Don't Look Up

I recently wrote an opinion article for The Skyline View in which I criticized the politicians and police administrators that placed a new breed of less-than-lethal weapons into the hands of police officers without first creating a decent set of rules for their use.

In the article, I touched on the fact that our police forces are now deploying weapons that were designed for use by the military in times of war.

Now I am reading that not only are police departments around the country trying to obtain Predator drones for use in policing their home turf, but also some of them already have access to the Predator and they are using them on US soil against our citizens.

Recently, the Los Angeles Times ran an article that described the use of a Predator in North Dakota. This was a case where a farmer was accused of cattle rustling, when the suspect and his friends fled into a rural field, an area police official was able to call upon a local military base to deploy a drone over the area. This incident ended peacefully, but that is not my point.

This drone is from the same family of pilotless-military aircraft that routinely kill suspected terrorists and innocent bystanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This Predator aircraft (an unarmed version) is now flying over the Unites States hunting for our citizens. How long will it be before this Predator is outfitted with missiles like its brethren overseas?

Anyway, back to studying for my Journalism final.

Media Matters vs Fox News

The website and research group, Media Matters for America is a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) organization that is dedicated to analyzing the constant barrage of news media that you and I do not have the time to look into.

Media Matters for America describes their website like this…

            

“Using the website mediamatters.org as the principal vehicle for disseminating research and information, Media Matters posts rapid-response items as well as longer research and analytic reports documenting conservative misinformation throughout the media. Additionally, Media Matters works daily to notify activists, journalists, pundits, and the general public about instances of misinformation, providing them with the resources to rebut false claims and to take direct action against offending media institutions.”

What is funny about perusing this website is its homepage. They have many different media categories for you to choose from; such as, Economy, LGBT, Fox (This one will seem redundant later), Immigration, Environment and Science, National Security etc…

I guess you are still wondering what I find funny about this and why I pointed out that the Fox only category was particularly intriguing. What is funny is that no matter which category you decide to look at, Media Matters for America has found that Fox News has made one egregious violation of journalistic ethics or another.

I have no grand point here, only that either Fox News is the worst thing to happen to the collective reputation of journalists, or Media Matters for America was created just to berate Fox News.

War is Hell

We were recently discussing in class the traumatic effects of war and the famine it causes on the photographers that capture the images for the world to see. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is one of the problems that photojournalists face upon their return from the warzone, but guilt can also be a killer.

One of the other issues we were debating in class was the photographer’s responsibility to “get the shot” vs. his/her obligations as a human being. For example, do you as a journalist; offer your food rations to the starving children lying in front of you, or do you concentrate on taking the most impactful shot you can with the hopes effecting the change needed in the world to feed all of the children? It is an impossible choice.

When I was looking into this issue, I found a photograph and a story that I remembered. I remembered this photo because I recall the debate I had over it; it was essentially the same debate we had in class over a photographer’s responsibilities.

This is the photo (Warning, disturbing image) that photojournalist Kevin Carter took in 1993 of a starving child in Sudan being approached by a vulture.

This photograph caused a firestorm of criticism of the photographer and a pile of mail at the New York Times as to the fate of the child.

Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for this photo, but after one year the guilt racking the soul of Kevin Carter proved to be too much and hetook his own life.

Hindsight, or Tips for future Journalism 120 Honors Students

This is blog #16. I will complete my 20^th blog entry, as per my honors assignment, on Monday, December 12. The assignment stated that the 20 posts had to be completed by the end of the semester. Therefore, even though regular classes end tomorrow, I am hoping that Monday still makes the deadline.

What I want to do with this post is to state what I wished I had done differently with this blog assignment, and perhaps a Journalism 120 student next year will be able to benefit from my hindsight and general tips..

            

The first thing is the most obvious: do not procrastinate. Here I am late in the semester, trying to prepare for my finals, and I still have to worry about figuring out what I am going to write about every night…and then I have to write it. It is not as if I dislike writing, I actually love it, but I find myself grasping at straws on which topic to cover as the time ticks away. This makes my posts seem rushed and at times incoherent.

           

 If I just kept a schedule of one blog post per week, with two or three weeks with two posts, I would not be writing this “How To” post right now. In addition, there is always one big media-related news story in every given week to write about. If it is a big story, with opinions on it flying on both sides—writing your blog post will be simple. However, if you wait until the end, it is hard to come up with a quality post.

           

 My final tip is this, when searching for journalism-related topics to blog about, just go to Poynter for actual stories and tips from journalists, or go to the Huffington Post’s Media Page for more controversial and sensational topics to write about.

            

Anyway, my plans are to keep this blog going long after this class ends, so I hope you will all see my writing develop over time…for the better I hope.

Product Placement Scandal

Product placement is just an unpleasant fact for most media consumers and a profitable one for media purveyors. In fact, Journalism 110 students study this subject in depth. We learn that TV shows and movies are paid big money by companies to have their products featured in their shows and movies.

Since last spring when I completed Journalism 110, I have been suffering from Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon when it comes to product placement: meaning, now that I have learned of it, I see it everywhere. I see it daily on TV morning shows when they are featuring products on feature pieces about “gift ideas” and “new gadgets for the techno-junkie in your family” segments.

Then why is it that now the media is claiming to be shocked by the “revelation” that certain people that come on their shows that feature products—actually are in the pocket of the companies’ products they are hawking?

This seems like a no-brainer to me. Are there people out there that did not actually notice this phenomenon before?

The controversy stems from the multiple appearances of Alison Rhodes on NBC’s Today show. She appears under the title of “Safety Mom”, a parenting safety expert that shows parents products that can aid in the safety and wellbeing of their children. However, it has been discovered that Rhodes is actually on the payroll for many of the companies whose products she promotes.

The Huffington Post’s Katherine Fung reported the following:

“NBC said it was unaware that Rhodes was affiliated with the companies she was hawking for. Indeed, the deceptive arrangement generally flies under the radar. It is illegal under federal law, but the Post reports that it rarely attracts the attention of the FCC.”

I for one do not find this newsworthy…I find it sad.

Watch the video below and see if you would have been fooled.

Blue Monday.

Media News Group (MNG) is a print-publishing company that is responsible for printing many of the Bay Area papers the people of California are familiar. The San Mateo Times and the San Jose Mercury News are some of the local papers MNG puts out that have a significant readership. However, due to a loss of advertising due to the diaspora from print to online journalism, MNG is doing the unthinkable; it is stopping its Monday printing of several of its daily papers.

The Media News Group has announced that three of its smaller papers, the Eureka Times-Standard, Vacaville Reporter, and the VallejoTimes-Herald will cease their Monday print additions and go to an online only format on those days.

The Media News Group calls its new move “digital-first Mondays”. Some of its other papers that have a paywall in place for access to their websites are lifting the restrictions on Mondays and cancelling home delivery in the bargain.

I know the completely new digital realm that the newspaper industry is contending with is a moving target, and we should give it time before we make any harsh judgments for their business models, but I see way too many ways for the news consumer to get the short end of the stick here.

How long before the sacred act of reporting the news in an unbiased way can only be read by the privileged? 

Shield Laws

After reading in our book about how the Supreme Court left shield laws up to the individual states. I decided to see which states had shield laws and which did not. What I did not expect to find was a third category, those covered by the Minnesota Free Flow of Information Act.

For help in explaining the Minnesota Free Flow of Information Act, I lifted a paragraph from the Citizen Media Law Project:

"In order to protect the public interest and the free flow of information, the news media should have the benefit of a substantial privilege not to reveal sources of information or to disclose unpublished information. To this end, the freedom of press requires protection of the confidential relationship between the news gatherer and the source of information. The purpose of sections 595.021 to                                   595.025 is to insure and perpetuate, consistent with the public interest, the                                      confidential relationship between the news media and its sources". (Minnesota)

This law was a state-driven effort to force the hand of the federal government into enacting a federal shield law for journalists for the first time. However, even though this act was first passed in Minnesota, it has also been adopted by many other states…California is not one of them, but is well protected in other ways.

Works Cited

"Minnesota Statutes 595.021-.025 | Citizen Media Law Project." Home | Citizen Media Law Project. Web. 05 Dec. 2011. <http://www.citmedialaw.org/minnesota-statutes-595-021-025>. 

Waltz with Bashir

It is not often when I am reading a chapter in our Journalism 120 textbook that I am also given a better insight into one of my favorite films of all time--Waltz withBashir.

This film is described on IMDB as “an Israeli film director interviews fellow veterans of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon to reconstruct his own memories of his term of service in that conflict.”

Our book, News Writing and Reporting for Today's Media talks about the very incident/controversy/massacre that the movie mentioned above does, but adds an interesting wrinkle that I did not know. I did not know that the incident that occurred in Lebanon was reported on by Time Magazine and ended up becoming a precedent setting libel case in the US.

At the time, Ariel Sharon was the Israeli minister of defense, and the article in Time insinuated that Sharon had prior knowledge of the planned massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon. The magazine had printed the story, even though they had no way to fully confirm the information on the secret-government report they based their story on, but were able to infer the names of those involved through cross-referencing with other reports.

The jury found in favor of Time, but did say that they had indeed defamed Sharon and that what they had printed was false.

Anyway, you should watch the movie.

National Defense Authorization Act of 2012

A couple of nights ago, the US Senate quietly passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. The Senate and House pass a similar bill every year as a matter of course. Normally, this bill just releases the funds needed for the US military to function for the following fiscal year. However, this year’s bill had rider attached to it unlike any of the similar Defense Authorization Acts that have preceded it…and it should scare the hell out of all American journalists, bloggers and activists.

This bill allows the US military to detain people on US soil without a trial, or being afforded a lawyer. This bill reclassifies the United States as a warzone and the rules of war apply here. This means that anybody the government disagrees with, such as whistleblowers, investigative journalists, or opinionated citizens can be scooped up off the street—never to be heard from again—shield laws be damned.

What is even more frightening is that now that it is “legal” for our military to use assassinations in warzones, like in the case of Osama bin Laden and a myriad of his Al-Qaeda henchmen; it would now be possible, and even legal, for the US to shoot and kill any dissenting voice it wishes to silence.

President Obama has said that he will veto this bill, but amazingly, the Senate and House have stated that they have the two-thirds vote needed for a veto override.

What, they can get a two-thirds majority vote for lighting our constitution on fire, but they can’t even get a simple majority vote to raise our debt ceiling…this is the most frightening turn the US has taken in my 41 years alive as an American. 

I hope my government lets me live long enough to see this act be overturned.

Big Changes to the Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize for excellence in newspaper journalism, literary achievements, and musical composition has been handed out since 1917. It is one of those prizes that when received, cements a person’s position in their field, and lends more authority to their future works.

Now, after all of those long years, the Pulitzer folks have added a new and exciting category as well as change their submission guidelines to get with the times.

Now if you wish to have your entire body of work considered for the famed prize, you have to submit it electronically. Before, you used to have to submit your work in a traditional portfolio filled with all of your paper clippings, and mail that sucker in to the Pulitzer Prize committee. This is more convenient and it shows that old dogs can learn new tricks.

The other thing that has changed is that they have added another category of prize, the Local Reporting of Breaking News category has now added, "real-time reporting of breaking news." as one of its prizes.

This category was put in place to recognize that sometimes journalists break stories through social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook hours before an entire story can be crafted and published. This category, from what I can read so far, seems to still be geared towards professional journalists, but seems to be technically open to anybody who breaks a news story and can send in proof, in the form of a timeline for the Pulitzer Prize committee to consider.

I can hear it now…

Mom: why don’t you get off Twitter, go outside, and breathe some fresh air?

You: why don’t you want your child to win a Pulitzer Prize?

Mom: Never mind.

Are We in the Dark?

The major magazines in the US have a lot to think about when deciding on a cover for their latest issue. Because most magazines come out monthly, their editors know that people will be passing the newsstands and laying eyes on their cover layout decision for 3 to 4 weeks, so it must be impactful as well as having a good shelf life. This is a much bigger job than just piecing together pretty pictures.

To complicate this matter, most of our major magazine publishers in America also distribute their wares to other markets abroad like Asia and Europe. Now they have to design a cover that will suit those very-different tastes. It must take a wealth of knowledge of foreign cultures and plenty of boots on the ground overseas to ensure that their cover layout has the impact intended and does not offend.

Now let us flip this concept a bit. What if the US magazines found it easier to be impactful in the foreign markets, but were afraid of the consequences of their actions here in America? Does that sound a bit Orwellian to you? Well, it is a fact and there is proof on Time Magazine’s own website, where they show you what the covers of their different magazines look like in a given month.

Check out the website linked above and go back through the past year’s publications.

Am I really A Journalist?

The Skyline Journalism Department considers all Journalism 120 students as members: that also goes for 110 students and of course the staff working on The Skyline View itself. We can all write stories with hopes of eventually getting them published in the paper. We can do everything a big city paper can do, we write opinion pieces, feature, news and sports articles, but there is one tool that we are not afforded as student journalists—we are not issued press credentials.

Possessing press credentials or passes can get you behind the scenes and right to the meat of the story, but student journalists find it hard to get approved for one.

Recently, a sexual assault occurred on Skyline’s campus and it was a member of The Skyline View staff that broke the story via Twitter, but when the student journalist was trying to obtain more information from the San Bruno Police, he was turned away because of his lack of credentials. The newspaper’s faculty adviser, Nancy Kaplan-Biegel, was even on the phone with the San Bruno Police testifying to authenticity of the reporter…to no avail.

This was The Skyline View’s story, and our newspaper had to sit on its hands and wait for “legitimate” news agencies expand on the story.

I really have no point here other than this just being a sad tale.

Lèse Majesté

Journalism is sometimes a hard and thankless job, and sometimes journalists are even willing to go to jail in order to ensure the journalistic ethic of protecting the identity of a source. Nevertheless, when a journalist decides to stick by their guns and go to jail for this, it is their choice to do so. So imagine you are a journalist or blogger that is going to jail, not for what you wrote, but for something, someone else wrote. That is the fate of many journalists, bloggers, and even Facebook users in the Kingdom of Thailand.

Thailand has a much-revered King is so loved that laws are in place to protect his image from even the slightest of disparaging comments. These are called laws of lese majeste, the term derives from the France, and means “injured majesty”.

 Now as any seasoned visitor to Thailand knows, it is always a good practice not to talk about the Thai royal family at all for fear that even a nice comment you make about the royals will be interpreted as negative.

These laws are the reason why if you visit any blog, newspaper website, or even a Facebook account based out of Thailand, the comments sections below the posts are disabled. They do this because these laws are so strict, that even if somebody else makes a comment on your blog that disparages the Thai royals, you are held responsible as the blogs owner, and you will go to jail. That is even if you deleted the comment to moment you first saw it.

           

 I plan on living in Thailand in the future, but I’m not sure if I will even bother to operate a blog when I am there…too risky.

            

Regis

We have just begun to touch upon broadcast media in our Journalism 120 class and it has struck me, and I’m sure others as well, just how different writing for broadcast is from print journalism.

One of these aspects is the “split script” that conveys both what appears in video on one side, and audio on the other.

That being said, it has led me to appreciate the ability of certain TV personality’s ability to read from teleprompters in a way that leads us to forget that they are reading at all.

Of course, the ability to flawlessly read from teleprompters is not just reserved for TV journalists.

(This begins my awkward transition into an article about Regis Philbin.)

Regis Philbin is not a journalist by trade, but an entertainer, and he has amassed more on-air screen time than anybody else on record with 16,700 hours on television.

Now, after over fifty years in show business, Philbin is retiring from his long-running morning show, LIVE! with Regis & Kelly.

What is amazing about such a long career in show business, is the long list of luminaries Philbin has been able to work with, from Joey Bishop, to Jack Paar (I will now wait for you kids to Google those names).

Waiting…

                        Waiting…

                                                Pretty impressive, huh?

Journalists or Citizens?

Do people that choose to be journalists for a living have to abandon all of their personal beliefs in order to keep their journalistic integrity? More importantly, is the suspension of one’s principles even possible?

Well, this “Sophie’s Choice” of a predicament is becoming a reality for a couple of journalists who have chosen to join the ranks of the Occupy Wall Street protests that have sprung up all around the country.

Lisa Simeone, who has two radio shows on NPR, helped organize the Occupy D.C. rally, but once her employer (NPR) found out they promptly fired her from her job as host of Soundprint.

Soundprint is a political show that mainly deals with climate and political issues. Her bosses at NPR decided that her involvement tainted the unbiased reporting of the radio network. She was initially allowed to keep her second show that deals with opera performances, but NPR soon canceled it.

In addition, there is the story of Caitlin E. Curran a freelance radio host of a show on a Brooklyn based NPR show. Her station, WNYC fired her because she briefly attended the Occupy Wall Street 

protests in New York.

I understand that a journalist has to be objective and I understand that a journalist needs to be nonbiased, but does a journalist also have to suspend their role as a citizen of the country they reside?

Knowing what is right and what is wrong is what makes a good investigative journalist. Therefore, it is no surprise to me that journalists want to attend these protests. The Occupy movement is happening because the income disparity in the U.S. and the world has become too big to be ignored and of course, journalists are keyed-in to this sentiment.

If journalists are being fired for lapses in their integrity for supporting the Occupy movement, then all of the other journalists working for the Mainstream Media that blindly follow the directions of their corporate owners and sponsors should also be fired with the same justification. 

Dennis Ritchie

We recently studied the art of writing obituaries in my journalism class. We discussed many aspects of obituaries, including who gets one in the first place. The people that deserve this honor have to be prominent in society in some way. For good deeds or bad, we remember people for their most famous of deeds. Some deaths seem to occupy the press for weeks or months, like the recent death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. However, some people who have made remarkable contributions that affect us as people on a daily basis, hardy get a mention. Even a man who invented the language that made Apple Computers and Steve Jobs possible in the first place.

His name was Dennis Ritchie, and he was found dead in his New Jersey home on October 12, 2011, just one week after the legendary Apple visionary passed away. You see, Mr. Ritchie developed UNIX, and it was arguably the world’s first computer operating system. Bits and pieces of UNIX, and the genius behind it wound its way into most of the consumer electronics around today. Yes, even the iPhone, and that is why I stated that Ritchie made Steve Jobs possible.

The press however, went with the glitz and glam that resided in the celebrity star power of the Jobs juggernaut. In my opinion, the press really dropped the ball on a perfect teaching moment here. The press could have taught our children that success does not necessarily mean that you have a fan club that praises everything you touch, but they could have shown that a quiet and behind the scenes player can also change the world—like Ritchie did.  Keep in mind that I actually have no problem with the amount of coverage afforded the Jobs death; I just think a visionary like Ritchie could have been offered at least a mention on the national news.

The MSM vs. Occupy Wall Street

What is the mainstream media’s responsibility when it comes to covering the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City? So far, with a few small exceptions, the major television networks have been largely silent on the subject.

Occupy Wall Street, as described on one of the many websites devoted to it says it “is a people powered movement for democracy that began in America on September 17 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City.” This protest and ones affiliated with it around the country are getting plenty of play on social media sites like Reddit and Twitter. The protesters also have celebrities like movie director Michael Moore, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and The Yes Men in their midst, but the media has seemingly given this event a resounding pass.

“Let’s be clear on this.  Both conservative and ‘liberal’ media outlets are playing for the same team, said Marc Adler on Michael Moore's website. “They are all either big corporations themselves or they are owned and controlled by the six mega corporations which dominate the mass media.  As such, a populist revolution is against their interest.”

Recently, television media rightly devoted most of their airtime to cover the various Arab Spring protests that popped up around the Middle East. The networks even sent correspondents to the center of the sometimes-violent protests, but no such embedded coverage exists for the Occupy Wall Street protests by the mainstream media.

However, once again the power of the internet has come to fill the void left by the American media. 

Here, you can watch live streaming video and photos from the protests, as well as live text posts.

If the mainstream media outlets are curious as to why they do not appeal anymore to certain demographics in their old viewership, perhaps they should reconsider their hypocritical editorial stand when it comes to covering protests in America--or be made irrelevant in the process. 

What is This Reuters You Speak Of?

In a recent 60 Minutes /Vanity Fairpoll, a large amount of the public mistook what the Reuters global news agency actually was.

The poll taken in May of this year found that 22 percent of people asked related the Reuters name as that of a German airline, a private New Jersey college, a fast food chain, and a London investment bank. Furthermore, 36 percent of those polled did not even have a guess as to what industry Reuters belonged.

How can this be? Reuters has been covering the world’s news since 1851. They currently employ over 3000 journalists worldwide. Are the Reuters bylines at the bottom of their 1000s of articles published daily too subtle?

Well, one thing is for sure, their competitors might just be better at tooting their own horn. Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler recently said, “that his news organization aims to be the world's "most influential."

In response to the encroachment of the other news agencies, Reuters has gone on a Pulitzer Prize level-hiring spree, in that they have recently hired many of the recipients of the prize in an attempt to raise their public profile.

Reuters has also made great strides with updating their website to attract an increasingly techno-savvy audience.

It would be a shame to see a world-renowned news agency go out of business simply because they did not carry the name recognition of some newer upstarts. I do not think that will happen in this case, but I guess I just wish Reuters would get the credit that is owed. 

The Media's Assange Problem

Are WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange re-raising the journalistic bar originally set by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the Watergate debacle?

The Woodward and Bernstein team fearlessly reported on and released information that eventually lead to the resignation of the President of the United States. As a result, the duo has been heralded as the best journalistic team of all time. They set the gold standard of what it meant to be a journalist.

However, when WikiLeaks releases diplomatic and military cables that uncover even greater wrongs committed by our government than the ones carried out by President Richard Nixon—we label them as a treacherous and anti-American cabal. However, this defamatory talk is not just coming from our government; it is coming from the Mainstream Media themselves. Time Magazine’s writer Joe Klein wrote this, “I am tremendously concernced [sic] about the puerile eruptions of Julian Assange. . . . If a single foreign national is rounded up and put in jail because of a leaked cable, this entire, anarchic exercise in "freedom" stands as a human disaster. Assange is a criminal. He's the one who should be in jail.”

 I cannot help but think that this sort of fiery talk from the likes of Klein and others is based entirely on a childish-professional jealousy. Every journalist who is proud of his or her profession, regardless of his or her personal political bent—deifies the Woodward and Bernstein team for what they were able to pull off. However, after slogging it out in the pressroom for twenty-plus years without a Pulitzer Prize sitting on their mantle, some journalists are put off by the fact that a computer nerd from Australia (Assange) can consistently scoop them.