News Cut: December 8, 2008 Archive

Why is the Department of Homeland Security sponsoring NPR programs?

Posted at 9:06 AM on December 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)

A few posts on Twitter this morning expressed alarm -- or at least confusion -- when listeners heard an underwriting announcement during Morning Edition this morning from the Department of Homeland Security.

What's up with that?

"'Support for NPR comes from NPR stations, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), offering E-Verify, confirming the legal working status of new hires. At DHS dot gov slash E-Verify."

Let's pass the buck by noting these are sponsorship announcements coming from NPR and has nothing to do with Minnesota Public Radio. Besides, NPR's ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, has written an online column about the decision to take the government cash.

NPR defends the sponsorship saying the network has accepted underwriting money from government for 20 years although the Postal Service, National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts hasn't usually stirred this much controversy.

Not everyone is happy about it within NPR, Shepard's article suggests:

"There's a perception of a conflict when you hear reporting and then you hear a funding credit that's from a particular point of view and you realize the program was funded in part by that government organization or entity," said Sean Collins, the executive producer of Latino USA for NPR. "It just makes you a little queasy. I don't think we do a good enough job of reiterating the concept of a firewall. It really does exist."

But Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin ratchets up the rhetoric, offering a sweeping generalization about Public Radio listeners:

As wild as the misperceptions about immigration policy are among NPR critics, their conceptions of what public radio is or should be are even stranger. Should NPR only accept advertising (because that's what we're talking about, no matter what genteel euphemisms we clothe it in) from clients with a certain set of sociopolitical objectives? The lefty Ford Foundation si, the righty Scaife Foundation no? The Department of Health and Welfare but not the Defense Department? (Except when Obama starts pulling the troops out, Defense will be okay again?) The United Way is all right as long as it talks about Planned Parenthood-funded abortion clinics, but not the homophobic Boy Scouts?

Late last week, the NPR ombudsman appeared on NPR's Talk of the Nation to discuss whether NPR sponsors have any influence the network's programs and reporting. Find it here.

As for MPR listeners, only seven have called since the spots started, according to MPR spokeswoman Jennifer Haugh. Three were negative and four were "neutral."

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The threat of online journalism

Posted at 11:05 AM on December 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: News

When it comes to imprisoned journalists, bloggers and online journalists have come of age.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is out with a report showing "45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors."

One-hundred-twenty-five journalists are currently imprisoned around the world. China leads the pack in jailed journalists.

"Online journalism has changed the media landscape and the way we communicate with each other," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon on the group's Web site. "But the power and influence of this new generation of online journalists has captured the attention of repressive governments around the world, and they have accelerated their counterattack."

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The invisible sports franchise

Posted at 12:21 PM on December 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Sports

The Minnesota Timberwolves, Minnesota's most forlorn sports franchise, fired coach Randy Wittman today, according to reports, and put the man most responsible for the team's collapse -- Kevin McHale -- back in charge as head coach.

How tough are things for the Timberwolves? Since you're smart enough to find your way to News Cut on a regular basis, I'm assuming you're familiar with Wikipedia, and the nature by which the online encyclopedia is updated by people who pride themselves on being the first to add new nuggets of information to a listing within seconds of its occurrence.

Here's a section of the Wikipedia listing for the Minnesota Timberwolves:

Not only had Wittman's firing not been added (as of 12:17 p.m.), but not a word of any aspect of the current season had been added. The section on the team's "rebuilding" had not been updated in 14 months. No mention was made of the Timberwolves rookie draft last year, even though the team had the #3 overall pick (which McHale botched by trading it).

McHale is holding a 2 p.m. news conference, which could have a high entertainment value.

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Is the media making the economy worse?

Posted at 1:56 PM on December 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Weeks after the massive -- and so far unsuccessful -- bailout of some financial institutions and days after Congress took another whack at the auto industry, New York Times columnist David Carr today identified the boogieman behind the country's economic woes -- the media.

Every modern recession includes a media séance about how horrible things are and how much worse they will be, but there have never been so many ways for the fear to leak in. The same digital dynamics that drove the irrational exuberance -- and marketed the loans to help it happen -- are now driving the downside in unprecedented ways.

The recession was actually not officially declared until last week, but the psychology that drives it had already been e-mailed, blogged and broadcast for months. I used to worry that my TiVo thought I was gay -- doesn't everyone enjoy a little "Project Runway" at the end of a long, hard week? Now I worry that my browser knows I am about to lose my job.

"When everyone is talking about recession, we all feel like something has to change, even if nothing has changed for us," said Dan Ariely, author of "Predictably Irrational," a book that explains why people do things that defy explanation. "The media messages that are repeating doom and gloom affect every one, not just people who really have trouble and should make changes, but people who are fine. That has a devastating effect on the economy."

Carr's riff isn't all that different from a similar one in the '70s. Only then, the subject was the Vietnam War. We really weren't losing it, the media was just focusing on the bad news.

But increasingly, the message behind Carr's prose is being amplified. A Business and Media Institute writer said today:

The barrage of constant bad news can affect people who don't find themselves in financial trouble, Carr noted, citing Dan Ariely, the author of "Predictably Irrational."

"When everyone is talking about recession, we all feel like something has to change, even if nothing has changed for us," Ariely said. "The media messages that are repeating doom and gloom affect every one, not just people who really have trouble and should make changes, but people who are fine. That has a devastating effect on the economy."

It sounds plausible, but who are these people for whom "nothing has changed?" People still may have jobs, but their plans for retirement are in ruins. Not everyone is 30 with a lifetime to get back what's been lost.

And Carr doesn't say the media is making it up; only that the bad news these days can be collected and disseminated far more quickly than ever before. But what are we supposed to do about that? In fact, that's a question that media critics have specifically not answered.

Here's today's economic news: The Tribune company filed for bankruptcy, 3M cut its earnings outlook and announced more job cuts, many borrowers who have their mortgages restructured are defaulting a second time, and auto magnate Denny Hecker closed some more businesses.

In non-economic news, the Timberwolves fired a coach, the Fergus Falls band is going to march at an inauguration, and a truckload of reindeer slid off an icy road in Freeport. So it's not as if other stories aren't being reported.

"The media are only doing what they always do eventually: They get it right, way too late to make a difference," said the Center for Citizen Media's Dan Gillmor, who hasn't had a nice thing to say about mainstream media, it seems, since savings accounts paid 5 percent.

Gillmor said, however that "people who save their money today are not being irrational, even though this is exactly the time you hope that enough people will spend to keep the economy from an absolute crater."

So there we are. A gloomy economy, a gloomy media, and a handful of critics who don't know the solution to either problem.

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Sningo!

Posted at 4:21 PM on December 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Weather

The snow is falling and so is the sky! We're having our first major snowstorm of the year. We interrupt this blog post for this important announcement: Minnesotans are not fazed by the weather.

And it's time for Sningo!

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Feel free to post any instances of the above in the official Sningo comments section below. Also, you can follow the storm on MPR's Updraft blog.

Update 4:52 p.m. - We have our first photo of us being unfazed of the winter season. This is on some side streets -- side streets! -- outside the News Cut World Headquarters. Note the way we have adjusted into gridlock without having to relearn this from last year. That person walking will be home before any of them.

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