Media Inquiry? Inconvenient facts go down the memory hole (part 2)

Do you remember the Independent Media Inquiry?

You might vaguely recall the Finkelstein inquiry…yes, rings a faint bell?

It’s OK, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d forgotten most of the details.

What do you remember?

Oh yes. Finkelstein, isn’t he the guy who wants to throw the champions of the fourth estate in jail for telling the truth about the nasty and unloved Ju-Liar government?

That’s right, that’s exactly right. Here’s a free online subscription to the Heart of the Nation.

According to many ‘exclusive’ stories in The Australian newspaper, the sole aim of the Independent Media Inquiry was to impose heavy sanctions on the news media because the Gillard government doesn’t handle criticism very well.

Take this story from media commentator Mark Day on 26 April 2012. It is so important it got top of page 1 treatment;

A new regulatory body, funded by government and with powers to impose fines and sanctions on news outlets is a key proposal of the long-awaited Convergence Review of the emedia sector.

Unfortunately, this story was wrong, wrong wrong.

The Convergence Review rejected any idea that there should be any such government-funded organisation with anything like the powers suggested in this breathless lead par.

However, since this story was published it has become standard operating procedure to continue the lie.

It is only possible to conclude one of four things:

a) the budget is so tight at News Limited that as many words as possible have to be recycled on a daily basis which means that key phrases are used over and over again to save money

b) the koolaid in the LimitedNews bunkers is real tasty and no one’s yet cottoned on that it is the source of the medicine that results in obligatory groupthink

c) there is a deliberate mis-information campaign going on designed to fool Australians into demanding Stephen Conroy’s head on a platter.

d) we are being fed a bowl of chump bait with fear-causing additives so we don’t see what’s really going on.

It’s probably a combination of all four.

If we’re stirred up about bloody attacks on ‘our’ freedom of speech and we can be made to think that only The Australian and the Institute of Public Affairs stands between us and a Stalino-Fascist dictatorship of ‘befuddled’ Greens from the ‘tofu belt’ aided and abetted by the ‘soft-Left media’ then maybe we’ll be goaded into action.

Seriously, you couldn’t make this stuff up even if you called yourself Chris Mitchell and spent your days dreaming of a world in which you could wield the absolute power that corrupts absolutely.

Monetizing UGNC: Is this how the news industry will survive?

I’m in that usual happy-anxious phase that authors get into when their manuscript is in the production process, but the first pages have not come back with editor’s queries and comments.

It’s a double-edged feeling because you are happy to have the MSS off your hands, but anxious because you don’t really know what the editor thinks and, even worse, stuff keeps happening. Stuff that would be good in the book. “Damn!”

This is really obvious in the world of News 2.0. The rate of change has not slowed, just because I’ve reached my contracted word length.

However, I’m also feeling a little smug (dangerous, hubris inducing, I know) because I see evidence again that one of my key theses is correct.

In my exposition about why I’m arguing for the term User Generated News-like Content (UGNC), rather than “citizen journalism”,  I make the point that the once radical posture of Indymedia and citizen journalism and the innovative use of collaborative technologies has been superceded by the MSM’s attempts to monetize the stream of cheap and free content they get from consumers – iReport on CNN is the best example, but not the only one.

Now I am a bit disappointed, but not surprised, that one of the world’s leading media and journalism research institutes is touting a conference for news executive at which they can learn how to exploit UGNC for profitable ends.

Stretching your news budget with user content will be at Poynter’s HQ in St Petersburg Florida and no doubt it will be a fun-filled affair.

Participatory journalism. Crowdsourcing. Pro-am. Whatever you call it, you’re probably debating how to create or expand user content for your organization.
…
Explore the benefits (and drawbacks) of enlisting volunteers or semi-professionals to cover the stories your professional team can’t. Learn how to maximize impact and create a system that makes sense for your newsroom.

Another interesting development from Poynter is a scheme to give some training to these UGNC newsroom volunteers.

Yes, lift your jaw up off the floor. It’s actually about training them to a level so that they can attain a Poynter Institute “certificate of understanding of journalism basics and skills”.

That is, turning them into real “journalists”. Perhaps not, it will be a low value qualification; probably more aimed at making your volunteer feel special and to not really mind being exploited.

In News 2.0 I suggest that monetizing and exploiting UGNC is going to become more common and that it totally undercuts any suggestions that UGNC will be a real defining challenge to the mainstream.

The MSM is fighting for its survival – this is no more than the dynamic of global capitalism – and it will do so by any means necessary.

World Media Summit – the future of news is in safe hands…not

OK, so can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

Chinese President Hu Jintao (7th L) poses for a group photo with co-chairpersons of the World Media Summit prior to the summit's opening ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, on Oct. 9, 2009. The two-day summit, hosted by Xinhua News Agency, opened here Friday morning. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

Talk about a nightmare featuring Men In Black. This comes pretty close.

The World Media Summit was held in Beijing from 9-11 October 2009 and brought together the leaders of 170 global news media companies to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the news industry in the age of News 2.0.

A number of important speeches were given by eminent people and a long-winded weasel-word statement was issued at the close of the summit.

It’s remarkable for the lack of irony, but the statement called for the news media to be a conduit for “world peace”. Yes, if this sounds like some lame beauty pageant, that’s exactly what it was, viz:

We hope that media organizations around the world will provide accurate, objective, impartial and fair coverage of the world’s news events, and promote transparency and accountability of governments and public institutions, and thus facilitate the mutual understanding as well as exchange of views and ideas among peoples from different countries and regions.

A fine sentiment, particularly given the summit was hosted by the Chinese regime and the keynote address was given by that well-known democrat and champion of media freedom Hu Jintao.

The revolution will not be Twitter-ized

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

Revolutionary black musician Gil Scott Heron released “The revolution will not be televised” in 1971. It was the first track on side 1 of Pieces of Man.

I put it out there because I think it’s important to reign in a little the “Twitter Triumphalism” around events in Iran over the past few days.

I want to paraphrase GSH: The revolution will not be twitter-ized”

I was on TVNZ this morning discussing the Iran-media/Twitter Revolution stuff.
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Epic 2015 – what’s beyond the horizon?

I was fortunate today to meet and interview Matt Thompson. He’s a journalist, blogger and thinker. He’s also the guy behind the wildly successful viral flash videos Epic 2014 and Epic 2015.

The premise of these 8.5 minute creations is to predict the future of the media in our digital world. They were both created a few years ago now and they tried to look ahead 10 years from when they were produced.

Epic 2014 was made in 2004, but a year later Matt decided it needed updating.

While I was in Columbia, Missouri at the Missouri School of Journalism 100th anniversary celebrations I met Matt and heard him talk about a new project. He calls it “Wikipedia-ing the news”, but admits the name doesn’t really capture what he’s doing.

Matt is a visiting fellow this year at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at MU that was also launched today.

I was able to grab a few minutes with Matt between his break-out session and the official launch where he and the other RJI fellows were announced.

I asked Matt why he had changed some of the content from Epic 2014 in the second version, a year later.

Fairfax journalists lock-out threat: Where’s the EPMU?

Fairfax Media journalists at the company’s Australian titles are on strike, but their return to work tomorrow is not certain as the company has threatened to lock them out. The four day strike was in response to the company’s announcement last week that it was mounting a “business improvement” plan that would see more than 500 job cuts to save the company $50 million. Obviously at the expense of jobs and quality journalism.

One of the key principles of the union movement is international solidarity. The journalists’ union in New Zealand, the EPMU should be doing a bit more than it is right now.

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton was sacked for refusing to file his column on Friday and other Fairfax columnists are backing him. This dispute is getting ugly across the Tasman, but it appears that there’s none of that action happening in New Zealand. Why not?

The Future of Citizen Journalism

AlterNet: MediaCulture: The Future of Citizen Journalism

This is an interesting column from AlterNet on the future of citizen journalism.

I’m collecting this sort of stuff now because I’m writing a book. The working title is Journalism in the Digital Age: Reporters, reportage and the public sphere. I’m interested in commentary as I go along and I’ve decided on a small experiment: I’m going to blog the book as I write it.

I’m not quite sure what that really means at this point. Perhaps I’ll put extracts or ideas up here for you to question and comment on. I suppose this is really the first entry in that process.

media ethics, journalism

Does news HAVE a future?

It’s probably still a rare thing for a blogger to actually advertise a rival blog in a post, but here goes. This deserves a shout. I got this message from Steve Borris, the associate director of the Center for the Application of Information Technology at the Washington University in St Louis. I’ve had a quick tour of “the future of news” and it’s probably going to become a regular stop on my rounds of the blogosphere. It’s covering some of the same ground as me, but ventures into technology a bit more than I might do. The “future” of news and journalism is a subject close to my own intellectual interests and my own passions about the future of journalism (but not as we know it). I will add a permanent link in my own blogroll, but for now, check it out. Here’s the gist of Steve’s message:

Hello,

I would like to call your attention to “The Future of News” blog that was launched last month. It is a spin-off of a college course by the same name that I teach at Washington University in St. Louis. This site provides a vision of what news will look like 5-15 years from now. It also provides ongoing commentary on how closely day-to-day events fit this vision. While most web-based information on the future of news tends to focus on the perspectives of those involved with current news organizations or technology, this site will also incorporate perspectives from history, political science, consumer marketing, economics, and finance. This should be evident in the three permanent articles that I have posted on the site: News as it was meant to be, Four advances that set news back, and The future of news.

media ethics, journalism