Entries Tagged 'New York Times' ↓

In my opinion, one of the most important jobs in this world is held by those who report from the parts of the world ‘less traveled by’. My favorite poem, by Robert Frost, finishes like this:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

Today’s New York Times prominently features a story on the inherent dangers associated with reporting from places often forgotten about. Sometimes the reasons for the inattention are due to the country’s lack of resources, failing public infrastructure or disassociated importance from the rest of the world. But often such places are not read about because of political pressure keeping such things unsaid. But ask any foreign correspondent about his or her sense of accomplishment and the answer will revolve around traveling the road less traveled. They have, putting their own lives in danger, impacted change throughout history in the most important way; telling stories.

Now, with the fractured media landscape and cost-cutting, these stories are not being told in the same fashion. First, we are seeing an increased bias towards “American” coverage, as opposed to news from the rest of the world, as I wrote about in April. But what international stories are being told, are being reported by different people or at least backed by different and less powerful organizations than the BBC and CNN. This has a very dramatic effect on the coverage or lack there of…

Back in March I asked my readers the following question after journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained by the North Korean government:

“However, my more pressing question is whether or not the North Koreans would have detained the two for more than a few hours or days had they been on assignment for a large news organization. My guess is no; the larger organization would have worked to arrange their release sooner than Current TV is doing. Of course, it doesn’t even appear that Al Gore, the Chairman of Current TV and one of its primary investors, has had any affect on the situation (either out of choice or not). I’m sure the diplomatic back channels are buzzing because of Gore’s connection, but take a circumstance where the independent journalists don’t have the backing of a former Vice President. Do you think the same thing would be playing out? There are examples of this out there for sure. In Russian it doesn’t matter how big or small your backing is, but in African countries or other locales where the central government isn’t as powerful as in Moscow or Pyongyang, would it make a difference? What about in China where economic policy seems to trump all? When NBC has the backing of GE, does that matter? What do you think? Are small and independent news organizations more susceptible to political pressure with diminished resources for negotiation and the inability to apply appropriate political pressure?”

Apparently the mainstream media has caught wind of this precarious situation with today’s Times’ article. But if Al Gore’s journalists can be sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp, where does this leave us? Where does this leave those brave journalists willing to travel the road less traveled by, in order to make what difference they can?

Who? What? Why? When? Where? These are the five governing principles of any news story and the basic tools of the journalism trade. Anyone who has ever worked in the industry knows this and most readers do to as these facts make up the foundation of any good story. Unfortunately, these days (look at me, sounding all old and shit) not everyone remembers the rules. I’ve just spent more time than I would have liked searching through a clumsy video replay of yet another round-table discussion on the future of news (or in this case, “traditional media”), looking for the names of the participants as well as the date this occurred. I was able to piece together the names, although the date was found only through a trusty “new-media” tool I like to call Google: June 4th, 2008. The original broadcast was on GroundReport.com, but it contained no information next to the video as to who the participants were and when this discussion took place. Both IWantMedia.com and GroundReport.com have included this information elsewhere on their sites (found it too late), but it was easier for me to Google the information, ending up back on the original sites I started from, than to search through the mass of nothingness accompanying the video. Perhaps new-media has something to learn here? I’m not sure if that lesson is to be learned from Google or perhaps a legacy company like the New York Times… More on that later.

Anyway, I’ve included below the discussion that took place at NYU’s J-school about the future of traditional media. The discussion was hosted by I Want Media and Ground Report, one a media industry general information website, the other a citizen journalist/news platform (still in its infancy, as I discussed earlier). Both are worthy ideas and worth a look. The discussion was fairly interesting and featured Michael Wolff (Vanity Fair and Newser.com), Kenneth Li (Reuters), David Carr (New York Times), Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch.com), Keith J. Kelly (New York Post) and Johnnie L. Roberts (Newsweek).

What did they have in common? They are all men, all happened to be in the same television studio in New York at the same time and for the most part, they all are media commentators and journalists with something at stake (although some of them are obviously less complacent than others about their careers). Other than that, as you’ll see, the line is pretty clear as to who “gets” it and who doesn’t. Schonfeld and Wolff were on their own it seemed simply because of the way they approached the discussion where as the other panelists spent half their time defending old media and the other half of the time blaming new media and news aggregators for “stealing” their content. More on that to come… My favorite part of the discussion was the last question of the night: “What are you all doing to secure your future in this industry?” Not one of them was able to provide a viable response although clearly Scholfeld and Wolff have a head start on the others.

At least I thought Wolff had a head start until I saw this news about the AP looking to shut out news aggregators (like newser.com) from publishing its content (and that of its affiliated newspapers). We’ll see how far that one goes, especially considering the New York Times Company is guilty of doing the same thing (see the lawsuit here brought by Gatehouse Media), although the lawsuit against their Boston.com subsidiary was settled out of court. Seriously, now the AP is resorting to suing instead of embracing to stop this change? For one, it explains why The New York Times Company settled out of court…

But the real kick in the teeth on this one is the following quote from the AP’s William Dean Singleton, “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.” I know Dean Singelton. I met him during my childhood right before he bought my father’s paper, fired and then re-hired the entire news staff so as to do away with seniority and by doing so drove away the best talent that paper had known. To say the least, I’ve never been a fan of his…

From TechCrunch:

“Online media network Current TV has so far remained deafeningly silent over the arrests of two of its reporters, Chinese-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee, who were detained by the North Korean military earlier this month after crossing the border between China and North Korea while they were reporting on refugees fleeing poverty. Reports about the arrests surfaced last week, when the NY Times reported the detention.”

The post goes on to discuss the latest speculation that the two journalists have been moved to the capital, Pyongyang. This is not a good situation any way you look at it, but I’m wondering what would have happened had Ling and Lee been working for the New York Times, NBC, the BBC or some other large news organization. First, would they have been allowed to cross the border by their superiors? Blow-back is more severe and more costly the larger the organization (not to mention consequences from the chain of command).

However, my more pressing question is whether or not the North Koreans would have detained the two for more than a few hours or days had they been on assignment for a large news organization. My guess is no; the larger organization would have worked to arrange their release sooner than Current TV is doing. Of course, it doesn’t even appear that Al Gore, the Chairman of Current TV and one of its primary investors, has had any affect on the situation (either out of choice or not). I’m sure the diplomatic back channels are buzzing because of Gore’s connection, but take a circumstance where the independent journalists don’t have the backing of a former Vice President. Do you think the same thing would be playing out? There are examples of this out there for sure. In Russian it doesn’t matter how big or small your backing is, but in African countries or other locales where the central government isn’t as powerful as in Moscow or Pyongyang, would it make a difference? What about in China where economic policy seems to trump all? When NBC has the backing of GE, does that matter? What do you think? Are small and independent news organizations more susceptible to political pressure with diminished resources for negotiation and the inability to apply appropriate political pressure?

Last week I featured an incredible report by SVT TV in Sweden, on the international bribery involved when Saab subsidiary Gripen, BAE and the Czech Republic crafted a deal for the possible sale and eventual lease of fighter jets to the Czech government. (That was part 1 of a 2 part series on bribery and corruption with the 2nd part coming soon.)

But lets revisit the Swedish report again with something new in mind this time. First, the report reads like another episode of the Bourne series of movies with its vast network of shell companies, offshore accounts, Austrian Counts and money changing hands everywhere. In the end, the Czech government leased a number of Gripen planes from the Swedish government. However, the real winners and losers in this deal were far more complicated. Winners? That Austrian Count is a couple of million richer, Gripen and Saab got a chance to make some change, BAE (who orchestrated the deal through its shell companies and contacts) got a hefty sum and possibly dozens of Czech politicians were able to purchase vacation homes in their destination of choice. Losers? Well, the Czech citizenry, Gripen competitors and many other unknown lives were cheated because of this enormous fraud.

However, one surprising fallout to this episode (although no one has yet to connect the dots) is the loss of possibly thousands of jobs in Sweden. GM, Saab’s owner for the time being, is crashing and burning with no end yet in sight. Saab’s sales are dismal and only getting worse and GM, dealing with its own host of problems, is looking to dump Saab as quickly as possible. I mentioned that something new came up? Well, the New York Times wrote a long feature today on the Swedish government turning its back on Saab in this financial crisis. Yes, you read that right. The Socialist country so famous for its assistance of individuals and companies has said that it won’t bail out Saab leaving thousands of employees’ futures in limbo.

My question is this: How, when Saab, Gripen and BAE went through all of this trouble to orchestrate a very profitable deal for Sweden does the Swedish government turn its back now that the automaker is in trouble? Well, one unproven theory is that this is punishment in some sense for dragging the Swedes’ name through the mud in the Gripen investigation now blowing wide open. Or, perhaps the Swedish government, however unlikely it is, was unaware of the huge bribes going on with the Gripen deal and has decided to let Saab suffer because of it. The third possibility is that perhaps, as the NY Times suggests, this is just the Conservative party, now in power, flexing its muscles in order to change precedence. Whatever the case, the waters are muddy and full of piranhas of all stripes.

Journalism students are told to keep things fair and balanced in their reporting and those who succeed can hope for a role with Fox “News”. But for those out there who would like to both advance their careers beyond that of fluffer to Bill O’Reilly, as well as perhaps advance discourse and transparency in our world, they should take a lesson in how to report intelligently, instead of just focusing on a perceived balance.

Recently Bryan Walsh, a writer and podcaster for TIME on issues related to the environment, discussed the difference between balanced reporting and smart reporting with Eric Pooley. Pooley, a former managing editor for TIME, is writing a book on climate change and using this issue as an example, shows how economic and environmental illiteracy leads to balanced reporting (or the stenographer approach) instead of intelligent reporting. In the podcast, Pooley quotes the great English journalist Henry Lucy as saying,

“I’d rather take a poet and teach him about business than take a business person and teach him how to write.”

Pooley continues with his example of how the Warner-Lieberman Carbon Cap bill may have been killed last year, partially due to a lack of accurate reporting. He discusses how reporters were taking the balance of the opposing views on the subject, rather than reporting on the facts of the bill and what the actual effects would be.

“The result of this (uneducated group of journalists) is that since relatively few of us get taught, we do freeze up a little bit as a class around balance sheets and around economic studies… (This) leads reporters into the he-said, she-said, painstakingly balanced approach (to writing a story).”

With tighter budgets and fewer reporters on the beat, interconnected issues like environmental policy suffers in its coverage due to the lack of education and knowledge in the field. In the end, Pooley does commend the New York Times on their recent accouncement of a team of reporters dedicated to covering environmental issues (including business, science and political reporters). This approach will undoubtedly better serve the public and lead to more comprehensive, accurate reporting on environmental issues. The entire intervew (only 8 minutes long) can be heard here:

Reporting on Climate Change