All rock, no action

Here is a link to the article we discussed a bit yesterday critiquing the "Live 8" events and charging that the purpose of the campaign "was to amuse the crowds and to clear their own consciences, and whether they realized it or not, to reinforce dictatorships. They still believe us to be like children that they must save, as if we don't realize ourselves what the source of our problems is." The source of the problems, according to Jean-Claude Shanda Tonme, is the persistence of nondemocratic regimes.

Old media cope with new technology

Digital devices have given viewers more control over what they watch. Research shows that people are increasingly editing the advertisements out of their television viewing. The advertisers' solution: make the advertising indistinguishable from the rest of the broadcast by relying more intensively than ever on product placement. Results would appear to be mixed.

How to e-mail a professor

Professor Michael Leddy has advice. Some of it might go farther than necessary, but the basics (give a subject, let the person know who you are) seem to be on the useful side, if a tad obvious and by no means specific to communicating with professors. Whether or not you like the advice, it is an interesting sign that new technologies require new forms of etiquette (most people answer the phone in these parts with a "hello," a practice so widespread that it is hard to imagine not doing it -- in the early days of telephony, the standard greeting was "Ahoy!"), and the etiquette does not always develop as quickly as the technology spreads.

Blogging for democracy

In our discussions of the democratic potential of new media, we have returned several times to the (maybe obvious) point that whether they are democratic depends on how they are used. Now the international group Reporters sans Frontières is tyrying to promote democratic blogging with their new Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents (dowloadable in PDF format). The handbook discusses blog sociology, blog techniques and blog strategy, and includes advice on avoiding censorship and maintaining anonymity. The material seems especially directed to bloggers and potential bloggers in authoritarian states, where control of the media can often mean that sources based on computer networks can be the only credible sources available.

Something culture is good for

There is a delightful essay by the theatre director and writer Sulayman al-Bassam in the Guardian today on producing plays by Shakespeare in the Arab world. He makes the observation that many people have made before about the use of classic texts as a defense against censorship, but also goes on to discuss just how well suited these texts in particular are to examination of the contemporary Arab world, with their depiction of a pre-modern world about to be consumed in a great historical transformation, and all its attendant confusions and discomforts. It is a good starting point for understanding why anybody cares about dominant systems of storytelling.

European proposal: Media should stop promoting terrorism

This looks like it is likely to be controversial, if it gets any attention at all. The European Commission is issuing a report today claiming that media promote a view of the world which tends to promote radicalisation and terrorism. According to the EC report:

"Some media disseminate propaganda which contributes to violent radicalisation. Typically this conveys a reductionist and conspiratorial world view where inequity and oppression are dominant ... Some form of self-regulation principle or code of conduct ... might be beneficial."

In addition to this, the report argues, media need to be aware of the role they play in serving as the means by which terrorists communicate with different publics. According to the report:

"The media are the main vehicle through which [terrorism] attempts to affect citizens and leaders alike. Journalists face the difficult responsibility of reconciling their duty to inform the public with the need not to facilitate the aims of terrorists."

Special attention is given in the report to the role of the internet, which is presented as a vehicle by which extremist groups communicate both internally and with the larger public:

"The growth in use of the internet enables people ... to create networks through which it becomes easy to incite racial and religious hatred and also coordinate terrorist actions."

There is also a recommendation in the report that terrorists not be referred to in terms of their declared loyalties (i.e., "Islamic terrorism"), as this both draws a false distinction between "types" of terrorism and unfairly associates criminals with whole populations:

"The commission believes there is no such thing as 'Islamic terrorism', nor 'Catholic', nor 'red' terrorism ... The fact that some individuals unscrupulously attempt to justify their crimes in the name of a religion or ideology cannot be allowed in any way ... to cast a shadow upon such a religion or ideology."

These sound like fairly harsh criticisms of media. Especially the characterization of "propaganda which contributes to violent radicalisation" sounds as though it could be interpreted as suggesting that any critical material is pro-terrorist, and does not necessarily confine itself to coverage of issues related to terrorism. If the report gets any attention at all, expect a lot of angry response from journalists.

Fear and intimidation in the production houses

Former CBS anchor Dan Rather and HBO documentary producer Sheila Nevins spoke at a panel on journalism at the Fordham University School of Law yesterday. Rather complained that since he began he career:

politicians "of every persuasion" had gotten better at applying pressure on the conglomerates that own the broadcast networks. He called it a "new journalism order."

He said this pressure -- along with the "dumbed-down, tarted-up" coverage, the advent of 24-hour cable competition and the chase for ratings and demographics -- has taken its toll on the news business. "All of this creates a bigger atmosphere of fear in newsrooms."

Nevins argued that a similar atmosphere constrains the production of documentaries, arguing that:

...even in the documentary world, there's a certain kind of intimidation brought to bear these days, particularly from the religious right.

"If you made a movie about (evolutionary biologist Charles) Darwin now, it would be revolutionary," Nevins said. "If we did a documentary on Darwin, I'd get a thousand hate e-mails."

When he was asked to compare the pressure journalists now face from government to those he faced as a critic of the Nixon administration, the main difference that rather observed was that he felt that in the earlier period, his employers supported him.

Mediacourse

Another correlation between the amount of tv watching and obesity, in a fairly media-materialist view point. And yes, obseity problems are getting worse, but if television is a cause or a consequence or randomly associated, was not found. The problem could very well be the amount of fast food available to kids, or even the amount of commercials of fast food per amount of tv watched. But to simply blame it on television is a mediocre answer, and to resolve the issue with less television watching isnt the best answer. Sure, kids are missing out on excercise, intellectual pursuits, and real relationships and interaction by watching television, but to blame obesity on television or atleast to use the correlation to suggest this possibility- as often done in recently published research found in newspapers/journals, seems to be an evasion of the issue- possibly even a scape-goat. what do you think? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4238386.stm

The most pointless celebrities

In Britain, the television station Channel 4 conducted a survey to find which were the most pointless celebrities. The methodology was that viewers were asked for what a well known person was known, and if the viewers could not give an answer, the celebrity got a point. First place was won by the person formerly known as Posh Spice. Second place went to her husband, David Beckham.

The NYT responds to "new media"

Access to the New York Times website has been free of charge for as long as they have had one, a fact which has allowed the paper to increase its readership and influence beyond what could have been achieved with print. No longer: next week they will begin charging for access to that part of their site which is different from all other newspaper sites: the op-ed pages. This is an experimental move -- either it will increase revenue (and broaden the revenue base beyond advertising) if people decide it is really worth $49.95 a year to read their editorial writers, or it will decrease the readership and presence of the paper as readers turn to other sources. My bet is on the second possibility, but the fate of this experiment will determine what happens with many other online news sources as well.

Down with allocution, up with consultation!

You have been reading a lot of speculation this week about how the communication is sphere is transformed by "new media" (such as the internet) which many writers celebrate for its low barriers dividing the producers from the consumers, and for its ability to circumvent censorship. Not so in China, where an authoritarian government wants to limit access on a number of topics, and providers like Google and Yahoo, with an eye to the world's largest market, seem only too happy to play along. Isabel Hilton has the report.

The cultural significance of Gilligan

Paul Farhi has a reflection in the Washington Post on the passing of comic actor Bob Denver, who played the title character on Gilligan's Island and the loopy Maynard G. Krebs on Dobie Gillis. He sees Denver's characters as emblematic of the cultural transformation television underwent as it moved from elite to "mass" medium, and laments, "How we need smart actors and dumb sitcoms now."

Has Katrina saved the US media?

Writing for the BBC, Matt Wells speculates that "American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back," and also has some ideas about why it may have been lost in the first place.