Media Rhetoric Journal

It’s called bad kairos.

The reaction of the UC Davis police to peaceful student protesters is now an internet meme featuring Lt. John Pike pepper-spaying everything from baby seals to the Declaration of Independence. These images are satire and deadly serious howls of outrage (an outrage I share).

Pepper-spraying the students at UC Davis was a speech act in that physical acts may be interpreted by witnesses as springing from particular ideologies and “speaking” for those ideologies. The act, then, becomes a text of that ideology and open to reaction, critique, and resistance.

These photoshopped shenanigans (just search for pepper spray cop on Google) have Pike spraying vulnerable and/or sacred things, i.e. the two images reproduced here. I interpret that to mean that the authors of these images believe Pike, and the power he represents, is a direct threat to our culture (and I happen to agree with them if this is the case) .

It’s difficult to know what political impact these images might have. Bursting into a meme so quickly is significant, I think. But then there’s the irreverent and, in some cases, outrageous subjects that could easily turn the meme against the authors.  Also bad kairos?

Wait and see.

Technorati Tags: Culture, Rhetoric

News-Leader Editor David Stoeffler announced today that the paper will soon require readers to use Facebook in order to comment on content. It’s a good move:

The goal is to eliminate anonymity in the hopes of increased civility and conversation in comment threads.

In the long run, we also hope it will lead to increased participation, inviting in people — including community leaders — who often are turned off by the sometimes outlandish and even vicious comments from largely anonymous users.

The new Facebook Comments platform is being implemented across Gannett’s newspapers, following testing in four markets, including Des Moines, Iowa. The system allows any visitor to the website currently logged into Facebook to leave a comment on an article using their Facebook identity.

When the News-Leader first implemented a comment feature I argued for an open system that allows anonymity. I think anonymity was necessary to jump-start an online community. But I have also argued that such systems cannot remain anonymous because they become a haven for trolls who drive out civility and intelligence.

I’ve argued for a tiered system that preserves some anonymity and rewards transparency with greater service.

Facebook is all about the idea that one should have a single online identity. In the infographic below (click for larger view), Mark Zuckerberg makes the argument that transparency is a form of integrity. I agree. But Christopher Poole, founder of 4chan, counters that the cost of failure can be high if you contribute transparently. I agree with that, too, which means that we all need to be mindful of our civic voices.

Technorati Tags: Journalism, Rhetoric

My recent essay about poverty and journalism is ready for Rhetorica readers to review. Here’s the link to Google docs.

I rely heavily on a criticism made by sociologists Herbert Gans and Michael Schudson — that journalism routinely fails to offer citizens “actionable” information. I largely agree with their assessments. So perhaps it is interesting that providing the poor and working class “actionable” business and economic coverage is exactly what I think newspapers should do to correct the (middle)  class bias of journalism.

Take a look. Let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: academia, Journalism, media bias, Rhetoric

A big what-if from The Guardian:

The idea of giving this information away before publication might therefore seem to be putting digital dogma before common sense. Just because the internet theoretically allows journalists to give readers a peek behind the curtain by sharing the list with them does not make it a good idea.

We suspect otherwise though at the Guardian. What if readers were able to help newsdesks work out which stories were worth investing precious reporting resources in? What if all those experts who delight in telling us what’s wrong with our stories after they’ve been published could be enlisted into giving us more clues beforehand? What if the process of working out what to investigate actually becomes part of the news itself?

OK, fine. But I think news organizations should have been leading this revolution rather than following it. That’s what’s going on here — following. Can you say (Pulitzer Prize winner) ProPublica?

For that matter, can you say Ozarks News Journal? We’ve opened our “newslists” to our readers through our Facebook group from day one. Granted, we’re not the big dog in town. But we have reported on important issues and done so differently from other news media in town. It’s a student project, i.e. they are still learning.

How committed is The Guardian to this new rhetoric of conversation? Take a look:

It’s a bit of a leap in the dark, we know, so we’ve decided to structure it as a short trial starting this week and we are ready to pull the plug if we suspect we’re giving away too much competitive advantage or falling on deaf ears. What we won’t do is give up our right to exercise our own judgment about which stories are important, or pay much attention to pestering from PR people, but we do think it is worth listening to our readers.

It was a “bit of a leap” 10 years ago. Today it’s what I’m teaching my journalism students.

Further, The Guardian doesn’t make it easy to participate. What appears to be the main page for the newslist (it isn’t entirely clear but should be) has neither instructions for participating nor the newslist itself. You have to click through to a blog post to find these things.

And, all too typical, a link to Open Newslist is nowhere to be found on the front page.

Technorati Tags: Journalism

Just a reminder to loyal Rhetorica readers: I will not be covering the presidential campaign the way I have done in the past, i.e. examining the rhetoric of the press-politics relationship. I am out of the politics game — at least on the national level. It remains to be seen if I use my space here on Rhetorica for state and local press-politics coverage. I’m still thinking about it.

Due to other commitments (especially regarding the sites I run for my classes — Ozarks News Journal and Reflections in the Screen), blogging on Rhetorica will continue to be a low priority. Exception: This will be the primary space for sharing my academic work. I am finishing my peer-review draft of my case study on journalism and poverty now (deadline early next week). I’ll post my results and thoughts as soon as the latest draft is complete.

Most of my blogging effort is going into Carbon Trace now — my blog about bicycling and walking for basic transportation. I’m having a much greater impact on the world with this local blog. The whole point of writing a blog (for me) is to make some difference in the world, to apply rhetoric to an exigence for the purpose of persuasion and, thus, to  create the world I want (see here and here).

I suggest that you subscribe to Rhetorica’s RSS feed so that you’ll be alerted when I post new content if you remain interested in Rhetorica.

I’m also thinking about a re-design. Hmmmm… if you have thoughts on that, please leave a comment.

Rhetorica isn’t going anywhere. I have too much important work represented here to close the site. Further, as Rhetorica approaches 10 years of existence, it is one of the longest-running blogs on the internet. That’s reason enough to make sure that I keep it going.

Technorati Tags: academia, Blogging, Journalism, Rhetoric

That’s another over-promising headline for you. Here’s what caught my eye: What Journalists Need To Know About Libelous Tweets. And here is the lede:

Rumors that CNN had suspended Piers Morgan due to the News of the World phone hacking scandal spread on Twitter earlier this month, sparking an important discussion about whether journalists need to verify information before tweeting.

Why would this spark such a discussion. Isn’t it painfully obvious?

I have long argued that operating as a custodian of facts with a discipline of verification is essential to journalism. What that means is: If you do not have that stance and practice that discipline then you are not practicing journalism. I don’t care if you’re getting a paycheck from a news organization or not.

Journalism is not simply writing up current events. It’s not punditry (i.e. unreported opinion). It’s not gossip. It is a very particular thing that emerges when one operates as a custodian of facts with a discipline of verification while pursuing a very particular purpose. Other communicative endeavors may also operate with this stance and discipline. Academic writing certainly should. That doesn’t mean academic writing is journalism. It simply means that this stance and discipline are essential to more than journalism. Perhaps this: This stance and discipline are essential to the gathering and dissemination of any information that we would hope an audience would take seriously (that information being useful to some purpose).

Verify tweets?

Does the person tweeting consider himself a journalist producing journalism for the primary purpose of offering an audience civically useful information (and/or, in the case of professionals, giving citizens the information they need to be free and self-governing)?

Then, hell yes, you verify before tweeting.

Technorati Tags: Journalism, Media Ethics, opinion journalism, Rhetoric

My essay for the American Political Science Association conference and the Journal of Poverty & Public Policy — a case study in reporting about poverty — is coming along nicely. The conference is in early September. I began the writing phase last week.

I found myself wanting to come up with something practical.

I have written/published these academic essays concerning journalism:

• the ethics of pre-primary presidential campaign coverage
• the role of identity in the ethics of writing ombudsman columns
• the politics of community improvement programs
• the ethics of identity in who is a journalist
• the structural biases of journalism
• the shifting definition of “losers” in the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

All of these essays had their beginnings here on Rhetorica, either as blog essays (re: bias and campaign coverage) or as questions I asked of my readers (re: ombudsman and “losers”). All these essays share something with many other essays written by professors in the humanities and social sciences: There is very little here that can be put to immediate use.

That’s OK on one level: Our primary purpose is to try to come to some understanding of how the world works and why it works that way from the points of view of our various disciplines. But it’s not at all satisfying from another role we academics should play — the role of public intellectual.

Take my primary campaign essay for example. It began as a blog essay entitled The Press-Politics of the Presidential Primary Process. My writing on this topic for Rhetorica and for an academic audience created an idea for the improvement of political journalism: Tell a different story; tell the story of citizens’ experiences with governance.

Simple, right? Just change your whole point of view.

But that’s what professors so often do. We come up with stuff that has very little practical application because the institutions we hope to influence do not want to be influenced. The collective mind of an institution wants to survive and reproduce itself. Telling a different story of politics would change the entire game — a game that the establishment of journalism is very happy with as it is (despite occasional grousing on the pages of the Columbia Journalism Review).

That’s not to say “tell a different story” isn’t important or shouldn’t be used to improve political journalism. This is a change in point of view that would improve the ability of journalists to fulfill their primary purpose and come close the meeting the demands of their press-politics mythology. I stand by it as necessary, but I suffer no delusions that anything will ever change in regard to it.

With this new essay I set myself to a practical challenge: Say something interesting about how journalism (using the Springfield News-Leader as a case) covers poverty and point the way to better practice without costing the newspaper time, money, space, or personnel. In other words, take away the usual excuses for not making a change. These are, by the way, really good excuses. Much of what we all know would improve journalism costs the very things today’s corporate product has so little of:  time, money, space, or personnel.

Since I am studying one newspaper, I did a little field research and met with the editor, David Stoeffler. We’ve had two conversations about this essay, one formal and one informal. Those conversations have led to a breakthrough. Based on my examination of two months worth of issues of the News-Leader, I think I have discovered something that hits all the hot buttons.

Well, you’ve read this far, and this is where I leave you hanging. The conference is September 1-4. So I must have this thing written by 31 August. That’s when I’ll tell Rhetorica readers all about it.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Journalism, Politics, Rhetoric

One of the first things I wrote for The Rhetorica Network almost ten years ago was the Media/Political Bias page. It’s still a work in progress, yet it has brought me and this weblog more attention that anything else I’ve written.

You will find the latest mention in Brooke Gladstone’s new book The Influencing Machine. It is a graphic, non-fiction book about the media. Here’s one of my panels in the chapter about bias:

Last fall I did a segment with Ms. Gladstone for On The Media about crisis reporting. We were chatting before the recording began, and she told me that I was in her forthcoming book. I made some wisecrack about hoping the artist drew me in a properly heroic fashion. And now you can see the results.

Now compare to the real things. Pretty close I guess

I’ll start reading the book soon and write a review. A quick flip through it demonstrates that despite its graphic approach the book is thoroughly serious. Hmmmmm… do I have an anti-graphic book bias?

Oh, never. There’s nothing about a graphic approach that suggests a lack of seriousness. We’re still talking words here. But more, just take a look at the panel above. Notice what you can read in drawing. The hunch of my shoulders and the tilt of my head suggest that I think I’m stating the obvious but am baffled why no one seems to get it. I’ve got a steady hold on that rocking boat of bias and a steady gaze because, by gum, I just know I’m kinda sorta in the ballpark with this whole bias thing. And, perhaps, the hunch of my shoulders also betrays my being disconcerted that my little gem of obviousness — everyone’s little gems of obviousness in a rolling sea of motivated obviousness — is making Ms. Gladstone hurl.

Technorati Tags: Culture, Journalism, media bias, Rhetoric

In case I have not been clear over he years, I think the essential practice of journalism is the discipline of verification (re: Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2001, 2007). Any communicative endeavor that would be called journalism by any persons who would call themselves journalists (pro or am) must be based on the discipline of verification: the checking and double-checking of facts with multiple sources.

There’s an old saw in journalism education used to hammer home this discipline:

If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

That assertion is a beautiful expression of the discipline because it 1) demonstrates its seriousness, and 2) disallows the shirking one’s responsibility even though the quality of the information may be obvious and/or difficult to verify.

This morning I read a Reporter’s Notebook column in the Springfield News-Leader from which we can tease another expression of the discipline. Not a replacement of the time-honored expression, but an attention-getter just the same.

If your grandmother says she was a bounty hunter, check it out.

And this is exactly what reporter Jess Rollins did.

Mags allowed her license to expire in 2005, a detail I learned from checking records at the Missouri Department of Insurance, Financial Institutions and Professional Registration. (I always check records of sources I interview but I admit a hint of guilt in checking out the validity of my own grandmother’s story.)

While he plays the line for a smile, I’d bet sawbuck that he actually did it.

You see, Jess was a student of mine at MSU. He took my introductory course. Now I don’t want to be making any claims of having much to do with his professional success. But I will say that I do try to impress upon all of my students in all of my journalism classes that the discipline of verification is the essential skill of journalism. If you want to be good, be good at that.

But more, if you want to do important work that fulfills the primary purpose of journalism, be good at that.

That primary purpose (also from Kovach & Rosentstiel): To give citizens the information they need to be free and self-governing.

Technorati Tags: Journalism, Rhetoric