Journalism: May 2003 Archive Page

"Last week, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd misrepresented a Bush statement to imply that he said the Al Qaeda terrorist network is 'not a problem anymore,' and the distorted quotation has since been repeated by MSNBC 'Buchanan and Press' co-host Bill Press, CNN's Miles O'Brien and others, including numerous foreign press outlets. At a time when the New York Times is under fire for its conduct in the Jayson Blair scandal, Dowd's creation of an exploding media myth is cause for serious concern." Brendan Nyhan --Dowd Spawns Bush Media Myth (Spinsanity)

This link is currently popular with webloggers. It's a great example of how the public benefits from the attention weblogs focus on inaccurate media accounts.

"The Chinese government, fiercely vigilant when it comes to any manifestation of press freedom, are learning this lesson the hard way with regard to the viral condition known as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. It used to be thought that in China, the only way of confirming if a story was true was if the state-owned press had already emphatically and categorically denied it. The belief persists." David Stanway --SARS in a Wilderness of Mirrors (Butterflies and Wheels)

A few hours ago, I got an e-mail from somebody named Kelvin Law:

The worst is over for Hong Kong with SARS, the number of cases is on the way down, and the number of recovered people discharged from hospital significantly outnumbered new cases. I hope very soon you will have confident again to come over to visit, to shop and or to open up the 1.2 billion people market here for your products.

I don't know about you, but this e-mail does absolutely nothing to boost my confidence about the ability of China's leadership to control SARS (which seems of late to be gaining ground in the copyediting battle against "Sars").

I imagine I got that message because a long time ago I used to participate in a listserv devoted to teaching English to international audiences (because the engineering school where I used to work had more than half of its students who had learned English as a foreign language). I get periodic invitations to submit proposals to academic conferences in China. As fun as that might be, with 2 small children at home and a career track that rewards teaching instead of globe-trotting, I've had to prioritize lately.

Neil McIntosh separates the tiny mite of truth from the wishful thinking that led Andrew Orlowski to announce that Google would solve the blogging noise "problem" by removing weblogs from its main search tab. --The Blog Clog Myth (Guardian)

Yet another example of the difference between journalism and academic research. Journalists, in their noble and important efforts to communicate complex subjects to a broad audience of non-specialists, often get basic facts wrong -- the kind of mistakes that peer-readers are supposed to catch in articles submitted to academic journals. But building a whole news item on a stretched point of interpretation, and not checking with sources to confirm the stretch, is not good journalistic practice. Where is Mr. Orlowski's editor, and why isn't Orlowski simply posting his opinions on a weblog -- where the ethical standards of journalism don't apply?

"Blogs are one big fat op-ed section for the news organizations out there. Thanks to the ethics of linkage (crediting sources — a polite grace learned from orthodox journalism and years of compiling footnotes and bibliographies for term papers in high school and college) and of Google's PageRank algorithms, the blogosphere is a vast watershed of credit-giving: an authority-granting system of a high order.|It is vastly dumb, given this situation, for the newspapers to continue hiding their stories and archives from search engines. The cost in lost authority far outweighs the benefits in selling those archives for $2.95 (or whatever) per story." Doc Searls --Printwash (Doc Searls)

Especially notable is Doc's response to Orlowski's rant on "googlewashing".

"When I wrote in one story about 'bloody street fighting in Baghdad,' it appeared the morning TV viewers were seeing jubilant Marines and Iraqi civilians tearing down statues of Saddam Hussein on the eastern side of the Tigris River. Some readers, believing all of Baghdad was like that, were livid. They did not grasp the fact that, on the western side of the river, pitched battles were still taking place. Because they did not see it on TV, it was not happening. And it did not fit their view of the war." Ron Martz --Embed Catches Heat: TV Sanitized the Iraq Conflict, But a Paper Gets the Hate Mail  (Editor and Publisher)

In response to an older blog entry, Michael Turton e-mails me:

You are correct in saying the truth will not come out. If you look at the first site above, the anti-protester site, and scroll down, you'll see a picture of an Iraqi in a B&W striped shirt kissing a soldier. Look down further at the pictures and see who is in the center of the statue wrecking party.

That event was staged, my friend. The B&W striped kisser made the cover of USN&WP kissing one soldier, and Newsweek kissing another. He's probably one of the Iraqi freedom fighters shipped in prior to the taking of Baghdad.

Whatever the truth about the photo in question, it's abundantly clear that those who relied only upon TV for their understanding of the war are getting a flashy, shallow package. But that's true of any TV news product.

"As technological utopians, they believe that everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds, if technology is modelled on the American dream and the American way. And as opinion formers, they claim no formal power base, operating instead by linking exhaustively to one another.|Fortunately for them, in the hyperlinked world it is not necessary to airbrush dissenters out of the group photograph. You can simply wait for Google's PageRank to promote the ideas the A-list find acceptable and linkworthy to the top of the page, while the websites of apostates disappear below the fold and out of history." Bill Thompson continues the anti-blogging backlash, which seems to be gaining momentum.

--Blog Eats Blog (Spiked Online)

Thompson suggests the term "blogeoisie" (bloj-wah-zee) to refer to the A-list bloggers whose favor (and linkage) rules the blogosphere.

"Officials of past Democratic and Republican administrations marvel at how the White House does not seem to miss an opportunity to showcase Mr. Bush in dramatic and perfectly lighted settings. It is all by design: the White House has stocked its communications operation with people from network television who have expertise in lighting, camera angles and the importance of backdrops." Elisabeth Bumiller --Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights (NY Times -- will expire.)

Thanks for the link, Beth Ann.

"What we can know, just by reading his blog, is that this Salam is up to no good. He is spreading "inside views" of the new Iraq, not only to the blogosphere, but directly among the journalists still encamped at the Meridian (formerly Palestine, formerly Meridian) hotel. Not the "embeds" who've gone home after remarkable learning experiences, but those "hacks" not yet transferred to the next breaking news story, and so still kicking around this mysterious city of Baghdad, trying to figure out what's happening without exposing themselves overmuch to danger.|And they lap it up...." David Warren --'Salam Pax' Plays Americans for Fools in Iraq (Ottawa Citizen)

Hmm. Now if Salaam Pax were to meet up with isabella v....

...and watching the fur fly sure is fun.

Paul Krugman (of the for-the-forseeable-future-always-to-be-associated-with-sloppy-reporting New York Times) wrote on Tuesday:

Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told "those who opposed the liberation of Iraq" — a large minority — that "you were sickening then, you are sickening now." Fair and balanced.

Cavuto quickly responded:

Look, I'd much rather put my cards on the table and let people know where I stand in a clear editorial, than insidiously imply it in what's supposed to be a straight news story. And by the way, you sanctimonious twit, no one -- no one -- tells me what to say. I say it. And I write it. And no one lectures me on it. Save you, you pretentious charlatan.

Journalists are Acting Like Bloggers (Literacy Weblog)

I'm interested in this exchange for several reasons. First, JawsBlog introduces Cavuto's response as a "fisking" -- even though Cavuto doesn't quote very much of Krugman's editorial. A fisking seems, then, to require a combination of using your opponent's words against him or her, particularly in disdainful attacks on the personal character or professional credibility of your opponent.

On another note... "shock and awe" is embedding itself in our public language, thogh the meaning is still fluid. Jim recently sent me a link to a speech in which Kurt Vonnegut uses ironic repetition to deflate the rhetorical power of "shock and awe." But Donald Luskin of the National Review uses the term like an old, reliable friend:

Paul Krugman took at shot at Cavuto in his Tuesday column in the New York Times — and Cavuto shot back with what can only be described as a generous serving of good old fashioned shock and awe.

The military imagery delivered by Fox and all the other news companies will be affecting our language and our culture in many ways.

"It’s true that in the recent culture wars academics and journalists have often been at each others’ throats. But this very antagonism is now a sign of proximity rather than of distance. Whereas academics and journalists once disdained one another from afar, they now compete for preeminence in the common role of explaining the contemporary world....Bridging the gap between the discourse of students and teachers starts with the recognition that there is a continuum between the adolescent’s declaration that a book or film 'sucks' and the published reviewer’s critique of it." Gerald Graff --Higher Education as Popular Culture (U Chicago)

Via KairosNews.

Sheila Webber blogs thus: "Lowe, who teaches in the Media Department of Thames Valley University, describes how he simulates a breaking news story by using email, audio and video tapes. The students have to put together a story and reflect on the experience. Variations on the exercise, including using the internet to search for background stories, are suggested at the end of the case study." --The Breaking Story: Creating a dynamic learning environment for journalism students (PDF) (Via Information Literacy Weblog)

I'll have to take a closer look at this as I start putting together my journalism courses for Seton Hill University. It reminds me of the premise for several online interactive fiction stories, such as Online Caroline and Majestic.

The too-stupid-to-be-true-iLoo turns out not to be a hoax after all:

"We jumped the gun basically yesterday in confirming that it was a hoax, and in fact it was not," said Lisa Gurry, MSN group product manager. "Definitely, we're going to be taking a good look at our communication processes internally."

It's a public relations embarrassment for a company famous for micromanaging news releases, interviews and promotional events.

--Microsoft: iLoo No Hoax After AllAP)

What next... will the Iraqi information minister be spotted emerging from an iLoo, and will he announce to the assembled reporters that the iLoo doesn't exist?

"Every once in a while, in order to remind myself of the quality of information typically reported, I trace down the source of a particularly ridiculous story. The 'Klingon Language Interpreter' myth, which is spawning now, provides an amusing case study of the process of pack journalism." Seth Finklestein --Klingon Language Interpreter Story DebunkedKuro5hin)

See also the truth about the Microsoft iLoo.

Update: Apparently the iLoo is true after all.

"His tools of deceit were a cellphone and a laptop computer -- which allowed him to blur his true whereabouts -- as well as round-the-clock access to databases of news articles from which he stole." --Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of DeceptionNY Times)

Jayson Blair demonstrated talent that many junior high schoolers are developing -- the ability to assemble bits and pieces culled from different sources into what looks like a coherent narrative. People who do this are bound to make mistakes. In Mr. Blair's case, the mistakes cost him a promising career at a respected institution.

"Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab...." Andrew Orlowski trolls bloggers by taking a tidbit from a Reuters article from last Monday and gleefully spinning another anti-weblogging story. --Register to Fix Orlowski Noise Problem?  (Register)

Under the subheading "Unearned Reputations," Orlowski refers to "blog-infested Google results." Perhaps I don't search for the same things that Orlowski searches for... but I've never noticed that blogs crowd out more useful results. In fact, since bloggers tend to point to (and comment on) sources that they themselves find useful and noteworthy, I'm generally happy to run across a good content blog.

Orlowski does usefully remind us that Google is not perfect, is not omnisicient, and does not replace human expertise. Orlowski is the voice that whispers "Remember Caesar, thou art mortal" even as the throngs bow before him. But Orlowski can't stand on his own balcony and shout those words -- he'd need to whisper it into the ear of each individual blogger out there who casts a vote by posting a link. Since the only thing bloggers agree on is that blogging is cool, I don't think the rest of the world is going to suffer due to the efforts of webloggers to help filter the mass of information in cyberspace.

At any rate, Evhead gets the credit for the "Orlowski Noise Problem" quip.

"One of the first scientists I spoke to, a highly decorated nanochemist, confessed in the most forthright way that he felt he had been duped. It turned out that his candor was typical.|But these physicists were more than helpful. They were downright friendly. They often had to stop to explain concepts that were elementary to them, but obscure to me. Though they were talking down to me, they made generous efforts to make it look like they weren't....I find it significant that almost every humanist I've spoken to can easily summon up recollections of mean-spirited treatment at the hands of our own scholarly community." Leonard Cassuto

I find it significant that almost every humanist I've spoken to can easily summon up recollections of mean-spirited treatment at the hands of our own scholarly community." Leonard Cassuto

--A Humanist's Sojourn Among ScientistsChronicle)

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, I worked briefly writing press releases for the music department. When interviewing a faculty member about an upcoming performance, I asked all kinds of layman's questions about a particular piece that was to be performed; what was the occasion for which it was written, what was going on in history and culture at the time, what should a visitor listen for during the performance that was unique or unusual? After answering two or three such questions, the faculty member rolled her eyes and said, "Just put the name of the symphony in the paper. The people who really want to see it will come; the rest wouldn't get much out of coming anyway." Bear in mind this was a music teacher. But a year or two later, when I was writing press releases for U.Va.'s School of Engineering and Applied Science, a faculty member who was working on virtual reality goggles (this was in 1990 or 1991, so that was very cutting edge) took the time to demonstrate his work for me. When I asked him whether he spent a lot of his time giving demonstrations, he said that if he didn't say "no" most of the time, the lab would be completely tied up with giving demonstrations.

"To an amazing degree, the Baghdad-based press corps avoids writing about or filming the friendly dealings between U.S. forces here and the local population--most likely because to do so would require them to report the extravagant expressions of gratitude that accompany every such encounter. Instead you read story after story about the supposed fury of Baghdadis at the Americans for allowing the breakdown of law and order in their city." Jonathan Foreman --Bad Reporting in Baghdad: You Have No Idea How Well Things are GoingWeekly Standard)

"The Baltimore Sun essentially accused me of pretending to witness an incident of friendly fire in Kandahar, Afghanistan. When I explained that I had made an honest mistake in the heat of combat confusing that incident with another we videotaped in Tora Bora, the paper countered that there was no friendly fire incident in Tora Bora, according to the Pentagon." Geraldo Rivera

--Geraldo Rivera Has a Weblog?Roughpoint)

Regardless of whether this is supposed to be a weblog (as it was called on catch.com), and as the current site promises it will soon be, from what I see so far, Geraldo doesn't seem to 'get' the web. This site is made up of blocks of prose, chopped up into separate sections. A section entitled "What is this website about, and why," begins with a rambling anecdote: "When I was younger, I had no notion that I would spend 32 years as a reporter. With my parents' help and a partial scholarship..."

Didn't Geraldo learn about the inverted pyramid? The "statement of intent" for the website is broken up into four parts, and the website itself isn't even mentioned until the fourth section. It's as if he's so addicted to writing for TV, that he feels he has to tease his audience to keep their attention. "More coming up soon, after you click the 'next' button." Some parts appear in all caps, AS IF SHOUTING WILL MAKE MORE PEOPLE LISTEN TO HIM.

While Geraldo has a right to defend himself and publicize his side of things in the Tora Bora incident, and I think the blogosphere will be richer for his participation in it, I worry that the blog will look like the last few seasons of Roseanne, when the star's comic talent was completely overwhelmed by an irrepressible ego.

As they say in TV land, stay tuned for further developments...

"It's about making sure an employee is doing the job he was hired to do, not getting caught up in some overgrown, overly opinionated diary/hobby that unfairly treads on his association with his employer and has the potential to damage his employer's reputation." Eric Meyer --Meyer: Employers have Right to Ban BloggingCyberJournalist)

"To suggest, then, that a newspaper has the right to force a newsroom staffer to kill his weblog is tantamount to saying the newspaper has the right to prevent newsroom staffers from publishing any personal website, or perhaps even from posting comments to an online-news mailing list. Woe to ye who enters a newsroom -- you must remove yourself from all quarters of cyberspace. No pictures of the kids. No photos of your cat." J.D. Lasica --Lasica: Let Journalists Blog!CyberJournalist)