News Cut Category Archive: News

Hoax of the day

Posted at 2:16 PM on October 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

Perhaps it's time to change the name of newscasts to hoaxcasts.

Today's hoax-as-news event occurred in Washington where someone pretending to be from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced the organization was endorsing climate change legislation.

The event at the National Press Club ended when a real spokesman for the Chamber burst into the room.

"Whoops," says The Guardian:

In today's instant news era, that wasn't quite soon enough. Several green organisations tweeted or blogged on the about-face. Reuters news agency put out a straight news story about the Chamber's apparent U-turn, and the Washington Post and New York Times put the story on their news sites (both later removed the stories from their websites). CNBC actually sought - and got - comment from analysts. It also broke its programming to have a reporter read out the fake press release.

The hoax was carried out by The Yes Men, a group which has perpetrated similar nonsense in the past, and.which has a new movie out about its "work."

There once was a saying in newsrooms, "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." It might be time to bring that baby back.

Coincidentally, the New York Times announced today it's cutting 100 newsroom jobs. No word yet if one of the positions affected is the one that determines if a story is real.

(Update 4:55 p.m.) - The Chamber rattles the legal sabers.

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Balloon Boy

Posted at 10:07 AM on October 16, 2009 by Than Tibbetts (4 Comments)
Filed under: News, Things that are puzzling

Suddenly, live on national television yesterday, our collective, inner, 6-year-old boy was stirred to life. Who wouldn't want to be floating free, up in the air with the birds, on a Thursday afternoon? Who wouldn't want to do all of that with a name like Falcon?

Perhaps we're well past the point of expecting cable news to check the veracity of the scenario, that a thin-skinned, sealed, relatively small helium balloon listing and bobbing through the air with little evidence of a ~50-pound load on board could actually carry a small boy, but it was fun while it lasted.

Today, the evidence is stacking up against the boy's father, Richard Heene. Apparently he was there when the balloon launched yesterday.

And after watching the bizarre Today Show interview this morning — wherein Richard dismisses the notion that it was hoax as young Falcon vomits twice — it just doesn't pass the smell test.

Whatever happens, I'm sure we'll be able to watch it live on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News.

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Our dereliction of duty

Posted at 9:57 AM on October 3, 2009 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News, War

Every now and again -- when I'm speaking to some group -- someone will ask, "how do you determine what news is?" They're looking for a definition I can't give them. It's not an algorithm (sorry, Google); it's a feeling from your heart to your head. You know it when you see it or when you feel it.

You have to be some sort of heart-dead or brain-dead person not to see the stories within the story of Pvt. Travis Hafterson, whom I've been writing about this week (here, here, here, and here). The 21-year-old Marine from Circle Pines left Camp LeJeune in North Carolina on leave last month only to find out his orders had been rescinded. He was looking for help for post traumatic stress disorder and his mother suggested he come home to get it.

We can argue -- and we have, respectfully, in the posts I've made on News Cut this week -- about whether he should have done that, but one thing cannot be denied: Travis Hafterson is a broken human in need of help and we did this to him.

We sent a kid off to war -- twice -- with all the bravado we could muster on lawn signs, bumper stickers and radio talk shows, and while we lived a comfortable life supporting our troops here with our yellow-ribbon magnets, Hafterson and thousands of other combat soldiers were accumulating memories that turn into nightmares.

Here's just one of several I lifted from a psychological report he underwent last Saturday:

"He watched as an Iraqi police member opened the door of the house, only to have the back of his head explode from enemy fire. He tossed a grenade into the home. ... Though (the enemy) had lost limbs, he was still alive. So Hafterson had no choice but to kill him with a knife through the throat."

Hafterson's primary story isn't the only one that went largely unreported this week. So was the amazing story of how Minnesota's system worked. Psychologists and psychiatrists gave up their days off last weekend, social workers stepped in, attorneys donated their time, court-appointed experts reacted with diligence, a Ramsey County judge and the staff of the Civil Commitment Court acted swiftly, sensitively, and urgently, purely because they recognized the need to help a kid -- "one of our own," you might say -- who came home for help.

On Thursday, the Marines swept in, grabbed Hafterson before he could get it, and sent him to a military prison. He's disappeared into the closed society of the military again, and the public symptoms of a wider mental-health scandal disappeared with him.

The Marines couldn't have done it without the indifference of the news media in the Twin Cities.

Almost a year ago to the day, another Minnesota soldier also had a problem. Gwen Beberg befriended a dog in Iraq but had to leave "Ratchet" behind when she returned to the states. The local media sprang into action. The local newspapers carried the story on page one. Local TV news personalities wouldn't let the story die, and finally the military relented. When the dog came home for a happy reunion, the TV stations were there live.

No such luck for Pvt. Hafterson or, for that matter, the hundreds or maybe thousands of soldiers like him who may exist if only we in the news media were interested enough to find out. No TV station picked up the Hafterson story this week. The Pioneer Press was the only newspaper to do so. The Star Tribune, which announced a "military affairs" beat just a week ago, ignored Hafterson's plight. The Associated Press took a pass. The Huffington Post rejected the story as did National Public Radio. The alternative online news sources around here who fancy themselves the future of journalism -- MinnPost, The Uptake, and City Pages, for example -- proved that they can shrug their shoulders as well as the big boys. Of all alternative online sources of news, only Rick Kupchella's new Bring Me the News "covered" the story.

If the news media here had treated Pvt. Travis Hafterson like a dog, it would've been an improvement.

While the Hafterson story was playing out in the Twin Cities this week, a summit on the future of journalism was being held in San Francisco, where the San Francisco Chronicle noted the theme:

Key to survival in the digital media age is rapidly responding to the preferences that consumers reveal every time they click a link, view an ad, read a story or post a comment, said Michael Franklin, professor of computer science at UC Berkeley. He is also the founder of Truviso, a San Mateo company that creates tools for analyzing consumer data.

Each online action represents clues that media companies can use to customize content, products and ads to particular consumers. That, in turn, can increase customers' engagement with the site and the likelihood of responding to marketing, he said.

Fancy talk, indeed, but it leaves out the two most important elements of journalism. It needs to employ people who give a damn and it needs to make you look, when your instinct is to turn away.

At some future point, the PTSD story will resurface in the form of some tragedy, and the media wags will ask "how could this happen?" When it comes time to ask the question, we should be looking in the mirror.

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Making the news

Posted at 11:13 AM on September 11, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

CNN today framed a Coast Guard training exercise on the Potomac River near the Pentagon as "felony stupidity." But the case actually shines a light on the journalistic rules of CNN.

A few minutes after the president appeared at a ceremony honoring the dead in the 9/11 attacks at the Pentagon, CNN reported that the Coast Guard had fired shots at a boat on the Potomac, sending the nation, apparently, scurrying for word of a terrorist attack.

It turned out to be a training exercise, which sent the CNN anchor team into hyperbole over the Coast Guard decision to have a training mission on 9/11, where it could be mistaken for an actual terrorist attack.

"Is there any admission on the part of the Coast Guard that they made a terrible mistake?" a CNN anchor asked a reporter. But the mistake was CNN's. There were no shots fired, and along the Potomac, there was little indication anything was wrong, and a Coast Guard statement suggested the training exercise was primarily on a radio frequency. A CNN staffer heard the words "bang bang" on a newsroom scanner, and the news organization went with its report.

Later, a CNN reporter cited "sources in the newsroom" while saying the news network put the story on the air before calling the Coast Guard -- or anyone else -- to ask what was happening. It once was a well-observed rule in the news media that journalists don't report anything heard on a news scanner without verifying its truthiness.

"Coast Guard Confusion: Training Exercise Sparks Panic on 9/11 Anniversary," the headline on ABC News' Web site screamed. Well, no, it was CNN that caused whatever panic might have ensued (Note: There's actually no indication anyone outside the CNN newsroom had panicked.)

Try as CNN might in the aftermath to focus the spotlight on the Coast Guard, Washington officials weren't biting. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says if law enforcement felt there was a need for the exercise it's "best not to second-guess." the Associated Press reported.

Gibbs sharply criticized CNN for airing an inaccurate report that shots were fired during the exercise, saying "before we report things like this, checking would be good."

As an old colleague-comic in a newsroom used to say, "Never check the facts, son. You ruin a lot of good stories that way."

(AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

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Don Hewitt, 1922-2009

Posted at 10:41 AM on August 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: News

Don Hewitt, best known for creating "60 Minutes" has died, according to CBS News.

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The 'T' word

Posted at 3:27 PM on July 1, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

Catching up.

When NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard was on Midmorning a few weeks ago, she said the Public Radio audience was angry that NPR won't call waterboarding torture. She said she'd have an article about that by the end of the day, but she didn't and I forgot to check.

She explained the policy last week:

... the problem is that the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons, including the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties the United States has signed.

That earned over 400 comments, most of which did not agree with Shepard. She wrote a follow-up post yesterday, noting that she brought the audience concerns to the editors and that NPR is apparently resolute on the matter:

One can disagree strongly with those beliefs and their actions. But they are due some respect for their views, which are shared by a portion of the American public. So, it is not an open-and-shut case that everyone believes waterboarding to be torture. Many in NPR's audience obviously believe it is, but others do not.

The main argument of my column was that NPR should describe waterboarding rather than use coded language to characterize it. Another alternative is to quote responsible officials who have described it as torture, for example President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.

Media critic Dan Kennedy, who writes Media Nation, took Shepard to task last week for "getting it so wrong."

Perhaps NPR can eschew the T-word and instead describe waterboarding as "an interrogation technique once considered so heinous by the United States that it hanged Japanese officers for doing it to Americans."

To which, he says, Shepard responded...

I'm not trying to say what is and is not torture, but is every abuse classified as torture now or are there degrees? When a police officer throws a suspect to the ground and handcuffs them, is that torture or simply abuse?

And to which he -- Kennedy -- responded today:

As John McCain and others have pointed out, the United States executed several Japanese military officers for waterboarding American prisoners of war after World War II. And as I wrote last week, if NPR really can't bring itself to use the T-word, perhaps it can describe waterboarding as "an interrogation technique once considered so heinous by the United States that it hanged Japanese officers for doing it to Americans."

So yes, if I were an editor at the Boston Globe, you're damn right I would refer to waterboarding as torture. That seems about as solid as referring to oil as a fossil fuel, or baseball as a sport. By eschewing the term "torture" to describe a practice that the entire international community regards as such, NPR is not being neutral. Rather, it is embracing a euphemism that places the network squarely on the side of the torturers and their enablers.

NPR should not use enhanced interrogation techniques on the English language.

On Midmorning, Shepard said she's not just NPR's omudsman, she is "the ombudsman for Public Radio," which seemed to be news to the people at MPR News I talked to.

So, is there an MPR policy preventing reporters and hosts from using torture instead of waterboarding? No.

FYI, Ms. Shepard will be on Talk of the Nation on Thursday at 1:40 p.m. (CT) to talk about the issue.

(Photo: Getty Images)

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The truth about Cronkite

Posted at 3:44 PM on June 25, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Icons, News

If there's one person who would hate the way the condition of Walter Cronkite is being reported, it's Walter Cronkite.

To recap: Last Thursday it was reported Cronkite was "gravely ill."

Later in the day, his publicist declared the reports of Cronkite's near death exaggerated. "He has suffered no major health crisis. He is at home. He was recently ill, and he's home recuperating. He's not gravely ill."

This afternoon the family acknowledged the original story.

In order to dispel false rumors, Walter Cronkite's family wants it known that he has apparently suffered for some years with cerebrovascular disease and he is not expected to recuperate. He is resting comfortably at home with family, friends, and a wonderful medical team. We thank you for your prayers and good wishes."

It's been interesting to read comments from old-timers about Cronkite in the last week. "That was back when journalists just gave us the news," one said, a comment echoed by many others. They forget that it was Cronkite who basically said -- on a news broadcast -- that Vietnam was a mistake.

Cronkite's work also serves as a reminder that news doesn't have to be slick to be good.

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News conference choreography

Posted at 3:06 PM on June 23, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News, Politics

The very tail end of President Obama's news conference today provided the best glimpse into the workings of the White House press corps.

Listen to the comment shouted at the end of the president's remarks. (Listen)

After Obama had bid everyone "adieu," an unidentified reporter whined "No questions about Iraq?" It seemed an odd complaint to a president, coming from someone responsible for asking the questions, one of which, by the way, included "how many cigarettes do you smoke a day?"

I wondered about that on Twitter, when Kevin Watterson, the Minnesota House Republican Caucus' communications boss, suggested coordination between Obama and the press corps over what questions would be asked.

He wasn't the only one. Writing on the Politico blog, Michael Calderone noted that Obama invited a question on Iran from Huffington Post's Nico Pitney.

Reporters typically don't coordinate their questions for the president before press conferences, so it seemed odd that Obama might have an idea what the question would be. Also, it was a departure from White House protocol by calling on The Huffington Post second, in between the AP and Reuters.

CBS Radio's Mark Knoller, a veteran White House correspondent, said over Twitter it was "very unusual that Obama called on Huffington Post second, appearing to know the issue the reporter would ask about."

Knoller says a news conference shouldn't "be choreographed," although presidents historically have had a "go-to" reporter to call on when questioning gets tough -- the kind of reporter who might ask about, for example, a new dog or the number of cigarettes he smokes a day.

Most of the questions asked today seemed to follow the issues that currently have our attention -- Iran and health care. It's not clear what question about Iraq the lonely reporter with the complaint would have asked had he been given the chance.

On that subject -- the news agenda -- a survey of what we're interested in (by way of the news media) speaks to our short attention spans.

Here's the graph for the last week, compiled by Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism:

And the week before that:

And the one before that:

Iraq hasn't registered on the PEJ's news coverage index since the third week in February.

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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Keeping secrets - Part 2

Posted at 1:51 PM on June 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: News

More on the weekend escape of New York Times reporter David Rodhe from Taliban captors in Afghanistan. I wrote about the Times' decision to keep the kidnapping secret yesterday.

"I can't tell you whether anything we did made any difference," Times editor Bill Keller told John Hockenberry, the host of The Takeaway today.

But Keller said when he talked to Rodhe, he was told the decision to keep his kidnapping secret was "completely the right thing to do." According to Keller, Rodhe's captors were "absolutely obsessed" with his value as a commodity and were determined to keep him, suggesting that if the world knew of Rodhe's capture, it would have been more difficult for him to have escaped.

Curiously, Hockenberry never asked Keller about the balancing the ethics of keeping a news story quiet and whether similar kidnappings have been kept quiet out of similar fears of harm to the person kidnapped

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Tales from the heartland

Posted at 12:55 PM on June 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: News

From America's Dairyland comes the kind of story that makes journalists rap their head on the cubicle walls.

A Milwaukee journalist has admitted she had a love affair with the city's police chief. It gets worse. She teaches ethics as part of her journalism classes at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

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Watergate's birth

Posted at 8:40 AM on May 25, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

Historical insight or long-lasting sour grapes?

Two ex-members of the New York Times say they had the tip on Watergate first. They say it came from former FBI chief L. Patrick Gray, the Times reports today.

If true, the revelation also means that the top two officials at the FBI were trying -- it would appear, desperately -- to get the media to follow the break-in story. W. Mark Felt, the associate director of the agency, has already been identified as "Deep Throat," the tipster who guided the Washington Post through the biggest story of a generation.

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America's stiff upper lip

Posted at 2:24 PM on April 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

It's usually interesting to see how others view us. Matt Frei, who hosts the BBC's World News America, has noticed that the (primarily) cable TV newsies are growing more "emotional" (in evaluating that term, remember that the English called World War II "the unpleasantness").

But we the American public are not:

The collapse of the economy, the outrage of unwarranted bonuses, Ponzi schemes and designer trash-cans have brought the pitchforks out of the cellar. We are finally getting a genuine bonfire of vanities.

And yet I am surprised how generally calm and collected the American public has behaved, despite the best efforts of some of my colleagues to tease out their fury.

Perhaps it is because they have just had an opportunity to express their feelings where it matters: at the ballot box.

Perhaps it is because they still believe that judicious government can fix things.

Or maybe it is because all the ranting and raging is being done on their behalf. On air.

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Things you may have missed

Posted at 6:54 PM on March 2, 2009 by Steve Mullis (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

While Bob is away, News Cut is on a pseudo vacation as well. But, that doesn't mean we're gonna let you News Cut readers go without a fix, so I thought I'd share some interesting reading with you. Here's a quick smattering of things you may have missed during your hectic day, both on Minnesota Public Radio and around the Internet:

• The DOW finished below 7K for the first time in over a decade - Pretty sure the next roller coaster at a Six Flags near you is going to be called DOW. "You must be this in debt to ride this ride."


• A journalist, originally from Fargo, was arrested in Iran - If it were indeed because of the bottle of wine, how is it that you can buy wine in a country where it is illegal to buy wine? Head, begin spinning in 3...2...1


• The Norm Coleman team rested their case today in the Senate election trial - MPR's Elizabeth Stawicki recaps the past five weeks, yes FIVE weeks, of the trial. Wrap your head around that folks, five weeks, and now it is finally the other team's turn. /facepalm


• Call Guinness, AIG's $61.7 billion loss is the largest in corporate history - I believe the section of the record book is in the back, under the "D'oh!" category.


• Obama will meet British Prime Minister Gordon Brown tomorrow - I'm curious if they will have as cozy of a relationship as Bush and Tony Blair had.


• This company re-created the Hudson River plane landing in a computer animation - Interesting stuff, and cool to see that pilot at Obama's address last week. That guy has it made, I forsee a book deal or made-for-TV movie in his future.

That's all I have for now. Bob, hurry back, the News Cutterites are going to get restless!

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Will the media cutbacks affect you?

Posted at 9:01 AM on January 2, 2009 by Bob Collins (22 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News

In the first hour of MPR's Midmorning, we're going to talk about how to handle tough times in a particular business -- ours. With the worsening economy, news organizations are cutting staffs. How is a commitment to a viewer, listener, or reader to be maintained? What ethical challenges do these times pose? Do you care?

I'll be live-blogging in the studio with Kerri Miller and we'll be joined on the program by Alicia Shepard, the ombudsman for National Public Radio and Clark Hoyt, Public editor for the New York Times.

I'll be reading your comments and insight during the broadcast.

You might also be interested in reading former NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin's latest blog post comparing public radio in Canada and the U.S.

Live-blogging

9:02 a.m. - We're starting with Alicia in the first half hour. Kerri says she's been taking a lot of heat over the budget cuts at NPR. Apparently people have been suggesting NPR used the economy to get rid of shows and people it wanted to get rid of. Some have suggested a racial motive, which as least gets to the concern that a decades-old attempt to make newsrooms more diverse will be wiped out in this economy.

9:07 a.m. - Recommended reading: The future of journalism.

9:08 a.m. - Why didn't NPR use buyouts instead of layoffs. Because NPR was afraid they'd lose people they didn't want to lose, says Shepard. She says buyouts are a more humane way of eliminating people. "But I'm out of my pay grade in talking about those specifics."

9:10 a.m. - Where did the Joan Kroc money go? The St. Paul native gave millions of dollars to NPR (none to her hometown public radio operation, for the record). "The perception was that NPR is rolling in money and that's not true," she says. The Kroc money went into an endowment that was to generate $10 million a year. Here's Shepard's column on the cutbacks.

9:16 a,m. Shepard is defending NPR's acceptance of Homeland Security underwriting. She gives props to listeners for responding quickly when they hear something they don't like. She mentioned WalMart underwriting announcements.

9:20 a.m. - We're going to get to Gaza coverage in a minute. In the past, this has been a huge debate at NPR.

9:22 a.m. - Caller on "underwriting issue." Sounds like local underwriting on MPR... spots promoted clean coal. When membership renewal time came up, she was aggravated. "It was boosterism for clean coal, which I think is an oxymoron." She e-mailed in her complaint asking what the guidelines are. Got a response back she said was unsatisfactory; that corporate sponsorships were important to the budget. She has not renewed her membership and acknowledges she listens to the programming.

The underwriting messages, however, came from NPR, Kerri says. So what do listeners to about that. The impact of the caller not renewing is taken out on Minnesota, while the responsibility for the problem is with NPR. What's a listener to do?

9:26 a.m. - -- Kind of wondering where the future of journalism discussion went.

9:28 a.m. - I've been waiting to relay a reader comment on diversity, but they've gone back to the phones. Would like to get it on before Alicia is cut loose.

9:29 a.m. - Shepard says an ombudsman would never do any lobbying. Then the connection to NPR went down. Budget cuts.

9:30 a.m. - Clark Hoyt joins us regarding coverage in the Times of the Israeli bombing of Gaza. Gotta give Kerri credit here. Hoyt is answering her question, Kerri is talking off mic to the producer about what happened to Shepard, Hoyt completes his answer and Kerri smoothly goes to her followup question. She obviously was listening to Hoyt's answer while talking.

9:33 a.m. - Hoyt says "there's a great awareness" in the newsroom that people are skeptical of news organizations. "They (editors) are very concerned about presenting a true picture of what is happening."

9:34 a.m. - Shepard rejoins the discussion. I have assumed the role of potted plant.

9:35 a.m. - Shepard says NPR has created a Middle East page on its Web site in order to say to listeners, "look at the totality of our coverage" whenever there's an accusation of bias in an individual story from the Middle East. She says it's difficult in a 4-minute piece to provide all of the elements and context of a story.

9:37 a.m. - Should people who report the news also give their opinion? Hoyt says this came up in coverage of the meltdown. He was troubled by having reporters covering aspects of the bailout, and writing columns on the same pages about what should happen. "To me that poses an insoluble conflict."

This has been an issue for me, too. But in a different way. The columns do nothing more than make public an opinion that may be held by a reporter. Not publishing it doesn't eliminate the opnion, it just eliminates your knowledge of it. That's not saying the opinion influences the reporting, however. Quite often, just the opposite is true.

9:40 a.m. - Shepard says allegations of bias occupy most of her time. "There may be bias," Hoyt says, "but the only way you can judge that is only over a period of time." He notes a recent front-page article in the NYT on Bush's role in the housing problem. "I got lots of messages saying 'this is outrageous. There goes the Times... Bush bashing."

Here is the article. Hoyt says nobody apparently considered that "this was Part 16" of a series.

9:43 a.m. - The problem of live-blogging. My question on diversity now won't fit where the conversation is. Bummer.

9:44 a.m. - Reading comments and thinking that a valuable discussion would have is if people don't renew memberships to public radio stations, how that does anything but increase the likelihood the person -- who usually still listens to public radio -- will grow more dissatisfied because resources are further removed from news or programming because of declining budgets?

Methinks public radio should do more to give the public more options on how to influence programming without destroying it.

9:47 a.m. - Hoyt is talking about the story in the New York Times that -- to my analysis -- clearly led people to assume McCain was having an affair. Apparently there's a lawsuit filed over this so Hoyt can't talk about it. I've talked about it quite a bit.

9:53 a.m. - I popped in on the show to ask how people can influence a newsroom short of destroying the journalism therein. There must be a way short of "the nuclear option," as Kerri says. "People go immediately to maximum power," says Hoyt. "People go to angriest option right away." He blames the Internet. "It's not a proportionate kind of response, usually," he says.

Shepard says there's a powerlessness among listeners and readers. "At the end of the conversation, someone will say, 'thank you for listening.' People want to be heard," she says.

Let me point out here that I think this blog just served a valuable role in an otherwise broader conversation, and it came as a result of what you wrote. Newsroom blogs, it seems to me, are the avenue for a better relationship with the news consumer.

"Reporters can be very thin skinned and resistant to criticism. We need to thicken up the skin and engage with readers more directly," says Hoyt.

"Journalism is done with the greatest sense of integrity," says Shepard. "But mistakes will be made."

This concludes the program. I don't think we really ever got to the journalism aspect of things. -- the business of journalism, perhaps.

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Your Christmas story

Posted at 7:34 AM on December 24, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: News

I admit, I'm tired of the commercials where someone gives a family member a new Lexus, and the clattering group that remarks "He got it at Jxxxx."

We need a bit of a pick-me-up and we're counting on you. Tell us your Christmas story. Make it good. Heck, make it up if you want.

I'll start. It was the winter of 1980. I was living in a basement apartment in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, my first Christmas alone (my wife had run off with the town insurance agent, but that's another story for another day). We were in the grip of a typical western Massachusetts cold snap. The morning air temperature that Christmas morning was -23. I didn't have a garage.

A car in a garage has a chance of starting at -23; a car high on a hill, exposed to the wind rolling in from New York when it's -23 has no chance. I was to travel back to the family estate for Christmas.

Click. Click. Click. You know the sound. And Christmas was over. I went back inside to spend the day with the cat, and call the family to tell them I couldn't make it.

A few hours later, I looked out the window to see the news director at the radio station I worked at (who, as I recall, also volunteered to take my shift that day so I could go back home) -- and his father -- unraveling some jumper cables. A few minutes later, the car was running, and I was on my way.

Update Here's another one that just came my way from back East. On my personal blog, I wrote a story about my Springsteenian home town last spring. Specifically, I wrote that my mother mentioned to a "checkout lady" at a grocery store (whom she did not know) that she was in need of someone to mow her lawn. Later that day, the phone rang. It was the "checkout lady" with a list of recommendations. Cool enough. This morning, my mother sent me an e-mail. There was a knock at the door yesterday. It was the "checkout lady" with "a beautiful basket filled with candy, coffee and cookies."

When it comes right down to it, you don't need diamonds and fancy cars to make a Christmas memory.

Your turn.

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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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How Mumbai changed the media landscape... again

Posted at 9:30 AM on November 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: News

The situation in Mumbai is now over and we will soon forget about it and return our attention to the U.S. Senate recount in Minnesota and the special on doodads at the local Buy More. But for fans of journalism and social networking, not before we take stock of what we've learned about the changing communication landscape.

As documented here and several thousand other places since Wednesday, Mumbai was a turning point in media -- and in particular, Twitter -- the same way the 60 Minutes story on George Bush's military service was the turning point for blogs. We're not going back.

The tendency is to view this in the context of us vs. them; that is, does Twitter now make mainstream media even more irrelevant? No. Some media choose to be irrelevant all by themselves (The Star Tribune op-ed pages, for example, have yet to carry the word Mumbai and there's been three editions since the terror began. At the same time, it found room today for a warning that the Internet is now in the hands of Democrats, as if somebody actually owns the Internet) .

Much of the material that people consumed from Mumbai via Twitter was based on NDTV or CNN-IBN reports, and then repeated on Twitter. But there was actual reporting being done -- better -- via social networking by people such as Vinukumar Ranganathan, a business development manager who is the person known as vinu on Flickr and Twitter. At the height of the conflict on Thanksgiving, he was the only source for eyewitness information because it was happening next door to where he lives. Blogs, such as Arun Shanbhag's, filled in the blanks admirably and expertly.

"Twitter isn't the place for solid facts yet - the situation is way too disorganized. But it's where the news is breaking," Michael Arrington wrote on Tech Crunch. But he was wrong; it was the source for solid facts.

On her blog, Teaching Online Journalism, Mindy McAdams writes of 10 things she's learned from the Mumbai coverage. " Breaking news -- especially disasters and attacks in the middle of a city -- will be covered first by non-journalists," she said. "The non-journalists will continue providing new information even after the trained journalists arrive on the scene."

Closer to the point, what we saw here was not the suspected replacement of one medium with another, but the merging of the two (or three). The news organizations which best understood that have figured out how to create content in the social networking space rather than using social networking only to repackage it into traditional TV, or radio, or even Web sites. The best social networkers have figured out how to merge mainstream media into their space. Those who found themselves out of the game, were the ones who didn't. Their time is running out.

To be sure, the signal-to-noise ratio on platforms like Twitter can be unbearable for any intelligent adult. In its technical infancy, it doesn't yet provide an easy way to filter irrelevant material and, as with most new media, small groups of early adopters/social networking experts are slowing its evolution by trying to dictate the "right" way to use it. It is, afterall, social networking and one has to define one's own social comfort zone. And it's true that there's danger in overestimating the value of social networking during breaking news; it's still a good method of repeating bad information.

On the other hand, if you can turn off the noise, the opportunities for being better informed are endless. The access to information from around the world has never been better, a follower on Twitter said to me yesterday. She was somewhat frustrated that Americans aren't taking advantage of it. The last three days have suggested the situation is changing and the world isn't going to revolve around those who are willing to be left behind.

"I have always been a shutterbug. Would love to be a photo journalist someday!" Vinu Ranganathan told Wired.com.

He already is. And so are you.

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The face of the Mumbai attacks

Posted at 10:16 PM on November 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: News, War

This picture that I posted here on Wednesday is the poster for the attacks in Mumbai.

NPR commentator Sandip Roy says the image has haunted him since the violence started on Wednesday. "His message was loud and clear. He said to India, 'pay attention to me,'" Roy said.

What happened to this one? I don't know, of course, but I think I found another picture of him today in the Boston Globe's excellent slideshow.

And another one a few seconds later.

I'm pretty sure it's the same guy. The picture was taken by Mumbai Mirror photo editor Sebastian D'souza, and they're a good reminder that news photographers are either brave, foolish or a little of both

The Independent (UK) tracked him down:

But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."

As the gunmen fired at policemen taking cover across the street, Mr D'Souza realised a train was pulling into the station unaware of the horror within. "I couldn't believe it. We rushed to the platform and told everyone to head towards the back of the station. Those who were older and couldn't run, we told them to stay put."

The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D'Souza added: "I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."
.

Other notes from Mumbai: Sen. Satveer Chaudhary got plenty of coverage in India's Economic Times with a statement that the attacks will hurt the U.S. economy........ AFP quotes a Minnesota backpacker who was on the scene..... Delta/Northwest resuming flights to Mumbai on Saturday.

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The Bachmen vs. Lizard People

Posted at 10:06 AM on November 21, 2008 by Than Tibbetts (29 Comments)
Filed under: Media, News, Politics

Take a moment and look at these two ballots.

Let's compare. Does everyone have their copy of 204C.22 ready?

Our first stop will be Subdivision 1: Ballot valid if intent determinable.

In both cases, the only marks in the ovals are next to a bona fide candidate. I will vouch for the voter's intent with the "X" mark, he/she used it consistently across the full ballot (see Subdivision 10, Different marks).

(We're going to operate under the assumption that it doesn't matter what was in the write-in field, despite what David Icke might say.)

The problem facing the state's Canvassing Board might be reconciling Subdivision 4:

Name written in proper place.

If a voter has written the name of an individual in the proper place on a general or special election ballot a vote shall be counted for that individual whether or not the voter makes a mark (X) in the square opposite the blank.

I've polled a few people around the office and consensus seems to be that this is an overvote, meaning the ballot should be discarded.

Aside: I suppose the Franken camp could mount a challenge by saying that "Lizard People" is not the name of an individual, though I doubt "voter intends to be funny" is one of the criteria the Canvassing Board will assess. Comedy Central's Indecision 2008 crew, by the way, wonders alike.

Several questions arise: Should the county have accepted the Franken vote? Does the voter consider Al Franken equivalent to the Lizard People? Is Lizard People a collective, or just one person like Cat Power? (Hat tip to the Minnesota Independent, which points out who put Lizard People on the map.)

What this also means — assuming the above holds true &mdash is that a lot of the people who played election judge have an unfounded preference for the Franken ballot, legally speaking.

So, there you have it. A pretty straightforward look at some challenged ballots through the prism of the law. Not so hard, was it?

D'oh!

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Minnesota recount: What do the ballots tell us?

Posted at 4:00 PM on November 20, 2008 by Steve Mullis (169 Comments)
Filed under: News, Politics

We're all having a great time playing election judge with the challenged ballots coming out of the various counties. However, while it is amusing, the ballots raise a lot of interesting questions.

First, it should be noted that these are just a small fraction of the ballots being recounted and challenged. Looking at the data from yesterday, 452,249 were recounted. Of those, 221 were challenged, which equated to about 0.000489 0.0487 percent (thanks MNLatteLiberal for the correction). See where I'm going with this? These ballots are certainly not representative of everyone that voted. For the most part, people voted correctly. Whether it be from years of standardized testing or simply reading the instructions at the top of the ballot (click image to see instructions).

Click for full-size image.

However, if you assume that there will be 200+ challenges a day similar to these, that starts to add up to a lot of incorrectly filled out ballots. So should there be more explicit instructions, not only on the ballot but at the polling places? Not everyone is familiar with scantron-style bubble tests.

What we've also been wondering is if these people knew that they could ask for another ballot if they feel they messed it up. The prevalence of arrows, eraser marks and lines show that people made mistakes. Is it embarassing to ask for another ballot? None of these questions can be answered without knowing exactly what the person was thinking about when they voted, whether it be lizard people or just sheer confusion.

What was the scene at your polling place? Was it far too busy, chaotic or confusing to ask for another ballot if you made a mistake or ask for instructions if you were confused at how to fill out the ballots? Were there not enough poll workers to help out?

The other topic these ballots obviously bring up is the ballot system in general. Does this make the case for an all-electronic voting system in Minnesota? I'll let you weigh in on that.

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What we're dealing with here

Posted at 5:17 PM on November 19, 2008 by Than Tibbetts (136 Comments)
Filed under: News, Politics

Update: More ballot pictures below.

Update #2: We put together a page where you can play election judge.

More We'll probably all tire of this soon, but here's what election officials will be contending with for the next couple of weeks. This picture of an improperly marked ballot comes from photographer Bill Alkofer who was in Shorewood this morning.

It's clearly closer to the Al Franken circle, where the mark would have been properly placed assuming the voter's intention was to vote for Franken. I suppose a case could be made that it's more likely the mark of a voter trying to restart a stalled pen than a sign of intent.

But, from the Minnesota statute on voter intent:

Subd. 6.Mark out of place.

If a mark (X) is made out of its proper place, but so near a name or space as to indicate clearly the voter's intent, the vote shall be counted.

On the whole, the statute gives elections officials pretty generous discretion in determining what counts or not.

More ballot photos...

From MPR's Curtis Gilbert: The Coleman campaign challenged this ballot in Anoka county, arguing the voter drew an arrow pointing at Coleman's name after filling in the bubble next to Franken's name.

Now we've got the spirit. Here's what the statutes say relevant to our next ballot.

Subd. 13.Identifying ballot.

If a ballot is marked by distinguishing characteristics in a manner making it evident that the voter intended to identify the ballot, the entire ballot is defective.

From Gilbert again: The Franken campaign challenged this Anoka County ballot, arguing that the thumb print on it constitutes a distinguishing mark. If a voter signs a ballot or writes his Social Security Number on it, that ballot is invalid under Minnesota state law. The State Canvassing Board will need to determine whether this thumb print has the same effect.

And then there's this one.

From MPR's Tom Robertson: Here is a pic of a ballot that was challenged in Beltrami County. The voter cast their ballot for Al Franken, but also put "Lizard People" as a write-in candidate, not only in the U.S. Senate race, but for several others. The county auditor/treasurer ruled that the vote should not be counted because it's considered an overvote. Representatives for Franken challenged that decision.

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The Begich connection

Posted at 9:34 AM on November 19, 2008 by Than Tibbetts (0 Comments)
Filed under: News

File this as another of Mr. Collins' beloved Minnesota connection stories.

Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who was just declared the winner of Alaska's U.S. Senate race over Ted Stevens, is the nephew of Iron Range resident Joe Begich (reg. required).

Mark's father, U.S. Rep. Nick Begich has been presumed dead since 1972, when his plane from Anchorage to Juneau disappeared. A month-long search turned up neither remains nor wreckage.

It's a story that writes itself:

Joe Begich said that his brother, who was Alaska's sole representative in the U.S. House and running for re-election in 1972, had planned to run for the U.S. Senate against Stevens. But it would be current Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich who would fight that political battle in what was a truly historic and bizarre campaign.

(h/t: Aaron Brown)

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News Cut: Evening Brief

Posted at 6:30 PM on November 18, 2008 by Steve Mullis (0 Comments)
Filed under: News, Tech, Things that are puzzling

Another evening round-up of news and bits that might have fallen through the cracks or that you might have missed during your busy 9-to-5 day:

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The $2 billion man, and other stories

Posted at 3:27 PM on November 18, 2008 by Than Tibbetts (4 Comments)
Filed under: News

• Ouch. Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo, announces he's leaving the company and its stock soars as much as 13 percent, putting more than $2 billion back onto its market valuation. (Of course, YHOO has lost half its value since Yang and Co. rebuffed Microsoft's merger overtures.)

• Speaking of billion-dollar men, Mark Cuban, maverick Mavericks owner, was charged with insider trading by the SEC for allegedly dumping his shares of Mamma.com using non-public information about an impending stock offering. Cuban seems to insinuate that the case is little more than a high-profile hit job. The fact that he's bankrolling a bailout watchdog site BailoutSleuth.com is unrelated, I'm sure.

• Somali pirates have hijacked seven ships in the last 12 days, including the 1,080-foot Saudi supertanker Sirius Star. Just what does a pirate do with a booty of $100 million in crude oil? Also, note the pirates' poor timing. A few months ago they would've had $200 million on their hands.

• Something I learned today: Cushing, Oklahoma, population 8,371, holds between 5 and 10 percent of the United States' crude oil supply.

• Countdown to The Recount: It starts tomorrow. The magic number is 215. How long will it go on?

• Following up on my previous post, Honda is opening a new factory in Greensburg, Ind. How would you like to be in human resources there?

When Honda announced it was hiring 900 employees, 33,000 people applied.

• On the other hand, a sure sign that we're in trouble: "big-time" layoffs at NASCAR.

• Google is hosting millions of photos from the LIFE archives going all the way back to the 1860s. Lots of fascinating photos of the evolution of human conflict from the Civil War, to World War I, etc.

• How lonely is this penguin? (And if you haven't bookmarked The Big Picture, you're missing out.)

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Making the rounds

Posted at 6:00 PM on November 17, 2008 by Steve Mullis (4 Comments)
Filed under: News, Politics

Hey there News Cut readers, online editor Steve Mullis here. As my colleague Than pointed out already, our fearless News Cut leader, Bob Collins, is on vacation. He gave us the keys to the car this week and we promised not to crash it. I'm going to waffle between the useful, newsy stuff and the not so newsy but amusing.

So, let's get right down to brass tacks.

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