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Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Back to the BeginningTuesday, 17 January, Savannah ...
Strange times ... We're moving backwards at an increasing rate. I guess it would be alarming if it weren't
for the apparent support from the largely uninformed. That would be the GOP and Tea Party.
So now
our "democratic" process called The Primaries looks more and more like the numbers rackets we used to convict people
like Al Capone, and still use under RICO to go after gangsters we can't convict otherwise. What a horrendous hypocrisy.
The "popular support" of people these days accumulates through transparently silly mechanisms like social media
and callous devices that lead to SuperPACS. It's never about content; it's always about money. Little surprise.
And when we look back, this is even less a surprise. Look at the success of the insulting Lottery programs.
States like Georgia, New York and New Jersey are so proud with their appalling strategies to run unabashed numbers rackets,
with the alleged purpose of supporting education. Normally, we would think "you're kidding of course" because
this is patterned on criminal enterprises. But no, it's okay if the State runs it.
Missing from the equation
is any sense that we should pay for what's important. So, more and more of what we laughingly refer to as our "political
system" is run by the power of cash, not programs, or even ideology. And we are not even remotely resistant to
the idea of using gangster techniques to bolster that cash.
I'm anxiously awaiting a secret agent or a super
hero, or both, who will come in and spank every single one of these excessive captalists - except the majority who like it
- until they return the money. We never demand full accounting, much less make a value-based assessment on whether we're
getting our money's worth ... do we get the education our numbers rackets pay for, do we really get community value from the
millions of tax waivers for a new plant, and then we borrow more to pay for what we can't afford. This is the fault
of a political party?! Or is it a society that has gotten lazy, and would rather, happily, rely on cash from RICO-style
operations and a mortgage on the future?
So, we already have significant leadership with ideas and plans
... some we love and some we hate. But we expect that kind of leadership - or at least I do - and it will succeed, unless
you have a ludicrously intransigent congress ... especially the opposition party, senior leaders of which said, amazingly
from the very beginning, that their total focus was on forcing the new, Black, President from office. Golly,
who really has a big problem here?! Clearly, it is not President Obama and mainstream Democrats.
5:31 am eet
Thursday, May 5, 2011
There's a new "Gatekeeper" in town ... YOU!Below is a terrific story from
the Financial Times. Unhappily, it is nothing new, especially to those of us who have reported “breaking
news” before. It is like my mantra in Media Ethics and Advanced Reporting classes, and even
in my introductory classes … in a meaningful mangling of the old Stones song, “Time is NOT on our side.”
And it has never been more so.
[I won’t go so far as to say “poor Wolf,” as he’s just benefitted from being
in an adjacent sentence to Walter Cronkite.]
As I tell all my students, often to unbelieving looks, “there’s a new Gatekeeper
in town, and it’s you” … (or you had better start becoming one!) THAT, to me, is
the fundamental new reality in media. Half-baked
news from AbbottabadBy John Gapper
Published: May 4 2011 23:03 | Last updated: May 4 2011 23:03
Late on Sunday night, Wolf Blitzer, the news anchor on CNN, was visibly
struggling not to tell his 9m viewers something a lot of them already knew or suspected – that Osama bin Laden was dead. The rumour broke out on Twitter at 10.25pm but it was only 20 minutes later that he reported the fact.
The anchor,
a venerable figure since the days of Walter Cronkite, used to be a symbol of authority whom the audience trusted to tell the
truth at the right time, but Mr Blitzer merely looked absurd. His unwillingness to report a rumour before it had been
checked out – the stance of traditional news organisations – meant that CNN had to trail behind its own viewers.
News
has become faster and looser, as illustrated by the stream of facts, insight, rumours and propaganda that surged across news
and social networks from the moment the White House announced that President Barack Obama would address the nation. It is becoming harder and more awkward for news providers to adhere to
the old safeguards when they no longer dominate distribution.
In many ways, the rise of social media – the ability of
anyone who has a computer or a smartphone to broadcast photographs, information and opinion – is a good thing.
It allows experts to find an interested audience, and those who witness world-changing events – in this case the engineer
who thought he had found a quiet place to live in Abbottabad until disturbed by helicopters – to report them.
But by
loosening the grip that anchors and editors used to have, it places greater demands on the readers and viewers themselves.
They must play a bigger role in deciding what is information and what is misinformation; what is signal and what is noise.
Some of them are willing and able to do so. Others are not.
In one way, the bin Laden case is a classic example of the fog of war that always envelops news reporting –
the only people who know what happened are the Navy Seals and the Pentagon, and they are motivated to embroider the facts
for propaganda purposes. We were initially told that bin Laden died using his wife as a human shield and that he was
armed, neither of which was true.
These myths duly appeared all over the next day’s newspapers, along with the half-baked story – fulfilling
the wish for real life to be like a Hollywood film – that Mr Obama watched the raid live on video. No matter how
grizzled or sceptical the news editor, a story is sometimes too good to resist.
Added to them, however, was a collection of imaginings
and half-truths spread on social networks – mythical quotes from Mark Twain and Martin Luther King Jr, and rumours of
a blast at the US embassy in Afghanistan. My Twitter stream was filled with both valuable information and nonsense.
For what
Jay Rosen, a professor at New York University, calls the “attentive” consumer,
the ability to tap into a broader stream of raw information is a boon. “There are more ways to receive misinformation
but if you are paying attention, there are also more ways to have it weeded out,” he says. “The difference
is that the process is happening in public rather than in the newsroom.”
If you are adept at sifting information, or an expert for whom
having facts filtered by an editor for a general audience is a disservice, this is all to the good. The elite audience now
knows more and can sort through the noise to find the signal. That elite represents perhaps 5 per cent of the total
audience – one study found that 0.5 per cent of Twitter users capture 50 per cent of attention on
the network.
For the average consumer, the effect can be akin to going to a dealer to buy a car and being presented with a bunch
of parts to assemble yourself. It suits hobbyists but has serious frictions for those wanting the full service.
New ways
to filter information are springing up – Andy Carvin, a journalist at US National Public Radio, specialises in curating
the flow of tweets from countries such as Egypt and Libya and helping to make sense of them. There is a frenzy of venture
capital investment into social media aggregation.
The elite and general audiences also tend to sort themselves out by behaviour.
As Prof. Rosen says, the latter group is “less likely to rush immediately to the news, so there is rough justice.
If you wait longer, you will get a better version.”
There are two difficulties, however. One is that the “mainstream
media” are inexorably being dragged toward the Twitter, or news agency, model of constantly publishing and updating
information, and away from the traditional approach of waiting for a while to nail down what is clearly true. The news
anchor is being dragged off his moorings.
Emily Bell, a professor at Columbia University, argued this week that “every newsroom
will have to remake itself around the principle of being reactive in real time”, no matter how it feels about that.
Mr. Blitzer looked so awkward on Sunday that it is hard to imagine him resisting the urge to match the rumour-machine next
time.
The
second difficulty is that many people have neither the time nor the inclination to filter out good or bad information –
they tend to seize on the scraps that suit them to bolster whatever their view is of the world. That was true of President Obama’s birth certificate, and it will be true of bin Laden’s body.
To protest at this is like protesting against the weather – it is
there and we must cope with it. In the future, news and myths will be thrown at us in greater volume and faster, for
both better and worse.
11:42 am eest
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Former U.S. Ambassador Explains Bulgarian Media (sort of)WikiLeaks: Bulgarian Media: Lacking Money and Morals| May 3, 2011, Tuesday
Former US Ambassador to Sofia, Nancy McEldowney.
Photo by BGNES Diplomatic cable of the US embassy in Sofia, dated June 6, 2009, revealed on WikiLeaks
and provided to the project for investigative journalism http://www.bivol.bg/home.html, bringing out new details about corruption and censorship
in Bulgarian media. The text has also been published at the Balkanleaks site, an analogue of the notorious whistle-blowing WikiLeaks.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SOFIA 000304 SIPDIS E.O. 12958:
DECL: 06/18/2029 TAGS: PGOV, PREL, KCOR, KCRCM, BU
SUBJECT:
BULGARIAN MEDIA: LACKING MONEY AND MORALS
Classified
By: Ambassador McEldowney for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)
1. (C) Summary: Bulgarian media is highly manipulated and increasingly concentrated in fewer hands.
Reporters and editors accept bribes to cover stories, to print propaganda articles as though they were news, and to not print
information that sponsors do not approve. The media's cooption obviously limits its ability to serve as a voice for civil
society. With elections for the national parliament around the corner, the consequences of concentrated media ownership and
corrupt journalism are already on full display. Though some independent outlets are surviving, the public has largely lost
faith in mainstream media and is turning to tabloids for diversion. End Summary.
2. (C) With the overabundance of both traditional and new media outlets, many cannot survive on advertisement revenues
alone and are reliant on donors. The new local private media owners, who unlike their predecessors have no journalistic background,
use the media to influence the public and promote their business interests through the selected release of information and
targeted attacks. Among the more dominant players is the recently formed conglomerate New Media Group, which is speculated
to own three national dailies and one weekly newspaper, one regional newspaper and one television station, with rumored plans
to purchase another. The Group jump-started in the summer of 2007 with the acquisition of three papers, one of which, the
Telegraph Daily, has become the largest circulation daily with over 100,000 copies on Saturdays and 60,000-70,000 on workdays.
The Group is rumored to belong to the circle of companies close to the current junior government coalition partner, the Movement
for Rights and Freedom (MRF) political party. The reported head of the Group, Irena Krustova, is a former government official
with no credible means to afford such an investment.
3. (C)
Local media outlets regularly practice self-censorship and even have black lists of politicians and rival businessmen that
are neither interviewed nor covered. The New Media Group recently printed the exact same article in all of its newspapers
in apparent targeted attacks against its business and political enemies. The Group has resorted to this practice on at least
two previous occasions, the January gas crisis and the April garbage crisis in Sofia. The national daily Sega and the Standart
daily have been criticized for more subtly representing the interests of their business mogul owners. Similar trends are visible
in television media, except at a much higher cost to business and political interests.
4. (C) By contrast, the German media group WAZ, which owns two daily papers, Trud Daily and 24 Hours, with total
circulation of over 150,000 copies, is considered more focused on the bottom line. The emphasis on revenues has led to more
sensational articles in both papers, lowering the overall quality. With the foreign owners' lack of familiarity and interest
in the local political scene, the chief editors of the papers largely determine reporting on domestic politics. While these
papers are not known to maintain blacklists, certain politicians receive clear preferential coverage, allegedly based on personal
friendships with the chief editors.
5. (C) With the emergence
of new media and countless short-lived papers, many mainstream papers complain that their readership has decreased. During
the election season, editors say that readership typically drops further because readers "know" the stories are
paid for. Companies reduce their advertisements and instead, act as intermediaries purchasing advertisement space for political
parties. With the decrease in revenue and reporters, smaller papers sometimes resort to covering the news by watching television,
which often offers sponsored news coverage. Though under strain, larger newspapers continue to have enough staff to cover
major events. Privately, journalists say that political parties pay reporters, editors, and TV producers for interviews and
news coverage, which appears without any financial disclosure. Political parties also openly sponsor papers, such as Duma
(Socialists) and Ataka newspaper and TV Skat sponsored by the nationalist party Ataka, which are easily identifiable.
6. (C) Accustomed to manipulation of the press, the Bulgarian public
has turned to tabloids for diversion. The print media market has been flooded with short-lived yellow newspapers with anonymous
owners. Mainstream editors allege that these owners operate in the gray economy, evading taxes and basic journalistic ethics.
Because of murky ownership and the prevalence of unsigned articles the public has no protection against libelous stories printed
in them. The tabloid weeklies, Weekend and Show, are among the most popular and influential papers, with total circulation
over 450,000 copies. The expansion in readership has prompted even serious politicians to grant the tabloids interviews. Days
before the European elections, the PM gave an extensive interview for Weekend promoting his party's ideas.
7. (C) Candidates across the political spectrum know how the game is played. Journalists
described MRF's current strong play for media influence as part of a long-standing tradition of political figures investing
in media when their power is challenged. The Socialists and the liberal-leaning King's party also have a well-established
history of paying for press coverage. The opposition center-right parties (DSB and UDF) previously paid only for advertisements.
In the past, GERB relied mainly on the charisma of the party's informal leader Boiko Borissov for coverage, who often called
or texted journalists directly.
8. (C) Comment: Most Bulgarians
get their basic news from TV, not papers. But, print journalism is the political opinion driver, and many TV news programs
feature headlines and articles from the papers, extending their influence far beyond the circulation numbers. Overall, gray
sector players and business practices are seriously threatening investigative journalism and media pluralism in Bulgaria.
End comment.
A couple of wonderful sites for finding out information on the press
anywhere in the world are the following:
http://www.pressreference.com/index.html
and to see today's front pages of more than 500 newspapers around the world
go to:
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/default.asp
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
OsamaInteresting range of reaction to OBL’s assassination. An alleged quote
from MLK is floating around the internet …
"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious
lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper
darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive
out hate: only love can do that." - Martin Luther King, Jr
Apparently,
a quick Google search of MLK quotes reveals nothing like the above. I noted on FB that perhaps we could hold back on
the rejoicing and just send an "attaboy" to Obama.
James
Fallows has a nice bit of soul-searching in The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/05/two-non-american-views-should-any-death-be-celebrated/238205/
The process seemed about right this time …
very quiet, careful, thoughtful, and executed well. The BBC’s John
Simpson had his usual deeply knowledgeable, insightful recap, pointing out that we had OBL shortly after 9-11 but were too
timid to execute, and restating (for the umpteenth time) that Al Qaeda is not a global, coordinated force. But it does sound
so much better to talk about the War on Terror rather than the hundreds of millions who, to one degree or another, are tiring
of being kept powerless and poor. It does not seem a trend that is likely to diminish.
Friday, February 11, 2011
The New International NewsFebruary 2011 ... So now we've been through the Iranian elections (Twitter was there!), and then the Tunisian riots
(Twitter was there!), and now the Egyptian protests (Twitter was there!) ... can we say, "Twitter is the new Media Darling?!"
Nobody I know is tweeting, other than the media and tourists. This may be the most successful non-event in recent memory.
Lord, now that I'm looking for a job back in the States in journalism/communication, it's clear that I must be a twitter expert
or I'm dead meat! Nonsense! What a group of sad-sacks
we have become. I don't need Twitter ... I know how to text on my damn cell phone ... this is nothing new, other than
to the great unwashed (wh0, frankly, we've been implicitly dealing with for years) who now are entranced by these "new"
technologies. Golly, folks, what else are you amazed by ... deconstructed news stories now called "lateral news"?
How about "gatekeepers" ... you mean ALL of us? Good heavens, even as a 62-year-old with 110 students, aren't
I accepting and then re-desseminating stories I find throughout the internet on Facebook? Aren't I, then a multi-gatekeeper?
Of course I am! So, where should our emphasis be in terms of gatekeeping? ALL of us, obviously ... it's now an
individual responsibility. And then we get to Tahrir Square.
If you watched that tonight, you saw a typical - but largely unnoticed - new reality ... Al Jazeera cleaned the BBC 's clocks.
This analysis is based on my very clear assessment that Al Jazeera is far better than CNN, MSNBC, or FOX ... not even close
... those three are simply embarrassing, and anybody with an ounce of international reporting experience knows that immediately.
But tonight, the BBC was totally unprepared for Omar Sulieman's statement, and when it came, they virtually went to silent,
taking the wrong feed, then not knowing what to say ... while Al Jazeera was right one top of the events, immediately announced
that Mubarek had resigned, and then had the EU's policy chief on to talk about the EU community's reaction. It was a
drop-kick win for Al Jazeera. Even Euronews, which has been ever more aggressive and professional, could only translate
and follow the flow. This is the new news ... and it augurs
well for those who will take their meager resources and build solid and insightful news coverage on to what they have, with
promises of more to come. Those European broadcasters who have slavishly followed the U.S. sensationalist approach to
TV news will, I hope, eventually lose the battle for ratings and respect. THAT'S where the battle is now being fought
... not at the Twitter and Facebook levels. They're just stupid!
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