Sarah Palin Joins Al Gore In Not Realizing That Everyone's A Reporter These Days

from the something-in-the-veep-sauce? dept

Last year, we wrote how odd it was that former VP Al Gore banned reporters from a speech he gave, where all audio-video equipment was also banned. These days, such "no reporters allowed" speeches make no sense -- because anyone can be a reporter. Yet, it seems that there's something in the veep sauce (or veep wannabe sauce) that leads to these sorts of positions, as former VP candidate, Sarah Palin, is trying to do the same thing, barring "reporters" along with any kind of recording devices from a talk that she is giving. You can understand, perhaps, why politicians like to do this, but it seems both out of touch and completely pointless. Every single person in that room can be a reporter in one way or another -- and it doesn't take a recording device, but a pencil and some paper (or a decent memory). Trying to block out the "official" press is just a waste of time.

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It's 2009 And Newspapers Are Just Now Realizing That Reporters Should Interact With Their Communities?

from the better-late-than-never dept

We've complained in the past about how rare it is for reporters at newspapers to actually engage in comments on their articles. Instead, they seem to view the comments with disdain, pointing out how idiotic many comments are. Well, of course that's what happens when the folks at the actual newspaper ignore them. So, while it's nice to see a newspaper like the Cleveland Plain Dealer (whose writers have been advocating for changing copyright law to protect newspaper business models) finally realize that its reporters need to engage in comments in order to foster more of a useful community in those comments, it's really quite stunning that it's taken this long for newspapers to figure it out -- and that such a "revelation" requires a special announcement from the newspaper itself.

We're joining the online conversation. For too long, we at The Plain Dealer posted stories on cleveland.com and then turned away to focus on the next day's news. Now, we're encouraging our reporters and editors to pay attention to what you're saying, to answer your questions and respond to your complaints.

A newspapers' true asset is the community it serves. Too many in the newspaper business have been neglecting that community. It's great that this particular newspaper seems to have finally figured it out, though it's amazing that it took this long and is such a big change in focus that it requires an announcement.

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Is It So Wrong To Admit That Journalists Have Opinions Too?

from the hiding-them-doesn't-change-that dept

There was a big kerfuffle in the journalism world over the weekend, as it was revealed late Friday that the Washington Post had rushed out new "social media guidelines" leading one editor to delete his Twitter account, and another to joke that under the new guidelines, his Twitter account would only discuss "the weather and dessert recipes." This isn't the first time news organizations have generated attention for coming up with restrictive social media guidelines. And, of course, one of the more ridiculous aspects of all of this was that the Washington Post didn't reveal what those guidelines are, leading to a ton of speculation and leaving it to a competing news organization to publish the actual guidelines. A big part of the problem here was the lack of transparency from the Washington Post in the first place...

While we're on the subject, the whole thing seems based on this platonic ideal of journalism that involves the objective, unbiased reporter. The guidelines basically tell reporters and editors that they shouldn't say anything that suggests they actually have an opinion on something, and the editor who deleted his Twitterstream did so because it expressed an opinion on certain news events. But, it's time we got over this. Just because people pretend to be objective, it doesn't make them objective. Just because reporters claim to be unbiased, it doesn't make them unbiased.

Yes, it's great to strive to be as fair and impartial as possible. It's important to present as much as is reasonable as possible. But the bias is there. Pretending it isn't is ridiculous -- and, at times, damaging. It's what leads reporters to go overboard in trying to "present both sides of the story" even if one side is completely ridiculous. Reporters have too much trouble saying "wait, that's wrong." They just present what was said and move on, without ever digging into the truth. In the quest for impartiality, they've actually gotten away from providing accuracy and honesty. I'd much rather have reporters clearly state their bias and opinion, and then let others argue the points out.

And, of course, reporters and editors have always had opinions. It's why they have an editorial page, after all. But, even more important, it's bias and opinion that goes into determining what story makes the front page, or the middle page or gets spiked. It's about how the "facts" of the story are presented. There's bias everywhere. Asking reporters to bite their tongue and not actually say what they think doesn't negate the bias, and it doesn't help readers/viewers/listeners get any closer to what's real. It's just a way of avoiding responsibility, avoiding the community, and avoiding doing a good job. In the meantime, as newer publications (mostly online) do away with the ridiculous idea that a party can be fully impartial, the community of people who consume and share and spread and make and comment on the news are going there. Because that's where "the news" is best presented.

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NFL: Refs Banned From Using All Social Media; Press Can't Live Tweet

from the free-speech-ain't-so-free dept

While it doesn't go nearly as far as the ridiculous policies put in place recently by college's Southeastern Conference (SEC) regarding "tweeting" on gameday, Ben alerts us to the news that the NFL has instituted its own social media policy that applies to players, referees and the media. There had been lots of talk about how the NFL was working on such policies, and they seem problematic. They ban players from doing any tweeting or sending any kind of social media message from 90 minutes before the game starts until well after the post-game press conference ends. I'm not sure why it's so troubling that players might want to communicate with fans...

Even odder is that the rules now prohibit NFL referees from using social media, ever. Apparently, some of this is in response to a ref who apologized online for a blown call in the week after it happened. In that case, the ref is an attorney during the week, and apologized via his work email. But that raises all sorts of questions. What if the ref's job during the week requires the use of social media? And, honestly, what's so wrong with letting refs communicate?

Finally, the new rules tell the credentialed media that they can't provide any sort of live "play-by-play" info via social media, though, I can't see how that's enforceable (other than kicking the reporter out of the stadium). Once again, this seems like part of the league's misguided belief that it can control how reporters report on a game. The first link above notes how ridiculous it is that someone sitting in the stands can easily live tweet a play-by-play, while the professional reporters cannot. The whole idea, of course, is that the NFL wants to "protect" its broadcasting contracts, that get sold for a ton. But the idea that a live tweet somehow replaces a TV broadcast is ridiculous. Personally, as someone who follows a bunch of sports reporters on Twitter who do tweet info during sporting events, I find it a useful reminder that I wish I had the time to watch a game...

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Associated Press's Continued Delusion: Social Networking Guidelines Require Employees To Delete Other People's Content

from the hello,-let-me-explain-to-you-the-web dept

It's no secret that the Associated Press has had a rather difficult time figuring out its place in the online world, often resorting back to weak attempts to re-enact the old walls and scarcities that simply don't exist in the internet world. Lately, it's been having a lot of trouble figuring out how to have its own employees interact on social networks -- first reprimanding an employee for stating his personal opinion about an AP-member newspaper in his Facebook account. Now, however, the AP has released "staff guidelines" for how to use social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, and there are some highly questionable rules there. The one getting the most attention -- for good reason -- is the bizarre and troubling demand that those who use Facebook not only have to watch their own language, but the language of any friend that posts a comment on their Facebook "wall." Seriously. They want AP employees to comb through any comments that friends/family/etc. post on their wall -- and if they "violate AP standards: any such material should be deleted." It's difficult to fathom how this could possibly make sense and isn't a huge burden for AP employees as well as obnoxious to their friends and family. Does the AP also tell its employees that when out to dinner with friends, they must "shush" them if their friends say anything not up to "AP standards"?

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Is It Really So Wrong For A Reporter To Have An Opinion?

from the modern-media dept

There's an interesting article by NPR's ombudsman, noting that Planet Money's Adam Davidson apparently went way over the line in a recent interview with Elizabeth Warren, who's in charge of watching over the TARP program to make sure it's not abused. Apparently a ton of people complained. Davidson apologized and NPR says that what he did was wrong and that: "It's important for journalists to treat whomever they are interviewing with respect -- and to keep their opinions to themselves. Davidson did neither."

The thing is... when I heard the original broadcast that caused the problems... I actually really liked it. Davidson is a smart and knowledgeable guy who's spent an awful lot of time digging into issues around the economic crisis to get to the bottom of them, and he had a reasonable point that he was trying to make, based on all of that knowledge -- and he challenged Warren on it. The reason I liked it was that it was a reporter actually challenging someone on something, rather than simply letting it stand. This is something that has been missing from reporting in many cases. It's what Jay Rosen has referred to as "he said/she said" reporting -- where a reporter asks questions to elicit a story from multiple parties, but never tries to ascertain if either story is true -- but just presents what the various people say. Davidson wasn't doing that. He was actually claiming that it seemed like Warren was trying to stretch the purpose of her job to do something that didn't necessarily fit in the role. And it was great to see a reporter actually say to someone "that's not true" because it felt like someone was finally getting challenged (no matter whether you feel Warren is in the right or not).

It was quite clear what Davidson's position was -- he laid it out -- and he challenged Warren, and it made for an interesting discussion. The whole idea that reporters must "keep their opinions to themselves" doesn't seem to make much sense. If someone is talking to a reporter and saying stuff that the reporter believes is wrong, don't they owe their audience the courtesy of digging deeper? I was impressed by Davidson, and am actually a bit disappointed that he backed down so quickly. It actually makes me wonder how much Planet Money will push back on people who state stuff that the Planet Money team feels is wrong in the future.

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Newspaper Journalists Claiming TV Reporters Are 'Plagiarizing' The News

from the sense-of-entitlement dept

Ima Fish writes " Seattlepi.com has a posting on its blog section from "the News Chick" about how broadcast news "plagiarizes" print news. Here's the gist of the complaint:

"Print journalists consider it plagiarism. Broadcasters call it a "rewrite."

Here's how it works in nearly every news market in the country. Print reporters do research and interviews for a story that ends up being about 800 words or so. Broadcasters rewrite and condense the paper's story to around 50 words - sometimes adding their own audio or video - then present it as their own."

Condensing 800 words down to 50 words is not plagiarism, if the word "plagiarism" is to have any real meaning, of course.

The person complaining the most is Seattle's Tri-City Herald editor Ken Robertson. He's careful not to use words such as "stolen" and only goes as far as to say his stories were "lifted." Which makes sense because even he knows he has absolutely no copyright claim on the news itself. But if he knows that, exactly what is he complaining about? That he didn't get his pat on the back when an important news story got wider coverage?!

And I'm reminded of the recent postings involving Aretha Franklin and the producers of Britain's Got Talent. Franklin, the producers, and any newspaper writer got exactly what she or he bargained for. Franklin looked fashionable. The producers got paid for producing their show. And a newspaper writer got paid for writing stories. Why should they be given any credit beyond that? Franklin didn't make the hat fashionable. The producers did not make Boyle an incredible singer. And newspaper writers do not create news, they report on news. The sense of entitlement on such issues is quite bizarre."

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This Is Ironic: Reporter Cites Bogus WSJ Stats To Claim Bloggers Are Untrustworthy

from the how's-that-working dept

Earlier this week, the blogworld spent plenty of time analyzing a ridiculously bad WSJ "article" by pollster Mark Penn about the number of professional bloggers and how much they make. Having been in the "profession" for about as long as anyone, it took one glance to know that the number he was talking about didn't even come close to passing the laugh test. It was so silly that I didn't even think it was worth posting about it (beyond an offhand comment on Twitter). However, plenty of others went through the numbers and pointed out how ridiculous they were. Scott Rosenberg and ReadWriteWeb are two examples of bloggers doing a great job digging into the numbers and showing how Penn's number aren't even close to accurate. There's also a separate issue about why the WSJ is allowing a PR guy like Penn to write an article presenting him as if he were a regular journalist, but we'll leave that aside for now.

However, (and here's where it gets funny), another mainstream source, Bonnie Erbe, of US News & World Report, used Penn's report to write an article trashing bloggers. And yet, pretty much everything she accuses bloggers of doing, she or Penn do themselves:

They are the technology age's equivalent of reporters and columnists, but without the degree of separation that used to protect readers and consumers from being targeted for commercial or political purposes, that old-fashioned edited newspapers and magazines used to (and to a limited extent, still do) provide.

Hmm. So, it's the bloggers who are sneakily providing commercial or political messages... and not Mark Penn, a political pollster and corporate PR flack being able to write his own biased, poorly fact checked and often just incorrect article in the "prestigious" Wall Street Journal? And Erbe simply believes this professional spinmaster over those who actually have some knowledge and experience with what he's talking about... and then claims it's the bloggers who are likely to write for commercial or political purposes? Wow.

The problem is, veracity is deleted and placed in the trash bin. Unverified opinion is taking its place. Well-written, fact-checked opinion has a storied place in journalism history. But off-the-cuff, on-the-take opinion does not. Yet there is much more of the latter on the Internet than the former.

Yes, again, she seems to have gotten it exactly backwards. In this case, it was the WSJ article where "veracity" was deleted and placed in the trash bin, replaced by Penn's unverified opinion. Meanwhile, the well-written, fact-checked opinion came from (oops) the bloggers she now accuses of not doing it.

The column goes on to say that the way to generate traffic to an Internet site is to make it as outrageous as possible. "Outrageous" on the Internet usually comes in one of two forms: 1) pornography or 2) wildly unsubstantiated, extreme opinions.

Hmm... wildly unsubstantiated, extreme opinions like "Internet, Bloggers' Half-Truths Are Killing Newspapers and Journalism" (which happens to be the title of Erbe's writeup here...)

The fact that, as Penn discloses, some bloggers are making as much as $200,000 per year and many of them are doing so by shilling for companies or selling consumer goods is downright scary. Consumers need a filter. They need to know if someone is saying something just to grab one's attention, or touting a product because that person is being paid by an advertiser to tout it.

How much does Mark Penn make shilling for companies? Isn't that scary?

I used to be friendly with a woman who quit a high-level job at a cable news organization because she insisted on the old "two source" rule. That rule, observed by all reputable news organizations, insisted that no one could publish or broadcast a source story, unless that story was confirmed by two independent sources. The cable network wanted to put on air stories based on information from one source and she quit rather than comply. How old-fashioned of her!

So, let's see... Erbe bases this entire article on a single source (which was proven wrong by multiple other sources) and "goes to press" with it, and then says that "all reputable news organizations" observe a "two source rule," which she totally ignores herself. How new media of her!

Honestly, reading her complaints about bloggers and realizing she commits every single one of them, while missing out on the fact that it was the "bloggers" she dismisses who actually provided the credible analysis and reporting on this story, would make me think that her piece was pure satire. But, looking over her other columns, it doesn't appear that she's the satire sort of person. Or perhaps I'm wrong. I haven't checked that with two sources, so clearly I'm part of the crew that's destroying journalism. But I'm sure fond of irony.

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The Mainstream Media Has No Shortage Of Resources

from the doing-less-with-more dept

You regularly see people in the newspaper business, as well as some professional media critics, complaining about the terrible consequences of falling advertising revenues in the mainstream media. There seems to be a worry that as the Internet makes the news business more competitive, traditional media organizations won't be able to afford to do "real" reporting any more. It's not a crazy argument, but more often, the opposite seems to be true. Take the recently-completed Democratic Party convention. Ezra Klein points out that there were a ton of reporters who had to justify their presence at the convention, and so rather than focusing on what was happening on the stage (which they could have just as easily done by watching it on TV) they wandered around looking for trumped-up controversy to cover, giving undue attention (in Ezra's view) to a few disgruntled Clinton supporters. Meanwhile, Matt Yglesias points out that CNN appears to have flown its stars to Denver, put them up in hotels, and constructed an elaborate new set for them, all so they could "cover" the convention in precisely the same way they would have covered it if those same stars had stayed at home in Atlanta or DC. Far from having inadequate resources, on the most high-profile news stories, the mainstream media seems to squander vast sums of money on things that only marginally improve the quality of their coverage. There are a variety of factors that may be undermining the quality of mainstream media coverage, but at the moment, a lack of resources doesn't seem to be among them.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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So About That Plan To Drop The Great Firewall For Olympics Reporters? Yeah, Forget That...

from the whoops dept

Back in February, there were some rumors making the rounds that the Chinese gov't was planning to drop its "Great Firewall" of internet censorship, to make sure that reporters had full access to the internet as necessary. Then, in April, the International Olympic Committee specifically asked government censors to drop the filters during the Olympics. Even that request seemed sketchy, as the IOC said that leaving the filters in place would "reflect poorly" on China. I would think that having the filters in the first place (and putting them back after the Olympics) would also "reflect poorly" on China, but that's a separate discussion.

However, what really does reflect poorly is the news that China hasn't dropped the filters at all. Journalists are complaining, but apparently the Chinese censors and the IOC have come to a compromise: China won't censor any Olympics websites. Unless they mention Tibet or something. In other words, China hasn't really loosened the Great Firewall at all.

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Press Boycotts Indian Cricket Matches Over Restrictions On Digital Media

from the good-for-them dept

Last week, we wrote about how disappointing it was that American newspapers agreed to restrictions placed on them by Major League Baseball concerning how those newspapers could report on games online. You would think that newspapers reared on the idea of freedom of the press and editorial independence would not allow an organization they were covering to dictate the terms of coverage -- but they did. Luckily, it looks like reporters down in India are more willing to stand up for what they feel is right. Reader Bipin writes in to let us know of a very similar situation, where the Indian Premiere League put a number of restrictions on how the press could report online on its cricket competitions in India. Rather than agree to the restrictions, the press threatened to boycott IPL events entirely. Apparently the boycott threat has worked to get the league to back down a bit, though it may still end up with some restrictions. That still seems ridiculous, and hopefully the press will again point out that it needs to remain independent and cannot abide by any restrictions placed on it by the very organization it's covering.

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MLB Follows NFL In Restricting How Reporters Can Report On Games Online

from the who-puts-up-with-this-stuff? dept

Brian writes in to let us know that Major League Baseball seems to be following the NFL's rules on how reporters are allowed to report on games. In the MLB's case, reporters can only post short video clips, can't post more than 7 photos per game and all non-text content must be removed after 72 hours. It's fairly amazing that news organizations agree to put up with these restrictions. The fact that news organizations caved into the NFL is what has allowed MLB to go down a similar path. Again, MLB has every right to set the terms by which it gives out press passes, but news organizations should push back against these policies, potentially buying tickets themselves, rather than getting team-approved press passes. It's also not at all clear why a news report shouldn't be allowed to post as many photos as they want on their site, or why they shouldn't be able to leave them online for more than a few days.

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Journalism Professor Says Citizen Journalists Should Be Regulated

from the ah,-the-old-elite-standards-again dept

There's just something about the idea a lack of "elite" gatekeepers that upsets some people. It's why you hear complaints about Wikipedia or blogs or home videos on YouTube. For some reason, there are a group of folks (often the former elitist gatekeepers) who feel that since not all of the content is great, useful or interesting, it all is problematic in some way or another. The latest to express this type of viewpoint is David Hazinski, a journalism professor and former NBC correspondent, claiming that "unfettered" citizen journalism is "too risky" and that it needs to be regulated (via Romenesko) by "official" media companies, handing out "certificates" to citizen journalists. Unfortunately, his basic premise seems to be incorrect. He states: "Supporters of "citizen journalism" argue it provides independent, accurate, reliable information that the traditional media don't provide." That's not quite true. While some supporters may claim that, in general the benefits of the idea that anyone can be a reporter isn't necessarily about reliable information, but about providing additional viewpoints and information to try to make sure that more of the story is out there for people to find. It's not necessarily about being better -- but just giving an outlet to people who can add more to the story. He's certainly right that it can be abused, but that's missing the point. Sure it can be abused. But so can the traditional press. What's more important is that such abuses can also be outed and brought to light, just like any other news story. Hazinski is right that professional journalists should be verifying the information provided by "citizen journalists" but that should be true of anyone they accept information from. Almost all of the complaints he lobs at these untrained journalists applies equally to the trained ones -- so it's hard to interpret this piece as anything but complaints from someone who doesn't like the riffraff encroaching on his turf.

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