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goddamnedtwisto posted:The strange thing to me is what Brown Moses (and others, of course) is up to is how journalism used to be done, only cheaper. It used to be that journalists were entirely reliant on local people who may or may not have been journalists ("stringers") who would post/telegram them reports of what was happening in, say, Calcutta, and the journalist would then try and piece together a coherent story from that without ever leaving Fleet Street. I think its Nick Davies in Flat Earth News that talks about the relative size of news gathering agencies and the effect that the commercial news organisations trying to do news on the cheap by having virtually no body anywhere other than a few major cities has on the quality of, and what actually gets reported as, news. Print media is just the same, with local reporters expected to cover increasingly disparate subjects whereas in the past you would have specialist crime reporters for example. Who would have thought that commercial pressures would affect the way news was reported. To give the BBC their due, they do maintain the largest network of journalists, with presences in far more countries than any of the commercial news organisations.
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Nov 3, 2013 15:13
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Obliterati posted:Given what's happening here though, can we really say professional journalists are? Obviously a professional impartial journalist is going to be much better, but if we have to have bias in our reporting surely it's at least better to have a wider variety of biases? In probably my favorite interview ever Andrew Marr interviewed Chomsky and was utterly destroyed. At the end he is literally spluttering and says something like 'so you think we just actively censor everything?' To which Chomsky replies 'no, you got your job because it simply wouldn't occur to you to ask difficult questions.' That's the thing. Journalists are not evil people actively censoring the news it is just the people who control news organisations don't promote people who rock the boat too much and powerful people won't give access to anyone who doesn't ask softball questions. Of course if good journalism does get done in spite of that you get consequences like the Hutton enquiry.
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Nov 3, 2013 16:23
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Rapey Joe Stalin posted:There's also the problem of bias, concious or not. How many citizen journalists are going to be aware of the need for, let alone be scrupulous in the application of, impartiality? I recommend "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" to everyone; Hunter S. Thompson gives a time capsule of US presidential politics and is prescient about 'objective' journalism. It is a farce. Thompson says the only things that can be reported impartially are numbers like stock figures and sports scores. Now we know those numbers can just be a facade for a bigger story that someone might not want told. If the citizen journalist idea is an opportunity, it will be in the form of Thompson-inspired Gonzo-journalism (basically I see D&D as a massive citizen journalism document for future journalist/historians). It is recognizing that objective truth is an unattainable idea; but one should pursue honesty - to yourself, to history, and to science. The problem is that conglomerates can form online like Drudge or Infowars that just reconstitute Murdoch's populist tabloid bullshit.
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Nov 3, 2013 16:39
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goddamnedtwisto posted:The strange thing to me is what Brown Moses (and others, of course) is up to is how journalism used to be done, only cheaper. It used to be that journalists were entirely reliant on local people who may or may not have been journalists ("stringers") who would post/telegram them reports of what was happening in, say, Calcutta, and the journalist would then try and piece together a coherent story from that without ever leaving Fleet Street. That's always been the downfall of "Citizen Journalism" in that there's inherently no "Authority" to it and there is the aspect of "The Bloke Down The Street said...". BM had "Photoshopped!" accusations thrown at him over the chemical weapon launchers in Syria when he posted those photos for example. And because BM doesn't have the "authority" someone working for the BBC might have. It's easy to spread uncertainty and doubt about his reporting because he doesn't have "Authority" to back him up in the public eye, even though we know he's right, backs up his sources and been doing very good work. There's also a really sinister undercurrent of "monitisation" of "Citizen Journalism" made to pander towards certain demographics like Free Republic and Infowars and the more people are drawn into that circlejerk of opinions. The more they look for the sources that pander to their opinions and the more they will drift towards that. Which makes the site owners more money. So the cycle continues where reporting becomes more outrageous and more drawing in of readers. But then holding a reader attach rate was one of the things the industry has been freaking out about for a while now and "citizen journalism" is competing for mindshare on a much bigger level since there isn't much money to go around either so they get a lot more desperate and swing to the other end of the spectrum as they need the hits to make money. Also while we're on the debate of news speed and how 24 hour networks love to fill time. "No Time To Think" by Howard Rosenberg and Charles S. Feldman is utterly essential reading on this and how the 24 Hour networks operate. You will want to punch a wall afterwards, but it's a fantastic book.
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Nov 3, 2013 17:06
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This is why nearly all my work links to the various sources it's referencing, and I spend a lot of time on verification. The reason I'm widely respected and seen as reliable is because I've done that, and I have built up a good track record. The problem with the vast majority of citizen journalism is a lot of it is unverified accounts of events, and that results in situations like we saw with Reddit and the Boston marathon bombings. Either that, or citizen journalism is reduced to TV news channels asking their viewers to send in pictures of bad weather.
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Nov 3, 2013 17:19
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Brown Moses posted:This is why nearly all my work links to the various sources it's referencing, and I spend a lot of time on verification. The reason I'm widely respected and seen as reliable is because I've done that, and I have built up a good track record. The problem with the vast majority of citizen journalism is a lot of it is unverified accounts of events, and that results in situations like we saw with Reddit and the Boston marathon bombings. Either that, or citizen journalism is reduced to TV news channels asking their viewers to send in pictures of bad weather. What you do requires effort, and the amount of effort you put in is clearly visible in your writing. However, it is so easy these days to slap up a blog and write with authority about subjects that you have no expertise in, and I think that that, combined with the way in which people now interact with news (selecting sources that reinforce their prejudices) means that there is a danger with citizen journalism, that good writers (You) get swamped out or dismissed out of hand when you go against popular opinion. Thankfully, for once, justice is being done and you are getting some of the recognition you deserve for the amount of work and dedication you have shown. Out of interest, how much misinformation is being put about, if it's possible to quantify such a thing, by states with interests in Syria (eg Israel, Russia and Iran) and is it easy to spot when you have the resources you have, or do you get caught out too?
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Nov 3, 2013 17:35
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Well, if a group or government makes a claim and doesn't support it with some sort of evidence I tend to approach it with a certain level of cynicism, especially in situation like you have where Russia is putting out an increasingly convoluted story about the August 21st Sarin attack. Another example of this is something I was told about only in the last couple of days. Apparently a major US newspaper was planning a big piece about me and Human Rights Watch's work on the August 21st attack, before the UN report was published. Supposedly they asked a US intelligence official for their opinion on my work, and they said it was all nonsense, and shouldn't be trusted, so the nearly complete article was spiked. Of course, then the UN report is published and it turns out I was totally right about everything, so it hardly gives you much faith in the information these agencies are producing.
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Nov 3, 2013 17:44
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Brown Moses posted:This is why nearly all my work links to the various sources it's referencing, and I spend a lot of time on verification. The reason I'm widely respected and seen as reliable is because I've done that, and I have built up a good track record. The problem with the vast majority of citizen journalism is a lot of it is unverified accounts of events, and that results in situations like we saw with Reddit and the Boston marathon bombings. Either that, or citizen journalism is reduced to TV news channels asking their viewers to send in pictures of bad weather. Thankfully you've built a lot of that "authority" through reliability and adherence getting your stories verified. It was one of the big debates pre-Arab Spring on "Citizen Journalism" where an establishment like the BBC would hold more authority than a blogger and the reader/viewer would be able to say "Oh that BBC, it's reliable" while the blogger would be have to cultivate that reliability from grass roots and would still invite more skepticism and occasionally downright hostility on what they report. Oh and the usual "How the gently caress do you make money on this, anyway?" question. Business interests, pffft  I think we are only starting to get past the social acceptance part and not have to rely so much on the establishment (The establishment also co-opting social media also helps), but as Twisto rightly points out, when so much info is coming out and everyone has differing information. How do you get past that when people will dismiss and accept based on their own biases and have an instant rejection method in "It's only someone on twitter"? Now that is a tricky subject.
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Nov 3, 2013 18:22
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Brown Moses posted:Well, if a group or government makes a claim and doesn't support it with some sort of evidence I tend to approach it with a certain level of cynicism, especially in situation like you have where Russia is putting out an increasingly convoluted story about the August 21st Sarin attack. I'm sure you and most here have seen it, but Adam Curtis absolutely eviscerates MI5s ability to do its job (and with it reporting of intelligence stories) in BUGGER, a blog post on the BBC site.
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Nov 3, 2013 18:32
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I have no confidence, or have seen any evidence to provide any confidence, that intelligence agents are in any way shape or form, reliable, accurate or able to be trusted. The only possible reason they can provide factual information is by relying on public and private informants such as BM, or illegal hacking that should put them in jail along with the News of the World.
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Nov 4, 2013 00:14
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Brown Moses posted:Either that, or citizen journalism is reduced to TV news channels asking their viewers to send in pictures of bad weather.
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Nov 4, 2013 00:29
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Comstar posted:I have no confidence, or have seen any evidence to provide any confidence, that intelligence agents are in any way shape or form, reliable, accurate or able to be trusted. That's a little over-broad. In their small-scale work they do very, very well - from Double Cross to current counter-terrorism work, they're pretty efficient with a minimum invasion of privacy/liberty. It's at the larger scale, when they're forced (or allowed) to speculate and build their own worlds that things go pear-shaped really quickly, which is the point of the article - that they can and will invent enemies where none exist. Conversely they have a huge blind spot in the opposite direction, where they believe that any information (for example the tipoffs about the 7/7 bombers) that has not come from their own investigative efforts is fundamentally weaker than their own beliefs. The latter is arguably a good thing though, given the former - I think we're all happier with the idea that the occasional loan nutter will get through compared to the kind of total lockdown and massive wholesale invasion of privacy and liberty that would be required to prevent them.
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Nov 4, 2013 00:56
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goddamnedtwisto posted:the occasional loan nutter will get through The Wongabomber
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Nov 4, 2013 01:05
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baka kaba posted:The Wongabomber Oops. Mind you in terms of damage to the country you have to wonder how Al-Quaeda stack up against the financial sector...
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Nov 4, 2013 01:08
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goddamnedtwisto posted:Oops. High Frequency Bombing.
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Nov 4, 2013 02:34
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Heresiarch posted:High Frequency Bombing. Somebody makes a joke tweet about the NASDAQ falling and the entire middle east gets turned to glass.
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Nov 4, 2013 07:35
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goddamnedtwisto posted:That's a little over-broad. In their small-scale work they do very, very well - from Double Cross to current counter-terrorism work, they're pretty efficient with a minimum invasion of privacy/liberty. Spies are not good at counter-terrorism. They only help CREATE terrorism, which admittly they have shown a good record of doing. Police, courts and the use of law and justice are good at counter-terrorism. Intelligence agencies are not. They have no ability or actual want or need for any *minimum* invasion of privacy/liberty. They only want, and get the maximum amount, and be outside and above the law to do so.
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Nov 4, 2013 08:14
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Comstar posted:Spies are not good at counter-terrorism. They only help CREATE terrorism, which admittly they have shown a good record of doing. It's a pretty massive claim to say that they're creating terrorism when we're talking about the British intelligence services. I can sort of see the argument in abstract when you're talking about the aggregate actions of the West against the Muslim world, when you factor in things like rendition and drone strikes, but I was referring specifically to what MI5 et. al. are up to. (For what it's worth I would definitely characterise the activities of the CIA over the last 60 years in that way - and also a perfect example of what happens when intelligence agencies are given that sort of overly-broad and un-overseen brief)
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Nov 4, 2013 08:28
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goddamnedtwisto posted:It's a pretty massive claim to say that they're creating terrorism when we're talking about the British intelligence services. I can sort of see the argument in abstract when you're talking about the aggregate actions of the West against the Muslim world, when you factor in things like rendition and drone strikes, but I was referring specifically to what MI5 et. al. are up to. Particularly as the opposite of CIA is not MI5.
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Nov 4, 2013 09:03
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goddamnedtwisto posted:It's a pretty massive claim to say that they're creating terrorism when we're talking about the British intelligence services. I can sort of see the argument in abstract when you're talking about the aggregate actions of the West against the Muslim world, when you factor in things like rendition and drone strikes, but I was referring specifically to what MI5 et. al. are up to. That would be the MI5 that provided at the very least intelligence support to Ulster Unionist terrorist groups, right?
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Nov 4, 2013 09:58
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The prosecution is back today, finishing off their opening statement, here's my Twitter list.
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Nov 4, 2013 10:02
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WebDog posted:Or here in Australia where there's the ABC Open scheme that trains people in remote towns to act as volunteer camera operators should something go down and they can't whisk someone out fast enough. That's a great idea. It's really only state/public broadcasters that actually innovate and evolve, isn't it?
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Nov 4, 2013 10:47
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Peter Jukes and Emily Bell on CNN talking about the phone hacking trials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HeWVDBtA7Q Peter Jukes will be doing a second edition of his book, The Fall Of The House Of Murdoch, after the trials, and he plans to have a chapter about me in it.
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Nov 4, 2013 10:55
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A chapter? drat BM, you're going up in the world! When you're calling Piers Morgan a bastard on Have I Got News For You, don't forget us little people.
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Nov 4, 2013 11:11
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Brown Moses posted:Peter Jukes and Emily Bell on CNN talking about the phone hacking trials That's, in it's way, very fitting. By the title, I would infer it isn't just about the hacking scandal, but also about how the media giants are faltering and there's a search for a new model, like the Brown Moses' of the world. Congratulations.
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Nov 4, 2013 12:09
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Brown Moses posted:Peter Jukes and Emily Bell on CNN talking about the phone hacking trials You had better never describe your rise to greatness as "pulling myself up by my bootstraps", or I will find you and glare at you is a slightly disappointed way 
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Nov 4, 2013 13:04
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For those not following on twitter, the prosecution is using mobile phone data to undermine the original statements made by Brookes and Carter about their behaviors when a lot of archived records went missing. The world is a funny place sometimes. being too clever isalmost always not clever enough.
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Nov 4, 2013 13:24
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Have they brought up brooks husbands clumsy attempt at destroying that file yet?
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Nov 4, 2013 13:25
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So someone on another site is arguing that whilst IPSO is an obviously corrupt puppet of the media companies, its extended powers still mark an improvement, and it's better than government intrusion into the workings of the press via the royal charter. Part of this is because, he says, IPSO and the IPCC are largely unnecessary anyway - the law can deal with the illegal stuff, and our libel laws are sufficiently biased in favour of the claimant to provide a solid counter against the merely unethical stuff. ... I don't think I'm equipped with the relevant knowledge to deal with this.
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Nov 4, 2013 13:34
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Plavski posted:A chapter? drat BM, you're going up in the world! When you're calling Piers Morgan a bastard on Have I Got News For You, don't forget us little people. There may not be time on the show to call us all bastards individually. A group statement will have to suffice.
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Nov 4, 2013 13:39
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Darth Walrus posted:So someone on another site is arguing that whilst IPSO is an obviously corrupt puppet of the media companies, its extended powers still mark an improvement, and it's better than government intrusion into the workings of the press via the royal charter. Part of this is because, he says, IPSO and the IPCC are largely unnecessary anyway - the law can deal with the illegal stuff, and our libel laws are sufficiently biased in favour of the claimant to provide a solid counter against the merely unethical stuff. This is the sort of argument Ian Hislop made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evMGuGmOWJs You could note that, so far, the law is not particularly good at dealing with this: it's taken a very long time for these few examples to be tried in a court. edit: wrong video
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Nov 4, 2013 13:42
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Is forcing a paper to apologise for lying in the same prominance as the original lie really that infringing on freedom of press?
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Nov 4, 2013 13:47
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Darth Walrus posted:So someone on another site is arguing that whilst IPSO is an obviously corrupt puppet of the media companies, its extended powers still mark an improvement, and it's better than government intrusion into the workings of the press via the royal charter. Part of this is because, he says, IPSO and the IPCC are largely unnecessary anyway - the law can deal with the illegal stuff, and our libel laws are sufficiently biased in favour of the claimant to provide a solid counter against the merely unethical stuff. Defamation cases are terrible methods for resolving damages because they take ages, cost more money than most people can realistically afford and rarely adequately right the initial wrong. Just say the Sun ran a story saying every boat I had ever worked on had sunked killing all hands. For the entire duration of the trial I would be unemployable and the eventual correction would be so poo poo that I would have to hope the damages could support me for the rest of my life.
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Nov 4, 2013 13:48
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willie_dee posted:Is forcing a paper to apologise for lying in the same prominance as the original lie really that infringing on freedom of press?  This is not the sort of reporting they want to have to give prominence to, hence them fighting it with tooth and claw.
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Nov 4, 2013 13:51
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The whole "Operation Black Hawk" stuff is fascinating, Peter Jukes is doing the best tweets on the subject. I always assumed it was one trip to the bins, but it sounds like they spent the day going back and forth.
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Nov 4, 2013 13:58
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I like Ian Hislop, but that's exactly the kind of argument that would be made by someone who's spent his entire working life getting sued for libel. The system works, to an extent, for someone like Christopher Jeffries who was both obviously libelled and, as he was an ex-master at Clifton and a landlord, had the money to sue. A friend of the family used to run a firework shop in the 80s. One year a strange bloke turned up asking to buy some special high-powered bang-three-times-as-loud fireworks that you needed a licence for, the sort of thing that councils let off on the Bonfire Night display. He got sent away with a flea in his ear, and came back the next day, and the next day, and most days after that, twice a day, three times a day; and each time with a new chapter on the story for why he needed them, which after three weeks of this was a massive epic about the bloke's dying nephew who loved fireworks more than anything and he'd been given six months to live and they really wanted to make his last Bonfire Night extra special and so on and so forth, to the point where it was seriously affecting his ability to do business because he was spending so much time trying to get this bloke to piss off. So eventually he gave in, sold the guy the fireworks, gave him a long and involved rundown on how exactly to let them off without getting his head shot off. Five days later and his picture's on page 7 of the News of the World under the headline IS THIS THE NASTIEST MAN IN BRITAIN? And of course, now he's a gutless spiv who talked Our Intrepid Reporter into buying the most powerful things in his arsenal while sneering gleefully about how dangerous they were. Nobody's going to buy anything from the nastiest man in Britain, so he has to shut the business down and his family goes through some difficult times until they can fill the gap. If this was all going off right now, I'd love to know what Ian Hislop thinks he should do about it. He's got no money to sue with, the regulator can't do anything to redress the damage he's been caused, and from my pathetic understanding of the libel law it's hardly a guaranteed win anyway, especially if it were Sue, Grabbitt and Runne working on a shoestring against whoever News International could afford to instruct.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:06
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The problem is the conflation of press ethics/libel laws and the phone hacking scandal, which was a problem with how Leveson was set up. The former is a tricky area with harms on all sides and no obviously correct answer, the latter is largely resolved by reforming the police and not the media. The real scandal of the phone hacking revelations is that the police were taking kickbacks at all levels from the media in exchange for stories and then for obvious reasons not investigating the media when it looked like they'd been up to other illegal things.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:14
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He actually addressed that counterargument by pointing to the Sonia Sutcliffe case, which demonstrates (as he says) how even relatively poor people can successfully go after newspapers by invoking legal aid for a meritorious claim. I don't know how readily available that is, though, or what the criteria are for getting it.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:15
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So the gist of this operation blackhawk stuff is that Brooks had private security doing counter-surveillance while she went around destroying evidence? loving hell these people are Bond villains.
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Nov 4, 2013 14:17
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Darth Walrus posted:He actually addressed that counterargument by pointing to the Sonia Sutcliffe case, which demonstrates (as he says) how even relatively poor people can successfully go after newspapers by invoking legal aid for a meritorious claim. I don't know how readily available that is, though, or what the criteria are for getting it. Has everyone forgotten the legal aid cuts?
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Nov 4, 2013 14:19
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