October 7th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Yet another bar has been lowered in the 2008 Presidential political campaign — or, in this case, the Vice Presidential campaign which in this case is controlled by a Presidential campaign:
Constantly under the watchful eyes of security, the media wasn’t permitted to wander around inside Coachman Park to talk to Sarah Palin supporters. When reporters tried to leave the designated press area and head toward the bleachers where the crowd was seated, an escort would dart out of nowhere and confront him or her and say, “Can I help you?” and turn the person around.
When one reporter asked an escort, who would not give her name, why the press wasn’t allowed to mingle, she said that in the past, negative things had been written. The campaign wanted to avoid that possibility Monday.
This item from the St. Petersburg Times should be troubling to all Americans. Since when is the press barred from talking to a candidate’s SUPPORTERS? So now Palin is kept under tight wraps by the McCain campaign, giving interviews to a few select mainstream media reporters plus softball p.r. type interviews for Fox News’ mega-partisan talker Sean Hannity…while the press is barred from talking to her supporters.
This is how new standard operating procedure is created. In 2004 the press had lots of stories about how people were screened to enter and in some cases kicked out of George Bush’s political events. Now it’s come down to the press being barred from talking to a candidate’s supporters. And the irony is that speeches at these events will talk about defending freedom….
The conservative blogosphere gave us a preview today of what tomorrow’s post-debate talking points and spin will sound like. The short version: It’s Gwen Ifill’s fault.
The problem, apparently, is a “pro-Obama” book she plans on releasing on Inauguration Day that led Matt Drudge and other bloggers to question her objectivity as the moderator of tomorrow’s VP debate.
I skeptically use quotations because the book is about how the black political structure of the civil rights movement is giving way to men and women who have benefited from the struggles over racial equality. That trend has been observed by many scholars in the last year and isn’t exactly a sign of political bias. The title, “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” might raise some eyebrows. But honestly, how can you write a serious book about changes in the black political structure without making Obama the central focus?
Ultimately, this has nothing to do with the book. It’s a continuation of the right wing’s war on the media. They’ve seen the Couric interviews and they’re worried about Palin’s performance in the debate. And they’re once again going after media bogeymen (and women) to 1) intimidate Ifill (and others) into taking it easy on Palin, and 2) set up an excuse in case she performs poorly.
Sorry, but you’ve cried wolf one too many times this campaign season for that to work.
McCain, to his credit, has said he has confidence that Ifill will do a professional job and hasn’t called for her to step aside.
But as I said above, this isn’t about getting a different moderator (they think the entire press is liberal, so where would they find one except from Fox News?). It’s about intimidation and scapegoating. Nate Silver and Andrew Sullivan think Obama should call the bluff and ask Ifill to step aside. Both candidates have been preparing for Ifill’s style, and Biden will be better able to adjust to a new moderator, the reasoning goes.
But I agree with Marc Ambinder: Republicans have perfected the art of “playing the refs,” and the press shouldn’t cave in to unsubstantiated bullying.
The people who are going to use the Ifill excuse for Palin’s performance aren’t going to suddenly admit that she’s unqualified if she makes the same mistakes with another moderator. They’ll just look for another excuse.
Katie Couric and news operations at the radio and television networks, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and other national newspapers, are members of the Mainstream Media, or MSM, as it has come to be called. These are the people responsible for encountering, finding, and objectively reporting the news, and they are the ones that really count, in terms of the safety of the democracy. In fact let’s give them an identifier of their own. They are the Mainstream Mainstream Media, or MMSM.
Besides the MMSM, all MSM organizations also have an opinion operation housing analysis and commentary, but those opinion operations don’t need wingmen. Some of them should BE wingmen for their MMSM colleagues.
A wingman is a commentator, no doubt about it. I am about to attack those people who have taken the MMSM under attack, and my mission is to keep them under attack for as long as necessary. I am flying a pretty good airplane. I have 35 years of experience at the controls of the media profession, and I know the news side as well as I know the opinion side.
The mission needs wingmen because the MMSM can’t defend itself without appearing to lose balance and objectivity, particularly in a political season such as this. I can take on the McCain and Obama camps with impunity, however, because I am a declared commentator flying partisan colors, but they are not politically partisan. I am partisan free press. I am pro-MMSM, and anyone who is not is walking on the fighting side of me. The role of the MMSM in American democracy dates to the 1734 Zenger verdict and predates presidents, politics, and the Constitution. A free press is as basic to American democracy as oxygen atoms are to air. Nothing about this republic is more worthy of our regard and our respect.
I decided to become an MMSM wingman last night when I heard John McCain say to Katie Couric, “This is not the first time I have seen a governor being questioned by some quote, ‘expert’.” Katie Couric couldn’t bite his head off, but I sure can. I can wonder why a man who would aspire to the presidency of the
United States would place his partisan needs before the principle of democratic oxygen. The nation is gripped by fear of financial failure, but no one is asking about the effect on the republic of an MMSM failure, which is far scarier. Rather, it has become open season on the free press. I could hear millions of Americans last night, joining McCain’s attack, cheering his words in the dark. Does he not see the risk?In today’s MMSM, speaking of Gov. Sarah Palin’s candidacy, Ron Carey, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, said, “Thanks to the mainstream media, quite a low expectation has been created for her performance.” Katon Dawson, the GOP chair in South Carolina, again referring to Palin, spoke of “a pile-on by the media elite. You don’t have this kind of negative media attack without a question mark being put up.”If the MMSM’s reporting – and yes, they are the elites in their business – does not meet the Zenger verdict’s standard of truth, there will be retractions and corrections. In the meantime, the people are free to react to the information with high or low expectations, and with exclamation points or question marks. This wingman mission is all about the people. Taped to my instrument panel are these words:“The guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press.”Thus an attack such as McCain’s on the MMSM must in fact be an attack on the people. It is time it, and they, were defended.
September 17th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Lawyers and media control are now swirling around Republican Vice Presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin, the Associated Press reports:
GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is effectively turning over questions about her record as Alaska’s governor to John McCain’s political campaign, part of an ambitious Republican strategy to limit any embarrassing disclosures and carefully shape her image for voters in the rest of the country.
Republican efforts include dispatching a former top U.S. terrorism prosecutor from New York, Ed O’Callaghan, to assist Palin’s personal lawyer working to derail or delay a pending ethics investigation in Alaska. The probe, known as “Troopergate,” is examining whether the governor abused her power by trying to remove her former brother-in-law as a state trooper.
This now moves this from Palin versus the Alaska investigation and charges that she is trying to derail it to a new phase where the GOP is now stepping in to delay it.
O’Callaghan is just part of a cadre of high-powered operatives patrolling Alaska as reporters and Democrats scrutinize every detail of Palin’s tenure in government, plus her family and friends. One strategy: Carefully coordinate any information that’s released. The McCain campaign is demanding that it becomes the de facto source for answers about the operations of Alaska’s government during the past 20 months.
Palin’s normal press secretary, for example, now turns away inquiries from any reporter who isn’t permanently based in Alaska, referring questions to the presidential campaign. Trouble is, some of McCain operatives only recently have arrived in Alaska and struggle to explain Palin’s positions on arcane state issues.
When a reporter for The Associated Press asked the state’s Department of Health and Social Services about lawsuits involving state health policies, he was directed to call Meg Stapleton, a former spokeswoman for Palin now working for McCain.
What you’re seeing is a shift. Once something is done and has become the norm, that’s the new standard. So in the future if any candidate — Republican or Democrat - seeks to delay or derail a local problem and refuses to directly answer questions to the press, it will be our new campaign norm. Been there/done that/it’s OK. You can tell we’re in a new era because (a) it is happening and (b) it is working.
September 14th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Early 21st century America has been noted for a trend: increasingly, fact-based journalism is under fire from partisans who demonize and try to discredit reporting and reporters who dare to run material that doesn’t advance their party’s agenda or vigorously challenges their party’s attack lines.
PREDICTION: This theme will now be picked up by friendly talk radio show hosts and friendly new media in particular. Because if a fact checking organization lists how a charge or assertion is inaccurate or full of baloney by demonizing and discrediting the organization it allows new license. Not only are the longtime info gate keepers the press under fire as biased partisans with agendas but the fact checkers are said to be sloppy or in league with certain candidates.
SECOND PREDICTION: A fact checking organization will be blasted but then cited to as credible if it defends Mr. Rove’s side. This is the same attitude displayed by partisans who talk about how the methodology of a polling organization is flawed — unless the poll shows their side ahead and then the methodology is just fine.
Life would be easier if the new and old media from now on rely on that reliable beacon of fact accuracy, Karl Rove. But idn’t John McCain himself believe that Rove himself wasn’t factual with some of the material spread about McCain in South Carolina in 2000? Should those charges just have been allowed to stay out there and not be checked by fact-based journalists and fact checking organizations?
In 35 years of newspapering and teaching, I developed a quiet amusement over the general public’s almost total ignorance of how the news media does its job. Then, last year, I received the following email from a reader, one Stuart Jewell, complaining about media content: “It’s strange to me, that almost all columnists and reporters assume the talent of being able to define what ‘the people’ want to know and how urgently they want to know it.”
His words struck not my newspaperman’s heart, but my media educator’s brain. I thought: “It’s not strange at all. Columnists and reporters don’t assume anything. They go to journalism school, where they learn the definitions of what the people want to know, and how urgently they want to know it. The study of journalism, and all the other media forms, is as black-and-white as learning English. The media uses definitions, rules and values that are as clear-cut as the conjugation of verbs.”
Suddenly, and clearly, I understood that Stuart Jewell’s problem was not ignorance. It was illiteracy. Media literacy is not a required subject in American schools, from kindergarten to university. Jewell had offered a judgment of a vital democratic institution without any sort of a knowledge baseline. With his focus, I expanded my ongoing research into the media-public relationship, and I found a gap, between the media and the public.
This gap has always been there but it really started to open in 1950s America.
David Halberstam, in his comprehensive history, “The Fifties,” noted it: “It was in the fifties that the nation became wired for television, a new medium experimented with by various politicians and social groups.” Only 10 years later, “television had begun to alter the political and social fabric of the country, with stunning consequences.”
It was a literacy gap. All the knowledge about the new medium resided with the experimenters, knowledge to which the general public had no real access. At the heart of the gap was a code, centuries old, but simple and easy to learn in college and university media degree programs. I teach it to 200 new students a year. It should be taught to everyone.
Never before have I seen that gap more apparent than in the Republican convention and the events surrounding it. In May 2007, U.S. Dept. of Labor statistics indicated 1.07 million media professionals in an adult population (15 and over) of 240 million. In 21st-century America, if you are not a media professional, you are, like Stuart Jewell, essentially media-illiterate. In this illiteracy, Americans accuse the media of bias, irresponsibility, moral decay, Hannah Montana. And many of those accusations are true, because media professionals, in a media-illiterate world, know they can get away with it. The gap has become a wedge. The result is an American crisis, creating fear and mistrust, even loathing, of a media institution that is the life blood of democracy.
At the Republican convention were thousands of Stuart Jewells (with millions more watching) and a handful of media professionals, most notably a Republican strategist named Steve Schmidt. So notable was Schmidt’s presence in the proceedings that he is the subject of a long profile in the Sunday, Sept. 7, New York Times. Using media tools, Schmidt manipulated public response that brought the audience, who had no idea why, to a frenzy. Democratic media professionals did the same thing last week at Denver, but in St. Paul, there was an ominous difference. Schmidt attacked the media, again and again, in ways that were not legitimate. He did not do this viciously; he did it as a professional using media tools to evoke a response.
If the public understood that, all would be well. But they didn’t and don’t. In their media illiteracy, Schmidt the media pro knew he could get away with it. And that is a huge part of the American crisis, going forward from this convention.
The public doesn’t understand, because they have never been taught, that people are the authors of the media code that the professionals use, and thus are the source of all media, particularly journalism, or what Americans have always called a “free press.” That connection is consistently revealed by professionals seeking to define exactly what journalists do. In a 1987 speech, Jeff Greenfield, now of CBS, laid it down nicely: “The bedrock theory of the free press is that once society decides to invest ultimate power in the people, they must have access to the widest possible range of information.”
Thus the source of the power of the press must be the power of the people, who can access their power through only one source, the power of the press. The natural, enduring strength of this circularity is acknowledged by the deliberations of the nation’s founders. The place for their guarantee of a free press was not in the Constitution, which established the government, but right at the top, No. 1 in the Bill of Rights, which protected the governed. The press belongs not to the Constitution, but to the people, who created it. Journalists, educated in these realities and principles, write to it, write to the people, as if through a window which no power, natural or man-made, can close.
Steve Schmidt is trying, though. If he succeeds, he will have succeeded in pulling the plug from the First Amendment. Somebody needs to get him to talk about that. But for Sunday’s New York Times profile, he declined to be interviewed.
September 3rd, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Below is an email from the PPIAC, Professional Private Investigator’s Association of Colorado, to which I belong. “Do no evil” takes on many colorations, it seems.
Not sure how Google wanting to take any and all searches any person does online while using their browser “Chrome” (which sounds in passing conversation a lot like the word ‘Crone’… rather poetically so), so Google can publicly display, translate into other languages, et al, forensics and data investigation from annual fee data bases of criminal records etc, that PI’s engage with online regularly.
Google’s promotional purposes, are not exactly what a PI considers a useful by-product of their work… that data gathering is usually held as confidential and is most often protected by legal statutes.
Wonder what that means for the feds who might use Chrome to gather data. Are you laughing yet at the possibilities for gaffes and freak spillage? Goodness.
You may have heard that Google is introducing a new Web Browser, “Chrome.” If you are tempted to install and use this browser for investigative research of any kind, pay attention to the following quote from the “Terms of Service…”
“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”
Read the fine print… Your “confidential data” may not be so confidential.
August 30th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
Sri Lanka is today known more for the performance of its fine cricket team and the conflict between the government and the LTTE. The passing away of its highly talented and sensitive journalist Mallika Wanigasundra went almost unnoticed.
I came to know of her passing away while going through the website of another dedicated and respected Sri Lankan journalist Nalaka Gunawardene. I met Gunawardene in the late 1980s at Vestras, Sweden, where we had gone to attend an international semniar on “Media In Times Of Crisis”. For his website pl click here…
He writes: “Mallika Wanigasundara, who passed away on 4 April 2008 aged 81, went in search of causes and process that shape the everyday news headlines. She blazed new trails in issue-based journalism, covering topics ranging from health and environment to children, women and social justice.
“It was only last year that the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lanka Press Institute presented her the Lifetime Achievement Gold Medal for Excellence in Journalism. In 1990, she was selected by the United Nations Environment Programme for the Global 500 award.
“Mallika was associated with the Sri Lankan media in one capacity or another for over half a century. Starting her professional career in 1956 with the Sinhala evening daily Janatha, she later moved on to English language journalism at Lake House where she worked first in The Observer and then at Daily News.
“Mallika also helped put Sri Lanka on the world map of development journalism. Beginning in the early 1980s, she contributed Sri Lankan stories to Depthnews, published by the Press Foundation of Asia based in Manila, and to Panos Features, syndicated globally by the Panos Institute in London.
“In those pre-web days, these services – when printed in newspapers and magazines - were among the most dependable sources for ground level reporting from far corners of the world. (Alas, both services have since gone the way of the Dodo – not to mention Asiaweek, South and Gemini.)
“It was characteristic of many accomplished journalists of her generation that they remained mostly in the background, shaping news coverage and analysis. Some even didn’t nurture a personal by-line, writing under pseudonyms or simply not signing their names on their work.” More here…
“Russia is dying with desire to be what it hates most - a new America. An America which goes to war in Iraq without U.N. backing; An America that punishes Serbia; and an America that is godfather of the new state - Kosovo. ‘Europe is part of the periphery’ said a Russian MP. Russia has begun to imagine itself as a rising superpower confronting a declining America. The Russian media, entirely controlled by the Kremlin, has been feeding its readers with propaganda about new Russian grandeur.
“Russian MP Serguei Markov, a political scientist attached to the Kremlin, said that the signal to begin military operations had been given personally by Dick Cheney, and that Russia was at war against America - the only rival worthy of the new rival Russian power.”
August 24th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The aggressive/obscene/trivial performance of the TV channels in India during the past decade created a public disquiet/uproar. Despite government efforts/threats these channels continued to compete in trashing the basic tenets of journalism.
Finally, the private television broadcasters have realized the folly inherent in such a strategy and have announced their own code of conduct. India, like elsewhere, has a “toothless” media regulatory authority.
India’s leading TV channel (NDTV) says: “In a self-regulatory measure, private television broadcasters have announced the setting up of a News Broadcasting Standards (Disputes Redressal) Authority (NBA) to enforce its code of ethics and broadcasting standards.
The international students/journalists (from teenagers to senior citizens) that I teach in the universities in India, and now in Australia, often express concern about the credibility and role of the mass media.
The recent development is welcome, but it is shameful that the realization about the code of conduct and ethics should come so late in the day. But there would be lingering doubts regarding the effectiveness of the “new” code of conduct.
However, we all live on hope. “A nine-member authority will be chaired by Justice J S Verma, former chief justice (of India’s Supreme Court) and former National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairperson.
“Its members are, historian and author Ramachandra Guha, eminent sociologist Dipankar Gupta, former Nasscom chief Kiran Karnik, and economist and former under secretary general of United Nations, Nitin Desai.
“This is the first ever initiative through which the public can put forth their grievances over television content. The Authority will become operational on October 2 (Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday). Read the rest of this entry »
A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit claiming CNN’s Nancy Grace drove the mother of a missing toddler to suicide can go forward.
I’m of two minds on this one. As a journalist, I’m aware of the chilling effect such suits could have. But as a human being who happens to be a journalist, I’m well aware that Grace has worked diligently to make her brand the intentionally-cruel interview and has done so with the full support of CNN.
Duckett appeared on Grace’s show after her son Trenton disappeared from her Florida apartment in August 2006, and Grace accused the 21-year-old mother of giving vague answers and of hiding something. Duckett fatally shot herself before CNN aired the interview, taking with her vital information regarding the child, who remains missing.
Duckett’s family claims in the lawsuit that Grace’s intense questioning caused severe emotional distress that led to the suicide. It also claims that the decision to air the interview after her suicide caused the family to suffer severe emotional distress and media and public harassment. They are seeking a jury trial, unspecified damages more than $15,000 and punitive damages.
Duckett family attorney Jay Paul Deratany said attorneys will begin taking testimony.
“There is more information out there to be gleaned,” said Deratany. “If Melinda had any information, Nancy Grace stopped the investigation in its track.”
Police have said Duckett is the only suspect in her son’s disappearance.
Not surprising, CNN has neither commented on the ruling nor aired anything about it.
Well - we’ve done it again. We’ve angered the Beijing leadership.
According to this news account from China’s Xinhua news service, the Chinese government is ‘urging’ the U.S. to curb the ‘odious conduct’ of a ’small number’ of ‘anti-China lawmakers’ after the House passed Resolution 1370 [it passed 419-1], which criticizes China’s human rights record. Furthermore - the Chinese government takes umbrage with President Bush, for meeting pro-democracy activists in Washington, since it ’sends the wrong message’ to ‘anti-China forces.
Was the campaign of Democratiic presumptive Presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama sending a publication — and perhaps the press in general — a petulant or hard-ball message? Or was it strictly coincidence?
And if it is to explained and dismissed by some as a coincidence is it as believable as being a coincidence in the political world as to the weekend clarification through a spokesman (a U.S. military spokesman…after the White House called Baghdad) of Iraq Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s comments about favoring Obama’s withdrawal timetable?
No matter what, the Politico reports something that won’t help the Obama campaign in its future press relations since it shows either a)short-sighted, stumbling staffing or b)counter productive political vindictiveness:
Forty journalists, including such leading correspondents as Dan Balz of The Washington Post, will be aboard his plane for next week’s swing through Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England.
The campaign received 200 requests for press seats on the plane.
Among those for whom there was no room was Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent of The New Yorker. The campaign, which was furious about the magazine’s satirical cover this week, cited space constraints in turning him away.
But the New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, whose long, long article on Barack Obama’s early political days in Chicago’s ward politics (available here) was the reason for the magazine’s controversial cover by Barry Blitt depicting Obama as a Muslim, has been barred from traveling with Obama on his foreign field trip this week.
…..More than 200 media folks applied to fly in Europe with the freshman senator. But, alas, the Obama campaign said it simply was not able to find a seat for Lizza.
Now, that’s Chicago politics.
In a MUST READ, The Huffington Post looks at an incident that could contain the seeds of a future political boomerang. Here are two key portions:
July 20th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
This question was raised by a reader in India who takes an avid interest in the American blogs/media. She marvels at the manner the media/blog pundits cling on to the statements issued by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Who is this chap? Do the pundits need to be reminded that Mr Maliki is the creation of the present Bush administration?
The reader then reminds that Mr Maliki would become as irrelevant in a few months time as his mentor and master George W. Bush. Does it really matter whether Mr Maliki agrees with the proposed Barack Obama plan for withdrawal from Iraq or not? The reader wonders whether this approach of media/blogs is because of myopia, or ennui, or sheer laziness, or let-the-world-go-to-hell attitude. “Where are the fresh insights into complex issues?”
It also occurred to me that the pundits had already made up their minds that the White House “leaked” this news. No one is asking whether this could be an intentional leak. In any case aren’t there other issues to talk about? Do Mr Maliki’s routine flip-flops on this issue to be taken with such seriousness, and analysed so minutely, as if this was a new development or “Breaking News”? (See here..)
The reader adds: “So one is not sure whether the US presidential candidates’ views on important issues are being properly reported/reflected in the media/blogs. This hysterical approach has become typical of media/blogs trivializing important issues and then forgetting about them. The atmosphere thus created resembles that of a fish/vegetable market in an Asian or an African country.”
But then someone could say that at least those fish and vegetable-sellers are earning their bread by putting in hard work, and in an honest fashion!!! (The NYT opinion here…)
Once again, from the Daily North Korea of South Korea, an interview with someone who is said to actually live in the Hermit Kingdom. According to the newspaper, which is staffed in part by North Korean defectors, this member of the ‘North Korean Elite class,’ says he is fully aware of the mass protests in South Korea over U.S. beef, and in his words:
“I can speak not only for myself. No North Korean citizen, apart from on holidays, ever eats meat. When I see protests against the import of U.S. beef, I only wish it could be sent to the North.”
When the interviewer - clearly opposed to the protests over U.S. beef - asks what it would be like if a North Korean protested in such a fashion, the man, using the name An Chul-jin, replies:
“I can’t even imagine a citizen beating an agent of the People’s Safety Agency. Even if it’s just a verbal attack, such a person would be automatically sent to the Labor Training Corps. As a consequence, citizens never speak out against them, even if the agent is at fault. If they physically assault an agent, they are taken to a reeducation camp. They’re the ones with the power, so citizens are automatically captured, and sometimes subject to terrible acts.”
June 29th, 2008 By SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
As a young journalist I was once reminded that a journalist could either be a watchdog or a lapdog, can’t be both. Journalism, like other professions, has undergone a visible “change” in the past three decades. There was a time when many considered it a vocation (a calling), but now it is being increasingly treated as a mere job in any other industry.
Shaun Mullen’s earlier post on TV personality Tim Russert evoked interesting comments in TMV. Who is a real journalist? Can he survive in the changed world and the present media industry/culture? I have to battle with these tough questions often during my lectures on media/journalism.
A friend in India, Sanjay Sethi, draws my attention to a piece by Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, who is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. Hedges latest book is Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians.
To take the discussion further, let’s see what Hedges wrote: “The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year…No journalist makes $5 million a year.
“No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how often Bush or Cheney has invited them to dinner at the White House or offered them an interview.
“All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, and it is the job of the journalist to do the hard, tedious reporting to shine a light on these lies. It is the job of courtiers, those on television playing the role of journalists, to feed off the scraps tossed to them by the powerful and never question the system…” More here…
In keeping with the changing times, who knows journalists may soon be known as media workers (belonging, as they do, to the second oldest profession in the world). This would be in line with the change in name in the oldest profession in the world — from prostitute to sex workers….
June 20th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
A critical key for the future viability of blogging and the future viability of the msm, that most bloggers and quite a few in the msm already understand, is the strong symbiotic relationship developed, and which continues to develop rapidly and creatively, between certain of the msm and the blogosphere…
A symbiosis is wherein two or more hosts are nourished by and from one another, reciprocally, complementarily, so that all thrive even the more. And such is all around us to see. When I drove the Pan American hiway in the 1960s, I saw many jungle orchids which had symbiotic relationship with certain trees; each literally would die without one another.
Also, here, were you to come with me up past timberline in these rock and hard packed mountains, there is a process by which tiniest micro-organisms nibble away at the roots of the bristlecone pines for nourishment. But they do not destroy these trees that are often over 2000 years old. In their microphageous puncturing the roots of the trees, the micro-organisms literally make the roots more porous so the trees can take advantage of spare rainfall and the few nutrients that manage to make it past the hardpack.
Thus too, a symbiosis between the blogosphere journalists and the msm journalists is, in prototype form, a present paradigm and it is a rich one. There has long been a symbiosis between book authors, with quotes and multi paragraph quoting accepted as fair use practice when cited consistently and well. There is also a working symbiosis between msm and book authors and book publishers for nearly 200 years. There is no obstacle that I know of, when mutual benefits are brought in good will, that ought stand between such being worked out easily and amiably between msm and bloggers.
A parasitic relationship is another form altogether. That occurs when a life form attaches itself to the host, and thrives… while the host is depleted and dies. Where I grew up in the Great Lakes, for instance, the lamprey eel fastens itself to the sides of large fish, penetrating the skin… and over time, literally sucks the guts out of the fish, killing them.
Traveling in the south, I saw huge green kudzu vines, once thought to be the saving grace remedy for loss of topsoil back during the dust bowl droughts. Thus, kudzu was imported to the south and midwest, and planted by droves. It took over, growing outside its more meek native environment (Japan, for instance). It rose like Rodan over everything. It grew so quickly, people said they could hear the vines creaking overnight. The kudzu grew so tall and so widely, it canopied entire forests, keeping the trees and flora from the sunlight. Inside the bodacious green vine over everything… inside, all the trees and ferns had gone black and dead. That’s what a parasite does. Me first, me only, me forever.
The blogosphere cannot be halted from growing and developing, but it is not like kudzu. It is a natural force in its own right, that has gathered itself into existence for expedience and creative reasons, and that has laid road and infrastructure deep into the interior where there was none before.
Giving credit to this ‘young-ancient’ force doesnt depend on whether one agrees or not with every blog’s politics. The fact is, Read the rest of this entry »
June 20th, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Since the 24/7 news cycle is no longer, and it’s now a minute to minute news cycle, matters of end-game negotiation or denouement that used to take months, sometimes seem to occur within moments too.
This is an update to an earlier story at TMV yesterday which ran Robert Cox’s understanding of the legal facts behind the contretemps between Associated Press and Drudge Retort. For those interested in process as much as content, the AP and the Drudge Retort have made peace. For now. The issues about who will represent bloggers as a huge worldwide group and how remains to have several solutions in place, and more, no doubt, to come.
Back Story AP and Drudge Retort Come to Terms
Posted June 20th, 2008 by Robert Cox
In what may close one chapter and signal the beginning of another, the AP and Rogers Cadenhead of Drudge Retort have come to resolution on their dispute while leaving unresolved the central source of conflict in the case - whether the verbatim publishing of an AP headline and AP lede are, or are not, covered under “fair use” doctrine.
AP also failed to provide any public guidance on their own position and Rogers is refusing to bail them out by publishing the guidance they gave him last night in resolving his concerns including the post themselves. I cannot see how AP’s approach helps them resolve the broader implications of their posture here.
It does resolve the matter for Rogers, and therefore me and Ron Coleman, which has been the goal of the MBA all along. So, maybe we can all get some sleep tonight. It’s been a long week.
No Meeting
The much anticipated meeting yesterday never happened in at least in the sense many bloggers and reporters understood it. Instead there were a flurry of phone calls as well as internal meetings at AP resulting in an outcome that while not a clear win for anyone is also not a loss for anyone either.(cpe’s itals) No “guidelines” were established, no precedents set and no one needs to spend time in court. Most importantly, the MBA was able to help Rogers Cadenhead end up with a solution that was acceptable to him and that has always been our primary concern.
Rogers has the somewhat nebulous AP statement and his own reply: AP Settles Dispute with Drudge Retort…
