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The Noisy and Prolonged Death of Journalism
The war of words between the old and the new media is heating up some more. Eric Schmidt has an op-ed in Rupert Murdoch's WSJ (ironic, that) explaining to newspapers how Google wants to, and is trying to, help them. Kara Swisher's BoomTown column translates and deconstructs Schmidt's argument, hilariously. A few days back, the Washington Post's Michael Gerson became the latest journo to bemoan the death of journalism at the hands of the Internet; and investigative blogger Radley Balko quickly called B.S. on Gerson's claim that (all?) bloggers simply steal from (all?) hard-working, honest, ethical print journalists.
...has been more deadly to the art of journalism than all of the technical innovations in the last 200 years put together.
I think in retrospect, the mainstream media should have heeded the warning of one Alvin Toffler, who wrote in The Third Wave in 1980 that as communication technologies improves, the days of the the mass media controlling media distribution will come to an end.
With cable TV, small-dish satellite TV and the public Internet, Toffler's warning has become 2009 reality. The only survivors will be those who can quickly embrace taking full advantage of today's communication technologies, and Time, Inc.'s recent "fantasy demo" of an electronic edition of Sports Illustrated designed to take full advantage to future tablet computers (such as the much-rumored Apple tablet) is proof there are some in the mainstream media who understand they must change with the times (pun not intended :-) ).
It's just the death of journalism as we know it.
Print, TV, and radio news outlets are going to have to decide if they are in the print/tv/radio news or if they are in the business of news.
If it's the former, they will die. If its the latter, they can survive if they pay attention.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The internet does not replace the journalists aka reporters.
it is merely changing the distribution.
The town crier was replaced by the paper boy but journalism, gathering the facts, reporting on events, has lived on.
it is not the printing press that makes a journalist.
My big wish is that factual reporting would regain its place ABOVE the opinionated offerings seen on places such as FOXnews.
comment directly in my journal
Just like the BBC, that depraved pit of corruption and bias.
Err, wait: I misspelled FOX.
Let me begin by saying that most comments on /. dealing with traditional journalism quickly turn into a bonfire, cheering the death of traditional journalism and heralding blogs as a bright new dawn with untold promises. I think this is wrongheaded, for reasons I'll get to quickly.
I work for a pretty niche tech magazine as a writer and editor. Much of what I cover is business tech., a lot of venture news and business tech products. It might amuse people how traditionally we do things from a journalistic point of view, since we're frequently writing about the technologies and sites that are changing journalism - editors comb leads and find stories, hand them off to writers who do interviews and then pass the copy back to the editors, who fact-check and rewrite. etc. We have an online component, but we're still very definitely a print publication first.
I think blogging and new journalism has a lot to offer. The distribution method and quick turnaround is great. They can get and exchange news much quicker than I can, although in my particular niche there's not much urgent news, so being a monthly pub. isn't really a problem. But I also think new journalism has a downside, and I think Gerson is right about many of the things he says (never thought I'd say that).
First off, objectivity is not dead. No, you can never be perfectly objective. And objectivity doesn't necessarily mean never expressing an opinion. But it does mean disclosing conflicts of interests (not that traditional journalism has always done a good job of this - it hasn't) and trying to be as honest as possible with your readers. My biggest problem with blogging in general, at least as far as replacing traditional journalism, is that so much of it is done by interested parties. Sure, you can get great info about goings on directly from CEOs and the people involved, but oftentimes it's like hearing about a break-up from only one half of the couple. Business being the way it is, once you're working in an industry, you've got some kind of relationship - however tenuous - with everyone else in it.
I'm not going to name names, but especially in venture and business journalism, many apparently disinterested blogging parties have a history in business themselves, and many are currently engaged in business ventures of their own. There's plenty of people who aren't going to let this cloud their judgment or color their writing, but how can you tell? People talk about new journalism like there's no gatekeepers, but companies and organizations and PR agencies are always going to have gatekeepers. And if it's someone in an industry writing about goings-on in that same industry (which many people see as a big plus for blogging - since, they say, a participant knows more about the situation than an uninvolved third-party journalist), they're going to have a vested interest in not causing too many waves. Sure, some people get big enough or well-read enough that it doesn't matter, and admittedly plenty of lowly traditional journalists have been forbidden from doing a hit piece because they don't have the clout (or their pub. doesn't), but that added conflict of interest certainly can't help matters.
People like to heap scorn on traditional journalism, but there's a very good reason for fact-checking, and there's a very good reason for objectivity. I'm all for new journalism and I read plenty of blogs. I do think that form of journalism is, more or less, the future. But let's not be quite so hasty to discard everything that made traditional journalism what it was (even if it's tarnished, in this day and age), and let's not be quite so quick to put all our faith in blogging. I'm confident that a more concrete code of ethics will develop in blogging, and bloggers who lie and distort will get weeded out just like traditional journalists who've committed the same transgressions tend to be (eventually), but I'm not quite ready to hang up my sad little hat with the press pass or my dreaded red editor's pen just yet.
The little bit of journalistic integrity left will be destroyed if the government starts picking up the tab. Newspapers will have a vested interest in getting funding so support of one candidate or another will be rewarded with money, instead of just interviews, questions at press conferences, and leaked memos.
As much as I hate to say it, it's that way now. NBC and it's sister stations are all owned by GE (at least until they sell to Comcast soon). This includes MSNBC. MSNBC is a very left-of-center network. While it has been shown that all media was biased toward Obama in the last election (yes, even Fox News... numbers don't lie), MSNBC went above and beyond the call of duty and by far the biggest Obama supporter of all the major media networks.
Now what does this have to do with GE? Who do you think would give more for green programs, Obama or McCain? Obviously Obama. Who stands to make a fortune off green programs? GE! GE makes the wind generators for wind farms, CFL and LED light bulbs and are well invested in other "green" areas. While it's great that GE is taking such a stance to greenify our world, it's not so great that they use their media subsidiaries to shape public opinion toward favoring one political party over the other to help their bottom line.
However, you are correct that it would get much worse if the government were paying the bills. You could expect that whichever presidential candidate or political party that promised to increased funding to the press outlets would get the more favorable treatment.
With that said, there should be some kind of oversight to prevent the corporations that own the press from using it to drive agendas with the purpose of increasing profits. For that matter, the press shouldn't be driving agendas at all!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Sad is how many cheer it on who don't like AM talk radio without understanding that giving the government a foot in the door opens all to the affect.
Isn't that always the case?
When the Bush Admin was grabbing all this power for the Executive branch, those of us that found it disturbing, were called a few things and we didn't understand the necessity of it since we're in a time of war - or some such non-sense.
Now comes the Democrats and the Obama Administration. Do the Republicans get it now? Of course not. The Democrats don't get it either, of course, and if they get their way, the inevitable Republicans that will get back power in some future election, will be able to do that same thing. So, in your AM Radio example, if the folks who want that out of the way, well, we just may see our beloved NPR bite the dust.
Power always flips back and forth - which is a good thing because we'd have a really corrupt government,otherwise - see Venezuela or Iran - if it didn't and I for one welcome the flipping back and forth because in the long run it does limit one sides damage or the others.
But the trouble is, once Government gets power, it doesn't give it up: regardless of who's in power. Just look at how the Obama Administration kept all the executive power that the Bush Admin took.
Change indeed.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
After Fox News won their argument in Florida establishing there was no need for them to report only the truth or facts, I see lots of room for regulation.
You feel free to believe that a free market can self-regulate, but don't put the media under that umbrella. We all know what sells, what makes money, and its not good unbiased reporting with lots of research and fact checking. Those things were only ever done on the basis of personal or imposed integrity, a sense of honour that seems to be mostly lost.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Don't kid yourself that there was ever a time when ethical journalists were the norm. There's a reason the most highly coveted prize in journalism is named for a notorious muckraker and yellow journalist.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
seeing an "emergency" someone will step in with government money, more regulation, etc, and it just goes downhill from here.
Just... [exasperated gasp] fuck. How do you Ronald Regan "all government is evil" fan-boys keep coming up with this stuff? I mean, where, exactly, is there any evidence to suggest that "the government" is going to step in and take over the role held by the free press? No, the article you cite is evidence of quite to opposite (that which you claim not to fear nearly as much), the inordinate influence of big media companies in shaping how, when, and where we get access to information. Sure, the government, having been bought and paid for by those interests, will have a role, but it is the electorate's stupidly steadfast refusal to recognize that their "representative government" has been sold to the highest bidder that is to blame, not "the government".
CPB, PBS? How has the fact that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS, created by an act of congress and funded by federal tax dollars, in any way stopped public television stations from covering stories critical of Federal Government officials?
If anything, the CPB via PBS stations has funded some of the toughest critics - of the lead up to the Iraq war, the contested 2000 election, etc. - so much so that the right tried very hard to get the CPB and PBS entirely de-funded.
Even the US Congress is more than capable of creating a non-profit, private corporation that funds real, fact-checked, investigative journalism. If this is the only way we can continue to have such reporters, whether they are published in print or on the net, then we should certainly do so.
Such an entity - a hypothetical Corporation for Public Newsgathering - could also fund investigative bloggers. The only criterion would be original, investigative, fact-checked news content, whether published on paper or on-line.
So wasting taxpayer money on programs that few people watch is an advantage?
Do you feel the same way about educational resources? Do you feel the same way about scientific research? Given the choice between educational programming that that few people watch, or fart jokes that appeal to a broad audience, which is a better use of community resources? Stretched over a 10 year span, which do you think is a more valuable resource... 10 years worth of educational programming that remains relevant, or 10 years of fart jokes about former celebrities that no one pays any further attention to?
Perhaps we could make the quality programming free, and allow people to take out student loans so they can be institutionalized and watch fart jokes if they are so inclined?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Isn't this a sad state of affairs when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are considered honest media? JS even called out Obama for his speech echoing that of one Bush made for the troop surge. I've been trying to watch more of the other networks lately because I stopped for so long, I wanted to see how they'd improved. MSNBC is pretty much the same as it has ever been although they seem to support the Daily Show. Fox has pretty much been doin a nose dive since they were created. Remember when O'Reilly was watchable? Certainly not the case anymore when you have him blatantly asking people to ignore the constitution to state how they really feel public policy should be. They of course do everything in their power to discredit the Daily Show. Then there's CNN, well, they are a shadow of their former selves, the CNN story is the truly sad one as they used to be great! They seem neutral to the Daily Show but the mere fact that all three report on the Daily Show and even go so far as editing clips to make it look like JS is saying something completely different, thank you Fox News, this is what is truly very sad! The show that advertises itself as fake news is considered more legitimate than all the major outlets! Thankfully there are other sources for the rest of us, I'll try again in another year or so to see if there have been anymore changes in TV news. I don't hold out much hope though.
When CNN started defending the Administration by critiquing a Saturday Night Live skit, I knew they were less honest than Fox.
And no, I don't remember when O'Reilly was ever watchable.
Fark headlines are more honest than most of the news media out there right now.
Exactly right! And this should not only be true of news journalism, this should be extended to other industries as well...
- Is your doctor is lying to you about your tumor? Go to a different doctor!
- Engineer lying about the safety of that bridge, use a different engineer!
- Is your teacher lying to your children about whether the Holocaust occurred, find a different teacher!
All of these people should be allowed to make up whatever lies they feel like, cause I'd much rather have idiots have the right to say their idiotic things than leave it up to the government to decide what idiotic things can be said. Get yourself a medical/engineering/teaching/etc degree so you can verify everything anyone ever says to you. Obviously nobody should be held to any kind of professional accountability, because freedom of speech trumps all!
P.S.
And because this is Slashdot, I feel the need to point out that the above post is sarcasm...