Can Journalists Scour Facebook For News? Is It Newsworthy? Is It Breaking?

These questions came to mind when I saw Slate's recent post about Caroline Giuliani, who was a member of a Barack Obama support group on the social networking site Facebook. I don't know about you, but many questions are raised, and I spent most of the wee hours asking them over at IvyGate. So in the spirit of not rewriting...

(...continue reading "Can Journalists Scour Facebook For News? Is It Newsworthy? Is It Breaking?" on IvyGate's "What Does A Liberal Look Like? According to Lucy Morrow Caldwell, A Harvard Student (UPDATE)" »

The Wall Street Journal. Neutrality. A Chance To Make Right.

Yesterday, Slate's Michelle Tai asked the question, "How do newspapers report on themselves?"

And I've got an answer: They don't. Rather, they shouldn't.

The paper in question is the famous Wall Street Journal, a rag so esteemed that you rarely see a journalist write about the Journal without preceding it with "venerable." Yet with a Murdoch-ian News Corp. positioned to eat up what is arguably the nation's most important paper, Tai wants to know how exactly the paper is supposed to report on itself, given that News Corp. has its hands in, well, everything. With that kind of potential disclosure, how's a paper like the Journal supposed to have any space for actual business news?

Tai correctly points out that the public's perception neutrality -- a sensitive word these days in the media world -- would be seriously compromised if the Journal reported on itself. As an "important paper," the Journal would certainly shun avoiding covering News Corp. altogether, because that would leave holes the size of, well, News Corp. in the paper.

OK, can't do that. How about finding our "most neutral" reporters? Besides serving as a backhanded diss to all the other reporters at the paper for being "less neutral," you still have a cynical public who won't believe it with the "staff writer" title behind it. So what's left?

Tai saves the very, very last paragraph of her excellent and brief overview of the situation to what I think is the answer: Hire an outsider. She writes:

Sometimes the answer is to hire an outsider. In 2003 the Seattle Times chose a freelance reporter, Bill Richards, to cover its ongoing dispute with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. To ensure objective coverage, editors didn't tell the owner what Richards was working on. Richards and the paper also decided that an outside arbitrator would have the final word on any disagreements.

There you go. With all of those top-flight journalists out of a job these days anyway, I say it's high time to hire a bunch (with experience at liberal pubs and conservative pubs alike) to cover Rupie and his media Death Star.

I'm tired of hearing that newspapers aren't neutral, and reading those that don't try to be. I'm also tired about reading the old yellow journalism tactics of championing your own paper in editorial, e.g. "Post beats Daily News in circulation! Woo! Top story!" So in my opinion, the Wall Street Journal should have a third party -- the Society of Professional Journalists or some similar group -- to choose a small team strictly for the News Corp. beat. Pay them average pay, too -- no more than they would get in any other department at the paper. Make it transparent; tell us who they are on WSJ.com, where they come from, and how much they're making for all of this. Full biographies. The whole nine yards.

Does it raise the question that the WSJ's own reporters aren't neutral enough? Maybe. But I think doing this "out of principle" is a solid basis for supporting this suggestion.

Would it be expensive? You bet. But if the Wall Street Journal can't hack it when the paper itself is in the pages, don't expect any other lesser paper to do so. You can say what you want about it, but it's my opinion that this is the only way to do that elusive neutrality concept right.

It's time to set a good precedent in journalism for once.

ADHD America: Don't Blame Paris Hilton and Keyshawn Johnson for Inattention to Iraq

Slate's Jack Shafer, ever a favorite read of mine, trashes Al Gore and Tom Friedman this week for blaming celebrities as the reason why the nation can't seem to focus on the real issues, like immigration.

"Britney and K-Fed and Anna Nicole Smith and all this stuff, meanwhile, very quietly, our country has been making some very serious mistakes that could be avoided if we the people, including the news media, are involved in a full and vigorous discussion of what our choices are," Gore said earlier this week on Good Morning America.

Shafer puts forth some evidence saying otherwise, with which I agree: "By my back-of-the envelope estimate, your average big-city daily carries more news about immigration (or other significant issue du jour) in one day than it does about every celebrity on the planet in a full week."

What I don't agree with is in the next graf:

"If he possessed any real courage in his conviction that news coverage of the frivolous blocks the discussion of serious "issues," he'd attack sports coverage. Sports capture a billion times the attention that celebrities do and probably swallow 20 percent of the news budget of dailies. The reason Gore gives sports coverage a bye while castigating Britney coverage is simple: Sports fans talk back—loudly—and folks who crave entertainment-news coverage are too embarrassed to defend their innocent diversion."

Similarly, Shafer goes on to criticize Friedman for suggesting that we put 9/11 and Iraq behind us so we can debate more important issues.

And I think all of this is baloney.

As silly as it is for Gore to suggest that the "gossiptainment" coverage steals our national attention, I really think that he didn't mean it quite so literally, and that he was just looking for a contrasting scapegoat. After all, you've got to have a feel for the popular opinion, and I'm pretty sure Paris Hilton is much more interesting to the average American reader than, say, a heady New York Times piece on Iraq.

So to suggest sports? Well sure, Shafer's got a valid point that it takes up just as much of our attention as celebrities do, but I think he's avoiding making a more serious point at the expense of some humor -- the fact that the ongoing political coverage in Iraq simply doesn't resonate with the average American (who doesn't have a sibling or child in the war). If it doesn't resonate, there won't be a reaction, which is why the average American has probably put more thought into their vote for "Dancing with the Stars" than any recent story on U.S. foreign policy.

It's called "foreign" policy for a reason -- and most Americans see it that way. So to blame sports, those epic, domestic battles that make daily living easier? Come on. Apples and oranges. This isn't a media question, this is a question about the psychology of Americans. The papers just reflect that.

So what would you prefer? A press that reflects its readership or one that sets agendas? Ideally, a publication should only reflect its readership, but we all know that's close to impossible.

So really, I think Shafer ran with the humor in his latest column at the expense of identifying a problem that's been mentioned before -- the disconnect between pressing national issues and the American people -- but never really solved. Shafer mentions Vietnam as a point of contrast ("Yet during the Vietnam era, the public and politicians found time and space to squabble over civil rights, the environment, Medicare, and missile defense, just to name a few topics"), but the real difference is somehow Iraq doesn't quite get everyone so frustrated. And I think we agree that it should.

So who's really to blame?