Incommunicado Bar

Cartoon from New Yorker .(H/t Shaza E)

2nd cartoon: "I have a huge Internet following" (H/t Clara G)

Journalist Malcolm Gladwell: "Stop going to journalism programs"

Author/journalist Malcolm Galdwell ("Tipping Point," "Blink," "Outliers")gave this advice to young journalists in a 2009 Time interview:

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

In a 2011 Nation piece, Michael Tracey wrote: "...if you take a full major’s worth of journalism classes, that’s about twelve (or however many) less classes in the humanities that could’ve equipped you with an intellectual framework from which to approach your work."

Is our media system failing U.S. democracy?

A 2008 academic study compared the level of public knowledge about current events in Denmark, Finland, England and the U.S. It found that the countries with TV/radio dominated by public broadcasting -- Denmark and Finland -- were the best informed. Our country, dominated by corporate commercial media, was the least informed. The study's authors suggest that differing media systems play a role in those results.

A 2003 study of U.S. public knowledge about the Iraq War found that misperceptions were greatest among those whose primary info source was Fox News -- and least among those whose primary info source was public broadcasting. (A Pew poll taken in Aug. 2010 found that almost 1 in 5 Americans believed President Obama to be a Muslim; only 34% knew he is a Christian. 43% chose "don't know.")

Why don't we have public TV like this in the U.S.?

Weeks before the Iraq invasion, Jeremy Paxman of BBC's "Newsnight" and skeptical British citizens literally cross-examined Prime Minister Tony Blair about evidence/reasons/legality behind the invasion -- an interview whose transcript became part of last year's official Iraq inquiry in Britain. (Here's another tough Paxman interview of Blair having nothing to do with Iraq.)

In our country, bullying from politicians + lack of insulated funding = embarrassing timidity at so-called "public television"...as evidenced by PBS surgically removing Tina Fey's comedic swipes at Sarah Palin from a broadcast in 2010.

Country by country comparisons of
spending on public broadcasting in this study (at page 31.)

Public access TV channels...

...have offered diverse and local voices, launched careers, and led to Saturday Night Live spoofs from Mike Myers -- such as "Wayne's World" and "Coffee Talk with Linda Richman."

Manipulating Image or Sound

Brittany R blogged about misleading editing at NBC on the George Zimmerman 911 tape.

Laura M blogged about these photos in a post headlined: "A Picture Tells A Thousand Lies?"

Best reporting by the ethnic and community press

"Ippies Awards" (not to be confused with the Izzy Awards). Some great media work recognized.

Open, fast Internet fading in USA?

USA is behind other countries when it comes to broadband access (15th place) and Internet speed (23d place).

There's a digital divide in our country whereby middle-class kids like my daughters grew up with fast Web-accessed computers in the home, while kids in rural areas and inner cities don't have computers or fast Internet.

In 2009, big Internet providers such as Verizon, Comcast, AT&T DID NOT APPLY for any of the billions in federal stimulus grants for expanding broadband infrastructure, according to the Wall St. Journal, because recipients of our tax money had to agree to respect Net Neutrality or Internet non-discrimination.

In August 2010, Keith Olbermann did a segment about Net Neutrality on his now-defunct show on MSNBC. Olbermann exited MSNBC as it was being taken over by Net Neut-foe Comcast. (Here's Jon Stewart's Net Neutrality segment from the same period.)

P.S. I was asked to appear on a talk-radio show on a big city station to analyze Oblermann's exit from MSNBC; when I suggested a link to the Comcast takeover and criticized Comcast's opposition to Net Neutrality, a producer asked me during a commercial break to stop the "Comcast-bashing" because "they're our biggest sponsor."

Blogger puts video distortions into mainstream media

The late Andrew Breitbart, a former Drudge Report staffer, ran BigGovernment.com. In July 2010, the Obama White House fired US Dept of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod soon after BigGovernment posted a 100-second video excerpt purporting to show that, during a speech to the NAACP, Sherrod had boasted about discriminating against a white farmer while she was a federal employee during the Obama administration. Actually -- and Breitbart corrected that one error -- she was describing events in the 1980s when she was Georgia field director for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, a nonprofit that had grown out of the civil rights movement to help Black farmers.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, a fuller version of the speech aired by CNN showed that Sherrod told the story to illustrate how she had overcome her racial hostility toward whites and ultimately helped the white farmer save his farm.

Months earlier, other selectively-edited tapes distributed by BigGovernment.com (played repeatedly on Fox News and elsewhere) helped put the anti-poverty group ACORN out of business. Rachel Maddow dissects the distorted presentation that doomed ACORN. (Fox News had goaded others in media for not doing enough ACORN-smearing.)

It wasn't just Fox News that promoted BigGovernment.com's misleading ACORN story. The Public Editor of the paper of record, the New York Times, went to absurd lengths to defend his paper's inaccurate coverage.

Beware Drudge "Exclusive"

Perhaps Matt Drudge should stick to aggregating content from elsewhere (with revved-up headlines) rather than "report" -- as demonstrated by this 1999 "world exclusive," which helped push the story into some mainstream outlets.(Crack investigative reporting compared baby pictures. H/t Bianca)

And as demonstrated by his 2007 "exclusive" in which he accused CNN reporter Michael Ware of "heckling" Republican senators during a news conference in Iraq and "laughing and mocking their comments." Drudge's evidence-free charge -- based on an anonymous "official" -- was picked up by rightwing blogs and the Washington Times.

Deeper Transparency

ProPublica offers a new "Explore Sources" feature on some articles where readers can easily go to original source documents behind important facts in the story (H/t Mariana).

Undercover videos of farm animal abuse...

...to become illegal? Here's a helpful report from U.C. Berkeley News21 students.

Election 2008: Mayhill Folwer of HuffPost "Off the Bus"

Mayhill Fowler says she didn't hide that she was recording ex-President Clinton's angry words about a Vanity Fair reporter, while he greeted voters in public as he campaigned for his wife in June 2008. BUT Clinton obviously did not know Fowler was a HuffPost "citizen journalist." Should she have ID'd herself? (She clearly got a more honest take from Clinton than if he'd known she was a journalist.)

Shouldn't public figures know nowadays that anything said in public -- especially rants (or racism) -- will be recorded and on record forever? Exhibits A and B.

Mayhill Fowler's earlier reporting scoop that launched "Bittergate" uproar.

Blogger Takes Ethical Step...And Then Some

Here's an example of a blogger acting professionally and ethically as per SPJ Code of Ethics. Blogger Ken Krayeske -- who gained fame by questioning University of Connecticut's basketball coach about his huge taxpayer-paid salary -- announced (in Oct. 2009) that he wouldn't be covering Hartford City Hall because his girlfriend had a job there.

How Movies Romanticize Journalists...

...as blogged by former indy media student Isabel Braverman.

Sexism in Media

Trailer for new documentary Miss Representation

Student blog round-up April 4

Google's product of the future. Are we okay with it? (H/t Sara)

Young Internet Voices plea for Net Neutrality in this video (H/t Mariana.)

Women Musicians Build Followings...

... through Facebook, reported NPR's Laura Sydell in 2010. The report discusses cellist Zoe Keating and
singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.

YouTube stars get big bucks

What the Buck? Good question. Here's Michael Buckley's "My You Tube Story." (H/t Bianca) According to a Dec, 2008 New York Times report, Buckley earned over $100k in the previous year from his YouTube video-rants about celebs, plus a development deal from HBO.

YouTube star Lisa Donovan or ""Lisa Nova"has real talent for sketch comedy. Like Tina Fey, she liked to play Sarah Palin, including in this famous McCain/Palin rap.

Cory Williams and his smpFilms hit the bigtime with "Hey Little Sparta" (aka "The Mean Kitty Song" -- more than 60 million views, about 5 million of them in the last 5 months). He told the NYT in 2008 that he was earning over $200k per year, partly from (ugh!) product placements within his videos.

My 15-year-old daughter's favorite YouTube star and main source of daily news -- Philly D (of "The Philip DeFranco Show") -- offers his take on current events and celeb news. Should I be monitoring my daughter's online activities better?

Become a YouTube Star and appear in a hugely popular music video with Weezer or the earlier one from Barenaked Ladies
.

"Where the Hell is Matt?" became so popular, the guy has had his travels paid by corporate sponsors for years.

Is wall between news/ads eroding on Internet?

A weird NY Times example found by "In Other News"(H/t Mariana)

Google - Verizon Deal Erodes Net Neutrality

Jon Stewart's take (H/t Laura M)

Web censorship China and Elsewhere

China's web censorship intensified this week. (H/t Brittany) Bianca found logo for Google- as opposed to Google + ...to indicate "subtracting" content.

Nice button(H/t Carly)