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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.
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
Whilst a blog may give one persons view point, I find the alluring aspect of blogging and online amateur sites (like slash even) is not the article or POV of the original poster, but of how its responded to.
It feels more like I'm taking part in events than sitting back watching somebody else's version.
liqbase
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.
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.
Each medium ranges from utter garbage to something at least rather good. The "best" of the bloggers are not up to the standards of the NYT, but they're pretty new.
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.
...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.
Sturgeon's Law.
Interviewer: Why is 90% of Sci-Fi crap?
Scifi Author: Because 90% of everything is crap.
.sig Karma out the wazoo, better to spend points elsewhere if this is above 2 or below 0
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!
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
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
"[R]ather good"
This phrase is a contradiction in terms any time you're talking about credibility in journalism.
"standards of the NYT"
I think it's funny how you picked CBS and the NYT. Ever hear of Jayson Blair? The poor journalistic integrity of those two institutions has been revealed by their own reporters.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.