September 2008 Archives

The much-awaited debate season had a cold and unpromising start. MSNBC believed that Obama "won" the debate and Fox believed the same for McCain. The truth is, both candidates lost.

Debates are a huge opportunity for either side. The 1976 debates illustrated the potential they have to influence a presidential election. Although Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford in the elections, polls showed the gap narrowing after the first debate - and swaying almost entirely Ford's way, until the third debate.                                                                                                                   

The purpose of having a presidential debate in such close proximity to the main elections was entirely defeated this year. As an audience, we only heard again what we have been hearing through the race. The undecided voters remained undecided and the voters who were certain will remain unwavering.

Surprising, given the number of Democrats that agreed with McCain, and the number of Republicans that agreed with Obama, as was visible in CNN's "audience reaction" meter. Also surprising, given how close this presidential race is.

The choice of topics didn't help either. Both sides have been very clear about their foreign policy, especially with regards to Iraq, Afghanistan and Georgia. The economic crisis issue had tremendous potential as a debate topic. Both candidates, however, were hesitant to aggressively comment on the issue because it is so new - they haven't had the time to effectively use it to their advantage. Both candidates are well aware that every single thing they say is going to be simultaneously checked by scores of fact checkers, waiting for one to make a mistake. 

In this excerpt, the extent to which the moderator and PBS anchor Jim Leherer tried to illicit a substantial response from the candidates becomes evident: 

"I'm trying to get at, that one of you is going to be the President of the United States come January. In the middle of a huge financial crisis that is yet to be resolved. And what I'm trying to get at is how this is going to affect you not in very specific, small ways but in major ways and the approach to take as to the presidency."

I do find specific fault with Obama. The Democratic nominee should have stepped out, gotten aggressive and taken a few risks. His opponent is a member of the party that has arguably recreated America's 1929 depression. Only this time, the impact is much more global. According to filmmaker and author Bernard Henry Levy, "the left has always been too shy," and especially in the American scenario. At an event to promote his new book "The Left in Dark Times:  A Stand Against New Barbarism," Levy mentioned this fairly global trend. And this has been evident in this debate.

The following is one instance where Obama should have hit back a lot harder than he did. John McCain's vague justification of being cost-conscious:

"Who is the person who has believed that the best thing for America is to have a tax system that is fundamentally fair? And I've fought to simplify it, and I have proposals to simplify it. Let's give every American a choice, two tax brackets, generous dividends, and, ah, and two, and let Americans choose whether they want the, the existing tax code or they want a new tax code. And so, ah, again, look at the record, particularly the energy bill."

We can only hope the debate will get more interesting in the future when topics of abortion and same-sex marriage come up. For now we can just look forward to an entertaining vice president's debate. Especially since we know so little about one of the candidates.

The internet has done a variety of things for journalism - things that you know only too well. If you are reading a student's blog on the topic of media I, the author, can safely assume that you are not new to the field of journalism and that you have already processed a good amount of information on the state of the news media and web-based journalism before. There is just so much out there. So much you can go through, so much you can trust. And so much that you can't.

For you to be reading this blog, you probably have an opinion already on what I am going to write about, and for some reason, you think that this student of journalism might have something interesting to say. Something that you would like to read because of the possibility of it adding to your opinion of the news media or in order to gauge a student's opinion on the news media. But you wouldn't trust everything I say, unless you spend a lot of time viewing and cross checking all the links I provide. You may still be unsatisfied.

To get any information on the American news media, a layman would choose a more reliable source, such as Editor and Publisher Magazine or Poynter as first stops. They were probably yours as well.

The internet has complicated things for a reader. Legacy media like ABC News and Washington Post are online, trying to be as interactive as a blog but also as "balanced" as they have aspired to be. The lines between these two entities have been blurred, and unsophisticated consumers of news are hesitant to distinguish the two; they don't know what they can expect from either. They don't know what is trustworthy.

But websites like SpinSpotter.com and NewsTrust.net will change all that. Before you waste your time reading a story, SpinSpotter tells you if you can trust the content or not. NewsTrust aggregates all information it deems reliable, and organizes it based on topics.

Here is how they work.

 SpinSpotter

A toolbar is downloaded onto your browser. As you read an article, the Spinoculars indicator comes on and discovers all the items that illustrate the "spin" in the piece being read.

The system identifies "Spin," based on a set of criteria created by a Journalism Advisory Board. These include, biased sources and over-reliance on press releases.

Evidently, an opinion/editorial story will have the most "red." Consider Nicholas Kristof's column in the New York Times.

As for the tool's usage, unfortunately there were a variety of websites I visited, that did strike out on a few of the elements my Spinoculars should have had caught on to. Aside from the technical tweaking the tool may need, the tool performed smoothly and was easy to use. 

NewsTrust

The objective is to be the last stop for trustworthy news or "quality journalism." Articles are rated by reviewers for fitting the "core principles of journalism," including fairness and transparency. 

They call themselves a "guide to good journalism." A large variety of sources of news are reviewed and lists of good stories are populated.

The benefit to the reader is that the website has information on all the major topics in the news. It is strictly an aggregator, but has a variety of stories from both sources in both mainstream media like the New York Times, USA Today, etc., and what it calls the "Independent" media - a host of websites and blogs such as AlterNet - a left wing news webstie, MotherJones and even The Huffington Post.

The difference is that NewsTrust requires the proactive effort of its viewers to grow the number of stories it has whereas SpinSpotter is a tool, applicable to any content page.

Both sites function on one underlying belief: viewers want to be aware of the fact that they are reading biased content.

Consumers of news have gotten critical about the messengers of news they once trusted blindly. To get an accurate account of news today, the coverage of the same story must by viewed in two different websites, in both mainstream media and "independent" media. Neither NewsTrust nor SpinSpotter would work if readers were not proactively concerned about the quality of news. 

No matter what your opinion on blogs and amateur journalism is, you need to accept that these new players in the news industry cannot be ignored and that they are here to stay. And they have earned their place. Websites like Drudge Report, Politico and DailyKos have broken stories which would have arguably gone unnoticed (or maybe just unreported) by the traditional media. 

 But the resulting problem is an overload of information. In this cluttered environment, NewsTrust and SpinSpotter make a confused and overloaded news viewer's job, a lot easier. 

As I have mentioned in previous posts, consumers of news in an educated society cannot be fooled about a biased channel being objective. The media has a tremendous influence over its viewers and continues to exercise this power. Because of this, undecided voters need to be very cautious of where they get their information. 

We have seen outrage against Fox by democrats and independents, against MSNBC by republicans at the RNC and also against ABC by an undistinguishable group of citizens. 

On this instance, MSNBC discovered an inconsistency with CBS' coverage of GOP nominee John McCain. 

The original video was posted on CBS' website. Later, the edited version 
was aired on TV.

In a country such as the United States of America, the biases are known. They may not be officially advertised, but they are immediately evident. This is probably why few cared to watch Obama's interview on MSNBC; According to Nielsen, Bill O'Reilly's interview with Obama had more than twice as many viewers as his interview with NBC's Keith Olbermann.

"The two taped interviews aired head-to-head at 8 p.m. and O'Reilly's show on Fox News drew 4.6 million viewers compared to the 1.9 million who tuned into Olbermann's show on MSNBC."

News TV becomes like bad reality TV when they publicly go at each other for not being objective. There have been numerous other instances of the media attacking each other over the airwaves. While most stories, even the important ones, are restricted to 1.5 minutes on TV, anchors of competing news channels don't hesitate before taking up 3-5 minutes of airtime to speak against other news organizations or journalists.

Keith Vs Bill

While News TV lowers itself to bad reality TV, did ABC do a good job with Palin's interview? No matter what Gibson could have done better, it would have been impossible to satisfy everyone, least of all journalists. Although the McCain campaign may have approached Gibson after his treatment of the Clinton-Obama debate, his questions were clearly direct and probing. 

But that doesn't mean that Gibson and Palin must have had some interaction in the past. As an independent and undecided voter, one interview with Palin is not enough for me to make my decision up about her. And the media's job, both liberal and conservative, is doubly important as she has not been a well-known, national public figure. Although ABC may be perceived to be fairly neutral in comparison to the other networks and cable channels, it is important that Palin interviews with MSNBC as well, as Obama interviewed with O'Reilly, for me to finalize my opinion on the candidate.

Are these two terms mutually exclusive? Can neutral organizations be transparent? If they truly are neutral, do they need to be transparent?

To compare "neutral" with biased and transparent news, I looked at a variety of organizations. As an international student, I am new to American media and have few preconceived notions of news media brands. Immediately, I was confused: I couldn't tell if The Los Angeles Times was left of center or right, whether CNN was Democratic or Republican or whether The Washington Post was Republican or simply an extremely political paper.

But what was evident was the bias of the reporter of each individual story. Even an organization like PBS that prides itself on balance and objectivity has biases. For instance, in a certain PBS documentary on marketing, it is evident that the reporter is skeptical about the sanctity of the advertising industry and in the process has packaged a 90-minute insightful, important, but nonetheless opinionated documentary of the industry. 

Let's accept that it is unrealistic to expect a well-informed individual, like a reporter, to not have opinions. 

That's where transparency comes in. Having links to a story published online makes it easier for the reader to verify the information put forth by the reporter. The reader may also pull up the reporter's personal blog site and investigate the point of view.

Fantastic! So as a journalist, we don't need to pretend anymore. Does this mean that we can proudly be human again?

Not really. Few consumers of news are not involved enough to bother, or have the time to take advantage of the tools that enable transparency. But consumers notice the biases of news brands like The New York Times or The Boston Globe. This is simply an outcome of repeated consumption. 

Therefore, it is only in the best interest of an organization to be transparent about their biases which can not be hidden. A contrary case in point: Fox News. They pride themselves on being objective and run their slogan, "We Report, You Decide" right next to their logo.

But Rupert Murdoch, owner of NewsCorp, FoxNews' holding company, made clear that he did try to influence audiences to support the war, through his various news outlets. "Good strong news organizations, can, by disclosing things, can help shape the agenda," he said.

The public does will notice these discrepancies and it is only damaging to the credibility of the brand to not be transparent about its objectives. As was evident in an incident involving Fox News correspondent Griff Jenkins at the DNC in Denver, this year.

Also relevant are the other type of news consumers - the ones that are unexposed, uneducated and often unrepresented. This audience may not be easily found in America, but one step over to the developing countries like Spain, Brazil and India and one notices the impact a newspaper has in daily life. What is seen on TV or what is read in print is considered gospel. The audience is impressionable and without an infrastructure for Internet, they don't have the facilities to cross check what they read or view. In such an event, it becomes doubly important to be nothing but objective. But being neutral may not help here, because the audience may not have the ability to read between or act on just the cold facts. 

As entities that are better-informed and more knowledgeable than the average reader, news organizations are qualified to take a stand on the issue and not be neutral. But they must take a stand independently, without a bias. Being transparent can help an organization prove its independence and unbias. 

There is also a larger national risk in being biased, especially in a bi-partisan political scenario. As an audience, you are more inclined to consume the channel/newspaper that reinforces rather than challenges your view.

Consider the difference in turnout at the screening and discussion of Obama's acceptance speech with John McCain's, at USC Annenberg's event that was organized at the same time and same day of the week. According to the Daily Trojan, "The scene in the Annenberg lobby, where about 100 students gathered to watch McCain's speech, was more subdued than the crowd of more than 300 that overflowed the lobby last week to witness Obama's speech. "

If a newspaper is leftist, and has a loyal leftist audience, it will be bad business to carry editorials that may be supporting a Republican movement. For instance, a newspaper may believe that same-sex marriages should be allowed. They may also believe that the War in Iraq is important for national security, but this opinion will disappoint their audience; it may cost the newspaper loyal readership.

One reason for the explosion of blogs may be that there are a large number of individuals found voiceless and unrepresented in this bi-partisan media - and technology has enabled them to take things into their own hands. 

If people keep reinforcing their own opinions little progress will be made. A Republican will prefer and restrict his daily news diet to organizations with a Republican slant. The same goes for Democrats. 

Eventually, the country will end up evenly split with an equally divided public opinion on any issue of importance.

Instead, if a news organization were to take open stances based on issues, it could be transparent about its opinion, and thus have content that is unique and constructive.

Photo: Anant Goenka

Click to view Album of the event.