Media Re:public

Great challenge for citizens or journalists - get Speaker Nancy Pelosi to explain in detail why she doesn’t think even one of the three dozen transgressions described by Denis Kucinich in House Resolution H. Res. 1258: Impeaching George W. Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors is an impeachable offense.

Democrats.com is offering a prize of up to $1000 to the first person to get the answer on video or audio tape.

The timing is perfect - Pelosi’s headed out on a book tour. The only quibble I have is the stupidity of limiting eligibility to “progressive citizens or journalists,” which they define as “To qualify as a “progressive” citizen or journalist, you must be active with a known progressive group or news organization or website (including Democrats.com). Your activity can be as limited as volunteering or posting comments.” Why would reporting by a right-wing, moderate or apolitical citizen not be worth having? For that matter, by this definition, posting an angry comment on democrats.com complaining about this dumb rule would automatically make you eligible.

Thanks to Jay Rosen for tweeting this.

Image: Nancy Pelosi at 30th Anniversary of Silicon Valley Leadership Group, June 2, 2008.
By Orin via Flickr

Is Amnesty International a media organization? Should they (or any other activist non profit organization) aim to be one? Dan Gillmor has started a great discussion on his blog about this. He says we should be finding ways to get human rights, environmental and other advocacy organizations that do large amounts of in-depth research and reporting, especially in other countries. In a discussion of business models for foreign here at Berkman yesterday, Ethan Zuckerman said that doesn’t really help solve the problem of how to get more international news to the US public, because in the end that just means Human Rights Watch will be going to the same funders as Global Voices projects for support. But I agree with Dan that getting the work of what he calls the “almost-journalists” to a broader public in a format that is based on journalistic principles is well worth doing. In a sense of course, that’s what we get when a journalist covers a report by the International Crisis Group. But NGOs have long been frustrated by how hard it is to get the media to pay attention to their issues and many are now producing not only nice-looking reports, but online articles, blogs, audio, video, and multimedia. But those materials, which range from basic to quite complex productions, don’t get the added credibility or the increased attention they would have if they reached the audiences of a trusted journalism brand, whether a newspaper, broadcaster or native-online publication.

UPDATE: I’m embarrassed to have forgotten to mention Public News Service here which seems to be doing exactly the thing I describe below, using a pool of money from nonprofits to produce and distribute radio stories that are created by professional journalists. They were languishing in my list of interesting groups to investigate more, which I will do, and write about them in a post to come.

So I believe it would be helpful if there were a way for advocacy groups to spend some of their outreach money not begging journalists for attention, but funding organizations to hire journalists who will pay attention but will also be fact-checked and edited and whose work will be included in publications/programs/platforms that reach a general audience rather than one that is seeking out information on the issue in question.

This is exactly what is happening when a group like the Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund gives NPR a grant for “Three-year support for expanded international, national and local news and feature coverage on the impact of deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan on American military personnel and their families.” But that is a) not as accessibly transparent as some of us would like and b) benefits only one well-funded nonprofit and one media outlet. What I want is a pool from many organizations that would fund reporters from many different media.

Top video in nonprofit/activism this week on Youtube: highlights of Al Gore’s speech on climate change. Number of views as of this writing: 79,109

Number of people who watched 60 Minutes on CBS on July 20, 2008: 8.3 million people (from TV by the numbers)

No joke - if you have created media of any kind (from the rules: “Print, radio, TV and online journalists, photojournalists and bloggers from any country are invited”) since September 15 2007 (and through 15 Sept 2008) that is about human rights and could be used to illustrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you have a few weeks left to compete for one of THIRTY (30!) all-expense paid trips to Paris. Please help get the word out! If you’re more media consumer than producer, think of the most compelling media about human rights you’ve read, heard or seen recently and forward the link to the author. If none of your regular media sources seems to have mentioned human rights recently, forward it with a note asking why. Information about the contest is available in English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

Actually, my talented colleagues Wendy Seltzer, Geoff Goodell and Steve Schultze did the very eloquent telling of the FCC that their proposal to give away spectrum to be used for “family-friendly” Internet, accomplished by network-level filtering of potentially harmful content, which I wrote about a few days ago, is wrongheaded on many fronts:

– it mistakenly treats the Internet like a broadcaster, which denies the Internet’s essential nature as a space for creation, collaboration and innovation;
– it will stifle both competition and innovation in important areas;
– it is in conflict with the FCC’s own policies promoting openness and neutrality; and worst of all,
– it violates the First Amendment (oh that!), suppressing large amounts of speech

That’s the supershort version, if you have time to be really enraged about this (and you should!) you can read the whole comment on the FCC website, in docket 07-195. And sign up for Berkman’s mailing lists, where news will surely be posted as it appears.

Update: My fellow fellow Harry Lewis has a lovely post on the absurdity of the proposed rule.

Image: Free Speech
Uploaded on May 1, 2007
by mellowbox

Tags: FCC, pornography, censorship

Two conversations today shifted my feelings about a couple of the metaphors we use a lot to talk about media and journalism:

First, the media “ecosystem,” a term some of my colleagues love and that I have resisted, with support from fellow fellow David Weinberger, including in his presentation at our March event. I felt “ecosystem” sounded too neat, too organic, too rational, to represent the messy forces at work in the media environment. In a discussion yesterday I was convinced that other people don’t get that from the word, that they think of ecosystems that can be out of balance, polluted, on the verge of collapse. So, with the idea that the multiple media ecosystems include dangerous jungles, toxic Superfund sites and great barren deserts, I’m cautiously giving the word a chance.

The second opening I’m considering is for the vegetable metaphors: usually “eat-your-spinach journalism” or “the broccoli on your plate.” This came up a lot in LA, and like Adrian Monck, I didn’t like it much. I found the implication that the challenge is to “sugar-coat the broccoli” (a disgusting image) or as Ethan more appetizingly says “make broccoli au gratin,” adding just enough cheese sauce (cheese may be cheap processed America, as in gratuitous of pictures of distressed children, the expensive artisanal (Abomination! Word Press just tried to tell me the correct spelling of that word is ‘artisinal’ the end is near) goat cheese of powerful storytelling).

Now I’ve decided the problem is not the metaphor itself, but with the implied attitude toward broccoli and other healthy vegetables, that even those of us who know we need to eat them would eat mostly potato chips and chocolate cake if we could. I think we need to give both broccoli and people more credit. Like the healthy school food movement, we need to have a positive attitude, making sure the people who prepare and serve the broccoli are passionate about vegetables and eager to share their love with others, not trying to force the kids to eat soggy overcooked frozen broccoli because it’s their duty. And we need to include the education part, where kids learn what spinach looks like growing, how to cook it so it tastes good. It’s repeatedly worked in school cafeterias. So maybe we should be looking for the Alice Waters of journalism? Oh could someone please also write the equivalent of Fast Food Nation about the media to shake people up about what’s in their journalistic lunch bag?

Photo: Broccoli
Uploaded on April 19, 2005
by Tzatziki

We want to support the programs we love.
We want to support the people who might produce programs we might love in the future.
We don’t want to save public broadcast stations just because they are transmitters that used to be the only way we could get these shows, but we do want to support stations that create and support communities.
We want to be able to donate money for podcasts, individual shows and stations.
We want to do this in ITunes and on the IPhone and in other places too.
We want to support stations to produce shows we don’t care about, because other people might be interested in them.
Some of us (OK, exactly one of us) don’t mind pledge weeks, but want additional options for supporting podcasts.

We all hope that this little picture
will help us do what we want.

That’s the “Relbutton,” “rel” being short for “relationship.” The Relbutton was one of the hot topics at the first workshop of Project VRM, which I was lucky enough to attend some of yesterday and today. Sadly other commitments interrupted, so I missed some sessions, but I did make sure to be at the session on VRM and Public Media, which is where we reached the above conclusions.

VRM is Vendor Relationship Management, the alternative to CRM, Customer Relationship Management. As someone who only learned what CRM was when learning about its replacement, I believe that VRM will eventually need a less geeky, less reactive, more assertive name like BISS (Because I Say So), but that will come.

In the meantime, VRM is a wonderful set of concepts and projects-in-progress about giving consumers control, even consumers who are getting something for free. Hence the excitement about the public media and the Relbutton. The button will let us as listeners/viewers/readers say: “Hey, I am interested in this story/podcast/program/series/station/website and I would like to support it in some way, on my terms, when and how it’s convenient for me.”

Once every public media distribution platform is outfitted to accept Relbutton input, you’ll be able to use the Relbutton to build whatever kind of relationship you want to establish with them, whether it’s donating $5 once or $50 monthly or getting on a mailing list or learning that the station needs in-kind donations of something you have a garage full of. If the object of your desire isn’t set up (the technical term is “VRM-compliant”) yet, the Relbutton will collect and escrow this information and send the producers a message to let them know that they are missing out on your love.

Those of us who don’t love pledge week can hardly wait for the VRM gang to make this real. Stay tuned.

I thought I might lose my Trader Joe’s Blueberry Muesli this morning, listening to Adam Davidson chat with Morning Edition co-host Ari Shapiro about free trade, Colombia and the US election. Their 4-minute conversation is ickily chatty (”Hey Adam, hey Ari”) and unbearably arrogant and US-centric. Adam contends that making a big fuss over trade agreements with Colombia is, in his words, “nutty” because Colombia is just too small to matter: “I did the math and… the entire Colombian economy is the size of Hollywood, Florida, not Hollywood, California” They both laugh. Indeed, what could be more entertaining than living in a country where the per capita gross domestic product is less than $20 a day?

So, Ari persists, why do US politicians care about this silly little country, since only “some people here and there” (Adam’s words) will be affected by any trade deals? Well apparently, unions are upset because a lot of union leaders get killed there, but as Adam goes on to observe in the same cheerful “gosh-how-silly” voice, “a lot of people get killed in Colombia, it’s a very violent society.” Wow, that’s even funnier than being poor!

The hilarity continues as Davidson notes that in some states “trade is a big, big deal” even though those foolish voters are just wrong about trade being the reason they lost their jobs. Davidson presumably thinks that American voters in those states may be almost as stupid as the people who choose to live in poor, violent Colombia.

I’ll leave union members and residents of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Ohio to defend themselves against Davidson’s flip dismissal of their concerns. On behalf of the rest of the world, though, I urge NPR to make both Ari Shapiro and Adam Davidson spend a few hours learning something about Colombia. Wonderful place to start is on Global Voices, which will steer them to a heart-breaking series of short videos on the struggles of a brave group of women to fight back against the violence and economic hardship in the Barrancabermeja region, home to the country’s biggest oil refinery. Hey, did Davidson really fail to mention that petroleum accounts for almost 30% of Colombia’s exports? Yup, I listened one more time to be sure.

This offensive piece of “analysis” (perhaps that’s just another word for “filler” at Morning Edition?) added nothing to our understanding of trade issues or the election politics it was supposedly about, while actively encouraging the worst sort of American closedmindness. Which public is public radio aiming for?

Photo: Bogotá
2600m + montañas paisas…
Uploaded on December 27, 2006
by One*mandarino
Some rights reserved