What's the responsibility of the media? | 91 comments (91 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: The fourth estate (4.00 / 7)

In Europe the blogosphere is still pretty marginal to this whole process. It encourages a more critical reading of the MSM, but rarely originates much new material of its own.

Looking at the politics that I have been most involved in, Internet surveilliance vs Internet freedom in Sweden, the evolving pattern is that pretty much all the new material is produced online by non-journalists. On a particular issue - the FRA-law, the swedish implementation of IPRED, the parliamentary treatment of the telecom package, the ACTA negotiations - there is usually a group of bloggers that does the digging in particular sub-questions (in collaboration with their commenters), a wiki to collect and sort the data and some form of campaign site to formulate the slogans, press-releases and coordinate activities. And a facebook-group tied to the campaign page to draw traffic and utilise the networking effects of that site.

In general I would agree with the quoted bit, but there are examples to show that it need not be so.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 04:40:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (4.00 / 5)

These examples usually, in my impression, involve official documents, available in the a language the bloggers understand, that can be found on the internet.

That's where bloggers have the advantage: If the primary source is on the 'net, there is nothing that a reporter can do that a good blogger can't also do.

On the other hand, blogs do not (yet) have reporters on the ground in - say - Georgia, to tell which way the tanks are actually driving, and which city the rocket artillery is actually shooting at. Good as the deconstructions of the official Western(TM) line was (and I note that I got the deconstruction on ET before the Danish press started ~~reporting on the events~~ plagiarising CNN), it would not have been possible without AFP and TASS...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 05:26:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (4.00 / 6)

It's possible as blogging becomes more visible reporters won't be needed - or will only be needed in very hard to reach areas.

People who live in an area will do their own reporting. We saw that with Katrina and Iraq, and the information, detail and interest level were usually much better than the MSM reporting.

Talking to camera isn't hard. Viewers don't care if it looks amateurish, as long as the coverage is interesting. And there's a generation growing up now which is YouTube literate, and doesn't see MSM TV as an exclusive 'serious' news source.

So single viewpoint editorialised reporting will start to become more rare, replaced by self-selected eyewitness footage and perhaps some random analysis from opionated people.

If you look at BBC News 24, there's only about four hours of real content there each day - the rest of it is autocue reading and repetition. It's starting to look very rigid and contrived as a format. (Which it always has been - but without competition, no one noticed.)

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 06:19:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (4.00 / 4)

yea what's with the news channels repeating the same stuff every 30 minutes? Just when TV gets a format that facilitates in depth coverage, they dumb the whole thing down again.

notes from no w here

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 06:55:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (none / 1)

Truth is a precious thing; use it sparingly? Content costs money, especially the traditional model.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Thu May 28th, 2009 at 11:53:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (none / 1)

It's possible as blogging becomes more visible reporters won't be needed - or will only be needed in very hard to reach areas.

That depends. If they continue to play to their weaknesses (political ~~analysis~~ tea leaf reading, recycled press releases, manufactured stories, incessant (and unattributed!) plagiarism - sorry, "syndication" and copy-pasted Reuters newsfeeds) instead of playing to their strengths (access to institutions, the ability to dispatch correspondents worldwide on short notice, large and varied archives(!) and the ability to force confrontations with insiders), then they will lose relevance, influence and, not to put too fine a point upon it, raison d'etre.

But if they play to their strengths instead of their weaknesses, they will play an important part of the media landscape throughout this iteration of democracy.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 09:55:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (none / 1)

the big loss will be this one

the ability to force confrontations with insiders

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 12:52:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (4.00 / 2)

That and the ability to put people where bloggers won't or can't go. How many bloggers are providing independent ground coverage of the Chechen conflict? Of the dirty war in Columbia? Of Georgia's little misadventure in South Ossetia?

And for that matter, you can add providing an institutional framework for whistleblowing. While whistleblowers could hypothetically contact - say - DailyKos, the blogosphere has precious little history of dealing with whistleblowers, and it just takes one security cock-up to make life really miserable for a guy who takes on - say - Volkswagen or ThyssenKrupp.

The really sad thing is that the broadcast media have already largely surrendered two of these critical strengths. If the entire press goes "ooh, shiny!" whenever a spin doctor feeds a press release to a tame newsie, its ability to keep its eyes on the ball long enough to support whistleblowers and force confrontations with insiders is seriously compromised (to put it nicely...). And the salient point here is that blogs and other grassroot media can't - at least in their present form - replace those aspects of the broadcast media.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 06:06:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (4.00 / 3)

There was an entire blog devoted to on the spot coverage in Chechnya. But it seems to have closed now. (Or been closed down.)

More exotic places don't necessarily have convenient infrastructure - yet.

The idea of blogging is relatively new, and the idea of news blogging is even newer. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it's not possible.

And I'm not completely convinced by the whistleblower points. Hasn't Wikileaks been doing exactly this?

The move to blogging doesn't just mean a move away from one-to-many media - it means a move away from passive spoonfeeding of editorial narratives, and of the idea of the Inherent Personal Authority of reportage and editorial.

That's a good thing, because a multiplicity of independent sources improves the overall quality of news reporting.

It's a bad thing if you want to make a policy point and have people support you, because first you have to find an audience, and then you have to keep their attention for long enough to create democratic pressure - all of which will become harder.

But it can be done. At the moment the European right is doing it more successfully than the left is. The left is leading in the US.

But that only proves that it can be effective.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu May 28th, 2009 at 09:34:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (4.00 / 2)

I think that the wiki is probably a media form in and of itself - it has many of the features of grassroot media, but it also retains many of the features of broadcast media. Among them a rather strong editorial control, at least compared to more "orthodox" peer-to-peer systems. The main difference between wikipedia and a traditional lexicon seems to be that wikipedia is open and above board about the editorial process.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu May 28th, 2009 at 11:00:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The fourth estate (4.00 / 2)

As the main source, yes. Official documents offline - but public - has also been an important source. And get enough of a crowd going and you will have someone in the right place with a camera or a taperecorder.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Wed May 27th, 2009 at 08:48:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

What's the responsibility of the media? | 91 comments (91 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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