responsibility

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?

The Vietnam war we lost, the lies we were told and the innocence we lost

There’s a new book about General William Westmoreland and the Vietnam war which, again, raises such serious questions about the lies we were told about the war, the progression of that war, its strategy and its failures.
Any one who remembers the “Five O’clock Follies” – the daily afternoon briefing of misinformation and manipulation of the media (and ultimately the public) by MAC-V (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) suspected at the time that the wolves were pulling the wool over the sheep’s eyes — but the military and government establishment did so with such gusto, bravado and the arrogance believing that they’d never be challenged, much less caught.
Almost a half century later we are still buffeted by the lingering effects of that war – the relationship between the military and the media has forever been changed, embeds don’t have the opportunity to report freely on what happens, and there seems to be a revisionist view among the public that any doubt or questioning is in some way unpatriotic. And that – the not-so-veiled-threat of any questioning or challenge as being akin to unpatriotic is the worst result of all.

It’s the arrogance, Stupid!

The Justice Department admits it served $16 dollar muffins, $8 cups of coffee and cookies and brownies that cost $10 each at a 2009 meeting.

At a time when many Americans don’t have enough money for basic groceries this seems to be, well the word that comes to mind is excessive.

The story, appearing in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times Justice Department’s $16 dollar muffins don’t sit well, quotes Justice Department officials, “We agree that excessive spending of the types identified in the OIG report should not occur,” adding that the department has taken steps “to ensure that these problems do not occur again.”

Good messaging. Good Crisis Management.

Maybe they might have thought about the ramifications of the decision to spend so much before they thought they were so entitled. But it proves the old media adage, you never get caught for the crime when you do it but always for the cover-up or the discover.

Student Censorship by University of Kentucky

As reported by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.

A reporter with the student newspaper at the University of Kentucky was barred from a news media event with basketball players. DeWayne Peevy, an associate athletics director, told The Lexington Herald-Leader that the newspaper’s basketball writer, Aaron Smith, broke an unwritten policy barring reporters from interviewing student-athletes without first going through media relations.

Oh sure – those students journalists… student athletes can’t speak with student journalists but the rest of the media can? And there is logic in this decision? It looks like University censorship. Plain, simple and regrettable.

Glenn Beck links the massacre in Norway to Hitler Youth – obviously hateful and vile – it is still protected speech. But yuck!

I write in support of free speech, no matter how loathsome it may taste. But the ultimate question – how is it that personalities like Glenn Beck continue to receive the attention, the coverage, and yes even comments like these before the public mindset simply says, “Basta. No more. Good bye.”

On his radio show and reported in the Los Angeles Times Monday Beck said, “There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing.”

Is Beck delusional? Hateful? Is he trying to stir the pot to further his own ambitions, dependent on promoting his own notoriety, regardless of how vile it may be to many? Clearly his departure at FOX was born of falling ratings, declining sponsors, embarrassment and ultimately the network’s decision to cast away a program which had run its course, fulfilled it mission and was no longer something (or some one) they wanted to be associated with.

So what was his agenda in making these remarks? Does he believe that this was a camp a la Hitler youth? Could he be serious, or is he just messing with the audience?

And yet, the monster of hate and bigotry and irresponsibility lives… it clearly lives in Beck’s dark heart and worse, probably too it lives among some of his faithful. Clearly the Los Angeles Times found it newsworthy to report. A Google search at 553p PT Monday on “Beck and Hitler Youth” yields 160,000 hits! Imagine… in just a few short hours… from his lips to Internet phenomenon.

So yes, free speech lives – and fortunately condemnation is alive too. Irresponsible speech lives freely. Hateful, nasty, unimaginable things are said and written by Beck and others – Beck just gets an overwhelming response… What disturbs me the most is that he probably contrived his comments to provoke just such a reaction.

Free speech comes at a price. Unfortunately Beck is using up the currency at an alarming rate.

Perverse and Perverted – Networks in Bidding War for Casey’s Story

That’s right – network’s don’t pay for interviews so instead they offer lavish treatment and buy the rights to photographs and other family memorabilia; it’s called the licensing rights for everything surrounding her actual tell-all tale. Payola by any other name is still wrong.

It’s been going on since before the verdict but now the bidding war for Casey Anthony’s story has gone big time with attorneys holed up in pricey New York hotels as they negotiate Casey for her licensing rights. That’s right – network’s don’t pay for interviews so instead they offer lavish treatment and buy the rights to photographs and other family memorabilia; it’s called the licensing rights for everything surrounding her actual tell-all tale. Payola by any other name is still wrong.

Postings in social media on this are colorful ranging from outrage and revulsion to snide comments about the ethics (or lack thereof) involved in even considering buying her story, much less rewarding her. None of this is new. None is shocking. It is what tabloids and quick-books have made fortunes on over the years. The networks should not be blamed – they are selling a product and need to corner an ever shrinking piece of the viewer’s loyalty. Sadly this is being done under the banner of news, but that seems to cause few any pain or difficulty.

Meanwhile – Casey may be in Palm Springs according to some… while cross country her lawyers are no doubt turning up the heat in their bidding war… and the weatherman said it was going to be a scorcher in New York today. No doubt.

A Smart Move – or just strageic? Or am I a skeptic?

ABC News hires kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart to cover child kidnapping and missing person cases. It is worth asking is this good journalism or smarmy public relations and booking?

ABC News has hired Elizabeth Smart, formerly in the news as a Utah kidnap victim when she was a child, as a correspondent assigned to kidnapping and high profile missing person cases, according to The Hollywood Reporter and reported in People Magazine.

Is this a strategic move or one aimed at creating and fostering special appreciation among victim’s families?
Is she a bona fide journalist or a talented ‘talking horse’?

The issue is simple – what’s her training, journalistic experience or story telling? Obviously she will work alongside talented producers; obviously she will be guided and hand-held… but is she being sent out as a lure to sway the sympathy of victims?

It is worth asking is this good journalism or smarmy public relations and booking?

Historic? One for the record books? Hype? Or we just don’t know what to say?

Can some one explain to me the use of the word “HISTORIC” being flaunted by the media to describe today’s meeting between Mrs. Michelle Obama and Nelson Mandela?

Why is it historic? She isn’t a head of state… she isn’t conducting bilateral talks… there are no negotiations between our countries – at least none that is revealed to date.

Is it important? i suppose yes…. certainly to her and her daughters… but to the rest of us?

Why does the news media use the word historic to describe what was a brief and in diplomatic terms nothing more than a courtesy meeting?

In the scope of time, or the Obama presidency, in terms of international relations between South Africa and the United States this will hardly be termed ‘historic’. So why does the media use the word, as if to credit her with something more significant than what it really was?

Am I missing something? (And no – this isn’t about race, black leaders or women’s rights…), this is just an observation about the word choice used by networks and local stations to categorize an event – or characterize it? Maybe both.