Tag: Journalism

We’re in the news desert between election day and Christmas.

First, there were Chinese weather balloons that turned out to be spy satellites.
Today, there are drones over New Jersey and an Iranian ghost ship patrolling off the East Coast.

“They” say there’s nothing to worry about.
But the government can’t tell us for sure what those drones are doing above New Jersey and Ohio.

Nothing so exciting has happened in the sky above New Jersey since Orson Welles’s adaptation of “War of the Worlds” at Grovers Mills in 1938.

The local police and sheriff are mobilized. So too is a cadre of citizen observers.
Thank goodness the Coast Guard is out there with binoculars searching for Mideastern warships that have apparently wandered west of the Mediterranean Sea.
Additional FBI agents are being urgently dispatched to investigate.
The FAA placates the public saying the brouhaha is only about fixed-wing airplanes.
But a government spokesperson says that while he can assure us everything is safe, he can’t say what is really happening.
But, if he doesn’t really know, how can we trust him to be assuring of anything?

The president-elect speaks. The White House communications office comments.

Cable talk TV has filled hours with speculation from aviation and espionage ‘experts’ and yet, now on day umpteen of the crisis, why is our knowledge so muddled, the government’s response so clouded (think: obfuscation), and our ears are ringing?

I guess among the Trump transition pronouncements, Congressional befuddlement over endorsement, and mysterious drones hovering over the Garden State, it’s little wonder what really captures the audience’s imagination.

Noteworthy in the media

To all of my students still interested in improving their skills of interviewing, two pieces on today’s (12.15.24) CBS Sunday Morning are a master’s class.

The first from David Martin in a profile of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the second from Tracy Smith in an assessment of the talent of Nicole Kidman are well worth studying.

The reporter’s innate curiosity, authenticity, poise and focus are all to be emulated. The structure of their questions, their brevity and insight are noteworthy.

Even their on camera questions, bridges, and cutaways are executed so very well.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sunday-morning/

And the beat goes on… and on

Just when I (foolishly, naively?) thought there couldn’t be yet another attempt to market the presidency, imagine my surprise to discover: Trump Fragrances.

https://gettrumpfragrances.com/

From Bibles to fragrances, airlines, steaks, vodkas, even University degrees, the Donald’s shopping list goes on to add new ventures…tho the eua de parfume is getting a bit thick.

With apologies to Sonny and Cher, these lyrics canter through my mind:
And the beat goes on, the beat goes on
Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain
La-de-da-de-de, la-de-da-de-da

And the beat goes on (yes, the beat goes on)
And the beat goes on (and the beat goes on, on, on, on, on)
The beat goes on
And the beat goes on

The beat of all this commerce in the guise of government is hurting my head.

I feel as if we have returned to the Medieval Ages where one can buy indulgences from the church and crown. Is there a difference today?

Soliciting (demanding) money from donors for Inauguration Ball tickets is not unusual, it just seems the sums (thank you Elon, Jeff and many others) have become extraordinary.

It’s OK to market a political campaign, but I am left to wonder, after you win… after you pay the bills, when does it stop?

When does the Office of the Presidency become beyond price?

When does a man who is ostensibly serving his country decide that obsessively seeking greater profit is enough?

Investing in technology instead of human assets is bad for news and the public

LATimes owner Patrick Soon-Shiong has revealed and boasted about his plans to add a button to check the bias of articles written for his newspaper.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/los-angeles-times-owner-bias-meter-1236078458/


I’m confused…. Isn’t it the inherent role of media to present both sides of a story?
Isn’t that what journalists – trained and educated and practiced journalists – already do?

Soon-Shiong is admitting that he doesn’t trust the reporters on his payroll to present the news. Huh? What a revelation! He’s willingly paying people he thinks aren’t doing their jobs!
Have we reached a new depth of corporate insanity?


I see an even greater danger in aggregating viewpoints from AI, which hardly can distinguish truth from hallucinations itself, posting amendments or corrections to a story from cyberspace. This isn’t balance but risks making more noise and confusion… This risks perpetuating a universe of ‘alternative facts.’ Once upon a time, those of us in television news would decry an audience who believed anything they saw when the set box lights flickered. Relying on a bias meter seems equally preposterous.


Methinks his money might be better spent investing in the paper with more reporters and editors and less reliance in a faux technological solution.

Try Apologizing!

After all else fails, it’s still not too late and best to remember the truth was always the best alternative.

When deep in the middle of a crisis, acknowledge your responsibility and even complicity, and pledge to make a clean sweep of whatever are the causes.

I provide crisis training for clients and so am admittedly watching United Healthcare closely, tho I am not involved professionally.

I am puzzled by the apparent silence from United Healthcare’s corporate communications in the wake of this crisis. (Visual analogy: ostrich).
What can they be waiting for, unless they concede their reputation is beyond repair?

At first, it would have been ‘easy’ to play the victim card… their CEO was viciously assassinated. Now they can play the victim card again, that their business is the target of a deranged attacker.

But when will they address the real problem? So many of their customers hate their business practices and those of the healthcare insurance industry at large. What do you do to fix a tattered reputation when your brand appears to be despised?

I’m skeptical that silence is the solution. I have better ideas, not that anyone has asked me.

Media Coverage of Political Regimes: A Study on Vietnam and Syria

Watching the news…
I see parallels between the fall of South Vietnam in the spring 1975 and the equally stunning collapse of the Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad within the last fortnight.
I see similarities in political regimes rotted by corruption and propped up by foreign powers motivated by their own fears, ideologies and self-interests.
I see decades long totalitarianism – over a half century for Syria – and 30 years of foreign colonialism in Indochina post WW2 – finally unraveling as their once vaunted armies abandon their posts and tear away their uniforms to obscure their identities.
I see an apparent collapse of the intelligence organization, or its willingness to deceive its minders.
I see jails being liberated of political prisoners and senses of joy and relief by a populace which feels it is finally free to embrace the future.

One difference… the global press corps has done a responsible job of years-long critical coverage of the Assad regime… I don’t remember an American press corps equally critical of its South Vietnamese puppets culminating with the fall of “Big Minh” (Dương Văn Minh)

(And yes… there are parallels too between the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan under President Ashraf Ghani and reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate… among other world conflicts…)

It proves the stink and the plague of corruption at the core will rightly, inevitably be unsustainable. But we should not be shocked… tho we should feel profound sadness for the pain and suffering endured by its citizens, the ultimate victims.

What I find tragic is the American press corp has largely abandoned its foreign posts decried for being economically unsustainable and for management’s assessment that US isolationism doesn’t warrant the time, space or expense of offering a diet of global news. We are too ignorant, in some cases like ostriches choosing the bury our heads, lest we confront realities which are too unpleasant for conversation or action that loom in our path.

Is there anything on our horizon which augurs change?

Wait wait – the story is about US (the media)! KTLA leads with news about itself – after all, what’s more important?

When KTLA TV News in Los Angeles discovered itself in the uncomfortable position of covering a vigil when the crowd turned its anger on the media, the station made that the foal point of its story. Was this necessary? Or hype? Is the main story that there was a shooting followed by an autopsy followed by a predominantly peaceful vigil, or was the story that a single loud-mouth protestor took objection to the cameras?
See for yourself. KTLA News opted to lead with the ‘threats’ in its anchor lead, its reporter’s on camera toss, and in the opening sequence of the video itself. A trifecta of self-indulgent ‘we are the the story.’
Only then – after that non-event was exhausted – did the story go on to cover what was a peaceful expression of the community’s sadness.

Maybe at worst this is poor judgment and self indulgent – the consequence of emotion running rampant over judicious news judgment. But – where were the elders of the news department? Where were those with more experience to know that the real story was not about the media, and never was, nor should it ever be. As witnesses to an event we are not supposed to become as important as the event itself. And when, for instance, does a stupid person’s threat become more important than the event itself?

The station may counter that the community’s rage was a part of the story… really? One loud-mouthed person now represents the entire community? It just seems lame to suggest that even as a supposed defense for poor news judgment. Just saying.

Fallacy of international news reporting

When networks say they are “monitoring” international news there is a significant difference from the era when they covered it.

Monitoring means saving money and human resources by remaining in London and piggybacking on all other international news sources.  Monitoring means reading the wires – AP, AFP, Reuters among others, and aggregating as many mutually agreed facts as possible while ‘packaging’ that information in to unilateral reporting.  What’s worse is then the reporter says, “We have learned…” Oh yes?  Learned from who?

Reporting and coverage once meant doing one’s own work – asking questions – using one’s 5 senses – following leads and owning the story as best one could.  Covering any story is about “learning more”… but now, as a verb, it is often a cheap substitute for real work.

Coverage meant something — it meant an investment of time, money, responsibility and staff.  Monitoring a story is the lazy approach to news gathering.  It is the way news is covered today.  It is the sad result of cost cutting for a product that many people don’t seem to value… the news.

While we profess to know more than ever before, and we do have greater access to timely news sources than ever before, US audiences receive fewer and fewer actual reports from network correspondents and more ‘monitored’ and ‘repackaged” news.  It just feels less and less honest.

Paid Media? Media for Sale? A Federal court judge wants to know more in the Google-Oracle Suit

Today’s decision by a Federal court judge ordering Oracle and Google to disclose who they paid to write about their “JAVA trial” poses interesting questions about corporate media management — who pays for what to be written and what extent does that have on influence within the industry?
What would you expect that answer to be?

All Things D’s filing  Judge Orders Google and Oracle to Disclose Who They Paid to Write About Java Trial has the story quoting “Judge William Alsup, who presided over the case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, wrote in his order that he’s “concerned that the parties and/or counsel herein may have retained or paid print or Internet authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers who have and/or may publish comments on the issues in this case.”
We’ve seen purchased coverage before in terms of trade press, I’m thinking especially of the sychophants who write gushingly about the latest Apple release and who (masquerading as reporters) would leap to their feet to applaud Steve Jobs.  Other companies (Cisco’s news site) commissions articles by well-known and reputable authors — though one might assume they are not (often) going to either write nor would Cisco (or others likely) post unflattering comments, reviews, analysis or criticisms.  This is coverage purchased to put forth the issue in the most flattering light possible under the circumstances.  
It is corporate communications imitating news.  It’s a lot like Sorkin’s The Newsroom imitating real news rooms.

BP Oil was insidious in the way it aggregated media coverage during the gulf oil spill while inserting reports from its own commissioned reporters…. it did make a disclaimer but only in the tiniest of print.  It was clever – in the midst of critical news it seemed unexpected to read glowing accounts of the importance of big oil to the community and their years of service and commitment to the economy and residents.
I don’t argue that this is happening – I find it refreshing that a federal judge is concerned enough to demand a review into how pervasive it may have been during his trial.
I find Judge Alsup’s order compelling. His full order can be found here .

Giving Up is Not the Answer

A letter appearing in today’s NY Times prompts my response – Good Riddance.
The letter:
Why I Decided Against a Career in Journalism
To the Editor:

Re “Journalism’s Misdeeds Get a Glance in the Mirror,” by David Carr (The Media Equation column, July 30):
After holding top positions on my college newspaper for the last three years, I recently decided not to pursue a career in journalism. Coincidentally, Mr. Carr’s examination of the public’s lost confidence in the news media shares some of my rationale.
While he rightly criticizes the journalists in the phone-hacking scandal, he explains that they succumbed to the pressures of cutthroat competition and ruthless profit motives.
In many ways, these journalists reacted to the demands of the consumers of their reporting: a public infatuated with the private lives of celebrities and the sordid details of their gossip, infidelities and failings. Readers, too, share some culpability for driving reporters down such a contemptible path, through their continued subscriptions and consumption of those dubious tabloids.
Perhaps when the media replace supplying the guilty pleasures of their readers with the ethical pursuit of the truth, then journalism will be the right field for me.

JAMES R. SIMMONS Jr.

I offer this response:

Dear Mr. Simmons,
I wish you well in whatever endeavor you choose and congratulate you on your decision not to pursue a career in journalism.  Obviously you dont have the fire-in-the-belly to really succeed in this field which will require creativity, stamina, perseverance, and commitment.  Forgive me, but as someone who has worked and succeeded for more than 40 years as a journalist I’d conclude from your letter that you dont seem to have the gumption.
Yes there are admittedly many troubling things about our field – corporate ownership, a troubling economy, business models which are in flux.  Sure we’re making mistakes – we tend to see things too often in terms of scorecards – who’s leading, what’s trending, what’s the latest (even when there is little that’s new or changed).  Too often it seems we hype rather than just report.  All true.
We reduce even the more complicate social issues to short and often too simple vignettes, as if that does justice to the issue.  Network news stories are pitifully abbreviated; print lines and newspaper sections are often embarrassingly thin, compared to what many of us remember only a few years ago.  
New models of news, including many of the services aimed at college-aged students such as yourself are thin on substance and too-hip-for-their-own good.  New programs that feature scandal and celebrity over substance are not what I find much favor with — but trends come and go and change is always part of the equation.  Some times it requires more patience as change – including audience’s tastes – adapt.  Yes, there have been mistakes – and there are also corrections.  I suppose if you want to toss blame maybe we ought to include an education system that seems content not to teach civics or citizenship much less create an awareness or sufficient appreciation of the integral role we should responsibly play in society.
Yes Mr. Simmons there is much that is wrong but if you don’t have the stomach to be part of the solution then I am glad that you have decided to pursue a career elsewhere.  To me Sir it is better that you have been culled from the pack lest readers/audiences, including me, become saddled by your bemoaning and wailing.
Perhaps you might follow a career in  politics?  Or business? Surely there is nothing too challenging or wrong about those fields, or is there? 

Sincerely,

Peter Shaplen