Take a look at veeker.com

OK the assignment for next week is you send me a podcast (an audio file) as an attachment in an e-mail. I should be 30 second radio report on a news item that you find and report on. We looked at how this was done and how it is different then the reverse pyramid used in newspaper writing in class today on the video. This should be sent to me by Monday noon to a different e-mail address: carsurf@dragon.email.ne.jp. Hope to hear from you on Monday. See you in SecondLife or on Thur.

US Slips Again In Freedom of the Press Ranking |
| from the gosh-at-least-citizen's-rights-aren't-being-eroded dept.|
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday October 24, @07:39 (The Media)|
| http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/24/047209 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

[0]npwa writes to tell us Reporters Without Borders has released their
annual [1]worldwide press freedom index. While developing nations like
Haiti and Mauritania continue to gain ground developed nations like
France, Japan, and the US continue their downward spiral. From the
article: "The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last
year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in
2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply
deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security'
to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on
terrorism.' The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US
states, refuse to recognise the media's right not to reveal its sources,
even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all
with terrorism."

Discuss this story at:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/10/24/047209

Links:
0. mailto:nalmassy@yahoo.com
1. http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=639

Check this out for next class you will be resposible for a knowlegeable discussion on the topic:
BENEFIT DEDICATED TO SLAIN REPORTER, NOBEL WINNER
Acclaimed Canadian and international writers are in Toronto to pay
tribute to a slain journalist, honour courageous writers and celebrate
freedom of expression at PEN Canada's annual benefit.
FULL STORY:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts-books/national/2006/10/20/pen-benefit.html

Two things for and before next Thur. class. The writing assignment for this week is for you to chose a beat that you think you would like to cover and write a story from that beats point of view. The journalism video covered some of the common beats but you can use your imagination and think of others. Second thing is SecondLife. Meet me there over the next week- Sunday and Monday would probably be best as I'll be on site (second life) more of the time on those days, although most nights between 9:30-10 p.m. Good Luck.;>}

On Tuesday, November 7th at 3rd period (Room to be announced) we will be hosting a distinguished visiting lecturer, the best-selling author of children's books, Lynne Reid Banks. The most famous of her works is the classic _The Indian in the Cupboard_, which has sold over ten million copies worldwide and was made into a feature film in 1995. According to her official bio at "She was born in London in 1929 and was an actress in the early 1950’s; later she became one of the first women TV news reporters in Britain. She has written forty books – her first, _The L-Shaped Room_, was published in 1960." [Of course, Night School students are welcome to attend the lecture if they're free at the time and don't mind making the journey to the Sagamihara Campus. Some of the students in Nibu have never been to the Sagamihara Campus and might like an excuse to visit.]

The assignment for next Tue. noon deadline is a story about animal rights that you research and write. I also want you to read through "The Weekly Spin" below. It is a valuable source for storys that don't often get widly published but should. The question for this week which you can e-mail the answer to carsurf@dragon.email.ne.jp, for extra credit is: What is liguistic framing? That would be a good subject for an academic paper. Send me your answers by this Sunday for cridit. See you next week. Clark
From: weekly-spin@prwatch.org
Subject: The Weekly Spin, October 11, 2006
Date: October 12, 2006 11:04:23 PM JST
To: cmd+weekly_spin-46979@lists.democracyinaction.org
Reply-To: weekly-spin@prwatch.org


THE WEEKLY SPIN, October 11, 2006

Sponsored by the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy:
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THIS WEEK'S NEWS

== BLOG POSTINGS ==
1. Zigging and Zagging on Cutting and Running
2. Remember Those Term-Limit Pledges?
3. Accuracy of Report on Video News Releases Affirmed: CMD Issues Full Rebuttal of RTNDA Claims

== SPIN OF THE DAY ==
1. Hiding 600,000 Dead Iraqis
2. Spinning Bout the Nukes in the Bay
3. U.S. Army: From 'One' To 'Strong'
4. First Soda, Now School Junk Food: Clinton Deal Claims Lower-Cal Crunch
5. CMD's 2005 Annual Report Available On Line
6. PR or School Teachers? Maldives Party Asks
7. Blowing in the Wind
8. Hill & Knowlton Challenged Over Maldives Work
9. Losing Afghanistan Twice Over
10. European Drug Pushers
11. Burson Backs Licensing PR Professionals
12. Covering Up for Foley?
13. FCC Names Obesity/Food Marketing Task Force
14. The Best Book Ever?

--------------------------------------------------------------------

== BLOG POSTINGS ==

1. ZIGGING AND ZAGGING ON CUTTING AND RUNNING
by Sheldon Rampton

The Bush administration's use of the term "cut and run" to
caricature opponents of the war in Iraq is yet another example of
the attention that America's war party pays to rhetorical repetition
and linguistic framing at the expense of realistic discourse and
analysis. Bush himself has taken to using this catchprase
repeatedly. At a recent speech in Birmingham, Alabama, he declared
that "The party of FDR, the party of Harry Truman, has become the
party of cut-and-run." He repeated the charge a few days later, at a
political fundraising breakfast for California Congressman Richard
Pombo. "The Democrats are the party of cut and run," he said. "Ours
is a party that has got a clear vision and says we will give our
commanders and troops the support necessary to achieve that victory
in Iraq."
For the rest of this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5098

2. REMEMBER THOSE TERM-LIMIT PLEDGES?
by Elliott Fullmer

It's hard to believe that twelve years have passed since the Newt
Gingrich-led Republican Revolution of 1994.
In that year, GOP candidates launched a successful effort to
take control of both the House and Senate, something they had not
been able to accomplish in the previous forty-two years. Their
campaign focused heavily on the Contract with America, a list of
objectives that Republicans promised to pursue in Congress if
elected into the majority.
One of the key proposals of the document was the Citizen
Legislature Act, a measure which would amend the Constitution to
place limits on the number of terms members of both the House and
Senate could serve. The argument was that career politicians become
too distant from the people and need to be replaced by ?citizen
legislators.? In a show of support for the proposed amendment,
which eventually failed in the House, several GOP candidates pledged
to limit their own terms (independent of any legislation forcing
them to do so) if elected. Small numbers of candidates followed this
trend in future elections as well.
For the rest of this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5275

3. ACCURACY OF REPORT ON VIDEO NEWS RELEASES AFFIRMED: CMD ISSUES FULL REBUTTAL OF RTNDA CLAIMS
by Diane Farsetta

October 9, 2006 ? The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD)
released today a full rebuttal of claims made against its April 2006
report, "Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed." The report
tracked television stations' use of video news releases (VNRs),
narrated pre-packaged segments produced by public relations firms
for their clients. The report documented 77 television stations
airing VNRs or related materials; not once did stations disclose the
client behind the segment. The report led the U.S. Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) to launch an investigation of the 77
stations named, in August 2006.
Last week, the Radio-Television News Directors Association
(RTNDA), through the law and lobby firm Wiley Rein & Fielding, urged
the FCC to drop its investigation. RTNDA alleged that the
investigation has had "a chilling effect" on TV newsrooms. RTNDA
also issued a critique of CMD?s report that misrepresented and
distorted the substance of the report. CMD's full, point-by-point
rebuttal of the RTNDA critique is available online at:
www.prwatch.org/node/5282.
For the rest of this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5283

== SPIN OF THE DAY ==

1. HIDING 600,000 DEAD IRAQIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casualties.html
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have a chapter in The Best War Ever
titled "Not Counting the Dead," reporting on how the US government
has chosen to hide the horrific impact of the US invasion and
occupation. Now the authors of a major study examined in the book
have a new study out. The New York Times reports, "A team of
American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that
600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003
American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war
here. ... It is the second study by researchers from the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. ... The study comes at a
sensitive time for the Iraqi government, which is under pressure
from American officials to take action against militias driving the
sectarian killings. In the last week of September, the government
barred the central morgue in Baghdad and the Health Ministry ? the
two main sources of information for civilian deaths ? from
releasing figures to the news media. Now, only the government is
allowed to release figures."
SOURCE: The New York Times, October 11, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5289

2. SPINNING BOUT THE NUKES IN THE BAY
http://www.sundayherald.com/58383
"Scotland's green watchdog played down the risks of radioactive
contamination at a popular coastal resort in Fife following an
11th-hour intervention by government spin doctors," reports Rob
Edwards. "Internal emails reveal the Scottish Environment Protection
Agency (Sepa) delayed and then altered a news release after it had
been described as 'not entirely helpful' by a senior Scottish public
relations official." The Sepa release announced a "hazard
assessment," which found that radioactive waste dumped decades ago,
after the closure of a naval air base, had resulted in 100 radiation
hotspots. The area includes "Scotland's largest sailing club and a
beach." The intervention by Scottish Executive PR official Neil
Trotter resulted in major changes to the release. The original
version estimated the likelihood of radioactive exposure to be
"around 1 in 900 a year for the whole beach, and around 1 in 90 for
the area with the greatest concentration" of waste. The published
version merely stated the "likelihood of harm ... is considered to
be low." Sepa denied that they had "tone[d] down" the release,
saying, "The content of Sepa press releases is decided by Sepa."
SOURCE: Sunday Herald (Scotland), October 8, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5287

3. U.S. ARMY: FROM 'ONE' TO 'STRONG'
http://adage.com/article?article_id=112420
"The Army spends more than $200 million annually on marketing -- the
biggest ad contract in the federal government," notes Advertising
Age. Ten months after winning the U.S. Army's main advertising
contract, the McCann Worldgroup firm announced the theme of its
first campaign: strength. "There's strong, and then there's Army
strong," explained a video from the firm. "There is nothing on this
green earth that is stronger than the U.S. Army." Like other
recruiting efforts, the Army's "strong" campaign "was developed to
specifically address not just those considering an Army career, but
family members and friends of potential recruits. Since the start of
the Iraq war, the U.S. military's advertising increasingly has
focused on convincing parents and peers that the choice of the
military career is a good one." The "strong" TV ads will start
airing November 9; print ads will run in 2007.
SOURCE: Advertising Age, October 9, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5286

4. FIRST SODA, NOW SCHOOL JUNK FOOD: CLINTON DEAL CLAIMS LOWER-CAL CRUNCH
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061006/ap_on_he_me/diet_school_snacks
"Kids will buy what they want. We just stop by the bodega on the way
home." So says one thirteen year old, unimpressed by what the adults
have just signed -- a "voluntary agreement" between five snack food
makers (Kraft, M&M Mars, Campbell Soup Co., Dannon, and PepsiCo),
the American Heart Association, and the Clinton Foundation in round
two of the former president's voluntary intiatives to discourage bad
eating habits in America's schools. The "deal" is this: where
schools agree to follow "Competitive Food Guidelines," vending
machines will stock only products that contain no more than 35
percent of their calories from fat, no more than 10 percent
saturated fat, and no more than 35 percent of sugar content by
weight. Although the guidelines have been commended, implementation
raises doubts. Janey Thornton, president of the School Nutrition
Association, said, "It has to have some enforcement behind it... .
[S]ome states have none and that's where I think the problem comes
in." The Center for Science in the Public Interest noted that local
schools and vending machine companies could completely ignore the
program. Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, criticized the
initiative as "a sham and a public relations stunt" by junk food
firms.
SOURCE: Associated Press, October 6, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5285

5. CMD'S 2005 ANNUAL REPORT AVAILABLE ON LINE
http://www.prwatch.org/pdfs/CMD_2005_Annual_Rpt.pdf
The Center for Media and Democracy's 2005 Annual Report is now
available online. Read CMD staff bios, descriptions of our projects,
a summary of media coverage we received in 2005, and our financial
statements. We appreciate the individuals and foundations that have
provided support for our work throughout the years. If you would
like to contribute to CMD, please click here to give through our
secure server.
SOURCE: CMD 2005 Annual Report
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5284

6. PR OR SCHOOL TEACHERS? MALDIVES PARTY ASKS
http://www.minivannews.com/news/news.php?id=2504
The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has called for the termination
of Hill & Knowlton's contract defending the repressive government of
the Maldives. The MDP calculated that the PR firm has been paid
$800,000 over almost three years. "According to World Bank figures,
$800,000 is enough money to pay for the salaries of 290 Maldivian
secondary school teachers for a whole year," acting MDP President
Ibrahim Hussain Zaki stated in a media release. In response to
recent media coverage of Hill & Knowlton's role in the Maldives, Tim
Fallon posted a note on his blog defending his work as leading to
"seismic" changes in the Islamic nation. Dozens of visitors to the
blog aren't buying his story. "Why on earth would you help a brutal
dictator who has murdered his own people? This shows what kind of a
company Hill & Knowlton really is," wrote one.
SOURCE: Minivan News (Maldives), October 7, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5281

7. BLOWING IN THE WIND
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-rocketdyne6oct06,1,5612437,full.story
A five-year long study into the 1959 meltdown of a nuclear reactor
near Simi Valley in California has concluded that it could have
caused between 260 and 1,800 cases of cancer. The report could not
be more specific because the U.S. Department of Energy and Boeing,
the parent company of Rocketdyne, refused to provide the weather
data crucial to modelling where the radioactive pollution went. The
report states that Boeing officials told the researchers that the
wind data was proprietary information. "How can you possibly declare
a trade secret which way the wind blew on a certain day?" Dan
Hirsch, the co-chairman of the advisory panel that oversaw the
study, told the Los Angeles Times. At the time of the accident, the
lab issued a media statement claiming, "No release of radioactive
materials to the plant or its environs occurred, and operating
personnel were not exposed to harmful conditions."
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5280

8. HILL & KNOWLTON CHALLENGED OVER MALDIVES WORK
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1799467.ece
In an overview of the changes occurring in the Maldives, a cluster
of islands to the southwest of India, reporter Meera Selva sketches
how the repressive president, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, is failing to
respond to the either the democracy movement or the growing
influence of Islamic fundamentalism. "The government is aware that
the problems facing ordinary Maldivians may affect its tourism
industry, but its response has been cynical rather than hopeful,"
Selva writes. Tim Fallon from Hill and Knowlton's London office has
been working for Gayoom's government, to prevent a tourism boycott
in response to controversies over police brutality and the lack of
multi-party elections. Hill & Knowlton is reportedly on a ?13,000
(US$24,000) a month retainer. Speaking on BBC Radio, Maldives
democracy activist Jenny Latheef said, "I don't know why Hill &
Knowlton would support somebody like that. He's a dictator, a brutal
dictator."
SOURCE: The Independent (UK), October 5, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5276

9. LOSING AFGHANISTAN TWICE OVER
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092506R.shtml
Some readers of Newsweek read a cover story in the October 2, 2006
issue titled "Losing Afghanistan: The Rise of Jihadistan," but not
readers in the United States. Editions destined for Asia, Latin
America, and Europe provided an in-depth analysis of the situation
in Afghanistan and the failures of the U.S.-led war such as, "The
harsh truth is that five years after the US invasion on Oct. 7,
2001, most of the good news is confined to Kabul, with its choking
rush-hour traffic jams, a construction boom and a handful of
air-conditioned shopping malls. Much of the rest of Afghanistan
appears to be failing again. Most worrisome, a new failed-state
sanctuary is emerging across thousands of square miles along the
Afghan-Pakistan border: 'Jihadistan,' it could be called." Readers
in the U.S. instead were given a retrospective of the career of
photographer Annie Leibovitz.
SOURCE: TruthOut.org, September 25, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5278

10. EUROPEAN DRUG PUSHERS
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15046930/
The drug industry is hopeful that it will succeed in watering down
the European Union's ban on direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) of
pharmaceuticals. Draft proposals from a working group, which
includes members of the European Commission and the drug industry,
have proposed a public-private partnership to provide patient
"information" on prescription medicines. It is a prospect that
horrifies the medical watchdog group Health Action International
(HAI). In response (pdf) to the latest EU push, HAI stated, "The
pharmaceutical industry is in no position to provide the information
people want, need and deserve; information that is unbiased,
reliable and comparative." In 2004 a push to weaken the EU's DTCA
ban was overwhelmingly rejected. HAI reports that one of the
European Union members of parliament defended the latest move on the
grounds that "70% of the current MEPs were new to their positions."
SOURCE: MSNBC, September 28, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5274

11. BURSON BACKS LICENSING PR PROFESSIONALS
http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/article/596797/Burson-calls-PR-industry-counter-bad-publicity/
Harold Burson, the founder of Burson-Marsteller, has flagged his
support for the licensing of PR professionals. "It would overcome
the derogatory manner in which we are depicted in the news media,"
he told a PR conference in India. The idea of licensing of PR
practitioners has a long history within the profession. PR industry
pioneer Edward Bernays supported it, while Burson previously opposed
it. In a speech in 1992, Bernays argued that without a system of
licensing, a set of guiding principles and "a strict ethical code,
PR will be relegated to an increasingly diluted status and waning
importance in our society."
SOURCE: PR Week (sub req'd), October 5, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5273

12. COVERING UP FOR FOLEY?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/washington/05hastert.html
Republicans in the U.S. Congress continue to grapple with the
controversy surrounding the resignation in disgrace of Rep. Mark
Foley. Former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham, who subsequently
became chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds (chair of the National
Republican Congressional Committee), has resigned following reports
that he tried to stop ABC News from reporting on the sexually
explicit chats that Foley had with teenagers about the Grand Old
Party in his pants. But Fordham seems unwilling to play the role of
fall guy in the cover-up scandal. In a news conference he told
reporters that he had been warning people about Foley since 2003 or
earlier, holding "more than one conversation with senior staff at
the highest levels of the House of Representatives, asking them to
intervene when I was informed of Mr. Foley?s inappropriate
behavior." As the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz observes, "That's
what's driving this whole thing, the sense that key Republicans were
more concerned with the politics of the Foley mess than protecting
the teenagers he was hitting up online."
SOURCE: New York Times, October 5, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5270

13. FCC NAMES OBESITY/FOOD MARKETING TASK FORCE
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060928/ap_on_he_me/food_ads_kids;_ylt=AhJ8mx7X
Citing "a public health problem that will only get worse unless we
take action," Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin
Martin announced a joint task force on child obesity. The task force
currently brings together mostly corporate and conservative members,
including Walt Disney, media watchdog Parents Television Council
(which recently lauded General Mills for "family friendly
advertising" and specializes in indecency complaints to the FCC),
and the Beverly LaHaye Institute, which opposes sex trafficking,
promotes abstinence and attacks feminists. Sesame Workshop and
Children Now reportedly have also been invited to participate.
Children Now's board chair is marketing consultant and former ad
exec Jane Gardner. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who urged Martin to
create the task force, said that he did not consult with any other
members of Congress. In the press conference announcing the task
force, Sen. Brownback appeared to propose his own conclusion to the
task force's work: further voluntary restrictions, rather than FCC
regulations on media marketing to children. "If we start down the
road of saying we're going to limit everything and we're going to do
it with a regulatory regime, I think you get everybody in a quick
adversarial relationship." The Institute of Medicine of the National
Academies has already recommended specific food marketing
restrictions.
SOURCE: Associated Press, September 27, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5239

14. THE BEST BOOK EVER?

Haven't had a chance to buy our new book, The Best War Ever?
Wondering what it's all about? Click here to read exclusive passages
from the book. Chapters excerpted include "Not Counting the Dead,"
"Rewriting History," and "Big Impact." We hope you'll take this
opportunity to whet your appetite and will go on to read the book in
its entirety. You can order it online, or ask your local bookseller
if they have it in stock. And after you read it, please consider
posting a review on Amazon to encourage others to read this
important book. And don't forget to visit The Best War Ever website
to watch the great four minute flash video about the book!
SOURCE:
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5265

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| Ask an Expert About the Future of 'Citizen Journalism' |
| from the mainstream-media-is-quaking-in-its-boots dept. |
| posted by Roblimo on Monday September 25, @12:20 (Media) |
| http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/25/1510234 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

People ranging from [0]Doc Searls to [1]J.D. Lasica to [2]Dan Gillmor to
[3]Craig Newmark have talked about how "citizen journalism" is
supplanting and/or augmenting professional reporting. (FYI: One of the
groundbreaking moments in "citizen journalism" happened right here on
[4]Slashdot.) This week's interviewee, NYU professor [5]Jay Rosen, is not
only a long-time proponent of [6]civic journalism, but has now started
[7]NewAssignment.net with seed money from Craig Newmark, a $10,000 grant
from the [8]Sunlight Foundation and, last week, $100,000 from [9]Reuters.
Jay Rosen is obviously not just an academic or theoretician, but is
actually doing things, which means he can answer almost any question you
may have about citizen (or civic) journalism. Usual Slashdot
[10]interview rules apply.

This story continues at:
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/25/1510234

Discuss this story at:
http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/09/25/1510234

Links:
0. http://www.searls.com/dochome.html#Bio
1. http://jdlasica.com/aboutjd.html
2. http://citmedia.org/blog/
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Newmark
4. http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/10/07/120249&tid=149
5. http://www.poynter.org/profile/profile.asp?user=102644
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_journalism
7. http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/07/25/nadn_qa.html
8. http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/09/07/slt_gift.html
9. http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/09/20/rts_gft.html
10. http://slashdot.org/faq/interviews.shtml

PUT THIS DOWN ON YOUR SCHEDULE---DEC.4TH A MONDAY IS THE ASAHI SHIMBUN TOUR. THIS IS WORTH 50 POINTS FOR THE COURSE AND EVERY EFFORT SHOULD BE MADE TO ATTEND.

We will be looking at one of the great photojournalists in class next week. Although you will hear Larry Towell denia that he is one, he is! Maybe a more delicate Thompson. He comments that..."Poetry is literature with the water squeezed out of it." Kind of like journalism although we usually allow and want some of the H2O. He added to the last quote that.."When you go into the world you edit much more." That's the KISS of it. You might want to look at the web site for a preview at >http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/

Next weeks assignment is to write a movie or book review. You should mention the directors name and the main characters and actors. Discribe the story and then comment on how well everyone did their job. Deadline is noon on Tue. to carsurf@yahoo.com.

Have some sympathy for the guys running the show. It is in everyones best interest for there to be a sucessful conclusion to the war in Iraq. The trouble is that no one seems to know what is happening, let alone have solutions. Getting the information is difficult or as the opinion below from the Weekly Spin has in impossible.
IRAQ "98 PERCENT OFF-LIMITS" FOR PRESS CORPS
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003122985
"Everyone is kind of groping around in the dark," says New York
Times senior correspondent Dexter Filkins on his return from
reporting in Iraq. Despite employing 70 Iraqi staffers, the civil
war there (Filkins doesn't hedge--"Yeah, sure" it's a civil war) has
meant the Times cannot safely access stories. Its own five
correspondents primarily spend their time pasting together reports
by the Iraqi staff, protected by a small army of 45 security guards,
armored cars, and belt-fed rooftop machine guns. "Nobody trusts
anybody anymore. There's no law, and the worst people with guns are
in charge." The Iraqi reporters know that if their association with
the Times is revealed they may pay with their lives, Filkins told
the Committee to Protect Journalists at a September 14, 2006, talk
in Manhattan where he is preparing to serve a U.S. fellowship. His
advice to other reporters thinking about covering Iraq: "Don't go."
Filkins said that the U.S. military is similarly hamstrung in
getting quality information: soldiers rarely leave their bases and
don't interact much with average Iraqis. Ninety-eight percent of
Iraq, including Baghdad, is too dangerous for reporters to cover, he
said.
SOURCE: Editor and Publisher, September 16, 2006 (sub req'd)
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5227

Your assignment for next week,deadline Monday, is to write a news story about the news you personally thought the most important over the last summer. If appropriate find original sources rather then use just a news story, if it is a news story that you will use. The three new people, two of which have had trouble, should write an introduction to their blogs. If you still have problems we will work them out in the next class. See you next Thur. Clark

Information, news,public relations and propaganda. What are the differences between them? Try to think about this and define what each of the headings ie. info, news, etc. means.
GOVERNMENT PR: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=2060330
"Agencies across government are under increasing pressure to sway
public opinions -- either to win funding from Congress, to satisfy
customers, to recruit new employees, to educate the public about new
programs, to minimize fallout from controversial policies," writes
Mollie Ziegler. With more U.S. federal agencies "applying
sophisticated public relations tools and tactics," government
spending on PR and marketing services skyrocketed from $39 million
in 2001 to more than $400 million for 2006 to date. For example, the
Federal Aviation Administration "hired a PR consultant last year to
help it put a more positive face on its decision to outsource 2,500
jobs, the biggest outsourcing deal yet by an agency." The Defense
Department hired consultants to survey college students, to improve
their branding and recruiting materials. And agencies are still
putting out video news releases, though the Government
Accountability Office ruled that segments that don't make their
government source clear are illegal covert propaganda.
SOURCE: Federal Times (U.S.), August 28, 2006
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
http://www.prwatch.org/node/5127

| Fake News Stories Probed |
| from the truthiness dept. |
| posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 16, @20:24 (The Media) |
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/16/2327242 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

An anonymous reader writes "From the article: "The U.S. Federal
Communications Commission has begun an [0]investigation of the use of
video news releases, sometimes called "fake news," at U.S. television
stations. Video news releases are packaged stories paid for by businesses
or interest groups. They use actors to portray reporters and use the same
format as television news stories.""

Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/08/16/2327242

Links:
0. http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/08/16/fake-news-probe.html

The ever present danger of Big Brother manipulating public discourse and perceptions is well illustrated here. Orwell we didn't really expect this, but should have.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| PR Firm Behind Al Gore YouTube Spoof? |
| from the new-intarweb-trolls dept. |
| posted by ScuttleMonkey on Sunday August 06, @18:11 (Republicans)|
| http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/06/209244 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

mytrip writes to tell us ABC News is reporting that a supposed amateur
video posted to YouTube.com may have actually been designed and posted by
a Republican [0]public relations firm called DCI. From the article:
"Public relations firms have long used computer technology to create
bogus grassroots campaigns, which are called 'Astroturf.' Now these firms
are being hired to push illusions on the Internet to create the false
impression of real people blogging, e-mailing and making films."

Discuss this story at:
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=06/08/06/209244

Links:
0. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2273111&page=1

Here are the first few paragraphs of a well thought out medium long article on, what the writer believes is, the pathetic state of techno journalism. Think about it - read the whole article if you'd like and then think about it some more, and tell me - is he right?
7-28-06
Column: Get That Out of Your Mouth #27
The Next Gonzo Journalism
Column by Chris Dahlen
I keep hearing the same gripe from the critics of the critics of pop culture: Today's writers eat it. Nobody knows how to cover music, or movies, or video games, or any of the other media that matter. We need someone to swoop in and save us: We need a new Lester Bangs, or a new Hunter S. Thompson-- one of those guys who made criticism and alternative journalism seem so vital back in the 1960s and 70s. Where they hell did they go?
Chuck Klosterman writes in Esquire about the failure of the gaming press to cough up a single critic who embodies whatever Bangs was doing when he told people to listen to the Troggs. Old school fans of music crit watch the field slip into the morass of mp3 blogs, message boards, and kids who just shout, "Hey, can you YSI that to me?" every time a new album leaks-- and they wonder, what happened to the great critics? They want a tastemaker, a voice of authority, who can put it all in perspective and knock our heads together with his or her crazy-yet-dead-on arguments.

But I think I've found the answer: We don't have a new Bangs or Thompson yet because pop culture today is primarily a technology story. And we don't know how to write about technology.

Oh sure, we cover tons of stories about technology. We write up every new thing from could-be-big trends-- whatever happened to the podcast revolution, anyway?-- to tiny but buzzworthy ones, like that "personalized" Jessica Simpson download they're selling at Yahoo! Music. The problem is that every time we write about some new technology like podcasting, we go through the basic template-- explain how it works, decide whether grandmothers will care about RSS feeds, and so forth-- and we quote the same types of people: The early adopter, the industry analyst, the skeptic. And no matter what context the story falls into and how important the subject may seem, the overall tone is always the same: whatever it is, it's "neat."

Here is a very good article defending the newsworthyness of blogs and the choices we make when selecting news. It's written by the great Canadian Science Fiction writer and Creative Commons advocate Cory Doctorow and published by the Canadian Brodcast Corporation:
Truth and the Net
By Cory Doctorow


Trusting what you read on the internet is a dangerous prospect, but it beats the alternative. At least on the internet, you get to choose your bias.

You can't trust what you read online. You can't trust what you read in the paper. You can't trust what you see on TV, or hear on the radio. You can't trust what your friend swears her brother's girlfriend said is true.

You can't trust anything – not with the gospel, bet-your-life trust that you reserve for things like gravity and death and your family.

You never could.

But for a long time, it sure seemed like you could. It seemed like any enterprise to which the CRTC gave a broadcast licence would surely conduct itself with dignity, fairness and accuracy. Anyone with the wherewithal to put a newspaper in your door in the morning, or get a magazine onto the stands surely wouldn't risk seeming wild or foolish by publishing untruths.

In hindsight, we know how wrong that was. Look at the CBC's infamous "Hippie Bill" segment where a young William Gibson (later to become a world-famous science fiction writer, but even then something of a storyteller) guided a gullible camera crew around the hippie paradise of Yorkville, inventing hippie argot and "facts" about the hippie lifestyle.

CBC.ca archives video: Yorkville Hippie haven, 1967

Look at how the New York Times omitted mention of Stephen Colbert's virtuoso performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner, in which the comedian scorchingly denounced the press for its failure to address issues of moment in the Bush administration.

Consider the raft of woo-woo magazines advocating the use of crystal pyramids to improve gas-mileage, conspiracy books about alien abductions, racist monthly newspapers, nutjob talk-radio hosts, and the thousand other ways in which the truth is mangled, omitted, or reversed by the press. It's a truism that experts of all kinds wince when they see mainstream press coverage of their disciplines, anticipating the perennial clunkers, errors and mix-ups that characterize all generalist coverage of specialist subjects.

The most important difference between the internet and all the media that came before it is the cost of participation. On the internet, participation is pretty much free — or at least, it's in free-fall, with library terminals, cheap hardware, open WiFi and free training courses making the net available to ever-larger pools of people.

Almost anyone can participate. If having the money to run a publication was ever any kind of proxy for reliability, kiss it goodbye. You can't even count on a site's prominence as a barometer of its truthfulness. Wildly popular sites like the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia can be edited by anyone who comes upon them, anonymously, and those edits show up live the instant they're made.

Media scholar Clay Shirky calls the pre-internet era the "select, then publish" epoch. It was a time when industrialists hired editors to choose from among the pool of available accounts of the world and its workings and publish those that suited their taste best.

Now we're in the era of "publish, then select." Gone is the era of a few news outlets who divide the pool of advertising dollars into substantial chunks and use those chunks to staff a newsroom full of investigative reporters.

Good riddance. We've got something better in "publish, then select" land. Investigative bloggers like Kathryn Cramer — whose hobby is tracking the movements and deeds of mercenary armies — post their initial impressions of a story, with whatever details they've gleaned. A horde of readers converges on the post and sends her corrections, argument, accord, evidence, and opinion. Cramer sifts through this to find what she considers credible and coherent, and adds new posts. In this incremental fashion, a truth emerges. Not the only truth (lots of the subjects of Cramer's posts strenuously object to them and tell her so on her site and on their own), but a truth nevertheless.

Other collaborative projects like Wikipedia — an encyclopedia with more than one million entries that anyone can edit — go one further, deploying elaborate tool-suites so that readers can, with a little effort, see who contributed what to which Wikipedia posts and when. Wikipedia articles are just the surface, beneath which lurks a palimpsest, revealing the chatter, denunciations, and consensus-building that yielded the current version of the truth.

Wikipedia gets it wrong all the time. So do bloggers. But then, so do newspapers, magazines, TV and radio. The interesting thing about systems isn't how they perform when they're working to specification, it's what happens when they fail.

Blogs, Wikipedia, and other online media fail gracefully indeed. When a newspaper gets a story wrong, it can take 24 hours to get a correction out – if it corrects it at all. There's no ready way to link criticism of a newspaper article with the article itself. Certainly, you can't make the edits yourself.

But if you find an error in a Wikipedia entry, you can fix it yourself. You can join the discussion about whether a blogger got it wrong. Automated tools like Technorati link together all the different blogs discussing the same topic, turning them into a conversation.

As advertising dollars are gobbled up by Google, Craigslist and eBay, major media outlets are slashing their newsrooms and their editorial staff, making do with generic syndicated material off the wires, contracting "truth" to a few accounts, a few biases. Meanwhile, "citizen journalists" of publish-then-select are discovering that you can fact-check on the cheap, without a Chumcity or Torstar building behind you, provided you do so *after* you go to press.

The news isn't just something your audience/funders receive in completed parcels. It's something they come to understand by looking at the story from many angles, through a multiplicity of online sources.

A public service broadcaster that wants to truly provide a service to the public can do better than merely producing yet another account of events. It can provide tools to help its audience explore the story as it emerges.

Imagine a future where "public service" news is a set of collaborative online tools that help citizens piece together coherent accounts of events as they unfold: message-boards that let you fly over to get the gist of the conversation, or drill down to see the nitty-gritty of individual discussions. Something that helped users create persistent identities through which their contributions could be permanently linked over time. Something that turned the news into a palimpsest where every buried body could be disinterred and examined for wounds.

Most of all, a public service broadcaster could be the repository for the raw materials of the news: public, freely reusable databases of geodata, audiovisual news morgues, and user-created AV materials that the broadcaster could host permanently in a stable archive. As public service broadcasters around the world developed comparable archives, these could be reciprocally linked, giving Canadians access to the BBC, Britons access to Deutsche Welle, Germans access to Radio France. If bloggers and other citizen journalists represent a future for newsgathering and reportage, public service entities like the CBC should be working to fill in the infrastructure gaps that presently stand between them and a well-rounded, wide-ranging, timely and balanced view of the news.

Meanwhile, it's not sloppiness that compels a blogger to publish before all the facts are in hand. The way a blogger gets all the facts on hand is by publishing, attracting a discussion, and figuring out what's really going on, as best as anyone can figure it.

It's a lot of work, getting to the truth. Reading the newspaper is easy. Choosing whose news to believe is hard — but if it's the truth you're after, and not just some dominant narrative du jour, there's no getting around it.

Do you share Cory Doctorow’s view about the truth of what you read online? Are "citizen journalists" making the online world more trustworthy?

Share your comments »

Cory Doctorow (www.craphound.com) was born in Toronto and lives in London, England. He is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist and co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net). Doctorow is a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, MAKE, the New York Times and other newspapers, magazines and websites. He is a former director of European affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He currently serves on several boards and advisory boards including Participatory Culture Foundation and Technorati, Inc.

Doctorow was a keynote speaker at the CBC.ca Web Ed 2006 conference. He spoke on the limits of copyright online.

Citizen journalists get rewarded
Here is an interesting report from the BBC about this new wave of journalism which comes, as from here, cell phone photographs but also from blogs, web pages and internet discussion boards.

The judges were unanimous in choosing the winning image.

Enlarge Image
A picture taken moments after a bomb exploded on a number 30 bus in London's Tavistock Square on 7 July 2005 has won the first citizen journalism award.
Second prize went to a shot of the Buncefield oil terminal fire taken by a passenger in a plane.

The awards, set up by Nokia and the UK Press Gazette, aim to highlight images shot by citizens witnessing events.

The popularity of camera phones means more images of significant events are reaching news organisations.

I witness

Increasingly the well-known pictures of significant events around the world, such as the bombings in London on 7 July 2005, are coming from citizens rather than professional photographers.

The shot taken of the immediate aftermath of the Tavistock Square bomb was widely publicised in newspapers and on the BBC. The judges of the award were unanimous in choosing it as the winner.

Vicky Taylor, BBC News Interactivity editor and one of the judges, said: "I went with the pictures which were taken by people almost by chance. They did not set out to photograph an event, it just happened in front of them."


David Otway's shot of Buncefield won second prize
Ian Reeves, editor of Press Gazette, said "It's clear from the quality of the entries to these awards that citizen journalism, however you define it, is going to play an increasingly significant role in the industry."

The person who took the Tavistock Square photograph elected to remain anonymous and asked for the prize to be donated to one of the London bombings charities.

The third prize went to another photograph taken of the aftermath of the 7 July bombings. The image was taken by Alexander Chadwick in the tunnels of London's Piccadilly Line as commuters made their way to a station from the bombed train.

To be eligible for the award, pictures had to be taken between 1 May 2005 and 20 April 2006. They also had to have been published in a known magazine, newspaper or broadcast or seen on a self-published blog, citizen journalism site or photo-sharing service.

JUST A FINAL REMINDER THAT THERE IS NO CLASS ON THIS THUR. THE 13TH AS WE MADE IT UP WITH OUR MONDAY TOUR CLASS. I WILL CHECK ALL BLOGS ONE FINAL TIME THIS WEEKEND AND SEND IN THE CLASS MARKS ON TUE. THE 18TH. HAVE A GOOD SUMMER. CLARK