From today’s Crikey email:
As Iâ??ve observed many times both here at Crikey and in my academic work on blogging, discussion in the media about online politics is inevitably dominated by the tedious repetition of a few clichés (to the point where I feel as if pointing this out has itself become tedious). But occasionally you come across such a clanger that itâ??s worth revisiting the discussion.
One of those clichés is the journos vs. bloggers theme. Bloggers, weâ??re constantly told, donâ??t do the hard work that journos are trained for â?? including rigorous fact-checking. This is in fact a bad joke, as many journos these days, as David Salter makes witheringly clear in his new book The Media We Deserve, do their job sitting in front of a computer screen permanently frozen on Wikipedia, and â??reportingâ?? consists largely of tweaking press releases and news feeds. Bloggers, by contrast, at least at the best of times, are instantly accountable to their readers for errors of fact.
Thereâ??s a striking example of the finely honed research skills of journos in The Australianâ??s media section this week, ironically about the use of online media for political campaigning. Lara Sinclair writes:
Politicians of all persuasions have taken the opportunity to put their profile on MySpace, with John Howard making up for a slow start by attracting 16,050 friends, marginally ahead of 15,816 who had signed up by yesterday afternoon for Mr Rudd.
Really?
John Howardâ??s â??officialâ?? Myspace has 9 friends (some of whom are Cabinet Ministers who may therefore be lying to him). The site that Sinclair points to as a breathless indicator of Howardâ??s growing popularity is in fact pure satire. Does she really believe that Howard wrote this blog post about the Indigenous â??emergencyâ???
Of course there are in fact, many other ways we could address the problems that exist in Indigenous communities. However most of these alternatives involve having to include Indigenous Australians in the decision making process who would only argue that we must address the causes of the problems as well as the symptoms. This would quite likely lead to the creation of Indigenous Affairs policies that are actually beneficial for Indigenous Australians. An unsavoury prospect indeed.
If reading the site sheâ??s writing about is too much hard work for Sinclair, youâ??d have thought that the hubristic motto might have given the game away:
The price of greatness is responsibility.
lolz
Ahh yes, I remember that one well. That MySpace link doesn’t seem to be functioning.
Well, both journalism and blogging have their good and bad points. At a Melbourne Writers Festival event about the reporting of the Iraq War in newspapers (which featured Salter) it was pointed out that all the panellists were journalists. Journalists critiquing their own work.
I was just looking for the latest about the McCann case and apparently it’s all over the newspapers that Mrs McCann kept a diary. In the diary, she apparently said her children were “hysterical”. Mmmm, she wrote it down instead of just thinking it. Yikes, is she paying for it in the media or what?
An article from the Belfast Telegraph argues that:
“Everyone has a view on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann – but only the media have the power to inflict on us a tsunami of prejudice masquerading as detection.”
Hah! Brilliant! And somehow strangely appropriate for the times…
Oh dear that was a clanger. It’s funny, I just scanned that one and then just gave up reading the rest of it after about two paragraphs down. I tend to tune out now when I see MSM stories about politics and the net.
The Google page is here BTW.
“Bloggers, we’re constantly told, don’t do the hard work that journos are trained for – including rigorous fact-checking. This is in fact a bad joke, as many journos these days, as David Salter makes witheringly clear in his new book The Media We Deserve, do their job sitting in front of a computer screen…”
The most unbelievable example was the recent widely-distributed press photo of an Iraqi woman holding a handful of what were clearly shiny new un-fired cartridge rounds, claiming that they were bullets fired into her house. The reporters, who presumably were reporting from a *war zone,* nevertheless could not tell the difference between bullets after they have been fired, and pristine cartridges beforehand, forget even the fact that they seem not to have known that the two words denote different things.
And these are the people who want to tell you what their opinion is about stuff. Well, I guess they know best, having gone to J-school and what-not. Musta been pretty tough.
Top stuff per usual Mark.
Those stills on MySpace of people mobbing Howard are quite sickening. Says a great deal about King John’s ego.
I wonder if the same people will be mobbing him if he wins & decides to do the Churchill thing & send the younguns into war…the battlefields of the Middle East & Iran…just after he uses SerfChoices to ensure that plenty of Workers are toiling for a pittance as the economy goes into meltdown.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18371.htm
The MSM has at least 2 great advantages over blooging that are unlikely to be bridged:
1. Editorial discipline. Space mean that 2,000 words rants must be whipped into shape and trimmed of fat. Far too much of that part of the blogosphere that aims to compete with the MSM reads like little more than an extended “Letter to the Editor” of The Oz.
A classic example of this is obviously the dreary and tragic New Matilda, which is basically a whige-fest of tired old John Pilger worshippers. On the other hand Tim Blair – while being the master (so far) of being able to bridge traditional journalism with new technology – runs a whinge site, which is little more than threads with dozens of “me-too, yeah, boo sucks” sycophants.
LP is streets ahead, and has a better handle on the platforms interactivity and ‘real time’ potentials. Given how recent this whole blogosphere thang is, LP shows lots of evidence of being up to the challenge of adapting as the medium evolves.
2. Content-bundling ability. The MSM is still streets ahead as a “one stop shop.”
Having said that, I very rarely access the MSM.
MSM journalists do get access to powerful persons.
Bloggers must hope they can make more of this raw material than journalists who generated it.
Opinion pieces are far more plentiful in the blogosphere than in the MSM. Necessarily, the quality and range in the blogosphere are far more diverse. This is no huge disadavantage. One quickly learns how to scroll past the crap.
MSM opinionators have at least been trained to write sentences and paragraphs. However, many of them appear to have been employed not for their critical thinking but for their status as mouthpieces for predetermined views.
I would pay for good investigative journalism if it existed this side of the Guardian.
It didn’t take much reading to realise that that fake site was satire. Interestingly enough, some of the comments on it seemed to suggest that some people thought it was real.
I have to wonder sometimes Sacha whether in such cases the commentors are joining in with the performance, or are even the original writer sockpuppetting. It makes the whole thing so much more compelling, it would have to be tempting.
The crucial problem for blogs and their readers is the anonymity involved.
Sure the MSM has unattributed leaks from departments, politicians operatives etc but often blogs are too unbalanced or weird examples of group think and rather petty-mindedness.
The MSM is blinkered but as Katz observed they get access.
You know you are buying The Australian when you pay for it- likewise the The Grauniad.
Once you’ve tried 100% pure press release it’s hard to go back to the cut stuff the journos and bloggers are trying to offload.
“MSM journalists do get access to powerful persons.”
Yes, but since powerful persons are unlikely to tell the journalists the truth, and since the journalists are highly unlikely to even report truthfully the little they’ve been told, I’m not sure the advantage is a telling one.
Nowadays everyone’s an editorialist — even pieces written by AP stringers are effectively op-ed pieces in terms of what they leave out, and how they spin what’s left in. At least with bloggers, the fact that you’re reading someone’s cranky opinion is right out there in front, so you don’t get angry feeling like people are pulling a fast one when they load their argument. And blogs like LP provide a marvelous sort of cubist view of the news, by taking little snippets of detail on a variety of topics, then letting pretty intelligent people argue about them, in the process of which even more details and factoids get added in. It’s a pretty entertaining way to stay informed, and a lot less infuriating than trying to decode the New York Times like a bloody kremlinologist.
“When I want to know the news, I read Byron. Or LP and four or five other sites.”
“blogs like LP”
Actually, I take that back. There are no other blogs like LP, in the sense that this is the only group blog I know of designed for conversation, where it really is what I would consider an actual conversation. Most group blogs are just a lot of individuals separately bloviating into the void. (Ever try reading the appalling TPM Cafe?) On most political blogs I ignore the comments thread, but here it’s the very meat of the thing. Well done! Give yourselves two cans of spinach and a Cuban cigar.
well said, j_p_z and JG, more power to LP I say.
cheerio
I couldn’t agrre more…:)
agree
And dont forget retired or unemployed Editors of former newspapers like Brian Toohey of the National Times, which was highly readable,an upset some people because it was..he can now be found at Eureka Street. There is Richard Neville too,who ran a anarchist newspaper of type,even before Nimbin had marihuana smokers.Gees! I am getting old.And Brian still has a bloody bite about him for a fearless little fella.And I am almost sure these two havent got much in common besides seeing time itself,have multiples of meaning.And what they may have to say about journalists is, well… experienced.
Today’s “politics and blogging” session @ Brisbane Writer’s week naturally touched on “MSM cf Blogdom”, and the question of relative authoritiveness in the 2 spheres.
The expectation is that work of “real” professional journos can be relied upon, more so than the ratbag net-scribblers of the gift economy. So it follows that sources indexed by google news are gospeller than those indexed by google blogsearch?
I note google news does not pick up the scurrilous netrag in your browser now, but it does index zdnet, including it’s Au variant.
Well how’s this for professionalism on the part of that NewsCorp organ, ZDnet:
Lara, per mark’s note, is just the latest in the conga line of MSM dills who, mischievously or ignorantly, have dis-informed the public re: jwh having any myspace friends.
Googling the literal string “over 14000 registered friends to Rudd’s 12000″ reveals zdnet’s page
http://www.zdnet.com.au/…/soa/Rudd-calls-on-Facebook-mates-in-campaign/0,139023166,339281021,00.htm?ref=search
which strangely doesn’t have that search string. It does instead have “Howard has yet to join MySpace or Facebook, however, where Rudd now has over 5,000 supporters in his network”. Why did google pick it up with that exact string?
Look at google’s cached copy: ZDnet’s Jo Best actually wrote in his/her original published copy,
“The Prime Minister has also adopted social networking and has his own MySpace page. Howard is currently edging ahead of his Labor rival in terms of popularity, with over 14,000 registered friends to Rudd’s 12,000″.
But it’s not the suckering of Jo, his/her poor research, that constitutes a notable lack of professionalism, IMO- that’s almost a given whenever the MSM tries to extract copy from the intertubes.
It’s the fact that Jo, (and I know of other MSM journos that do similar), will publish an untruth, and when a commenter pulls them up on it, (as you will see in above, presumably why Jo did his/her after-the-fact edit) they go back and adjust their copy without any note that they have tampered with the story as originally published.
Sure this is a trivial example, but it’s downright unethical I reckon.
At least most bloggers would have the integrity to note “My oops” or “my bad”,
Right, here comes an MSM journo (only in the blogosphere could you get away with ‘MSM’, for Christ’s sake!) to the rescue of my fine profession. (Hmm, perhaps not. That third glass of wine is kicking in but I’ll give it a go anyway.)
Bloggers are about opinion, journalists about fact. I have rarely seen a blog that does not reference back to a respected newspaper, magazine or radio station for its authority in making even the most outrageous statement.
You cannot ‘get your news’ from a blog if it is merely the opinion of a blogger who is commenting on what he or she read in the actual news. You can get your opinion, or your jollies, or your raised blood pressure from a blogger, but you don’t get the news.
A case in point would be Crikey, which I happily subscribe to and think is a fine online publication. Everything on Crikey, however, is driven by what was in the paper that morning or on the telly last night, researched, investigated, written, filmed, analysed, devised and finally published by journalists. Crikey does not investigate fact, and nor does anything I’ve ever seen in – for want of a better term – any non-mainstream medium.
What justification do I have for this? Only the knowledge that when a real journalist wants to know something, they ring up the expert or the politician or the witness or author or the alleger or the nutter or the whoever and bloody well asks them. And then reports what they say. Which is called news.
j_p_z makes a very good point that even the newswires are editorialising, and that most journalists spend their time rewriting press releases. There is absolutely no doubt about that whatsoever. Spent the afternoon doing it myself! But that is all to feed the insatiable appetite of the internet for content. Whether that content is worthwhile or not is the big issue for journalism and for publishing in general. All I know, after 20 years in the business, is that what goes into my printed copy is quality, and what goes on the internet is bollocks.
Ahh facts in journalism. What a quaint notion, and isn’t it gratifying that at least one journalist still believes in it. And quality as well, all in the one package.
Well Mr Twain, as a subscriber to the SMH, I’d say they have about 3 or 4 journalists who have a simultaneous interest in facts and quality, and I’m not talking about the majority of the op-ed slush, Elizabeth Farrelly excepted.
Generally though, Mr Twain, your profession is a weak and faltering beast, unable to effectively respond to forces beyond its control.
Incidentally, if you could persuade your editors and fellow journos to combine the above key words with investigative journalism, you might start to regain some of your ever diminishing readership.
Hi Adrian
Mr Twain is Ms Twain, as a matter of fact. FACT! Don’t mention that word!
I agree that it would be nice that our publishers channel a little more funding into maintaining quality, and investigative journalism, and writing stories that you would be interested in reading, but if as you say our readership is diminishing and all the news that you need to know can be found on the intenet, what would be the point?
We have some serious challenges, undoubtedly, (I mean, we get paid absolute shit these days) but we’ll always be around in some form or another, beavering away, uncovering those elusive facts, illuminating and entertaining and pissing off our readers. And there will always be those old bastards lurking in the corner, disputing our evidence, telling us we are no good and forecasting our demise. The Adrians of this world, I call them. We couldn’t live without them.
Like cockroaches, journalists and the MSM will always be there, scuttling up your drainpipe, unsettling your dreams, ready to annoy you no end. It’s great fun – some of you should try some time, rather than just whinging about it.
Now run along Mr(s) Twain and enjoy your self congratulatory “bloggers aren’t journos” masturbatory mantra, one I’m sure you chant as you tearfully wank yourself to sleep every night.
So here’s the thing, if I call up someone to do the same I don’t get access, so guess what, your access is purely a function of the soon to be worthless masthead you work for, replace me with you and I’d get the same result. Trust me when I say that you ain’t that special buddy boy/girl.
I think we’re doing just fine thank you. At the moment our target is you. And it’s working.
Well, that’s not very nice language, now is it, Phil? Do you think your mum would like that sort of behaviour at her dinner table? Especially to a special girl like me.
Don’t worry – you’ll miss us when we’re gone.
No it isn’t and no I won’t. You see the thing is that folks like me ARE the audience for quality journalism, that’s why we care so much that you aren’t giving it to us…….then you come in our house and shit all over us, why the fuck would I respect you in the morning baby?
Phil, either you’ve had too much to drink, or I have. Can’t remember ever coming into your house and shitting on you, but like all mortals, I may be wrong.
It’s pretty much a waste of time looking to the dailies and their web-sites for news too. Particularly when it comes to political reportage. “Mr Howard told Sydney radio presenter Alan Jones” “Mr Costello told ABC radio …” “According to NineMSN…” “News Limited reports …” etc, etc, etc.
So what are you gunna do for a living when all the experts, politicians, allegers and nutters are on TEH INTERTUBES? Oh hell, I forgot – most of us are already!
In this country, real journalists have been AWOL for the past decade.
‘you’ll miss us when we’re gone’.
Yes- because the relationship is symbiotic.
One of fun things I get to do in my day job is to get press releases and google them to see how far they travel and how little they change.
One of the problems faced by both sides is the growth of spin.
On the subject of a woefully incompetent MSM, you may find this trackback interesting.
You can’t claim we don’t break stuff and make news when we don’t get access even if we try. Give good bloggers the same access and I think they’d give the MSM a run for it’s money.
Oh? Hang on? Incoming breaking news I have to blog about:
Bugger. Damn MSM always beats me to the really big stories.
OK, I’m not as anti-journo as Gummo and Phil. I think Marktwain has a point, someone does have to dig up facts. At the moment it happens that the fact-digging balance of power lies with journos working for the MSM. The thing is that this balance is shifting quickly and a big chunk of that shift, in my opinion, is due to the declining standard of journalism.
The thing that really bugs me is that so many Oz newspapers try to pass off opinion writing as journalism. Sure, they put it under the heading “opinion” but many of the op-eders present their opinions as fact.
Oh, and another thing. Blogs like this one have a hell of a lot of people hanging around that are the same people that journos might try to ring to check their “facts”.
Maybe I am as anti-journo as Gumm and Phil but it’s 3 PM here so I haven’t had anything to drink yet…
Ms Twain, as an MSM journalist of two decades’ standing it is somewhat surprising that your internal editor doesn’t strangle sweeping generalisations like the above at birth.
Certainly, much of what appears on the internet is bollocks. As I suggested upthread the opportunities for bollocks on the intenet are literally endless. But there is also much good stuff.
And, unfortunately, your brag about the quality of your copy is disproven by the above.
Mick, I’m not anti journo, just anti fuckwit journos who have tickets on themselves. As I said, without the masthead they are nothing.
I want them to do their thang. The problem is that they are always bitching and moaning about their lack of financial support from the masthead to investigate, hey………..now you know what it’s like to be a blogger who would actually like to make news.
I think they need to STFU about bloggers.
Katz, it’s the Long Tail of bollocks.
I know we hacks are all hated and despised – the journos and the real estate agents regularly have pants parties – but I’d be interested in knowing who the good journos are considered to be.
Obviously there are innumerable bad ones, and for some reason I currently work with most of them, but we are not all evil. I know Lara Sinclair vaguely and while her reputation is okay, she does write about marketing and advertising, after all. Who on earth would take that topic seriously?
(This is a serious request here. The wine’s going down slowly and the Twenty20 is a bit dull so I’d find your comments stimulating.)
The journo who did that great work on the Haneef case Hedley Thomas I think it is? No one in the SMH is worth a cracker.
OK I’m off to bed.
Hmm, well I’ll reserve my opinion there, Phil, although I’m pleased you’re being nice to me now.
You never had any time for Paul McGeogh, perchance? Anne Davies, Anna Patty? Any of the business writers? (Actually, the best journo on the SMH for getting things right most of the time is Mark Metherall. He’s a reporter, pure and simple, although I’m sure he makes errors now and then.)
lol…that’s right Marktwain, best we rely on journos who get fed disinformation & the next campaign propaganda from politicians who are oh so concerned about the public learning the ‘real deal’.
I mean we learnt soooo much valuable information from the majority of you regarding the build up to the Iraq War…& what a fabulous effort that was getting yourselves so close to the action by getting permission to be imbedded w/ the military industrial machine, marvellous!…and those insightful reports from the ‘Green Zone’…or in the midst of some military base that provides yummy food & drinks, but little action…or Iraqis for that matter. Outstanding!
Yes, lucky for us you guys & gals were on top of the pre-Iraq War intelligence bit…such in-depth reporting & skepticism…i mean gawd forbid if you’d actually helped prevent that War, a million or so people might actually still be alive. We wouldn’t want that now would we? Live people going about their daily tasks is too freakin’ boring…not much of a hook in eh? And wouldn’t the advertisers be disappointed?
Still, you can’t really be criticised for producing fluff & candy floss…noone would expect more considering the environments you work in. At least now our suspicions that King John & Lord Costello dislike each other enuff to act out a ‘faux’ cockfight every few mths to get attention has been confirmed. Our thanks to the various News Ltd. organisations for that entertaining stage play. You all should get full marks for acting…tho the script was certainly lacking in originality. Yawn.
I will say you lot are extremely professional at helping the ego-maniacs of our society create distractions & maintain their privileged positions. I’m so grateful i use your fellow wordsmear’s work to keep the weeds down…being so toxic and such.
Well, keep up the mundane work. Oh!… and let us know when you guys & gals decide to venture out from ‘spin’ world & decide to do some in-depth, worthwhile reporting on this government…stuff about the Siev-X disaster, Downer’s connections to shipments that headed in the direction of the Gulf, the killing of innocent Afghani citizens by Aussie troops, Liberal Party visits to Indonesia pre-Tampa…the readers & viewers might decide to reflect on such valuable info. & make an informed decision regarding this election.
for now “schlaft gut”
and thanks for the laugh, i needed it.
Now that’s just being silly, nasking. You have made up your mind on certain events based on what? Your own presence at those events, or the journalists you choose or choose not to read about those events? Think about it. Seriously.
QUAKER: The truth will come out by itself.
PAINE: The truth rarely comes out unless dragged by its hair.
– Paul Foster, “Tom Paine, A Play in Two Parts”
The big problem is that lately one rarely sees the truth dragged anywhere at all, except perhaps to fundraisers for various interested parties. If the employees of the MSM are still acting in good faith (a rather big if), then they need to stop acting as if they are privy to some sort of “higher truth” that is obscured by the annoying workaday facts, and start reporting what they actually see and hear and find out, in a kind of literal, bug-eyed, affectless tone, like they were autism patients. Publish and be damned, as a great man once said who would nowadays be put into a sort of media blackout in the service of one of those “higher truths” that the BBC and Reuters and the NYT seem to know far more about than us mere proles.
How many MSM twits covered the brutal suppression of free speech in Brussels this past week?
Hey, Australia just won in the cricket. Now that’s news!
That’s a line much more indistinct than suggested. Just look at the rubbish some within the GG have been churning out on polling results, and compare it with Poll Bludger or Possum.
that’s right, anyone who queries the lack of in-depth reporting & woeful approach to certain events is “silly”. Doing a Tony Snow impersonation are you Marktwain?
Let’s just say i’ve been around long enough to take the ‘official version’ w/ a pinch of salt…& the years i spent living under Maggie Thatcher taught me how truly obsequious, deceitful &/or stymied a press can get. i’m seeing the same characteristics here…& interestingly a certain media mogul is what those eras have in common. Believe it or not…;)
Nasking, my cancer is nowhere near as advanced as Tony Snow’s.
Anyway, I’m thinking of getting out of journalism soon and retraining to become a school teacher. Then I can throw off my feeble attempts at objectivity and instead ruin the world by moulding young minds in my likeness.
Fark!
MYSELF: “How many MSM twits covered the brutal suppression of free speech in Brussels this past week?”
MARKTWAIN: (3 minutes later) “Hey, Australia just won in the cricket. Now that’s news!”
A parable for our times, lurking between the lines, perhaps?
“I am the man, I suffered, I was there.”
– Walt Whitman
“I am the wo/man, I was in my office in London pulling it up on YouTube, I spun it (and/or edited it and/or buried it), I know better than you.”
– MSM reporter
It’s da irony, j_p_z, da irony.
Hey, Stephen Larkham’s farked his knee!
Seems to me you have a distorted view of teachers. But that doesn’t surprise me. You work in an industry that lives and breathes smear, hyperbole, distortion & character assassination…one that has for many a year failed to satisfy the public and serve their interests. If you have any complaints about bloggers & those who comment, try not to forget that your profession served as one of the role models.
Fortunately, there is an evolution going on…;)
Oi! Can we cut out the personal attacks on Marktwain just because you don’t like her points? Where do you think you are? Spleenville? At least wait until she gets personal first.
Yup. Imagine a blogosphere without an MSM feeding station and scratching post. Screen to screen LOLcats, Star Trek slash fic, knitting, cooking, godawful poetry and “what I did on my holidays”. And not much else.
Of course the MSM is not purely objective. Whoever claimed it was? It has always existed to make money and further agendas first and foremost from the Daily Courant onwards. But it still has immense data gathering and transmitting capacities, well beyond the co-ordinated capabilities of the blogosphere. And so it should. The whole point of herding cats is that you can’t.
Plus I bet everyone here can point to MSM journalists and commentators they admire from John Pilger to PJ O’Rourke. “Oh yes but he/she’s different. They tell it like they see it.”
Where the MSM has been really shown up though over the past five years or so is in the quality of their analysis and opinionating. Not so much because the quality has slipped but rather because citizens, having now having uncensored middlecasting outlets, are setting new benchmarks generally. There’s still as much, if not more, blogmentary out there as bad as the MSM at its worse. But the best has really raised the bar.
And now for the first time in human history, we have a mass content dissemination system where no one’s really in charge. Kinda like talkback without a host. Or Letters to the Editor without an editor. On the whole, I’m surprised the outcomes aren’t worse. Both for the blogoshere and the MSM.
I reckon basically and ultimately they’ve just gonna live with eachother, albeit with some serious reputation index shifting and evolving de facto reallocation of responsibilities beyond basic info harvesting. Like several dozen polished knives and forks and a million grubby busy chopsticks now picking at both a ribeye fillet and yum cha.
Obviously you’re not fluent in naskingese MT. Don’t sweat it though. No one is. Not even nasking.
And ask your internal editor to watch the dangling participles there Katz. Think of the kids reading this.
Not actually a great debating point for you, SL.
With a particularly nasty subtext about Jews, BTW.
Phil ,
your behaviour on this thread is a pathetic and unfortunately not rare example of blogging’s weaknesses.
It isn’t unusual for you to abuse others and to argue around points not to them . Grow up fella!.
Classic Phil-
“Now run along Mr(s) Twain and enjoy your self congratulatory â??bloggers arenâ??t journosâ?? masturbatory mantra, one Iâ??m sure you chant as you tearfully wank yourself to sleep every night.”
Yeah you are doing wonders for blogging, wonders.
Gee, throw in a bit of intentional gonzo and folks get all riled up. Thanks for the criticism, I’ll take it on board.
Mr Twain is Ms Twain, as a matter of fact. FACT! Don’t mention that word!
You put up a comment with no reference to your own gender, using the name Mark Twain. Then when someone naturally assumes you’re male (as we assumed Hannah was female until he told us otherwise), you cry GOTCHA!
Let me explain a few things to you MT. For one, LP is a political blog. Not all blogs are political blogs. The USP or Unique Selling Point if you like is that blogs are about writing
Some people, like the ones on LP, like to write about politics and economics. That is called opinion. Don’t try to tell me that the editorial pages of the AGE and Herald Sun aren’t stuffed with articles which are opinion rather than reportage. What the blogosphere does is give us a greater choice than what we’re dished up by the editors; also, it holds a magnifying glass to those opinion writers, showing that the populace isn’t passively sucking their opinions up as “fact” simply because they are in the blogosphere.
A magnifying glass is also being held up to the MSM in other ways. A discussion, say, of John Howard’s body language on TV while being interviewed, or the gender implications of something that happened on BB or Oidol, doesn’t require the kind of access that journos have and an educated person with a blog is equally capable of coming up with some intriguing point as a MSM opinionista. Most of the time, I find the good bloggers much better value.
As far as facts go, do you really believe that by reading John Quiggin, for example, I get inferior factual information on the economy than if I’d read the Herald Sun? Please.
Your derogatory remarks also ignore the fact that most blog readers are completely aware of and cool with the fact that journalists (Stop the presses!) generate news. But if you don’t read blogs, you won’t be pointed towards many journalists’ writings that are interesting or pertinent at the time, because the editors of the local Aus. dead-tree press don’t consider it newsworthy at the time, or it’s too specialist. In other words, blogs actually increase our consumption of journalism – it’s just that we’re able to bypass the stuff that the Australian media has decreed we must read or watch.
Me, I like to read news on topics related to feminism. There’s no readily available and affordable quality feminist journal that I would buy, but there’s a plethora of quality feminist blogging out there that has replaced that. Pandagon, Feministe, Shakespeare’s Sister et al. I think it’s the journals that really need to worry.
Many well written blogs focus on other areas such as health, science, housing, kids’ education, special needs kids or whatever and the fact that they might concatenate facts from many sources matters not a whit, compared to the level of skill and humour with which they do so.
But I’m straying from my point which is that the blogosphere is primarily about writing, and the political bloggers are a subset of it rather than constituting its whole. I read many of the despised “personal bloggers” because they are good writers.
Have you read Creek Running North? Pandagon? Crooked Timber? John Quiggin? Do you think these kind of things have no merit? Thousands of readers disagree, and have voted with their keyboards.
Comment with 2 links chewed up by spaminator.
C’mon Spaminator, drop it, there’s a good boy…
Off to vote now. Based on what I read in the MSM PLUS what I read on blogs. Get used to it.
Nope.
I ain’t no CK.
If people wish to have their posts treated with the same courtesy they expect in face-to-face debates, the very least they must do is post under their real name. Otherwise, “they” are no more than typing.
If journalism is being defined according to the veracity of fact in relation to representations of complex events in the world, then there are no good journalists, only acts of good journalism. hence, bloggers or any other nu-me-diaz can get their good-journalism-freak on.
If, on the other hand, journalism is defined by the hegemonic slickness of the media apparatus to deliver target markets/audiences/political constituencies to interested 3rd parties that pay the media apparatus in money or access to the ‘truth’, then the MSM sh!ts all over the nu-me-diaz.
relating to a point made above about how experts, pollies, etc are those who journalists have access to, while bloggers don’t, I also reiterate the point that experts etc are already blogging. Most of the time it is through my university’s media unit, but sometimes when I am asked for a quote about hoons or something I have been found through my blog
I’m a BLOKE I tells ya!!! Sexists.
ever considered providing a translator Nabs? And trying to walk out that chip on your shoulder”? When you find time away from your cyber-space journey of Homeric proportions of course…;)
Well, an interesting rage of responses to my feeble and rather tipsy attempts to defend my profession. Some are even well argued, which is a refreshing change from the majority of self-proclaimed arbiters of journalistic incompetence in the olden days, when I was a bright young thing just starting out. Then, if wanted to complain about the evil meeja and its role in the destruction of civilisation you had to sit down and write something on a piece of paper (what the hell is that, I hear you say). The time it took to rustle up some writing paper or whip the cover off the typewriter was usually enough to calm most people down. They also had a tendency to consult a dictionary and proof-read their prose, something that I seem to have forgotten how to do as well.
In the olden days – say, 2001 – it was only the true-blue nutters who couldn’t quite temper their vitriol when you happened to write something they didn’t agree with. I still have a couple of them following my career, in fact, all because I wrote an article back then that had the gall to give equal time to an industry association that was calling for stronger environmental regulations. We’ll all be rooned, my Hanrahans said. You’ll be pleased to know they still keep in contact and regularly send me Christmas cards adressed to ‘the spawn of Satan’.
I think they teach this point in universities these days, the oft quoted case study of how the media reports global warming. It is literally beaten into our heads – one of my old editors liked to use a metal ruler for the purpose – that we had to get all sides of the story. So now when 95% of climatologists are warning of impending doom, we old smack-head journos dutifully trot off and ask the 4% of waverers and 1% of nutters what they think as well and just as dutifully note it down. It’s an issue we are yet to resolve in our worldwide mass media bingo games down the local. I’m so inculcated by my training that if I was around when Winston Churchill was proclaiming against the evils of Nazism, I would have rung up Mr Hitler to see what he had to say for himself. Hitler is evil, say the allies. No, I’m not, says Hitler. 700 words, have it in by four o’clock and remember to ask the Martians what they reckon too.
I should perhaps point out that I’m an old lefty, which is why I’m interested in this site in the first place. It’s also why I have to use a pseudonym, because I am one of those old-fashioned types who believes in objectivity in my professional life. But I’m just a reporter (and quite proud of it) not a commentator. Unlike those evil beasts Dennis Shanahan and Glenn Milne, who are allowed to comment as well as report. That would be the malign Murdoch influence. Strange that Fairfax lets David Marr and Adele Horin get away with it too.
I was out last night and catching up on sleep today so I’ve not read this thread until just now. There are some interesting points made, but can I ask people please to maintain appropriate standards of civility?
I think it’s wrong to say that Crikey (particularly) and blogs (to a limited extent) don’t break news, even if much of what’s published does have a symbiotic relationship with the MSM. But a lot of what Crikey publishes relies on research, leaks, sources, etc., basically old fashioned journalistic processes but not necessarily done by journos. Maybe that’s part of the reason why there’s some angst about?
My own view is that the relationship shouldn’t and needn’t be adversarial, which is why I was attacking the bloggers v. journo theme as a tired cliche.
The severe confusion of fact and opinion in most papers now is a problem, however, though again it needs a more complex analysis (which I don’t have time for now) than simple condemnation.
I presume you didn’t actually mean “rage” despite the fact that in some lights, if you squint your eyes just so, as written, it does seem to mean, well, something.
And it is heartening to read that some MSM journalists do occasionally achieve the state of sobriety.
I take your crack about Shanahan and Milne being the worst, apart from all the rest, as meaning that opinionating is very widespread in the MSM.
You appear to be quite dismissive of the old reportorial requirement of getting a denial from that nice Mr Hitler.
Are you, or has something necessary been lost with the spread of the Shanahans?
“Journalism is one of the highest callings there is,â?? Marshall says. â??Good journalism is essential to democracy. With good journalism, you have good government.â??
http://asunews.asu.edu/node/1060
Bloggers aren’t journos? Well most aren’t and probably don’t want to be.
However I know one very ordinary blogger who manages to regularly get news stories on the front page of regional newspapers and sometimes The Age in Melbourne.
How? Just do the research, write an outline, contact a journo and bundle the docs and email same.
Viola! What the blogger wanted aired in the print media gets in the print media and a journo gets a article under his/her byline with minimum effort.
With a good many source documents now appearing on the Internet in digital from and many others capable of being scanned and emailed directly from source to person inquiring, it just gets easier and easier for any novice to follow the paper trails.
These days even articles by the few good journos remaining are usually only a guidline for discovering the ‘truth’.
As to journos having superior access to the powerful – little insignificant people are not usually considered a threat and can often get almost as far up the VIP tree as the journo and gain quite a bit of ‘background’ material.
“I presume you didnâ??t actually mean â??rageâ?? despite the fact that in some lights, if you squint your eyes just so, as written, it does seem to mean, well, something.”
a bolt of cloth
a quiver of arrows
a rage of responses
Yeah, it has a certain kind of poetic ring to it.
Bias in media has always been with us, as Nabakov rightly notes, but it seems to me that in recent decades there’s been a change in the structure of the bias, and that’s what interests (worries/exasperates) me. I’d be interested if Marktwain has any critical opinion of what I’m saying here, or maybe thinks I’m mistaken…
Don’t know if it’s the same in Australia (though there’s reasons to suppose it’s not so different there), but for instance, in my grandfather’s day, in New York, there were upwards of a dozen major newspapers, each with its audience and constituency, and each with a rather obvious political bias which could be more or less taken for granted. You shared the paper’s views, which was sort of why you bought the paper. It was on your team. In other words, the biased reporters were talking directly to their biased audience in the same biased language. Fox News in a way is the inheritor of this tradition. So, I think, are the blogs.
But in the post-60s, post-Woodward and Bernstein, post-everyone’s-a-college-boy-now world, and aided and abetted by media consolidation, a different kind of journalistic bias formed: an elite talking only to itself, and talking down to you, and uninterested in whether what it was telling you was the ‘whole truth’, because whatever they deigned to tell you was for your own good. The new elites had often privately decided amongst themselves that they were going to ‘change the world/the System/whatever,’ without consulting you, and usually in the name of some vague commitment to something called ‘social justice’ (a phrase which always cracks me up, since even Plato after 500 baffling pages couldn’t define ‘justice,’ yet these fellows know implicitly what it is, and it’s even social now, too!).
So it’s not the bias as such that bugs me; it’s the arrogance, and the closed circuit. And with the arrogance comes an extraordinary, almost aristocratic kind of laziness: as I noted upthread, reporters in a war zone in Iraq apparently *did not know what a bullet looks like after it’s been fired*. They felt no need to know these trivial worldly ‘facts’; they knew the Higher Truth about the war, and that’s what they’ve decided to tell you about. How can anyone trust anything they say, even if it’s accurate, say, 80% of the time? Which 80% is the accurate part?
More to say about this, but don’t want to get too long…
“In other words, the biased reporters were talking directly to their biased audience in the same biased language. Fox News in a way is the inheritor of this tradition. So, I think, are the blogs.”
j_p_z, i fervently agree that we need more diversity of news reporting outside of the blogosphere (difference of opinion flourishes in this space)…but implying that Fox news is somehow outside of the ‘elite’ parameters & owns up to its less than ‘fair and balanced’ focus is bogus. The ‘Kingmaker’ Murdoch is just another ruling class elite…previously an ENABLER…who plays chess games w/ our societies based on his own somewhat Reublican Libertarian views…primarily & conveniently those that promote whatever propaganda & political leaders will help him accumulate assets, stocks, influence…& essentially, an EMPIRE.
http://www.outfoxed.org/
N’
I’ve received a communication from Helen Dale threatening action for defamation if comments about her on this thread aren’t removed. I don’t concede for a moment that any are defamatory, and I haven’t previously read most of this thread. However, because I don’t want to face a legal action, I’ve removed them, and would ask people not to make any further comment about this issue.
Who’s Helen Dale??
skepticlawyer aka Helen Darville/Demidenko.
hmmm…well hasn’t that killed the thread American Corporate style.
I saw the crumbling of my space…& i ascertained myself
thought, why bleed now?
when we can stand aloft & resist
or
look for a destination
more suitable
w/out the need
to apply for compensation
look upon the oncoming, potential disaster
and smile
as you step aside
comforting for all & sundry in the mix
in the chaos
lonely crafts
w/ weapons
get broadsided
sometimes
N’
Paragraph five, j_p_z, is right on the money. It has never changed, and never the twain shall meet.
You’re no Lefty Marktwain…yer just another neo-con SLEEPER who has been awakened for the election.
It’s up to the Australian voters now
Australia?…or the 51st state of America?
(Friday Night Lights – Explosions in the Sky)
long live the Truth Seeking bloggers!
Howard out! Rudd in!
Oh.
79 comments on I don’t think there has been much of substance to counter Marks’ proposition.
Other than those that have been stripped.
I’ve thought this over some, and I very much doubt I’ll remove comments again if the request is posed in terms of a legal threat. However, I do appreciate people leaving it where it stands at the moment.