Media
Media
Public Access New Media
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 15:14Last November, I wrote a couple blog posts about The Future of the Newspaper. I suggested that as local papers closed down, at least some local news coverage could be picked up by bloggers. Steve Collins noted that many readers of local papers are older and are less likely to be online. I suggested that perhaps we could get people to take material from the blogs and create public access television shows presenting material from new media on public access media.
Now, several months later, I’m on the Government Access Television commission for my local town and serve as the First Selectman’s designee to the Sound View Community Media board. There is some historical enmity between GAT and SVCM and I am in a difficult position trying to find ways that we can all work together as effectively as possible to use community media to promote civic involvement at the local level.
This evening, GAT will have a meeting and I hope to present a few of my ideas about ways to bring public access media and new media together a little better. The simplest parts are making sure that the GAT schedule is as easy to find online as possible and that we get more GAT programming available online.
However, there are other ideas that go beyond GAT. As an example, ever since I attended my first board meeting of SVCM, I’ve been kicking around the idea of setting up a public access television show talking about how to connect public access media with community access media, and then bringing information from new media into community access media.
As I’ve thought about it, I’ve also thought that a weekly news program highlighting what is on various towns’ GAT channels would be useful. GAT is great in providing raw gavel-to-gavel footage. Yet a lot of people are not especially interested in watching a whole Board of Education meeting. They want to see the highlights, just like how they see highlights of other meetings on local news stations. Can we find people that will highlight important parts of a hearing and help craft a weekly news program that puts the highlights into context?
How would this work with high school students? My understanding is that Amity does some great work with high school students and video. Can we get any of them to participate in a weekly program? Could we expand it to add some educational content or even highlights from local sports teams?
Widening the scope even more, can we draw together people interested in the nexus of community media and new media for an open space style conference, or ‘unconference’? The idea is fairly simple. We need to find a day that we could get as many people interested in the topic to gather at some convenient place. Amity High School might be a good place to have it.
The ‘unconference’ would start by explaining how unconferences work, perhaps using the example of ‘podcamp’ unconferences. Then, the folks gathered would collaborate to establish an agenda and break out into sessions about the topics of most interest. A Public Access New Media conference could also invite people from various groups around the state, and not be just about Woodbridge, or towns in the Amity School district.
If you are interested in helping organize such an ‘unconference’, or helping produce a Public Access New Media television show, please let me know.
Blogging Ethics
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 17:05A common misconception about bloggers is that they write whatever they want, without concern to the veracity of what they write, or the ethical implications of their words. This may be true for some bloggers, but is not an accurate representation of most of the bloggers I know. Recently, there was a great discussion on a mailing list of progressive political bloggers about whether or not one of the bloggers should pursue a particular story.
Early on the morning of March 28th, North Dakota State Representative Dave Weiler was arrested on a misdemeanor charge that he assaulted his wife after he allegedly pushed her to the ground twice. He spent eight hours in the county jail before being released on a $250 bond and was ordered to have no contact with his wife. Weiler reportedly described the incident as an unfortunate private matter and said that he and his wife were working things out. He expressed the hope that the charges would be dropped.
On April 9th, the Associated Press reported that Rep. Weiler had pleaded not guilty to a charge that he assaulted his wife. His trial was set for May 14th. On April 17th, the Associated Press reported that Rep. Weiler pleaded guilty as part of a plea deal. In the deal, Rep. Weiler agreed to get a psychological examination and domestic violence treatment. The judge deferred Weiler’s sentence for one year. If Rep. Weiler meets the terms of the agreement, the changes will not become part of his record.
A blogger from North Dakota sent an email asking about the ethics of blogging about this and a lively discussion ensued. I suggested that a good starting point to explore the ethical issues is to look at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. Most bloggers are not members of the Society of Professional Journalists, but their code of ethics is a great document that every blogger should read and seek to adhere to. The key points are to Seek Truth and Report It, Minimize Harm, Act Independently, and Be Accountable.
These goals raise some interesting issues. With a domestic violence issue, a reporter, or a blogger, may have to make a difficult judgment call about whether or not reporting about domestic violence might make the situation better or worse. Many people argued that part of reason domestic violence continues to the extent that it does, is because people don’t talk about it. They don’t shine the light of truth on it. This enables abusers to continue their patterns of abuse.
Beyond the ethical issues, there are also legal issues that bloggers need to be aware of. The course, Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Online Publishers, provides a good basis for understanding the many of the legal issues, and I encourage all bloggers to take this course.
Beyond the journalistic issues of reporting what happened, was the issue of whether or not the blog should express the opinion that the State Representative should resign, be recalled or expelled. Many different views were expressed here, reflecting people’s views about how serious domestic abuse charges are, whether or not both sides of the story are really being presented, whether it is an appropriate role for the blog to call for expulsion, whether they would do it for a representative they agreed with politically and so on.
I brought up the National Organization for Marriage, which has been robocalling in our state against marriage equality. It seems as if the National Organization for Marriage is all too willing to comment on whether or not two people who love one another should be allowed to marry, if their organization thinks the couple shouldn’t love one another, but the organization seems unwilling to address real threats to marriage, like domestic violence.
One person noted that the wife of Rep. Weiler works in the North Dakota Governor’s office and there were concerns about how the order for Rep. Weiler to have no contact with his wife, it that order still stands, would affect his ability to work within the legislature.
In the end, the North Decoder blog wrote, “He should resign immediately” and went on to describe options to have Rep. Weiler removed if he doesn’t resign.
Was this the right choice? What will happen next? What can we all learn from this? It is good to see bloggers struggle with ethical and legal issues of what they write. We need to see more bloggers struggle with these sorts of decisions and I look forward to following the discussions.
DailyKos and the Future of Journalism
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 04/19/2009 - 10:46On a mailing list on the future of journalism that I’m a member of, a person recently sent an email about this article on DailyKos about where people get their sources for diaries on DailyKos.
Kos notes that less than 20% of the primary sources are from newspapers. Other important sources include Advocacy organizations, Political trade press, Government, and campaigns. This seems to reinforce the idea of blogs, at least DailyKos is an echo chamber repeating what they’ve heard from groups trying to push out their message.
Another stereotype of bloggers is that many of them are people that sit at home typing on their computers, but don’t actually get out and do primary research or get involved in local politics. Aspects of this criticism comes out in the comments to Kos’ post.
The first comment, which was also the most highly rated comment observed,
“the thing about newspapers is they have reporters that go to the city council meetings, the school board meetings, the planning commission meetings, the high school sports events, the church easter egg hunt. That is what we will be losing out on, that local coverage that doesn't come from alternative media. It is that mundane stuff that affects people's lives more than ever changing cable news and blog chatter.
This generated a great discussion. People noted that a lot of local newspapers do really poor jobs of covering local news, and small towns often never have anyone covering important meetings.
One person noted,
It's one thing to go to the meetings. It's another to read the agendas and build contacts between you and the councilors and other government types.
It's a huge time investment to do it right. It's a lot more than just an afternoon trip to an hour-long meeting.
Yet this is what local elected officials do. If we want to have an effect, we need to spend the time reading the minutes and agendas of local meetings. We need to spend the time getting to know our local elected officials and having meaningful discussions about what is best for our communities. If we had more bloggers doing this, it would go a long way to dispel the notion of bloggers are armchair critics that never really get anything done.
So, what are you going to do to improve government and the local coverage of it in your area?
(Originally published at DailyKos, including a poll. If you are active on DailyKos, please stop by and vote on the poll.)
Followup Friday – Context
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 04/17/2009 - 15:22Last Saturday, I wrote a blog post, What does a cyberstalking bunny have to do with Chris Dodd, Bloggers, Talk Radio and Corruption?. It provided background on the reporter who attempted to interview the cyberstalking bunny and related it to other issues.
One person commented, “i don’t get it, whats ur point with all this?” The point is context. Everything that happens, happens within a contextual framework. Unfortunately, too often that framework gets lost, especially in the case of a humorous video.
It is this sense of context that is one of the most important things that we are losing as newsrooms face cutbacks or get closed. News organizations that want to survive need to focus more on context and less on juggling advertising and subscription rates.
One communications director noted this when he spoke with me about CTNewsWire. News organizations traditionally receive press releases, often competing press releases, and attempt provide context to help readers understand the full story. I hope that as more bloggers and citizen journalists join CTNewsWire, they will be able to fill some of the gap.
CTNewsWire continues to grow. Recent press releases include messages from Secretary of State Bysiewicz’s office reminding voters about the May Municipal elections, as well as notices from the Secretary of State’s office and the Attorney General’s office about Broadwater and Army Training Facility sites.
Another press release talks about the first field hearing of the Commission on Enhancing Agency Outcomes. One thing commissions can do is to get more agencies to send their media advisories to CTNewsWire.
The State Budget has gotten a fair amount of attention on CTNewsWire. Connecticut Voices for Children sent an announcement to the list about their annual State Budget Forum and a media advisory was issued informing the press of a media availability of Speaker of the House Chris Donovan and Senate President Don Williams to talk about the GOP budget.
In particular, the efforts of Republicans to dismantle the Clean Elections Program was roundly criticized by a large number of groups working together for Good Government in Connecticut in one press release.
CTNewsWire is also now being duplicated in other areas. OKNewsWire is up and running in Oklahoma and western-mass-news is up and running as well.
In terms of legislation, a few bills have recently been highlighted to me. HB 6510 addresses the establishment of a Connecticut Electric Authority which “will help lower electricity costs, have the authority to plan and purchase electricity directly from generators, would bolster electricity supply and promote renewable sources”.
HB 6512 “will create more options in the way electricity will be procured” by allowing “utilities to purchase a complete portfolio of needed generation, but in smaller pieces from a larger number of generators than is currently allowed”.
An interesting press release related to the subject of electricity was issued by the Attorney General’s office, blasting $85.8 Million In Payments To Power Generators Who Delivered No Electricity
Also, relate to electricity utilization is National Hanging Out Day promoted by Project Laundry List, which notes that electric dryers use ten to fifteen percent of domestic energy usage in the United States. National Hanging Out Day is Sunday, and I hope people reading this consider air drying some clothes on Sunday.
Another bill that my friends are tracking is HB 6604, An Act Concerning Public Access Television channels. There seems to be a lot of battles over amendments to this bill.
Other follow up items worth noting: Rick Wood and James Crawford from Beecher Road School have gone to China and have this website where they are writing about their travels. Also, a guardrail has now been installed along Peat Swamp Reservoir.
There are probably a lot of other follow-ups that I should provide, but that is enough for right now. Hopefully, this will provide additional context to articles I’ve written in the past. Are there other things that I’ve written about that you want follow up on? Let me know.
What a does cyberstalking bunny have to do with Chris Dodd, Bloggers, Talk Radio and Corruption?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 04/11/2009 - 19:41This evening, I read a blog post by former talk radio host Colin McEnroe about Providence, RI’s “NBC 10’s Jim Taricani’s interview with alleged cyberstalker Ann Bruno.” It is a great example of a failed television interview and perhaps says something about what is happening to media today. In the interview, Ms. Bruno dons a bunny costume and runs circles around Jim Taricani. Yet it seemed like there was more to the story, so I decided to follow Ms. Bruno down the rabbit hole to see where it leads.
First, I found information about the nature of the ongoing hostilities between Ms. Bruno and Tracy Sisson. The best description of the conflict is probably in this article, and the best understatement about the Ms. Bruno comes from WPRI, “Bruno refused to answer questions about the charges.”
Yet, somehow, it seemed that there was more to the story. So, I thought I’d see what I could find out about Mr. Taricani, who attempted to interview Ms. Bruno. This is where things got much more interesting. Back in 2001, about the same time that the hostilities between Ms. Bruno and Ms. Sisson appear to have started, WJAR, also known as NBC 10 aired a portion of a videotape showing a Providence city official accepting a bribe from an undercover FBI informant. The tape was sealed evidence as part of a Federal investigation into corruption of Providence officials. Mr. Taricani was subpoenaed to reveal the source of the tape, which he refused to do. He was fined $1000 a day for 85 days, which NBC picked up the tab on. Then, he was convicted on criminal contempt charges for not revealing the source.
The next day, Sen. Chris Dodd introduced a Federal Shield law for reporters. One of the questions people argued about after the bill was introduced is whether it would apply to bloggers. Two years, to the day, before Colin put up his blog post about Mr.Taricani’s attempted interview with Ms. Bruno, I wrote a blog post about shield laws, Chris Dodd and Jim Taricani.
Now, you might think that the only talk radio tie-in is that Colin is a former talk radio host. However, he isn’t the only former talk radio host involved in this story. The investigation led to the conviction of Providence Mayor Vincent Albert "Buddy" Cianci, Jr. on corruption charges. This resulted in the second resignation by Mr. Cianci. After his first resignation, in 1984 after pleading no contest to a charge that he assaulted Rhode Island contractor with a lit cigarette, he worked as a talk radio host on WHJJ in Providence.
So, who are the reporters? A former mayor who becomes a talk radio host, mayor again and then gets convicted of corruption? A television reporter who gets convicted of criminal contempt for not revealing sources, and then later gets pwned in an interview? A former talk radio host who wrote the blog post that got my attention? Me? You? What does it tell us about shield laws, reporters, and the state of the media?
