Who or what is a journalist?

USA Today also tackles the question of who or what is a journalist? Contributor Philip Meyer, the Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wonders that too. His thesis is sobering:

Journalism today operates under a kind of feudal system. Just as serfs once provided their labor to the lord of the castle in exchange for protection, reporters today rely on the corporations that hire them to give them the legal clout to take risks in digging out the truth.

Trouble is, bloggers and independent authors don't get that kind of protection, so the First Amendment "shield" still leaves them pretty exposed in practice. Bloggers haven't yet got around to seriously banding together and organizing for protection, though Meyer notes the emerging role of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in providing some legal assistance to California bloggers who are being pursued by Apple Computers. Apple argues that the bloggers revealed "important trade secrets" about their company. Thumbs down for Apple; thumbs up for the EFF (click here for their web site).

"Multi-task lite"?

The media question of the day according to USA Today is this:

As U.S. children are exposed to 8 1/2 hours of TV, video games, computers and other media a day — often at once — are they losing the ability to concentrate? Are their developing brains becoming hard-wired to “multi-task lite” rather than learn the focused critical thinking needed for a democracy?

This appparently is the concern raised by a recent media study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. So if you thought the children's attention spans were getting shorter ... you were right! USA Today provides the main stats here and the original report is here.

"The Office", transplanted to the U.S.

This is a post I originally made on my research blog, London Calling, but it's something that I'm so interested in, I thought I could bring it into mediaville. Last Thursday evening I managed to watch the first episode of the U.S. version of the BBC’s Golden Globe-winning comedy, "The Office". Straight to the point: It really was a clone of the Brit version - right down to about 90% of the gags, and my wife and I were playing "spot the American version of Tim, Gareth, Dawn, etc." to stay amused. (To be fair, the first episode is intended to be a close remake of the original; after that, the U.S. show’s writers are supposed to create original American material for the new show.) Still, even with Ricky Gervais, the show's original UK creator, helping with this version, I don't think that’s going to save it. The odds are that it will follow the calamitous U.S. version of "Coupling" – another failed NBC attempt to import a UK comedy idea - down the tubes.

Inevitably, it seems, the critics in the States quickly panned the show. (See this example from a Slate critic, titled "What have you done with my office?: NBC body-snatches the BBC series"; it's pretty typical.) It seems that American TV critics love most things British - after all, British telly is supposed to be the best in the world (though some HBO execs might take issue with that.) I should point out here that, even though as a general principle I dislike U.S. remakes of successful comedies, I was not completely opposed to this particular example (maybe just 80% opposed). After all, it stars the often-hilarious "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" alum Steve Carell as the Ricky Gervais/David Brent clone. And the show is set in Scranton, PA, a Godawful town that draws a guffaw right from the start. Nevertheless, the show still starts out with two strikes against. Why is this? Dana Stevens of Slate rejects the notion of simple Anglophilic snobbery. Instead, for those loyal fans of the UK original on BBC America:

It's love. The Office's fans love their show with a fierce conviction, and I doubt most of them will take kindly to the idea of simply transplanting the alienated crew of Wernham Hogg paper company to new digs in Scranton, Pa. For those still in mourning for the BBC series (which wrapped up earlier this year with a two-hour special), seeing the roles already recast with American actors is like waking up to find your beloved has been abducted, Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style, and replaced by a random stranger.

But of course there's more to it than that - and yes, snobbery is part of it as well. If Slate is one bastion of Anglophile critics in the States, NPR is surely another. I heard reviews on NPR's Morning edition (click here for the web feed) and later Thursday on Fresh Air. Both reviewers made a similar point that old clones - such as "All in the Family" and "Sanford and Son" - worked in the U.S. because almost nobody over here had seen or even heard of the originals, so no-one had a chance to compare the original with the clone. Now the critics can compare much more easily - unlike most of America, they tend to be avid viewers of BBC America, for example - and the U.S. versions always seem to suffer in comparison. This seems to be at least a contributing factor in why more recent sitcom and drama remakes (including "Coupling", "Cracker" and apparently even a US "Fawlty Towers", which I didn't know about) bomb almost every time. Finally, add in the fact that there's just some je ne sais quoi about Brit comedy that usually doesn't survive the translation, and the "bombs" just get bigger and bigger ...

On a related note, Fox has just started a sketch comedy series called "Kelsey Grammer Presents: The Sketch Show", 9:30 p.m. EST Sunday. It's based on a popular British show of the same name (without the "Kelsey Grammer presents" bit). And it even includes one of the stars of the British show - a bit like having Simon Callow on "American Idol" or Anne Robinson on "The Weakest Link". This one seems to have flown under the radar - maybe it'll work. And it's true that U.S. clones seem to work better with reality TV and (maybe) sketch comedy, but not with sitcoms. Now why is that? hmmmm....

"Independent" Film?

It's been a busy week for me. But it's Friday so I want to post something. I'm not going to say anything about Terri Schaivo - I've said all I can say about that issue, and anyone wanting to read more about her can go to just about anywhere else in media-land. Instead, I'll bring up the issue of independent film. Remember the American "independent" film company, producing great little movies outside of Hollywood and free from at least some of the constraints of the Hollywood machine? (Think back to 1989's "Sex, Lies, and Videotape," and move forward from there.) Well, truly independent film distributors are fast dying out, and now, even more, when we talk about the "independent" film sector in the States we really do have to put quotes around the key word.

The latest blow to independent film comes with the announcement that HBO and New Line Films - both units of Time-Warner - are to buy Newmarket Films "for an undisclosed price." Newmarket, a distribution company that championed such films as "Whale Rider" (brought over from New Zealand), "Monster" and "The Passion of the Christ," will now join a long list of originally independent "indies" that have been bought up by the big Hollywood studios and the media TNCs (TransNational Corporations) that own them. The list includes New Line itself - originally an independent horror/schlock distributor - as well as Caravan Pictures and Miramax (owned by Disney); and Castle Rock (owned by Viacom). Such "indies" - as well as specially created "independent" distributors such as News Corporation's Fox Searchlight - are designed to give smaller, specialty, and limited-appeal movies the patina of indie coolness, while still being under the ultimate control of the corporation that owns it. That means that in movies, as elsewhere in the media, more and more channels of communication (and particularly distribution, the key to any movie's success) are owned by fewer and fewer entities. Even MGM, the last of the independent old-line studios, has been bought by Sony corporation.

This raises a interesting question. "The Passion" was distributed by Newmarket Films even when it was completely shunned by mainstream studios. Would the "new" Newmarket, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner, have been as daring?

New York Times: You go, girl!

The New York Times editorial page has been getting a bit mouthy against the Bush administration of late (though whether anyone outside of the cultural and political elites is paying attention is another matter. Last Wednesday, for example, saw an editorial condemning the Bush administration's media propaganda efforts.

As documented this week in an article in The Times by David Barstow and Robin Stein, more than 20 federal agencies, including the State Department and the Defense Department, now create fake news clips. The Bush administration spent $254 million in its first four years on contracts with public relations firms, more than double the amount spent by the Clinton administration. Most of these tapes are very skillfully done, including "interviews" that seem genuine and "reporters" who look much like the real thing. Only sophisticated viewers would easily recognize that these videos are actually unpaid commercial announcements for the White House or some other part of the government. Some of the videos clearly cross the line into the proscribed territory of propaganda, and the Government Accountability Office says at least two were illegally distributed.

(The GAO, by the way, condemns this whole practice as "propaganda." The Bush administration is ignoring the GAO.)

Sunday's Times turned to the "fiscal meltdown" looming in Washington, as ballooning government spending and continuing tax cuts for the wealthy (yes, the rich are still lining uo for even more tax cuts) threaten to really damage the U.S. economy - and leave millions more in poverty

When you step back and look at it, the collective tax-cutting psyche of Mr. Bush and his partisans appears to border dangerously on the grandiose. How else to explain their relentless profligacy in the face of the unprecedented Bush-era swing from budget surplus to deficit, the unmistakable long-term trend of a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer income distribution, the ballooning costs of war, the weaker dollar, rising oil prices and record deficits in trade and investment - which now require the United States to borrow $2.1 billion a day from abroad? It's time for the people, the ultimate referees in a democracy, to call a timeout.

Today's target for the Times is the Republican government's somewhat opportunistic role in the Terri Schiavo saga.

The Bush administration and the current Congressional leadership like to wax eloquent about states' rights. But they dropped those principles in their rush to stampede over the Florida courts and Legislature. The new law doesn't miss a chance to trample on the state's autonomy and dignity. There are a variety of technical legal doctrines the federal courts use to show deference to state courts, like "abstention" and "exhaustion of remedies." The new law decrees that in Ms. Schiavo's case, these well-established doctrines simply will not apply.

Republicans have traditionally championed respect for the delicate balance the founders created. But in the Schiavo case, and in the battle to stop the Democratic filibusters of judicial nominations, President Bush and his Congressional allies have begun to enunciate a new principle: the rules of government are worth respecting only if they produce the result we want. It may be a formula for short-term political success, but it is no way to preserve and protect a great republic.

All good stuff, I'm sure. But, again, who's listening?

Terri Schiavo

The hullabaloo surrounding the Terri Schiavo euthanasia case (see this BBC report for the latest gory details) is only the latest example of how a simple-yet-appealing news story with limited applicability to the rest of us can hijack the news agenda increasingly set by cable TV. Just like that, Iraq and Social Security and Medicaid and North Korea and Bolton at the UN and Wolfowitz at the World Bank and drilling in ANWAR and baseball steroid use and March Madness all go out the window (OK, maybe not March Madness). It also helps that Schiavo was quite pretty in previous years and the media love any excuse to frame a news story around images of a pretty woman (I'm not kidding about this!). And then Congress and Pres Bush get involved (after years of completely ignoring this issue while it slowly wound its way through the Florida courts) and suddenly it's all completely out of whack. This story gets some traction - and legitimacy - because it taps into the latest round of the culture wars; but really it's yet another excuse for Fox, MSNBC, and CNN to wheel their wall-to-wall coverage over to a newly incandescent issue that will fade as quickly as it burst into life. (Slate.com provides a handy little explainer about the case, which, with this war room piece from Salon is about all you need to know.)

Journalism today

I've been away up in the Adirondacks for the past few days, so I've got some catching up to do. I did note that the ever-excellent Diane Rehm hosted a show earlier this week (on Tuesday) devoted to the state of journalism today. "Faster, looser, and cheaper," is how she describes it. "The rise of weblogs, distrust of mainstream media, and ... the culture of opinion" are among the issues she discusses with her guests. Joining her was Michael Getler, ombudsman for The Washington Post; Jay Rosen, author of PressThink and associate professor at the Department of Journalism, New York University; and last but not least, Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The PEIJ has just released a major report, The State of the Media 2005, which acts as an important annual report card for the media.

On unethical media practices, by the NYT

Last Sunday's New York Times (registration required) challenges head-on the aggressive media policy pursued by the Bush administration. Although we got some headlines from the recent revelations about covert payments to Armstrong Williams and other conservative commentators, the current policy focuses on the federal government's penchant for

a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

And this is the problem. It is bad that the administration is sending out propaganda masquerading as news (otherwise known as VNRs, or Video News Releases). It is much worse for local TV news to air this material without indicating where it comes from! Local TV news benefits as follows:

Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up original material. Public relations firms secure government contracts worth millions of dollars. The major networks, which help distribute the releases, collect fees from the government agencies that produce segments and the affiliates that show them. The administration, meanwhile, gets out an unfiltered message, delivered in the guise of traditional reporting.

This is a basic issue of ethics, for TV news station managers even more than for the government. Stations need to accept that they must acknowledge where they're getting this material from. It's inconceivable to me that any station manager worth her salt wouldn't do this. As for the federal government: If it's so intent on producing this propaganda then they should put it on a government-run TV service and call it by its nice name: public diplomacy. At least then no-one would be under any illusions about where the information was coming from. And btw, the government already does this for people overseas. Government-funded instruments of propaganda/public diplomacy have been around for decades. You may have heard of them: Voice of America; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; and TV/Radio Marti, among others.

"British" film is booming(?)

British film is doing better at the UK box office - 45% better, according to The Guardian, which reports: "Box-office takings for the top 20 British films totalled £176m [$320 million] in 2004, compared with £121m in 2003. And the number of UK films taking more than £3m at the box office jumped to 16 in 2004, from eight in 2003."

The success was largely due to "big-budget co-productions such as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as well as the popularity of smaller films such as Shaun of the Dead, Bride and Prejudice and Layer Cake." Among the other strong Brit performers was King Arthur (£7m), Thunderbirds (£5m), and Alfie (almost £5m). However, on closer inspection, most of these films - including Prisoner of Azkaban and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason - were really co-productions (mostly with the U.S.), so I wonder just how "British" this British resurgence really is. On the other hand, British film has often been criticized for being too insular and too small-minded. If there is to be any sustained resurgence of the British film industry, it has to be on global - and by global I mean American - terms. That's what gave British film international exposure in the 1960s, and that's what can do it again. As long as there's some room left for "small" British films, and wonderful "insular" films such as Vera Drake, I can live with that.

No stopping ad spending in America

An article in AdAge.com, highlighted by the Benton Foundation Compolicy service, notes a TNS Telecoms report that the amount spent on advertising in this country has risen by nearly a tenth in just the past year. The figures are as follows:

US ad spending rose 9.8% to $141.1 billion from $128.5 billion in 2003. There were gains for every medium but one. The exception: national spot radio, down 0.7% to $2.6 billion. The surging Internet showed the biggest gain, up 21.4% to $7.4 billion. Outdoor advertising had a strong 20.1% increase to $3.2 billion. In TV, national syndication had the biggest gain (15.8% to $3.9 billion), followed by cable (up 13.8% to $14.2 billion), spot TV (up 11.7% to $17.3 billion) and broadcast network TV (up 10.7% to $22.5 billion).

Nice to know the ad industry isn't hurting. The piece also points out the big-time ad spenders - the usual suspects, it must be said: "Procter & Gamble Co. continued as the top U.S. advertiser in 2004, increasing measured spending 7.4% to $2.9 billion. General Motors Corp. was No. 2, boosting measured media by 17.5% to $2.8 billion."

(Addendum:) A more complete andaccessible report is available at the Marketing Today web site. Note that the actual figures are for Jan - Sept 2004, so I'm assuming the above raw totals have been annualized for the whole of 2004.

Cable TV and indecency

Broadcasting & Cable point to the developing indecency battle between cable TV owners and Congress, who just can't get off their current decency purge of the media, and are vowing to bring the industry under the same indecency restrictions as broadcasters. Key committee chairs in both Senate and Congress seem set on pushing the issue.

“I think we can put restrictions on cable, and I intend to tell them that,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens told an appreciative crowd of TV and radio-station executives in Washington for the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual state leadership conference last week.

Stevens' comments were echoed by his House counterpart, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas). Both men said their viewers, particularly children, do not differentiate between traditional broadcast channels and pay-TV channels when they scroll through program guides, and there is no reason for Washington to make that distinction either.

The NAB, the lobbying group for broadcasters, is "thrilled," while the less-influential National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) is not so happy. The cable industry's traditional best friends have been the courts, who consistently have held that less stringent regulations apply to cable than over-the-air TV. Let's see how long that continues.

Campaign '04 and the Internet

The good people at the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Pew Research Center for The People & The Press have just released a post-election, nationwide survey of Internet use during the recent electroral campaign. They note:

Fully 75 million Americans – 37% of the adult population and 61% of online Americans – used the internet to get political news and information, discuss candidates and debate issues in emails, or participate directly in the political process by volunteering or giving contributions to candidates.

Pew also notes "a striking increase in the number who cited the internet as one of their primary sources of news about the presidential campaign: 11% of registered voters said the internet was a primary source of political news in 2000 and 18% said that in 2004." Full details and lots more stats are here.

Oh dear, CJR wants to re-engage the public again!

The Columbia Journalism Review's latest editorial is yet another example of a worthy screed that still misses the bloomin' point entirely! The piece, "On Mission: It’s Time to Reconnect the Press and the Public," sound great. It correctly notes that the public is disconnecting from a corporate media industry that increasingly feels like, and acts like, a "behemoth." Caught by critics from the left and right, it opines, journalism is losing its hold over the American public. The atomization of media outlets and multiple news sources doesn't help. So far, so obvious - but what to do? Thinks CJR:

All that individual journalists can do, as we all think through these challenges, is rededicate ourselves to journalism’s central mission and find ways of explaining that mission to the public. If we want people on our side, in other words, we have to do work that actually benefits them. And we have to explain ourselves. ... More to the point, we salute those journalists who are quietly fighting to stay on mission — the editor who talks his publisher into another education correspondent, the station manager who gives a reporter more time, the columnist who remains intellectually honest, the features editor who rolls the dice on something deep.

Yes that's all wonderful and worthy and everything (in a weekend retreat, let's-break-into-groups-and-discuss, pass-a-resolution-to-feel-useful sort of way), but back in the real world (sorry, but I'm building up to a rant now) it's not the journalists who need to "fix" themselves. The "problem" (and oh! my! god! doesn't everyone know this by now?) is that the bottom line - cash, dollars, filthy lucre, whatever - is king in the world of journalism. And by "king" I mean in an absolute monarch, divine right of kings kind of way. So where journalistic ethics and profits clash, 99 times out of 100 it's the ethics that go out of the window. And the public knows that and they don't see any sign of change. It's all very well for CJR to point to the one time in a hundred where individual ethics and journalistic courage win out, but it doesn't change the other 99 times when these values don't win out over the bean counters and good journalists just have to knuckle down to keep their jobs or get fired. I am tired of hearing one appeal after another to the poor bloody infantry - journalists and editors - being exhortated to "try harder," "rededicate themselves ...," "journalism's mission," blah blah blah, when the problem is obviously structural and systematic and has everything to do with the business side and profit maximization and stock market gains! I saw that in spades at the small-town daily I worked at as a reporter in the mid-90s, and things have only got worse since.

(I sense an Occam's razor moment here!) Until we can find some way to reduce media owners' incessant need to wring 20, 30, 40 percent profit margins out of their media outlets, nothing - nothing - is going to change! So here's a suggestion: institute much stricter ownership limits, both locally and nationally. Turn back the consolidation of media ownership and you turn way down the pressure for ever-larger profits. Simple! Suggest that, CJR, or just shut up!

At last!

An honest viewpoint on Social Security that expresses my feelings exactly. Thank you Thomas Geoghegan of Slate!

Not-so-indecent "Frontline"

Now that the FCC has finally decided that last November's network screening of "Saving Private Ryan" was not indecent, that reminds me once again of wimpy old PBS caving in over airing soldiers using sweary words on its recent "Frontline" documentary ("A Company of Soldiers," aired on Feb. 22). But I thought I could at least recognize those brave PBS stations that did air the uncut version. The public broadcasting tracking site current.org lists the 15 stations that aired the uncut version (before the 10 p.m. safe harbor for indecent content): WGBH Boston; WTTW in Chicago; South Carolina ETV; KCPT in Kansas City, Mo., WFUM in Flint, Mich.; Iowa PTV; WGTE in Toledo, Ohio; WMHT in Albany/Schenectady, N.Y.; WNED in Buffalo, N.Y.; KNME in Albuquerque, N.M.; WBGU, Bowling Green, Ohio; WGBY in Springfield, Mass.; KPBS in San Diego; Oregon Public Broadcasting; and KUHT in Houston.

Interestingly, Benton's Comm-related headline service notes that many of these stations that aired the unedited version in prime time said "they found the FCC guidelines on indecency clear enough to help them make up their minds."

BBC lives to fight another ... 10 years

It's been a long haul for the BBC but, it seems, they've made it, at least in terms of keeping their funding mechanism going for another decade. The beeb is to get its Charter renewed ... but there are strings attached. I'll have to return to this when I have more time.

The media and the Dean scream

As Howard Dean barrels through the South, in his new guise as Democratic Party chair, showing the red states he's not a crazy nut after all, it's interesting to recollect the amazing coup de grace executed by the media on his character during last year's primary season. There's a fascinating piece to this end by Ed Wasserman in the Miami Herald, that questions the media's role in the famous "Dean Scream" episode at the end of the Iowa Caucuses in January 2004. Wasserman makes the fair point that the "scream" was completely and systematically taken out of context. What sounded to us in fakey TV-land like a crazed rebel yell was, in the actual context of a packed, very noisy hall, simply normal cheerleading by a candidate keeping the troops' spirits up. All you have to do is set the sound levels to something resembling the actual noise levels in that Iowa hall, rather than the very selective version we heard over and over (with the heavy background noise artifically reduced to a whisper). In the "truer" context, displaying greater verisimilitude - which TV news never let us hear - the incident is transformed. "Dean was no longer scary, unhinged, volcanic, over the top. He was like the coach of a would-be championship NCAA football team at a pre-game rally, trying to be heard over a gym full of determined, wildly enthusiastic fans. I saw energy, not lunacy."
Wasserman concludes:

True, some network news executives commented afterward that perhaps the footage was overplayed and offered the bureaucrat's favorite bromide, that hindsight is 20/20. But the media establishment has never acknowledged this as a burning matter of ethical harm. That's because the Dean Scream incriminates the entire professional mission of television news, which is built around the primacy of the picture. TV producers don't profess to offer meaning and context; they get you the visuals, unless they're gory or obscene. The notion that great footage would be not shown just because it's profoundly misleading - that's a possibility few TV news executives would entertain. That's why they're not eager to see the Dean Scream enter the canon of journalistic sin. And if that leaves Howard Dean's political future hobbled by a lie, so be it.

Every time I've seen Dean on TV or heard him on radio since that time, I've seen a very collected, calm, rational individual - not the mythic madman of the campaign trail - and that just reinforces the gnawing sense I've long had that the electorate were fed an instant myth by a TV news system primed and waiting to take out Dean at the perfect opportunity and the right time for their purposes. I'm not saying that I'm the world's biggest Dean fan; but I do think that one of the American political system's brightest stars - someone who dared to be a litttle different, thereby energizing this atrophied federal political system - was brought down by the equivalent of a single, carefully aimed news media sniper shot (a sniper who, btw, had been waiting in the long grass for Dean for many months). It's a singular indignity that Bush, Kerry, Gore et al never had to endure, perhaps because they consistently played it safe. It's an indignity that probably destroyed Dean's chances of being elected president forever, and will further limit the range of electable Democratic candidates for high public office to a bunch of Mark Warner clones. And it's an indignity that will always hang on Dean's public persona, like a bad smell - but it will never hang on the TV news media, which can throw their collective hands up, say "hey, not our problem!" and then forget they ever had any complicity in the matter. Nobody deserves such a lowdown dirty mediated fate - except maybe certain cable TV news "personalities" who dish it out but can't take it - but certainly not Howard Dean.

U.S. freedom of press under threat: The French view

France's Le Figaro notes the threat to U.S. free speech and free press - not only by recent government actions, such as the Patriot Act and attacks on journalist-source confidentiality (think Matt Cooper and Judith Miller), but also by a general willingness by Americans to let these freedoms atrophy. As Exhibit A it points to USA Today's recent survey of 112,000 American high school students, which showed

that 32% of them believe that there is too much freedom of the press, versus 10% only who believe that there is not enough. If 51% find it normal that the media publish whatever news they want, no less than 36% would prefer that the media be subject to government authorization beforehand. And the newspaper added that "the results of this poll correspond very closely to those of recent studies of adult attitudes."

The French newspaper, not surprisingly, rounds things off bt bringing in good old Thomas Jefferson, "the author of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America," who once said that "he would prefer to live in a country without a government to living in a country without freedom of the press. That is obviously not the opinion of all his twenty-first century fellow citizens," says Le Figaro. I think the evidence suggests the French are right on this one.