Short Analytical Memo

The presentations we saw in class were extremely impressive. I was amazed at how different each of the pitched projects were from each other. There was very little overlap. 

In terms of feasibility, I think the top three presentations were: MORP, JournalisKit, Speak Now. All three of these ideas target weaknesses in the marketplace, which is why I think they all have pretty good odds of success. 

MORP, which was presented by Maura, seeks to inspect and grade media outlets. As Maura mentioned in her presentation, there are a lot of industries that get scrutinized in that way. But there has been no successful organization that I am aware of that grades media outlets. Now it's a lot easier said than done. It's not easy to come up with a fair way of assessing media outlets and Maura didn't provide a lot of details of how it would work, but I think the concept has a tremendous amount of potential. This is especially true considering all the public distrust of the media. Having an organization with a good brand name among mainstream outlets (and ideally conservative outlets as well) could push the media to improve drastically over time. So even though I have concerns about the lack of details and that it would end up as a fell-good liberal org, I think the concept was really good. 

Peter's presentation on JournalisKit was also really good. The tech industry is an extremely competitive market to enter, but I think there are a lot of media startups and professional media outlets struggling to find good web tools for them. The user interface of any website is extremely important, but it can be very difficult for established media outlets and startups, which are focused on content, to develop a solid user interface on their own. They are generally forced to hunt all over for good tools and then they have to take those tools and make them work in a journalistic way. I think an outlet that makes these web tools specifically for media outlets, would do really well and fill a vacuum in the industry. I also think Peter has a solid grip on motion graphics and making web content user friendly, which likely means that he has a lot of great ideas. One example in particular was how he mentioned the transparency feature. I love that. Ultimately, it is not easy to build a tech startup from scratch, as there is a lot of competition out there, but I think the idea Peter presented was solid.

Finally, Kyle's presentation on The Road Ahead seemed pretty viable. In the era of the internet, an outlet that travels around the country and produces videos about American culture from all those different places, seems likely to produce viral content that would make a lot of money. It's not guaranteed to work, but I think it would because I think people have an appetite for this stuff. There are a lot of popular travel shows and stuff, so I think spinning that in a way that's unique and social media-friendly would tap into that market. 

Why I Actually Support Public Broadcasting

So it’s no secret that I am generally pretty conservative on a lot of economic issues. I want the government to shrink in size. That means I tend to favor a lot of budget and tax cuts. 

But in the grand scheme of things, public broadcasting doesn’t cost that much. This year, we are projected to spend $4,062 trillion with $619 billion going to non-defense discretionary spending. Spending $2 billion or so on public broadcasting is not going to break the budget. 

The reality is that the business model for media outlets is not that strong at the moment. It is in the public’s interest to have more dedicated public media outlets that aren’t as ratings/viewership driven as the rest of the competition in their quest to inform the public. Public media serves as a public option for citizens to choose from in their media consumption.

I am not as concerned with the current level of reliance of public broadcasting on corporate funding, but I do agree that it is something to keep in mind.

While I was researching this, I actually found an article by someone that was making “the conservative case for public broadcasting” as well. 

I don’t agree with a bunch of the points he’s made in that article. The market has provided us with some descent broadcasting networks. I particularly like CBS news. Some of their programs like 60 Minutes and Face The Nation are very top-notch in my opinion, despite their liberal shortcomings. From my experience, PBS is also a fairly liberal network as well, so I don’t think public broadcasting will solve the issue of media bias. 

I think a lot of people associate broadcasting with cable news. Cable news sucks. It sucks really really badly and I watch it all the time. I’m almost always mad when I watch it. But whether it’s MSNBC, CNN, or Fox News, they know how to keep me interested. 

The primary reason why I am supportive of additional funding for public broadcasting is because of how affordable it is for the federal government. I am a big believer in giving people options, that’s why I like the free market so much. 

The incentives for content creation are different in public media than in private media. As a result, this often results in fundamentally different types of content being created in public media than in private media. Because it’s not expensive to do so, I think the government should give people that option. 

Why Drudge and Breitbart Succeed

In the syllabus assignment for Drudge and Brietbart, the question was asked, “Do mainstream media give more attention to inaccurate indies than to credible ones?” I think they probably do, not because they support them, but because they want to mock them.

This same theory applies to conservatives in the mainstream media as well. The liberal elitist media loves to include conservative guests in important conversations in order to pretend that they aren’t biased and in order to try to put down conservatives. 

Conservatives feel very isolated. The media is against them, the pop culture (basically every famous celebrity) is against them, and academia is against them. Over the years, the left has embraced this exclusion tactic and looked down upon conservatives, dismissing them as stupid, racist, sexist, religious nutcases, rednecks, delirious old people, out of touch/privileged, etc. 

Conservatives have similar self-righteous and condescending tactics to put down the left as well, but they don’t have the power that the left has. They don’t have control of the media, academia, pop culture, etc. The left does, and as a result, the right often finds themselves in defense position and to some degree isolated/excluded from society. 

It’s maddening - enough to make someone go crazy.

A great example of this is what happens in college campuses across the country. These liberal colleges are using their power & control of academia to censor conservative speakers on campus. Places like Berkeley turn into war zones over one conservative speaker. I’ve never heard of that happening to liberal speakers on college campuses, though I’m sure there have been a few instances. 

Another important point to make is that the conservative movement is a mesh of a bunch of ideas from different movements that get rejected by the leftist culture that dominates society. As a result, economic conservatives, religious conservatives, military hawks, libertarians, etc are forced to work together - and it’s not a strong union. But the one thing they all have in common is that they completely despise the left.

This is a big part of the reason why I think conservative outlets like Drudge and Breitbart (outlets that I don’t ever really use, by the way) are able to thrive. They feed conservatives what they want - fodder for taking on the liberal elites that have treated them so poorly. They give conservatives tools to move from defense position to offense position.

And because conservatives can become isolated from society as a result of leftist domination, they can become more radical, which is something that Drudge and Breitbart take advantage of. I am not convinced that they are intentionally taking advantage of this. I think it’s more a subliminal thing and something that results from them getting sucked into this stuff as well.

I mean, obviously they are trying to produce content that will keep their readers interested - just like any other media outlet. But I don’t think that they are intentionally scheming this behind closed doors. It’s a subliminal thing and in some cases, it might even come from the competition. 

In an interview with Politico, former Speaker of the House, John Boehner had a similar theory about how Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity “turned to the dark side” or became radicalized. He said it was the result of competition from Mark Levin. 

What it also comes down to is the simple truth that there is a big vacuum of power on the right. As a result in part of that awkward union of ideology, forces like Drudge and Breitbart are able to seize influence within the movement. It’s unfortunate. 

Transparency and Objectivity

Alex S. Jones (a lecturer on the press and public policy who has the burden of sharing the same name as the crazy person on InfoWars.com), wrote a book in which he described the importance of objectivity in journalism. 

He said, “objectivity does not require that journalists be blank slates free of bias. In fact, objectivity is necessary precisely because they are biased.” That quote perfectly captures my perspective on this debate about objectivity. 

I do not believe that all journalists should be objective. Journalists that expose their ideology in their reporting certain have an important role to play in the press. But it is crucial that the media isn’t completely comprised of those types of journalists. The media needs to have objective journalists - journalists that may have a certain viewpoint, but remain neutral in their reporting.

True objectivity probably isn’t possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing. It is important for consumers to have the option of looking at objective reporting so that they can separate facts from spin-masters. Good objective reporting includes a fair presentation of both sides of an argument while making it clear to the reader what is objectively a fact and not up for debate.

There are a few areas where objectivity shouldn’t exist. It shouldn’t exist for coverage of white supremacy or other terrorist organizations, for example. In those instances, reporters must join the rest of civilized society and encourage the rejection of such heinous beliefs.

However, just because journalists should tell their audience that racism or murder is wrong, doesn’t mean that they should tell their audience that it’s wrong that health care isn’t guaranteed as a right. There is a distinction between rejecting serious threats to civilized society and taking a side in mainstream political debate. (By the way, a single payer system is a very, very bad idea)

When discussing the issue in class, the example of climate change often comes up. Objective coverage of climate change is reporting on the two political positions on the issue (if relevant to a story) and then stating the scientific facts about climate change that may contradict one of the sides. Whenever climate deniers reference legitimate facts, then that should be included as well when relevant. My point is that when one side says the sky is blue and the other says its orange and we can look and confirm that it’s blue, it is objective journalism to state which side is correct on that issue. 

In the Transparency is the New Objectivity article,  the author makes the argument that objectivity is a fallacy and that transparency is the answer:

“Anyone who claims objectivity should be willing to back that assertion up by letting us look at sources, disagreements, and the personal assumptions and values supposedly bracketed out of the report. Objectivity without transparency increasingly will look like arrogance. And then foolishness. Why should we trust what one person — with the best of intentions — insists is true when we instead could have a web of evidence, ideas, and argument?”

Objective reporting is not a result of arrogance. It is the result of journalists striving to give the consumer the most accurate assessment of the facts as they can. That way the reader or viewer can make up their own mind.

In terms of being transparent about beliefs, I think it should only be done when it’s relevant. For example, if a journalists writes a story about Edward Snowden and has been donating to foundations supporting him or has written other pieces defending him, than being transparent about that is a must. But if a journalist is doing a story about a tax reform bill and has opinions that were never acted upon, than there isn’t a need for transparency. They just need to be mindful of their biases and make sure if doesn’t bleed through in their work. If every “objective” journalist gave a list of all their biases for every story they’ve worked on, than they would generate a lot of unhealthy skepticism from their audience. 

Why So Many Entrepreneurs Become Sellouts: A look At the HuffingtonPost

The Guardian article about Arianna Huffington “selling out” to AOL (which was subsequently bought out by Verizon) made me think of something that Steve Jobs said to Walter Isaacson when Isaacson was writing his biography. There was no succinct quote, but Jobs essentially complained about a lot of successful entrepreneurs that sell their companies after becoming successful. He said he thought it was more beneficial to continue doing the work of building up the company that was started.

It’s easy to look at this from a purist point of view. No one likes sellouts and everyone wants to see the founder of a successful company continue doing their work, because they tend to know how to do their work better than some conglomerate that wants to buy them.

But it’s important to consider the person in that position. They are still human. Perhaps the time commitment to their company is taking too much time away from their family. Or maybe they were only in that business for the money and selling the company at this point in time is the best way to make that money. Another possibility is that they want to sell their business to invest elsewhere. 

In an interview that Huffington did with Inc, Huffington explained that she wanted to sell the company so that it could expand faster. She said that the board and the HuffingtonPost investors did not want to sell and that she had to go out of her way to convince them to do that. 

In class, there has been a lot of scrutiny and criticism of her decision to make that sale. However, as I’ve done a little research about the deal online, it appears that a lot of people in the business community thought it was a great decision at the time and in succeeding years. The HuffingtonPost expanded big time and went global at a pretty fast-paced. The timing and execution of the sale seemed perfect. 

It was a shortcut of sorts that seemed to pay off. Even with the Verizon acquisition of AOL, some analysts believed that the HuffingtonPost seemed to benefit. Then came the layoffs two years later. 

To be honest, if I were in her position, I probably would have made that same decision. There was no way of knowing that Verizon would buy AOL and the HuffingtonPost was a rising star. There was no guarantee that the HuffingtonPost’s star power would continue and the only logical way of ensuring its relevance was by expanding, which the AOL acquisition would allow for. 

That being said, in hindsight, it definitely feels like a bad decision. Especially knowing that Verizon would purchase AOL. Verizon is a bad company. 

The Guardian also points out to the issue how the bloggers were treated. While they did get a lot of free publicity, they were not paid for all their hard work. When HuffingtonPost became flush with money from the acquisition, many of the bloggers that had built that organization were not paid for their hard work, even though there was a lot of money coming into the HuffingtonPost. Some of them, I believe, were hired before the blogging program got shut down. But naturally this led to people feeling betrayed. 

In some cases, I think selling out can be a good thing. But in this case, I think Huffington’s decision was probably the wrong one. As tough and scary as it can be to build a company up without taking shortcuts, sometimes that can really pay off in the end. 

Chinese Web Censorship And Weak-Willed Tech Corporations

The articles, that about China and censorship, we learned about how the Chinese government pressures powerful companies to censor web content. 

Reading through these articles, I thought about the irony of how companies like Google, Apple, and more will sometimes stand up to the US government publicly and advocate for privacy and other rights. 

A year ago, for example, Apple refused to unlock the San Bernardino iPhone for the FBI and fought the US government publicly about that. It initially began as a private dispute between the FBI and Apple. The FBI made it public and Apple successfully avoided unlocking the iPhone for the FBI. Of course, it later came out that the FBI found another way to unlock the iPhone without Apple. 

In August, Apple caved and complied with Chinese laws mandating that VPN apps on the app store be removed so that the government could better track its citizens’ web usage. 

With that in mind, one must wonder if Apple has secretly unlocked iPhones for the Chinese government without any pushback. In the US, they want to portray themselves as a progressive champion that promotes human rights. But the reality is that at the end of the day, they really care about making profits. If the US government threatened to ban them from the US until they complied with government requests and there was no way of gaining public support, Apple would probably cave very quickly like they appear to do in China. 

This is true for all big corporations. They love to play a big PR game in which they pretend to be the champion for individual rights. But when push comes to shove, they really care more about making profits than defending those rights.  

These articles provide a lot of evidence to support that. While it is unclear, how much of a fight Google put up against they Chinese government, it seems clear that they were not willing to give up competing in the Chinese economy in order to stand up for certain principles. 

This creates a big problem for indies in particular. The Fox News article about Matthew Lee explained how an independent reporter that aggressively reported on the UN was taken off Google.

The article quoted an email that Google sent Lee informing him that he was de-listed from Google. 

"We periodically review news sources, particularly following user complaints, to ensure Google News offers a high quality experience for our users," it said. "When we reviewed your site we've found that we can no longer include it in Google News."

Google later tried to say that there was a misunderstanding, but that was a questionable explanation at best, especially after the email he received.  

When something like that happens and big tech corporations cave to governing pressures and engage in censorship, there isn’t a lot that indies can do. These organizations have a tremendous amount of power and 

Luckily, web censorship in the US by big tech companies is often limited and not coordinated. So if an indy gets de-listed from Google, for example, they can use social media or reach out to other indies to garner public support and fight back against these companies.

But the problem is that the potential still exists for big corporations and governments to silence those who ask them important questions. 

At one point in class, I referenced a segment on Tucker Carlson in which Tucker said he felt companies like Google and Twitter function like public utilities and should be regulated (I can’t find that link). 

I think Congress should pass laws protecting users from unfair web censorship in the US from prominent tech companies. 

Real Journalism

Roughly four years ago, CommonDreams wrote an article about how Senator Dianne Feinstein wanted the shield law to only apply to “real journalists,” saying that WikiLeaks’ employees and nonsalaried reporters shouldn’t receive those protections. 

Having studied journalism for the past three years, I’ve learned that everyone has their own definition about what a “real journalist” is. When it’s an interviewee, that usually means someone that isn’t going to press them very much on the issues. President Trump is a classic example of this. He often labels media organizations that scrutinize him “fake news.” “Real news” or “real journalism” are the journalists or pundits out there that are on his side.

This has definitely been my experience when working with public relations officials. Many public relations officials are former journalists, themselves. They have a tendency to idealize their journalism days and lecture journalists about how they should do journalism. They want journalists to make their jobs easier, but often times, journalists are supposed to do things that would make their jobs harder.

Last semester, I covered a protest event that the contingent faculty held outside of the Board of Trustee’s IC 2020 Cocktail party. At first, I interviewed one of the contingent faculty professors. Not knowing a lot about this issue (I was assigned to the story at the last minute and only knew what I read about it), I asked him a bunch of easy questions. Next, I interviewed David Maley, who is basically the spokesperson for the college. After hearing some of the first interviewee’s responses, I asked him a bunch of tough questions. I got the sense that he was used to this from Ithacan reporters and he didn’t challenge my journalism. After Maley, I talked to a physical education professor. I can’t remember specifically what he taught, but I remember pushing back at some of his points with points that David Maley had brought up when I talked to him.

My questions weren’t that tough (and I was personally probably on his side of the debate), but he DID NOT LIKE my questions. He told me that my job as a journalist was to press the college administration because they were oppressing the contingent faculty and to be more supportive of the contingent faculty. I had asked very similar questions to Taylor Ford, who was organizing student support for the contingent faculty and he was fine with my questions. Part of the purpose of asking those questions was because I wanted to be objective in my reporting and because I wanted to get quotes of them responding to some of David Maley’s points.

A few weeks later, I was at another contingent faculty event. I was not covering it – it was a private meeting that I wasn’t supposed to go to, but accidentally went to. After the meeting I talked to him again about that issue. He was eating raw lettuce, some of which was spewing onto my face. He had thought about the issue further and told me that real journalists shouldn’t be objective. He brought up the global warming debate as an example. To me, global warming was different because that’s an issue of objective facts. The contingent faculty debate was an issue of fact-based differing points of view. We had a somewhat friendly back-and-forth and that was that.

My point is that there are a lot of people, particularly people that haven’t done a day of journalism in their lives, that love to lecture journalists about how they should be doing their job. It’s a lot easier to talk about doing something than it is to actually do something. 

Going back to the CommonDream article, of course, nonsalaried journalists are “real journalists.” You don’t need to get paid to be a “real journalist.” In terms of the Wikileaks issue, I believe that the people behind Wikileaks should receive legal protection as well. However, I must mention my deep reservations about what they do at Wikileaks. I don’t like the indiscriminate leaking of documents. I don’t think that’s good practice. But we need to be consistent on the issue of protecting journalists. I believe that the New York Times had the right to publish the Pentagon Papers, and believe that this applies to Wikileaks as well. 

The only caveat I have with the premise of the CommonDreams article is that the writer seems to believe that journalists’ sources deserve legal protections as well. I disagree with that. I think journalists should do everything in their power to protect their sources, but people that expose some of the country’s secrets should not be protected legally if they are not protected by the Whistleblower Protection Act. 

For example, if someone leaks information to the press about a CIA operation to prevent North Korea from launching inter-ballistic missile tests, I believe the journalists that publish that information (even though I believe they shouldn’t publish information like that) should be protected and the leaker should be prosecuted if discovered. 

This is the ideological compromise I have to make because of my interests as a US citizen and my interests as a journalist.