and via slashdot:
| Print News Fading, Still Source of Much News |
| from the fact-checking-the-next-media-casualty dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday December 26, @10:22 (The Media)|
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/26/1341218 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
CNet's Dan Farber took a look, not only at the popular news of how print
media is dying a slow death, but also what contribution to the news print
journalists are still making. According to research quoted, while the
physical publications are quickly becoming a thing of the past much of
the news that makes its way into circulation via blogs and other means
still [0]originates from the hard work of those print journalists. (We
[1]discussed a similar perspective on the news a week back.) "While the
Internet is growing as the place where people go for news, the revenue
simply isn't catching up fast enough. The less obvious part of the
Internet overtaking newspapers as the main source for national and
international news is that much of the seed content--the original
reporting that breaks national and international news and is subsequently
refactored by legions of bloggers--comes from the reporters and editors
working at the financially strapped newspapers and national and local
television outlets. [...] As the financial pressures mount--the outlook
for 2009 is dismal--and the cost cutting continues, we can only hope that
the original news reporting by top-flight journalists is not a major
casualty."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/12/26/1341218
Links:
0. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-10128881-80.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
1. http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/20/2124218&tid=149
Friday, December 26, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Interesting article on the future of Newspapers in the New Yorker:
THE FINANCIAL PAGE
NEWS YOU CAN LOSE
by James Surowiecki
DECEMBER 22, 2008
TEXT SIZE:
SMALL TEXT
MEDIUM TEXT
LARGE TEXT
PRINT E-MAIL FEEDS
RELATED LINKS
The Balance Sheet, James Surowiecki’s blog.
KEYWORDS
Newspapers; Advertising; Internet; Technology; Business; Economic Crisis; Recession
hen the Tribune Company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy, last Monday, Sam Zell, the man who bought the company a year ago, for $8.2 billion, said that its problems were the result of a “perfect storm.” You take readers and advertisers who were already migrating away from print, and add a steep recession, and you’ve got serious trouble. What Zell failed to mention was that his acquisition of the company had buried it beneath such a heavy pile of debt that any storm at all would likely have sunk it. But although Zell was making excuses for his own mismanagement, the perfect storm is real enough, and it is threatening to destroy newspapers as we know them. Layoffs and buyouts have become routine. The Miami Herald and the San Diego Union-Tribune are reportedly on the selling block, while lawmakers in Connecticut are trying to keep two newspapers there afloat. Even the New York Times Company has slashed its dividend and announced that it would borrow against its headquarters to avoid cash-flow problems.
There’s no mystery as to the source of all the trouble: advertising revenue has dried up. In the third quarter alone, it dropped eighteen per cent, or almost two billion dollars, from last year. For most of the past decade, newspaper companies had profit margins that were the envy of other industries. This year, they have been happy just to stay in the black. Many traditional advertisers, like big department stores, are struggling, and the bursting of the housing bubble has devastated real-estate advertising. Even online ads, which were supposed to rescue the business, have declined lately, and they are, in any case, nowhere near as lucrative as their print counterparts. Papers’ attempts to deal with the new environment by cutting costs haven’t helped: trimming staff and reducing coverage make newspapers less appealing to readers and advertisers. It may be no coincidence that papers that have avoided the steepest cutbacks, like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, have done a better job of holding onto readers.
Newspaper readership has been slowly dropping for decades—as a percentage of the population, newspapers have about half as many subscribers as they did four decades ago—but the Internet helped turn that slow puncture into a blowout. Papers now seem to be the equivalent of the railroads at the start of the twentieth century—a once-great business eclipsed by a new technology. In a famous 1960 article called “Marketing Myopia,” Theodore Levitt held up the railroads as a quintessential example of companies’ inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Levitt argued that a focus on products rather than on customers led the companies to misunderstand their core business. Had the bosses realized that they were in the transportation business, rather than the railroad business, they could have moved into trucking and air transport, rather than letting other companies dominate. By extension, many argue that if newspapers had understood they were in the information business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more quickly and more successfully to the Net.
FROM THE ISSUECARTOON BANKE-MAIL THIS
There’s some truth to this. Local papers could have been more aggressive in leveraging their brand names to dominate the market for online classifieds, instead of letting Craigslist usurp that market. And while the flood of online information has made the job of aggregation and filtering tremendously valuable, none of the important aggregation sites, to say nothing of Google News, are run by a paper. Even now, papers often display a “not invented here” mentality, treating their sites as walled gardens, devoid of links to other news outlets. From a print perspective, that’s understandable: why would you advertise good work that’s being done elsewhere? But it’s an approach that makes no sense on the Web.
These mistakes have been undeniably costly, but they’re not the whole story. The peculiar fact about the current crisis is that even as big papers have become less profitable they’ve arguably become more popular. The blogosphere, much of which piggybacks on traditional journalism’s content, has magnified the reach of newspapers, and although papers now face far more scrutiny, this is a kind of backhanded compliment to their continued relevance. Usually, when an industry runs into the kind of trouble that Levitt was talking about, it’s because people are abandoning its products. But people don’t use the Times less than they did a decade ago. They use it more. The difference is that today they don’t have to pay for it. The real problem for newspapers, in other words, isn’t the Internet; it’s us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free. That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product.
Does that mean newspapers are doomed? Not necessarily. There are many possible futures one can imagine for them, from becoming foundation-run nonprofits to relying on reader donations to that old standby the deep-pocketed patron. It’s even possible that a few papers will be able to earn enough money online to make the traditional ad-supported strategy work. But it would not be shocking if, sometime soon, there were big American cities that had no local newspaper; more important, we’re almost sure to see a sharp decline in the volume and variety of content that newspapers collectively produce. For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime—intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on—and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is. ♦
ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTOPH NIEMANN
THE FINANCIAL PAGE
NEWS YOU CAN LOSE
by James Surowiecki
DECEMBER 22, 2008
TEXT SIZE:
SMALL TEXT
MEDIUM TEXT
LARGE TEXT
PRINT E-MAIL FEEDS
RELATED LINKS
The Balance Sheet, James Surowiecki’s blog.
KEYWORDS
Newspapers; Advertising; Internet; Technology; Business; Economic Crisis; Recession
hen the Tribune Company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy, last Monday, Sam Zell, the man who bought the company a year ago, for $8.2 billion, said that its problems were the result of a “perfect storm.” You take readers and advertisers who were already migrating away from print, and add a steep recession, and you’ve got serious trouble. What Zell failed to mention was that his acquisition of the company had buried it beneath such a heavy pile of debt that any storm at all would likely have sunk it. But although Zell was making excuses for his own mismanagement, the perfect storm is real enough, and it is threatening to destroy newspapers as we know them. Layoffs and buyouts have become routine. The Miami Herald and the San Diego Union-Tribune are reportedly on the selling block, while lawmakers in Connecticut are trying to keep two newspapers there afloat. Even the New York Times Company has slashed its dividend and announced that it would borrow against its headquarters to avoid cash-flow problems.
There’s no mystery as to the source of all the trouble: advertising revenue has dried up. In the third quarter alone, it dropped eighteen per cent, or almost two billion dollars, from last year. For most of the past decade, newspaper companies had profit margins that were the envy of other industries. This year, they have been happy just to stay in the black. Many traditional advertisers, like big department stores, are struggling, and the bursting of the housing bubble has devastated real-estate advertising. Even online ads, which were supposed to rescue the business, have declined lately, and they are, in any case, nowhere near as lucrative as their print counterparts. Papers’ attempts to deal with the new environment by cutting costs haven’t helped: trimming staff and reducing coverage make newspapers less appealing to readers and advertisers. It may be no coincidence that papers that have avoided the steepest cutbacks, like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, have done a better job of holding onto readers.
Newspaper readership has been slowly dropping for decades—as a percentage of the population, newspapers have about half as many subscribers as they did four decades ago—but the Internet helped turn that slow puncture into a blowout. Papers now seem to be the equivalent of the railroads at the start of the twentieth century—a once-great business eclipsed by a new technology. In a famous 1960 article called “Marketing Myopia,” Theodore Levitt held up the railroads as a quintessential example of companies’ inability to adapt to changing circumstances. Levitt argued that a focus on products rather than on customers led the companies to misunderstand their core business. Had the bosses realized that they were in the transportation business, rather than the railroad business, they could have moved into trucking and air transport, rather than letting other companies dominate. By extension, many argue that if newspapers had understood they were in the information business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more quickly and more successfully to the Net.
FROM THE ISSUECARTOON BANKE-MAIL THIS
There’s some truth to this. Local papers could have been more aggressive in leveraging their brand names to dominate the market for online classifieds, instead of letting Craigslist usurp that market. And while the flood of online information has made the job of aggregation and filtering tremendously valuable, none of the important aggregation sites, to say nothing of Google News, are run by a paper. Even now, papers often display a “not invented here” mentality, treating their sites as walled gardens, devoid of links to other news outlets. From a print perspective, that’s understandable: why would you advertise good work that’s being done elsewhere? But it’s an approach that makes no sense on the Web.
These mistakes have been undeniably costly, but they’re not the whole story. The peculiar fact about the current crisis is that even as big papers have become less profitable they’ve arguably become more popular. The blogosphere, much of which piggybacks on traditional journalism’s content, has magnified the reach of newspapers, and although papers now face far more scrutiny, this is a kind of backhanded compliment to their continued relevance. Usually, when an industry runs into the kind of trouble that Levitt was talking about, it’s because people are abandoning its products. But people don’t use the Times less than they did a decade ago. They use it more. The difference is that today they don’t have to pay for it. The real problem for newspapers, in other words, isn’t the Internet; it’s us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free. That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product.
Does that mean newspapers are doomed? Not necessarily. There are many possible futures one can imagine for them, from becoming foundation-run nonprofits to relying on reader donations to that old standby the deep-pocketed patron. It’s even possible that a few papers will be able to earn enough money online to make the traditional ad-supported strategy work. But it would not be shocking if, sometime soon, there were big American cities that had no local newspaper; more important, we’re almost sure to see a sharp decline in the volume and variety of content that newspapers collectively produce. For a while now, readers have had the best of both worlds: all the benefits of the old, high-profit regime—intensive reporting, experienced editors, and so on—and the low costs of the new one. But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is. ♦
ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTOPH NIEMANN
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Check it out:http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/08/hp-and-asu-demo-bendable-unbreakable-electronic-displays/
You now have outstanding assignments: 'A Radio Report sent to me as a .wav attachment in an e-mail, a watch sports story, a story about what will disappear through new tech. over the next few years, and finally a report on your expierience at the FIFA events in Japan. The first three are late. Good luck and work hard.
You now have outstanding assignments: 'A Radio Report sent to me as a .wav attachment in an e-mail, a watch sports story, a story about what will disappear through new tech. over the next few years, and finally a report on your expierience at the FIFA events in Japan. The first three are late. Good luck and work hard.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
From Tech Innovation
My first job as a journalist was at Supermarket News, the leading publication for grocery executives. I worked out of a bureau in San Francisco that included several other journalists who reported on the fledgling computer industry. While I was attending the opening of Safeway's first gourmet supermarket, my colleagues were watching Steve Jobs unveil the first Macintosh. It didn't take me long to figure out which was the more exciting and important industry to report on. So when I got the opportunity to switch publications, I jumped.
Over the next two decades I covered Silicon Valley—first for trade publications, and later for Forbes, Fortune, and Business 2.0. There were two things I especially liked about my job. I met some of the most amazing people on the planet, and I got to watch digital technology creep into every aspect of our lives—PCs, cell phones, music, movies, cars, and more.
For the last three years I have been covering the field of social innovation as managing editor of Stanford Social Innovation Review, and I'm happy to see that digital technology is starting to have a bigger impact in the social sector. William Brindley, the CEO of NetHope and the subject of our most recent interview is one of the reasons that phenomenon has occurred.
Brindley leads a group of techies from the world's largest humanitarian NGOs who are finding creative ways to use technology to improve the way that humanitarian aid is delivered. The group has helped create suitcase-size devices powered by solar cells that provide internet and phone service anywhere in the world, and is developing easy-to-use hand-held devices for field workers charged with monitoring agricultural production in Africa. Nonprofits still trail for-profits in their use of technology, but with the help of people such as Brindley they are closing the gap.
My first job as a journalist was at Supermarket News, the leading publication for grocery executives. I worked out of a bureau in San Francisco that included several other journalists who reported on the fledgling computer industry. While I was attending the opening of Safeway's first gourmet supermarket, my colleagues were watching Steve Jobs unveil the first Macintosh. It didn't take me long to figure out which was the more exciting and important industry to report on. So when I got the opportunity to switch publications, I jumped.
Over the next two decades I covered Silicon Valley—first for trade publications, and later for Forbes, Fortune, and Business 2.0. There were two things I especially liked about my job. I met some of the most amazing people on the planet, and I got to watch digital technology creep into every aspect of our lives—PCs, cell phones, music, movies, cars, and more.
For the last three years I have been covering the field of social innovation as managing editor of Stanford Social Innovation Review, and I'm happy to see that digital technology is starting to have a bigger impact in the social sector. William Brindley, the CEO of NetHope and the subject of our most recent interview is one of the reasons that phenomenon has occurred.
Brindley leads a group of techies from the world's largest humanitarian NGOs who are finding creative ways to use technology to improve the way that humanitarian aid is delivered. The group has helped create suitcase-size devices powered by solar cells that provide internet and phone service anywhere in the world, and is developing easy-to-use hand-held devices for field workers charged with monitoring agricultural production in Africa. Nonprofits still trail for-profits in their use of technology, but with the help of people such as Brindley they are closing the gap.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Citizen Journalists Provide Glimpses Into Attacks
By BRIAN STELTER and NOAM COHEN
The attacks in India served as another case study in how
technology is transforming people into potential reporters,
adding a new dimension to the news media.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/world/asia/30twitter.html?th&emc=th
By BRIAN STELTER and NOAM COHEN
The attacks in India served as another case study in how
technology is transforming people into potential reporters,
adding a new dimension to the news media.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/world/asia/30twitter.html?th&emc=th
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Well guys here it is again and am still waiting for the pod casts ( wav. file attachment) news report:
Investigative journalism to make an online come-back?
Paul Raven @ 22-11-2008
Following on from Tom M’s mention of Spot.us, the New York Times has an article on the organisations that may well end up replacing it. Local news websites like VoiceOfSanDiego.org are looking to beat both the current newspaper and web news models by returning to solid original journalism on the matters that matter:
“Voice is doing really significant work, driving the agenda on redevelopment and some other areas, putting local politicians and businesses on the hot seat,” said Dean Nelson, director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. “I have them come into my classes, and I introduce them as, ‘This is the future of journalism.’ ”
The problem being that, currently, online advertising doesn’t provide enough income to run a proper newsroom, even with the lower overheads of the straight-to-web model. But will that always be the case? I’d be a lot more tolerant of internet advertising if I felt I was getting decent content as a result of it.
Investigative journalism to make an online come-back?
Paul Raven @ 22-11-2008
Following on from Tom M’s mention of Spot.us, the New York Times has an article on the organisations that may well end up replacing it. Local news websites like VoiceOfSanDiego.org are looking to beat both the current newspaper and web news models by returning to solid original journalism on the matters that matter:
“Voice is doing really significant work, driving the agenda on redevelopment and some other areas, putting local politicians and businesses on the hot seat,” said Dean Nelson, director of the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. “I have them come into my classes, and I introduce them as, ‘This is the future of journalism.’ ”
The problem being that, currently, online advertising doesn’t provide enough income to run a proper newsroom, even with the lower overheads of the straight-to-web model. But will that always be the case? I’d be a lot more tolerant of internet advertising if I felt I was getting decent content as a result of it.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Got the following from Futurismic.com a very good source.
Tomorrow’s news: Journalism’s future will look like … ?
Tom Marcinko @ 18-11-2008
As Ed Wood said, future events such as these will concern you in the future. With newspapers shriveling up on our breakfast tables, and TV spewing out tabloid and opinion, what’s going to happen to investigative journalism? Reporter-maven DigiDave says:
What we need right now is 10,000 journalism startups. Of these 9,000 will fail, 1,000 will find ways to sustain themselves for a brief period of time, 98 will find mediocre success and financial security and two will come out as new media equivalents to the New York Times…. I don’t know what that organization will look like or who it will be - but that’s what we need and we face some serious challenges along the way.
Dave’s behind Spot.us, a venture in “community-funded reporting.” People submit tips and fund pitches, and the resulting stories can be used by anyone under Creative Commons. About 10 projects are on the boards. A pitch on the after-effects of a year-ago oil spill on San Francisco Bay’s beaches has raised $500 and needs $300 more. Sounds like slow going, but it beats whining about the good old days.
[Story tip: Journerdism]
Related posts
Flux of facts - the fate of news in a wired world (0)
WIRED autopsies crowdsourcing experiment (0)
Secret Motel Art (0)
Queen Rania of Jordan opens communication with the West… via Youtube (0)
Mixed messages: Wired in two minds over Estonian “cyberwar” story (2)
Tomorrow’s news: Journalism’s future will look like … ?
Tom Marcinko @ 18-11-2008
As Ed Wood said, future events such as these will concern you in the future. With newspapers shriveling up on our breakfast tables, and TV spewing out tabloid and opinion, what’s going to happen to investigative journalism? Reporter-maven DigiDave says:
What we need right now is 10,000 journalism startups. Of these 9,000 will fail, 1,000 will find ways to sustain themselves for a brief period of time, 98 will find mediocre success and financial security and two will come out as new media equivalents to the New York Times…. I don’t know what that organization will look like or who it will be - but that’s what we need and we face some serious challenges along the way.
Dave’s behind Spot.us, a venture in “community-funded reporting.” People submit tips and fund pitches, and the resulting stories can be used by anyone under Creative Commons. About 10 projects are on the boards. A pitch on the after-effects of a year-ago oil spill on San Francisco Bay’s beaches has raised $500 and needs $300 more. Sounds like slow going, but it beats whining about the good old days.
[Story tip: Journerdism]
Related posts
Flux of facts - the fate of news in a wired world (0)
WIRED autopsies crowdsourcing experiment (0)
Secret Motel Art (0)
Queen Rania of Jordan opens communication with the West… via Youtube (0)
Mixed messages: Wired in two minds over Estonian “cyberwar” story (2)
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Here is a good talking point for next class:
Newspapers Are Dead; Long Live Newspapers
Source: American Journalism Review, November/December 2008
"Newspapers are in trouble for reasons that have almost nothing to do with newspaper journalism," writes Paul Farhi. "Even a paper stocked with the world's finest editorial minds wouldn't have a fighting chance against the economic and technological forces arrayed against the business." Farhi says newspapers "remain remarkably popular" but suffer from "the flight of classified advertisers, the deterioration of retail advertising and the indebtedness of newspaper owners." The Internet, he maintains, has expanded newspaper readership while sapping "newspapers' economic lifeblood. The most serious erosion has occurred in classified advertising, which once made up more than 40 percent of a newspaper's revenues and more than half its profits. ... Craigslist and eBay and dozens of other low-cost and no-cost classified sites began gobbling newspapers' market share a few years ago. What they didn't wipe out, the tanking economy did." In the same issue of American Journalism Review, journalism professor Philip Meyer writes that economic pressure will transform today's general-audience newspapers into "The Elite Newspaper of the Future," offering "analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting" to "the educated, opinion-leading, news-junkie core of the audience" who "will insist on it as a defense against 'persuasive communication,' the euphemism for advertising, public relations and spin that exploits the confusion of information overload."
Newspapers Are Dead; Long Live Newspapers
Source: American Journalism Review, November/December 2008
"Newspapers are in trouble for reasons that have almost nothing to do with newspaper journalism," writes Paul Farhi. "Even a paper stocked with the world's finest editorial minds wouldn't have a fighting chance against the economic and technological forces arrayed against the business." Farhi says newspapers "remain remarkably popular" but suffer from "the flight of classified advertisers, the deterioration of retail advertising and the indebtedness of newspaper owners." The Internet, he maintains, has expanded newspaper readership while sapping "newspapers' economic lifeblood. The most serious erosion has occurred in classified advertising, which once made up more than 40 percent of a newspaper's revenues and more than half its profits. ... Craigslist and eBay and dozens of other low-cost and no-cost classified sites began gobbling newspapers' market share a few years ago. What they didn't wipe out, the tanking economy did." In the same issue of American Journalism Review, journalism professor Philip Meyer writes that economic pressure will transform today's general-audience newspapers into "The Elite Newspaper of the Future," offering "analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting" to "the educated, opinion-leading, news-junkie core of the audience" who "will insist on it as a defense against 'persuasive communication,' the euphemism for advertising, public relations and spin that exploits the confusion of information overload."
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Thursday, October 09, 2008
From CBC:
Journalists easily manipulated, says veteran U.S. newsman
Seymour Hersh says bloggers now more effective than mainstream media
Seymour Hersh will kick off the Shaw Festival's fall lecture series on Sunday in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. (Brad Barket/Getty Images)
Groundbreaking U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh contends that journalists have allowed themselves to be manipulated in their coverage of U.S. politics in recent years.
"My profession failed us when it came to understanding what George Bush and Dick Cheney were doing in Iraq," Hersh said Thursday on CBC cultural affairs show Q from CBC's Washington, D.C., studio.
"Generally, we didn't do our job, which was to be skeptical and give them the greatest scrutiny we could, to hold them to the highest possible standards. We didn't do that. We went along with them and became part of the team," said Hersh, who will kick off the Shaw Festival's fall lecture series at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on Sunday.
And journalists are still being manipulated, he added. "We have a man in office [in the U.S.] who's demonstrated no capacity to get anything done with any success, and we've just given him $700 billion U.S. to ease the world's credit crunch. Of course, we've found out over the past weekend that they're only just figuring out what to do with this money."
It's not a new situation, he said, giving examples from his career as a reporter in the New York Times' Washington bureau and as Washington correspondent for the Associated Press.
"When you have editors who want stories and are willing to take risks, you have a great newspaper," he said. "But most of the people who get promoted [to top editors] fit the corporate model, are malleable and predictable … less interested in stories and more interested in not making waves."
Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin have been telling American voters to ignore what they call the liberal media.
Hersh pointed to a revolution in journalism that's been sparked by the Internet. Bloggers, he noted, have replaced the mainstream news media as cutting-edge news gatherers.
The public began learning about Sarah Palin, he said, "when bloggers in Alaska started flooding the Internet with accounts of some of her doings and the mainstream press picked it up. We have a new phenomenon at just the right time .… We don't know what to make of it … but I assure you, it is the future in terms of journalism."
He also noted that the public's appetite for celebrity gossip has resulted in the blurring lines between news and entertainment. "I don't care what they [reporters] think," he said. "I want to know what they know."
But Hersh, whose coverage of the My Lai massacre and coverup helped end the Vietnam War, believes in the power a single piece of writing can wield.
He also believes it's the duty of journalists to be unbiased in their reporting, and this objectivity shouldn't undermine reporting the truth.
"By 1967, I was convinced that the only objective thing to say about the [Vietnam] war was that it was a disaster," he said. It was corrupting America, it was murdering people."
Journalists easily manipulated, says veteran U.S. newsman
Seymour Hersh says bloggers now more effective than mainstream media
Seymour Hersh will kick off the Shaw Festival's fall lecture series on Sunday in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. (Brad Barket/Getty Images)
Groundbreaking U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh contends that journalists have allowed themselves to be manipulated in their coverage of U.S. politics in recent years.
"My profession failed us when it came to understanding what George Bush and Dick Cheney were doing in Iraq," Hersh said Thursday on CBC cultural affairs show Q from CBC's Washington, D.C., studio.
"Generally, we didn't do our job, which was to be skeptical and give them the greatest scrutiny we could, to hold them to the highest possible standards. We didn't do that. We went along with them and became part of the team," said Hersh, who will kick off the Shaw Festival's fall lecture series at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on Sunday.
And journalists are still being manipulated, he added. "We have a man in office [in the U.S.] who's demonstrated no capacity to get anything done with any success, and we've just given him $700 billion U.S. to ease the world's credit crunch. Of course, we've found out over the past weekend that they're only just figuring out what to do with this money."
It's not a new situation, he said, giving examples from his career as a reporter in the New York Times' Washington bureau and as Washington correspondent for the Associated Press.
"When you have editors who want stories and are willing to take risks, you have a great newspaper," he said. "But most of the people who get promoted [to top editors] fit the corporate model, are malleable and predictable … less interested in stories and more interested in not making waves."
Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin have been telling American voters to ignore what they call the liberal media.
Hersh pointed to a revolution in journalism that's been sparked by the Internet. Bloggers, he noted, have replaced the mainstream news media as cutting-edge news gatherers.
The public began learning about Sarah Palin, he said, "when bloggers in Alaska started flooding the Internet with accounts of some of her doings and the mainstream press picked it up. We have a new phenomenon at just the right time .… We don't know what to make of it … but I assure you, it is the future in terms of journalism."
He also noted that the public's appetite for celebrity gossip has resulted in the blurring lines between news and entertainment. "I don't care what they [reporters] think," he said. "I want to know what they know."
But Hersh, whose coverage of the My Lai massacre and coverup helped end the Vietnam War, believes in the power a single piece of writing can wield.
He also believes it's the duty of journalists to be unbiased in their reporting, and this objectivity shouldn't undermine reporting the truth.
"By 1967, I was convinced that the only objective thing to say about the [Vietnam] war was that it was a disaster," he said. It was corrupting America, it was murdering people."
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Just a reminder that your assignment this week is to listen to two or three of the New York Times podcasts and perhaps a couple of the NPR ones. Also take a look at this rather long opinion article:
Don’t let the facts spoil a good story
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian,
Saturday September 13 2008
Here is a cautionary tale for anyone working in research. “Captain Cook and Lord Nelson seem unlikely figureheads in the fight against climate change alarmists,” said the Sun. “Lord Nelson and Captain Cook’s ship logs question climate change theories,” announced the Telegraph. Oh that’s handy. So perhaps we can just keep on burning oil regardless then? “The ships’ logs of great maritime figures such as Lord Nelson and Captain Cook have cast new light on climate change by suggesting that global warming may not be an entirely man-made phenomenon.”
I spoke to Dennis Wheeler, a geographer at Sunderland University and the man whose research triggered this coverage. Is he a leading figure in “the fight against climate change alarmists”?
No. “But now I’ve had emails from cranks around the world thinking I’m some kind of anti-global warming conspiracy theorist and a friend to them. I’m most certainly not. The newspapers grossly and crassly misrepresented everything we are doing.”
In fact, Wheeler had spoken only to the Sunday Times, which covered his work accurately. The rest of the newspapers copied the quotes, and the information, but rather grandly decided to change the purpose and the outcome of his research. “It was odd reading articles which were written as if a reporter had spoken to me - I wasn’t fully aware of the extent to which the media copy each other’s newspapers - but worse was the brazen way they distorted our work. Not a single one of the journalists from any other newspaper contacted us to see if their take on the story was correct.”
In fact, the journalists concocted all kinds of connections entirely for themselves. “Ships’ logs, and thousands more like them, have revealed that recent global warming is not so unusual after all.” Is that true? “No. As I pointed out to the Sunday Times, the ships’ log books I work with only give us information about wind force and wind direction, they basically do not give us information on temperatures, and if they do it’s very scant and unreliable. We’ve simply never claimed indirectly or directly to have any direct evidence on changing temperatures.”
More from the Telegraph: “The records also suggest that Europe saw a spell of rapid warming, similar to that experienced today, during the 1730s that must have been caused naturally.”
Wheeler? “Your heart just sinks. Well, the central England temperature series, for example, have shown us that the 1720s and 1730s are a period of fairly rapid warming, but that’s in recovery from the Little Ice Age, and we’d like to know more about that, but this has been known about since 1974. What we are trying to do is to shed a fresh light - a bit of background - on these long-known changes in temperature.
“Somewhere at the end they do quote me, but by then the headlines have done their job, and the message is lost in the willingness of so many people to believe global warming is not a major issue. And by the end it was unclear what my quote meant anyway, in its new context.”
How did the papers quote Wheeler? Thus: “Global warming is a reality, but our data shows climate science is complex. It is wrong to take particular events and link them to carbon dioxide emissions.” I could see how that quote might get misunderstood.
“Only out of context. I wasn’t talking about the scientific community, I wasn’t talking about climate change theory being wrong, I was talking about the media and others getting things wrong. Any new weather event is currently explained away as yet another facet of global warming, but there has always been freak weather. Like most people, I find it hugely irritating when people draw too much from single events.”
If you’re an academic and your work has been “grossly and crassly misrepresented” by the newspapers, then I’m always very pleased to hear from you.
Don’t let the facts spoil a good story
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian,
Saturday September 13 2008
Here is a cautionary tale for anyone working in research. “Captain Cook and Lord Nelson seem unlikely figureheads in the fight against climate change alarmists,” said the Sun. “Lord Nelson and Captain Cook’s ship logs question climate change theories,” announced the Telegraph. Oh that’s handy. So perhaps we can just keep on burning oil regardless then? “The ships’ logs of great maritime figures such as Lord Nelson and Captain Cook have cast new light on climate change by suggesting that global warming may not be an entirely man-made phenomenon.”
I spoke to Dennis Wheeler, a geographer at Sunderland University and the man whose research triggered this coverage. Is he a leading figure in “the fight against climate change alarmists”?
No. “But now I’ve had emails from cranks around the world thinking I’m some kind of anti-global warming conspiracy theorist and a friend to them. I’m most certainly not. The newspapers grossly and crassly misrepresented everything we are doing.”
In fact, Wheeler had spoken only to the Sunday Times, which covered his work accurately. The rest of the newspapers copied the quotes, and the information, but rather grandly decided to change the purpose and the outcome of his research. “It was odd reading articles which were written as if a reporter had spoken to me - I wasn’t fully aware of the extent to which the media copy each other’s newspapers - but worse was the brazen way they distorted our work. Not a single one of the journalists from any other newspaper contacted us to see if their take on the story was correct.”
In fact, the journalists concocted all kinds of connections entirely for themselves. “Ships’ logs, and thousands more like them, have revealed that recent global warming is not so unusual after all.” Is that true? “No. As I pointed out to the Sunday Times, the ships’ log books I work with only give us information about wind force and wind direction, they basically do not give us information on temperatures, and if they do it’s very scant and unreliable. We’ve simply never claimed indirectly or directly to have any direct evidence on changing temperatures.”
More from the Telegraph: “The records also suggest that Europe saw a spell of rapid warming, similar to that experienced today, during the 1730s that must have been caused naturally.”
Wheeler? “Your heart just sinks. Well, the central England temperature series, for example, have shown us that the 1720s and 1730s are a period of fairly rapid warming, but that’s in recovery from the Little Ice Age, and we’d like to know more about that, but this has been known about since 1974. What we are trying to do is to shed a fresh light - a bit of background - on these long-known changes in temperature.
“Somewhere at the end they do quote me, but by then the headlines have done their job, and the message is lost in the willingness of so many people to believe global warming is not a major issue. And by the end it was unclear what my quote meant anyway, in its new context.”
How did the papers quote Wheeler? Thus: “Global warming is a reality, but our data shows climate science is complex. It is wrong to take particular events and link them to carbon dioxide emissions.” I could see how that quote might get misunderstood.
“Only out of context. I wasn’t talking about the scientific community, I wasn’t talking about climate change theory being wrong, I was talking about the media and others getting things wrong. Any new weather event is currently explained away as yet another facet of global warming, but there has always been freak weather. Like most people, I find it hugely irritating when people draw too much from single events.”
If you’re an academic and your work has been “grossly and crassly misrepresented” by the newspapers, then I’m always very pleased to hear from you.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Investigative journalism 2.0
Tom James @ 02-09-2008
Self-described new media whore Paul Carr has an interesting take on the future of investigative journalism and publishing - the problem:
Talk to a random sample of journalists and they’ll tell you the same thing - no one commissions investigative journalism any more.
Talk to any editor and they’ll tell you why; it costs a fortune to produce and rarely adds anything in terms of circulation or bottom line.
In an era of plummeting circulation and competition from free online news sources, as far as a cost-benefits analysis of newspaper investigations goes, it’s all cost and no benefit.
Basically another example of the problem of monetizing content that costs a lot to produce but little to reproduce. After dismissing one Web 2.0 business that attempts to address the problems of investigative journalism called Spot Us Mr Carr proffers his own solution:
I’d kill it. Take it out to the shed and put a bullet through its brain. Its been sick since the mid-80s and watching it try to struggle for twenty more years is embarrassing at best and cruel at worst.
…
Walk in to any bookshop and go to the politics, culture, biography or current affairs section. Now tell me investigative reporting is dead.
…
Of course these are the big stories - what of the smaller, more immediate ones? TV news. It’s there first, it has money and access and it has a 24 hour cycle to fill, meaning that every lead gets followed and reported no matter how apparently inconsequential.
…
Online news sources have their part to play too, although, frankly, they can be divided into two camps - brand extension for established media companies or total horseshit. Blogs have a role - but it’s confined to fact checking and uninformed gadflyery.
This gadfly likes Carr’s idea of idea of a cheap, subscription book-service, slightly more in-depth than a typical article in The Economist but less heavy than (for example) the 464 pages of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and you would also get a tighter, more focused, and original piece of reporting:
I’d approach an established publishing house with a business plan - a new imprint that publishes short (40,000 words maybe), low cover price (£4.99 tops) books, each written by a recognised investigative reporter and each dealing with a single investigative subject.
Also recommended is Paul Carr’s recently published book Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore. It combines hilarious gonzo journalism with genuine insight from Paul Carr’s experience as a wannabe Web 2.0 entrepreneur.
Tom James @ 02-09-2008
Self-described new media whore Paul Carr has an interesting take on the future of investigative journalism and publishing - the problem:
Talk to a random sample of journalists and they’ll tell you the same thing - no one commissions investigative journalism any more.
Talk to any editor and they’ll tell you why; it costs a fortune to produce and rarely adds anything in terms of circulation or bottom line.
In an era of plummeting circulation and competition from free online news sources, as far as a cost-benefits analysis of newspaper investigations goes, it’s all cost and no benefit.
Basically another example of the problem of monetizing content that costs a lot to produce but little to reproduce. After dismissing one Web 2.0 business that attempts to address the problems of investigative journalism called Spot Us Mr Carr proffers his own solution:
I’d kill it. Take it out to the shed and put a bullet through its brain. Its been sick since the mid-80s and watching it try to struggle for twenty more years is embarrassing at best and cruel at worst.
…
Walk in to any bookshop and go to the politics, culture, biography or current affairs section. Now tell me investigative reporting is dead.
…
Of course these are the big stories - what of the smaller, more immediate ones? TV news. It’s there first, it has money and access and it has a 24 hour cycle to fill, meaning that every lead gets followed and reported no matter how apparently inconsequential.
…
Online news sources have their part to play too, although, frankly, they can be divided into two camps - brand extension for established media companies or total horseshit. Blogs have a role - but it’s confined to fact checking and uninformed gadflyery.
This gadfly likes Carr’s idea of idea of a cheap, subscription book-service, slightly more in-depth than a typical article in The Economist but less heavy than (for example) the 464 pages of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and you would also get a tighter, more focused, and original piece of reporting:
I’d approach an established publishing house with a business plan - a new imprint that publishes short (40,000 words maybe), low cover price (£4.99 tops) books, each written by a recognised investigative reporter and each dealing with a single investigative subject.
Also recommended is Paul Carr’s recently published book Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore. It combines hilarious gonzo journalism with genuine insight from Paul Carr’s experience as a wannabe Web 2.0 entrepreneur.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Here's something I'd like you to look at and listen to too: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/multimedia/podcasts.html
As you can see this is an internet page with a list or directory of New York Times podcasts. I'd like you to listen to at least four different podcasts. Try and pick a variety of different kinds so you will get a better idea of how they are done. Making your own podcast as an assignment for the class will be something that we will be doing this semester.
As you can see this is an internet page with a list or directory of New York Times podcasts. I'd like you to listen to at least four different podcasts. Try and pick a variety of different kinds so you will get a better idea of how they are done. Making your own podcast as an assignment for the class will be something that we will be doing this semester.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Here's more from the Center of Media and Democracy Newsletter on fake news:
Yet Another Kind of Fake News
Source: MinnPost.com, August 18, 2008
As more newspapers and other media outlets cut staff, public relations and advertising make gains. The Minnesota-based firm ARAnet provides "free print and Web content. ... More than 65 of the nation's top 100 newspapers, including the Star Tribune, use" ARAnet content, which "carries client messages." ARAnet president Scott Severson says his firm provides "high-quality consumer content" that "just happen[s] to be underwritten by our clients." ARAnet clients pay $4,500 for content creation, tracking and reporting; media outlets use it for free. One ARAnet article "offered to auto sections" was sponsored by Lexus. Severson explains, "The article was about safety systems and mentioned Lexus. The best advertising doesn't look like advertising." It also doesn't carry clear disclosure. ARAnet's "online articles typically are identified as sponsored content," but its "print articles merely carry an 'ARA' designation, similar to the 'AP' identifier that runs with Associated Press articles." Other ARAnet clients include Home Depot, Microsoft, Best Buy and UPS.
Yet Another Kind of Fake News
Source: MinnPost.com, August 18, 2008
As more newspapers and other media outlets cut staff, public relations and advertising make gains. The Minnesota-based firm ARAnet provides "free print and Web content. ... More than 65 of the nation's top 100 newspapers, including the Star Tribune, use" ARAnet content, which "carries client messages." ARAnet president Scott Severson says his firm provides "high-quality consumer content" that "just happen[s] to be underwritten by our clients." ARAnet clients pay $4,500 for content creation, tracking and reporting; media outlets use it for free. One ARAnet article "offered to auto sections" was sponsored by Lexus. Severson explains, "The article was about safety systems and mentioned Lexus. The best advertising doesn't look like advertising." It also doesn't carry clear disclosure. ARAnet's "online articles typically are identified as sponsored content," but its "print articles merely carry an 'ARA' designation, similar to the 'AP' identifier that runs with Associated Press articles." Other ARAnet clients include Home Depot, Microsoft, Best Buy and UPS.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Thursday, July 03, 2008
This is long but you should read it, so here from the New York Times:
July 2, 2008, 7:14 pm
Save the Press
On the lobby wall of the newspaper where I got my first reporting job are the Thomas Jefferson words that journalists like to trot out as Independence Day nears:
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Of course, Jefferson also said the only reliable truths in newspapers were the advertisements, and that he was happiest when not reading the papers.
But as to his iconic quote, it’s no secret that we’re trending toward the former. And anyone who cheers the collapse of the newspaper industry should consider why Jefferson put aside his distaste for the vitriol and nonsense of the press for the larger principle of healthy democracies needing informed citizens.
Last week, almost 1,000 jobs were eliminated in the American newspaper industry, perhaps the bloodiest week yet of a year where many papers are fighting for their lives. You read about the great names — the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the San Jose Mercury News — as if reading the obituary page. Rich cities like San Francisco can no longer support a profitable daily paper.
Columnists, reporters, editors, cartoonists and photographers — including some colleagues here at The Times — who brought to life the daily narrative of a city or region have been swept aside. What started as layoffs and buyouts is edging toward closures and bankruptcies.
And here’s the great paradox: all of this bad news is coming at a time when the audience and reach of many newspapers has never been greater. The Internet may kill the daily newspaper as we know it, but it’s allowed some papers to increase their readership by tenfold.
Those who revel in the life-threatening trauma that newspapers are going through, saying they brought it upon themselves by being too liberal, too sensationalistic, too banal — choose your insult — miss the point. People are not deserting these complex and contradictory summaries of our collective existence. Not by any stretch.
Measured purely by number of readers in all formats, many newspapers have never been more successful.
Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 66 million unique visitors in the first quarter of 2008 — a record, and a 12 percent increase over a year ago, according to a Nielsen Online analysis. Forty percent of all Internet users visit a newspaper site. A visitor, it should be noted, is different from a reader, but it’s the measurement of choice.
The Web is the future. And yet, because online advertising accounts for only about 10 percent of total ad revenue, newspapers are hemorrhaging money. In its present form, and even in best-case projections, the Web format will never generate enough money to keep viable reporting staffs afloat at some of the nation’s biggest papers.
That’s the business model crisis, an old story by now, the millstones of capitalism crushing an outdated format. Something new will emerge, a print and Web model.
In the meantime, print reporters strap on the old Webcam, charge up their podcast recorder, grab their notebook and dutifully try to cover a story that now needs to be presented in three formats, or more.
What’s the alternative — the National Public Radio model? It’s possible that some civic-minded nonprofits will end up owning one or two of the nation’s great papers, and operating them as trusts, hands off.
But that’s a limited solution, fraught with problems of control and flexibility, and it won’t keep reporters at city hall in Sioux Falls or the statehouse in Santa Fe.
Another response is goodbye, and so what. Look at the auto industry numbers from this week, with General Motors slouching toward bankruptcy.
Besides, there’s plenty of gossip, political spin and original insight on sites like the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post — even though they are built on the backs of the wire services and other factories of honest fact-gathering. One day soon these Web info-slingers will find that you can’t produce journalism without journalists, and a search engine is no replacement for a curious reporter.
And just how much do most contributors at the The Huffington Post make? Nothing! “Not our financial model,” as the co-founder, Ken Lerer famously said. From low pay to no pay — the New Journalism at a place that calls itself an Internet newspaper.
Yes, the Brentwood bold-face types who grace HuffPo’s home page can afford to work for free, but it’s un-American, to say the least.
Long ago, I was a member of the steelworkers union, and also a longshoreman. If any of those guys on the docks heard that I was now part of a profession that asked people to labor for nothing, they’d laugh in their lunch buckets — then probably shut The Huffington Post down. Doesn’t the “progressive” agenda, much touted on their pages, include a living wage?
We could be left with a national snark brigade, sniping at the remaining dailies in their pajamas, never rubbing shoulders with a cop, a defense attorney or a distressed family in a Red Cross shelter after a flood.
My lament this Fourth of July is to ask readers to see newspapers as not just another casualty in the churn of business. Sure, reporters say stupid things and write idiotic stories. Everyone stumbles. But on its best days, a newspaper is a marvel of style and wit, of small-type discoveries and large-type overstatements, a diary of our deeds.
We may still prove Jefferson’s preference wrong: perhaps a nation can function without newspapers. But it would be a confederacy of dunces.
July 2, 2008, 7:14 pm
Save the Press
On the lobby wall of the newspaper where I got my first reporting job are the Thomas Jefferson words that journalists like to trot out as Independence Day nears:
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Of course, Jefferson also said the only reliable truths in newspapers were the advertisements, and that he was happiest when not reading the papers.
But as to his iconic quote, it’s no secret that we’re trending toward the former. And anyone who cheers the collapse of the newspaper industry should consider why Jefferson put aside his distaste for the vitriol and nonsense of the press for the larger principle of healthy democracies needing informed citizens.
Last week, almost 1,000 jobs were eliminated in the American newspaper industry, perhaps the bloodiest week yet of a year where many papers are fighting for their lives. You read about the great names — the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the San Jose Mercury News — as if reading the obituary page. Rich cities like San Francisco can no longer support a profitable daily paper.
Columnists, reporters, editors, cartoonists and photographers — including some colleagues here at The Times — who brought to life the daily narrative of a city or region have been swept aside. What started as layoffs and buyouts is edging toward closures and bankruptcies.
And here’s the great paradox: all of this bad news is coming at a time when the audience and reach of many newspapers has never been greater. The Internet may kill the daily newspaper as we know it, but it’s allowed some papers to increase their readership by tenfold.
Those who revel in the life-threatening trauma that newspapers are going through, saying they brought it upon themselves by being too liberal, too sensationalistic, too banal — choose your insult — miss the point. People are not deserting these complex and contradictory summaries of our collective existence. Not by any stretch.
Measured purely by number of readers in all formats, many newspapers have never been more successful.
Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 66 million unique visitors in the first quarter of 2008 — a record, and a 12 percent increase over a year ago, according to a Nielsen Online analysis. Forty percent of all Internet users visit a newspaper site. A visitor, it should be noted, is different from a reader, but it’s the measurement of choice.
The Web is the future. And yet, because online advertising accounts for only about 10 percent of total ad revenue, newspapers are hemorrhaging money. In its present form, and even in best-case projections, the Web format will never generate enough money to keep viable reporting staffs afloat at some of the nation’s biggest papers.
That’s the business model crisis, an old story by now, the millstones of capitalism crushing an outdated format. Something new will emerge, a print and Web model.
In the meantime, print reporters strap on the old Webcam, charge up their podcast recorder, grab their notebook and dutifully try to cover a story that now needs to be presented in three formats, or more.
What’s the alternative — the National Public Radio model? It’s possible that some civic-minded nonprofits will end up owning one or two of the nation’s great papers, and operating them as trusts, hands off.
But that’s a limited solution, fraught with problems of control and flexibility, and it won’t keep reporters at city hall in Sioux Falls or the statehouse in Santa Fe.
Another response is goodbye, and so what. Look at the auto industry numbers from this week, with General Motors slouching toward bankruptcy.
Besides, there’s plenty of gossip, political spin and original insight on sites like the Drudge Report or The Huffington Post — even though they are built on the backs of the wire services and other factories of honest fact-gathering. One day soon these Web info-slingers will find that you can’t produce journalism without journalists, and a search engine is no replacement for a curious reporter.
And just how much do most contributors at the The Huffington Post make? Nothing! “Not our financial model,” as the co-founder, Ken Lerer famously said. From low pay to no pay — the New Journalism at a place that calls itself an Internet newspaper.
Yes, the Brentwood bold-face types who grace HuffPo’s home page can afford to work for free, but it’s un-American, to say the least.
Long ago, I was a member of the steelworkers union, and also a longshoreman. If any of those guys on the docks heard that I was now part of a profession that asked people to labor for nothing, they’d laugh in their lunch buckets — then probably shut The Huffington Post down. Doesn’t the “progressive” agenda, much touted on their pages, include a living wage?
We could be left with a national snark brigade, sniping at the remaining dailies in their pajamas, never rubbing shoulders with a cop, a defense attorney or a distressed family in a Red Cross shelter after a flood.
My lament this Fourth of July is to ask readers to see newspapers as not just another casualty in the churn of business. Sure, reporters say stupid things and write idiotic stories. Everyone stumbles. But on its best days, a newspaper is a marvel of style and wit, of small-type discoveries and large-type overstatements, a diary of our deeds.
We may still prove Jefferson’s preference wrong: perhaps a nation can function without newspapers. But it would be a confederacy of dunces.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Here is a very good statement by web anthropologist Howard Rheingold .quoted from Futurismic, on the function of Journalism:
A smart mob is not necessarily a wise mob.
The technology itself does not guarantee peace or democracy. It really requires a literacy. It requires an informed citizenry. Journalism plays a role in that. Journalism brings to the people news they need to know about the workings of the State. And it helps bring public opinion to the policy makers to know that they cannot make policy that goes against the majority of opinions of the citizens.
A smart mob is not necessarily a wise mob.
The technology itself does not guarantee peace or democracy. It really requires a literacy. It requires an informed citizenry. Journalism plays a role in that. Journalism brings to the people news they need to know about the workings of the State. And it helps bring public opinion to the policy makers to know that they cannot make policy that goes against the majority of opinions of the citizens.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Just to let you know that the Asahi Shimbun tour has been set for July 7th Mon. at 11 a.m. This tour is worth 50 points for your course work and can change your final mark a lot so please make every effort to attend. I will give you exemption papers so that you can be excused from any classes that you have at that time. The tour will last for about one hour.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Training helps bloggers hone professionalism
By CARYN ROUSSEAU
Associated Press Writer
Miami real estate agent Lucas Lechuga began blogging to share his knowledge of the local market. He didn't bargain for a $25 million defamation lawsuit when he wrote that a Miami developer had gone bankrupt decades ago.
In Lake Geneva, Wis., commodities trader Gary Millitte registered the Internet domain name LakeGenevaNews.com eight years ago, but is so worried about the legal boundaries of writing online that he still hasn't started the ultra-local news site.
Non-journalists entering the world of blogs, online feedback forums, online videos and news Web sites provide information that newspapers and other media can't or don't. But many are now turning to professional journalists for help with dilemmas they're facing: When is something libelous? What's the difference between opinion and news? And how do you find public documents?
About a dozen would-be reporters navigated the basics of journalism at a recent training offered by the Society of Professional Journalists in Chicago. The group plans similar seminars this month in Greensboro, N.C., and Los Angeles.
Lechuga, who didn't attend the training, said it would have been a good idea. Having jumped into the world of online publishing with a finance degree, he said the claims against him - which are still pending - arose from a question of semantics, and he would have chose his words differently if he had a second chance.
"It would definitely have been something that would be worthwhile and I'd (have) been able to prevent this," said Lechuga.
Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., which supports working journalists, praised the effort to offer training to so-called citizen journalists.
"I think that what we're moving toward is some king of positioning between amateur and professional," Clark said.
Amateurs have long contributed to professional news reports, including the film of John F. Kennedy's assassination and photos from the Virginia Tech massacre last year, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004, Clark said.
Now, many distribute their content on their own, and some have gotten into trouble, said Clint Brewer, the national president of SPJ.
Geoff Dougherty, editor of the Web site ChiTownDailyNews.org and a presenter at the SPJ program, is trying to prevent that by offering his reporters online training.
With a $340,000 Knight News Challenge, he's creating a team of 77 to report on the smallest of meetings in every city neighborhood - gatherings that mainstream news organizations don't cover.
"I see us in five years as the go-to source for Chicago news," said Dougherty. "It's a big goal."
Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, said more than 100 judgments valued at $17 million have been handed down against bloggers over the last three years - about 60 percent for defamation, 25 percent for copyright infringement and 10 percent involving privacy.
"It's the tip of the iceberg," Cox said. "Bloggers are being asked to write checks. The threats against bloggers are very real. The costs are very real."
Other groups offer help, including NowPublic.com - a site that gathers photos, video and news tips from the public and distributes them to news organizations, including The Associated Press. NowPublic, funded with venture capital, offers resources for contributors and helps them learn to police themselves, said co-founder Michael Tippett.
"A lot of our members are aspiring journalists," Tippett said. "They'll get half of it right. We'll push them to getting all of it right."
MJ Tam, who has blogged about motherhood for eight years and attended the Chicago workshop, said she worried about how far she could go in rating baby products.
"I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing," said Tam. "How far can I take criticism? What's considered libel? I need those basics."
---
By CARYN ROUSSEAU
Associated Press Writer
Miami real estate agent Lucas Lechuga began blogging to share his knowledge of the local market. He didn't bargain for a $25 million defamation lawsuit when he wrote that a Miami developer had gone bankrupt decades ago.
In Lake Geneva, Wis., commodities trader Gary Millitte registered the Internet domain name LakeGenevaNews.com eight years ago, but is so worried about the legal boundaries of writing online that he still hasn't started the ultra-local news site.
Non-journalists entering the world of blogs, online feedback forums, online videos and news Web sites provide information that newspapers and other media can't or don't. But many are now turning to professional journalists for help with dilemmas they're facing: When is something libelous? What's the difference between opinion and news? And how do you find public documents?
About a dozen would-be reporters navigated the basics of journalism at a recent training offered by the Society of Professional Journalists in Chicago. The group plans similar seminars this month in Greensboro, N.C., and Los Angeles.
Lechuga, who didn't attend the training, said it would have been a good idea. Having jumped into the world of online publishing with a finance degree, he said the claims against him - which are still pending - arose from a question of semantics, and he would have chose his words differently if he had a second chance.
"It would definitely have been something that would be worthwhile and I'd (have) been able to prevent this," said Lechuga.
Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., which supports working journalists, praised the effort to offer training to so-called citizen journalists.
"I think that what we're moving toward is some king of positioning between amateur and professional," Clark said.
Amateurs have long contributed to professional news reports, including the film of John F. Kennedy's assassination and photos from the Virginia Tech massacre last year, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004, Clark said.
Now, many distribute their content on their own, and some have gotten into trouble, said Clint Brewer, the national president of SPJ.
Geoff Dougherty, editor of the Web site ChiTownDailyNews.org and a presenter at the SPJ program, is trying to prevent that by offering his reporters online training.
With a $340,000 Knight News Challenge, he's creating a team of 77 to report on the smallest of meetings in every city neighborhood - gatherings that mainstream news organizations don't cover.
"I see us in five years as the go-to source for Chicago news," said Dougherty. "It's a big goal."
Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, said more than 100 judgments valued at $17 million have been handed down against bloggers over the last three years - about 60 percent for defamation, 25 percent for copyright infringement and 10 percent involving privacy.
"It's the tip of the iceberg," Cox said. "Bloggers are being asked to write checks. The threats against bloggers are very real. The costs are very real."
Other groups offer help, including NowPublic.com - a site that gathers photos, video and news tips from the public and distributes them to news organizations, including The Associated Press. NowPublic, funded with venture capital, offers resources for contributors and helps them learn to police themselves, said co-founder Michael Tippett.
"A lot of our members are aspiring journalists," Tippett said. "They'll get half of it right. We'll push them to getting all of it right."
MJ Tam, who has blogged about motherhood for eight years and attended the Chicago workshop, said she worried about how far she could go in rating baby products.
"I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing," said Tam. "How far can I take criticism? What's considered libel? I need those basics."
---
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Sorry about not having this story up last week:
Search For RMS Titanic Was a Cover Story |
| from the just-like-in-the-spy-who-loved-me dept. |
| posted by timothy on Tuesday June 03, @12:33 (The Military) |
| http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/03/1621249 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
wiredog writes "According to National Geographic, Robert Ballard's
[0]search for the RMS Titanic in 1985 was a cover operation for the real
search: They were looking for the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, two US
nuclear submarines that sank during the Cold War." [1]ABC News also has a
story on this two-fer undersea search.
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/06/03/1621249
Links:
0. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080602-titanic-secret.html
1. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4978391&page=1
Search For RMS Titanic Was a Cover Story |
| from the just-like-in-the-spy-who-loved-me dept. |
| posted by timothy on Tuesday June 03, @12:33 (The Military) |
| http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/03/1621249 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
wiredog writes "According to National Geographic, Robert Ballard's
[0]search for the RMS Titanic in 1985 was a cover operation for the real
search: They were looking for the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, two US
nuclear submarines that sank during the Cold War." [1]ABC News also has a
story on this two-fer undersea search.
Discuss this story at:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/06/03/1621249
Links:
0. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080602-titanic-secret.html
1. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4978391&page=1
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Here is another paper with a short and a long quote in text:
Tomoko Asakawa
Mr.Richardson
WritingⅢ
June 10, 2008
671words
Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte
Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte both typify English literature. They deal with the same topic, which is love. We can especially see their view toward love and the society they lived in by reading their books. Jane Austen’s masterpieces are Pride and Prejudice and Ema, and Charlotte Bronte’s is Jane Eyre. We can see how different those works are, though both authors are from England, and are almost contemporary with each other, and what is more, both fathers were a priest.
The first comparison between Bronte and Austen is about their different views of the ideal woman. Bronte doesn’t make a thing of looks and elegance peculiar to woman. In her novel, Jane Eyre, about the beauty, the heroine says “I should have said that beauty doesn’t matter, or something like that.” (P#32) She thinks the most important thing for woman is the growth of their spirit. According to English literature Institute, the reason why Bronte writes at the length about the heroine’s childhood is because she emphasis the heroin’s growth as part of an educational novel. On the other hands, Austen makes a thing of their looks, elegance and in addition calmness. She seems to think that the ideal of woman must be beautiful and intellectual. In her novels, all of the heroines are beautiful and intellectual, though all of them have different character.
The second comparison between Bronte and Austen is their difference of view toward love. Bronte seems to have more passionate love than Austen, and wants romance. In Jane Eyre, the heroin named Jane meets the hero in an incredible situation. When she is on the way going back to her master’s estate, she encounters an accident and happens to meet the hero. By contrast, Austen regards love as more common and realistic than Bronte. Almost all the heroines meet the hero at a party or have an introduction from acquaintances. She seems to be more concerned about success resulting in the marriage rather than a romance, because in her novels when giving a description of the hero, she always adds his income and status.
The third comparison between Bronte and Austen is about the difference of their style. Bronte describes characters and also landscapes vividly. Her ability of description is celebrated. Many specialists on English literature say her novels are like pictures. On the other hand, though we can also see particular description of characters in Austen’s novels, it is more decent and minute than vivid and passionate. Bronte in referring to Austen states that she has a wise sense and approach to reality. However, she does not have a feeling. Austen’s writings are full of elegance.
The final comparison between Bronte and Austen is a look at the degree of concerns for feminism. Bronte is known as a feminist. According to Jane Eyre, the heroine says,
Do you think I am a machine, without feelings? Do you think, because I’m small and poor and plain, that I have no soul and
no heart? Well, you are wrong! I have as much soul and heart as you. We are equal in the sight of god. (P#59)
She thinks that woman who has a wonderful ability should be given an equal opportunity as well as a man and also insists on an improvement of statue of woman. In this respect, Austen seems, in contrast, to feel not much interest in it. Though she seems to worry about the life of women, and regard it as social problem, but in her case it doesn’t connect with women’s liberty.
Bronte and Austen, both are great novelists. However they have different opinions, both have works which have made a deep impression on their readers. Both have many highlights, and teach us important things. Even if the period that those books were written is now considered old, there still remains the powerful basis of people’s behaviors, for example sadness, happiness, anger and love are universal and eternal, so the books will continue to be enjoyed and read.
Work cited
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Kazuhiko, Ousima. Jane Austen. Tokyo:Tyoushinsya, 1997.
English literature Institute. English Literature. Tokyo: Arakawa Express, 1997.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New: Penguin, 1997.
Tomoko Asakawa
Mr.Richardson
WritingⅢ
June 10, 2008
671words
Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte
Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte both typify English literature. They deal with the same topic, which is love. We can especially see their view toward love and the society they lived in by reading their books. Jane Austen’s masterpieces are Pride and Prejudice and Ema, and Charlotte Bronte’s is Jane Eyre. We can see how different those works are, though both authors are from England, and are almost contemporary with each other, and what is more, both fathers were a priest.
The first comparison between Bronte and Austen is about their different views of the ideal woman. Bronte doesn’t make a thing of looks and elegance peculiar to woman. In her novel, Jane Eyre, about the beauty, the heroine says “I should have said that beauty doesn’t matter, or something like that.” (P#32) She thinks the most important thing for woman is the growth of their spirit. According to English literature Institute, the reason why Bronte writes at the length about the heroine’s childhood is because she emphasis the heroin’s growth as part of an educational novel. On the other hands, Austen makes a thing of their looks, elegance and in addition calmness. She seems to think that the ideal of woman must be beautiful and intellectual. In her novels, all of the heroines are beautiful and intellectual, though all of them have different character.
The second comparison between Bronte and Austen is their difference of view toward love. Bronte seems to have more passionate love than Austen, and wants romance. In Jane Eyre, the heroin named Jane meets the hero in an incredible situation. When she is on the way going back to her master’s estate, she encounters an accident and happens to meet the hero. By contrast, Austen regards love as more common and realistic than Bronte. Almost all the heroines meet the hero at a party or have an introduction from acquaintances. She seems to be more concerned about success resulting in the marriage rather than a romance, because in her novels when giving a description of the hero, she always adds his income and status.
The third comparison between Bronte and Austen is about the difference of their style. Bronte describes characters and also landscapes vividly. Her ability of description is celebrated. Many specialists on English literature say her novels are like pictures. On the other hand, though we can also see particular description of characters in Austen’s novels, it is more decent and minute than vivid and passionate. Bronte in referring to Austen states that she has a wise sense and approach to reality. However, she does not have a feeling. Austen’s writings are full of elegance.
The final comparison between Bronte and Austen is a look at the degree of concerns for feminism. Bronte is known as a feminist. According to Jane Eyre, the heroine says,
Do you think I am a machine, without feelings? Do you think, because I’m small and poor and plain, that I have no soul and
no heart? Well, you are wrong! I have as much soul and heart as you. We are equal in the sight of god. (P#59)
She thinks that woman who has a wonderful ability should be given an equal opportunity as well as a man and also insists on an improvement of statue of woman. In this respect, Austen seems, in contrast, to feel not much interest in it. Though she seems to worry about the life of women, and regard it as social problem, but in her case it doesn’t connect with women’s liberty.
Bronte and Austen, both are great novelists. However they have different opinions, both have works which have made a deep impression on their readers. Both have many highlights, and teach us important things. Even if the period that those books were written is now considered old, there still remains the powerful basis of people’s behaviors, for example sadness, happiness, anger and love are universal and eternal, so the books will continue to be enjoyed and read.
Work cited
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Kazuhiko, Ousima. Jane Austen. Tokyo:Tyoushinsya, 1997.
English literature Institute. English Literature. Tokyo: Arakawa Express, 1997.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New: Penguin, 1997.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Your assignment for this week is a hot news story. Don't just copy from a newspaper source. Hot news is a fire, bank robbery, murder etc. Dig up your own info. If that is to difficult go out and walk around and use your news nose to find an interesting story about anything you want. Remember, look around and ask your self what is that? Why is that? See you next week. Story is due by 8 o'clock p.m. Sunday
Friday, May 30, 2008
Sorry about not sending you all this as an e-mail this week, I couldn't find the e-mail address on time. And it looks like you can't connect to this blog through my website as it is also down. See you next week. Clark
The Weekly Spin, May 28, 2008
Blog Postings
Congress Orders Investigation into Pentagon Pundit Scandal
by Sheldon Rampton
"I believe it is absolutely critical that a public investigation happen that is transparent to this body as well as to the American people," said Rep. Paul Hodes, explaining his decision to sponsor the amendment. "Congress cannot allow an Administration to manipulate the public on false propaganda on matters of war and national security."
By a voice vote, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment last week to the Defense Authorization Act for FY2009, forbidding the U.S. Department of Defense to engage in "propaganda purposes within the United States not otherwise specifically authorized by law."
Probably more important is that the amendment requires an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study and report back to Congress on "the extent to which the Department of Defense has violated the prohibition on propaganda" already established in previous laws passed by Congress.
The amendment was prompted by an April 20 report in the New York Times exposing the Pentagon military analyst program through which the Pentagon lobbied for war by cultivating former military officers who became regulars on Fox News, CNN and the broadcast networks. As Diane Farsetta and Sheldon Rampton have argued previously, the Pentagon pundit program broke existing laws which forbid government officials from engaging in "publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."
Read the rest of this item
Product Placements vs. VNRs
by Sheldon Rampton
We recently received an email from someone who asked, "What is the difference between a 'product placement' and a 'video news release' (VNR)? Is a VNR a type of product placement?" Since other people might have the same question, I thought I'd post my answer here.
On SourceWatch, we have articles about both topics. As our article about video news releases explains, a VNR is a piece of video that is created (typically by a public relations firm on behalf of a paying client) and designed to look like a news segment for broadcast by TV news programs. It deceives audiences by creating the impression that the "news" they see on TV was produced by independent reporters, when in fact VNRs are promotional pieces designed to sell something for a client whose identity is not always disclosed. TV news shows often deny that they use VNRs, but Diane Farsetta, our senior researcher, has done extensive research in which she found numerous examples of the practice.
"Product placement" is a separate but similarly sneaky practice of getting television programs and movies to display a company's product within their program.
Read the rest of this item
Weekly Radio Spin: Dick's Army of Angry Renters
by Judith Siers-Poisson
Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at an award only money could buy, how a Pentagon investigation isn't bad for business, and who thinks struggling homeowners are whiny. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at the checkered career of Dick Armey. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!
Read the rest of this item
Be A Citizen Journalist
Featured Participatory Project: ID the Candidates Supporting the "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq"
Source: Congresspedia, May 27, 2008
On March 27, a coalition of Democratic House candidates and military experts unveiled the "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq." As one of the more solid commitments to end the war, it has generated a lot of buzz lately as more than 50 candidates have endorsed it. With the Iraq War as the foremost issue this season, an endorsement of the plan is a critical piece of information about a U.S. congressional candidate, so we need your help to add it to the profiles of candidates that make up Congresspedia's Wiki-the-Vote project. (If they haven't endorsed the plan, you can call attention to that as well.) No experience is necessary and full instructions for helping out can be found here. It's your democracy - participate!
Spin Of The Day Postings
Tiger Woods Caddies for Chevron
Source: The Nation, May 22, 2008
In early April, the global oil company Chevron announced that it has entered into a five-year deal with the foundation created by the professional golfer, Tiger Woods. Woods proclaimed that "Chevron has a track record and a commitment to bettering the communities where they operate." Chevron's record, such as its partnership with the Burmese military dictatorship on the Yandana gas pipeline is "certainly nothing with which Woods should want his name attached," writes Dave Zirin in The Nation. Asked about Chevron's record, the president of the Tiger Woods Foundation, Greg McLaughlin, stated that its partners share its mission to help young people. "President McLaughlin should think more seriously about what Chevron is and what they do: they pollute, they destroy, they conspire with dictators, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way. Now they want to burnish their 'brand' by partnering with Tiger Woods," Zirin concluded.
Coal Front Group Feels the Heat
Source: Facing South, May 22, 2008
Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) -- a coal and power industry front group -- is busy organizing opposition to America's Climate Security Act of 2007 proposed by Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner. The Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) reports that Pete MacDowell, an activist with the NC (North Carolina) Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, received a phone call from ABEC asking if he would put his name to a fax to Lieberman and Warner opposing the bill. Asked whether ABEC was an environmental group, the caller said "yes" and denied it had any links to power utilities. In response to ISS's revelation, Steve Gates from ABEC's parent group, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, stated that "one new staff member -- who is no longer working on this project -- decided to 'wing it' when asked some questions that were off her script. This staff person clearly should have answered 'Yes' when asked if ABEC was related to the utility industry."
Healthcare Privacy Laws Quietly Assist Fundraising
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, May 27, 2008
When a patient checks into a hospital or goes to see a doctor, they are typically handed a booklet called "Notice of Privacy Practices" and are asked to sign a document acknowledging that they received the information. Patients assume that these "privacy practices" are in place to protect their personal information and that doctors and hospitals will keep their information in strictest confidence. In reality, patients usually overlook fine print contained in these documents that say that hospitals can share their personal information and use it for fundraising purposes. Thus someone who checks into the hospital for a heart ailment can later be solicited to help pay for expensive new hospital equipment or a new diagnostic wing. Fundraising professionals call this "high touch direct mail," but others think gathering marketing information this way is disrespectful to patients. Dr. Steven Fugaro, an internist and president of the San Francisco Medical Society, says the practice raises ethical concerns. "When you go to Macy's or Wal-Mart or buy a car, it has come to be expected that your name will be used for commercial purposes. But ... people come to us because they are sick. They have an expectation that their names will be kept private, even the fact that they were treated by the doctor or a hospital." Most patients are unaware that health care privacy laws are being used to harvest marketing data.
Duck and Cover
Source: Calgary Herald, May 25, 2008
Oilsands mining in Canada (Source: Sierra Club of Canada)
The Alberta government has hired crisis management guru Peter Sandman to help it defuse concerns over the environmental impact of the oilsands mining industry. In April, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach sought to defend the discovery of 500 dead ducks found in a tailings pond. At a cost of C$35,000, Sandman spent two days advising Alberta Environment officials on how to "handle regular public meetings and controversies" over oil extraction. "It's not a secret that when you mine bitumen, it's pretty ugly. ... It's not shocking that tailings ponds occasionally kill ducks," Sandman said. Lindsay Telfer from the Sierra Club of Canada told the Calgary Herald that she wondered how Sandman's advice affects the government's "very specific attempts to greenwash the oilsands."
McCain's Pastor Problems Deepen, Widen
Source: Huffington Post, May 21, 2008
Pastor John Hagee endorses John McCain for President in March 2008
Pastor John Hagee, the controversial Christian televangelist who last March endorsed Senator John McCain's nomination for Republican candidate for U.S. President, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis were doing God's will when they chased the Jews out of Europe in order to herd them into Israel, where they could establish a Jewish state. In an audio tape of the sermon revealed by Huffington Post, Hagee went in and out of biblical verse as he preached, "'And they the hunters should hunt them, that will be the Jews. From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks. If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that." A Hagee spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the remarks, which can be found at around the 1:08 mark of his sermon titled "Battle for Jerusalem." Hagee later apologized for the remarks. But McCain, who had earlier sought Hagee's endorsement to improve his standing within the evangelical community, quickly distanced himself from the pastor, describing his comments as "crazy and unacceptable."
Big Fat Lies
Source: Scripps Howard, May 22, 2008
"Dishes targeted to health-conscious consumers at popular chains such as Chili's, Taco Bell and Applebee's contained as much as twice the calories and eight times the grams of fat than the restaurants claimed in their published nutrition information," reports Isaac Wolf, citing research done in eight cities by television stations affiliated with the Scripps media chain. The worst offender was the Macaroni Grill, a restaurant chain owned by Brinker International. Its "Pollo Margo Skinny Chicken" was supposed to have 500 calories but actually had 1,022, with 49 grams of fat rather than the promised 6. "People have a right to know what's in their food," said Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "How can you exercise personal responsibility and make an informed choice if you don't have basic information?"
Thanks for the Mercury
Source: Times Union (Albany, NY), May 21, 2008
It isn't every day that a state's largest polluter is honored. It helps when the polluter -- and its buddies -- helped found and advise the group giving the award. The Maryland-based Wildlife Habitat Council gave biodiversity conservation awards to 21 companies, including the Lafarge cement plant in Ravena, New York. The award was for Lafarge's 150-acre Deer Mountain Nature Preserve. The honor was not publicized until the company came under fire for mercury contamination near a local high school. Federal reports show that the plant in question was New York state's largest mercury emitter for three years running. Environmentalists smell a case of greenwashing. "At first I thought it was a joke. Then I was astonished and horrified," said an analyst with the New York Public Interest Research Group. Joining Lafarge on the Wildlife Habitat Council's board of directors are representatives from Monsanto, Exxon Mobil, DuPont, ConocoPhillips and Waste Management. The conservation group Ducks Unlimited, which is funded by Exxon Mobil and Anheuser-Busch, also holds a seat. The Council gave "Signatures of Sustainability" awards to DuPont and Anheuser-Busch, both of which had a role in founding the group.
America Supports Its Friend's PR Firm
Source: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), May 22, 2008
PR firm Susan Davis International (SDI) has retained its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense's America Supports You campaign. The one year contract is good for up to $3 million. "The long-running campaign aims to communicate public support of the military to service members and their families. Among SDI's assignments are developing a national media strategy, partnerships with businesses, celebrities and other entities, PSAs, internal communications, events, and a 'robust' web and interactive campaign." Some claim the bid process heavily favored SDI, but that's not the only controversy. As CMD reported previously, the Pentagon is investigating SDI's work on America Supports You, including unusual financial arrangements with the military newspaper Stars & Stripes. The paper recently reported that "a former attorney for the Pentagon's news bureau, the American Forces Information Service, has alleged 'serious misconduct' by Pentagon and S&S officials," including Allison Barber, who "is a friend of Susan Davis, and awarded the six-figure PR pact without a competitive process."
Virginia Commonweath University's Secret Research for Philip Morris
Source: New York Times, May 22, 2008
As CMD previously reported, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) operates a School of Medicine and a School of Public Health while enjoying a cozy relationship with the tobacco industry, especially cigarette maker Philip Morris (PM). Now the New York Times reports that in 2006, VCU entered into a secret and extraordinarily restrictive research contract with PM that bars researchers from publishing, or even talking about, study results without first getting approval from PM. If news organizations ask about the contract, university officials are supposed to decline to comment and tell PM about the inquiry. All patents and other intellectual property created under the contract go to PM. The contract violates VCU guidelines for industry-sponsored research, which state "University faculty and students must be free to publish their results." David Rosner, a professor of public health and history at Columbia University in New York, says VCU's contract is "counter to the entire purpose and rationale of a university." VCU President Eugene Trani, who refused to be interviewed for the Times article, owns 6,250 shares of common stock in the Universal Leaf Corporation and sits on their Board of Directors.
Less Isn't Always More
Source: Contra Costa Times, May 21, 2008
Comprehensive information about what chemicals are sprayed on food crops just got much harder to come by. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced that they will no longer conduct and publish annual national surveys of "which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes and oranges grow." The report is used extensively by farmers, environmental advocates, chemical companies and even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Don Lipton, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau, said "farmers will be subjected to conjecture and allegations about their use of chemicals and fertilizer. Given the historic concern about chemical use by consumers, regulators, activist groups and farmers, it's probably not an area where lack of data is a good idea." One fear is that information will only be available after there's been a problem. Steve Scholl-Buckwald of the Pesticide Action Network explained, "What we'll end up doing is understanding pesticide use through getting accident reports. And that's a lousy way to protect public health."
Yucca's Not Quite Dead Yet, but What's Plan B?
Source: Las Vegas Sun (Nevada), May 21, 2008
Aerial view of Yucca Mountain
Increasingly, people are coming to the conclusion that the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada might never open. Former Louisiana Senator J. Bennett Johnston, "the lawmaker perhaps most responsible" for advancing the plan for a permanent waste repository at Yucca, now says the "project should never have been billed as a place to hold waste indefinitely," reports Lisa Mascaro. Johnston admitted, "You can't absolutely prove with certainty what's going to happen in 10,000 or 100,000 years." The U.S. Department of Energy will soon "deliver its long-awaited application to license the site." The department currently projects "that Yucca could start accepting waste by 2020." Meanwhile, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) industry group "has been quietly chatting with small, primarily rural communities to gauge their interest in hosting a temporary waste facility." Neither NEI nor Johnston "will admit that Yucca Mountain is dead ... but they would like to have a backup plan." For more on NEI, see CMD senior researcher Diane Farsetta's article in the June 2008 issue of The Progressive magazine, "Meet the Nuclear Power Lobby."
Terrorists Recruited on YouTube?
Source: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), May 20, 2008
Senator Joe Lieberman has penned a letter to Google, asking them to ban content on YouTube that is produced by organizations considered to be terrorist, such as Al Qaeda. Lieberman asserts that Islamic terrorist groups are using YouTube to "'disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers and provide weapons training.' His Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has found Al-Qaeda branded videos on YouTube documenting 'horrific attacks on American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.'" Lieberman adds that the videos play a "significant role in the process of radicalization, the end point of which is the planning and execution of a terrorist attack." Google responded that while it understands Lieberman's concerns and has removed some egregious videos, they seek a balance that "encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."
Armey's Angry Renters
Source: Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2008
"AngryRenter.com looks a bit like a digital ransom note, with irregular fonts, exclamation points and big red arrows -- all emphasizing prudent renters' outrage over a proposed government bailout for irresponsible homeowners," writes Michael M. Phillips. In fact, however, "the people behind AngryRenter.com are certainly not renters. Though it purports to be a spontaneous uprising, AngryRenter.com is actually a product of an inside-the-Beltway conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, a fellow Republican. It's a fake grass-roots effort -- what politicos call an AstroTurf campaign -- that provides a window into the sleight-of-hand ways of Washington."
The Weekly Spin, May 28, 2008
Blog Postings
Congress Orders Investigation into Pentagon Pundit Scandal
by Sheldon Rampton
"I believe it is absolutely critical that a public investigation happen that is transparent to this body as well as to the American people," said Rep. Paul Hodes, explaining his decision to sponsor the amendment. "Congress cannot allow an Administration to manipulate the public on false propaganda on matters of war and national security."
By a voice vote, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment last week to the Defense Authorization Act for FY2009, forbidding the U.S. Department of Defense to engage in "propaganda purposes within the United States not otherwise specifically authorized by law."
Probably more important is that the amendment requires an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study and report back to Congress on "the extent to which the Department of Defense has violated the prohibition on propaganda" already established in previous laws passed by Congress.
The amendment was prompted by an April 20 report in the New York Times exposing the Pentagon military analyst program through which the Pentagon lobbied for war by cultivating former military officers who became regulars on Fox News, CNN and the broadcast networks. As Diane Farsetta and Sheldon Rampton have argued previously, the Pentagon pundit program broke existing laws which forbid government officials from engaging in "publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."
Read the rest of this item
Product Placements vs. VNRs
by Sheldon Rampton
We recently received an email from someone who asked, "What is the difference between a 'product placement' and a 'video news release' (VNR)? Is a VNR a type of product placement?" Since other people might have the same question, I thought I'd post my answer here.
On SourceWatch, we have articles about both topics. As our article about video news releases explains, a VNR is a piece of video that is created (typically by a public relations firm on behalf of a paying client) and designed to look like a news segment for broadcast by TV news programs. It deceives audiences by creating the impression that the "news" they see on TV was produced by independent reporters, when in fact VNRs are promotional pieces designed to sell something for a client whose identity is not always disclosed. TV news shows often deny that they use VNRs, but Diane Farsetta, our senior researcher, has done extensive research in which she found numerous examples of the practice.
"Product placement" is a separate but similarly sneaky practice of getting television programs and movies to display a company's product within their program.
Read the rest of this item
Weekly Radio Spin: Dick's Army of Angry Renters
by Judith Siers-Poisson
Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at an award only money could buy, how a Pentagon investigation isn't bad for business, and who thinks struggling homeowners are whiny. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at the checkered career of Dick Armey. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!
Read the rest of this item
Be A Citizen Journalist
Featured Participatory Project: ID the Candidates Supporting the "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq"
Source: Congresspedia, May 27, 2008
On March 27, a coalition of Democratic House candidates and military experts unveiled the "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq." As one of the more solid commitments to end the war, it has generated a lot of buzz lately as more than 50 candidates have endorsed it. With the Iraq War as the foremost issue this season, an endorsement of the plan is a critical piece of information about a U.S. congressional candidate, so we need your help to add it to the profiles of candidates that make up Congresspedia's Wiki-the-Vote project. (If they haven't endorsed the plan, you can call attention to that as well.) No experience is necessary and full instructions for helping out can be found here. It's your democracy - participate!
Spin Of The Day Postings
Tiger Woods Caddies for Chevron
Source: The Nation, May 22, 2008
In early April, the global oil company Chevron announced that it has entered into a five-year deal with the foundation created by the professional golfer, Tiger Woods. Woods proclaimed that "Chevron has a track record and a commitment to bettering the communities where they operate." Chevron's record, such as its partnership with the Burmese military dictatorship on the Yandana gas pipeline is "certainly nothing with which Woods should want his name attached," writes Dave Zirin in The Nation. Asked about Chevron's record, the president of the Tiger Woods Foundation, Greg McLaughlin, stated that its partners share its mission to help young people. "President McLaughlin should think more seriously about what Chevron is and what they do: they pollute, they destroy, they conspire with dictators, and heaven help anyone who gets in their way. Now they want to burnish their 'brand' by partnering with Tiger Woods," Zirin concluded.
Coal Front Group Feels the Heat
Source: Facing South, May 22, 2008
Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) -- a coal and power industry front group -- is busy organizing opposition to America's Climate Security Act of 2007 proposed by Senators Joe Lieberman and John Warner. The Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) reports that Pete MacDowell, an activist with the NC (North Carolina) Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, received a phone call from ABEC asking if he would put his name to a fax to Lieberman and Warner opposing the bill. Asked whether ABEC was an environmental group, the caller said "yes" and denied it had any links to power utilities. In response to ISS's revelation, Steve Gates from ABEC's parent group, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, stated that "one new staff member -- who is no longer working on this project -- decided to 'wing it' when asked some questions that were off her script. This staff person clearly should have answered 'Yes' when asked if ABEC was related to the utility industry."
Healthcare Privacy Laws Quietly Assist Fundraising
Source: San Francisco Chronicle, May 27, 2008
When a patient checks into a hospital or goes to see a doctor, they are typically handed a booklet called "Notice of Privacy Practices" and are asked to sign a document acknowledging that they received the information. Patients assume that these "privacy practices" are in place to protect their personal information and that doctors and hospitals will keep their information in strictest confidence. In reality, patients usually overlook fine print contained in these documents that say that hospitals can share their personal information and use it for fundraising purposes. Thus someone who checks into the hospital for a heart ailment can later be solicited to help pay for expensive new hospital equipment or a new diagnostic wing. Fundraising professionals call this "high touch direct mail," but others think gathering marketing information this way is disrespectful to patients. Dr. Steven Fugaro, an internist and president of the San Francisco Medical Society, says the practice raises ethical concerns. "When you go to Macy's or Wal-Mart or buy a car, it has come to be expected that your name will be used for commercial purposes. But ... people come to us because they are sick. They have an expectation that their names will be kept private, even the fact that they were treated by the doctor or a hospital." Most patients are unaware that health care privacy laws are being used to harvest marketing data.
Duck and Cover
Source: Calgary Herald, May 25, 2008
Oilsands mining in Canada (Source: Sierra Club of Canada)
The Alberta government has hired crisis management guru Peter Sandman to help it defuse concerns over the environmental impact of the oilsands mining industry. In April, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach sought to defend the discovery of 500 dead ducks found in a tailings pond. At a cost of C$35,000, Sandman spent two days advising Alberta Environment officials on how to "handle regular public meetings and controversies" over oil extraction. "It's not a secret that when you mine bitumen, it's pretty ugly. ... It's not shocking that tailings ponds occasionally kill ducks," Sandman said. Lindsay Telfer from the Sierra Club of Canada told the Calgary Herald that she wondered how Sandman's advice affects the government's "very specific attempts to greenwash the oilsands."
McCain's Pastor Problems Deepen, Widen
Source: Huffington Post, May 21, 2008
Pastor John Hagee endorses John McCain for President in March 2008
Pastor John Hagee, the controversial Christian televangelist who last March endorsed Senator John McCain's nomination for Republican candidate for U.S. President, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis were doing God's will when they chased the Jews out of Europe in order to herd them into Israel, where they could establish a Jewish state. In an audio tape of the sermon revealed by Huffington Post, Hagee went in and out of biblical verse as he preached, "'And they the hunters should hunt them, that will be the Jews. From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks. If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that." A Hagee spokesman confirmed the authenticity of the remarks, which can be found at around the 1:08 mark of his sermon titled "Battle for Jerusalem." Hagee later apologized for the remarks. But McCain, who had earlier sought Hagee's endorsement to improve his standing within the evangelical community, quickly distanced himself from the pastor, describing his comments as "crazy and unacceptable."
Big Fat Lies
Source: Scripps Howard, May 22, 2008
"Dishes targeted to health-conscious consumers at popular chains such as Chili's, Taco Bell and Applebee's contained as much as twice the calories and eight times the grams of fat than the restaurants claimed in their published nutrition information," reports Isaac Wolf, citing research done in eight cities by television stations affiliated with the Scripps media chain. The worst offender was the Macaroni Grill, a restaurant chain owned by Brinker International. Its "Pollo Margo Skinny Chicken" was supposed to have 500 calories but actually had 1,022, with 49 grams of fat rather than the promised 6. "People have a right to know what's in their food," said Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "How can you exercise personal responsibility and make an informed choice if you don't have basic information?"
Thanks for the Mercury
Source: Times Union (Albany, NY), May 21, 2008
It isn't every day that a state's largest polluter is honored. It helps when the polluter -- and its buddies -- helped found and advise the group giving the award. The Maryland-based Wildlife Habitat Council gave biodiversity conservation awards to 21 companies, including the Lafarge cement plant in Ravena, New York. The award was for Lafarge's 150-acre Deer Mountain Nature Preserve. The honor was not publicized until the company came under fire for mercury contamination near a local high school. Federal reports show that the plant in question was New York state's largest mercury emitter for three years running. Environmentalists smell a case of greenwashing. "At first I thought it was a joke. Then I was astonished and horrified," said an analyst with the New York Public Interest Research Group. Joining Lafarge on the Wildlife Habitat Council's board of directors are representatives from Monsanto, Exxon Mobil, DuPont, ConocoPhillips and Waste Management. The conservation group Ducks Unlimited, which is funded by Exxon Mobil and Anheuser-Busch, also holds a seat. The Council gave "Signatures of Sustainability" awards to DuPont and Anheuser-Busch, both of which had a role in founding the group.
America Supports Its Friend's PR Firm
Source: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), May 22, 2008
PR firm Susan Davis International (SDI) has retained its contract with the U.S. Department of Defense's America Supports You campaign. The one year contract is good for up to $3 million. "The long-running campaign aims to communicate public support of the military to service members and their families. Among SDI's assignments are developing a national media strategy, partnerships with businesses, celebrities and other entities, PSAs, internal communications, events, and a 'robust' web and interactive campaign." Some claim the bid process heavily favored SDI, but that's not the only controversy. As CMD reported previously, the Pentagon is investigating SDI's work on America Supports You, including unusual financial arrangements with the military newspaper Stars & Stripes. The paper recently reported that "a former attorney for the Pentagon's news bureau, the American Forces Information Service, has alleged 'serious misconduct' by Pentagon and S&S officials," including Allison Barber, who "is a friend of Susan Davis, and awarded the six-figure PR pact without a competitive process."
Virginia Commonweath University's Secret Research for Philip Morris
Source: New York Times, May 22, 2008
As CMD previously reported, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) operates a School of Medicine and a School of Public Health while enjoying a cozy relationship with the tobacco industry, especially cigarette maker Philip Morris (PM). Now the New York Times reports that in 2006, VCU entered into a secret and extraordinarily restrictive research contract with PM that bars researchers from publishing, or even talking about, study results without first getting approval from PM. If news organizations ask about the contract, university officials are supposed to decline to comment and tell PM about the inquiry. All patents and other intellectual property created under the contract go to PM. The contract violates VCU guidelines for industry-sponsored research, which state "University faculty and students must be free to publish their results." David Rosner, a professor of public health and history at Columbia University in New York, says VCU's contract is "counter to the entire purpose and rationale of a university." VCU President Eugene Trani, who refused to be interviewed for the Times article, owns 6,250 shares of common stock in the Universal Leaf Corporation and sits on their Board of Directors.
Less Isn't Always More
Source: Contra Costa Times, May 21, 2008
Comprehensive information about what chemicals are sprayed on food crops just got much harder to come by. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced that they will no longer conduct and publish annual national surveys of "which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes and oranges grow." The report is used extensively by farmers, environmental advocates, chemical companies and even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Don Lipton, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau, said "farmers will be subjected to conjecture and allegations about their use of chemicals and fertilizer. Given the historic concern about chemical use by consumers, regulators, activist groups and farmers, it's probably not an area where lack of data is a good idea." One fear is that information will only be available after there's been a problem. Steve Scholl-Buckwald of the Pesticide Action Network explained, "What we'll end up doing is understanding pesticide use through getting accident reports. And that's a lousy way to protect public health."
Yucca's Not Quite Dead Yet, but What's Plan B?
Source: Las Vegas Sun (Nevada), May 21, 2008
Aerial view of Yucca Mountain
Increasingly, people are coming to the conclusion that the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada might never open. Former Louisiana Senator J. Bennett Johnston, "the lawmaker perhaps most responsible" for advancing the plan for a permanent waste repository at Yucca, now says the "project should never have been billed as a place to hold waste indefinitely," reports Lisa Mascaro. Johnston admitted, "You can't absolutely prove with certainty what's going to happen in 10,000 or 100,000 years." The U.S. Department of Energy will soon "deliver its long-awaited application to license the site." The department currently projects "that Yucca could start accepting waste by 2020." Meanwhile, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) industry group "has been quietly chatting with small, primarily rural communities to gauge their interest in hosting a temporary waste facility." Neither NEI nor Johnston "will admit that Yucca Mountain is dead ... but they would like to have a backup plan." For more on NEI, see CMD senior researcher Diane Farsetta's article in the June 2008 issue of The Progressive magazine, "Meet the Nuclear Power Lobby."
Terrorists Recruited on YouTube?
Source: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub req'd), May 20, 2008
Senator Joe Lieberman has penned a letter to Google, asking them to ban content on YouTube that is produced by organizations considered to be terrorist, such as Al Qaeda. Lieberman asserts that Islamic terrorist groups are using YouTube to "'disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers and provide weapons training.' His Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has found Al-Qaeda branded videos on YouTube documenting 'horrific attacks on American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.'" Lieberman adds that the videos play a "significant role in the process of radicalization, the end point of which is the planning and execution of a terrorist attack." Google responded that while it understands Lieberman's concerns and has removed some egregious videos, they seek a balance that "encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view."
Armey's Angry Renters
Source: Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2008
"AngryRenter.com looks a bit like a digital ransom note, with irregular fonts, exclamation points and big red arrows -- all emphasizing prudent renters' outrage over a proposed government bailout for irresponsible homeowners," writes Michael M. Phillips. In fact, however, "the people behind AngryRenter.com are certainly not renters. Though it purports to be a spontaneous uprising, AngryRenter.com is actually a product of an inside-the-Beltway conservative advocacy organization led by Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, and publishing magnate Steve Forbes, a fellow Republican. It's a fake grass-roots effort -- what politicos call an AstroTurf campaign -- that provides a window into the sleight-of-hand ways of Washington."
Thursday, May 22, 2008
I finally downloaded the obituaries from last weeks assignment. Some of them are really great. I also wanted to check and see if all of you gave me a computer e-mail address (rather then a cell-phone one) as I would like to send you a couple of long e-mails. Will talk with you about that next week. This weeks assignment is longer then most as it is an opinion article, one were you review something and tell your readers what you really feel about the subject. Here anger is good and of course love and joy are also acceptable. See you next week. The assignment is due Sun. evening.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
It's your holiday but thought you might be interested in this great free film festival which you can watch on your computer. Heres was David Pogue at the New York times has to say about it:
You know how people in one country or culture tend to see
the people in *other* countries or cultures as stereotypes?
After 9/11, many Americans saw every Middle Easterner as a
terrorist (just the way terrorists see all Americans as The
Enemy). Whenever someone starts a sentence with "The French
always..." or "The trouble with Muslims is...", this kind of
generalizing and dehumanizing is under way.
Anyway, as the organization puts it: "Pangea Day endeavors
to bring the world together and promote understanding and
tolerance through film." Over 2,500 movies were submitted
from 102 countries; the Pangea committee winnowed them down
to 24 short movies, which will all be shown on May 10 in a
four-hour marathon.
So where is this film festival taking place? All over the
world, simultaneously -- at 1,500 sites, and counting.
Live broadcasts will take place simultaneously in Cairo (at
the Pyramids), Kigali, London, Los Angeles (at Sony
Pictures Studios), Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro. At these
big-ticket venues, big names like Christiane Amanpour of
CNN will serve as presenters. Selected movie theaters all
over the world will participate.
You may also be able to watch the broadcast on TV; in this
country, Current TV will air it on cable.
But the majority of the festival sites will be less formal.
The whole thing will be streamed live over the Internet,
available in seven languages. So anyone can invite a few
friends over and become an impromptu festival site. Or you
can just sit there by yourself and watch it on your
computer.
What makes the whole thing so cool is that it's so global
and so wired. In fact, its the wiredness that makes it
possible; it never could have happened 10 years ago. The
movies were submitted digitally; the broadcast will
incorporate hosts and musicians from multiple sites; even a
cellphone stream is available for viewing.
Sure, people of all nations have been joined by Internet
video before, thanks to a little thing called YouTube. But
YouTube joins people without them realizing it; there's not
much sense of community (unless you count the juvenile,
raunchy comments), and zero sense of mission or purpose.
It's very unlikely that, after watching some YouTube video
of someone putting Mentos into a Coke bottle, you'll stand
up and announce, "I'm a changed person."
Pangea Day, I suspect, will be different.
To watch the broadcast, find out which TV channels are
showing it, watch some celebrity endorsements, see amazing
music videos of different countries singing *each other's*
national anthems, or to organize your own viewing party,
visit www.pangeaday.org.
WHEN YOU GO TO THE WEBSITE ABOVE CLICK ON TRAILER TO GET THE IDEA. THEN ALL YOU WOULD HAVE TO DO IF YOU WANTED TO WATCH IT IS GET UP AT 3 A.M. ON SUNDAY MAY 11 AND GO TO THIS SAME WEB SITE AND WATCH IT. HOPE YOU'LL JOIN ME THERE.
I'll be one of the millions in that very, very big audience.
You know how people in one country or culture tend to see
the people in *other* countries or cultures as stereotypes?
After 9/11, many Americans saw every Middle Easterner as a
terrorist (just the way terrorists see all Americans as The
Enemy). Whenever someone starts a sentence with "The French
always..." or "The trouble with Muslims is...", this kind of
generalizing and dehumanizing is under way.
Anyway, as the organization puts it: "Pangea Day endeavors
to bring the world together and promote understanding and
tolerance through film." Over 2,500 movies were submitted
from 102 countries; the Pangea committee winnowed them down
to 24 short movies, which will all be shown on May 10 in a
four-hour marathon.
So where is this film festival taking place? All over the
world, simultaneously -- at 1,500 sites, and counting.
Live broadcasts will take place simultaneously in Cairo (at
the Pyramids), Kigali, London, Los Angeles (at Sony
Pictures Studios), Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro. At these
big-ticket venues, big names like Christiane Amanpour of
CNN will serve as presenters. Selected movie theaters all
over the world will participate.
You may also be able to watch the broadcast on TV; in this
country, Current TV will air it on cable.
But the majority of the festival sites will be less formal.
The whole thing will be streamed live over the Internet,
available in seven languages. So anyone can invite a few
friends over and become an impromptu festival site. Or you
can just sit there by yourself and watch it on your
computer.
What makes the whole thing so cool is that it's so global
and so wired. In fact, its the wiredness that makes it
possible; it never could have happened 10 years ago. The
movies were submitted digitally; the broadcast will
incorporate hosts and musicians from multiple sites; even a
cellphone stream is available for viewing.
Sure, people of all nations have been joined by Internet
video before, thanks to a little thing called YouTube. But
YouTube joins people without them realizing it; there's not
much sense of community (unless you count the juvenile,
raunchy comments), and zero sense of mission or purpose.
It's very unlikely that, after watching some YouTube video
of someone putting Mentos into a Coke bottle, you'll stand
up and announce, "I'm a changed person."
Pangea Day, I suspect, will be different.
To watch the broadcast, find out which TV channels are
showing it, watch some celebrity endorsements, see amazing
music videos of different countries singing *each other's*
national anthems, or to organize your own viewing party,
visit www.pangeaday.org.
WHEN YOU GO TO THE WEBSITE ABOVE CLICK ON TRAILER TO GET THE IDEA. THEN ALL YOU WOULD HAVE TO DO IF YOU WANTED TO WATCH IT IS GET UP AT 3 A.M. ON SUNDAY MAY 11 AND GO TO THIS SAME WEB SITE AND WATCH IT. HOPE YOU'LL JOIN ME THERE.
I'll be one of the millions in that very, very big audience.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
How do you feel about large international companies controlling domestic news sources?
From the New York times:
Murdoch Moving to Buy Newsday for $580 Million
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and TIM ARANGO
A tentative deal to buy his third New York newspaper would
tighten Rupert Murdoch's grip on American news media.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/media/23paper.html?th&emc=th
Murdoch Taking On F.C.C. Media Rule
By STEPHEN LABATON
Rupert Murdoch appears likely to pose the first significant
challenge to the media ownership rule that the Federal
Communications Commission recently adopted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/media/23ownership.html?th&emc=th
From the New York times:
Murdoch Moving to Buy Newsday for $580 Million
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and TIM ARANGO
A tentative deal to buy his third New York newspaper would
tighten Rupert Murdoch's grip on American news media.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/media/23paper.html?th&emc=th
Murdoch Taking On F.C.C. Media Rule
By STEPHEN LABATON
Rupert Murdoch appears likely to pose the first significant
challenge to the media ownership rule that the Federal
Communications Commission recently adopted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/media/23ownership.html?th&emc=th
Here is an example of government-military manipulation of the news, which is what we were discussing in the last class. This is from the Geeky, Nerdy, news letter from Slashdot.com:
| Pentagon Manipulating TV Analysts |
| from the media-trojan-horse dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 22, @17:31 (The Military) |
| http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/22/2010243 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]gollum123 notes an extensive article from the NYTimes on the evidence
that the military, since the time of the buildup to the Iraq war, has
been manipulating the military analysts that are ubiquitous on TV and
radio news programs, in a [1]protracted campaign to generate favorable
news coverage of the administration's war efforts. "Hidden behind that
appearance of objectivity of military analysts on the major networks, is
a Pentagon information apparatus... The effort... has sought to exploit
ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial
dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in
the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Several dozen of
the military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either
as lobbyists, senior executives, board members, or consultants. Records
and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over
access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind
of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism
coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. ...[M]embers of
this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when
they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts
acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their
access."
| Pentagon Manipulating TV Analysts |
| from the media-trojan-horse dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 22, @17:31 (The Military) |
| http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/22/2010243 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
[0]gollum123 notes an extensive article from the NYTimes on the evidence
that the military, since the time of the buildup to the Iraq war, has
been manipulating the military analysts that are ubiquitous on TV and
radio news programs, in a [1]protracted campaign to generate favorable
news coverage of the administration's war efforts. "Hidden behind that
appearance of objectivity of military analysts on the major networks, is
a Pentagon information apparatus... The effort... has sought to exploit
ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial
dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in
the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Several dozen of
the military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either
as lobbyists, senior executives, board members, or consultants. Records
and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over
access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind
of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism
coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. ...[M]embers of
this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when
they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts
acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their
access."
Sunday, April 20, 2008
This article is from ButterflysandWheels.com:
Apologetics and the Surrender of the Fourth Estate
Click here if you want to print, or adjust the appearance, of this article
By Gil Gaudia
It has been debated whether the term “the Fourth Estate” which refers to journalism or a “free press” was originated by Edmund Burke, who once pointed to the gallery of reporters in the British Parliament and declared them to be the fourth, and most important, element overseeing a triumvirate of governmental power. In my opinion, this was one of the most perceptive descriptions of democracy and its processes, applying equally well to the British Parliament and the Estates General of France (from which the term was derived); the constituents were supposed to be representatives of the society’s main elements— the nobility, the middle class and the clergy. Burke was saying that the influence of a free press was, and should be, greater than any of the other three because the “word,” written and spoken, was the key to power.
(Incidentally, the “debate” arises because a guy named Thomas Carlyle is the one who actually put the following statement in writing: “Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament but in the reporter’s gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”)
Who said it first? Was it Burke? Was it Carlyle? Does it matter?
What does matter is that the uncertainty of Burke vs. Carlyle symbolizes the dilemma of whom or what we believe. In this country today, if we substitute the terms “United States Senate” for the “nobility” (makes you want to vomit doesn’t it?) the “House of Representatives” for the “middle class” (not very appetizing either) and “fundamentalist Christians” for the “clergy,” (Well, that’s not too bad) it is apparent that little has changed, with one glaring exception. The Fourth Estate has sold out to the combined forces of its previous antagonists and we now have the deplorable situation where the people have lost the protection of the “more important far than they all.”
Where is today’s Fourth Estate? Nowhere to be found, because sadly, with the exception of only a small minority of courageous and perceptive people, whom the other three estates have managed to portray as unpatriotic troublemakers, the American press has surrendered its role in the “reporter’s gallery,” and is no longer fulfilling Burke’s/Carlyle’s indispensable obligation. This is a devastating loss. It is devastating because access to the truth about governmental matters, of which the press has been the guardian, has been abandoned.
Apologetics and the Surrender of the Fourth Estate
Click here if you want to print, or adjust the appearance, of this article
By Gil Gaudia
It has been debated whether the term “the Fourth Estate” which refers to journalism or a “free press” was originated by Edmund Burke, who once pointed to the gallery of reporters in the British Parliament and declared them to be the fourth, and most important, element overseeing a triumvirate of governmental power. In my opinion, this was one of the most perceptive descriptions of democracy and its processes, applying equally well to the British Parliament and the Estates General of France (from which the term was derived); the constituents were supposed to be representatives of the society’s main elements— the nobility, the middle class and the clergy. Burke was saying that the influence of a free press was, and should be, greater than any of the other three because the “word,” written and spoken, was the key to power.
(Incidentally, the “debate” arises because a guy named Thomas Carlyle is the one who actually put the following statement in writing: “Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament but in the reporter’s gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”)
Who said it first? Was it Burke? Was it Carlyle? Does it matter?
What does matter is that the uncertainty of Burke vs. Carlyle symbolizes the dilemma of whom or what we believe. In this country today, if we substitute the terms “United States Senate” for the “nobility” (makes you want to vomit doesn’t it?) the “House of Representatives” for the “middle class” (not very appetizing either) and “fundamentalist Christians” for the “clergy,” (Well, that’s not too bad) it is apparent that little has changed, with one glaring exception. The Fourth Estate has sold out to the combined forces of its previous antagonists and we now have the deplorable situation where the people have lost the protection of the “more important far than they all.”
Where is today’s Fourth Estate? Nowhere to be found, because sadly, with the exception of only a small minority of courageous and perceptive people, whom the other three estates have managed to portray as unpatriotic troublemakers, the American press has surrendered its role in the “reporter’s gallery,” and is no longer fulfilling Burke’s/Carlyle’s indispensable obligation. This is a devastating loss. It is devastating because access to the truth about governmental matters, of which the press has been the guardian, has been abandoned.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
I talked a little bit about how paper newspapers were in trouble and here is how some are reacting:
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Papers tailor online content to increase audience, ad sales
By Associated Press (AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With classified revenue dwindling, the news industry must get better at tailoring articles and display advertising to online readers, several newspaper executives said Tuesday.
Papers must more aggressively ''slice and dice'' content to readers' particular interests, Leon Levitt, vice president of digital media for Cox Newspapers Inc., said during a panel discussion at the annual conference of the Newspaper Association of America.
''We're at the early stages of doing that,'' said Levitt, whose company, a unit of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc., owns 17 daily and 26 non-daily newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Palm Beach Post in Florida and the Austin American-Statesman in Texas.
Newspapers faced with dwindling print advertising are turning more to the Internet to make up for lost revenue. Overall newspaper advertising revenue last year fell 7.9 percent, including a 9.4 percent dip in print advertising that was offset partially by an 18.8 percent hike in online advertising, according to the newspaper association.
Levitt said newspapers are leaning most heavily on online display advertising, which is growing at a faster clip than classified advertising.
Other newspaper executives on the panel said the industry must first become more familiar with readers' online behavior before they can deliver personalized content and advertising.
Several executives said they're developing multiple Web sites, blogs and other products to reach distinctive audiences.
Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com, said The New York Times is a ''strong believer'' in creating multiple brands.
She said its DealBook blog, which provides financial news, started as an e-mail newsletter service in 2001 and then also became a Web site two years ago. The company also has a Great Homes and Destinations Web site that provides information about the luxury real estate sector.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Papers tailor online content to increase audience, ad sales
By Associated Press (AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With classified revenue dwindling, the news industry must get better at tailoring articles and display advertising to online readers, several newspaper executives said Tuesday.
Papers must more aggressively ''slice and dice'' content to readers' particular interests, Leon Levitt, vice president of digital media for Cox Newspapers Inc., said during a panel discussion at the annual conference of the Newspaper Association of America.
''We're at the early stages of doing that,'' said Levitt, whose company, a unit of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc., owns 17 daily and 26 non-daily newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Palm Beach Post in Florida and the Austin American-Statesman in Texas.
Newspapers faced with dwindling print advertising are turning more to the Internet to make up for lost revenue. Overall newspaper advertising revenue last year fell 7.9 percent, including a 9.4 percent dip in print advertising that was offset partially by an 18.8 percent hike in online advertising, according to the newspaper association.
Levitt said newspapers are leaning most heavily on online display advertising, which is growing at a faster clip than classified advertising.
Other newspaper executives on the panel said the industry must first become more familiar with readers' online behavior before they can deliver personalized content and advertising.
Several executives said they're developing multiple Web sites, blogs and other products to reach distinctive audiences.
Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com, said The New York Times is a ''strong believer'' in creating multiple brands.
She said its DealBook blog, which provides financial news, started as an e-mail newsletter service in 2001 and then also became a Web site two years ago. The company also has a Great Homes and Destinations Web site that provides information about the luxury real estate sector.
Monday, March 31, 2008
On Newspapers for Slashdot.com:
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Newspapers Are Dying, Blog At 11 |
| from the news-that-fits dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday March 30, @14:36 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
The New Yorker is running a long and thoughtful piece by Eric Alterman on
the [0]death and life of the American newspaper. It's not news that
newspapers are dying, but the acceleration of the process in the last few
years is startling: "Independent, publicly traded American newspapers
have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three
years... The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death,
that the newspaper companies' solution to their problem was to make 'our
product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.'" The article goes
on to profile The Huffington Post as exemplar of what is replacing paper
and ink. "The Huffington Post's editorial processes are based on what
Peretti has named the 'mullet strategy.' ('Business up front, party in
the back' is how his trend-spotting site BuzzFeed glosses it.)
'User-generated content is all the rage, but most of it totally sucks,'
Peretti says. The mullet strategy invites users to 'argue and vent on the
secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking
sharp.
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252
Links:
0. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_alterman?currentPage=all
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Newspapers Are Dying, Blog At 11 |
| from the news-that-fits dept. |
| posted by kdawson on Sunday March 30, @14:36 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
The New Yorker is running a long and thoughtful piece by Eric Alterman on
the [0]death and life of the American newspaper. It's not news that
newspapers are dying, but the acceleration of the process in the last few
years is startling: "Independent, publicly traded American newspapers
have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three
years... The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death,
that the newspaper companies' solution to their problem was to make 'our
product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.'" The article goes
on to profile The Huffington Post as exemplar of what is replacing paper
and ink. "The Huffington Post's editorial processes are based on what
Peretti has named the 'mullet strategy.' ('Business up front, party in
the back' is how his trend-spotting site BuzzFeed glosses it.)
'User-generated content is all the rage, but most of it totally sucks,'
Peretti says. The mullet strategy invites users to 'argue and vent on the
secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking
sharp.
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252
Links:
0. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/31/080331fa_fact_alterman?currentPage=all
Saturday, March 29, 2008
| Mainstream Media Finally Catching On To How News Propagates |
| from the whole-new-idea-of-trusted-networks dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 28, @13:17 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/1532237 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Techdirt is reporting that the mainstream press may finally be "getting
it" when it comes to how the next generation of news readers [0]consumes
and shares news. One student summed it up very succinctly by saying "If
the news is that important, it will find me." "According to interviews
and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news
and current events but conduits as well -- sending out e-mailed links and
videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on
friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they
are replacing the professional filter -- reading The Washington Post,
clicking on CNN.com -- with a social one."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/28/1532237
Links:
0. http://techdirt.com/articles/20080327/152312670.shtml
| from the whole-new-idea-of-trusted-networks dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 28, @13:17 (The Media) |
| http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/1532237 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Techdirt is reporting that the mainstream press may finally be "getting
it" when it comes to how the next generation of news readers [0]consumes
and shares news. One student summed it up very succinctly by saying "If
the news is that important, it will find me." "According to interviews
and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news
and current events but conduits as well -- sending out e-mailed links and
videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on
friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they
are replacing the professional filter -- reading The Washington Post,
clicking on CNN.com -- with a social one."
Discuss this story at:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/03/28/1532237
Links:
0. http://techdirt.com/articles/20080327/152312670.shtml
Monday, March 17, 2008
Web Has Unexpected Effect on Journalism
By DAVID BAUDER
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Internet has profoundly changed journalism, but not necessarily in ways that were predicted even a few years ago, a study on the industry released Sunday found.
It was believed at one point that the Net would democratize the media, offering many new voices, stories and perspectives. Yet the news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report.
Two stories - the war in Iraq and the 2008 presidential election campaign - represented more than a quarter of the stories in newspapers, on television and online last year, the project found.
Take away Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, and news from all of the other countries in the world combined filled up less than 6 percent of the American news hole, the project said.
The news side of the business is dynamic, but the growing ability of news consumers to find what they want without being distracted by advertising is what's making the industry go through some tough times.
"Although the audience for traditional news is maintaining itself, the staff for many of these news organizations tend to be shrinking," said Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director.
NBC News' recent decision to name make David Gregory host of a nightly program on MSNBC, while keep his job as White House correspondent is an example of how people are being asked to do much more, he said.
News is less a product, like the day's newspaper or a nightly newscast, than a service that is constantly being updated, he said. Last week, for instance, The New York Times posted its first report linking New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to a prostitution ring in the early afternoon, and it quickly became the day's dominant story.
Only a few years ago, newspaper Web sites were primarily considered an online morgue for that day's newspaper, Rosenstield said.
"The afternoon newspaper is in a sense being reborn online," he said.
A separate survey found journalists are, to a large degree, embracing the changes being thrust upon them. A majority say they like doing blogs and that they appreciate reader feedback on their stories. When they're asked to do multimedia projects, most journalists find the experience enriching instead of feeling overworked, he said. The newsroom is increasingly being seen as the most experimental place in the business, the report found.
Most news Web sites are no longer final destinations. The report found that many users insist that the sites, and even individual pages, offer plenty of options to navigate elsewhere for more information, the project found. Rosenstiel said he's even able to reach Washington Post stories through the New York Times' Web site.
In another unexpected finding, citizen-created Web sites and blogs are actually far less welcoming to outside commentary than the so-called mainstream media, the report said.
© 2008 The Associated Press.
By DAVID BAUDER
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Internet has profoundly changed journalism, but not necessarily in ways that were predicted even a few years ago, a study on the industry released Sunday found.
It was believed at one point that the Net would democratize the media, offering many new voices, stories and perspectives. Yet the news agenda actually seems to be narrowing, with many Web sites primarily packaging news that is produced elsewhere, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual State of the News Media report.
Two stories - the war in Iraq and the 2008 presidential election campaign - represented more than a quarter of the stories in newspapers, on television and online last year, the project found.
Take away Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, and news from all of the other countries in the world combined filled up less than 6 percent of the American news hole, the project said.
The news side of the business is dynamic, but the growing ability of news consumers to find what they want without being distracted by advertising is what's making the industry go through some tough times.
"Although the audience for traditional news is maintaining itself, the staff for many of these news organizations tend to be shrinking," said Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director.
NBC News' recent decision to name make David Gregory host of a nightly program on MSNBC, while keep his job as White House correspondent is an example of how people are being asked to do much more, he said.
News is less a product, like the day's newspaper or a nightly newscast, than a service that is constantly being updated, he said. Last week, for instance, The New York Times posted its first report linking New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to a prostitution ring in the early afternoon, and it quickly became the day's dominant story.
Only a few years ago, newspaper Web sites were primarily considered an online morgue for that day's newspaper, Rosenstield said.
"The afternoon newspaper is in a sense being reborn online," he said.
A separate survey found journalists are, to a large degree, embracing the changes being thrust upon them. A majority say they like doing blogs and that they appreciate reader feedback on their stories. When they're asked to do multimedia projects, most journalists find the experience enriching instead of feeling overworked, he said. The newsroom is increasingly being seen as the most experimental place in the business, the report found.
Most news Web sites are no longer final destinations. The report found that many users insist that the sites, and even individual pages, offer plenty of options to navigate elsewhere for more information, the project found. Rosenstiel said he's even able to reach Washington Post stories through the New York Times' Web site.
In another unexpected finding, citizen-created Web sites and blogs are actually far less welcoming to outside commentary than the so-called mainstream media, the report said.
© 2008 The Associated Press.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Interviews are not easy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOOK AT THIS:
Facebook founder heckled at web conference 12:18PM, Monday 10th March 2008
A keynote talk with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg descended into chaos as the audience heckled the interviewer for failing to get to the point.
Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old billionaire, was the keynote speaker at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Business Week journalist Sarah Lacy took the stage to question Zuckerberg, but the audience quickly grew tired of the topics she focused on, claiming that the real issues were being ignored.
"Never, ever have I seen such a train wreck of an interview," claimed audience member, Jason Pontin, via Twitter.
Lacy finally allowed the crowd to take over, and Zuckerberg was subjected to an enthusiastic barrage of questions about the real issues facing the social networking site, such as privacy and data portability.
"The audience is asking Zuckerburg better questions than Lacy did," said former Microsoft blogger, Robert Scoble, via his Twitter feed.
Facebook founder heckled at web conference 12:18PM, Monday 10th March 2008
A keynote talk with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg descended into chaos as the audience heckled the interviewer for failing to get to the point.
Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old billionaire, was the keynote speaker at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Business Week journalist Sarah Lacy took the stage to question Zuckerberg, but the audience quickly grew tired of the topics she focused on, claiming that the real issues were being ignored.
"Never, ever have I seen such a train wreck of an interview," claimed audience member, Jason Pontin, via Twitter.
Lacy finally allowed the crowd to take over, and Zuckerberg was subjected to an enthusiastic barrage of questions about the real issues facing the social networking site, such as privacy and data portability.
"The audience is asking Zuckerburg better questions than Lacy did," said former Microsoft blogger, Robert Scoble, via his Twitter feed.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Flux of facts - the fate of news in a wired world
Here's one from the people at Futurismic.com that will give you something to think about:
written by Paul Raven | February 19th, 2008
Steve Rubel points us to an article at American Journalism Review that discusses the hazards of newsrooms relying on Wikipedia for research and citations. [Image by rabbleradio]
This is hardly a new story (though usually we hear about the horrors of students rather than journalists citing the online encyclopedia), but it’s not going away any time soon - in the always-on 24/7 culture of the web, the only constant is change. As Rubel puts it:
“The big question in my mind is this: when journalists cite Wikipedia articles, what happens when the facts they reference from the wiki entries change (assuming they do)? Do the reporters go back and update their articles? The news reports call more attention to the articles, potentially opening up a can of worms each time they source Wikipedia.
Seems like a big vicious cycle. Perhaps in the future these stories will carry some of the same disclaimers that Wikipedia lists.”
And if you think that’s a symptom of postmodernism running wild, what about CNN handing over the reins of iReport to the community of citizen-journalists who contribute to it? [Via SlashDot]
Are the definitions of “truth” and “consensus” converging? Were they ever really different?
Here's one from the people at Futurismic.com that will give you something to think about:
written by Paul Raven | February 19th, 2008
Steve Rubel points us to an article at American Journalism Review that discusses the hazards of newsrooms relying on Wikipedia for research and citations. [Image by rabbleradio]
This is hardly a new story (though usually we hear about the horrors of students rather than journalists citing the online encyclopedia), but it’s not going away any time soon - in the always-on 24/7 culture of the web, the only constant is change. As Rubel puts it:
“The big question in my mind is this: when journalists cite Wikipedia articles, what happens when the facts they reference from the wiki entries change (assuming they do)? Do the reporters go back and update their articles? The news reports call more attention to the articles, potentially opening up a can of worms each time they source Wikipedia.
Seems like a big vicious cycle. Perhaps in the future these stories will carry some of the same disclaimers that Wikipedia lists.”
And if you think that’s a symptom of postmodernism running wild, what about CNN handing over the reins of iReport to the community of citizen-journalists who contribute to it? [Via SlashDot]
Are the definitions of “truth” and “consensus” converging? Were they ever really different?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The following is a good example of investigative journalism on a controversial issue:
STEPHEN STRAUSS: SCIENCE FRICTION
The vitamin D debate
Feb. 13, 2008
It’s been cold and remarkably un-sunny in my neck of Canada recently — climatic conditions which I have been repeatedly told in the past year should lead me to start scarfing down vitamin D pills, and do it in amounts which likely exceed Health Canada’s daily recommended dosage.
And even more importantly, I've been told I should also counsel you to ignore the existing suggestions and strike out on a vitamin D health path of your own, one which might see you taking up to five times today’s suggested dose. (That’s what one advocate announces he is doing).
And if I don’t, it is my fault — well "my" as in all the media — if you readers get cancer, multiple sclerosis, flu, autism, depression, diabetes, loose teeth, stroke, heart disease, osteoporosis, fractures and God knows what else.
I know that, because last year 15 scientists from around the world scolded journalists in an American Journal of Clinical Nutrition editorial for effectively condoning ill health.
"We do not think that the public media present the vitamin D story in a complete and accurate manner," they said.
"Reports about vitamin D inadequacies are presented straightforwardly, but when it comes to discussing the intake of vitamin D needed to correct the situation, outdated official recommendations for vitamin D are propagated by the public media. This probably occurs because of restrictive editorial policies driven by concern about possible litigation if media were to advise a 'toxic' intake greater than the [present upper intake level]," they — including Reinhold Vieth of the University of Toronto — wrote.
Well, one should take this kind of criticism to heart. I have, in the last little while, specifically been looking at a paper that came out last year in the AJCN. I did this because it made many people’s top 10 science stories of 2007 and because the finding was described in various Canadian media as strongly influencing the Canadian Cancer Society’s decision to recommend that people in this country take much more — upwards of two-and-a-half times today’s recommended 400 International Units — vitamin D on a daily basis.
The study compared over a lengthy period — four years — the cancer rates in women taking vitamin D, taking calcium without vitamin D, or taking nothing. Researchers at Creighton University in Nebraska then reported a 60 per cent decrease in collective cancer rates for the vitamin D takers when they took what was something more than twice the currently recommended dosage.
While the cancer numbers were small — only 50 cases in toto — the CCS decision meant there was lots of coverage of the research. I found upwards of 50 reports in magazines, newspapers, radio and television, but absolutely zero coverage of the criticism of the paper that appeared in the journal in recent months.
In one letter, three scientists in Texas pointed out a number of issues, not the least of which being an Iowa study which suggested that when breast cancer was looked at there was indeed a fall in cancer numbers for the first five years when a vitamin D supplement was taken. But this balanced out at 10 years and there actually seemed to be more breast cancers among women taking vitamin D after 15 years.
It is precisely these sorts of yes/no/maybe results that make science and medical writers very, very, very, very cautious about blithely recommending dose rate increases.
Then there were the questions raised by Manish Sood of the Toronto General Hospital and Amy Sood of the University of Toronto faculty of pharmacy. They pointed out that some had suggested the incidence heart disease might grow as a result of increasing the vitamin D dosages and recommending, as the CCS did, that supplements be taken year round or during fall and winter months depending on skin colour and other factors.
In light of the CCS recommendation and a possible heart disease side-effect, they concluded their letter saying: "As Canadians, we ask the question — have we just traded one problem for another?"
Sounds reasonable, but their concern was brushed back by paper authors Robert Heaney and Joan Lappe of Creighton, who responded that there is no evidence of heart problems with vitamin D doses up to 10 times what they had given people. They added, "the issue of vitamin D toxicity was exhaustively reviewed in this Journal just a few months ago and Sood and Sood may find some reassurance in that report."
Given this disagreement I, too, needed reassurance and so I went to the review where I found something very non-reassuring. Heaney and Vieth had co-authored the toxicity study with two employees of the Council For Responsible Nutrition, a Washington D.C.-based lobby group and trade association for ingredient suppliers and manufacturers in the dietary supplement industry — that is to say, the official representatives of the people who would make vitamin D.
And their roles were anything but minor. One applied "risk assessment methodology" to the results and the other "searched literature and summarized relevant findings." Ultimately what the four wrote looks extremely authoritative, and might well be so, but to my mind this collaboration represents not an apparent conflict of interest, but a genuine conflict of interest.
And let me explain it with a simple equation. Let us assume that one-third of the people in North America decide, based on the CCS recommendation, to more than double their vitamin D dosage and this costs a bare $20 per person a year. That translates into an extra $2 billion going to vitamin D manufacturers and sellers.
All of this made me go back to the original Creighton paper and look to see if there was any indication of specific conflicts of interest among the researchers in it. The paper says no, with resounding vehemence: "None of the authors was affiliated in any way with an entity involved in the manufacture or marketing of vitamin D."
Then it goes on to mention that one author, Robert Recker, was on the scientific advisory boards of Roche and Proctor & Gamble, and Heaney was on the scientific advisory board for the International Dairy Food Association and the speaker’s bureau for P & G.
It’s true that Roche doesn’t make vitamins today — but it sold the business in 2003, a time that the Creighton experiment was ongoing. The sale, by the way, was announced at the same time Roche said it had resolved lawsuits growing out of its involvement in vitamin price fixing.
But Proctor remains in the business, in that it has licensed its Olay name to another company to produce Olay vitamins, which include vitamin D in a multivitamin supplement. Not to mention the fact that Heaney reported in 2006 that he had a "financial relationship with SmithKlineGlaxo" — a company which directly produces vitamin D.
And oh, yes, it seems almost everyone doing vitamin D research — Vieth included — gets money from dairy farmers associations in either Canada or the U.S.
So I sent Recker and Heaney an e-mail asking for an explanation and Recker responded: "Neither Dr. Heaney nor I have any affiliation with the company that supplied the vitamin D for the study. We have not had affiliation with the vitamin D work for the companies you mention. I have been a scientific adviser to Roche, P & G and Smith-Kline-Glaxo, but not in their vitamin D work."
Interestingly finely parsed, but when I Google "Recker and Glaxo" I find him quoted in a company press release endorsing an osteoporosis website the company supports — a site that advocates taking vitamin D and which points out that if you have problems getting it naturally, you can buy supplements that will fill in the gap.
Recker responded in his e-mail to me that, "I do not include the statement in the press release as a potential conflict of interest since I was not making the statement out of any affiliation with GSK. I have not participated in any of the studies nor in any advisory capacity to GSK regarding any vitamin D product. There is often some confusion about what constitutes a potential conflict of interest, as might be the case here. My institution does not require that I list this as a potential conflict of interest in its management of faculty relations with industry."
Parsing a parse, if you ask me.
I then had a lengthy discussion with Vieth who quite candidly said he had been delighted to join up with the manufacturers’ association employees in the toxicity review paper because he had long admired them for being good scientists. "I was honoured when they asked," he told me.
As to money conflicts he doesn’t think that was a big issue because vitamin D is a generic product and can be made for very little. He said the pure form of the substance costs about $3,000 a kilogram to make, a figure that translates into the dose each of the women in Nebraska took to ward off cancer costing about 3.5 cents a year to make.
Then he told me he had been angered when his name had been taken off some scientific papers after he, in complete openness, told agencies and journals that he and his wife have set up a vitamin D company in Toronto called Ddrops Inc. She is now the company’s president and it sells a year’s supply of 1,000 IU liquid vitamin D for about $20. "I was told my name was being taken off papers because of my wife’s occupation. That is something I find infuriating and upsetting," he said.
A little additional research found that Elaine Vieth has told the Hamilton Spectator that pharmacies initially had little interest in selling her product, which can be sprinkled on food or in drinks, but that after the Creighton cancer study appeared she sold 30,000 bottles within two days.
I am not often struck speechless by life’s contradictions, but here I am. Who would have thought that the research pertaining to what Ddrops markets as "the sunshine vitamin in just one drop" could be so conflicted?
Nonetheless, let me be absolutely clear. I cannot say that any of the findings of any of the researchers I cite — particularly when it comes to vitamin D’s cancer preventative effects — are erroneous because of the scientists’ commercial connections. Vitamin D may indeed turn out to be the next best thing since free e-mail and ballpoint pens, but I will say that a careful journalist, a prudent journalist, a wise journalist would look at this tangled mess of conflicted interests and results and proceed exceedingly carefully in promoting a massive change in vitamin D dosage levels.
I will say that Health Canada should not be stampeded into doing anything reflexive when it comes to raising vitamin D dosage levels.
And I might also suggest that if university scientists are looking for a less conspiratorial explanation for their perception that media has been loath to join a crusade to raise the dosage levels, they would do well to consider how it looks to outside observers when researchers blithely associate with those who benefit financially from these changes.
And that advice is good on both the sunniest and the cloudiest of days.
Related link:
Take vitamin D to reduce cancer risk, Canadian Cancer Society advises
External links:
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition editorial on vitamin D recommendations
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article on vitamin D toxicity
Creighton University backgrounder on cancer/vitamin D
(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window)
Biography
Stephen Strauss wrote articles, columns and editorials about science and technology for the Globe and Mail for more than 20 years. He has also authored three books, several book chapters, and for his efforts received numerous awards. Through all his time in journalism, he still remains smitten by the enduring wisdom of the motto of Austrian writer Karl Kraus. Say what is.
STEPHEN STRAUSS: SCIENCE FRICTION
The vitamin D debate
Feb. 13, 2008
It’s been cold and remarkably un-sunny in my neck of Canada recently — climatic conditions which I have been repeatedly told in the past year should lead me to start scarfing down vitamin D pills, and do it in amounts which likely exceed Health Canada’s daily recommended dosage.
And even more importantly, I've been told I should also counsel you to ignore the existing suggestions and strike out on a vitamin D health path of your own, one which might see you taking up to five times today’s suggested dose. (That’s what one advocate announces he is doing).
And if I don’t, it is my fault — well "my" as in all the media — if you readers get cancer, multiple sclerosis, flu, autism, depression, diabetes, loose teeth, stroke, heart disease, osteoporosis, fractures and God knows what else.
I know that, because last year 15 scientists from around the world scolded journalists in an American Journal of Clinical Nutrition editorial for effectively condoning ill health.
"We do not think that the public media present the vitamin D story in a complete and accurate manner," they said.
"Reports about vitamin D inadequacies are presented straightforwardly, but when it comes to discussing the intake of vitamin D needed to correct the situation, outdated official recommendations for vitamin D are propagated by the public media. This probably occurs because of restrictive editorial policies driven by concern about possible litigation if media were to advise a 'toxic' intake greater than the [present upper intake level]," they — including Reinhold Vieth of the University of Toronto — wrote.
Well, one should take this kind of criticism to heart. I have, in the last little while, specifically been looking at a paper that came out last year in the AJCN. I did this because it made many people’s top 10 science stories of 2007 and because the finding was described in various Canadian media as strongly influencing the Canadian Cancer Society’s decision to recommend that people in this country take much more — upwards of two-and-a-half times today’s recommended 400 International Units — vitamin D on a daily basis.
The study compared over a lengthy period — four years — the cancer rates in women taking vitamin D, taking calcium without vitamin D, or taking nothing. Researchers at Creighton University in Nebraska then reported a 60 per cent decrease in collective cancer rates for the vitamin D takers when they took what was something more than twice the currently recommended dosage.
While the cancer numbers were small — only 50 cases in toto — the CCS decision meant there was lots of coverage of the research. I found upwards of 50 reports in magazines, newspapers, radio and television, but absolutely zero coverage of the criticism of the paper that appeared in the journal in recent months.
In one letter, three scientists in Texas pointed out a number of issues, not the least of which being an Iowa study which suggested that when breast cancer was looked at there was indeed a fall in cancer numbers for the first five years when a vitamin D supplement was taken. But this balanced out at 10 years and there actually seemed to be more breast cancers among women taking vitamin D after 15 years.
It is precisely these sorts of yes/no/maybe results that make science and medical writers very, very, very, very cautious about blithely recommending dose rate increases.
Then there were the questions raised by Manish Sood of the Toronto General Hospital and Amy Sood of the University of Toronto faculty of pharmacy. They pointed out that some had suggested the incidence heart disease might grow as a result of increasing the vitamin D dosages and recommending, as the CCS did, that supplements be taken year round or during fall and winter months depending on skin colour and other factors.
In light of the CCS recommendation and a possible heart disease side-effect, they concluded their letter saying: "As Canadians, we ask the question — have we just traded one problem for another?"
Sounds reasonable, but their concern was brushed back by paper authors Robert Heaney and Joan Lappe of Creighton, who responded that there is no evidence of heart problems with vitamin D doses up to 10 times what they had given people. They added, "the issue of vitamin D toxicity was exhaustively reviewed in this Journal just a few months ago and Sood and Sood may find some reassurance in that report."
Given this disagreement I, too, needed reassurance and so I went to the review where I found something very non-reassuring. Heaney and Vieth had co-authored the toxicity study with two employees of the Council For Responsible Nutrition, a Washington D.C.-based lobby group and trade association for ingredient suppliers and manufacturers in the dietary supplement industry — that is to say, the official representatives of the people who would make vitamin D.
And their roles were anything but minor. One applied "risk assessment methodology" to the results and the other "searched literature and summarized relevant findings." Ultimately what the four wrote looks extremely authoritative, and might well be so, but to my mind this collaboration represents not an apparent conflict of interest, but a genuine conflict of interest.
And let me explain it with a simple equation. Let us assume that one-third of the people in North America decide, based on the CCS recommendation, to more than double their vitamin D dosage and this costs a bare $20 per person a year. That translates into an extra $2 billion going to vitamin D manufacturers and sellers.
All of this made me go back to the original Creighton paper and look to see if there was any indication of specific conflicts of interest among the researchers in it. The paper says no, with resounding vehemence: "None of the authors was affiliated in any way with an entity involved in the manufacture or marketing of vitamin D."
Then it goes on to mention that one author, Robert Recker, was on the scientific advisory boards of Roche and Proctor & Gamble, and Heaney was on the scientific advisory board for the International Dairy Food Association and the speaker’s bureau for P & G.
It’s true that Roche doesn’t make vitamins today — but it sold the business in 2003, a time that the Creighton experiment was ongoing. The sale, by the way, was announced at the same time Roche said it had resolved lawsuits growing out of its involvement in vitamin price fixing.
But Proctor remains in the business, in that it has licensed its Olay name to another company to produce Olay vitamins, which include vitamin D in a multivitamin supplement. Not to mention the fact that Heaney reported in 2006 that he had a "financial relationship with SmithKlineGlaxo" — a company which directly produces vitamin D.
And oh, yes, it seems almost everyone doing vitamin D research — Vieth included — gets money from dairy farmers associations in either Canada or the U.S.
So I sent Recker and Heaney an e-mail asking for an explanation and Recker responded: "Neither Dr. Heaney nor I have any affiliation with the company that supplied the vitamin D for the study. We have not had affiliation with the vitamin D work for the companies you mention. I have been a scientific adviser to Roche, P & G and Smith-Kline-Glaxo, but not in their vitamin D work."
Interestingly finely parsed, but when I Google "Recker and Glaxo" I find him quoted in a company press release endorsing an osteoporosis website the company supports — a site that advocates taking vitamin D and which points out that if you have problems getting it naturally, you can buy supplements that will fill in the gap.
Recker responded in his e-mail to me that, "I do not include the statement in the press release as a potential conflict of interest since I was not making the statement out of any affiliation with GSK. I have not participated in any of the studies nor in any advisory capacity to GSK regarding any vitamin D product. There is often some confusion about what constitutes a potential conflict of interest, as might be the case here. My institution does not require that I list this as a potential conflict of interest in its management of faculty relations with industry."
Parsing a parse, if you ask me.
I then had a lengthy discussion with Vieth who quite candidly said he had been delighted to join up with the manufacturers’ association employees in the toxicity review paper because he had long admired them for being good scientists. "I was honoured when they asked," he told me.
As to money conflicts he doesn’t think that was a big issue because vitamin D is a generic product and can be made for very little. He said the pure form of the substance costs about $3,000 a kilogram to make, a figure that translates into the dose each of the women in Nebraska took to ward off cancer costing about 3.5 cents a year to make.
Then he told me he had been angered when his name had been taken off some scientific papers after he, in complete openness, told agencies and journals that he and his wife have set up a vitamin D company in Toronto called Ddrops Inc. She is now the company’s president and it sells a year’s supply of 1,000 IU liquid vitamin D for about $20. "I was told my name was being taken off papers because of my wife’s occupation. That is something I find infuriating and upsetting," he said.
A little additional research found that Elaine Vieth has told the Hamilton Spectator that pharmacies initially had little interest in selling her product, which can be sprinkled on food or in drinks, but that after the Creighton cancer study appeared she sold 30,000 bottles within two days.
I am not often struck speechless by life’s contradictions, but here I am. Who would have thought that the research pertaining to what Ddrops markets as "the sunshine vitamin in just one drop" could be so conflicted?
Nonetheless, let me be absolutely clear. I cannot say that any of the findings of any of the researchers I cite — particularly when it comes to vitamin D’s cancer preventative effects — are erroneous because of the scientists’ commercial connections. Vitamin D may indeed turn out to be the next best thing since free e-mail and ballpoint pens, but I will say that a careful journalist, a prudent journalist, a wise journalist would look at this tangled mess of conflicted interests and results and proceed exceedingly carefully in promoting a massive change in vitamin D dosage levels.
I will say that Health Canada should not be stampeded into doing anything reflexive when it comes to raising vitamin D dosage levels.
And I might also suggest that if university scientists are looking for a less conspiratorial explanation for their perception that media has been loath to join a crusade to raise the dosage levels, they would do well to consider how it looks to outside observers when researchers blithely associate with those who benefit financially from these changes.
And that advice is good on both the sunniest and the cloudiest of days.
Related link:
Take vitamin D to reduce cancer risk, Canadian Cancer Society advises
External links:
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition editorial on vitamin D recommendations
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition article on vitamin D toxicity
Creighton University backgrounder on cancer/vitamin D
(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window)
Biography
Stephen Strauss wrote articles, columns and editorials about science and technology for the Globe and Mail for more than 20 years. He has also authored three books, several book chapters, and for his efforts received numerous awards. Through all his time in journalism, he still remains smitten by the enduring wisdom of the motto of Austrian writer Karl Kraus. Say what is.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Here is a good summary via our good friends at Mantex:
Neologism Ahoy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet
Would you know a sockpuppet if you saw one?
And even more, what would it have to do
with astroturfing - if anything?
I came across a whole slew of new terms
recently - all to do with creating bogus
identities and fake opinions on line.
A sockpuppet is a false identity used for
purposes of deception in an Internet
community. The sock sets up stupid Aunt
Sally comments which the puppeteer (in real
persona) then demolishes to gain credit.
Astroturfing gets its name from the fact
that it is pretending to be 'grassroots'
support for something - but in fact it's
a fake construction by stealth marketeers
and public relation wonks. Read it all here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet
Neologism Ahoy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet
Would you know a sockpuppet if you saw one?
And even more, what would it have to do
with astroturfing - if anything?
I came across a whole slew of new terms
recently - all to do with creating bogus
identities and fake opinions on line.
A sockpuppet is a false identity used for
purposes of deception in an Internet
community. The sock sets up stupid Aunt
Sally comments which the puppeteer (in real
persona) then demolishes to gain credit.
Astroturfing gets its name from the fact
that it is pretending to be 'grassroots'
support for something - but in fact it's
a fake construction by stealth marketeers
and public relation wonks. Read it all here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Media Manipulator:
Scientific American Mind - February, 2008
Getting Duped: How the Media Messes with Your Mind
Statements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies can help you separate fact from fiction
By Yvonne Raley and Robert Talisse
In 2003 nearly half of all Americans falsely assumed that the U.S. government had found solid evidence for a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. What is more, almost a quarter of us believed that investigators had all but confirmed the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a 2003 report by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, a polling and market research firm. How did the true situation in Iraq become so grossly distorted in American minds?
Many people have attributed such misconceptions to a politically motivated disinformation campaign to engender support for the armed struggle in Iraq. We do not think the deceptions were premeditated, however. Instead they are most likely the result of common types of reasoning errors, which appear frequently in discussions in the news media and which can easily fool an unsuspecting public.
News shows often have an implicit bias that may motivate the portrayal of facts and opinions in misleading ways, even if the information presented is largely accurate. Nevertheless, by becoming familiar with how spokespeople can create false impressions, media consumers can learn to ignore certain claims and thereby avoid getting duped. We have detected two general types of fallacies—one of them well known and the other newly identified—that have permeated discussion of the Iraq War and that are generally ubiquitous in political debates and other discourse.
Spinning Straw into Fool’s Gold
One common method of spinning information is the so-called straw man argument. In this tactic, a person summarizes the opposition’s position inaccurately so as to weaken it and then refutes that inaccurate rendition. In a November 2005 speech, for example, President George W. Bush responded to questions about pulling troops out of Iraq by saying, “We’ve heard some people say, pull them out right now. That’s a huge mistake. It’d be a terrible mistake. It sends a bad message to our troops, and it sends a bad message to our enemy, and it sends a bad message to the Iraqis.” The statement that unnamed “people” are advocating a troop withdrawal from Iraq “right now” is a straw man, because it exaggerates the opposing viewpoint. Not even the most stalwart Bush adversaries backed an immediate troop withdrawal. Most proposed that the soldiers be sent home over several months, a more reasonable and persuasive plan that Bush undercut with his straw man.
The straw man is used in countless other contexts as well. In his acceptance speech at the 1996 Democratic Convention, for instance, Bill Clinton opined: “… with all respect [to Bob Dole], we do not need to build a bridge to the past. We need to build a bridge to the future.” Dole did discuss restoring the values of an earlier America, but Clinton falsely implied that Dole was only looking backward (whereas Clinton was looking forward). People may use a straw man to discredit theories to which they do not subscribe. Characterizing evolution, for example, as “all random chance” is a straw man argument; it misrepresents a complex theory that only partly rests on the randomness of mutations that may lead to better chances of survival.
Recently, in a 2006 paper co-authored with Scott F. Aikin, one of us (Talisse) documented a twist on the straw man tactic. In what Talisse dubs a weak man argument, a person sets up the opposition’s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack, as opposed to misstating a rival’s position as the straw man argument does. In a July 2007 edition of Talking Points, Bill O’Reilly took on a claim by the New York Times that we had lost the war in Iraq by saying that “the New York Times declared defeat in Iraq Sunday on its editorial page, and there’s no question the antiwar movement has momentum.” (The editorial actually said that “some opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat,” but let us assume that O’Reilly’s characterization was correct.)
O’Reilly then offered a weak man explanation for the purported defeat: “The truth is the Iraqi government and many of its citizens are simply not doing enough to defeat the terrorists and corruption. The U.S.A. can’t control that country. No nation could.... Unfortunately, the Iraqi failure to help themselves has come true.” Although Iraq’s failure to aid in fighting terrorism and corruption could be why we are losing the war, the troubles in Iraq could also stem from a host of logistical reasons, some of which may shed a negative light on the current administration. O’Reilly, however, kept any discussion of these reasons offstage, suppressing the various other possible—and possibly more likely—reasons for “defeat” in Iraq. Meanwhile his claims that the “U.S.A. can’t control that country” and that “no nation could” deflected blame from the U.S. government.
Weak man arguments are pervasive. In a 2005 editorial in Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, conservative writer and activist David Horowitz picked on ethnic studies scholar Ward Churchill, formerly at the University of Colorado at Boulder, whose views he described as “hateful and ignorant.” Horowitz then went on to claim that Churchill’s radical “hate America” convictions “represent” those of a “substantial seg ment of the academic community.” Thus, he used the example of Churchill (the weak man) to argue that “tenured radicals” have made universities into leftist political institutions and subverted the academic enterprise, thereby failing to acknowledge the presence of more highly regarded and politically mainstream scholars in academia.
Trolling for Truth
Weak man tactics are harder to detect than those of the straw man variety. Because straw man arguments are closely related to an opponent’s true position, a clever listener might be able to spot the truth amid the hyperbole, understatement or other corrupted version of that view. A weak man argument, however, is more opaque because it contains a grain of truth and often bears little similarity to the stronger arguments that should also be presented. Therefore, a listener has to know a lot more about the situation to imagine the information that a speaker or writer has cleverly disregarded.
Nevertheless, an astute consumer of the news can catch many straw man and weak man fallacies by knowing how they work. Another strategy is to always consider a speaker’s or writer’s motivation or agenda and be especially alert for skewed statements of fact in editorials, television opinion shows, and the like. It is also wise to obtain news from more balanced news sources. An alternative approach is to try to construct, in your own mind, the best argument against what you have heard before accepting it as true. Or simply ask yourself: Why should I not believe this?
Scientific American Mind - February, 2008
Getting Duped: How the Media Messes with Your Mind
Statements made in the media can surreptitiously plant distortions in the minds of millions. Learning to recognize two commonly used fallacies can help you separate fact from fiction
By Yvonne Raley and Robert Talisse
In 2003 nearly half of all Americans falsely assumed that the U.S. government had found solid evidence for a link between Iraq and al Qaeda. What is more, almost a quarter of us believed that investigators had all but confirmed the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a 2003 report by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes and Knowledge Networks, a polling and market research firm. How did the true situation in Iraq become so grossly distorted in American minds?
Many people have attributed such misconceptions to a politically motivated disinformation campaign to engender support for the armed struggle in Iraq. We do not think the deceptions were premeditated, however. Instead they are most likely the result of common types of reasoning errors, which appear frequently in discussions in the news media and which can easily fool an unsuspecting public.
News shows often have an implicit bias that may motivate the portrayal of facts and opinions in misleading ways, even if the information presented is largely accurate. Nevertheless, by becoming familiar with how spokespeople can create false impressions, media consumers can learn to ignore certain claims and thereby avoid getting duped. We have detected two general types of fallacies—one of them well known and the other newly identified—that have permeated discussion of the Iraq War and that are generally ubiquitous in political debates and other discourse.
Spinning Straw into Fool’s Gold
One common method of spinning information is the so-called straw man argument. In this tactic, a person summarizes the opposition’s position inaccurately so as to weaken it and then refutes that inaccurate rendition. In a November 2005 speech, for example, President George W. Bush responded to questions about pulling troops out of Iraq by saying, “We’ve heard some people say, pull them out right now. That’s a huge mistake. It’d be a terrible mistake. It sends a bad message to our troops, and it sends a bad message to our enemy, and it sends a bad message to the Iraqis.” The statement that unnamed “people” are advocating a troop withdrawal from Iraq “right now” is a straw man, because it exaggerates the opposing viewpoint. Not even the most stalwart Bush adversaries backed an immediate troop withdrawal. Most proposed that the soldiers be sent home over several months, a more reasonable and persuasive plan that Bush undercut with his straw man.
The straw man is used in countless other contexts as well. In his acceptance speech at the 1996 Democratic Convention, for instance, Bill Clinton opined: “… with all respect [to Bob Dole], we do not need to build a bridge to the past. We need to build a bridge to the future.” Dole did discuss restoring the values of an earlier America, but Clinton falsely implied that Dole was only looking backward (whereas Clinton was looking forward). People may use a straw man to discredit theories to which they do not subscribe. Characterizing evolution, for example, as “all random chance” is a straw man argument; it misrepresents a complex theory that only partly rests on the randomness of mutations that may lead to better chances of survival.
Recently, in a 2006 paper co-authored with Scott F. Aikin, one of us (Talisse) documented a twist on the straw man tactic. In what Talisse dubs a weak man argument, a person sets up the opposition’s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack, as opposed to misstating a rival’s position as the straw man argument does. In a July 2007 edition of Talking Points, Bill O’Reilly took on a claim by the New York Times that we had lost the war in Iraq by saying that “the New York Times declared defeat in Iraq Sunday on its editorial page, and there’s no question the antiwar movement has momentum.” (The editorial actually said that “some opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat,” but let us assume that O’Reilly’s characterization was correct.)
O’Reilly then offered a weak man explanation for the purported defeat: “The truth is the Iraqi government and many of its citizens are simply not doing enough to defeat the terrorists and corruption. The U.S.A. can’t control that country. No nation could.... Unfortunately, the Iraqi failure to help themselves has come true.” Although Iraq’s failure to aid in fighting terrorism and corruption could be why we are losing the war, the troubles in Iraq could also stem from a host of logistical reasons, some of which may shed a negative light on the current administration. O’Reilly, however, kept any discussion of these reasons offstage, suppressing the various other possible—and possibly more likely—reasons for “defeat” in Iraq. Meanwhile his claims that the “U.S.A. can’t control that country” and that “no nation could” deflected blame from the U.S. government.
Weak man arguments are pervasive. In a 2005 editorial in Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, conservative writer and activist David Horowitz picked on ethnic studies scholar Ward Churchill, formerly at the University of Colorado at Boulder, whose views he described as “hateful and ignorant.” Horowitz then went on to claim that Churchill’s radical “hate America” convictions “represent” those of a “substantial seg ment of the academic community.” Thus, he used the example of Churchill (the weak man) to argue that “tenured radicals” have made universities into leftist political institutions and subverted the academic enterprise, thereby failing to acknowledge the presence of more highly regarded and politically mainstream scholars in academia.
Trolling for Truth
Weak man tactics are harder to detect than those of the straw man variety. Because straw man arguments are closely related to an opponent’s true position, a clever listener might be able to spot the truth amid the hyperbole, understatement or other corrupted version of that view. A weak man argument, however, is more opaque because it contains a grain of truth and often bears little similarity to the stronger arguments that should also be presented. Therefore, a listener has to know a lot more about the situation to imagine the information that a speaker or writer has cleverly disregarded.
Nevertheless, an astute consumer of the news can catch many straw man and weak man fallacies by knowing how they work. Another strategy is to always consider a speaker’s or writer’s motivation or agenda and be especially alert for skewed statements of fact in editorials, television opinion shows, and the like. It is also wise to obtain news from more balanced news sources. An alternative approach is to try to construct, in your own mind, the best argument against what you have heard before accepting it as true. Or simply ask yourself: Why should I not believe this?