As I work on the chapters for the book, I’m incorporating some of what I’ve been writing on these topics in recent years. Each of the following posts seems relevant to the chapter topic, “Principles of Creation”. (Special thanks to Josh Sprague, who put these pages together.)
Chapter 3: Principles of Creation
2009
Obama Starts to Follow Through on Transparency
This is indeed good news. The Bush administration’s fanatical devotion to secrecy was at least as much about keeping the public from finding out scandalous behavior as protecting information that, if disclosed, might endanger national security. more…
Newspaper Creates, Discusses Database of Obama Donors, but Hides Full List
This is the kind of thing that makes me crazy. The Washington Post runs an interesting story — Obama’s $100,000-Plus Donors Were Able to Give to Several Entities — about “nearly 100? wealthy families who’ve been giving big bucks to Obama. The story is based on data the paper crunched itself. more…
The Unspoken Peril for “Citizen Journalists” Surprise! You Owe the IRS Some Gift Tax!
StinkyJournalism.org: The Unspoken Peril for “Citizen Journalists” Surprise! You Owe the IRS Some Gift Tax! Is the “donation” of a citizen’s content (video, articles, commentaries, images) to for-profit media outlets that exceeds a fair market value of $12,000 in any single year subject to gift tax? Judging from the IRS guidelines, the answer is “yes.”
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2008
Authors: Government Censorship Better than Corporate
LA Observed has a post about how KRON TV in San Francisco disinvited the authors of a new book from a talk-show appearance after discovering that the book, No Time to Think: The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle, takes shots at the crappy state of local TV news. My initial reaction was incredulity. I mean, how clueless is that kind of move? more…
NY Times Continues to Push Old-Media Boundaries
Two interesting developments today at the New York Times online:
The first, and most noteworthy, is the paper’s welcome discovery that aggregation of and links to things it didn’t produce in-house improve the audience experience. As the graphic shows, the green-highlighted items below the story summaries are links to coverage in other media — including bloggers and direct competitors. The technology behind this feature comes from Blogrunner, a news aggregator the Times acquired a while back. more…
Unethical Practices by Ex-General and NBC News
The New York Times’ David Barstow has an astonishing piece in today’s paper, “One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex,” about former “drug czar” and retired general Barry McCaffrey, one of many retired military people working as supposedly independent analysts for various news organizations but who are anything but independent. more…
Housing Bubble Journalism: Still Inadequate
In today’s Wall Street Journal story about the deflation of the housing bubble, “Housing Pain Gauge: Nearly 1 in 6 Owners ‘Under Water’,” consider this passage: more…
CNN’s Small Mistake, Apple Shareholders’ Big One
NY Times: Apple Denies ‘Citizen Journalist Report’. Apple’s stock took a brief roller coaster ride this morning after a CNN “citizen journalist” wrote that an “insider” reported that Steve Jobs had been rushed to the hospital with chest pains.
Aha! Those infernal citizen journalists are ruining the world! more…
Financial Meltdown: Journalists Ignored the Early and Obvious Signs
If our economy goes off a cliff, journalists won’t be the ones at fault. But they’ll have much to answer for anyway, because they utterly failed to do their jobs when it counted. more…
Double Standard in Olbermann-Matthews Downgrading
NBC has every right to take Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews out of their anchor chairs for political events. But there’s a bizarre double standard at work in much of the traditional media commentary on this. more…
ABC News Responds on Anthrax, Sort Of
Props to TVNewser’s Steven Krakauer, who has an interview with Brian Ross of ABC News. Ross is the journalist who in 2001 fueled our national fears with his reporting on the anthrax killings, citing unnamed sources who falsely linked the anthrax attacks to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. In light of recent (and still somewhat murky) revelations in recent days, Jay Rosen and I asked three questions we hoped ABC would address. (Here’s my version; here’s Jay’s.) more…
ABC Has Major Questions to Answer in Anthrax Story
ABC News’ behavior surrounding one of its biggest “scoops” is already an object lesson of what’s wrong with American journalism. The news organization has proved unwilling — so far, at any rate — to come clean about how it was manipulated in the 2001 (and later) investigation into the anthrax attacks in the US following September 11. more…
Helping the Almost-Journalists Do Journalism
Doing journalism at its most basic level is a combination of two essential tasks. The first is reporting — gathering information via research, interviews, etc. The second part is telling your audience what you’ve learned — writing (in the broadest sense, including video, audio, graphics and more) and editing. more…
Sock Puppets for the Bush Administration
It is, of course, a scandal. What’s worse is the non-response of the media companies that have been suckers for this propaganda. Stonewalling is what we should expect from the government, not supposedly responsible news organizations. more…
Sustainability in Citizen Media
In a brief but illuminating email thread leading up to a small conference on Friday in LA, we’re looking at key questions about citizen media’s future. One, obviously, is sustainability, which we all agree is key. more…
AP: Media barred from covering Rove speech at prep school. The media have been barred from covering a speech by former presidential adviser Karl Rove to students at a prestigious prep school on Monday.
Please, please, Choate students — blog it. Be the media. Don’t let Rove or your administration get away with this. more…
Capturing a Moment, but Not a Life
I could follow anyone reading this with a video camera for an hour and post something on the Web that would make you look ridiculous. You could do the same to me. Neither posting would reflect who we really are. more…
Lord Black is the author of “Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full” and “Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom.”
True, I guess, but of course it’s missing the most salient element of the man’s recent biography — his criminal conviction for looting the media company he controlled. more…
2007
Confirming a Lie
I want to come full circle on a posting last July, when a London newspaper, commenting on the likely move of a senior News Corp. editor to the Wall Street Journal should — as has happened — Rupert Murdoch’s company buy Dow Jones. more…
Former Bush PR Head Calls Right-Wing Bloggers Political Stenographers
Dan Bartlett in Texas Monthly: I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.
Again, Big Media Guy Tries to Make it Bloggers Versus Journalists
Jeff Jarvis ably shreds NY Times editor Bill Keller’s straw men. Sadly, Keller and other major media people are still making this a bloggers against professional journalists question, which is not the question at all, or at least hasn’t been for anyone who actually knows anything about the development of new media. more…
Meanwhile, Solid Reporting from NY Times
The New York Times, eschewing bogus journalism, takes on the raft of falsehoods Rudy Guiliani has been peddling to sell his presidential candidacy — and does it without the standard he-said, she-said mincing of words. In “Citing Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again,” reporter Michael Cooper cites “facts” that
are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong. And while, to be sure, all candidates use misleading statistics from time to time, Mr. Giuliani has made statistics a central part of his candidacy as he campaigns on his record.
On Klein’s Errors, Time’s Semi-Stonewall and the Net’s Power
The furor surrounding Joe Klein’s misguided column of a week ago continues, incredibly, given Klein’s bizarre insistence on digging the hole deeper instead of forthrightly acknowledging error(s) and moving on. But this is not just about a columnist’s mistakes and tone-deafness. This is a debacle for the publication and company that employs him, because Time itself has compounded the problem, demonstrating contempt for its audience. more…
Shameful ‘Journalism’ by Time Magazine’s Joe Klein
One of the most amazing episodes in modern American journalism has emerged from a flagrantly inaccurate and misguided Time magazine column by Joe Klein. He’s a political writer whose work in this case may become Exhibit A for what’s wrong with the craft today. more…
New York Times’ Continuing Dealings with Sleazy Former Wall Streeter
Clark Hoyt, the paper’s public editor, notes the NY Times’ continuing publication of pieces by Henry Blodget, one of the Internet bubble’s most notorious characters. In “Taint by Association” Hoyt asks two key questions: more…
A Guaranteed Profit? Why?
My friend Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal’s superb tech columnist, has a plea in today’s paper called “Free My Phone” — asking the government force open what he calls the “Soviet Ministry” model of mobile phone service, a system that treats customers as if they were pawns. more…
Mortgage (and Journalism) Meltdown
If any other Bay Area newspaper was more of a cheerleader for the real estate bubble as it inflated than the Chronicle, I don’t know what it is. Now as the meltdown occurs, there’s apparently no reflection inside the paper about its own role in this mess. more…
NY Times and MoveOn Ad: Violation of Policy
One notable lapse, in addition: When I looked at the Times home page today I didn’t find any reference to Hoyt’s piece. It should have been flagged on the home page, because this is a case where transparency would best be more prominent. A small, unchanging link to the public-editor page is insufficient. more…
NY Times’ Brave Change: Opening Archives
Glad to see that the Times is putting its great cast of columnists more firmly back into the public conversation than they’d been behind the pay-wall. That’s excellent news for the writers and the readers. more…
Crocodile Tears from Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
Observe “Trashing Petraeus,” an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal. It weeps for the loss of civility in political discourse, pointing to a MoveOn.org advertisement in yesterday’s New York Times and congressional Democrats’ silence about it as evidence that “the ability of the U.S. political system to function will be impaired in a way no one would wish for.” more…
Journalists Failure to Dispel Saddam-9/11 Myth is Media Scandal
Buried in this New York Times story is the following incredible finding from a new poll:
Six in 10 Americans said in the poll that administration officials deliberately misled the public in making a case for the war; 33 percent of all Americans, including 40 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats, say Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Neglecting to Mention That Other Mortgage-Meltdown Villain
Howard Kurtz, in his Washington Post “Media Notes Extra,” has an appropriate caution for journalists:
Memo to the media: Everyone who is defaulting on a home mortgage is not necessarily a victim.
An Astonishing Admission by a Journalism Professor
Please read “Annals of Reporting” from today’s Talking Points Memo, in which Josh Marshall describes what looks like a classic example of journalistic malpractice. more…
Another Gross Journalistic Failure
Newspapers and broadcasters were raking in billions in advertising from the real estate and banking industries as this bubble inflated. I do not believe this is a coincidence. (Update: I also don’t believe it was deliberate malfeasance; but you just don’t see lots of tough coverage in media of the people and companies paying the bills.) more…
Rove’s Understanding of the Media
Jay Rosen: Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press. Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.) Savviness—that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, “with it,” and unsentimental in all things political—is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain.
My own impression is that Jay is a little too hard here on the Washington press corps, and in particular on the (yes, relatively few) members who have not fallen prey to insider-ness. more…
Did the Reporter Actually Read the Law?
In the New York Times yesterday, the second paragraph of James Risen’s story, “Bush Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping,” reads:
Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.
Google News to Let Subjects of Stories Comment
From the Google News blog comes news of a new initiative “Perspectives about the news from people in the news.” more…
Fake Steve Jobs: Hypocrite or New Believer?
The Forbes article in which Lyons trashed the blog world was such a bad piece of journalism that it was easy to discount. But let’s be generous and give Lyons credit for understanding that the new medium is worth trying after all. more…
A Note Regarding Comments
New commenters here must have one comment approved before they can routinely post without moderation. A recent comment contained a Nazi reference, calling a public figure a Nazi (he isn’t one). I deleted it without letting it go through.
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Opaque Behavior from Chicago Tribune
The news business remains one of the most opaque anywhere. Things journalists demand of others are considered impossible when the tables are turned. Hypocritical? Of course. But hardly a surprise, given that business people are in charge. more…
Incongruities in SF Columnist’s Valedictory Piece
David Lazarus has been, in general, an excellent business columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s taken consumer protection more seriously than just about any journalist in California, and perhaps the nation. Now he’s moving to the Los Angeles Times, where I hope he’ll thrive. more…
British Media Criticism: Fierce and Detailed
In London for a meeting with colleagues on a non-journalism project, I’ve been devouring the British press — noting, not for the first time, that the papers here do something that U.S. media folks do too little: tough media criticism. more…
Times Public Editor Off To Fast Start
Clark Hoyt, the New York Times’ new public editor (ombudsman), is off to a fast start. Today, in “Tiptoeing Around the Family Business,” he asks the paper to cover the story of the NY Times Company’s failings as a business: more…
News Organizations: Time to Say ‘No’ and Mean It
The NFL and other major sports leagues became popular in large part because traditional media organizations built them up. Now that the power is in the hands of the leagues, they’re throwing it around in increasingly brazen ways. more…
Old Newspaper Trick Backfires in Blogging Round-Up
Scott Rosenberg, in “There is no “first blogger,” dismantles the Wall Street Journal’s well-intentioned but surprisingly clueless weekend round-up about the so-called 10th anniversary of blogging. At issue, for many folks, are the Journal’s assertions about who did things first in the weblog world. By general agreement the newspaper got it wrong. more…
Citizen Black: A Criminal
This guy has been bad news for years. But his arrogance probably had as much to do with his problems as his actual business dealings. Let’s hope he’s out of journalism for good. more…
Journalistic Transparency in NY Times Q&A From Iraq
A long Q&A: Life in Iraq on the New York Times website shows the Baghdad bureau in more human terms, and gives readers an even better idea of what life is like in that nation. At one point John F. Burns, the newspaper’s outstanding bureau chief, writes of the Iraqi nationals who do an enormous amount of the actual reporting: more…
Welcome Transparency from Google
Google has launched a Public Policy Blog that is a model of the genre. A principal author is Andrew McLaughlin, the company’s director of public policy and government affairs (and a Berkman Fellow to boot). more…
Amateurish Pro Journalism Promotes Dishonest Book
It’s disappointing to see the new book, “Cult of the Amateur,” getting so much attention from media organizations — but sadly not surprising. more…
Unfortunate Advertising at TPMmuckraker
The advertisement at the top of a story this morning on TPMmuckraker.com held out the promise of a “Free Apple iPhone.” I had to turn off the audio come-on that launched when I loaded the page, which was annoying enough. But that’s not why I note this ad, or why Joshua Micah Marshall, proprietor of the TPMmuckraker site, and his colleagues should reconsider whether they want to do business with this particular advertiser. more…
Media Transparency, or Lack Thereof
The The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda has released a fascinating and valuable study of transparency at 25 major journalism organizations with global or otherwise widespread audiences:
A majority of the public believes the media can’t be trusted. Which global news sites are most transparent about their operations? Not necessarily the ones you would think….
Newspaper Barred from Blogging Baseball Game
The paper is naturally challenging the NCAA’s right to do this, and should, because the collegiate association is being ridiculous. more…
Amateurish “Cult of the Amateur”
Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture, was officially published this week. It is a shabby and dishonest treatment of an important topic. more…
Editorial Integrity Gets Boost
This article, “10 Things We Hate About Apple,” caused a mini-revolution inside of PC World, a magazine that is part of the IDG empire. Harry McCracken, the editor in chief, quit in protest when the story was killed but returned when it was reinstated and the publisher reassigned to other IDG duties. more…
Politico and Transparency
The Politico has, it seems to me, shown a somewhat rightward tilt. That’s fine, but the site should also be practicing a bit more transparency. more…
Jack Valenti: Wish He’d Been on Our Side
The news of Jack Valenti’s death reminds me of a column I wrote about him a few years ago. I wished, I said, that he’d been on our side in the copyright wars — that is, the side of those who wanted a fairer balance of interests. Valenti worked for the Hollywood cartel, however, and a balanced position was not in the cards. more…
Interviews, Email or Live
Wired News calls Jason Calacanis “cowardly” for refusing to do an interview except by email. Pretty thin-skinned response to Jason’s fuller explanation of why that’s his policy. more…
Whose Journalistic Standards?
Credibility is essential to a news organization, or at least some news organizations, and that means applying due diligence to material from the sources we cite and quote. more…
NBC Links Itself to Slaughter
NBC wasn’t wrong to put some of the grotesque Cho pictures and videos on the air and the Net. But it made a catastrophic marketing blunder in the process. more…
Maniac’s Video, Ethics and Tactics
The only reason this was a dilemma was that NBC had the videos exclusively — though NBC didn’t know that for certain. For all the network knew, the videos were on their way to the competition. more…
Blogger as Journalist: Shaming the Professionals
The blogger is a history professor. But what he did in this case was, purely and simply, journalism. more…
Iterating Blog Codes of Conduct
Tim O’Reilly, instrumental in the recent brouhaha over blogging codes of conduct, offers some valuable “Lessons Learned So Far,” which include: more…
New Boston Free Daily puts Bloggers on the Page
BostonNOW, a new free weekly set to launch April 17th, expects to fill out its content with excerpts from local bloggers. A small staff will cover local events, and some wire service stories will be included. more…
In Blogosphere, Honor Should Rule
I don’t believe there’s a need for a “code of conduct” for bloggers and commenters beyond the simple notion at the top of the NYT story: Be civil. That includes other concepts, such as Disclose your biases. And stand behind your own words. It’s about honor, nothing more. more…
Perhaps This Was Published Late
Slate’s Jack Shafer writes “In defense of the Anna Nicole Smith feeding frenzy“: more…
Neal Shine, R.I.P.
My professional life has been particularly blessed by a small group of people who pushed me to be better. They challenged me to try new things, to adapt and endure.
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Principles of Journalism, Citizen and Otherwise
This morning we’re happy to announce a new project, “Principles of Citizen Journalism” — a look at the key principles that we believe are at the basis of journalistic work for professionals and non-professionals alike. more…
Save-the-Newspapers Columnist Fires Back, Misses
The SF Chronicle’s David Lazarus, normally a terrific columnist, digs a deeper hole today in a surprisingly un-sharp response to criticism of another recent column. more…
Consumer Reports’ Integrity in Action
Consumer Reports is a publication that works hard to get things right. In its February issue it ran a dramatically wrong review of children’s car seats — flawed due to poor testing methods — and seriously jeopardized the trust it had won from its readers. more…
The Author’s Privilege
I’ve just read the galleys of a book that will be published in a few weeks. It discusses the rise of edge-in, democratized media in distinctly unflattering ways. That, of course, is the author’s privilege. more…
Pay-for-Play Bloggers Pollute Media Ethics
This is not a close call. To take money for touting products in a blog and not disclose it — prominently, and in context — is not ethical. No amount of thumb-sucking justifications can change that. more…
Fortune Magazine’s Ethical Problem
Loomis is unquestionably a fine journalist, and Fortune a great magazine. But the situation is a huge blind spot for Fortune — and it’s not the first time the publication has neglected to disclose relevant conflicts. more…
Tarring the Blog with Others’ Vile Comments
Howard Kurtz, in his online Media Notes Extra column at the Washington Post, fulminates about some disgusting comments posted on a well-known blog site. more…
JetBlue’s CEO, on the Web, Finally
criticized JetBlue yesterday for missing an opportunity in its customer-relations debacle of recent days. The company’s failure to use its website smartly, I said, was a missed opportunity. more…
JetBlue: An Opportunity Missed, Online
The New York Times, running an interview with David G. Neeleman, the beleaguered chief executive of airline JetBlue, reports that “JetBlue’s C.E.O. Is ‘Mortified’ After Fliers Are Stranded” in last week’s snowstorms. Neeleman’s words to the Times are indeed abject in their regret, and forceful in his intention to turn around a situation that may have hurt his company badly. more…
Not Getting Close to the Whole Story
The online magazine spiked has a story entitled “Is Wikipedia part of a new ‘global brain’?” in which a writer asks some reasonable questions but then undermines herself with — at best — incomplete reporting. more…
Cut-and-Paste Opinion-Making
This practice indicts almost everyone involved: the organizations that gin up semi-phony public sentiment; the letter “writers” who cut and paste what they’re told to say; and the newspapers that print the letters without serious due diligence. more…
Good Advice on Reader Comments
Rebecca Dube’s advice to readers who comment on the Toronto Globe & Mail includes:
1. Understand that an online discussion is not a free-for-all. Editors like me moderate online discussions for reasons of space, time and basic human decency.
This will be difficult for some folks, unfortunately. more…
CNN’s Shallowness:
I’m in an airport airline club where a big-screen TV is showing CNN. It’s a split screen. Half is devoted to some meaningless hearing in the Anna Nicole Smith case. The other features a private plane that may or may not be having trouble with landing gear. more…
Hyperbole Trumps Journalism
An open WiFi signal is nothing of the sort for people who make routine adjustments for safety of the data in their own computer, such as a firewall on one’s own PC. It’s entirely possible to run an open signal without seriously jeopardizing one’s own data in the way the article suggests through its painfully strained analogy. more…
Context in Citizen Video Whistleblowing
The SF Chronicle catches up with a somewhat old story today with a piece called “Creeps beware: Web gives women revenge / Catcall recipients share their stories — and men’s photos” — an article focusing on the way female bloggers are using the HollaBack sites to “post pictures and videos of guys who harass them in public.” more…
Journalistic Transparency from Libby Trial
The National Journal’s William Powers, in “Mirror, Mirror,” writes of the “Scooter” Libby trial in Washington, where various kinds of journalistic and political malpractice (and just plain regular functioning) are on display: more…
Apple Has Been Telling its Own Story for Years
Dave Winer, commenting on Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ open letter on digital restrictions for downloaded music, says Apple is now a media company: more…
Verify, Verify, Verify
Accuracy matters. That includes fact-checking. When you aren’t sure of the original source, this goes triple. more…
CNBC: News or Boosterism?
The Bartiromo situation is only the most recent flagrant example of questionable ethics in big media, but far from the only one. Look at the Scooter Libby trial in Washington, where all kinds of unhealthy journalistic practices are being hung out for exposure. more…
When Did Apple Become a Government?
This headine on the Macworld site — Former Apple marketer moves to the private sector — is unintentionally hilarious. You can move to the private sector from the public sector, but the latter is government, not another company. more…
Bogus Web Conversation by Clinton
NY Times: On Web, Voters Question Clinton Directly. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton sat in a fake living-room set on Monday night and fielded questions on a live video Webcast.
Was this a joke? Clinton’s alleged conversations with America have been so entirely scripted as to be laughable.
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Swampland, Indeed
Time Magazine has launched a Washington political blog, where at least one of the staffers posting to the site shows how he doesn’t get the medium at all — and perhaps needs remedial work in basic journalism, too.
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Digital Age Gives PR Folks Easier Way to Say No?
An honorable tradition among lawyers is representing defendants whom they strongly suspect to be guilty, especially people with little or no ability to pay for their defense. more…
Connecting Readership with Pay
Over at Micro Persuasion, Steve Rubel takes note of a new pay-per-performance system at ZDNet, where writers will be rewarded in part based on how many people read what they write. more…
Wall Street Journal’s Tech-Lingo Goof
A recent story about acronyms and abbreviations (sorry, it’s behind the Journal’s pay-wall, so I won’t link to it) began:
Do your MP3s get tangled in your BVDs? Have you confused an ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund) with an ETF (Effluent-Treatment Facility)? Do you ever order a QPC (Quarter Pounder with Cheese) by mistake at KFC?
Surges and Orwell
The media’s willingness — again — to be stenographers instead of actual journalists is tiring. Not surprising, though. more…
2006
Shooting before Aiming
A business-oriented website all but accused the editor of Men’s Health magazine, in a blog posting on Yahoo, of inserting an advertising plug into his copy. Oh, there was a disclaimer of sorts — maybe the blog writer “really loves the product,” suggested Dan Zoll in his posting — but the rest of the piece left almost no doubt in my mind about what he was thinking. more…
Double Whammy on Non-Disclosure
Long Island Business News runs an op-ed column under former U.S. Sen. Al D’Amato’s byline entitled, “Newsday’s new day: Murdoch or consortium?” It’s basically a suggestion that Tribune Co. sell its Newsday newspaper to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. more…
Video News Release Sleaze: Not a Government Matter
Two media and marketing watchdog groups issued a new report showing that the use of unlabeled VNRs by local TV “news” programs was continuing even in the face of heightened scrutiny. more…
Peeling Back Even More Layers
Tom Evslin’s graceful retraction of something he wrote recently helps us understand the changing media scene. Let’s unpack what happened.
In a posting entitled “Networked Citizen Journalists at Work” (including himself), he discussed the way folks peered into a small telecom company’s apparent business model. What prompted them? An item in David Pogue’s New York Times tech blog, which left some unanswered questions. more…
Another Tale of Incomplete Transparency
Business Week: Wal-Mart’s Jim and Laura: The Real Story. So are Laura and Jim real people? Or part of an elaborate publicity stunt? It turns out they are for real. However, their story, told in full, with certain financial payments disclosed, does not reflect as well on Wal-Mart as perhaps the company would like. The tale of how they started the blog reveals how hungry Wal-Mart is to find people who have anything positive to say about the company. And little wonder.
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*PayPerPost: A Cancer on the Blogosphere, or Merely Semi-Sleazy
Jason Calacanis has written a very tough piece about an operation called PayPerPost, a company that has gotten serious venture-capital backing for a “service” in which bloggers are paid to write about products — but are not required to disclose their financial interest. more…
Deception in Journalism
The Poynter Institute’s Bob Steele, in an essay entitled “HP’s Glass-Housed Critics,” writes:
Journalists are not above using some forms of deception to get stories. We’ve long used our own form of sting operations. We’ve played private detective in ways that aren’t always so kosher. Sometimes we pretend to be someone other than a journalist. Sometimes we are just less than forthright as we gather and glean information.
Do Public Media Believe in the Public?
I spent part of yesterday at a small conference organized by WGBH, the huge Boston-based public broadcasting operation. The topic under discussion was “open media,” which means different things to different people. more…
Transparency Not a Newspaper Ethic, Sometimes
The traditional media business is beginning to show signs of transparency, but only beginning. This case is a great example of how corporate media behave: like corporations. more…
Our Best Values Include Speech
Bob Cox, in ‘The best test of truth’, makes the case that free speech, one of America’s core values, should be one of our chief cultural exports in an often hostile world. It’s an eloquent essay. more…
Covering a Lie
The New York Times discusses “The Lonelygirl That Really Wasn’t” but skirts the ethical questions — including the fact that the site in question was deceiving people, and that the creators plainly hope to make money on the people they’ve deceived. Isn’t that — at least as much the smart forensic work that exposed the lie — the more important story? more…
When Editors Sound Like Politicians
If any business should speak directly, it’s the journalism business. But it’s just another enterprise where corporate-speak substitutes for clarity. more…
AP: Some CBS Affiliates Worry over 9/11 Show. Broadcasters say the hesitancy of some CBS affiliates to air a powerful Sept. 11 documentary next week proves there’s been a chilling effect on the First Amendment since federal regulators boosted penalties for television obscenities after Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed at a Super Bowl halftime show.
Help Us Create Training Modules for Citizen Journalists
As citizen journalism moves from an interesting concept to something more and more people will practice, we need to help would-be citizen journalists understand some fundamental principles of the craft. more…
Newspapers and Section Front Advertising
The LA Times editors are in a tizzy about the prospect of advertising on their section fronts, according to a story in the paper today. more…
A ‘Duh’ Moment for Newspapers
News websites have been notoriously stingy in their crediting of others’ work, for the same reason that they hate to write stories that are catching up with other people’s scoops. It’s a competitive thing. more…
Citizen Media Highlights Apparent Plagiarism
The postings in TPMmuckraker’s Ann Coulter Archives lead to various articles and other evidence that her rancid writings aren’t always her own words, and the site is looking for more examples that it plans to publish soon. more…
Profiles in Newspaper Spinelessness
The editorial page editor of the Shreveport Times frets about the rancid writings of Ann Coulter, which appear on his page. Wondering, Hamlet-style, if he should replace her with a rational conservative, he says:
So while her harangues finally may have grown tiresome, we would be reluctant to pull her column from our pages based on her attack on widows, believing that would be flirting with censorship.
Citizen Business Reporters, and Disclosure Issue, in New Site
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Gatekeeping at NYT Editorial Page
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Buzz Needs TransparencyTransparency is vital, not optional, in this new marketing relationship – and this is not simply about what’s ethical. Transparency is also smarter. You may never get caught pulling a fast one, but if you do, you will be punished. more…
Thin-Air Numbers and Untrustworthy Reporting
As NBC News continues to embarrass itself with its Dateline “predator” series — including unethical payments for help in pulling off stings — now it turns out that the network is basing a key baseline statistic on hocus-pocus. more…
Partial Truth Abortion
This kind of thing should make journalists of all stripes, online and traditional, cringe. TruthOut stated, without the slightest hedging, that Karl Rove had been indicted, citing a variety of unnamed sources. Now it’s sort of, kind of, backing off the story. See this deconstruction of the TruthOut semi-retraction by Salon’s Tim Grieve for details on the journalistic perversity involved. more…
Wall Street Journal: Rove’s Camp Takes Center of Web Storm. With more people turning to the Internet for news, bloggers have blurred the lines with traditional media and changed both the dynamics of the reporting process and how political rumors swirl.
The Journal’s story raises some good issues, especially the question of whether putting stuff out there to see if it holds up is a worthy journalistic standard. (It is not.)
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Language Abuse
The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen wrote a column saying (incorrectly, I believe) Stephen Colbert wasn’t funny in his lampooning of the president at the ridiculous White House Correspondents Dinner. Cohen got inundated with emails, a significant number of which apparently came from utter jerks. more…
*Mini-Transparency from NY Times Reflects Unfortunate Mindset
There are almost never just two sides to anything, at least not two equally compelling and truthful positions battling it out based on actual facts. Issues are infinitely nuanced in most cases, a universe of grays in a culture (journalistic and beyond) where we pretend, or maybe wish, that everything is black or white. more…
NBC Dateline Shreds Ethical Boundaries
Washington Post: NBC newsmagazine paid pedophile watchdog group to run sting. The NBC newsmagazine “Dateline” agreed to pay a civilian watchdog group more than $100,000 to create a pedophile sting operation that the network plans to feature in a series of programs next month, network representatives and the organization’s founder said.more…
More Bad Acts by “Mainstream” Journalists
This is old-fashioned reporting at its best. But this time the people being reported on are TV “news” shows that have abandoned their principles. more…
Bottom Up and Top Down
Jeff Jarvis, commenting on a couple of stories in the New York Times, says:
The problem is that they still think the internet is something the powerful use to affect the rest of us. Wrong. It’s what the rest of us use to affect the powerful.
It’s both, actually. more…
Opinion Laundering
My name for this slippery stuff is “opinion laundering” — getting others to take your positions while keeping your own fingerprints off the operation, as a money launderer does in turning illicit cash into the kind he can spend or invest openly. more…
Another Thought on Huffington-Clooney Fracas
The fists haven’t stopped flying over the Huffington Post’s bad move in reprinting George Clooney’s statements in other venues as blog postings, and Arianna Huffington’s mea culpa is not placating the critics. The more I learn about what happened, the more I agree that this was an egregiously bad move on her part. more…
One More Reason Newspapers are Losing Readers: Cowardice
We can argue about whether the concept of an editorial page is outmoded, but as long as editorial pages exist they have a nearly absolute obligation to talk with their communities about the big issues of the day, and to take stands. This decision — this refusal to engage in a core function of a newspaper — is cowardly. more…
*Bloggers and Disclosure
It should go without saying that the bloggers should make this disclosure, right? No question, the ones who parrot a company line — down to using the company’s words — ought to be more forthcoming about the connections. more…
Paying for a Product that’s Taken Away
I’ve been a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal’s online edition ever since the news organization started charging for it. The price has risen again and again, but I’ve found the value worth the cost. more…
A Big Media Content Dilemma, in a Nutshell
This story in Editor & Publisher, about American media’s unwillingness to print or broadcast the cartoons that have so dramatically inflamed many in the Muslim world, speaks volumes about the industry’s lowest-common-denominator approach to its audience. more…
A Publisher’s Deceptions, Money Trumping Honor
Individuals deceive. This is life. But when big institutions aid and abet the deceptions — especially institutions like major (supposedly) nonfiction book publishers, where some effort in service of truth is supposed to be part of the bargain with the readers — they sink lower than the offending author. more…
Oprah’s Wise Reconsideration
Winfrey understands several things that so many other people do not: more…
Journalists Having Transparency Imposed on Them
The CEO of a company called Overstock.com turns the tables on Business Week by arranging Web publication of an e-mail interview: more…
Author Channeling George Orwell
Australian Broadcasting: Frey, Oprah stand by controversial memoir. James Frey says he stands by the “essential truth” of his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, after accusations were levelled that significant parts of the Oprah-approved best-seller were fabricated. Frey chose CNN’s ‘Larry King Live’ show to defend his memoir and at the end of the show, Oprah Winfrey phoned in to say that she remained happy to recommend the book, despite the controversy. more…
GOP Schmoozing Bloggers at Alito Hearings
Michelle Malkin and a bunch of other right-wing folks are in Washington for a “blogger forum” courtesy of the Republican National Committee. more…
World Economic Forum’s Slow-Motion Transparency
The World Economic Forum is going to do some “Broadcasting, Podcasting, Webcasting and Blogging” at its annual meeting later this month. Too bad they’re not putting everything out for public consumption, but this is progress. more…
2005
HP Gets a Clue
Thomas Hawk posted a civil but negative comment on a Hewlett-Packard blog. HP deleted it. Hawk raised hell, and got noticed. David Gee, the HP blog host, reversed his decision. more…
USA Today and Churchill Club Put Public in Dark
Tom Foremski, over at Silicon Valley Watcher, notes that the Churchill Club teamed up with USA Today on an event about the future of media — and barred the press. I enjoyed Tom’s humorous call for assistance (I LOL at the picture he posted), but unfortunately found out about this travesty too late to weigh in before the event. more…
More Bad Behavior by ‘Journalists’
Wall Street Journal (subscription): How Companies Pay TV Experts For On-Air Product Mentions. Plugs Come Amid News Shows And Appear Impartial; Pacts Are Rarely Disclosed. more…
Update on “Journalist” Taking Government Pay
We’re seeing a pretty disturbing trend here. And people of honor in the journalism community — amateur or pro and no matter what their politics — should be on the case. more…
The Blogosphere’s Over-Reaching on “Jeff Gannon”
The Des Moines Register dissects the conspiracy theories surrounding the notorious White House pseudo-journalist who goes under the name of Jeff Gannon. This story nicely shows how what began as a solid online investigation — distributed journalism — has morphed into some bizarre theorizing based on too few facts. more…
Hypocrisy in the Ranks of the Powerful
It’s not just DeLay who’s a hypocrite. Turns out that Bush sued a car-rental agency, looking for a deep pocket. more…
AP Won’t Say It; Blogger Does
Bruce Schneier, a world-class authority on security-in-technology issues, points out an AP story reporting on the flagrant lies told by the Bush administration’s Transportation Safety Administration about its scandalous handling of “private” passenger data. AP won’t call the agency’s dissembling for what it is — lying — but Schneier does. more…
Another Journalist on the Govt. Payroll
The only word for this latest tale of a journalist on the take from government is “sickening” — and the question is how many more of these people will be exposed? more…
Google and Transparency
I remain an admirer of Google, but like many other people I’m worried that the company is getting too big for its virtual britches. As Jeff Jarvis and others have noted lately, there’s a worrisome bent toward “trust us” in the operation of Google News, a site I like but find frequently frustrating. more…
Hint: It’s Hyperbole
A predictable uproar will soon erupt in the blogosphere over Tina Brown’s latest column (reg req) for the Washington Post. The piece, after rambling around a bit, ends up being a useful exploration of why our society has become so dangerously risk-averse, and notably so in our private lives. more…
Bush and Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda
Frank Rich (NY Times): Enron: Patron Saint of Bush’s Fake News. That $97 million may yet prove a mere down payment. The Times reported last weekend that the administration told executive-branch agencies simply to ignore a stern directive by the Congressional Government Accountability Office discouraging the use of “covert propaganda” like the Karen Ryan “news reports.” In other words, the brakes are off, and before long, the government could have a larger budget for fake news than actual television news divisions have for real news. At last weekend’s Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how “most” of his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and the Washington press corps yukked it up. The joke, however, is on them – and us.
The New York Times story to which he refers ran last week, and it’s a scalding look at a corrupt practice. more…
Tribune Kills Anti-Bush Cartoon
It’s over the top, I agree, but the paper explained its decisions to readers, according to Romenesko, this way: “Today’s original Boondocks strip presents inaccurate information as fact.” more…
Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda from California Governor
I’m a passionate partisan for citizen journalism. But it is not, anytime soon, going to be a replacement for the valuable work done by the pros — and the more people like Bush and Schwarzenegger and their allies try to devalue honorable journalism, the more they’re devaluing democracy itself. more…
Blogging Sponsorship, Silicon Valley Style
Tom Foremski, formerly of the Financial Times, now runs Silicon Valley Watcher, which is just what it sounds like. He’s just announced his first sponsor, and the announcement comes in the form of an advertorial full of praise for the sponsor.
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A Biased Headline Twists a Story
Today’s New York Times has a story entitled “Federal Effort to Head Off TV Piracy Is Challenged” — a headline that gives the entire weight of the dispute to one side. The story describes efforts by several organizations to challenge the Federal Communications Commission’s mandate, on behalf of the copyright cartel in the entertainment industry, to lock down digitally broadcast signals so they can’t be copied.
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Speaking Back to the NY Times
In his column today, Dan Okrent, the New York Times’ Public Editor (read: ombudsman), offers some valuable ideas on how the newspaper can use the Web better to have a conversation with the readers, especially readers who feel aggrieved for one reason or another about the coverage. more…
Combatting Non-Transparent PR with Grassroots Energy
In an appropriately scathing posting on his Wi-Fi blog, Glenn Fleishman goes after think tanks and lobbying organizations that seem, in at least some cases, to be what he calls “sock puppets” for the telecommunications-industry giants that want to stop municipally built data systems before they start. more…
Promoting the California Housing Bubble
Passing through Los Angeles this morning, I bought a copy of the Orange County Register. On Page One was a huge promo to this story (reg req), which took up three inside pages. more…
Buzz-Makers: More Disclosure, Please
Newsweek: The Connected Get More Connected. This month, 100 of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, lawyers, bloggers and promoters will begin receiving cool new stuff for free, delivered straight to their homes and offices. In return, these movers and shakers promise to sample the products and offer feedback to the their manufacturers. The companies hope that, if the mood strikes, the Silicon Valley 100 will chat up, blog on, or just plain recommend the products to friends and colleagues, generating that most invaluable of currencies: buzz.
This is oddly creepy. Will the people getting this stuff will routinely tell people they’ve gotten it for free? (Glad to see that Joi Ito says he will…) more…
The End of Objectivity (Version 0.91)
Maybe it’s time to say a fond farewell to an old canon of journalism: objectivity. But it will never be time to kiss off the values and principles that undergird the idea. more…
Pointing to the Original
Over at ZDNet, David Berlind takes a deeper look at the transparency issue. He notes a posting that included an MP3 audio link of a key interview he did for the story. It’s a fine idea. more…
Lazy Equivalence on Journalism Ethics
The WSJ fell into what I call the “lazy equivalence” trap in this story today about two bloggers who got paid as consultants by the Dean presidential campaign. The article seeks to connect these payments with the vastly more serious Armstrong Williams payola scandal, in which the Bush administration paid the right-wing commentator more than $240,000 to promote an education policy. more…
Why CBS Should Have Been Smarter
Jay Rosen asks why (scroll down) I used the word “smarter” in a recent posting about the CBS News debacle, in which I said, in part: “It would have been smarter for CBS to thank, not make semi-snide remarks about, the bloggers who raised the important questions about the authenticity of the memos. But you can’t have everything.” more…
CBS News’ Half-Regrets
I’ve been reading the CBS News report (big PDF) on what some call “Rather-gate” — the poor journalistic practices that led the network’s news division to do insufficient due diligence in last fall’s report on George Bush’s National Guard service. The report is being picked to pieces by anti-CBS folks, but I think it’s a sign of progress that the network came relatively clean on its failings — and then fired some of the people responsible. more…
Bush Administration Invents ‘News’ and Pays Journalist
Given this administration’s fondness for fiscal recklessness, war-inducing lies, torture, attacks on civil-liberties and other misdeeds, these seem like minor matters. But the Bush White House’s contempt for honest journalism is really something to behold. Worse, it’s clear that the adminstration honchos believe the public doesn’t care — and that officials consider professional journalists to be utterly helpless in making anyone care. more…