Are you a Blogger or a Journalist?
Is blogging journalism? Perhaps it all depends, as President Clinton once asked, on what the meaning of “is” is.
Read “The Atlantic” magazine’s Rebecca J. Rosen’s piece “Why We Should Stop Asking Whether Bloggers are Journalists” in which she examines the possible implications of the recent legal decision that purports to answer the question of who is a journalist vs. who is merely a blogger. She describes a case where a judge weighs decisively against a non-mainstream, non-affiliated media….i.e. a blogger, and found that blogs by such ‘non-journalists’ not employed by fulltime traditional news organizations, are not qualified for any of the privileged protections accorded by various state “shield laws.”
While the discussion certainly will continue over who qualifies to be called a journalist, here is an alarming report showing the increasing numbers of journalists jailed worldwide for just trying to do their job.
Similarly, Reporters Without Borders examines the issues of media censorship, harassment, expulsion, and murder of journalists
Additional Press Freedom issues can begin to be explored from links and resources at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press
Understanding the U.S. Economic Crisis – Resources
Hot-button trigger keywords referencing “Stimulus”, “Bailout”, “Tarp” and the derisive “Obamacare,” appear with unabetting frequency in almost every business and economic-themed news story in the United States since 2008, and have spawned a ruckus, roiling, national and international partisan debate with little sign of abating.
As always, it seems everyone has formed an opinion on the issues and the topics stated, but few have an accurate understanding and clear accounting of the actual facts.
Be it colorful, quaint, or simply ill-informed, or fixated on all manner of misinformed misinterpretation and contentious misunderstanding of specific important details, there are those who maintain their take on these discussion points even if they are woefully off-the-mark by every measure.
Worst offenders of “the truth” are pundits and professional opinion-makers who contribute to the cause of endless confusion with their “analysis” and pronouncements that are less often illuminating, but are more often rife with unfettered partisanship that willfully ignores or runs roughshod over the facts.
Only with accurate, reliable information pinpointing facts about current laws, pending legislation and clear answers to questions about government that comes direct from an unassailable source can the conversation be furthered, and fairly discussed.
While passionate debate is always a healthy manifestation of the democratic process, and to this end everyone needs to know how to verify directly all the specifics that are set in policies and in ctual legislation, as a good way to start execising a better informed opinion.
Before making your political decisions visit the Library of Congress.
Also,
Bureau of Labor Statistics www.bls.gov
Bureau of Economic Analysis www.bea.gov
For TARP info, references and explanation see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009
Octopi Wall Street
Can’t understand why everyone is so up in arms about that ‘octopi wall street movement?’ Holy mackerel, I don’t mean to be a crab, or sound krill, but I heard they’re swimming against the tide just for the halibut. Oh my scrod! Why are they sleeping in tentacles and trawling for a fight?
The way I sea it, and I won’t be koi, if the sole porpoise of the demonstrations is to fillet a need to make political waves, well then it all sounds a lil’ fishy to me.
Sure, their scale is quite amphibious, and I’m net trying to be a cod here, but it may shark you to know that some are singing their protest songs out of tuna.
Whose herring them anyways? I may be old school but let’s fry to keep it reel. It’s not a clam dunk. I’ll bait you this ‘octopi movement’ is just a fish in the pan. I trout it will last. I’m sure soon it will flounder.
Walleye don’t mean to carp on the ‘octopi movement’ it leaves a large bass taste in my mouth. I say, Stop your whaling! Why mollusk passersby and the police with your crappie slogans? Confrontations will surely end up getting roughie and may send someone to the sturgeon.
Maybe I’m jumping to the wrong conch-clusions, and being an eel, but I can’t mussel myself: Do these urchins without anemone think they can usher in a new Age of Aquarium?
Sure—the tides, they are a changin’, but it’s one thing to snail agaist the current and quite another to stand around and beach. I think soon it’ll be sink or swim time and this grouper won’t last past Christmas or Oyster.
Drop me a line, and we shell see what floats your boat.
(Sorry everyone, I know these puns smelt, but I jest couldn’t help myself).
Have a punderful news day!
Story or Rumor Mongering?: separating Fact from Fiction
Does the story add up? Do sources and facts check out and hold up under scrutiny? How about the proverbial “smell test” or similar “gut check”? Beyond getting the facts straight, spelling the names right, a journalist covering a story must try to see through the fluff, the vested interests, and the image-making publicity machine.
Always lurking in every potential news story is a world of half-truths, lies, and innuendoes, with likely instances of any number of agendas and axes to grind. There’s the self-serving; the self-promoting; the muck-raking; the huckstering; the posturing; and the self-righteous—there’s the gossip; the misinformation; the bias and bluster; the spin, and the gloss-over. The “offficial statements” by the “official spkesperson”; the partisan and the interest groups, the lobbyists, propagandists of every hue, color and stripe who vy to control the message, color the facts and try to manage the public perception.
Be preparred for the special causes, the noble claims, the positions, the promotions, the pitches. Watch for the insidious ever so subtley-folded little fibbs, slight exagerations and obscurred obfuscations that come in ready slick and loaded sound-bites, B-roll, P.R kits, news releases, honed, fine-tuned, poll-tested, soap-box readied, rehearsed and pumped with every form of sincereity to sound as fresh, innocent, “grass roots” truthful, matter-of-fact, disiterested, unencumbered, friendly, confidant, observer, tipster, expert…oh, take your pick.
And politicians and their ilk are also an inscrutable lot: with a rapacious desire for publicity, influence and power, they are always ready to peddle a position, side-step an unpopular point-of view, or attack an opponent with what they call the “the truth.”
Yes, it’s especially hard on any given day to identify who’s trying to put one over on you or who’s telling the truth.
Truth is never “self-evident” in journalism. One must always seek; challenge; verify; test for accuracy, context, clarity, and transparency and constantly vet the reliability of all sources.
Question: How to dredge the swamp to get to the “truth” and the real story?
And, if not truth…then in the words of comedian Stephen Colbert, maybe just to settle for “truthiness”.
Here is a little help…a Washington Post reporter created a clever filter or hierarchy of truth for looking at early issues of the 2008 US election campaign.
The Journalist’s truth test as explained in the Washington Post.com story “Two Canadian Diplomats, One Evasion by Obama”
Tuesday, March 4, 2008; Page A09
“ONE PINOCCHIO: Some shading of the facts. TWO PINOCCHIOS: Significant omissions or exaggerations. THREE PINOCCHIOS: Significant factual errors. FOUR PINOCCHIOS: Real whoppers. THE GEPPETTO CHECK MARK: Statements and claims contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
Check out his analysis of the political issues from the past election cycle:
Also you can double check the facts and controversies at:
Find Political contribution information at:
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press analyses media coverage:
And if you want to shatter urban myths, rumour, scams and sensational internet fear-story hoaxes:
Find a collection of public documents, legal filings, arrest records, police mug shots, FBI reports on current crimes, celebrities, politicians in the news.
BP Disaster: Analysis of Media Coverage “100 Days of Gushing Oil: Eight Things to Know About How the Media Covered the Gulf Disaster”
In the wake of one of the worst environmental disaster of our lifetimes, PEJ Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reports on the media coverage to date.
100 Days of Gushing Oil: Eight Things to Know About How the Media Covered the Gulf DisasterAugust 25, 2010 —The complexity and duration of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico made it a challenging story to cover. The media found themselves trying to report a complicated, technical and long-running disaster saga that did not break down along predictable political and ideological lines. And they were reporting to an American public that displayed a ravenous appetite for the spill story. But a study of media coverage of the oil spill from April 20 to July 28 by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that most news organizations rose to the occasion.
Indeed, the mainstream press spent considerable time reporting from the Gulf region and humanizing the crisis. They largely avoided the temptation to turn the story into another polarizing and political saga. And some of them used their websites to help consumers understand details of the crisis that would have been harder to convey in more traditional formats. In short, the oil spill disaster was a unique story that tested a news industry battered by staffing cutbacks, decreasing revenues, and shrinking ambition. It was a test that much of the media seemed to pass.
Following are the eight essential points to know about how the media covered the disaster:
- Oil spill leads the news agenda. The oil spill was the dominant story in the mainstream news media in the 100-day period after the explosion, accounting for 22% of the newshole—almost double the next biggest story. In the 14 full weeks included in this study, the disaster finished among the top three weekly stories 14 times. And it registered as the No. 1 story in nine of those weeks.
- Events in the Gulf dominated the coverage. The activities in the Gulf of Mexico—the cleanup and containment efforts as wells as the impact of the disaster—represented the leading oil spill storyline, accounting for 47% of the overall coverage. Next came attention to the role of BP, at 27% of the coverage. The third-biggest storyline was Washington based, with 17% of the coverage focused on the response and actions of the Obama Administration.
- The White House fared better than BP. The Obama White House generated decidedly mixed media coverage for its role in the spill saga, but questions about its role diminished over time—in part thanks to a Republican misfire. And the administration fared considerably better than BP and its CEO Tony Hayward, who on balance were portrayed as the villains of the story.
- Outside of Louisiana, there were no protagonists. Among the top newsmakers in this story, most of them in the federal government or working for BP, no one really emerged as a protagonist or hero in the narrative—with two exceptions. A couple of Louisiana officials were the only major characters to be portrayed in a generally positive light.
- The Gulf saga was, first and foremost, a television story. The disaster generated the most coverage in the cable news (31% of the airtime studied) and network news (29%) sectors. There were also significant differences in coverage among the three cable news channels, with CNN (42% of the airtime) devoting considerably more attention than MSNBC and Fox News.
- The mainstream press seemed more interested than social media. In the social media—on blogs, Twitter and You Tube—the spill story generated considerably less attention than in the mainstream media. Among blogs, for example, it made the roster of top stories only five times in 14 weeks. But one theme that resonated throughout the online conversation was skepticism about almost all the principals in the story.
- Interactive elements helped tell the story. While some did better than others, many traditional media outlets made effective use of interactive features on their websites to track key aspects of the disaster. The PBS NewsHour’s Oil Leak Widget, for example, monitored the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf. The New York Times site offered a video animation that helped explain how a last ditch effort to prevent the spill failed.
- The spill got the public’s attention. Public interest in the Gulf saga may have even exceeded the level of mainstream media coverage. According to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, often between 50% and 60% of Americans said they were following the story “very closely” each week during these 100 days. That surpassed the level of public interest during the most critical moments of the health care reform debate.
These are some of the findings of a study that examined approximately 2,900 stories about the oil spill produced from April 20 to July 28—from the day that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded to the day after BP CEO Tony Hayward’s departure.
This study was designed and produced by The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The Pew Research Centeris a nonpartisan and nonpolitical fact tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.
Read the full report and Take the PEJ Quiz to find out how much you know about oil spill media coverage.
Contacts: Tom Rosenstiel, Amy Mitchell or Mark Jurkowitz of PEJ at 202-419-3650
The Curious Case of the Disappearing Comments
As a public service to London Free Press readers and others, I am posting the links to both the original and the updated story Police Cleared of Criminal Activity, because curiously, the robust reader reaction to the original story has been mysteriously removed in the updated version of the story. Here is the link to the original story and comments.
Creative Control International Inc. 