Monday, October 4, 2004
THE BAD NEWS ABOUT BLOGSThis has to be among the weirdest of times, thanks in large part to blogs. Bloggers are being credited with short-circuiting the normal "spin" that would have followed the first Presidential debate. The large-scale presence of bloggers in the 2004 U.S. presidential elections has disrupted the usual relationship between political parties and an often too-acquiescent press. They've made it harder for the political side to get away with (some) things; they've made it hard for the press to get away with (some) slapdash or slanted coverage. That's good. Not so good is the blatant weirdness mentioned above. In the days since the debate, there have been "reports" at various blogs that: (a) George Bush may have been wearing an earpiece through which answers were being fed to him. (b) John Kerry took something from his pocket that may have been briefing notes, which were not allowed under debate rules. (c) Fox News manipulated a photo to make Bush look taller. And those are just what I've run across at serious blogs. Who knows what's going on over at Drudge Report and other outposts of faux journalism.
No doubt blogging has changed the political journalism landscape. Neither party hacks nor journalists can as easily get away with their sins and weaknesses of the past. But the odd, odd "reporting" on mystery "notes," earpieces and stretched presidents -- all of it reported without benefit of fact -- sets blogging back a step or two. |
HOW'S THIS FOR SERVICEFrom OnlineJournalism.com:
BBC's Newstracker will now sift through thousands of other news sources, look for matching content and link to these stories on its Web site. The exercise is intended to have multiple effects -- readers will be able to get different perspectives on the same news item and also read BBC's articles in the light of these different viewpoints. The move is also backed by the idea of increasing BBC's news credibility and also to improve media literacy.
Will this start a trend? Let's hope so. |
COMPLEMENTARY QUOTESNancy Franklin, writing in the Oct. 4 New Yorker:
Polls and ratings figures show that young people are not developing the warm, fuzzy feelings toward [news] anchors that their elders supposedly have, and the networks have no idea whether the loyalty that does exist will carry into coming years... From J.D. Lasica's New Media Musings, a quote from the weekend NY Times:
Let down, perhaps, by the mainstream media, 21 percent of people under 30 say they are learning about the [U.S. presidential election] campaign from satirical sources like "The Daily Show" and the late-night television monologues, up from 9 percent in 2000, according to a Pew Research Center study released in January. ...
Now we know where young folk are getting their warm fuzzies. |
ALL THE NEWSHere's one for your reference bookmarks: Danish journalist Hans Henrik Lichtenberg has launched NewspaperIndex.com, a database of online newspapers around the world. The site features a huge country-by-country list and, according to Lichtenberg, the listing for many countries include at least one English-language newspaper. At the web site, he explains why he's mounted this tremendous undertaking:
We [journalists] need this site as a tool in our daily work. We have been searching for media databases like this. Most projects alike have not kept their focus on general news, politics, economics etc. But unfortunately included news sources of low quality and sites with very specialized media. And what is worst, the links have been broken or the URLs have been hard to remember. Listings aren't rated, but Lichtenberg writes that links are sometimes removed "because the organization or government behind the media is not giving the editorial staff the freedom to live up to the IFJ Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists."
SOURCE: Cyberjournalist.net. |
Last update: 11/1/04; 8:29:32 PM .
