Posts tagged journalism

The article makes a point of quoting Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, for a contrary view on warming.

Why? If there was an earthquake, the Times would not seek out a denier of earthquakes. If this was an article on medicine, the Times would not automatically seek out the views of a homeopath or acupuncturist. If this was an article on astronomy, you (the Times) would not make an obligatory pilgrimage to the UFO community. Yet on climate change… you bow again and again to the immense vested interests that fund the climate denial industry. This does not give your readers balance – in fact, it distorts their views of the actual facts.

Mr Ebell’s organisation receives substantial funding from Exxon Mobil, a point not mentioned in this article.

Journalists like to think of themselves as responding to a calling, or duty. For some journalists, there are stories that are worth taking a calculated risk to obtain—pieces that establish responsibility for organized rapes or massacres, for example, or reports that implicate powerful figures in corruption or organized crime. These are stories that would otherwise not be told.

Every high-risk decision brings both the potential of lasting, positive impact, and the possibility of permanent, tragic loss. Decisions about risk are highly personal, but the individual should be keenly self-aware. Your emotions come into play, as does adrenaline. A good story with an element of danger can bring with it a rush as compelling as sex or drugs.

In such a moment, you might be wise to ask yourself: Am I being driven by the emotions of the moment? How much of my decision is driven by ego? How much am I motivated by telling the story—and how much by the glory I might derive from telling it? Am I trying to prove something to myself or others? Perhaps every journalist is motivated by some incalculable mix of service and ego, intellect and emotion. Experience can help you better discern between duty, ego, and adrenaline.

My advice: Give yourself a chance to understand not only your coverage area, but yourself. There are plenty of tough stories to go around. If you really want to take on a dangerous beat, you’ll get your chance. So, yes, J-school students, your professors are right: Go ahead, go overseas. But start with a beat that allows you to learn—mainly about yourself.

When President Obama addressed the American Society of News Editors convention last month, the real news was what didn’t happen. The watchdogs didn’t bark. No discouraging word from the gathering of 1,000 of the country’s top news people, facing a president whose administration has led a vigorous attack on journalism’s most indispensable asset — its sources.

Obama took office pledging tolerance and even support for whistleblowers, but instead is prosecuting them with a zeal that’s historically unprecedented. His Justice Department has conducted six prosecutions over leaks of classified information to reporters. Five involve the Espionage Act, a powerful law that had previously been used only four times since it was enacted in 1917 to prosecute spies…

…As Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ government secrecy project, put it: “The administration’s aggressive pursuit of leaks represents a challenge to the practice of national security reporting, which depends on the availability of unauthorized sources if it is to produce something more than ‘authorized’ news.”

What’s behind the administration’s fervor isn’t clear, but the news media have largely rolled over and yawned. A big reason is that prosecutors aren’t hassling reporters as they once did. Thanks to the post-9/11 explosion in government intercepts, electronic surveillance, and data capture of all imaginable kinds — the NSA is estimated to have intercepted 15-20 trillion communications in the past decade — the secrecy police have vast new ways to identify leakers.

So they no longer have to force journalists to expose confidential sources. As a national security representative told Lucy Dalglish, director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, “We’re not going to subpoena reporters in the future. We don’t need to. We know who you’re talking to.

There is nothing so fulfilling as the physical act of travel — getting on a plane bound for a murky destination is one of my greatest pleasures, in spite of how arduous many of these locations tend to be. In fact, the greatest appeal of my life as an independent foreign correspondent is the freedom it provides me to explore the world and the people in it, opening my eyes to realities that are quite different than my own. There is simply no substitute for putting boots on the ground and experiencing life in difficult or developing countries. As small as the world can seem, with the immediacy of social media and instantaneous news from practically every far-flung corner of the world, it’s necessary to be reminded again of just how vast it’s always been. The connection provided by the Internet is simply no substitute for the far-richer connection that comes with seeing things up close and personal.

Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of access to information are vital whether you’re a credentialed journalist, a protester or a bystander with a camera. The First Amendment’s protections must extend to everyone.

Police have arrested dozens of journalists and activists simply for attempting to document political protests in public spaces. We are calling on the Justice Department to address this widespread abuse and protect everyone’s right to record.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of American Adults say they prefer reading a printed version of the newspaper, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty-eight percent (28%) like reading the online version of their preferred paper instead.

The ongoing death of newspapers is not about changes in journalism, or the need for them. It is about a business model that has ceased to be relevant in the face of present technology. It used to be a poorly kept secret, but amid a vast array of competing histories, it’s been forgotten like last year’s canceled NBC sitcoms: What made newspapers successful was never the news. Newspapers provided vital services in people’s lives: their connections with their hometown, the notices of local events, the daily topics of conversation, the latest thoughts hovering over Snoopy’s head as he snored atop his doghouse. Many of these services were syndicated, and those that were not - like the classified ads - were intensely well managed. The front page, and the headlines therein, were merely the container…

…The Internet commandeered the services that newspapers once championed and delivered each of these services on an a la carte basis. In an earlier era, it made sense to bundle these services in a single package - the newspaper - and deliver it fully assembled. Today, the Web itself is the package, and each of the services now competes against other similar services in separate, often healthy, markets. And this is as it should be - this is not somehow wrong…

…There is no rational business model that can be formed around solely the production of news, just as many artists will attest that there is no stable business model around just an artist producing art that does not involve dying first. News must be bundled with a service. And that’s a problem, because the Web model is to unbundle everything, reduce every service to its basic and fundamental form, and present it to you as a site or, more recently, as an app. If you ask southern California venture capitalists what types of investments they’re searching for, they’ll tell you they’re looking for that one thing - not six things bundled together, not three existing things that complement one another. One disruptive thing.

And that thing tends to omit the word “news.