Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal

January 13, 2005

Open-source documentary film…

Here’s a press release issued today about my participation in an interesting open-source documentary project:

The Echo Chamber Project has secured its first advisor from the Academic world.

Dr. Andrew R. Cline is an assistant professor of journalism at Southwest Missouri State University and a specialist in rhetorical analysis and web-based journalism.

Cline has agreed to provide his journalistic and rhetorical insights throughout the post-production process of The Echo Chamber documentary. Specifically, he will provide comments on The Echo Chamber interview transcripts and give feedback throughout the treatment, scripting, and editing phases of this independent film.

Adhering to the transparency principles of Open-Source Content Development, Cline has agreed to make all of his comments and feedback on-the-record. These will be available either through his own Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal blog or through specific e-mail excerpts that will be published on Echo Chamber Project’s Blog.

Cline’s Rhetorica Network “offers analysis and commentary about the rhetoric, propaganda, and spin of journalism and politics, including analysis of presidential speeches and election campaigns.”

The Echo Chamber is a documentary that analyzes the pre-war failings of the broadcast television news media, and will attempt to integrate the communication mediums of the Internet with Documentary Filmmaking throughout the post-production process.

Appropriately, Cline teaches in the Media, Journalism, & Film Department at SMSU’s School of Communications Studies, and brings an impressive set of qualifications to help guide and shape this project.

Cline is a member of the following organizations: Rhetoric Society of America, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Society of Professional Journalists, and American Political Science Association.

The Echo Chamber director Kent Bye serendipitously discovered Dr. Cline’s Rhetorica blog while performing a Google search on Journalistic Field Theory.

Bye then researched Cline’s pre-war commentary on the press was impressed with the quality of his media criticism, non-partisan political analysis and academic insights into the field of rhetorical analysis. Bye contacted Cline a month ago to become an advisor to The Echo Chamber, and today received confirmation on Cline’s level of participation.

Bye says, “I’m really excited about the possibilities of combining the power of the blogosphere with investigative documentary filmmaking and the principles of open source content development to create a new journalistic paradigm. This new type of “Integral Journalism” should be able create new opportunities for how an audience can create meaning. The active participation of Dr. Andrew R. Cline is the first step towards building a support network of advisors who will be able to provide their academic expertise and professional insights to the world throughout this post-production process.”

Currently, Bye is recruiting more post-production advisors and a full-time producer. He tentatively plans on completing The Echo Chamber documentary sometime between the Fall of 2005 and Spring of 2006.

Posted by acline | January 13, 2005 | Posted in: Main | Comments (5)

5 Responses

  1. Sven  January 13th, 2005 at 4:52 pm

    Wow. Just as I’ve managed to stuff my unhealthy obsession with that subject down the memory hole…

    What a great project. Irregardless of the subject matter, I like the way he’s structured it.

  2. Sven  January 13th, 2005 at 5:43 pm

    Fascinating…from the Bill Plante interview:

    You’re basically asking me to suggest that the news media could have done something in this case, and I don’t really think that the way we operate we could have. The news media in the United States are not generally argumentative about the processes of government. They may be skeptical, and generally are, but not argumentative. It’s a whole different discussion on how we see our role. I mean, this is part of what we discussed going into this. But to look back and suggest that because of the UN resolution in November, because of the weight of international legal opinion, things might have been different — is to suggest that the news media themselves, that is the daily reporting, would have brought this up. You’re never going to see that in this country. If we’re lucky, you will see specialists arguing this on the Op-Ed pages of the newspapers and on television documentaries. But it isn’t the kind of thing that you see in regular news coverage, because argumentation is not part of our ethos.

    ECP: Does that seem to be a big gaping hole that needs to be corrected though?

    PLANTE: What needs to be corrected, in my view, is the lazy reliance on a stream of facts, which are presented to the public every day. There needs to be some interpretation of those facts. There needs to be some checking of those facts — reality check if you will. But to turn around and make the argument that an opposition politician would make is not the function of the daily press. Those voices must be heard, but it is not the function of the daily press to bring them to the fore.

    First of all, I’m impressed that Plante agreed to be interviewed by a rogue filmmaker. I’m also impressed by his thoughtfulness and the depth of his knowledge of the issues and his own role (compared to how dumbed down reporters appear on TV).

    But what I’m most struck by is his complete resignation to his belief that the press is merely a bystander to history.

    That’s one of the most interesting things I’ve read all year.

  3. acline  January 13th, 2005 at 6:03 pm

    Sven… yes, the quality of the people who agreed to be interviewed was the deciding factor for me. I’m looking forward to making a contribution. It should be fun!

  4. Sven  January 13th, 2005 at 6:19 pm

    Please forgive me for going bananas, but another “wow”:

    PLANTE: [W]ould presentation of international opinion, which was a factor in the news coverage leading up to the war, have made any difference? It was not totally ignored. Particularly in the context of how people felt in Britain, France, and Germany, and all over Europe about the prospect of war. It was widely reported that the Europeans were against the war overwhelmingly. That made little or no difference to American public opinion.

    From the PIPA poll on Misperceptions, The Media and The Iraq War:

    Respondents were also asked to give their impression of how they think “people in the world feel about the US having gone to war with Iraq.” Over the three-month period, 25% of all respondents said, incorrectly, that “the majority of people favor the US having gone to war.” Of Fox watchers, 35% said this (28% for CBS).”
    …
    Perceptions of European views are more accurate in the US public: only 17% thought there had been majority support among Europeans for the war. Over the three months, CBS viewers most frequently misperceived European opinion (24%).
    …
    Among those who wrongly believed that the majority of the people in the world favor the US going to war with Iraq, 77% thought that going to war was the best decision; among those who believed that views were evenly balanced, 52% concurred; while among those who correctly believed that the majority of people opposed it, only 28% said they approved.

    Ok, back down the memory hole…

  5. acline  January 14th, 2005 at 8:46 am

    Sven… re: your first “wow” Plante has given an excellent example of the structuring influence of the status quo bias.