The Authority Revolution
Writing of the recently concluded BloggerCon III at Stanford, Jay Rosen notes that there’s something a whole lot bigger going on than just a communications revolution. I concur, and I especially like the illustration he uses.
The producer revolution in media is related to a possible producer revolution in politics, and both are related to a broader revolution in knowledge, the one that confronts medical doctors with patients who have researched the medication the doctor just prescribed and talked via the Internet with other patients who have done the same thing. Medical authority doesn’t disappear in this new world. But it has to take sudden account of knowledge-producing patients who have their own ways of finding out what works.Interactive authority in medicine is not going to be the same kind of authority–I know, you don’t, so listen to me. The search for what replaces do-what-I-say medicine is an important search. I see blogging as partly about that. In the field I know best, journalism, it could not be clearer that the terms of authority are changing. It’s not that “no one trusts the press.” It’s that trust is not going to be established any longer on the old terms that “traditional” trust-me journalism thought immutable and just.
One day, the insurance companies will get smart on this and find ways to ENCOURAGE people to do their own research. Better to serve an educated public than one that relies on (elite) doctors and lawyers to make things work for us. Me? Take responsibility for my own health? Prescribe my own medicine? Oh the sanity of that thought.
What the people of the world are discovering is that there’s a deep difference between stupid and ignorant. Stupid is forever, but ignorant can be fixed. We’ve been treated like the former when actually we’re the latter. THIS is the revolution underway.
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Exit polls and the forced transparency of the MSM
Blogs and the blogosphere are taking hits (again) in the Mainstream Media over the publication of those skewed exit polls election night. This should come as a shock to no one, for there is most certainly a war underway between these two camps.
The MSM wants to hang on to their secrets. The blogosphere demands transparency.
So let’s look at a bit of what’s being said. Chief among the critics are the two guys paid by the networks to conduct the exit polls. Details are from The New York Times:
The report, written by Joe Lenski and Warren Mitofsky and obtained by The New York Times, details systemic glitches that skewed the data in ways of which several news organizations, who paid tens of thousands of dollars for the service, were not aware.In some cases, the report said, survey takers could not get close enough to the polls to collect adequate samples of voters opinion. They were often stopped by legal barriers devised to keep people electioneering - not necessarily bona fide poll canvassers - away from voters.
The report also theorized that the poll results more frequently overstated support for Mr. Kerry than for President Bush because the Democratic nominee’s supporters were more open to pollsters. Whatever the case, according to the report, the surveys had the biggest partisan skew since at least 1988, the earliest election the report tracked.
Millions of people viewing those sites may not have approached the data with enough skepticism, the report said, in part because many of the sites did not include specific or detailed caveats that the results were preliminary and many fell within margins of error.
The report saved some of its harshest words for the networks and subscribers, whom it accused of allowing the data to leak.
“If it were not for leaks we would not have much of the problem forced on us by the leakees: the nonsubscribing media and the politicos,” the report said. “They don’t know how to evaluate what is being leaked, and then they demand that the leaked results be accurate in midday before it is vetted and before it is complete.”
But I digress.
Owen Youngman of the Chicago Tribune, a writer who never met a big word he didn’t like, cuts through the crap in his disdain for certain elements of the blogosphere. (Word definitions are added)
I do not dispute that these blogs and their authors are serving an increasingly meaningful role in the exchange of ideas and dissemination of opinion today. I read blogs, I think about blogs, I shake my head in wonderment at the bloggers’ seeming indefatigability (tireless determination). But, more to the point, I shake my head in disappointment at how, in taking advantage of the Web’s freedom to post a perspective, many of them fail even to aspire to the pursuit of perspicacity (the capacity to assess situations or circumstances shrewdly and to draw sound conclusions).That is, they publish because they hear “something” from “someone” who is “reliable.” Sorry, not good enough.
In a critique of the event, Mark Glaser of the Online Journalism Review offers his typically insightful observations.
As for rationales, Slate media critic Jack Shafer, who ran the exit poll page, told me that the reasoning for publicizing the numbers was all about demystifying a process controlled by the media elite.“Think of the exit poll as a secret tracking poll conducted for the elite,” Shafer said. “All Slate is doing is giving civilians a look at the process that they’ve been locked out of previously. The exit poll numbers are being swapped from NEP to its clients to politicians and journalists to boardroom big shots today like crazy, so why shouldn’t civilians have access to the information? I trust readers and voters to see the exit polls for what they are.”
But if Slate truly saw them for what they were — “a snapshot of an extremely fast-moving object,” as Shafer says — why trumpet them so prominently on their front page with a photo of Kerry looking triumphant? And even run a headline about how Bush might still pull it out (as if he were losing)?
Here’s the reality, friends. Without those numbers being made public, we wouldn’t have known an important caveat for the whole evening — that the networks exit poll data was questionable. Secondly, we wouldn’t have been able to understand the moods of the presenters. James Carville was beside himself with glee early in the evening, while Bill Kristol looked like somebody had shot his dog. Finally, we wouldn’t have known this controversy existed in the first place.
Joe Lenski and Warren Mitofsky told the Times that no one had asked for their money back. In other words, they would’ve gotten away with it after some shuffling and, cough, cough, adjusting. Go back and read their explanations about what happened. Don’t you think that’s important information for us to have? You can say that it would’ve come out eventually, but do you really believe that?
Finally, I do think this is yet another chapter in the continuing forced transparency of the MSM and their methods. Not only did the bloggers pull aside the curtain election night and reveal another secret, they also continued to cut away the foundation of the pedestal that separates them from the people they are supposed to serve. I view that as a good thing.
Overall, I think the networks did an outstanding job Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. That shouldn’t be overlooked in this war between the old and the new.
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The Free Ride is Over
Gone are the Olympics and gone is the election, and now broadcasters must work with the basics of their trade: quality programming and aggressive sales. As I’ve written about often, 2005 looks like a difficult year. New gadgets will flood the market over the next few weeks, and it sure looks like technology is driving us to video-on-demand, portability and easier digital recording.
It’s just not a sit down and watch TV world anymore, and even if it was, broadcasters would still have to deal with constant pressure from cable and satellite. Can you remember when some of the niche channels were just junk? I can, but they get better and better with every passing year. For crying out loud, even the History Channel is offering some compelling stuff these days.
Tim Hanlon at Starcom MediaVest Group says it’s time to take stock. “I think there’s a dual need,” he says. “One, to be concerned about what you say on the airwaves (because the FCC will continue their indecency pursuit, now that a moral “mandate” has been secured); and to re-think the business (via new technologies like HD, multi-casting, VOD, data-casting, etc.) beyond simple one-way, top-down, ad-supported broadcasting - technological change is politically agnostic!”
The business is really what’s in trouble. People lose their jobs when managers can’t make the bottom line, and we could see a lot of that next year. James Marsh, broadcast analyst for SG Cowen, also has a dual concern.
“We sense the underlying spot ad market is quite soft, he told me today. “TV broadcasters in swing states have been lucky enough to have political advertising to fill this lack of demand, but the free ride is over. We expect competition in the advertising environment to intensify as TV broadcasters start to deal with soft ad market that radio and newspaper have been contending with for 12 months.”
“Longer term,” he adds, “TV broadcasters need to find a better strategy to deal with local cable and the internet. In fact, even political could be at risk over time. Now is not a bad time to make sure they continue to get more than their fair share of political advertising in 2006.”
The Internet is no longer a luxury for broadcasters as they look to make budgets in 2005. It is absolutely essential that stations have a valid Internet strategy in place to make up the revenue they will surely lose.
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Quote of the year
“One day last May, I assigned the election to John Kerry. I said it early, and often. As I looked more, I saw that it shouldn’t even be close. I said that in this space more than once. Now I am so sure that I am not even going to bother to watch the results tonight. I am going to bed early, for I must rise in the darkness and pursue immediately an exciting, overdue project. Besides, if I was up, so many people, upon seeing every word I said of this election coming true on television in front of them, would be kissing my hands and embarrassing me with outlandish praise.”
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It’s time for a new political party
It is my hope over the next weeks and months that the press asks honest questions about why President Bush won relection rather than a mechanical probe on why Senator Kerry lost. And I hope the examination begins with an open mind.
Why did over 58 million Americans vote for the President? Ask them, and don’t use your silly exit poll questions. Ask them open-ended questions and LISTEN to what they tell you. Ask them about the Democrats, not just John Kerry. Listen. You’ll hear a lot of the stuff about which I wrote in Of Liberals and Networks.
Assuming the vote totals hold, this election means the end of the Democratic Party as we know it. George Bush is not a popular President, and yet he won by three and a half million votes. That MUST make people sit up and take notice, and I think the field is wide open for a viable third-party. At the very least, the Dems need to reinvent themselves. Reducing the election to a grab for states with large metropolitan populations doesn’t work anymore. This “red and blue” division is man-made, and it needs fixing.
Bloggers I respect are beginning to wax philosophical. Doc Searls says that while lefties were busy taking back America, righties were busy keeping it safe “from us.”
The Left did the best it could do. Huge kudos for getting many more people involved in politics, caring about democracy, and working to make a difference. Good work, but not good enough. For this challenge, anyway.There was also, let’s face it, a problem with the candidate. John Kerry was the best the Dems could come up with this time around, and he just wasn’t good enough.
If Joe Trippi had latched onto John Edwards instead of Howard Dean, the story might have been different. Peter Jennings just quoted an anonymous black voter: John Kerry isn’t Bill Clinton. This is true. Kerry vs. Bush was a contest between two rich guys, one of whom has always done a great job of faking an aw-shucks background. The other came off as a human yacht. Edwards would have been a much more exciting candidate. But … we’ll never know. Edwards is a footnote now. Kerry is the new Gore. The new Democratic leader is Barak Obama. And tonight he’s barely senatorial, much less presidential.
The real story was, and remains, connected democracy. The tough lesson for those of us on the Left is learning that those of us on the Right were no less connected — just a lot less obvious about it.
People say there are two Americas. I think there are at least three. One is Bush’s America: an amalgam of the extreme Christian “conservatives,” corporate interests and the builders of the burgeoning national-security state. Another is the Democratic “left”: wedded to the old, discredited politics in a time that demands creative thinking. I suspect there’s a third America: members of an increasingly radical middle that will become more obvious in the next few years, tolerant of those who are different and aware that the big problems of our times are being ignored — or made worse — by those in power today. That third America needs a candidate. Or, maybe, a new party.
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Letting photographers tell the story
There are no statistics or surveys to prove me right (or wrong), but I suspect the public disdain for the media doesn’t extend to the guys who take the pictures. After all, they’re just doing a job. They wear regular clothes and don’t have that prima donna air about them. They’re more like your neighbor than the guy with the notepad or the gal with the microphone. They get their hands dirty while others don’t.
One of the cornerstones of Postmodernism is trust of the experiences of friends over the knowledge of experts, and I have a feeling news photographers fit nicely into that niche. Who would you rather hear from, the person whose training (and in broadcasting’s case, “cosmetics”) puts them in the room with news, or the one taking it all in through the lens of a camera?
Photographers have a mission that somehow transcends the story, and that’s what makes them such good storytellers. A picture is, after all, worth a thousand words.
That’s what makes Dave Snider’s project so compelling. He’s the founder of The Photography Channel, a fun place where photographers assume the role of storyteller. Go visit the site and click on some of the videos. You’ll be amazed, not only at the quality of the work, but the warmth and “realness” of the eyewitness accounts.
I like this idea very, very much, and I think media outlets — whether broadcast or print — should take up this concept and run with it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s still photography or video. The story is what counts, and these photographers get past the glass in a way typical reporters just don’t.
Perhaps it’s because Snider positions them as eyewitnesses instead of storytellers that makes the work so compelling. Regardless, I think it’s brilliant.
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“We” is a very big word, Leslie.
Romenesko writes:
Howard Kurtz asks CBS News reporter Lesley Stahl: “Have we allowed the campaign to be hijacked by some of this more trivial stuff?” Her response: “Well, I feel like I’m a politician, because I’m not going to answer directly. I am going to say, what’s this ‘we’? What do you mean we?” KURTZ: “You’re finessing my question?” STAHL: “Well, my question is it’s not we, and that’s one of the problems that we in the kind of work that we do at CBS News are tarred with. … How did we all get in the same salad bowl together? Why do people think that what we do at ‘60 Minutes’ is the same thing that they’re doing on ‘Crossfire’? We’re not the same thing. We have standards of fairness and — I don’t know. I just — it worries me that even you, Howie Kurtz, would say we.”
| Dear Leslie,
I’m sure you’ll get an earful on this stuff downstream, but here are few answers to your question. We’re all in the same salad bowl… BECAUSE your “standards” don’t exempt you from presenting your own biases. It is so obvious to us out here that we wonder if there’s some sort of drug administered to people who work at CBS. And, you know, it doesn’t matter whether you see yourselves as above-the-fray; your viewers see you painting with the same brushes as everybody else. BECAUSE “fairness” in your world translates to “he said, she said” reporting, with you filling in the blanks. Absent absolute truth, it is impossible for you to be truly fair, because your stories don’t begin or end in the middle. Why? Because the middle is an illusion. You can include all sides in your stories, but it doesn’t produce what you think it does. BECAUSE the whole theory about gatekeeping — to which you undoubtedly subscribe — is crumbling under the weight of honest examination. Again, it assumes there is a vast sea of knowledge and information sources on one side and a sea of masses waiting to be informed on the other. As a gatekeeper, you are charged (by whom, nobody knows) to allow through the gate that which you and your colleagues deem worthy. But people who’ve seen through your “standards of fairness” are finding ways around those gates and discovering a whole new world. They’re quite happy to make up their own minds now, and where does that leave you? BECAUSE “we” is a damned big word. It is, in fact, the first word of U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. It’s the word upon which our society is built. We. Not you and them. We. Nobody’s exempt from the salad bowl — no profession, no institution, no politician, nobody. The fact that you see yourself as outside (above) the salad bowl is vastly more worrisome than Howie Kurtz saying we. Regards, Terry |
Why can’t we all just get along?
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More Stolen Honor
Jay Rosen points out that Stolen Honor got a lot more airtime than I thought. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Pax Network aired it several times throughout the weekend, also as an infomercial.
the 42-minute “Stolen Honor” was aired 10 times over the weekend on Pax, which reaches 90% of U.S. homes with televisions, according to a news release from NewsMax.com, a conservative news website based in Florida.In addition, NewsMax paid for airings on select TV stations affiliated with other networks, but it didn’t name them. Some stations airing the film over the weekend were owned by Sinclair, according to viewer complaints on several websites.
NewsMax officials could not be reached for comment Sunday night.
The group’s website, which describes the company as a “for-profit corporation dedicated to informing Americans to the truth the major media won’t report,” has been soliciting donations to pay for the “Stolen Honor” airings. It was not disclosed how much it paid.
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Sinclair’s idea is Post-Newsweek’s sin
Two days before the election, Orlando CBS affiliate WKMG-TV, aired the program that caused all the controversy for Sinclair Broadcasting last month, “Stolen Honor.” In a state where the candidates are neck-and-neck, the airing of the anti-Kerry program spawned hundreds of phone calls.
A half-hour version of the anti-Kerry program aired in Orlando at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. Sunday.
WKMG General Manager Henry Maldonado defended the decision to sell the time in an Orlando Sentinel article. He said he handled the transaction Friday by phone and said he couldn’t identify the purchasing group because he was out of town on business.
“It was a paid program,” Maldonado said. “It was no different from selling knives. The time periods are set up for infomercials.”
Knives? Hardly, and it’s likely the complaining has just begun. But with the election being tomorrow, there’s little time to do anything about it. Do you think that might’ve been the point?
WKMG-TV is owned by Post-Newsweek.
I’m sorry, Henry, but you’re standing there naked on this one. I mean, FLORIDA, of all places!
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More trouble for the nets as daytime viewing WAY down
Mediaweek’s John Consoli reports, in the cleverly-titled “Soaps on the Ropes,” that daytime ratings on the Big Three networks are down a cumulative 13 percent among the daypart’s key demographic, women 18-49, spurring concern among advertisers who need to target that audience.
Every one of the networks’ daytime soap operas is down in the ratings. Among the biggest declines in women 18-49 ratings are ABC’s One Life to Live, down 23 percent to a 1.7, and General Hospital, down 20 percent to a 2.0; CBS’ The Bold and the Beautiful, down 20 percent to a 1.6, Guiding Light, down 19 percent to a 1.3, and As the World Turns, down 18 percent to a 1.4; and NBC’s Passions, down 16 percent to a 1.6.
Even CBS’ top-rated soap, The Young and the Restless, is down 12 percent among women 18-49 to a 2.3, as is NBC’s highest-rated soap opera, Days of Our Lives, which has dropped 12 percent to a 2.2 in the demo.
“I do not recall seeing these high levels of ratings decreases in daytime across all the networks at the same time,” said Lyle Schwartz, senior vp and director of media research at Mediaedge:cia. “If these levels of audience declines continue to go forward, the networks are going to have problems meeting certain advertiser needs. There are advertisers who are going to want their makegoods in fourth quarter, and not wait till next year. If too many advertisers want their makegoods early, it could create problems for the networks.”Another media buyer, who asked not to be named, pointed out that NBC—with only two soaps, compared to four on ABC and four on CBS—will have fewer places to offer immediate makegoods and might have to shift advertisers into other dayparts (such as prime time).
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