Knowledge: mere opinion, fixed or subject to change?

Weighing that which is generally regarded as knowledge against the scales of opinion and knowledge that is either immutable or subject to correction in the future was helpful for me because these classifications directly affect how journalists portray such claims to knowledge.

It is exactly the confusion about this matter that has led to misinformation in the news media. Meanwhile, individuals have intuitively perceived that truth is not comprised of either-or absolutes and have rebelled against this dichotomous thinking by pushing a creed of relativism.

The press has an important responsibility of filtering out the zero-sum game between these two camps in its presentation of the knowledge it is meant to help generate and apply, and to assist readers in acquiring.

For example, in the presentation of scientific theories and religious convictions in the news media, it is crucial to properly convey the category of knowledge into which they fall because—as studies in almost every field have shown—these are the two systems of knowledge that have been the real progenitors of civilization. So nothing short of civilization is at stake.

To automatically present all scientific theories as immutable, incorrigible knowledge would not adequately represent the reality of the evolutionary path that science has followed, with the exception of perhaps pure mathematics. Especially in the unfolding period of transition, in which the scientific fundamentals rooted in the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview are being constantly challenged, the oversimplified science journalism seems naïve, out-of-touch, irrelevant and unreliable.

Similarly, when the majority of the world professes belief in a spiritual dimension of existence, the press—following suit with the current dominant consumerist-materialist culture—comes across as belligerent and having hidden motives in its refusal to present religious conviction as anything else than mere opinions. Meanwhile, believers consider Immutable to be one of the Names of God.

This last point is not to be argued, as debate and contention must be recognized for their worth: nothing (centuries of philosophical disputes have proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt). Instead, the point must be demonstrated in action and, with time, the proof will be irrefutable.

For those who find that hard to believe need only look to the process required for theories of racial superiority to travel the spectrum from widely accepted “incorrigible knowledge” to merely harmful opinion. We as humans have learned nothing if we have not learned that we are never done learning.

(Mortimer Adler’s Ten Philosophical Mistakes sparked this reflection.)

News media as social development?

I'm pretty sure that the champion of justice and equity second from the left is a reporter.

From now on this blog will record the progress on my theory that the future model of the news is one of service to local communities; a theory based on the assumptions that such a path is the only way for news organizations to survive as relevant institutions and because they are the best candidates to fulfill the growing needs of society for purposeful, service-driven information (versus consumer-driven entertainment).

Today I received my acceptance letter to participate in the FUNDAEC course Constructing a Conceptual Framework for Social Action in an online format administered by Lazos Learning. Through the study, assignments and practices of this curriculum, I hope to develop and articulate my ideas on where social action factors into the future of journalism.  As far as possible and appropriate, I hope to share my thoughts generated throughout the learning and discovery process.

In the application to the course, I was prompted to explain why I am interested in participating in the format as well as my expected outcomes, to which I replied:

My chief aim is to acquire a practical, relevant and rich foundation of knowledge of the concepts of social transformation. On this foundation I hope to construct a framework for making a contribution to the discourse on journalism and social action.

Two of the key words there are “relevant” and “contribution”, for reasons which, I am sure, I will explain in full detail in future posts.

Off the record: the decay of old-world journalism

Defending legacy news organizations by pointing out the shortcomings of new media outlets is like an an old farmer trying to justify his failing crops by comparing his harvest to the first plant of the young city folk who moved in down the road: the old farmer has had longer to try to get it right.

Legacies such as the New York Times and Washington Post should know better by now, and yet, they—like journalists from lesser-famed news sources and just as bloggers (both pajama-wearing and office-attired)—don’t seem to have a compass of journalism principles to guide them.

Perhaps this is the Decline and Fall of 20th-Century Journalism, and we’ve just been experiencing media decadence, which will hasten the end of old-world journalism and usher in the dawn of a new era of information sharing.

Look no further than the past week to see the evidence of old-journalism decay:

• There was, of course, Charlotte Allen’s editorial in the Washington Post on her distaste for certain women—as horrifying as it was error-riddled.
• Little defense has been offered against the accusation that American journalists tend to protect rather than expose the secrets of powerful people, a sharp contrast to The Scotsman printing the “monster” remark by Obama’s aide, even though she tried to strike it from the record after saying it. MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson magnified the apparent US media weakness when he had The Scotsman reporter on his show.
• Buy-out bids at the New York Times were due last week, but if those staff members who opted were too few to fill up the 100 newsroom cuts announced in late February, then the paper will have to resort to lay-offs. As one long-running writer at the Times put it, “People here are used to the idea that that doesn’t happen here.”
• Add to all of that the dubious media coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential nomination race, the frequent short-comings of the American press in international news, and not to mention the incessant celebrity gossip.

As the Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland put it in his worthy piece, Long Winter for the Media,

Access to the Internet gives the generations living today the choice to be the best-informed, or the worst-informed, human beings in history — but we will never be able to claim that we were the least-informed. Celebrity, slime and crude polemics pour from the electronic faucets as easily as high-minded exegeses.

Where are the leaders of the information and media revolution to guide the straying generations living today to ethical, interesting and correct information?

With links, why report when you can analyze? Link journalism leads to link editorializing.

With the advent of bloggers, there has been a shift in the ratio of those presenting the news and those analyzing it. Since anyone can publish her opinion on the Web, the balance is tipping towards more news editorials and analyses, and reporting the facts has become the task of the minority.

That’s fine. Not everyone needs to write similar stories on the same event. Subscribers can run wire stories and the rest can link. Then it’s open season for bloggers and journalists to connect the dots and add relative information to give context

It’s almost as if we’ve ushered in the Age of the Columnists. Every journalist who ever dreamed of unleashing her subjectivity should grab a keyboard and opine away.

The point that needs be stressed is that adapting such information mechanisms should be in addition to newswriting, especially since consumers can find links in their purest form elsewhere:

• Readers now can go straight to the source for the “hard facts”, which means lazy journalists’ newswriting can no longer regurgitate the press releases, but neither should they rely on the equally lazy option of simply adding a link.
• News aggregate Web sites are already in existence, and Internet users can subscribe to RSS feeds if a list of links is all they desire, so mainstream media should differentiate themselves by contributing their news expertise.
• Wiki journalism also relies heavily on linking, and like linking, it should be used by the media only to bolster its value as a news source. This is because news is real time, but the wiki concept is, as Daniel Conover puts it, “a curated form of search… a non-news based method of keeping up with developing information.” Conover further writes:

Typical news organizations shun this kind of thinking as “not news. They will soon retire that attitude. Since zapping in and out of topics is the way most informed people acquire information, creating and curating not only databases but high-quality topic articles will be one of the most significant journalism jobs of the future. Again, this will not be instead of news writing, but in addition to newswriting. The best news sources (BBC) already perform this function, often in real time.

Objectivity has not been marginalized. To what, then, would the news analysts link their readers? Journalists are encouraged, rather, not to editorialize in their analyses, but to contextualize. The Internet is already saturated with opinionated blogs and comments, and it is still the news reporter’s job to stick to the facts.

Survey says: more people get their news online, especially journalists

  If almost all journalists go online daily to find news and nearly half of the rest of us do the same, then media professionals should again find themselves with news expertise to offer readers.

• Many sources such as news wires and press releases, which were once exclusively available to journalists, are now open directly to citizens. However, while journalists collect and process this information for a living, other professionals don’t have all day to wade through everything.  
• Here may be where the ideas of link journalism and networked link journalism would come into play. As they do their research and investigating, reporters could then compile their reference and source links for readers who would otherwise spend hours clicking around on search engines to find the complete story.
• With such disclosure, journalists could regain the trust of their “audience”, not only letting the sources speak for themselves, but being helpful at the same time.
• The recent We Media/Zogby Interactive survey reminded the newspaper industry that it is not only facing a crisis in declining circulation and advertisement revenue, but also in declining credibility and quality.
• Now that readers can check the facts for themselves by following links in the news they read on the Internet, it is no wonder the poll found that online news has a greater share of the people’s trust, as stated in the 27 February 2008 press release on the Zogby Web site:

The survey finds the Internet not only outweighs television, radio, and newspapers as the most frequently used and important source for news and information, but Web sites were also cited as more trustworthy than more traditional media sources – nearly a third (32%) said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information, followed by newspapers (22%), television (21%) and radio (15%).

  Another important reminder that the survey gives the media is that traditional journalism has lost touch with its local reader.

  As more people gain access to international and national news on the Internet, they rely less on their local newspaper or TV station to learn what’s going on “out there”. The study affirms that citizens feel they’re lacking community news about what’s going on “right here.”

  No longer does every paper in the U.S. need a Washington bureau and a Middle East correspondent. Local papers can now redouble their focus and resources on local news and give the people what they really want. Of course, they will want to provide this news on their Web sites.

Other findings from the survey include:

• Although the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism (64%), overall satisfaction with journalism has increased to 35% in this survey from 27% who said the same in 2007.
• Both traditional and new media are viewed as important for the future of journalism – 87% believe professional journalism has a vital role to play in journalism’s future, although citizen journalism (77%) and blogging (59%) are also seen as significant by most Americans.
• Very few Americans (1%) consider blogs their most trusted source of news, or their primary source of news (1%).
• Three in four (75%) believe the Internet has had a positive impact on the overall quality of journalism.
• 69% believe media companies are becoming too large and powerful to allow for competition, while 17% believe they are the right size to adequately compete.

Does Prince Harry think blogs are news? Ask the Drudge Report.

The Drudge Report breaking the news black-out on Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan is a good example of how blogging news sites are easily and quickly slipping into the pit of greed and ambition that mainstream media has been trying to lift itself out of.

When stripped of its ethics, social justice and responsibility, journalism is just gossip. There is no better example of the harm that gossip could cause than the leaking of a Royal’s position on the front lines of a war, to the benefit and amusement of an opportunistic enemy.

For so long, watchdog blogs criticized the traditional media for their seemingly cutthroat tactics in reporting the story. Whether accused of being money-hungry, cowing at political pressure and interests or victimizing the public in trying to break the news first, the media lost the respect and trust of their audience.

Blogs, vaunting themselves as the alternative to the mainstream media, became the forum readers thought would give them the trusted quality news that they longed for, free from market competition and the influence of advertisers and politicians. With that recognition—which bloggers are constantly demanding from traditional journalists— also come responsibilities.

Instead, there is a double standard for blogger news sites. The Drudge Report plays dirty, but the only force that could demand that creator Matt Drudge be held accountable or at least apologize, is the same public that has given him the influence which prompted the Telegraph’s US editor to call Drudge the world’s most powerful journalist.

The Australian celebrity publication New Idea that first reported the Prince Harry scoop on January 7 on its Web site and later in its magazine edition made little waves but was berated by its readers for jeopardizing the lives of Prince Harry and the soldiers who fought along side him. The Telegraph reports that readers called New Idea an embarrassment to Australia, adding the statement of apology issued by the magazine:

Suggesting it had not contacted the Ministry of Defence or Clarence House for confirmation, a spokesman for the magazine said: “New Idea was not issued with a press embargo and was unaware of the existence of one.

“The story was published on Monday January 7. Since then New Idea has received no comment from the British Ministry of Defence.

“We take these matters very seriously and would never knowingly break an embargo. We regret any issues the revelation of this story in America has caused.”

Jon Williams, the BBC’s world news editor, wrote a post for The Editors blog in which he explained the position of those at the BBC who made the decision to agree to the news blackout for Prince Harry’s deployment.

Drudge has been mum on his decision not to heed it, although, unlike New Idea, he was aware of the embargo. His explanation would be appreciated by this blogger, who is sad to see him chipping away at our decency, credibility and trustworthiness.

 

Media mutualism

If traditional journalists could be found on-line, then perhaps the world would know whether or not they refute the bloggers’ claims that the professional media are worried about news migrating to the Internet.

For example, Alfred Hermida’s blogs from the Knight Science Journalism Symposium painted pictures of new-media champions lecturing to old-world reporters squirming in their seats and asking ridiculous questions.

The fact that there is almost no blogger voice giving a traditional media perspective makes the old-school reporters and editors look guilty as charged. It’s no wonder, then, that the new generation of media who are trying to carry journalism into the future see them as an impediment to advancement and a force to be reckoned with.

That is, unless there are traditional journalists who might agree with the way new-media advocates envision this future… We’ll never know until they blog about it either way, or leave a comment on this post.

As Hermida outlined in his blog on Tom Rosenstiel’s presentation at the symposium, journalists will soon learn to operate as part of a network rather than a final destination by assuming the roles of authenticator, sense-maker, navigator (yes, friends in the traditional media, it is OK for your readers to follow links away from your site…they will be back) and forum leader. These sound like better options than unemployment, so why wouldn’t a journalist support a way to preserve her livelihood?

Such potential responsibilities are also summed up in Daniel Conover’s foundations of 21st century journalism,

MAINSTREAM RETRENCHMENT
“Mainstream media” today are in decline, with “the people formerly known as the audience” fragmented. Future media will separate into market-driven grades of information. The “mainstream” will become a smaller subset of the total media flow, generally associated with less-sophisticated technology and users who: 1. Produce little content; 2. Profit only marginally from higher grades of information; and 3. Choose a passive lifestyle. Mainstream media will not dominate, but will represent the most significant media plurality.

Bloggers don’t seem to deny that professional journalists have a place within their shared information sphere. They actually thrive on taking news that’s run in the mainstream media and then “opensourcing” the information on their blogs. In fact, the investigative reporting job by political blogger Joshua Micah Marshall, of Talking Points Memo, just won him the George Polk Award for legal reporting. Part of his Web site’s process of covering the firing/resignation scandal of eight United States attorneys was to follow the news in the traditional media. But if the TPM staff and its readers hadn’t been paying attention and noticing patterns, their scrutiny of the scandal may never have been picked up by the mainstream media.

To recognize this media mutualism, both the traditional news companies and their employees will have to swallow their pride as well as the reality of smaller profit margins. Unfortunately there are signs that, well, this recognition may be further away than we’d like. In the New York Times story about Marshall’s award, a fellow blogger is quoted suggesting Marshall will win a Pulitzer someday. However, NYtimes.com writer Noam Cohen writes,

“It won’t be this year. Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes, said in an e-mail message that online articles are eligible for the awards, but they must have been published on a weekly or daily newspaper’s Web site.

‘A freestanding Web site does not qualify,’ he said.”

Paradigm shift in the gatekeeper debate

For a community in which the invention of coloring technology is as critical as the printing press, the media—new and old— are strangely viewing the gatekeeper debate in black and white.

Here’s the gray, and fuchsia, and Technicolor film:

Professional and participatory media can thrive together; imagine, mainstream and grassroots, harmonizing. Actually, they must if the art of news is to realize its highest form: accessible, timely, relevant information that adheres to the journalistic standards of balance, truth and integrity.

We’ll get there, eventually, although it could possibly be much sooner if blogger and newspaper advocates would spend less energy trying to block one another’s entrance into press conferences.

One constructive debate to launch would be Daniel Conover’s thoughts on the conundrum of 21st Century journalism. He humbly offers up for discussion possible solutions to the obstacles faced in building bridges across the print v. on-line rift. He addresses the heart of the matter with about 25 points, such as open sources, intelligence briefing models, curating information, accepting profit margin declines, and more. Brilliant.

Washington Post staff writer, Jose Antonio Vargas, in his November 2007 story Storming the News Gatekeepers, illustrates beautifully the distraction caused by the resistance on all fronts.

Why couldn’t the flood gates be flung wide open for anyone to plunge into the collective knowledge of the human race? How would that make the professional journalist’s job obsolete? If anything, it would enrich the quality, purpose and importance of her craft. She would then siphon the information into niche tributaries, much as she always has, but with improved resources.

Michael Karlberg writes about this adversarial culture of contest in his book How Everyone Can Win. The future, Karlberg predicts, is moving towards cooperation. Vargas highlighted a glimmer of this bright future in his story:

“High school and college students are writing for Scoop08, where relatively experienced student journalists are guiding inexperienced student CJs (citizen journalists). “This is the future of journalism, I think: journalists working with citizen journalists,” says Scoop’s co-founder, 18-year-old Alexander Heffner. “

The good and bad of broadsheet

http://reportr.net/2008/02/22/a-misguided-approach-to-electronic-paper/

The above blog post fueled ridicule of a questioner who, during a presentation for E Ink at the Future of Science Journalism Symposium, gave voice to a fundamental divide between print and electronic media that must be reconciled. Could the marketing director’s electronic-paper-display software and device, the journalist in the audience asked, do for her what a traditional broadsheet newspaper does, enable her to scan through its content? Clearly, many have missed her point in asking such a question. Surely this woman does not suggest that commuters lug with them on the subway an over-sized gadget. And unless she intends to then print out the displays so she can “feel” the pages between her fingers (my History of Journalism professor actually once said this in class), she is not some member of a new race of troglodytes, averse to computer screens and electronic text.

Until a more “human-like” graphical user interface (GUI) is developed, new-media apologists should admit that print journals still trump their digital counterparts when it comes to presentation of the news. There are rumblings of slow developments in this arena, such as “zooming” (zoomable user interface or ZUI), which is said to be closer to the human model of scanning and narrowing in on information. This could solve one of the major drawbacks to on-line news: interfacing. The first Web news source that adopts this technology will be a hero and leave its competitors leagues behind, competitors who still won’t have asked themselves, “what about broadsheet worked“. Our questioner wasn’t longing for the past, she was learning from it.