can inherently be manipulated that way. It is reminiscent of modern theater, that blurs the fourth wall and makes the audience uncertain of their place as participant or audience.

I also was stimulated by the idea in Digital Storytelling of Alternate Reality Games, which, (though always promotional tools), extend fictional characters into the real world, and allow people to interact with the story virtually.

Baudrillard recognized the absurdity of reality television, and, as most astute people eventually ask, “Don’t they know they cameras are there?” Based on the principle that viewing a subject necessarily affects its actions, the presence of cameras automatically turns the people’s actions into performance. On the web, though, we don’t have a camera on us, but rather a projected self, that we adapt to the medium.

Here I will share a passage from Marshall McLuhan’s, “War and Peace in the Global Village”:

The work of Pavlov, in revealing the fact of conditioned reflexes, had a totally different meaning for Russian and European.

Pavlov had been unable to condition the dogs in his experiments until he had first completely conditioned the laboratory environments in which they lived, introducing precise thermal and auditory controls.

The bell did not elicit salivation.

To the European, it was the fact of automatic salivation that created excitement; to the Russians, the conditioning of the laboratories. Indeed, the ordinary psychological effect makes no mention of the laboratory conditioning. The Westerner lives in a man-made environment, mechanically conditioned and time structured.