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CBS Sees no Journalism in Blogs
hende_jman writes "CBS News online has an article comparing some politics-oriented blogs to the kind of stuff they used to run in the author's school newspaper. It's an interesting read that has some valid critiques of the format as far as journalistic integrity is concerned (not that CBS hasn't been without its problems)."
Kerry was "in striking distance" in Florida and Ohio, said the Drudge Report.
;-) I guess it could have been the same with any other channel and it might have just been their methods/algorithms but take it for what it's worth.
.02
And last election FoxNews claimed victory for Bush well before it was officially called. All media outlets have their own biases that they use daily on a large cross-section of stories. Hell, some news stations go so far as to create near pandemonium out of stories like "Are our college students on death row in their dorm rooms?" when they are comparing jail cell fires to dorms?
Big plans and big claims are to be expected from folks - pajama-clad or not - who are dabbling with new technology and new modalities of public expression.
Coming from someone writing for the big dogs I can honestly say I'm not surprised. What the hell else was he going to say? "Oh, the mainstream media is fucking dead. The Internet will take over as the true purveyor of news? Yeah, that would have been printed...
You did not see any of the networks or the AP put out misleading reports of a Kerry lead nationally - or in the battleground states of Florida or Ohio. The editors, producers and executives who run these MSM organizations, in typical responsible, dinosaur fashion, know it would be wrong to do so.
From the little bit of flipping I did between the Daily Show, FoxNews, and NBC I was seeing quite a bit more information coming earlier from FoxNews about which states Bush had won and what they were projecting... I didn't see that so much from NBC and I certainly didn't see it on the Daily Show
His constant comparison of the blogs to his school newspaper is rather annoying and honestly quite childish. Perhaps we should heed his words and pretty much ignore what we see on the Internet from the "media outlets". If he really wanted me to listen to what he said he should have done some quote for quote comparisons between the blogs and traditional media outlet's stories and shown where exactly the blogs were lacking. Maybe that would have even helped the blogs.
Making mention of Drudge as your main point is really sad. Drudge has a lot of funny stuff but you have to take most of it at face value. I certainly don't read it often mostly because it's fluff and bullshit. Perhaps this guy should have done some googling and found some valid political blog sites and then done his comparison.
That's my worthless
I read this story yesterday, and it turned out the editor's speculation was wrong! When they issued a "retraction" they didn't apologize, and that editor added some political spin to it!
The mainstream media has a terrible credibility problem. This is why blogs are so popular these days. If no one has any credibility anyway, you might as well listen to the new guys.
"But I worked on a school paper when I was a kid and I owned a CB radio when I lived in Texas. And what I saw in the blogosphere on Nov. 2 was more reminiscent of that school paper or a "Breaker, breaker 19" gabfest on CB than anything approaching journalism. "
That, I believe is as good a description of blog culture as we're likely to find.
The reason why publications like the New York Times or National Public Radio are considered authoritative is because they have a long established track record and are trusted to provide a factual and balanced report.*
Bloggers simply do not have that level of trust, They still represent one guy with a website, and are only as reliable as the person typing the blog entry. That does not mean that bloggers do not sometimes add to the coverage of stories, just that they tend to be reactive, and sometimes prone to gossip and rumour more than journalism.
* Except of course by the right wing twits who go on and on about liberal media bias.
Three Squirrels
But without blogs, how would anyone get the really important news? Like George Bush attempting to eliminate his enemies?
Oh, wait...
You probably shouldn't click this.
that CBS seems to have difficulty understanding that sometimes the best thing one can do is just to drop an issue and wait for people to get caught up in the latest Britney or Paris 'scandal'. Within a month most people will have forgotten about the forged documents and they can go back to business as usual. Fighting it just brings back all the memories.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
At the same time, Taco, the fact that you and other Slashdot editors so horribly mangle summaries and headlines alike does nothing but lend creedence to Engberg's mindset. This article is an opinion piece. That means that the opinion expressed therein does not reflect the opinions of CBS, Major League Baseball, or Sane People. The headline should read "Engberg Sees No Journalism in Blogs".
Quit giving blowhards like Engberg such easy fodder. Show some interest in getting it right, not making it hot, dammit!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
what in the world qualifies?
Yes a lot of claimed bias isn't real (just look at all the bias people claim about Fox). But your examples would be akin to calling the AJC (Atlanta Journal) balanced.
It just doesn't cut it.
I don't think anyone has suggested that bloggers are going to be replacing journalists anytime soon or that blogs are going to be taking over the media. But bloggers can be very good fact-checkers as was displayed in the CBS/Dan Rather memo flap.
That incident was a great example of a large group of volunteers rallying together experts that could show a news story to be false.
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infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
I'm sorry ... but since when did blogs ever consider themselves Journalism? I know of exactly ZERO people who get their news from blogs. This has got to be the biggest non-story I've ever heard of.
I'd also point out that when websites like CBSNews are running "news" stories that do nothing other than reveal the results of reality TV shows, perhaps they're not the best ones to be preaching about journalistic integrity.
Linux is following that path, with Microsoft deep into fighting territory. Blogs have passed being ignored, emerging from laughter, and starting to be seriously attacked.
Just what do you expect from self-important competitors who are being eclipsed?
The problem is that the mainstream media tries to paint itself as some kind of oracle of information. The "blogosphere" is an organic system in that there is no official channel for information. So for instance, when Dan Rather stated to the world that the Bush National Guard documents were proof that Bush was AWOL, where were the dissenting voices? Where was the actual analysis?
Instead what we got was CBS news using blatant forgeries, selectively shopping them around to "experts" and pushing a story that doesn't even pass the smell test. The Bush docs story stunk to high heaven, and it took bloggers a matter of hours to determine that CBS lied through their teeth. Bloggers like those at Powerline devastated CBS' story because the media was not willing to do the ground work they should have. Whether that was through sheer laziness or bias I will leave as an exercise to the reader.
The mainstream media doesn't do reporting anymore. The blogosphere allows for a lot of crap, but through that crap comes a lot of valuable research. How many Iraqis are allowed to give their opinions on the nightly newscasts? Yet I can chose any number of Iraqi blogs and get a point of view that I would never see on the evening newscast - and because of it I've learned things about Iraqi culture and the situation there that the media would never have time to delve into.
It would be much better if those crying about the lack of journalistic standards with bloggers were any better - but the only thing that seems to separate journalists from bloggers these days is that bloggers have a greater tendency to check their sources when called and don't carry around the façade of officious objectivity like a shield.
Quite frankly, I give more credence to Glenn Reynolds than I do to Jayson Blair, Howell Raines, Andrew Gilligan, or Dan Rather - all of whom have shown that the combination of arrogance and groupthink in the mainstream media is far more pernicious than the open biases of bloggers.
A blog is just a means of sharing information and opinions, just like newspapers and television. A blod is just another way of presenting information, like the digital versions of newspapers do.
The quallity of a blog depends on the person administrating it and running it, and the people who write in it. I mean, come on, some of the major news websites out there are blogs. Like slashdot...
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
In my experience, bloggers rarely claim to be objective. People are voicing opinions. Journalists, on the other hand, claim to be objective truth seekers but they seem to get everything wrong. Why is it that whenever they write/talk about something you know something about, they're dead wrong? One has to assume that's the normal standard and that they get away with it because most people don't notice most of the time.
IAAAL - I am actually a lawyer
I call blogging "Layer 3 Journalism". You have the reporters doing the work, getting the story and writing it. Then you have the editors making political decisions on the stories, and deciding what gets put out, and how it gets released. Those are the traditional two layers of journalism.
Bloggers are a new, third layer. They take what was already reported on by other sources, and put their own unique spin on it, with outside commentary. The problem is, the further you get from the first layer, the more distorted the original facts get. As people read the blogs, email others, and pass the commentary on, it starts to generate a buzz online, and the story gets distorted further.
It's important to remember that most bloggers do not report the news; they report ON the news. As such, it can be useful as a sort of "watchdog" on the media. But when people start taking blogs as well-researched fact and start passing it around, it can generate enormous numbers of misinformed people.
Not that people aren't already misinformed...
But the greatest irony is that evidence is growing that Bush stole the election -- that the exit polls were in fact correct. I personally worked the polls handing out sample ballots for the Constitution Party, and the Republican standing next to me handing out his sample ballots told me he was expecting Kerry to win 2-1 at our precinct based on all those who preferred the sample ballots from the Democrat standing next to him than to his Republican sample ballots. Bush won in our precinct.
It's too early to make the claim that Bush stole the election. But it's also too early to say that the blogs were wrong for reporting the exit polls. It's doubly wrong the ignore the current blog focus on finding election anomalies, such as the one from kuro5hin that was finally proved out in the mass media (with credit going toward "callers" to Ohio election officials rather than to kuro5hin).
The mass media is supposed to be acting as the fourth branch of government, keeping the other three in check. Instead, the mass media is acting as a department of the executive branch, and it is now it is up to the blogs to keep the media in check.
The only reason you didn't see the major news outlets doing the same (well, at least they showed some restraint *cough* foxnews *cough*) was because they all got their hands slapped during the 2000 elections doing just what the bloggers were doing during this one.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Wow, that's kind of how I feel about CBS News.
The problem here is that CBS is confusing WRITING with JOURNALISM. NO surprise, since a lot of others are doing it as well. I've written for many gaming websites, as well as student magazines, and I have always refrained from ever calling myself a journalist. Quite frankly, I think that the only time writing can ever be called journalism is when you are writing about a first-hand experience.
That said, with so much of news becoming little more than opinion and thin analysis, writing is usually preferrable, just because the bias and editorializing is clear and expected. Journalism should be fair and unbiased, and rarely is.
That said, I think blogs are becoming the "new journalism", people writing from their own experiences and sharing that knowledge with others. Blogging is an exchange of ideas, debate in it's truest form. That something that Journalism stopped doing right around the time that the corporations bought up all of the media.
"not that CBS hasn't been without its problems"
I count three negatives in that sentence. So it's logically equivalent to "CBS has been without its problems". I think this is the opposite of what the writer intended to say.
grep -ri 'should work'
...many bloggers don't see much Journalism coming from CBS. Come on, this piece is largely sour grapes because many bloggers called CBS out (and rightly so) on the whole forged Air National Guard memo issue.
Editorial commentary aside, name one blog or even collection of blogs that even comes close to being the primary source of raw factual reporting as just one of the news outlets you've mentioned?
Until the bloggers spend some cash hiring reporters and stop using the mainstream media's reporting as the basis for the bulk of their output, they'll always be playing second fiddle.
Close, but not quite:
In the mainstream, journalism isn't dead, but reporting's been pushing up the daisies since the 70s.
What CBS does is "Journalism". Figure out what sort of story you want to tell, then send a guy out with a camera (or dig up some stock footage) who can come up with the iamges to tell the story.
Terrorist? Freedom fighter? No problem, we'll find someone to argue both points. Dirtball spammer? Ethikul small bidnidman and oppressed ontreprenooer? All the same to us! Safe car? Time bomb? We've spent a lot of money on this story so far, and we're not gonna throw it away, so let's rig the test to make sure it blows up real good! Obvious Microsoft Word forgery? Story's what we want it to be no matter how obvious the forgery is? No problem, we'll pay off a handwriting expert who's not even taken seriously in his own loopy field, and a couple of Democrat partisans to distract you from the real issue and to repatedly drub it into your silly little minds that our story is true, even though all the evidence we've brought before you is actually pure, Grade-D bullshit.
CBS: All journalism, all the time.
What bloggers do is "Reporting". Look at the screen (or listen to the scanner, or check your IMs and emails from your inside source), and state what's happening. Then spin it -- but always making it clear what parts are spin and what parts are fact.
Blogs: All reporting. "Here's the numbers: K57/B43. Because I support [Kerry|Bush], I think that's [great|horrible]. Be warned that these numbers are unconfirmed. Take with huge grain of salt. I'll report more numbers as I find them."
> > CBS Sees no Journalism in Blogs
I'm tired of getting my news spun for me. I just want the goddamn facts, separated from the spin. Blogs serve this purpose. The mainstream media used to -- but hasn't in decades. No journalism in Blogs? GOOD.
What about the story on missing explosives that they were going to spring on us on the Sunday night before the election? They tried to influence the election results, that is not journalism, it is propaganda.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I can't remember who said it, but one of the media moguls said something about the media being able to directly influence 30% of the voters, or something along those lines.
2004 was the year the media tried to overthrow a sitting president. You have NY Times coming out and endorsing Bush, you have the CBS "journalism", Michael Moore and the Hollywood loony crowd getting all sorts of air time.
And the public saw threw it. I think a lot of people voted Bush in spite of it. Kerry was stupid to align himself with these folks. After Whoopi Goldberg had her moment of sheer stupidity at the Kerry fundraiser, that guy actually comes out and says something to the effect of her being the "voice of the american people".
She isn't. Hollywood isn't. And allying themselves with that crowd of dopes cost Kerry the election.
The Kerry campaign constantly hammered Bush for being a liar, but if you look at the campaign, all the lies and half-truths were from Kerry boosters. The document scandal, the missing explosives, saying that orders to torture prisoners in Abu Gharib came all the way down from the top.
CBS is pissed because bloggers took them down, saw through their lies. People don't just watch the news and nod and accept it as fact. They go online. They discuss, they read others opinions.
The media's power is diminishing. The people saw through them this time. They didn't have the effect they wanted. So they're throwing a tantrum about it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Exit polls, predictions, and who called what state before whom aside, I'm curious what the /. crowd thinks of this county level map:
t e2004/countymap.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vo
this is my sig
Propaganda is reporting only those things which are detrimental to the other side and positive for "your" side. CBS, like most supposedly "liberal" news organizations, has done its fair share of both. Just because it reports something that is critical of the GOP does not make it biased. NOT reporting the same thing does.
BIG MEDIA: Bloggers are at best, amature journalists. They don't have *our* skill at conducting important, investigative journalisim.
BLOGGERS: What about FOX, with their 'fair and balanced' coverage of news? And why is everyone starting to mimic them?
BIG MEDIA: But, but, er...um, that is...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Mr. Engberg, while making a few interesting points, demonstrates that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. If the mainstream media want to remain in denial that the nature of communications and journalism is changing, I say let them.
There has been more than enough coverage on the 60 Minutes debacle. One would expect "real" mainstream media journalists to check their sources a bit more thoroughly, particularly one of the patriarchs of the news magazine genre of shows. But let's consider the genre itself for a moment. Mr. Engberg takes the following swipe: "The public is now assaulted by news and pretend-news from many directions, thanks to the now infamous 'information superhighway.'" The same could be said of many of the so-called news magazine shows on the network channels. Even the progenitor of the genre, 60 Minutes, gets the periodic poke in the eye because of shoddy work. A short examination of shows like 20/20, 48 Hours, Extra, and other travesties are shown to be fluff just by ordering and reading the transcripts. They are heavy on hype, light on content, and fill their time slot with repetition of the same information.
Cable has brought us little better. In that realm, we find shows like Anderson Cooper 360, The O'Reilly Factor, Crossfire, and any number of others that serve to spin the news directly at a target audience that already believes precisely what is being said. Debate shows are little more than sound bite shouting matches between pundits, not real newsmakers. They serve to make the host(s) look intelligent while devoting precious little time to actually allowing the expert to thoroughly explain his or her position. This is "real" journalism?
Mr. Engberg then continues with: "Let me tell you a few things about 'exit polls'..." Oh please do sir. After all, your profession gave us the "Bush wins Florida"/"Too close to call" mess in the 2000 election. Apparently our friends in the mainstream media weren't listening to the "PhD-style" expertise very hard. This year, we saw the races in places like Vermont, Georgia, and several other states called before more than a few percent of the vote was in, and less than an hour after the polls closed in those areas. Ah, responsible use of exit polls. In addition, it was widely reported by the mainstream media sources that Kerry was getting strong support. As a result, the stock market began to dip at the end of trading on November 2nd. Again, more of that "PhD-style" expertise, serving us so well. This is in direct conflict with this statement from the article: "You did not see any of the networks or the AP put out misleading reports of a Kerry lead nationally." Apparently he didn't bother to check his facts against what Wall Street already knew.
Finally, it galls me to no end that this fellow seems to believe that we're all college students studying something fluffy. I know there are PhDs who read this forum, and post to a good number of blogs on a regular basis. A great number of us have degrees in mathematical sciences, and as such, know very well the limitations of statistical analysis. In fact, we know it much better than the average journalist since we were required to take those classes in college or university. Just because Mr. Engberg hasn't studied enough math to understand the statistical magic doesn't mean his readers haven't.
If the mainstream media wish to stick their heads in the sand, so much the better. As an intelligent consumer of news and information, I will continue to rely on multiple media and sources for what I need, and it will continue to include political blogs, thank you very much.
Perhaps the point Mr Engberg missed is that one doen't get news from a single source in the Internet world? Instead, multiple sources are read and compared to minimise bias and stupidity. If there are statistics which require a PhD, go and find someone who has a PhD, knows satistics and can explain it to you, such as Tanenbaum.
Most people would agree that our current political climate is heavily polarized. The media most often calls attentions to extremes in the issues, rather than seeking common ground between groups. Even the president jumps on the bandwagon with statements like, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists." With no room for compromise, fueled by a media system which seeks to divide everything into two clearly contrasting piles of soundbytes, it's no wonder half the public is extremely polarized and the other half extremely apathetic.
How did things get to this point? Many argue the winner communicated more effectively than the loser. I agree. And many argue that the losers didn't have the right message. To that I also agree. But trying to understand what the Kerry camp did wrong is a waste of time when you ignore the extreme tilt of the playing field upon which they performed.
It is my contention that two specific events have contributed to the current situation:
1. The veto of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 by Ronald Reagan:
The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine harkened a new age in media and journalism. News outlets were no longer forced to adopt middle ground positions when covering issues; editorial no longer need be confined to narrow areas, and the airwaves exploded with thousands of heavily polarized pundits broadcasting 24 hours a day their agendas, without any concern for fairness or covering alternative viewpoints.
Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and thousands of other partisian pundits were free to spew their slanted take on the world without ever considering the need to offer anything but a wholly one-sided tale of the issues. Left un-regulated and therefore un-challeneged, their hubris expanded to epic preportions as evidenced in statements like, "Fair and Balanced, "No Spin Zone", etc.
And thus began the modern propaganda wars. Unfortunately it's more of a massacre than a real war.
Yes, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine also gave liberal entities the same freedom. The problem is the platforms for these pundits were mostly commercial radio stations, and the conservatives took the role of spokespeople for the agenda of corporate America, unarguably the true political power in the nation. Liberals, representing the moderate voice of the mainstream didn't have the resources that mouthpieces for big-pharma, insurance, finance, oil and defense contractors, and as a result, found themselves literally drowning in a sea of pro-big-business propaganda, with no way to get equal airtime and thus, no comparable method
Yeah. There's a big difference between reports and commentary--if you want the facts, you'll want to go with the people who have the resources to actually, you know, go out there and, like, get the facts; while if you want commentary, flip through the Joe Shmoe blogs and find the ones who write well and who you enjoy reading.
This is a pretty crucial difference, I think, and it's one that doesn't get enough play. I don't see blogland doing much in terms of actual reporting, but in terms of getting people to actually talk about stuff, interpret stuff, draw conclusions from the information available? Yes, they can do that.
Will someone please tell the mainstream media that blogs and "the media" are not the same, are not trying to be the same, and will never be the same.
You see, they are different. (I feel like I'm a primary school teacher here.)
Blogs are one person's perspective on the news and can be a great way to watchdog the media - as many posters here have surgested. This isn't trying to uproot the main media becasue the main media currently doesn't have anything like this. (Retractions? No need to retract, we'll just hope no one notices.
Blogs can also be great grassroots news sources. You wouldn't hear about the Election from a blog and that's why I didn't write about it in mine - everybody already knows from the media! But, as we saw during the invasion of Bagdad (someone else google for the Bagdad Blogger - I'm too tired right now) and post 911 NY, blogs can be great grassroots sources, picking up stories which are later picked up and expanded upon by the media. Again, the media has no equivilent to this and shouldn't feel threatened by it.
What about project blogs? These are different again! CNN wouldnt carry a story about the latest version of Apache - why would they! ("Yeah but we survived before all these fancy "project logs" came about". Really? Guess which famous project blog this quote came from: ... register online prior to the conference and save US$100 on the full conference...). Essential infomation - if you're interested in it. So this is another kind of blog again.
Finally (and this is what *really* annoys me) there are personal blogs. These are personal and should NOT be confused with the above two. (It's not the personal blogs that annoy me, its that people group the two and critisize them as one entity when they are different.) Sometimes a personal blog can oscilate between the other categories, but personal blogs are great ways to keep in touch with family and friends. It's easier than email, more public, and less intrusive. (I live 6000 miles away from most of my friends because I'm a TCK and believe me, it is useful.) So what that they're just complaining about who they're crushing on - thats the kind of stuff I want to know. But not all blogs are personal and have this kind of infomation. "95% of the blogs out there are these little high schoolers writing their journal online" is a valid critisicm of blogging in exactly the same way that saying "95% of the websites out there are porn, personal homepages of highschool drama queens, and spam campaigns. Therefore its all useless". The statistics may be true but I still find the website of my best friend pretty useful, and BBC.co.uk too.
Something to think about...
Daniel
Speaking as a print journalist (and editor), I'm saddend by attacks on the media's credibility. But I, too, think there's a problem.
The problem that dinosaur media has is: how do we put out a daily paper that's relevant to readers who are getting real-time news updates online? Answer: shorten the news cycle, rush to scoop the story, let others do the thinking.
Think of newspapers are the layman's scientific journals--they report the latest discoveries and happenings of interest to the target audience. Now think of how credible a scientific journal would be if it had to have 24-hr. reporting cycles. There's no way the editors could fact check everything, look deep for signs of bias and spin, etc. I don't think it's humanly possible to deliver hard, unbiased, fair, and comprehensive news with today's news cycle.
What should happen is a return to the days when nobody claimed to be 100% unbiased. If you look at 19th century newspapers, there was quite a bit of editorializing even on the front page. But just because we can't be perfect doesn't mean we have an excuse to be bad. In contrast to journalists, bloggers don't try hard enough to be objective and as accurate as possible.
The right balance between speed and fairness, IMHO, is professional journalists doing the blogging. Even if journalism is a craft and not a profession, crafts need to be taught by experienced craftsmen.
My ideal solution, though, would be slowing down the pace of life, but that's not going to happen.
Since the beginning of the www, people have been criticizing the medium not the source. This is a rediculous notion. To suggest this is to suggest that if there are a couple of bad television stations, then television as a whole is a bad source of information. I have seen broad inditements of the whole Internet because of some misinformation regarding health news. I know that the internet is full of nonsense. The government specifically warned about health information on the internet. This is no reason to doubt the veracity of every site on the internet. To bring this to it's logical conclusion, I was reading Penthouse Forum. I am fairly certain that either I am pretty lame or some people contributing to Penthouse Forum have embellished a touch. Is this a reason to consider periodicals as an unreliable source of information?
News consumers should always Consider the Source. I assume that when I am reading Penhouse Forum, there is a fair amount of fiction. The same is true for websites. If I am reading some guy's blog who has not proved his credibility, I take his views with due skepticism. When I read some of the more established or trusted bloggers, I will give them greater deference. The same is true for magazines. There are some editorialists who are always wrong.
As for this article, I would consider the source.
Yes a lot of claimed bias isn't real (just look at all the bias people claim about Fox). But your examples would be akin to calling the AJC (Atlanta Journal) balanced.
It just doesn't cut it.
Guessing that you're conservative, and quite possibly Christian, I'll quite a Bible passage.
Luke 6:42 "Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye." (KJV)
Your perception of bias is a function of your own bias. I would question how much PBS you watch and how much NPR you listen to to arrive at your suggestion that they are hopelessly biased. It all depends on what sort of bias yu are looking for. Not sure what I mean? Consider this: NPR and PBS gave far more coverage to Michael Badnarik and David Cobb than Fox. Badnarik, in particular, polled very strongly for a third party candidate in the election, and NPRs coverage was roughly in proportion to how votes were cast. In comparison Fox's coverage was far more limited, and not at all in proportion. ABCNNCBS were even worse than Fox in that respect.
Want to look at it another way? Compare the coverage Nader got, to the coverage Badnarik got. Now look at how many votes they got in the election? Note any discrepancy?
So on that particlar issue PBS and NPR were pretty clearly the least biased news media around. If you were a big Badnarik supporter, you'd have to say that NPR was the way to go, and the mainstream networks were horribly biased.
If you pick a different issue you will almost certainly find biases stacking up differently. In a large part your perception of bias will swing heavily on which issues you consider most important.
But trying to look at it objectively (as best we can) NPR and PBS spend most of their time reporting facts, and work hard to support their opinion pieces. You can claim bias in what you choose to report (which is where many of the claims of Fox bias come from), but if you actually compare coverage you'll find they are actually surprisingly even handed with what they report.
The NYT is, unfortunately another case, and I won't try arguing that one (in a large part sue to lack of knowledge of it).
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
If anyone other than CBS had said this I might have given it some credibility, but CBS has none left. After their handling of the 2000 elections, the fabricated documents of the Bush National Guard story, and the dubious story about missing weapons in Iraq, I don't know how anyone can say 'CBS' and 'News' in the same sentence. Coincidentally I wrote about the demise of CBS recently in my journal.
While traditional media may be letting us down in a big way these days that doesn't mean that news blogs are going to replace them. The problems that have caused traditional media to let us down recently are the direct result of the corporate media consolidation that have forced news departments to become entertaining profit centers in the company as opposed to serious outlets for informing the public. As the author of this article points out that's his main complaint with news-bloggers: their main concern is to generate hits and commentary by breaking controversial "news" as soon as possible. He is entirely correct when claims that this is NOT journalism.
:-)
Don't get me wrong, blogs are a great thing and give many people the opportunity to voice their opinions and talk about how life for everyday people really is during times of great importance. Imagine how valuable a resource it would be to historians to discover an ancient blogsphere of some sorts that offered insight into the daily lives of Roman citizens, for example. That's what blogs excel at, documenting everyday life. Information that's valuable not only to future historians but to contemporary researchers and (we can hope) leaders.
Back to the problems with traditional media. Jon Stewart makes this point best in his chapter on the media in American the book as well as on his Crossfire appearence. Those are real problems and they really are doing serious harm to the democratic process in the USA. The problem with American media today isn't that they are old stodgy dionsaurs that can't keep up with the internet age, rather it's that they've abandoned the slower, methodical approach to journalism that produces accurate, insightful stories. We need more professionalism and accountability in journalism, not less. If you want to understand the mood of the digital street, as it were, turn to the blogosphere, if you want insightful, accurate and factual reporting you turn to.... err well, I dunno The Daily Show? Traditional news outlets have dropped the ball and are basically just a conduit for party talking heads to transmit talking points and no longer bother to point out if the talking points are accurate or even remotely connected with reality. That needs to be fixed, by returning to high standards of professionalism that industry used to hold itself to, the kind of journalism that investigated Watergate not the kind that investigated blow-job-gate.
Blogs will play an increasingly important role in the journalistic landscape in coming years and will supplement traditional journalism rather than replace it. Their highest potentional is to serve as an important check and balance on the fourth estate, the meta-moderators as it were on the people charged with keeping government transparent and honest. They will also continue to be the leading source of news on who your cousin Steve is dating, what your giant asshole of a boss did at work today, not mention becoming the single biggest source of teenage agnst on the planet
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
"Journalism" is a fabrication made up after all the hero worship of Woodward and Bernstein kicked off because of Watergate.
The classic newspaper reporter 'worked up through the ranks' and didn't need academic 'credentials' at all.
In fact, J-School is where you go after you flunk Calculus and they won't let you into the English department.
There are yards and yards of spun-up bullshit about 'Journalism' but that's all it is.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
Would this article have been posted? I doubt it. This to me seems like a great example of the Old Media guys gloating, "HA! Those bloggers really f*cked it up this time! We are still relevant!" Too bad standard media fell for the exit polls last time around themselves. These polls occur in the realm of statistics and probability. They require PhD-style expertise to understand. While I personally don't have a PhD in statistics, I understood exactly what I was getting when I hit reload at Wonkette all day long, I was getting results that may or may not have any bearing on reality. Turned out that they didn't. Every site that I read exit poll results on had a disclaimer stating that I should take these numbers with a huge grain of salt. It's inexact information but why shouldn't I have access to that information if I want it?
As I said, the jury is still out on whether Bush stole the election, and the mounting evidence is still piecemeal and not yet worthy of a full blown pronouncement and story. In light of this growing evidence, it was way too premature for CBS to pounce on the blogs for reporting "incorrect numbers," for in this era of electronic voting it's going to take a lot of sleuthing to find out what the real numbers really are. But blackboxvoting.org is trying. Where is the CBS story on the massive FOIA effort of blackboxvoting.org?
Let's start with this: The sky is green. That statement is actually true in a way, in that there is green light coming from the sky. If you ran the light from the sky through a prism (you would have to columnate it first), you would see that this is true. And if you looked at the sky through a filter that only let green light pass, it wouldn't be black. So in that sense, it is true that the sky is green.
Nevertheless, the truth is that the sky is blue. I mean, go outside and look up, and what do you see?
I say all this to illustrate what I mean by "the truth" versus "what is true". And once you look at things with this distinction in mind, you see this all over the place.
Politics, for instance. The two examples that immediately come to mind are, "I did not inhale" and "I did not have sex with that woman." And both may be true. But the truth is, he smoked pot and he had sex with that woman.
But the point here is the news media. "Today John Kerry charged blah blah blah. The White House responded blah blah blah." And it's all true. John Kerry really said it. Someone from the White House did in fact say the other. It's all true. But what's the truth? They don't tell us.
This is the glaring flaw in the current news media. They are trying so hard to be "unbiased" (never mind that they do show bias in what stories they run, and they slant the stories a bit). But they are determined to give quotes from both sides, to let both present their side of the story. The problem is that the truth is biased. Somebody's view doesn't square with the facts very well. (Or, quite possibly, neither side does.) But the media doesn't point this out so that they will remain "unbiased".
I don't know if blogs are the answer. But the news media is certainly the problem.
Something I wish more bloggers would do is go out and do their own reporting and journalism.
At the same time I disagree with Junks Jerzey on one count: The good blogs that rehash existing news stories often come up with insightful new connections. They do have merit.
As for doing real journalism: Hey bloggers! Find a topic, figure out who it affects among the people where you are, and start asking people questions. Interview people, do research, and write about those things. Come up with original material rather than react to pre-existing news stories. It's a lot more fun and fulfilling.
There are some bloggers who do this. I aspire to do it when opportunities arise (I'm still a student so sometimes coursework takes precedence). Since I've been hired to do that kind of blogging in a newspaper's website, I figure I at least owe them some original content and not just--as the parent so aptly put it--letters to the editor.
As a bonus I'll throw in this bit of wisdom from legendary reporter and journalist Bill Moyers: Real News is the news we need to keep our freedom. That's what should guide CBS, NBC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and whothefuckever else dares to call themselves a news source.
The vast, vast majority of even the *good* weblogs are simply rehashes of information the author found elsewhere...Someone agreeing or disagreeing with a news story, and telling the world why, is not journalism. It's a letter to the editor.
A minor distinction needs to be made, but it's the whole reason the legacy media is so pissed off at teh interweb.
It's not a letter to the editor. It's an entirely different editor.
When drudge links a story to his front page, it's a front page item, regardless of whether the Washington Times originally ran it on page a1 or c17. It removes the ability of editors to shape news that they don't like.
The best example of this is still drudge outing Isikoffs Newsweek story about a particular intern, that was in the process of being spiked.
The fact that bloggers are now fact checking the mainstream media doesn't please them either, as it displays how accurate the mainstream media isn't. Kind of embarrassing to be corrected by someone who has "no journalistic integrity".
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
... it's Eric Engberg.
It's he, you may recall, whose one-sided political hatched job on Steve Forbes (referring to the flat tax as a "wacky scheme" in a straight news piece) convinced Bernard Goldberg to expose the MSM medias biases for what they are. Such exposure cost Bernard Goldberg the number 2 spot at CBS news and likely the anchor desk once someone pries it from Dan Rather's cold, dead hands.
Apparently journalism that states its biases and doesn't use codewords like "senior Administration officials" isn't journalism -- it's better, and we can't be having that.
One of the main reasons I hate the media is their arrogance. They think that they alone have the means to investigate a matter and come to a truthful conclusion. But they are just journalists. Most of them do have any special training in the matters on which they are reporting. Meaning that there are others that may be more qualified to comment on the issue at hand.
A great example is issues relating to computers. How many Slashdot readers like myself constantly groan at the oversimplications and innacuracies in news stories related to the subject of computers? Especially when it comes to security. But those in the media look down on us, as if we have no right to dare suggest that we have more expertise than the media.
I remember, during the Dan Rather "memogate" issue, a CBS exec saying that there was no comparison between his professional journalists and bloggers who are at home "in their pajamas." Oh really? What if that blogger worked in law enforcement, and had decades of experience investigating forged documents? Would you STILL think that a journalist is more qualified to comment on those documents than that particular blogger? Why the blanket assumption that EVERYONE in the media are mmore qualified to discuss an issue than EVERYONE who is not?
The arrogance of the media is unbelievable.
--
make install -not war
I'm not sure what NPR you listen to but I listen to them a lot.
(1) I never heard them mention Badnarik once and I was listening for it because that's who I voted for.
Okay, try this. Search google
site:npr.org
Bush: 7700 hits
Kerry: 4080 hits
Badnarik: 9 hits
Okay, he definitely got less coverage, but he got some.
site:foxnews.com
Bush: 18400 hits
Kerry: 9980 hits
Badnarik: 7 hits
So even though fox news had a lot more election coverage, they had less on Badnarik. By comparison npr was doing quite well really.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
CBS, Dan Rather, and FORGED MEMOS don't exactly enforce confidence. Dan "Red" Rather shot his wad and lost.
The fact that CBS laments blogs reiforces the fact that the OLD MEDIA is upset that they are no longer the final, dictatorial word as to what Americans see and believe.
Corporatism != Free Market
" It's an interesting read that has some valid critiques of the format as far as journalistic integrity is concerned (not that CBS hasn't been without its problems)."
Taco, CBS isn't just "not without problems", CBS/FOX/ABC/NBC and all the other broadcasters of corporate/lobby interest crap are part of the problem, but the REAL PROBLEM is that YOU pay lip service to the illusion that American Media is about journalism.