Iran and the Future of Journalism

[Warspite]

Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.

Unless you have someone with experience and political nous - someone who can provide analysis, not just narrative - they all you have is an unfiltered, undiscriminated mass of text.

Let me put it this way: imagine if someone in the USA formed their opinion of what was happening in the UK based on the BBC's Have Your Say. 

I am not sure I agree.  Some of the stuff I read on languish is actually much better than local newspaper articles, for example.  A professional journalist does not necessarily do better than another individual, especially if that someone is smarter, has access to generally unavailable information, has professional knowledge etc.  You may get a better understanding of the division of work among the 70+ HK government departments from me than from the local BBC correspondent.

You are confusing a source with a journalist.

You are right in that you would provide a better overview of your level of the civil service than the local BBC correspondent. But the BBC journalist would have access to a wider range of information that you - some within the civil service, some outside it - and if they are a good journalist, they will have a good degree of credibility based on their proven ability to interpret raw information. Not to mention the fact that, as a professional journalist, they will have institutional resources behind them.

There is also the final point that we can't really know you are a HK civil servant, what level you are, or whether anything you say is true. Whereas the journalist at least has some incentive to be somewhat honest some of the time.

[Josquius]

Twitter is the devil and should burn. I do not use that either to post myself or read other people's stuff. Its just stupid and pointless.

Blogging though. Now there I can see a place in the future.
Sure, there are lots of idiots just making things up as they find it. But there are also many well regarded, trusted people. A known spread of these across the world could well make for a good way to get your international news.

How conventional media can save themselves....better international cooperation? Getting foreign media to have one of their journalists write a piece about events in their country aimed at ignorant foreigners with the promise that you will do the same? - Of course these cooperation should be formed between similar papers, it'd be silly to have the left wing pro-freedom western paper printing reports from some right wing dictatorship's state media.

[Iormlund]

Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.

Unless you have someone with experience and political nous - someone who can provide analysis, not just narrative - they all you have is an unfiltered, undiscriminated mass of text.

Let me put it this way: imagine if someone in the USA formed their opinion of what was happening in the UK based on the BBC's Have Your Say. 

I am not sure I agree.  Some of the stuff I read on languish is actually much better than local newspaper articles, for example.  A professional journalist does not necessarily do better than another individual, especially if that someone is smarter, has access to generally unavailable information, has professional knowledge etc.  You may get a better understanding of the division of work among the 70+ HK government departments from me than from the local BBC correspondent.

You are confusing a source with a journalist.

You are right in that you would provide a better overview of your level of the civil service than the local BBC correspondent. But the BBC journalist would have access to a wider range of information that you - some within the civil service, some outside it - and if they are a good journalist, they will have a good degree of credibility based on their proven ability to interpret raw information. Not to mention the fact that, as a professional journalist, they will have institutional resources behind them.

There is also the final point that we can't really know you are a HK civil servant, what level you are, or whether anything you say is true. Whereas the journalist at least has some incentive to be somewhat honest some of the time.

All that is fine, but chances are the journo doesn't know shit, and he'll be forced to improvise on a 2 minute notice once something big happens.

The best example I can think of is the coverage of the Madrid bombings and following elections. It was uniformly dismal.
It took me 2 minutes looking at the statistical data from the elections to know what had happened. Another poster in the Spanish EUOT (whose work involves survey design) arrived at pretty much the same conclusion I did.

Yet not a single correspondent did. They had the raw data. They had the institutional backing. Access to wider range of information than I did. They had experience and credibility. And all* failed miserably.



*By all I mean all that I read, for example WSJ, Economist, NYT etc.

[lustindarkness]

Meta Gamin meets Journalism

edit:stoopid spic kant spell

[Warspite]

Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.

Unless you have someone with experience and political nous - someone who can provide analysis, not just narrative - they all you have is an unfiltered, undiscriminated mass of text.

Let me put it this way: imagine if someone in the USA formed their opinion of what was happening in the UK based on the BBC's Have Your Say. 

I am not sure I agree.  Some of the stuff I read on languish is actually much better than local newspaper articles, for example.  A professional journalist does not necessarily do better than another individual, especially if that someone is smarter, has access to generally unavailable information, has professional knowledge etc.  You may get a better understanding of the division of work among the 70+ HK government departments from me than from the local BBC correspondent.

You are confusing a source with a journalist.

You are right in that you would provide a better overview of your level of the civil service than the local BBC correspondent. But the BBC journalist would have access to a wider range of information that you - some within the civil service, some outside it - and if they are a good journalist, they will have a good degree of credibility based on their proven ability to interpret raw information. Not to mention the fact that, as a professional journalist, they will have institutional resources behind them.

There is also the final point that we can't really know you are a HK civil servant, what level you are, or whether anything you say is true. Whereas the journalist at least has some incentive to be somewhat honest some of the time.

All that is fine, but chances are the journo doesn't know shit, and he'll be forced to improvise on a 2 minute notice once something big happens.

The best example I can think of is the coverage of the Madrid bombings and following elections. It was uniformly dismal.
It took me 2 minutes looking at the statistical data from the elections to know what had happened. Another poster in the Spanish EUOT (whose work involves survey design) arrived at pretty much the same conclusion I did.

Yet not a single correspondent did. They had the raw data. They had the institutional backing. Access to wider range of information than I did. They had experience and credibility. And all* failed miserably.



*By all I mean all that I read, for example WSJ, Economist, NYT etc.

What do you mean? The WSJ, Economic and NYT failed to say the right party won the election even with the results?

[Valmy]

Personally, I think the whole idea of insider blogging and twittering is overrated as a news source - they are really no different to bazaar rumours.

It is sort of like relying on Tamas for all my news about Hungary.

Of course I DO rely on Tamas for all my news about Hungary.  Doh!

[Iormlund]

What do you mean? The WSJ, Economic and NYT failed to say the right party won the election even with the results?

They all went with the retarded "Spain surrenders to Osama" shit their target audience wanted to hear. None mentioned things like the relation between participation and socialist victories going back almost 30 years. Analysis my ass.

[Neil]

What do you mean? The WSJ, Economic and NYT failed to say the right party won the election even with the results?

They all went with the retarded "Spain surrenders to Osama" shit their target audience wanted to hear. None mentioned things like the relation between participation and socialist victories going back almost 30 years. Analysis my ass.

And why did the Spanish people participate?  Because they wanted to send a message that surrendering to Osama was the will of the Spanish people.

[Berkut]

What do you mean? The WSJ, Economic and NYT failed to say the right party won the election even with the results?

They all went with the retarded "Spain surrenders to Osama" shit their target audience wanted to hear. None mentioned things like the relation between participation and socialist victories going back almost 30 years. Analysis my ass.

Wow, what an excellent example of why personal anecdote is no substitute for actual reporting.

it's not like there was any chance you were going to come to the conclusion that the bombings influenced the election - your analysis started with the need to prove that they did not, and went from there.

[Iormlund]

Heh. I've always maintained the bombs influenced the election. It's fairly obvious, since participation went up 10%. Which in turn gave Zapatero his victory.

And thank you (and Neil) for proving my point about the audience rather neatly, by the way.

[Berkut]

And thank you (and Neil) for proving my point about the audience rather neatly, by the way.

How so? I had no interest in Spain bowing to pressure from terrorists - as a supporter of the war in Iraq, of course it was exactly the opposite -  I was very dissapointed out the outcome of the entire fiasco.

If anything, I would be pre-disposed to NOT wishing to believe that AQ can force an ally out of the war.

[Iormlund]

You certainly didn't want to hear that one of the supposedly most important allies, one of the Azores Three, had been from the outset against the invasion and wanted nothing to do with the whole thing.
It was sweeter to think the cowards had surrendered, lacking the spine of true American Warriors, when the reality was that only a few delusional fools believed an invasion was the right thing to do.
Even today you refuse to acknowledge that you can't force someone to do something he wants to do. And Spain never wanted to be in Iraq. No, in your mind Spain "bowed to the pressure of the terrorists" as you so aptly put it.

[Martinus]

The Revolution Will Be Twitted.

[Martinus]

Anyway I think Sheilbh raises an interesting question. The printed media is pretty much in its death throes. Worse still (at least for the media industry) is that commercial electronic media is pretty much becoming outcompeted by free "amateur" media (how many of you log in daily to Languish to find your news?)

Sure, the news have to come from somewhere (which is now mainly commercial media), but I guess the convergence will continue to happen.

So the question remains: will we turn into a hyper-information society, with everybody becoming a news source, or will we be lost totally in information chaos, as we have no longer a way to verify that any information is real?

[Berkut]

You certainly didn't want to hear that one of the supposedly most important allies, one of the Azores Three, had been from the outset against the invasion and wanted nothing to do with the whole thing.
It was sweeter to think the cowards had surrendered, lacking the spine of true American Warriors, when the reality was that only a few delusional fools believed an invasion was the right thing to do.
Even today you refuse to acknowledge that you can't force someone to do something he wants to do. And Spain never wanted to be in Iraq. No, in your mind Spain "bowed to the pressure of the terrorists" as you so aptly put it.

Yes, it is clear that you approached this in a dis-passionate and objective manner.