Tag Archives: Media

It Was Like A Movie

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The print and TV news media is full of the highly visual tragedy of the Costa Concordia, run aground and capsized in the Mediterranean.

Describing the chaos of the evacuation, survivors have likened their experience to the film Titanic.

You get this a lot with disasters, accidents and traumatic experiences.  “It was like a movie” say those who were there.

It is a description that grates, however, because those movies in question are attempting to depict a real life incident.  So of course any given real-life carnage is going to be “like a movie” because those movies are trying to be likereal-life accidents!

A less traumatic example might be when a model or movie star is described as being ‘sculptural’ or ‘like a sculpture’.  Well, of course they are, because the sculptor models his artwork on precisely those people!  Its a back-to-front metaphor. Taken to the extreme, one might describe Harrison Ford by saying “he looks like Indiana Jones” or “he looks like Han Solo.”

Yes, yes, I know we describe things via metaphor, and movies are metaphors. But to my mind “it was like a movie” still feels inadequate description of a real-life scene.

Can Publishing Be a Form of Fact-Checking?

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And now for some Inside Baseball.

Last week, I managed to irritate legal blogger Jack of Kent (a.k.a. David Allen Green) by suggesting he was being stingy with his links, and then not telling him about it.  This was not entirely true on either count – He was not being as unlinky as I had thought; and I had tried to let him know.

Since David and I have worked together on the Libel Reform Campaign, I assume that he is not going to sue me for trashing his reputation in the Guardian.  However, elements of our exchange got me thinking about issues of ‘responsibility’ in blogging.

Here’s the thing:  When David asked me “why didn’t you check?” I felt strangely short-changed, despitre the fact that I certainly had not checked with him beforehand.  This is because when I typed the original post, I fully expected David to become aware of it. Incoming links and twitter recommendations usually alert people to the fact they are being discussed.  Moreover, I think some part of my subconsicious decided that to cite him was, in effect, an invitation to respond.  The invitation was not explicit, but to me it feels like an integral part of the blogging conversation.

I write this not to try and get myself off the hook for the pint I know I must pay to David, but instead to ask how responsible blogging might be different from responsible journalism. A key pillar of the existing Reynolds Defence (a public interest defence for libellous statements) is the idea of verification before publishing.  But should this hold for bloggers?  What of the idea (which I had internalised until David complained) that the early publishing of comment or allegations on a blog or twitter, is in itself part of the verification and fact-checking process?  For citizen bloggers, publishing a claim online carries the implicit (and often explicit) request – “please help me verify”.

Mainstream media critics of blogging, and the politicians, certainly disagree, and see the publication of anything unchecked as being irresponsible.  I would appreciate thoughts on this from The Man Himself – Could this form of early publication online be considered ‘responsible’, due to the very nature of the medium?

Debating Breivik’s Manifesto

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As tweeted yesterday, I was asked onto Paul Hammond’s morning show on UCB Radio, to discuss Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breiviks’ manifesto, which has been published online.  I made the case that, unpleasant though Breivik’s views are, censoring his manifesto would only give him a martyrish status.  Also, the reasons given for suppressing such writings would quickly be used to attack and censor other books (like the Bible).

Here is the audio of my segment [6 Mb].

On the UCB’s Facebook page, a few people raised dissenting views.

… surely the human rights of the Norwegian students and there families should be held in higher esteem the Anders Behring Breiviks. He gave up his rights the moment he blew up the building in Oslo.

I think this is just a confusion of the concept of human rights.  Of course rights such as free expression may be lawfully removed, but its wrong to say that a killer or any other hated person in society can forfeit their rights in this way.  If that were the case, we would call them ‘privileges’ not ‘rights’.

Another common sentiment:

But I would caution against publishingg such material. Not everyone has the wisdom or intelligence to be able to read it. God forbid but what if there was to be a copycat killing because of publishing this?

To this, I am reminded of Bronwen Maddox writing in The Times, discussing the ramblingsof another killer, Cho Seung Hui:

The accusation that the NBC broadcasts may provoke copycat attacks — the most serious charge against the network — appears to rest on a notion of severe mental illness as contagious, common and predictable.

UCB is a Christian radio station, and as such there were a few comments invoking the more nebulous concepts of God and Satan:

He had his foot in satans kindom, he is a freemason wich is v evil ,he also listend 2 chantin an playd demonic games on computa,he gave the devil an entrance 2 his mind.ther so much ocult activities that warp the mind an insesetive the value of life

I don’t think this is helpful.  Evil and even satanic Anders Breivik may be, but these are adjectives to describe his end state of mind, not the process by which he became like that.  Explaining a good or a bad act as being the work of God or Satan is a way of avoiding hard thoughts and (maybe) a difficult truth.

On Linking To Your Enemies

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In my morning trawl through the Internet, I noticed two examples of a practice that has become mainstream: denying the object of your opprobrium a link.

First, the fascinating Brian Kellet writes this, in a fisk of a Liz Jones column about the NHS says:

I’m not going to link to the original story because I don’t want to send visitors to the rag that is the Daily Mail.

Then, in a battle of the pseudonyms, highly respected legal blogger Jack of Kent decides that he is going to have an argument with Gudio Fawkes, but without actually namechecking Guido or linking to the ridiculous Death Pentalty campaign he just launched. I’m particularly disappointed in Jack of K, as he writes, in his very next post, that one should “use links and sources wherever possible.”

Linking out, regardless of whether you agree with the person you”re linking to, should be the standard for blogging, just as it is for academia. It is the link to sources which gives the work credibility. In contrast, anonymous gossip disguised as lobby reporting is one of the reasons why there is so little trust in journalists at the moment (a topic discussed at the recent POLIS journalism conference, where I asked a panel of spin doctors and hacks whether the press should abolish anonymous sources)… and the fact that a tabloid does not have to cite its sources is one of the reasons why #Hackgate could happen.

Moreover, we know that our online bubbles are not as diverse as we like to think. Safe silos like Facebook actually filter content to prioritise those people that you already agree with, and our failure to link out just strengthens the confirmation bias. I disagree with Paul Staine’s worldview and his approach to blogging, but I do actually want to know what he is saying about the death penalty, the better to campaign against him.

So, just as we’ve stopped using the Blame The Daily Mail cliche as a substitute for actual political analysis, can we have a moratorium on the whole “I’m not linking to those people” schtick, please? I know we can Google pretty much anything we want to these days, but not everything appears on page one of the results. Worse, a failure to link looks a bit sly and scheming. Let’s leave the obfuscation and misdirection to those outlets with lower standards: The Newspapers.

The Corrupt Corporate Culture At the Heart of #Hackgate (Part II)

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'Son of Murdoch' by ssoosay on Flickr

‘Son of Murdoch’ by ssoosay on Flickr

The phone hacking scandal is becoming increasingly confusing.  During the debate on the issue today, I confess I became utterly lost by Ed Miliband’s long explanation of the relationships and personalities involved.  David Cameron was able to use phrases like “conspiracy theory” and “tissue of intruige” which brand the scandal as a Westminster fabrication.  John Rentoul is right to say that Cameron’s critics need much simpler language to explain the problem with the Prime Minister’s judgement and relationships.

Labour’s tactic is to doggedly pursue the ‘smoking gun’ of lore: the archived e-mail or the scribbled note that proves that Cameron knew more, and knew it earlier.  At yesterday’s select committee hearings, the questions were pitched to discover similar key facts that could skewer Murdochs R and J.

This is risky in both cases, because such evidence may never emerge.  It is also counter-productive, because on the meantime, both the politicians and media barons get to punt the difficult questions with “let’s wait until the inquiry” or “I don’t want to jeapordise the criminal investigation”.

A narrow fixation on evidence that could further damage the Prime Minister, or ruin Rebakah Brooks, means that the wider issue – polical, police and corporate corruption – is left to fallow.  Rupert Murdoch presided over the expansion of a corporate culture in which the phone-hacking of murder victims and other obscenities were the inevitable end result.  Whatever he knew and whenever he was told, he is at fault, he is to blame.  Meanwhile, David Cameron’s first act as Prime Minister was to employ someone who he knew had come straight from that morally barren Hades.  There may not be a smoking gun, but you can almost see the steam coming off this scandal.

The Corrupt Corporate Culture At the Heart of #Hackgate (Part I)

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News International's Rebekah Brooks Under Fire, by ssoosay on Flickr

'News International's Rebekah Brooks Under Fire' by ssoosay on Flickr

There are three recent articles that have stuck with me over the course of this scandal, and they’re all about the wider pheonmenon, the corrupt culture that allows all these power abuses to take place.  At Labour Uncut, Anthony Painter calls News Corporation a ‘monster’:

It is nothing to do with Rupert Murdoch as businessman or as an individual or about his politics. It’s about the over-weaning power of a media empire that seems willing to flex its muscles to infect politics, public discourse, and law enforcement agencies. The point is not to join all the dots painstakingly one by one. It is to say: this media empire is too powerful; it is time to take action.
…
The difference in the case of News International is that having committed wrong, it was then able to use its power to protect itself. It drew critical public institutions into its web of power in the process

Second, Nick Cohen filed a really interesting column last week on the culture of fear.  Few people, says Cohen, are brave enough to be whistleblowers:

I know good journalists at News International, but not one of them challenged a management that was presiding over a criminal conspiracy. If they had spoken plainly, their editors would have fired them and in all likelihood they would never have worked in the media again, because no other manager would want them to do to him what they had done to his predecessors.In their complicity with their superiors, they aped the workers in the City and on Wall Street, who knew that asking awkward questions would ruin their careers.

And finally, the indispensable Jay Rosen delves into the warped corporate culture that prevailed at News Corporation, which allowed hacking to become routine.  He brands News Corp as a company primarily interested in weilding influence, with its newspapers and channels as a lobbying tool for that primary purpose.  The refusal of the journalists at NI papers to acknowledge this is, says Rosen, the big lie that sows the rest of the deceit.

A corrupt culture, a generic malaise (in which the public is also implicated, by the way) is a much more ephemeral target for those of us who are angry at the power abuses that are now being uncovered.  Unfortunately, the slow realisation that our collective psychology has been so abused does not provide the same catharsis of a good political lynching.  So we concentrate on the humbling of bêtes noires like Rebekah Brooks and Ruper Murdoch instead.

Double Standards on Phone Hacking

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A few quick comments on the unfolding phone hacking scandal, and what it says about the double-standards of our society and politics.

First, let us note that the images featured on the front pages of many newspapers yesterday were those of the most iconic cases of recent years. Sarah Payne, hollyandjessica, Millie Dowler, Madeline McCann: the news-stands appeared to be some macabre Abduction Hall of Fame. This is actually a dream come true for rivals of News of the World. It is the invasion of privacy of these families that the rival newspapers are keen to report, because they too know that it is images of these children that sell. And by pasting the famous images onto Page 1, I would say that they too are stepping, once more, into the grief of these families.

Meanwhile, black men and boys (the victims of inner-city stabbings that are far more common than the abduction of white school-girls) don’t seem to be mentioned in the reports. Is this because Glen Mulcaire and his News of the World handlers did not think the stories were sufficiently interesting? Or that today’s politicians and editors judge that an invasion of the privacy of (say) Damilola Taylor’s family would not sufficiently motivate the public, in a way that the Soham murders apparently do? Whichever explanation is closer to the truth, it says something unpleasant about our society and our media. It is ironic that, in expressing outrage at the practices of the tabloids, we fall back on the precisely those assumptions and values that we otherwise claim to despise.

A final note, also related to public opinion. In the chamber of the House of Commons yesterday, the Prime Minister made some throwaway comment about how the phone-hacking scandal was no longer “just about celebrities and politicians”. It is sometimes difficult to remember that both those groups are humans beings too! They deserve precisely the same protection from the law as the families of murdered schoolgirls. The Rule of Law is the Rule of Law. When it is broken, the Prime Minister’s outrage should not be contingent on who the victim is.

Update

They’re discussing similar issues in the USA too.

Update II

Now cross-posted with comments at LiberalConspiracy.org

The Problem of Verification

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Jalena Lecic, whose photos were stolen and posted on the 'Gay Girl In Damascus' site

Jalena Lecic, whos photos were stolen and posted on the 'Gay Girl In Damascus' site

Angela Philips of Goldsmiths College, at last Friday’s POLIS conference:

A Major skill for journalists is to learn how to authenticate sources

Or, words to that effect! I made the note on twitter and therefore may have paraphrased. To fully authenticate the quote readers will have to watch the video of the session when it becomes available.

This quote stuck out, because twice in two weeks, I’ve been quick to share information online which has then been questioned and discredited.

The first was the damning testimoney of an “executive of Sony Music UK” who described how Simon Cowell grooms and sexualises young performers, in his quest to find a British Justin Beiber.

Ronan was privately auditioned by SYCO scouts on two more occasions and, as is usual practice on BGT, he was “invited”  to audition for the show as a “preferred” contestant.  At the same time, Ronan and his parents were “required” to enter into a contract with SYCO.  Like all SYCO contracts, it is heavily  weighted in favour of the label and are notoriously bad, even in the cut-throat world of the music industry.  Simon effectively signed Ronan for life and he’s got little or no chance of ever  getting out of it…unless Simon decides to terminate.

Now the improbable perfection of little Ronan Parke has always made me feel uneasy, so I was quick to share the story on my Facebook page.  However, the original post quickly disappeared from the website where it was posted and Simon Cowell issued such a strong denial over matters of fact that I felt it rendered the acusatory, anonymous post unreliable.  The following day, James Ward posted an excellent analysis of how the attack was propagated by a twitter account @ukLegion, which has also now disappeared from Twitter.  I shared James’ link on Facebook too.


#include damage.h

An industry insider at #BGT spills his guts on how this year has been totally stiched up for Ronan Parke to win http://justpaste.it/c8g

Earlier this week, reports emerged of the abduction of a Syrian blogger in Damascus.  I duly tweeted out the links on the @englishpen feed, because that is precisely the sort of information we are supposed to share.  However, by Thursday it emerged that no-one can be found who has actually physically met the blogger, Amina Abdallah Arraf.  It appears the photos posted on her site are fake, but it is not clear whether the entire thing is an elaborate hoax, or whether she has cleverly covered her tracks by ensuring that if no-one has met her, no-one can unwittingly betray her.  I was reminded of the Ali Abduleman disappearance in Bahrain in March – I am still not clear whether he was abducted by security personnel, or has simply gone into hiding.

I have several things to say about this.  The first is that linking to hoax information is clearly embarrassing, no two ways about it.  Here’s my worst example, although to be fair it was reminiscent of a real story.  As the Literally Unbelievable blog shows with its comments on The Onion articles, other people are much more gullible than I.

The second thing is to say that, nevertheless, the internet can work as a sort of fact-check engine.  The act of sharing a link does not and should not imply complete endorsement.  In the case of the SyCo smear I, at least, was quick to share the original article and the rebuttals.  In this example, one could say that the act of posting/sharing is also an act of verification.  When you publicise some text, does it stand up to scrutiny?  If not, you have learned a fact about the world, which you also publish.  This method is something that bloggers understand inately.  However, in formal journalistic and legal circles such a practice would still be lumped in with ‘publish and be damned’ as irresponsible journalism.  But it is more akin to open-source fact-checking.

I will also say that internet publishing has the huge advantage over print in that it allows corrections to the original article.  In the case of Amina Abdallah Arraf, the three highly reputable news organisations I linked to (Al Jazeera, the New York Times and the Washington Post) were all able to correct the original article.  This, I think, lessens the possibility of misinformation spreading.

Finally, this issue puts me in the mind of Ste Curran’s Monica, a play about a fantastic and witty online friend who turns out not to be real.

 

This Week on Twitter

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Was it last year, or 2009, or maybe 2008, that was branded “The Year of Twitter”? I am tempted to say that it’s an accolade deserved this year too. We’ve had the Arab Spring, the Japanese earthquake, the Royal Wedding and the death of Osama Bin Landen this year, and it’s only May. All these globally significant events have been defined and re-defined in the popular consciousness by the micro blogging site we have come to know and love. In the case of #OBL the event was actually live-tweeted by a Pakistani citizen journalist. 2011, the Year of Twitter again, right?

I think this misses the point. it’s better to say 2011 has already been an important year for events, and Twitter has both reflected and amplified those events.

It is also affecting more traditional news gathering too, so my claim (above) about “the popular consciousness” holds true even if not everyone uses Twitter. This critique by Felix Salmon of the New York Times‘ coverage (or rather, its coverage of it’s own coverage) shows how the organisation is in denial about how social networks affect it’s relevance and it’s reporting. Meanwhile, this article by Frédéric Filloux points to the wider evolution of news. This has a knock on effect for everyone.

In some cases, independent Twitter users are providing a crucial link in the news reporting chain. News editors have been fuming for years about super-injunctions, and their inability to mention gagging orders in their coverage. Meanwhile, Twitter regularly carries the names of those celebrities who have sought injunctions… So why has the main stream news media jumped on the story about one particular tweeter who has explicitly revealed the details of particular super-injunctions? The answer is of course that it provides an excuse for papers to reveal such details by other means.

In this story, apparently some of the tweets are actually inaccurate. Is this a fatal flaw, a reason for heavy censorship? Not really. As we saw earlier this week when a quote was misattributed to Martin Luther King Jnr, the same networks that propagate the inaccuracies are also the place to correct them. Social networks are surprisingly good at doing this. With the rise of the Internet, we have also seen the rise of new social norms and eittiquette. Forwarding on a false story is quite a major faux pas in the 21st century, perhaps more so than printing gossip, rumour and anonymous sources. The major reason for the New York Times’ loss of credibility in recent years was it’s failure to fact-check the anonymous government sources that told reporters that Saddam did have WMD. The paper was ruthlessly manipulated by the Bush Administration hawks, and yet does not seem contrite. If only Twitter had been around in 2002-03, we may have had the tools to more effectively call the news media, and through them, the US government, to account.

The Propaganda of Obama

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President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011

This week, much has been made of the fascinating photograph published by the White House, showing President Obama surrounded by his national security team as they followed the Bin Laden killing, as it happened. The newspapers I’ve read have all carried a knowing analysis of the image, explaining the telling body language and identifying each of the onlookers. Some of the less prominent figures, such as the Director for Counterterrorism Audrey Tomason, suffered the indignity of being unrecognised by the press.

The photo has already been labelled iconic, which I think is an overused word in this era of highly accomplished photojournalism, but it may yet become the most popular photo of Obama’s Presidency (it is one of the most popular photos on Flickr ever). If It does, this will be no accident. The image is as masterful a piece of propaganda as you are ever likely to see.  And, we’ve been here before.

The White House Flickr stream is touted as an emblem of open government. Photographer Peter Souza seems to have a free reign to wander around the Oval office and even the high-security Situation Rooms, with impunity. It conveys a message that there is nothing to hide.

The image in question is particularly good because it seems to portray a very long moment. If Souza had been filming the scene we imagine that it would not have looked very different from the still photograph… apart from some blinking. The uncritical analysis of the image in the press completely accepts this idea. The behaviour of the President during this operation (and indeed all those with a political interest in appearing strong, such as Vice President Biden, Hillary Clinton, and recently embattled Defence Secretary Robert Gates) has been defined by this image. When voters are asked “is Obama a strong leader?” (a hardy perennial in the opinion polls), this is the image they will remember when they agree.

However, a quick look at the photo’s attributes can remind us how manipulated this image actually is. For example, the file name for the image – which is assigned to it automatically by the camera – is P050111PS-0210. The file names of the images published either side of this one in the Flickr photo stream have the suffix 0106 and 0475, which means that Souza took 368 other photos around the same time, which he and the White House communications team chose not to publish. This is standard practice amongst all photojournalists – for every good photo, there are scores that are discarded because they do not quite capture the story you wish to convey. In this case, I’ll bet there are versions of this image that are under-exposed, or have Obama blinking, or of Joe Biden looking gormless, or with Robert Gates picking his nose, or Hillary Clinton with a double chin. Moreover, there will be others where Biden and Gates, on the extreme left and right of the image, are out of shot, which would be unacceptable.

Interestingly, there is a figure in a black jacket, standing next to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who is out of shot. This man stands with his arms folded (very Alpha Male) and he has a prime position behind Clinton and Gates. He must be as least as important as Tomason and Anthony Blinken (advisor to Joe Biden), both of whom have to peek over the shoulder of Bill Daley, just to get a look-in. I am not suggesting that this is some shadowy figure at the heart of a conspiracy – he might be some lesser aide or bodyguard. I just draw attention to him in order to point out how our gaze and opinions can be so easily directed. “If there aren’t photos then it didn’t happen” is an old newsroom adage. Add to that “If you’re not in the photo, then you weren’t there.”

Don’t get me wrong – I like President Obama, and I share his overall political outlook. One can hardly complain that he and his team choose to present themselves to the world in the best possible light. This is the essence of electoral politics, in fact. However, it is the job of the media to cast a critical eye over the images released to us by governments. The fact that Souza’s photo has been so swiftly elevated to ‘iconic’ status suggests to me that media due-diligence has not been performed in this case, which should be a cause for worry. Body language analyses and ‘who’s who’ type photo articles constitute fluffy, filler journalism. They are appropriate for Royal Wedding coverage, but not for matters of major geopolitical significance.