Posts tagged media

It is the responsibility of scientists and journalists to work together in stopping such empathy fatigue, because empathy is the primary human quality that fuels our instinct to protect human rights around the world.

Jamil Zaki, Empathy Fatigue and What the Press Can Do About It, The Huffington Post.

Background:

Circa 2009, I geeked out over Zaki’s article because, well, hearing a psychologist weigh in on the objectivity-is-perilous-in-journalism debate is refreshing. No one’s really arguing anymore over the fact that objectivity is a tricky, nuanced, sub-standard ethic for journalism, but a new, better ethic hasn’t quite emerged. A singular sterling standard probably won’t. 

Last fall, some of the best and brightest in media sat down to talk about it all and thanks to Poynter, this book emerged. Really smart people all over the world are creating and debating around accurate and value-creative reporting. You can explore our ethics tag for past coverage of some of those conversations.

The News:

Zaki, who is on the science side of things, very much heeded his own call to action and today I’m geeking out over his newest project, The People’s Science, a digital public space where scientists and the public can meet, share, and talk about science.

The site’s purpose is to encourage scientists to write posts about their research in easy-to-understand language and for the public to have conversations with those scientists directly.

In Zaki’s words (via NPR): 

In an ideal world, I think TPS could provide a platform for scientists to feature their work to a broad audience and describe why they find it exciting and relevant. For non-scientists, I hope that the site can provide an insider’s perspective on how scientists think, and a way to go beyond the “punchlines” of a given study and understand the process that went into it. I also think the public should be able to use this to vet other media sources, testing claims made by reporters against scientists’ own descriptions. Finally, I’d like the site to be a true forum: instead of each “pop” abstract serving as a static document, I’d like non-scientists and scientists alike to be able to ask questions and engage in discussion about the work posted here. At the highest level, my dream for this site would be to help scientists and non-scientists into more dialogue, which I believe can only be a good thing for our culture at large.

FJP: We agree, obviously, on very many levels. It humanizes the researchers behind academia’s impenetrable walls by thrusting them into the social sphere. It’s a gold mine for science reporters to have easy and direct access to emerging research and scientists. As someone who (in my non FJP life) works for an academic journal and deals quite regularly with the incomprehensible abstract and insanely long paper title, it’s wonderful.

Now go explore the site and ask questions.—Jihii

A Media Guide on Aging

Recently came across this, a 2009 guide for media and advertising folks on how to avoid perpetuating ageism in the media, which is in itself a nuanced conversation. But it’s worth having a look at and thinking over for  those who like to consume their media with wider, kinder, eyes. Here’s Senior Planet’s summary and cheatsheet on the document:

“Media Takes: On Aging,” a 53-page style guide for journalism, entertainment and advertising, lays out the many subtle ways in which older people are ignored, stereotyped and demeaned on a daily basis and recommends language that is respectful and inclusive.

You might not agree with every one of its recommendations, but as the guide’s introduction states: “Media do oftentimes perpetuate ageism, even if inadvertently. Still, they have the best forums and opportunities to offer redress and to ensure that they are providing accurate depictions of older Americans.” In other words, you can use online commenting features as a way to demand fair representation; when you see the invitation to comment, do so! Most important, the guide is worth reading because it can help us to more clearly parse the media we’re consuming and see the less obvious messages that they carry.

On Representation

  • Fewer than two percent of prime-time television characters are age 65 and older, although this group comprises 12.7 percent of the population.
  • Research shows that people who watch large amounts of television believe that older people are in poor shape financially and physically, have no sex lives, and are closed-minded and inefficient.
  • Approximately 70 percent of older men and more than 80 percent of older women seen on television are treated with little if any courtesy, and often with reason – because they’re perceived as “bad.”
  • Twice as many older people portrayed on TV are men, while in reality older women outnumber older men; and television portrays women as “seniors” at a younger age than men, who are more often portrayed as productive professionals.
  • When older guests are booked for late night shows, they are often asked to make silly cameo appearances, rather than sit down and talk.
  • In its representation of older people, much of the media focuses on those who are infirm, ignoring the 80 percent of us who are healthy enough to engage in normal activities.
  • Conversely, now that there’s a growing population of active people 60 and up to market to, we’re seeing a surge in images of “Woofies” – a term coined to describe the Well Off Older Folks whom advertisers are trying to reach. This surge underrepresents less well off older people and affects how as a society we think about programs like social security.

Keep reading the summary for points on inclusion and language. Or read the whole guide here.

Image Management Beyonce Knowles has banned press photographers from her ‘Mrs. Carter’ concert tour in an attempt to prevent unbecoming photos of herself from being used by the media. This appears to be a response to unflattering photos published by Gawker and Buzzfeed from the singer’s Superbowl performance. Now, Beyonce’s personal photographer, Frank Micelotta, is the only one officially allowed to capture images of Beyonce during her concerts. The press is then given a link to an “official” website where they must register to download “approved” images. In an article in Slate, Alyssa Rosenberg points out the quandary of celebrities censoring — or otherwise trying to completely control — their pictures: “[Beyonce is] turning the media into a distribution machine for whatever message she wants to send, rather than accepting that others have the right to judge the tour, as a product she’s offering up.” FJP: Pop stars aren’t the only ones practicing the dark arts of image control. Earlier this winter Politico published an article about the Washington press corps’ frustration with their access to the White House. Part of that criticism was the Obama administration’s use of social media to bypass them with images and information posted directly to the public. For example, the White House Flickr gallery is made up of photographs by Pete Souza, the official Obama administration photographer. Souza captures and even stages pictures of the president — like Obama’s moment of silence photo op held in honor of the Boston bombings — and many of those images have been used by the news media. Is it acceptable that politicians can craft their own image, but not celebrities? And how authentic can journalism be if everyone gets their images from one, tightly controlled source? Sort of related: Attorney, Carolyn E. Wright, points out in Slate’s Manners For The Digital Age podcast: if you’re in a publicly-accessible area, and you don’t have an expectation of privacy, you’re fair game to be photographed. Famous people, beware: as long as the media have their will, they’ll get you on camera their way — be you Obama, or be you Beyonce. — Krissy Image: Beyonce from the Super Bowl, via Pocket-Lint.

Image Management

Beyonce Knowles has banned press photographers from her ‘Mrs. Carter’ concert tour in an attempt to prevent unbecoming photos of herself from being used by the media. This appears to be a response to unflattering photos published by Gawker and Buzzfeed from the singer’s Superbowl performance.

Now, Beyonce’s personal photographer, Frank Micelotta, is the only one officially allowed to capture images of Beyonce during her concerts. The press is then given a link to an “official” website where they must register to download “approved” images.

In an article in Slate, Alyssa Rosenberg points out the quandary of celebrities censoring — or otherwise trying to completely control — their pictures:

“[Beyonce is] turning the media into a distribution machine for whatever message she wants to send, rather than accepting that others have the right to judge the tour, as a product she’s offering up.”

FJP: Pop stars aren’t the only ones practicing the dark arts of image control.

Earlier this winter Politico published an article about the Washington press corps’ frustration with their access to the White House. Part of that criticism was the Obama administration’s use of social media to bypass them with images and information posted directly to the public.

For example, the White House Flickr gallery is made up of photographs by Pete Souza, the official Obama administration photographer. Souza captures and even stages pictures of the president — like Obama’s moment of silence photo op held in honor of the Boston bombings — and many of those images have been used by the news media.

Is it acceptable that politicians can craft their own image, but not celebrities? And how authentic can journalism be if everyone gets their images from one, tightly controlled source?

Sort of related: Attorney, Carolyn E. Wright, points out in Slate’s Manners For The Digital Age podcast: if you’re in a publicly-accessible area, and you don’t have an expectation of privacy, you’re fair game to be photographed.

Famous people, beware: as long as the media have their will, they’ll get you on camera their way — be you Obama, or be you Beyonce. — Krissy

Image: Beyonce from the Super Bowl, via Pocket-Lint.

The Stressful Careers of Photojournalists and Newspaper Reporters Using metrics such as career opportunity, compensation, deadlines, working in the public eye, and danger among others to generate an overall “stress score”, CareerCast has a top ten list of the most stressful jobs of 2013. Congratulations, photojournalists and newspaper reporters, you’ve cracked the list. Reiterating what we already know, CareerCast reports: Two careers in the media industry score highly on the stress scale: photojournalist and newspaper reporter. Professionals from each field can be thrown into the epicenter of dangerous situations, such as war, natural disasters and police chases. Both careers also have declining job opportunities as the 21st century media landscape evolves. Newspaper reporters in particular face a shrinking job market; the BLS estimates a 6% job decline in the industry by 2020. The growth of online media has transformed the newspaper reporter’s job immensely. The immediacy internet outlets provide can be a useful tool, but it can also be a huge trap. Striving for the fastest reports can lead to inaccuracy and heightened stress. Watchful public eyes are trained on reporters at all times, so an incorrect report can compromise a reporter’s reputation as quickly as they can send a tweet. The least stressful job for 2013? University professor. Image: Stressful Careers. Select to embiggen.

The Stressful Careers of Photojournalists and Newspaper Reporters

Using metrics such as career opportunity, compensation, deadlines, working in the public eye, and danger among others to generate an overall “stress score”, CareerCast has a top ten list of the most stressful jobs of 2013.

Congratulations, photojournalists and newspaper reporters, you’ve cracked the list.

Reiterating what we already know, CareerCast reports:

Two careers in the media industry score highly on the stress scale: photojournalist and newspaper reporter. Professionals from each field can be thrown into the epicenter of dangerous situations, such as war, natural disasters and police chases. Both careers also have declining job opportunities as the 21st century media landscape evolves. Newspaper reporters in particular face a shrinking job market; the BLS estimates a 6% job decline in the industry by 2020.

The growth of online media has transformed the newspaper reporter’s job immensely. The immediacy internet outlets provide can be a useful tool, but it can also be a huge trap. Striving for the fastest reports can lead to inaccuracy and heightened stress. Watchful public eyes are trained on reporters at all times, so an incorrect report can compromise a reporter’s reputation as quickly as they can send a tweet.

The least stressful job for 2013? University professor.

Image: Stressful Careers. Select to embiggen.

Current events really only matter to the extent that they can fill this cultural standing wave that’s looking for a particular kind of content to fill it. It means that what’s driving our fascination is more primal or emotional or cultural than it is actual.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of the new book, Present Shock, in an interview with Nieman Lab.

In the interview, Rushkoff gives voice to so many of the things I have been feeling about news consumption: that making sense of news events is increasingly difficult because newspapers don’t fit the bill and live-blogging is confusing as ever; that Facebook invites misrepresentation; that the NY Times consumption experience is becoming increasingly frenetic because they have so many different versions of it. The Wall Street Journal (and I agree here), on the other hand, stays better anchored in time:

The Wall Street Journal has held onto a lot of what the nightly newscast provides, shockingly even with Murdoch at the helm. There’s this sense that they understand. There’s a periodicity to what they’re doing, so they stay anchored in time. The New York Times, on the other hand, it’s so hard to even comment on them, because there are so many New York Timeses happening simultaneously. It’s schizophrenic. I don’t even know how to consume it anymore.

The larger point is this (summed up by Mathew Ingram):

Rushkoff isn’t the only one to notice this: for me, the tension between those two modes of information delivery — the real-time stream and the fixed-in-time reservoir — was best described by Robin Sloan, author and former Twitter staffer,in an essay about what he called “stock” and “flow.” Those terms come from the world of economics, where people are used to talking about stored value (such as cash and other monetary instruments, or physical resources) and the real-time fluctuation in the value of those things: i.e., the trading of currency or the sale of goods.

Sloan said at the time that the idea of stock and flow was “the master metaphor for media today,” and I think he was right. We are all caught between the stream and the reservoir — because we want to be part of the real-time flow, but we also want to capture the value that comes from taking the time to analyze that flow.Atlantic editor Alexis Madrigal wrote about this challenge in a recent piece on the life of a digital editor, but it is something we all struggle with, whether we are theNew York Times or just someone trying to keep up with the news.

FJP: Finding a path through the media madness is a pretty enormous life goal of mine. Looking forward to reading the book.—Jihii

pbsdigitalstudios: If you’ve watched the music video (here: http://youtu.be/yGlD41XvJvU) then you’re probably already in awe of the Beat Making Lab. But you might be asking yourself, just what IS a beat making lab?  Click the pic above (or here: http://youtu.be/WDhFyjrnvIk) to find out! And subscribe here: http://www.youtube.com/user/beatmakinglab FJP: Perfect. Now go learn about it.

pbsdigitalstudios:

If you’ve watched the music video (here: http://youtu.be/yGlD41XvJvU) then you’re probably already in awe of the Beat Making Lab. But you might be asking yourself, just what IS a beat making lab? 

Click the pic above (or here: http://youtu.be/WDhFyjrnvIk) to find out!

And subscribe here: http://www.youtube.com/user/beatmakinglab

FJP: Perfect. Now go learn about it.

pbsdigitalstudios

The State of the News Media 2013

onaissues:

Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released their annual report on American journalism this week.  The report paints a bleak picture of the  news landscape, citing “a continued erosion of news reporting resources” and detailing “a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands.” You can view the full report online. 

On Slate, Matthew Yglesias counters the findings of the report. He argues, “American news media has never been in better shape. That’s just common sense. Almost anything you’d want to know about any subject is available at your fingertips.” He criticizes The State of the News Media Report for focusing  on the challenges related to monetizing digital content and selling ads and ignoring the variety and depth of news available today online. 

FJP: On our ever expanding reading list.

Harvard Searches Faculty Email over Media Leaks Last year, there was a cheating kerfuffle (outlined in The New York Times) at Harvard University regarding a take home test. Private information about the scandal leaked to the media, and the school took it upon themselves to peruse the emails of resident deans to see who blabbed. Now, before you go stating the obvious about academic freedom and privacy rights, let the university attempt to quell your concerns: VIa Harvard’s Website: Consequently, with the approval of the Dean of FAS and the University General Counsel, and the support of the Dean of Harvard College, a very narrow, careful, and precise subject-line search was conducted by the University’s IT Department. It was limited to the Administrative accounts for the Resident Deans – in other words, the accounts through which their official university business is conducted, as distinct from their individual Harvard email accounts. The search did not involve a review of email content; it was limited to a search of the subject line of the email that had been inappropriately forwarded. To be clear: No one’s emails were opened and the contents of no one’s emails were searched by human or machine. The subject-line search turned up two emails with the queried phrase, both from one sender. Even then, the emails were not opened, nor were they forwarded or otherwise shared with anyone in IT, the administration, or the board. Only a partial log of the “metadata” - the name of the sender and the time the emails were sent – was returned. The school only searched the subject lines of emails for queried phrases. How are your concerns? Quelled? Now, consider this… Via The Chronicle: One of the deans was told of the search shortly after it occurred. The others were left unaware that administrators had searched their e-mail accounts until the Globe questioned Harvard officials about the incident late last week. So, even if one were to accept Harvard ‘s subject-line-search as harmless, the fact remains that some deans weren’t even notified that this was happening.  Via Associations Now:  When dealing with a media leak, how can you be sure to keep in mind the privacy of your members and leaders so that if such a situation arises, it doesn’t have to reach this point? Or should it ever be allowed to reach this point?  Unfortunately, that’s where we are. Lewis Maltby, head of the National Workrights Institute, says people shouldn’t be surprised by employer snooping. “Almost every every major employer in America today reads employee email,” he told NPR in an interview about the Harvard snoop. “And if you haven’t been told by your boss that someone is reading your email, that’s just because they haven’t told you.” Image: via The Harvard Gazette.

Harvard Searches Faculty Email over Media Leaks

Last year, there was a cheating kerfuffle (outlined in The New York Times) at Harvard University regarding a take home test. Private information about the scandal leaked to the media, and the school took it upon themselves to peruse the emails of resident deans to see who blabbed.

Now, before you go stating the obvious about academic freedom and privacy rights, let the university attempt to quell your concerns:

VIa Harvard’s Website:

Consequently, with the approval of the Dean of FAS and the University General Counsel, and the support of the Dean of Harvard College, a very narrow, careful, and precise subject-line search was conducted by the University’s IT Department. It was limited to the Administrative accounts for the Resident Deans – in other words, the accounts through which their official university business is conducted, as distinct from their individual Harvard email accounts. The search did not involve a review of email content; it was limited to a search of the subject line of the email that had been inappropriately forwarded. To be clear: No one’s emails were opened and the contents of no one’s emails were searched by human or machine. The subject-line search turned up two emails with the queried phrase, both from one sender. Even then, the emails were not opened, nor were they forwarded or otherwise shared with anyone in IT, the administration, or the board. Only a partial log of the “metadata” - the name of the sender and the time the emails were sent – was returned.

The school only searched the subject lines of emails for queried phrases.

How are your concerns? Quelled? Now, consider this…

Via The Chronicle:

One of the deans was told of the search shortly after it occurred. The others were left unaware that administrators had searched their e-mail accounts until the Globe questioned Harvard officials about the incident late last week.

So, even if one were to accept Harvard ‘s subject-line-search as harmless, the fact remains that some deans weren’t even notified that this was happening. 

Via Associations Now: 

When dealing with a media leak, how can you be sure to keep in mind the privacy of your members and leaders so that if such a situation arises, it doesn’t have to reach this point?

Or should it ever be allowed to reach this point? 

Unfortunately, that’s where we are. Lewis Maltby, head of the National Workrights Institute, says people shouldn’t be surprised by employer snooping. “Almost every every major employer in America today reads employee email,” he told NPR in an interview about the Harvard snoop. “And if you haven’t been told by your boss that someone is reading your email, that’s just because they haven’t told you.”

Image: via The Harvard Gazette.

The 10th anniversary this month of the invasion of Iraq will remind most people of a divisive and dubious war that toppled Saddam Hussein but claimed the lives of nearly 4,500 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

What it conjures up for me is the media’s greatest failure in modern times.

Major news organizations aided and abetted the Bush administration’s march to war on what turned out to be faulty premises. All too often, skepticism was checked at the door, and the shaky claims of top officials and unnamed sources were trumpeted as fact.

Howard Kurtz, host, CNN’s Reliable Sources, Media’s failure on Iraq still stings.

Ten years is a long time, so for a quick refresher on what the press did and didn’t do at the time, take a look at this 2008 article by Dan Froomkin in the Nieman Watchdog Project.

Women Who Inspire

Vivek Wadhwa recently wrote:

Women are primed to lead in this new era. Girls now match boys in mathematical achievement. In the U.S., 140 women enroll in higher education for every 100 men. Women earn more than 50 percent of all bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and nearly 50 percent of all doctorates. Women’s participation in business and MBA programs has grown more than five-fold since the 1970s, and the increase in the number of engineering degrees granted to women has grown almost tenfold.

With that in mind, today being International Women’s Day and its theme being The Gender Agenda: Gaining Momentum, we were going to put together a top ten list of women in media tech. So we started compiling. And then we stopped. Because, really, this doesn’t do any good.

It leaves people out, it’s arbitrary and there’s more that can be said. So instead, here’s a slightly wider net that includes things to read by, about and for women in media tech:

So, with the caveat that no list is adequate, we hope that clicking through and reading about the individuals found here leads to searching out many more who inspire.

In particular, do seek out those who work in and on smaller spaces and places. There are many and learning what they do and how they do it is oftentimes beautifully humbling.

Meantime, happy Women’s Day. — The FJP.

Help an Iranian Researcher Out A few days ago, Iman Miri, a researcher from Tehran, reached out to us and asked that we help him promote a research project he’s conducting about technology and the media. He’s trying to research media habits and if you’d like to participate in the survey for his research, fill out the English questionnaire here or the Farsi questionnaire here. It doesn’t take more than 5-10 minutes of your time to fill out

Help an Iranian Researcher Out

A few days ago, Iman Miri, a researcher from Tehran, reached out to us and asked that we help him promote a research project he’s conducting about technology and the media.

He’s trying to research media habits and if you’d like to participate in the survey for his research, fill out the English questionnaire here or the Farsi questionnaire here.

It doesn’t take more than 5-10 minutes of your time to fill out

Politico: Obama’s a Media Puppet Master

Politico’s Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen came out with a longread yesterday about a rift between the Obama administration and the Washington press corp. Specifically, the issue is about access to Obama. More specifically, about how the White House has conducted few interviews with establishment media.

In Vandehei’s and Allen’s eyes, Obama is a media “puppet master” who, along with his staff, “has taken old tricks for shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision targeting).”

The results are transformational. With more technology, and fewer resources at many media companies, the balance of power between the White House and press has tipped unmistakably toward the government. This is an arguably dangerous development, and one that the Obama White House — fluent in digital media and no fan of the mainstream press — has exploited cleverly and ruthlessly. And future presidents from both parties will undoubtedly copy and expand on this approach.

The story is one of disruption. That is, disruption of an establishment press corp that feels slighted that the White House can — and does — go around them with its messaging by using social media and content marketing strategies. But there’s also a sense of entitlement permeating the piece.

For example, for all their handwringing that the president hasn’t given “an interview to print reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO and others in years,” Vandehei and Allen point out the Obama does give frequent interviews. Matter of fact, 674 in his first term, over 500 more than George W Bush gave in his first term.

But these interviews aren’t with the right people. Instead, “they are often with network anchors or local TV stations, and rarely with the reporters who cover the White House day to day.” Reporters who, in their estimation, would ask the tough and unpredictable questions. (See Allen’s  tough and unpredictable questions for George W Bush above from his 2008 one on one interview with the president.) 

And then there’s the complaint that the administration is creating content and taking that directly to the public rather than going through press intermediaries:

Still, the most unique twist by this White House has been the government’s generating and distributing of content.

A number of these techniques were on vivid display two weekends ago, when the White House released a six-month-old photo of the president shooting skeet, buttressing his claim in a New Republic interview that he fires at clay pigeons “all the time” at Camp David…

…The government created the content (the photo), released it on its terms (Twitter) and then used Twitter again to stoke stories about conservatives who didn’t believe Obama ever shot a gun in the first place.

All of which is to say, And?

In an age where everyone’s a publisher and everyone’s a brand, it would be surprising for a presidency not to employ these tools. In fact, they follow a long, if frustrating, history of political stagecraft and media manipulation.

In “Stagecraft and Statecraft: Advance and Media Events in Political Communication”, Dan Schill writes:

There is a complicated relationship between newsmakers and the journalists that cover their activities. [Philip] Seib reviews this relationship: “The journalists try to gather information, the politicians try to shape the news. This process tends to become a struggle for control over the information. Reporters can gather plenty of newsworthy material on their own, but they also need some cooperation from the candidates and staff members. Any major campaign will offer a rich diet of media events, but real news is often in short supply.” While the relationship can be adversarial, it is largely symbiotic — what is good for the candidate is usually also what is good for the reporter. Both campaigns and the news media want a compelling narrative, compelling pictures, and large audiences… Reporters rarely deviate from the news narrative that has been established. Especially at the presidential level, politicians can control the rules of engagement and “freeze out” reporters who do not follow those rules. According to [Tim] Cook, “Reporters, dependent on presidents’ cooperation, end up prisoners in the all but hermetically sealed pressroom, reluctant to roam far from their connection to fame and fortune in the news business. Instead of encouraging innovation and enterprise, the White House breeds concern among reporters about missing out on the story that everyone else is chasing.” Members of the news media should recognize this relationship and understand the factors that allow newsmakers to exploit this relationship, control the news agenda, and receive favorable coverage.

Go back to Timothy Crouse’s 1972 book, “Boys on the Bus,” about that year’s presidential campaign and reporters are complaining about “media events” and message control.

Or fast forward to the Reagan years and press complaints about Reagan’s mastery of political television and the importance of image over substance and you have, largely, the same phenomenon. It’s just different technology these days.

This isn’t to suggest that sit downs with the president aren’t important. They most certainly are. But the tug and pull between administrations and journalists is well known and well understood. It’s the journalist’s job to inform the public and if the only way they can do that is to get the coveted presidential interview they’re not doing that job well.  

To blame techniques such as social outreach and content creation by non-media actors is to cling to a traditional information flow that media modernity has long eclipsed.

We’re well into a new day and a new age. Instead of griping about it, change your tactics. There’s a whole lot of important reporting to do. — Michael

Related, Part 01: The Seven Secrets of Political Theater.

Related, Part 02: The Staging of a Photo-Op.

Images: Selected questions by Politico’s Mike Allen during his 2008 interview with George W. Bush, as posted to Twitter by Gawker’s John Cook. Complete interview transcript via Politico. Select to embiggen.

One of the foundational beliefs of the current Silicon Valley bubble is that the Valley is an enlightened place, socially and otherwise. And it is, mostly. Yet the portrait of the tech industry (especially its bleeding edge) and the portion of the media dedicated to covering it is not exactly what one imagines a supremely progressive place to look like: extremely white and extremely male.

A fantastic Storify pulled together by Buzzfeed’s Matt Buchanan.

We in the newsroom should have no illusions. Our entire purpose is to fill the “news hole,” which is the space left over after the advertisements have been placed on the page.

Theodore Daws in The Fall of Journalism, American Thinker.

Dawes, a long-time journalist, criticizes idealism and naivete in young journalists (in other words: those who think the industry is something other than a business that needs to make money), as well as j-school and false understandings of journalism ethics:

Of course, everyone overvalues the academic training they’ve received.  It makes the debt, hassle, and spent time seem worthwhile, or at least less futile.

And imagine the thrill of using “lede,” which is the new spelling of lead, as in the opening sentence of a story.  Its use provides the pleasing sensation of possessing specialized knowledge, knowledge well beyond the ken of the average Joe.

That is particularly pleasant to those who know so very little about everything else.

For example, I always ask job candidates a second question: “What is the difference between regulation and legislation?

Only one j-school graduate has ever known the answer.  That was because, he sheepishly provided, he had worked as a legislative assistant the summer prior.

Tell me, please.  How do you prepare a student for a career as a “government watchdog” and fail to provide the most fundamental instruction in how government works?

As befits their lofty status and lofty purpose, journalists work under a lofty ethical construct.  Unfortunately, it is as flawed and juvenile as their journalistic purpose.

On occasion the ethical imperatives are simply incompatible, for example: 1) saving the world and 2) journalistic objectivity. 

This illustrates perfectly an important fact: journalistic ethics weren’t arrived at philosophically or accidentally.

As is the case with many codes of ethics, the ethics of those in the journalism industry have as one of their primary purposes the maintenance of the status quo, particularly the economic status quo.

Read on.

FJP: Would love to see a rebuttal to this.