Newsy.com: where multiple media perspectives are featured

Newsy.com is a website with a nice twist. The site chooses individual stories and then examines them from the perspectives of various news organizations and websites. I've watched a few of newsy.com's featured stories, and I find this approach promising. By featuring a story from the perspectives of multiple news organizations, newsy.com is, in effect, telling us news about news-makers (in addition to telling us the news). Here's an excerpt from Newsy.com's about page: Newsy.com takes a step back to show how the world's news organizations are reporting a story - providing an unprecedented global and macro point of view. You'll find CNN right next to Al Jazeera, the BBC right next to ABC. Newsy.com also covers major newspapers, news magazines as well as top blogs from around the world. Here's a recent Newsy.com story that asks the question whether FOX News went over the line by promoting a demonstration. Here's another recent story discussing the new Wikipedia policy that allows only Wikipedia in-house editors to edit articles about living people.

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FCC comes through big on net neutrality

Because the citizens keep losing out to the political clout of banks, insurance companies and other well-monied industries, it's especially good to see the People of the United States win one against the telecoms. The FCC came down strongly in favor of net neutrality today. This is an incredibly important day for those of us who believe in grassroots politics and the fair and free exchange of ideas. For those not clear on the stakes, I refer you to my earlier report on the importance of net neutrality based on Tim Wu's explanation at the 2007 National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis. Today, the FCC announced two new guiding principles regarding use of the Internet:

- Broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications; and

- Providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices.

Here are today's words of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski:
This is how I propose we move forward: To date, the Federal Communications Commission has addressed these issues by announcing four Internet principles that guide our case-by-case enforcement of the communications laws. These principles can be summarized as: Network operators cannot prevent users from accessing the lawful Internet content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network. The principles were initially articulated by Chairman Michael Powell in 2004 as the “Four Freedoms,” and later endorsed in a unanimous 2005 policy statement issued by the Commission under Chairman Kevin Martin and with the forceful support of Commissioner Michael Copps, who of course remains on the Commission today. In the years since 2005, the Internet has continued to evolve and the FCC has issued a number of important bipartisan decisions involving openness. Today, I propose that the FCC adopt the existing principles as Commission rules, along with two additional principles that reflect the evolution of the Internet and that are essential to ensuring its continued openness. Fifth Principle of Non-Discrimination The fifth principle is one of non-discrimination -- stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications.

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Idiocracy Plurubus Unum

It is refreshing to hear someone from time to time call something by what it actually is. Frank Schaeffer is a former evangelical christian whose father was one of the most influential in the budding fundamentalist movement back int he Sixties and Seventies. Schaeffer recounts his life in the memoir Crazy For God. This is a man was was there, involved, part of it. Doubtless many who did not snap out of it along the way think he's a traitor, that he's been possessed by Satan, that he is evil. Yet that still doesn't answer the criticisms he brings to the subject. A recent poll in New Jersey has revealed that one in three right wing voters believe Obama is the Anti-Christ. I will let the video take it from there. LaLa Land. That's about as accurate as one can be. What the fundamentalist movement has created of itself is a situation in which absolutely nothing can penetrate the wall of doublespeak and obfuscation they have built around themselves. They are a community living within a tautology, and they cannot allow themselves to see it. I agree with Schaeffer that it is time to encircle them and move on. But this is a democracy, wherein all voices have at least a theoretical right to be heard. We do not have a pat, rigorous response politically to the introduction of absurdisms into the public discourse. We waffle, we try to be polite (which they do not) we try to be reasonable (which they take advantage of and disrespect) we try to, ironically, turn the other cheek in the face of their fallacious onslaught of nonsense. As Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar....and sometimes an idiot is just an idiot.

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Was Obama a liar?

I'm shaking my head at the terrible news coverage of Republican Joe Wilson's outburst during Barack Obama's health care speech last night. I'm not denying that Wilson's rude behavior is news, but look what's missing in prominent articles covering this story: Was Obama lying? It would seem that reporters should be asking whether Obama ever previously took a position on whether illegal aliens should be covered under what he proposes to be the new health care plan. Consider this AP article, which does what you expect. Wilson is rude; Wilson called the President a liar during a nationally broadcast session of Congress; the President looked stunned; Wilson was heavily criticized; John McCain is applauded for saying the obvious, that Wilson should apologize; Wilson does apologize; lots of head shaking; what will his behavior mean for Republicans? If I were teaching journalism school, I would tell my cub reporters to figure out whether Obama has ever promoted national health care coverage for illegal aliens. Then I would tell them to report on this central issue. If Obama has promoted health care coverage for illegal aliens, he was a liar. If he has never taken this position, then Joe Wilson is a liar. If Obama had previously taken the position that illegal aliens won't be covered, then Joe Wilson is a big fat despicable liar. If Joe Wilson turns out to be a liar, then his apology would need to go much further than it did; it would need to admit not only that he was rude but that he was the liar; he would need to admit that Obama never advocated health care coverage for illegal aliens. In any case, Wilson should be cross-examined like this by reporters: On what basis did you claim that Obama was lying? Show us your evidence. If Wilson has no evidence, he should admit that he had no evidence, and then he should add that he makes things up and that he is exactly the sort of mindless obstructionist to health care that shouldn't be part of the conversation because he is not an evidence-based being. Unfortunately, the media is once again running wild with the conflict of the moment, with the apology and all the head-shaking. Instead of covering the obvious issue that would put an end to the big sideshow, most news stories have side-stepped it. This issue of coverage for illegal immigrants is important for many people. It would be great for the illegal immigrants, of course, but it would also drive up the bill for all of those people who pay taxes (this would include many illegal immigrants). This is an important and contentious issue that needs to be addressed clearly. But when Joe Wilson shouts that Obama is a liar, the media can't even get to the point: Was Obama a liar? It is so damned difficult to keep the media focused on the actual terms of proposed health care reform. I do think shouting "Liar" at a President could be appropriate, even in Congress, if the President were lying about an important issue. It would be an extraordinary thing to do, but what if, for example, the President was lying to Congress that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that a war would be a cheap cake-walk when he knew these to be lies. In that case, I would think it would be appropriate for a dissenting member of Congress to stand up and call him a liar in order to spare the lives of several thousand American soldier, to prevent tens of thousands of soldiers from being maimed and to prevent the deaths, injuries and homelessness of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people. Too bad no member of Congress had the guts to stand up and break the silence in early 2003.

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Snipers posing as journalists.

This month's issue of The Atlantic includes a detailed and thoughtful article by Mark Bowden, "The Story Behind the Story." For 25 years, Bowden worked as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Using the media frenzy over Sonia Sotomayor's isolated phrase "wise Latina" as his case study, Bowden keenly describes what has happened to journalism before our very eyes. Not that it was obvious while it was happening, which brings to mind George Orwell's: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." And just look what is now in front of our noses:

With journalists being laid off in droves, ideologues have stepped forward to provide the “reporting” that feeds the 24-hour news cycle. The collapse of journalism means that the quest for information has been superseded by the quest for ammunition . . . The reporting we saw on TV and on the Internet that day was the work not of journalists, but of political hit men. . . . This process—political activists supplying material for TV news broadcasts—is not new, of course. It has largely replaced the work of on-the-scene reporters during political campaigns, which have become, in a sense, perpetual. The once-quadrennial clashes between parties over the White House are now simply the way our national business is conducted. In our exhausting 24/7 news cycle, demand for timely information and analysis is greater than ever. With journalists being laid off in droves, savvy political operatives have stepped eagerly into the breach. What’s most troubling is not that TV-news producers mistake their work for journalism, which is bad enough, but that young people drawn to journalism increasingly see no distinction between disinterested reporting and hit-jobbery.
All you need to join the modern fray is a laptop and an internet connection. Not that Bowden is dissing the idea of citizen journalists. Far from it, bloggers of all stripes have often kept the mainstream media honest. Nonetheless, we now live in an era where it is easy for an idealogue to pose as a journalist in his or her spare time, Bowden is proposing that journalism has morphed into post-journalism, an enterprise where balanced truth-seeking is not a prerequisite. Rather the enterprise of post-journalism usually like a sport and, quite often, it is war:

The truth is something that emerges from the cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it for journalism. Today it is rapidly replacing journalism, leading us toward a world where all information is spun, and where all “news” is unapologetically propaganda.

The search for conflict certainly makes economic sense. Conflict screams for our attention and, of course, it sells ads. What's more interesting: A) Jack and Jill take a walk or B) Jack and Jill have an argument? What's more compelling, batting practice or a real ballgame. What's more compelling: peaceful protests, or protests involving rock-throwing and teargas? We are, all of us, addicted to conflict pornography. We no longer see much need to listen to people who disagree with us, not when its socially acceptable to villainize them. As Bowden comments, "The other side is no longer the honorable opposition, maybe partly right; but rather always wrong, stupid, criminal, even downright evil." And again, bringing down one's opponent, especially while one is filled with Nietzschean ressentiment, feels fun. What does Bowden propose as a solution? It's not looking good:

Unless someone quickly finds a way to make disinterested reporting pay, to compensate the modern equivalent of the ink-stained wretch (the carpal-tunnel curmudgeon?), the Web may yet bury [press critic A. J.] Liebling’s cherished profession. Who, after all, is willing to work for free?

While reading Bowden's article I kept thinking that the same thing that has infected journalism has spread to politics. Yes, politics has always been contentious. But now our political system is so wrought with anger and accusations (and corruption) that it seem absolutely incapable of dealing with any major problem. I suspect that the causal arrow points from journalism to politics on this--that if we could somehow mute the fake journalists, our politicians might be better able to calm down and work better with each other. Total speculation, I know, and I'm not optimistic about seeing the sad state of journalism improve.

Continue ReadingSnipers posing as journalists.