It’s that time of year again, where Santa and his minions take over New York. Santa Con (short for convention) is an impromptu party where thousands of people come to spread holiday cheer, sing some carols, and have a few drinks (starting at 10 am and continuing throughout the day). The rules are simple: be kind, don’t get arrested, and above don’t make kids cry.
The personal blog is dead and this is before much of the public understood what is was used for. Most college students and especially graduate school of journalism students understand what the publishing tool offers, but many people are just now being exposed to blogging though mainstream media. It is practically a requirement that professionals in the media now have a blog. (more…)
Check Columbia Journalism Review’s open thread on Twittering. Though not closed to its benefits, I’m not a Twitter fan, primarily for the bolded reason below. Thread highlights:
“I’ve found out the following from twitter: that my neighborhood in West Hollywood was in lockdown, being searched for an armed gunman; that the earthquake I felt was powerful but doing little damage, and that the NoOnProp8 protests in my neighborhood were peaceful but growing exponentially. I got this info minutes – and in some other cases, hours – before it was available from other news sources online.”
“What does get lost with this tool is it is missing a specific socioeconomic class of people that journalists should not ignore. It just requires them to go out and talk to them face to face – and that isn’t as instant as the group of people on Twitter.”
I’d go further than UMiz new media prof, Jen Reeves, above, and say that Twitter excludes most of the world’s people and what’s happening to them in their neighborhoods. I care less about the platform, more about whom I’m talking to. So far, Twitter is breaking news/running commentary from the college-educated, technofiles and the upper middle class. Our media is already an echo chamber for the privileged so I’m cautious of any technology making it easier to remain that way. It’d be very cool though, if people in Brownsville, Bed-Stuy, Upper Harlem, the South Bronx and Jamaica, Queens could Twitter with each other and the privileged. Who wants to help me invent that platform?
“I don’t know, John. Should journalists use the telephone? The fact that you cannot see the other person is only the most obvious of that platform’s limitations. What do others think? Join the conversation: is “telephone” just a stupid audio trick?”
“Twitter takes nothing, it’s only a fragment of the whole that makes a news story.
In a 24/7 news cycle it is probably one of the greatest (and cheapest) ways to gather and distribute information. That is, if journalists are open to learn how to use Twitter, and listen. Without ever forgetting the basics of the trade.”“Maybe one of the Tweet Revolutionaries can explain how Twitter helps with the much more crucial tasks of connecting dots, situating events in their proper context, explaining and analyzing complex issues, etc. If our information culture did a better job at the latter, I suppose I would be a lot less concerned about all the hype devoted to the former.”
“And these “Tweet Revolutionaries” you refer to, who are supposed to unfold the awesomeness of Twitter for explanation, background, context, as well as breaking news, of course… who are they? Or are these simply the people you really, really, really want to argue with, whether or not they exist?”
“I think journalists should follow people relevant to their beat in order to get some sense of the what people are talking about and to cultivate sources. Twitter may not connect the dots, but it does an awesome job of letting you subscribe to lots and lots of important ones.”
Read more (and comment!) on CJR’s page.
Just saw a link on MeFi to an annual prison census from the Committee to Protect Journalists. The website lists the journalist identities in detail, so I highly recommend it. In the meantime, I took the liberty of swiveling it:
If you go to swivel, you can do a google map that shows countries highlighted by the number of the imprisoned.
Judy Chen, 50, an American citizen and a Falun Gong practitioner, said that she was attacked by a mob of pro-Communist Chinese people supported by the Chinese consul general in the U.S. on May 17, 2008 in Flushing, Queens, but nobody was arrested.
Judy Chen said that she no longer feels safe in Flushing. She is afraid she will be abducted and end up in jail in China.
“Since 1999 we know that the Chinese Communist regime has killed more than 3,000 practitioners in China,” she said. “They sell the healthy organs of Falung Gong practitioners online.”
Erping Zhang, a U.S. spokesman for Falun Gong, said that the crackdown on Falun Gong practitioners started in China in 1999 when the movement was banned. Now it’s taking place in the U.S. too.
According to Zhang, violence escalated after the earthquake in Sichuan Province, China, in May. The Communist party blamed the Chinese community in the U.S. for not being compassionate towards those people in need.
But Zhang believes that the real reason for the attacks is that U.S. Falun Gong practitioners pointed out China’s inadequate response to the earthquake in the international press, and in the process, made China look bad.
The problem with Judy Chen’s story and the explanations of the U.S. spokesman for Falun Gong, Erping Zhang, is that very little of it can be verified. Practically none of it can. Before publishing anything, a reporter needs to check with the Chinese consulate.
Can reporters cover issues where access to sources is limited by language problems and the possibility that one or both sides are trying to manipulate information? Should journalists just ignore certain news because they don’t trust either source, or should they try and recount what is happening, relying on tricky sources and informing readers about these difficulties?
“I called the Chinese embassy three times and finally got to a live person,” said Karina Ioffee, a reporter for the NY City News Service. “A woman mumbled something about Falun Gong not being a religion, but when I tried to ask her further questions she hung up the phone on me. I’m really trying to be fair, but when the other side is totally stonewalling me, there is not much I can do.”
This reporter decided to report the story, stating in the article that the Chinese consulate was repeatedly asked to comment, but declined. Other reporters, conversely, might decide not report it at all.
“We cannot report about Falun Gong under our system of ethics,” said Lou Parajos, editor-in-chief of The Queens Courier. “You can’t write about gossip, rumors and innuendo.”
For Lou Parajos, verifying Falun Gong practitioners’ statements is impossible. So reporters shouldn’t write anything, according to him.
“They say that a friend of a cousin of an uncle of someone went to jail and had their organs transplanted,” said Parajos. “This is fourth-hand information, this is Hollywood, how on earth can you check that? Are you sending a reporter to China to see whether it is true? And even if you do, I don’t think the Chinese would allow anybody to see anything.”
According to Parajos, the only information that can be used in a piece is the information written in the police report.
Parajos, for instance, could write in his paper that Wei Qiu was arrested on June 21 for assaulting a Falun Gong practitioner with a metal steering wheel lock and Ngan T. Yung was arrested on June 16 after allegedly assaulting Mr. Pan Hongyi, vice editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times. Parajos would write this information because it was confirmed by the police.
But if no one had been arrested, would the violence against members of the Falun Gong not been newsworthy? Is it ethical for a reporter not to write a single line about the people who say they are threatened every day if no police report has been filed?
The issue, as Parajos puts it, is a catch-22, but perhaps the solution is to verify all you can and identify the source to the reader.
In Judy Chen’s story, for instance, you can’t verify whether she was actually attacked on May 17, 2008 because there were no witnesses. But you can verify whether there are cases of Falun Gong people assaulted by other members of the Chinese community in Flushing.
On October 5, 2008, as I was filming Judy Chen distributing Falun Gong magazines next to the Flushing library, a woman approached her.
“Are you lying?” said the woman to Judy Chen. Then she grabbed her magazines and threw them on the floor.
Can black journalists cover the Obama White House without bias? Many asked that question–perhaps, not out loud–after watching ABC reporter, Steve Osunsami’s reaction on election night, to Obama becoming the 44th POTUS.
Media watchdogs, like fellow classmate Rima Abdelkader, sniffed out Osunsami’s election night throat-spasm and Osunsami, likely reacting to criticism as well as praise, explained why he showed emotion on his ABC News blog:
For me, it wasn’t the political event that was moving, it was the human event: on Tuesday night, the whole world watched as Americans of all colors came together in such an historic way.
Was Obama’s victory–the country’s victory–an acceptable reason for journalists to break professional composure though? I tended to think it was not. I mean, it’s not like journalists covering election night were being thrown a curve ball.
Listen to Michel Martin’s NPR discussion with other prominent journalists about their emotions on election night. All, except Soledad O’Brien, reported that they struggled to “hold it in.” Point being: they at least thought it important not to show emotion on-air. And I wondered whether Osunsami had the same struggle or whether he regretted his show of emotion and if so, why? I didn’t expect Osunsami to publicly reveal himself again by answering those questions, however. (I was one of the folks who Facebook’d him after the near-cry… no response… read on for why I didn’t follow up)
On election night, I inwardly burned during every second of Osunsami’s near-cry. (you must understand, in general, I’m the passionate sort) I saw “the moment,” not as a beautiful display of the story’s human side; that role should’ve been played by the jubilant Morehouse students in the background. Rather, I interpreted the moment, then, as a journalist compromising his professional integrity–and as a television network lowering its standards for “the black guy.”
Osunsami, with ABC’s help, had opened the door for his credibility to be questioned as a journalist. The hidden “benefit” of being a black journalist though, is that your purported lack of bias will be attributed to your race as well. Lucky us.
Which brings me back to the ignorant question that kicked off this post: can black journalists cover the Obama White House without bias? By his own admission, journalist Jeff Winbush can’t–but later asks to be judged by his reporting first. I find that odd, as well as his justification of black groupie behavior because, erm, white journos are groupies, too.
I’m not going to answer the question that I posed. Ignorance deserves a challenge, not an answer–and I realized after some thought, that I too was guilty of needing the challenge.
For others, question your assumption that black people think however it is that you believe black people think. You’ll squeeze more truth from a situation if you think of the offending black journalist as a journalist, first.
For me, don’t justify ignorance by fearing its repercussions. Part of what infuriated me about Osunsami’s show of emotion was the belief that, “he’s ruining it for the rest of us”–us, being the significant minority of black journalists who struggle mightily to enter and remain in this profession. It would drive me insane if I hounded myself with the belief that others doubted the quality of my reporting because of my race. Really, that’s their problem. I shouldn’t make it mine.
That realization is why I didn’t pursue Osunsami beyond that Facebook ouverture. On election night, I too was guilty of looking at him as a black journalist, not as Steve Osunsami. But if I were viewing him primarily as a man, I’d have said, there’s nothing wrong with showing emotion at an extraordinary time. Journalists are human, too.
Yo brothas, did I tell you I was chilling out with Snoop Dogg on Monday in Harlem? Just me and Snoop… good times.. and well, okay, about another 15 people were there also chilling with him. But my points is, with only a couple of dozen other people there, it was practically just me and Snoop hanging out. Now how often does it happen that you get that close to a celebrity? When Jennifer Lopez visited Macy’s about a month ago, there were about a couple of thousand people there and I barely caught a glimpse of her. That was lame. But chilling with Snoop was cool! I just don’t understand what he got out of it.
Snoop’s visit to a liquor story in Harlem on Monday was the weirdest publicity stunt ever. Mainly because there was no publicity involved! His visit to Liquor Authority on 125th Street was hardly promoted (I just happened to see the small poster that had been placed on the store window), the timing was akward (Monday morning at 11 a.m.) and there was no media present! I only saw one guy with a huge camera who might have been a media person… but that was it.
Due to all of this, there were hardly any people there waiting to see Snoop. He was scheduled to come there at 11 a.m. to sign bottles of cognac, to promote a new congnac line, Landy Drama Liqueur. As any decent celebrity, he was fashionably late by 1.5 hours. Sadly, because of that, many of the about 30 people that had been there to wait had already had to leave. Hah.
Before Snoop got there, his entourage arrived at about noon. Consisting of about five promotion girls, five PR-people, a few huge bodyguards, a few normal-size bodyguards, some random people (seemingly nobodies) and a couple of dogs, there were probably more people in his possé than there were in the audience. That was pretty embarrasing.
Is this maybe a sign that Snoop’s career is down in the dumps? I mean, visiting an empty liquor store in Harlem on a Monday morning is hardly a sign of a booming career… Or was is that Snoop deliberately wanted to keep this appearance very low profile? If so, why did he bring an entourage of 20 people with him? I can’t see how this promotionary effort was worth paying for all those people’s paychecks…
Who knows. I guess we’ll never know what the rationale behind his visit was. All I know is that I came out of the store with a free bottle of cognac and Snoop’s autograph on a cool poster. So yeah, maybe it was a bad day for Snoop but it was a good day for me!
You weren’t allowed to take photos inside the liquor store (I guess Snoop really did want to lay low…), so I only managed to take a few of him outside when he got out of his car. He was listening to his headset during the whole 30-minute visit… maybe he wanted to imagine he was somewhere else, maybe in a concert performing to thousands of people instead of signing cognac bottles..
Snoop getting out of his car...finally!
Snoop and his little boyguard...heh.
Ah, the judicial system…
Where partisan hacks are appointed for life…
Where we win the war on drugs a few million arrests at a time…
Where overworked D.A.s and more overworked P.D.s come together for a few hours of jostling over who gets the better end of the structured plea bargain…
Where the magic happens.
My colleagues in Tim Harper’s Craft class joined me in a fun-filled day watching:
a Fujianese immigrant bow before the arraignment judge, who told them to come back on a date different from what the bailiff told them, and only then (the date the judge said, not the date the bailiff said) would the People’s case against them for selling shit on the street without a permit be adjudicated;
a 19 year-old woman testify for the prosecution against the man she accused of raping her, calmly parrying the defense like so – Q: What did you have to eat when you got home? A: Chef Boyardee ravioli. Q: Meat or cheese? A: I do not recall the specific flavor of ravioli.;
a purple-haired woman yelling over the barrier separating the court from the gallery during a sentencing, only to be revealed as the defense attorney when she looks at her client, recognizes him and asks him how he got to court without her.
All of this led off by an inspiring dissertation from an ADA about how the best time to commit a crime is just before Christmas, because the prosecutors won’t be able to convene a grand jury before they have to cut you loose.
And my mother still wonders why I didn’t go to law school.
Hey, at least we don’t still execute mentally challenged sixteen year-olds, right?
Did I get your attention? (I’m totally capitalizing on Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens keeping people interested in Alaska. But I promise this will be my last Alaska post, because you’re probably tired of them.)
This week a film that I’ve had a hand in for years finally premiered – and it was worth the wait. In November 2005, my friend Ellen Frankenstein invited me to help her with an ambitious project called “Open Arms,” a documentary about women hunters in Alaska. Thus began a three-year odyssey, which for her is a testament to the value of following a story, and for me is a good lesson in patience.
Ellen Frankenstein films on remote Kruzoff Island.
I know we’ve all been having a blast with our papers for Legal and Ethics. Mine led me to a press conference last week where I was the only reporter in attendance.
Three New York City writers are suing the City over the way it doles out press passes. Rafael Martinez Alequin, David Wallis and Ralph Smith are the three plaintiffs who claim that their press passes have been unfairly denied by the NYPD, which is in charge of approving or rejecting press credentials.
I’ve been in contact with Martinez Alequin for the past month or so about the battle he’s been having with the NYPD since last year. My paper for legal and ethics focuses on the legal rights of bloggers compared to those who work for traditional media outlets, and how the internet and blogosphere are redefining journalism.
All three plaintiffs in this case publish their own works online. All three had their applications for credentials denied by the NYPD in 2007. They all say they’ve had press passes for years–Martinez Alequin says he’s had one since as early as 1983–and that the work they do relies largely on these press credentials.
“When you run to that story, the first thing you wanna grab is your press pass and your camera,” said Ralph E. Smith, who runs his own publication called the Gaurdian Chronicle.
Part of the problem is the emergence of new media and how the bureaucracy is adjusting to the influx of bloggers and online publications in the field of journalism. Plaintiff David Wallis, who has freelanced for the New York Times and runs his own online news service site, called the NYPD’s process of granting credentials “discriminatory.”
“As papers collapse, the online media, or the new media, is becoming the mainstream media,” Wallis said. “I think it’s clear that the police department is way behind the times and has no idea how to handle this.”
The case is being represented by Civil Rights attorney Norman Seigel.
“The system of granting press credentials in New York City has run amok, and needs to be changed,” Seigel said.
You can watch the video of the press conference here. You can even catch a glimpse of me–I’m on the right hand side, in the green sweater–asking some questions halfway through, like a real life reporter.
