TV – Page 6

Changing the definition of news – Bill O’Reilly asserts Fox News is dominant because they understand and give Americans what is important to them

In this clip Bill O’Reilly on ‘A Growing Split’ in News Coverage by Kevin Allocca on TVNewser is a piece and 2 video clips featuring Bill O’Reilly and FNC commentator Bernie Goldberg discussing mainstream media bias.

“Bill O’Reilly started his program last evening (Monday 7.19.10) with his take on Howard Kurtz, CBS’ Bob Schieffer, and Sunday’s edition of “Reliable Sources,” using their conversation as a jumping off point to criticize the “mainstream media.”

“Apparently there’s a growing split about how the news is covered in this country,” O’Reilly said. “The old-guard mainstream media makes decisions based on ideology, race, and elitism. The new media, of which Fox News is a part, covers what Americans believe is important to them. That’s why we are a dominant #1, and I submit that we have far more influence than the network news does.”

This too is a subject I have been writing about, see When Did Mainstream Media Get to Be a Dirty Phrase from June 17th.
How mainstream news is defined and denigrated is as interesting as any argument facing the media today. Fox – positioning itself as David to the mainstream media’s Goliath – is aligning itself with a distinct view of America, Americanism and Americana. It seeks to build alliances and seeks allegiance on the basis of political belief as that shapes its approach and tone, especially on the prime time evening newscasts as distinct from the daypart news programs. It asks viewers to rally around the institution (Fox) rather than the substance of the story, and at times intertwines the two. Either way it blurs the line of media independence and pure reportage.
Fox asserts that it is in fact the “new media” and defines the lines of that coverage and declares network dominance. That may not be the case in terms of sheer numbers but it is a growing trend.
Are there consequences and if so, what?

When did Mainstream Media get to be a dirty phrase?

I once thought the worst one might say about mainstream media is that it was professional, predictable, at times boring, but usually responsible, generally trustworthy and fact-checked.

Today it is under attack, principally by Fox and talk radio as something disreputable and surely not to be trusted. In fact, listening to the right-wing media it seems they are on a campaign to set themselves up as the only viable alternative to mainstream.

Isn’t there a contradiction in that, or am I missing something? How can the fringe become mainstream in its own right? And why would it? Once it became mainstream wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of being radical in its own right?

Sean Hannity attacks the media weekly (daily) with such vile that it he has become a caricature of a little boy ranting while trying very hard to appear like a sober, elder newsman. The more he bobs and bops, the more his girlish strop becomes increasingly inane.

Here’s a headline Mr. Hannity – you are every bit as much mainstream media as the next network anchor. You cant enjoy the kind of publicity, prominence, power and viewership without being part of the mainstream. Try as hard as you want to deny it, but you have met the enemy – Mr. Mainstream, and you are him.

What’s curious too is the unstated contradiction raised by this. Michael Savage boasts he is America’s most popular radio talk show (clearly something he wants and needs in order to maintain ratings and advertising revenue) and then attacks everyone else as mainstream. He wants in as part of the club yet wants no part of its membership? Fox TV does the same. They want to be treated as mainstream – part of White House pools and other media seen as responsible, national journalists, and they compete for the purpose of divvying up the advertising pie, but yet at the first chance they get – their personalities say, oh no – not us; we’re not mainstream but we’re different, special, counter-culture. Isn’t it interesting that conservative voices are today seen as counter-culture? Back in the old days… that just seems very different.

Look – mainstream or not – the question is what’s wrong with being seen as mainstream – tell the facts, provide insight, do the tough pick and shovel work of stationing reporters all over the globe and the country and provide news coverage of important events, regardless of how they may attract ratings. Tell the news that responsible editors believe need to be told and understood. Provide analysis and not rants. Provide context instead of opinions delivered with increasing angst and volume. Limit assertions in favor of sound bites and quotes from individuals engaged in the stories, and do so for more than :50 to :10 seconds each. What value is so short a sound bite?

Mainstream used to be a good thing. Why now is that the enemy? Why should it be the enemy? And why should we – any and all of us – have to decide what news we like on this basis. News isn’t supposed to be a popularity contest – it was never intended to be a profit center – but we now spend more time killing the messenger than we do in listening to the message. It is both wrong headed and dangerous to the Republic.

The message is this – tell me what you have to tell me, don’t boast over how good a job you’re doing at telling me, and stop decrying everyone else for the job they’re doing. Just do your job – fair and balanced, and I’ll decide.

Oakland’s rage – riots or not the mood is unclear

If you were a member of the media and you anticipated potential civil disobedience, which is more news worthy… or more responsible? A) To cover law enforcement’s preparations of an event which may or may not occur, or B) invest in a more contextual story about the economic plight and social unhappiness that may or may not be responsible for the raw nerves, frayed community relations and tensions?

If you’re watching or reading San Francisco media their choice largely appears to be A. It remains easier to point and shoot a camera or grab the easy quote from officialdom rather than source out responsible individuals in a community which is not just under-served but largely ignored much of the time.

All of this stems from what might best be called Rodney King redux, 3 days of riots in Los Angeles after an all-white jury in Simi Valley, California acquitted four Los Angeles policemen accused of beating Mr. King following a traffic-stop.

Eighteen years later another trial, also involving a white police man and a black victim, is poised to provoke rage. The trial of former Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Meserhle is soon to be deliberated, and in the event that the jury finds him not guilty or not guilty of a serious enough offense, there are fears of new riots in Oakland’s streets.

The media question is what’s the best way to cover this story? If there are riots will they simply be about justice, or the belief that the jury’s verdict was not the right result? Or is it possible that disobedience and tumult occur because of a systematic failure to provide for a community – including well-paying jobs, better schools, economic development, and sustained community services? To read or listen to much of the pre-coverage it would seem as if the community itself has gone mute on these issues — that if there are disturbances it will be because of justice, and not a pattern of injustice, racial profiling, harassment and other abuses, real or perceived, believed or merely assumed as truths.

And so the coverage has featured police drills. Law enforcement is ready. Mutual aid for emergency services has been requested and responses tallied. All this remains the easy story.

But what about the community? Who is demonstrating leadership? Who is articulating what is needed or wanted within the black community, and equally important: are they being heard? Are they even being approached? Are they being included in the story or edited out from the earliest point, the story’s inception? For those of us who covered the Rodney King riots we quickly learned it was not just rage at the system that acquitted the police officers. Unhappiness had simmered for some time – over services or a lack thereof – over treatment by local Korean merchants and alleged abuses or snubs, some of which were deemed to be based on cultural perceptions.

In Oakland I have grown tired of forecasts of civil unrest. I am particularly tired because I have yet to see anything more than a prediction of trouble, what some one in a position of office, whether that is municipal or media, believes could happen based on history. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the media could report and foster a dialogue because it does have the platform, knowledge and experience; because too, once upon a time, dialogue mattered.

And what if there were no demonstrations or that they were brief and peaceful? Then off to the next crisis du jour, a tumult of the moment, a toxic time bomb waiting to explode showering some one else with woe of the moment.

The Press Failed McChrystal – The Absence of Feet on the Ground and its Consequence to Truth, Knowledge and Discourse

Now that former 4-star U.S. Army General Stanley A. McChrystal has been retired in a maelstrom of debate over disobedience to his President and breach of military protocol, the question remains: why did his happen? Why did this happen this way? He was an experienced officer, well-groomed in military-media etiquette; he was arguably a man who would have entertained access to reporters on whatever terms or conditions he deemed. So why this article – at this time – to Rolling Stone?

It prompts questions – perhaps a riddle – what was it about the traditional role of the press, of open reporting and discussion free from pundits and partisanship that has made this war different from others? It should prompt tough discourse over what has happened to foreign correspondence, unfettered news gathering in country by trained eyes and ears from journalists trained and experienced in covering both policy and military matters. It offers a chance to realize the consequences of cost-counting that closes news bureaus at the expense of editorial depth. When news outlets close and reporters are absent, how does that change both what we know as well as limit the ability of news makers to tell what their sides of the story?

In Vietnam there were literally thousands of reporters – producers – camera people – bureau staff who daily covered both the war and the political scene. They represented a global audience drawn from papers and networks from Europe, Asia, Australia and both Americas. There were ex pats and indigenous personnel. Together they competed and celebrated their scoops and watched each other like hawks lest one be beaten on a story. Whether an embassy reception or the Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MAC-V) briefing there were plenty of reporters working on a range of stories. Today that has changed. Most – the vast majority – of American reporters in the Iraq-Afghan theatre are embedded on combat operations and out of Kabul. News is too often defined in terms of “bang-bang.” Combat with our troops in action gets a reporter on the air while a contextual, political report veiled in nuance and citing sources is deemed as being dull and is less newsworthy, less likely to either make it in the newspaper or on air.

So what happened with McChrystal? Did the absence of news outlets in Kabul create an environment where there was no opportunity to share the story as he saw the facts? Why couldn’t his story be told without such a Draconian consequence to his reputation and career? Did he have to replicate a Truman-MacArthur show down? What avenues were closed to him because of the absolute absence of reporters he could trust, on-the-ground with enough in-country experience to appreciate what he had to say?

I submit there were too few reporters on the scene and knowledgeable enough to appreciate the changing political nuance. I suspect that much of the basic crux of McChrystal’s argument was the tone and nature of the war was changing in a way that was far more profound that could be captured by airport news conferences, Sunday network talk shows, and punditry on cable stations of both the left and right. That noise was far from the real nature of the war. In that noise over substance and an inability to articulate the issues as he felt they needed to be heard, for McChrystal it had reached a tipping point.

This isn’t a matter of censorship or war-reporting censorship; that debate isn’t new. Michael S. Sweeney’ s terrific book, The Military and The Press, An Uneasy Truce is a seminal work documenting government censorship and military coverage. McChrystal’s self implosion does not seem to be about censorship per se except for the fact that news organizations in this war have exercised self-censorship by their absence from the scene, by their decision to rely on others to cover the date lines, capitols, institutions and individuals who would otherwise be at the center of the story itself.

Former CBS News and long time overseas correspondent Tom Fenton’s Bad News; The Decline of Reporting, The Business of News, and the Danger to Us All is yet further proof documenting the consequences of homogenized news packaged in at a central point at the expense of true understanding of the individuals, policies, politics and knowledge that can only be acquired, managed and challenged by a news office committed to its craft.

The riddle of McChrystal is how he was screwed by the business of news – the absence of reporters – the lack of those who understood the war and had the ears of the editors – who could challenge the assumed beliefs with consequential reporting that might have made a difference.

Yes there is a debate over McChrystal and obedience to protocol. There is a debate over the persecution of this war. And there are questions about the business of news gathering and the consequences of a muted press. I wonder if McChrystal may have thrown himself on a grenade merely to draw temporal attention to a 9-year old war that seems to receive less and less attention in the public eye — except for the bang bang, fear of boogie men known and unseen and an election cycle. It seems a very superficial way to cover an epochal event that threatens to bankrupt the nation and bleed her sons and daughters dry.

Disclosures – Michael Sweeney is on the faculty of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University where I am an adjunct instructor. My father Robert Shaplen was Vietnam correspondent for The New Yorker Magazine from 1945 until 1988.

Politics, Partiansanship and Priorities – why doesn’t the media focus debate on what is seriously threatening the bulwarks of government and democracy?

Announcing his intention not to seek re-election to the U.S. Senate, Indiana’s Evan Bayh (D-IN) said, “After all these years, my passion for service to my fellow citizens is undiminished, but my desire to do so by serving in Congress has waned. For some time, I have had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should. There is too much partisanship and not enough progress — too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous challenge, the peoples’ business is not being done.”

What a sad admission. What a sorry state of the Congress as articulated by one of its insiders. Too much partisanship? Too politicized? Not enough of the people’s work is being done?
At first I applauded Sen. Bayh for his conviction but the more I think about this the more unsettled I become. Why not fight the prevailing wind? Too Quixotic? Unwinable? Pointless, a fight not worth fighting? How sad that seems.
Senator Bayh can do what he chooses, to fight what he believes is worth fighting, to take a stand where he believes one must draw a line, stand and fight. I am however reminded of former Congressman Robert Drinan (D-MA) who always believed that the means was every bit as important as the end, that the way legislation was crafted and implemented was as important as its end result. Congressman Drinan was also a Jesuit and that might explain his unyielding commitment and personal focus. Ultimately Pope John Paul II compelled Bob Drinan to choose between his collar and calling and his seat in Congress, and Father Drinan returned to academic and ecclesiastical positions.
I applauded Evan Bayh for taking his stand and calling attention to his frustration. But the more I think about it, I am concerned if this is the easy way out? I am struck by the thought that if people whose convictions are truly noble are being compelled to leave the Congress, aren’t we all as a nation at a loss for their departure?

The media isn’t helping… it is polarizing too. Whether to the right (FOX) or left (MSNBC) or the muddled middle (CNN), the public is not being served by dispassionate debate and articulation of the facts. There is a rah-rah quality to many presentations that neither serves democratic discourse or perpetuates sober debate in lieu of screaming and emotion. The health care debate, the public meetings, the posturing and promoting of personal agenda would seem to more the sufficient evidence to indict both politicians and much of the media.

Of course there will be calls for restructuring, just as there have been calls for campaign finance reform as if this will be the cure-all, the panacea for what ails us. I think it might be deeper than that, deeper even the the pockets of wealthy candidates who seem intent on spending personal fortunes to win their election. Deeper too than just positioning and spin. Much deeper than what can be squeezed into a 30 second attack ad or single column op-ed.

The real problem is tolerance. Until we work to reform the process, unless we all agree that the means matters, until we stop the rhetoric and bombast at the expense of listening, then there will be only greater partisanship and discord, tumult and disharmony. From sound bites and quotes, to commercial messages which banter about words like “liberal” or “conservative” with such venom as to make each totally unpalatable, we will continue to alienate audiences, to turn people off, and to polarize listeners and viewers who will believe only in what they are already convinced about, supporting sides they favor and eschew all other viewpoints.

That is the true loss we face. We should report on that.

Use a Camera, Go to Jail… new laws make it illegal to photograph police

3 states now have laws prohibiting news photography of police… actually, any photography of on-duty police. If this is the new trend, what does it say for society that it is more afraid of protecting illegal or unprofessional acts by law enforcement than protecting civil rights?
Gizmodo.com is reporting Are Cameras the New Guns that law makers across the country are writing laws that limit if not outright prohibit photography of on-duty police in order to limit or halt photographs or video appearing on social media.
Laws that restrict citizen’s rights also restrict the news media and drape a veil on the truth. How far does this extend? Will news crews be allowed to shoot benign pictures of video of traffic accidents but not when police misbehave or there are questions of abuse and misconduct? What about civilian journalists who have captured police beatings, for instance the Rodney King video in Los Angeles, the Oscar Grant shooting allegedly by BART police officer Johannes Meserhle – are they now liable for prosecution for capturing evidence of potential misconduct?
Would this ban on photography extend to riots? Would this extend to coverage of police protecting the President of the United States making a visit, campaign trip or speech?
Where does one draw the line — is it permissable to make pictures of police when they are doing good things but not when their conduct might be called into question?
What, pray tell some one explain this to me, are we afraid of? This was, still is I would hope, a country where we expect our civil rights are protected… where we expect the best and most professional conduct from law enforcement, and where we acknowledge that bad things do happen… and that there are laws to protect everyone involved.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. Would some one help me to understand by starting a rigorous debate?

CNN to go it alone? Network may rely on no sources other than itself?

Not so many years ago… major newspapers sent their unilateral reporters around the world, wire services competed to file first from world capitals; radio and television networks scrambled to be first with multimedia and the global news audience was the prime beneficiary of news and information, in-country sourcing due to a robust sense of competition. Economic realities and changing market forces have picked off those reporters as if by a sniper whose aim was unfailing. UPI is gone, AP and AFP remain though reduced in size, scope and prominence. Now comes news that CNN is considering dropping all its outside sources CNN Close to Dropping AP… in favor of complete reliance on its own staff, I-reporters and citizen journalists, Tweats and other independent, unprofessional and inherently unreliable, untrained sources. It is not that all are unreliable they are untrained, unprofessional, unregulated and the audience is unprotected from uncorroborated reporting.
That’s the risk… the risk of spin, government or corporate news masquerading as real, and simply stories which cannot be checked and verified in what will be a competitive rush to publish and broadcast. It is already unfortunate that independent reporting has been a casualty of the economic juggernaut. The risk – and it is a significant risk – is that the network is choosing economics over prudence, responsibility and history.

When is somebody (how about you Mr. President?) going to kick some ass?

Frank Rich has written a compelling Op-Ed piece (6.4.10) in The New York Times Don’t Get Mad, Mr. President. Get Even asking if or when the British Petroleum gulf oil spill will finally trigger Mr. Obama’s anger to reach a boiling point. I think for many Americans, especially those living from Texas to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and to Florida, that tipping point passed some days ago.

Doesn’t it bother any one but me that he seems so measured? So level headed… so unflappable even as pelicans and other shore birds die; just as beaches, industries and communities all slathered in oil may not recover for a generation? Doesn’t this disaster rise to the level where some one in government, some one in charge, can appear to be righteously pissed off over the event, the handling, the aftermath and the guile of the company and executives in charge?

And then comes the story from The Washington Post Gitmo Becomes $500 million Camp Costly that the government’s investment in facilities at the prison camp includes features that might be considered by some, especially those suffering from the downturn in the current economy, to be lavish by any standard. Fast-food franchises, an Irish bar, astro turf and playgrounds (mostly unused) litter the base even as its mission is on the decline and the urgency of these constructions seems to be mitigated?

A story in the Seattle Times over the weekend reported fees for the Washington Mutual bank failure have topped $100m and are still climbing. Of course these are fees that to be paid from whatever is salvaged from the assets even as that means an even smaller fiscal pie is left to pay back to investors. What was most alarming was the line that attorneys are charging $925. and hour for their services. That’s a higher rate than most criminal attorney’s charge on capital cases! Doesn’t any one wonder whether this seems exorbitant? Is there a better way, a more affordable way? Should there be?

The lessons learned from the bank failures and the catastrophic consequences of the financial meltdown are still yet to be calculated. But for those responsible, isn’t tar and feathering an option worth reconsideration? Shouldn’t many Americans who are living on savings, borrowed money, who have lost jobs and in many cases are losing hope, what little remains, aren’t they justifiably angry? What’s wrong with showing anger? What’s wrong with being authentically mad? Why is showing anger something that seems to be out of place?

I cannot help but recall the lead character from the movie “Network” who asked his viewers to go to their windows and scream, “I’m mad as hell and I am not going to take it any more.”

On the eve of election night here in California, as well as other states, I do wonder when the electorate will find its way of expressing its simmering anger… not just in a ‘toss the bastards out” kind of knee-jerk response, but when will we demand and get better?

Death – unedited, raw and disturbing captured on camera

Death – captured on video – in June 6th’s Los Angeles Times Death of fugitive porn actor captured in disturbing video is a short metro (L.A. Now) item on the death of a porn actor named Stephen Clancy Hill, who was wanted in connection with a rampage that left two others dead. In all, not a terribly monumental story when compared with carnage that dots the worldscape daily, except that this story features video of the actual moment of Hill’s death captured and shown as a link from KTLA Channel 5.

Is this news worthy? And why have the editors determined that watching a raw tape of his body tumbling off a cliff, ricocheting and bouncing from is something that adds to our understanding or appreciation of the death?

In the final act of Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, Guildenstern wonders aloud if the concept of death can be portrayed on a stage. It is not a large leap to extend this question to citizen journalism and modern media. Somewhat at an emotional loss he asks, “No…no…not for us, not like that. Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over…Death is not anything…Death is not…It’s the absence of presence, nothing more…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound.”

For the editors of the Los Angeles Times the death of this man makes a great deal of disturbing visual noise.

Watching the Gulf Oil Disaster in Real Time – Live from the Ocean Floor

Technology never fails to amaze me and the BP disaster offers a unique glimpse from their underwater cameras.