Sliced & Diced

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Disturbing

“America seems more and more unable to deal with reality. So many people inhabit a closed belief system on whose door they have hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign, that they pick and choose only those facts that will serve as building blocks for walling them off from uncomfortable truths. Any journalist whose reporting threatens that belief system gets sliced and diced by its apologists and polemicists.”

—Bill Moyers, newsman and commentator, “America Can't Deal With Reality—We Must Be Exposed to the Truth, Even If It Hurts,” alternet.org, Feb. 14, 2011

• Editorial Comment: And Moyers should know.


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• Agricultural Communication/Journalism Faculty Wanted! The joint program in Agricultural Communication & Journalism at Utah State University seeks candidates for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. See the posting at USU’s HR site here or email ted.pease@usu.edu for details. Review begins in March. Start date: August 2011.
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Hang Down Yr Head, Mr. Dooley

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Forget the Comfortable—Just Get It Right

“Th newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, controls th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.”—Finley Peter Dunne (as Mr. Dooley) (1867-1936), journalist and humorist

“[J]ournalists should never use the phrase again to justify their actions, unless they want old Mr. Dooley to roll over in his grave. It is true that the worst journalism comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted. That is a breach of duty.

“We need journalists to get at the truth and to keep watch against abuses of power. They have a hard enough time getting that right. So let’s absolve them of the responsibility of charity or iconoclasm. If journalists want to comfort the afflicted, they should send money to the Red Cross.”

—Dr. Ink, Poynteronline, 2002

• Editorial Comment: I dunno. I can think of some in the media worth afflicting.

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George Orwell Lives

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Ministry of Truth

“George Orwell warned six decades ago that the corrosion of language goes hand in hand with the corruption of democracy. If he were around today, he would remind us that ‘like the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket,’ this kind of propaganda engenders a ‘protective stupidity’ almost impossible for facts to penetrate. But you, my colleagues, can't give up. If you do, there's no chance any public memory of everyday truths—the tangible, touchable, palpable realities so vital to democracy—will survive. We would be left to the mercy of the agitated amnesiacs who ‘make’ their own reality . . . in order to maintain their hold on the public mind and the levers of power.

"You will remember that in Orwell's novel 1984, Big Brother banishes history to the memory hole, where inconvenient facts simply disappear. Control of the present rests on obliteration of the past. The figure of O'Brien, who is the personification of Big Brother, says to the protagonist, Winston Smith: ‘We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.’ And they do. The bureaucrats in the Ministry of Truth destroy the records of the past and publish new versions. These in turn are superseded by yet more revisions. Why? Because people without memory are at the mercy of the powers that be; there is nothing against which to measure what they are told today. History is obliterated.”

—Bill Moyers, newsman and commentator, in address to TV news broadcasters, “America Can't Deal With Reality— We Must Be Exposed to the Truth, Even If It Hurts,” alternet.org, Feb. 14, 2011

• Editorial Comment: We can't handle the truth.
















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Doh!

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Clear Thinking

“If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.

“In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

“Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.”

—Joe Keohane, writer, “How facts backfire: Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains,” boston.com July 11, 2010

• Editorial Comment: Never let facts get in the way of a good prejudice.

• More News from the Spell-check Front: Yesterday, Betty Medsger reported on the copy editing “help" she’d received from MS Word. She’s not alone, says Teri Thompson in Ohio: “I just texted my son, ‘did you take dayquil?’ and Blackberry changed it to, ‘did you take tequila?’” Olé!

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• Agricultural Communication/Journalism Faculty Wanted! The joint program in Agricultural Communication & Journalism at Utah State University seeks candidates for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. See the posting at USU’s HR site here or email ted.pease@usu.edu for details. Review begins in March. Start date: August 2011.
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Manifesto

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Advice

“I had just asked myself what was the most important thing to remember about writing a story, and the answer came back loud and clear: ‘To make somebody read it.”

“Ultimately, there’s no other reason for writing. Journalists write to support democracy, sustain truth, salute justice, justify expenses, see the world and make a living, but to satisfactorily do any of these things you have to have readers. Fairness and accuracy are of course profoundly important. Without them, you aren’t in journalism proper: you are playing some other game. But above all, you have to be read, or you aren’t in journalism at all.”

—Tim Radford, former editor, The Guardian,
“A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists,” Jan. 21, 2011.

• Editorial Comment: Sounds simple enough.

• News from the MicroSoft Front: Longtime journalist and educator Betty Medsger writes: “I just had the ultimate Microsoft Word ‘correction.’ It indicated that my use of ‘you’re’ was an error. It indicated that instead I should have written ‘you is.’ No kidding.” No comment. (MS translation: “You should have written, ‘Yo mama.’”)

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• Agricultural Communication/Journalism Faculty Wanted! The joint program in Agricultural Communication & Journalism at Utah State University seeks candidates for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. See the posting at USU’s HR site here or email ted.pease@usu.edu for details. Review begins in March. Start date: August 2011.
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Lara Logan Assaulted

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Paternalism

“Paternalism in the news profession often has editors and news directors, most of whom are male, ‘protecting‘ their female reporters and correspondents. Journalists and news crews who go into dangerous situations—including riots, demonstrations, and war must be trained to deal with violence—and must be given every assistance by their organizations when they have been harassed or attacked. But, for news executives to discriminate on who to send because of the ‘fear’ that women may be subjected to sexual assault, and for women not to report it to their bosses, is to acknowledge that they, and probably society, haven’t come far in eliminating sexism within the profession.”

—Walter Brasch, journalist and professor,
“Sexual Assault Coverage by Media Shows Double Standard, Paternalism and Sexism”

• Fox Report
• CBS News
• New York Times
• Online ugly
• Committee to Protect Journalists here and here.

• Editorial Comment: Once again, assaulting the victim. Did CNN pull Anderson Cooper out?

• Historic! Mark Twain published Huckleberry Finn today in 1855. “Tawdry,” said reviewers.

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• Agricultural Communication/Journalism Faculty Wanted! The joint program in Agricultural Communication & Journalism at Utah State University seeks candidates for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. See the posting at USU’s HR site here or email ted.pease@usu.edu for details. Review begins in March. Start date: August 2011.
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Dream On

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A Lost Dream?

“Historically, journalism safeguarded [the American] dream, beginning with the John Peter Zenger case (1735), elevating truth over authority and eventually inspiring public education. Journalist-statesman Benjamin Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania on that notion. John Jay, first Supreme Court justice, believed an informed electorate required access to education ‘at a cheap and easy rate.’ Thomas Jefferson preferred newspapers over government with one stipulation — that people were ‘capable of reading.’ In the Internet era, journalism seems divorced from its historic, educational past.”

—Michael Bugeja, director, Greenlee School of Journalism, Iowa State University,
“Stewart, Assange and Journalism Education,”
Inside Higher Education, Jan. 18, 2011

• Editorial Comment: Education? Just “degrees to nowhere,” says Utah senator. You want fries with that?

• TODAY!!!! Mandalit del Barco, National Public Radio West Coast correspondent, comes to USU today to deliver a Morris Media & Society Lecture: "Haiti, Hemp & Hollywood: Stories of our times." Eccles Conference Center Auditorium, USU campus. Noon-1:30 p.m.







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• Agricultural Communication/Journalism Faculty Wanted! The joint program in Agricultural Communication & Journalism at Utah State University seeks candidates for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. See the posting at USU’s HR site here or email ted.pease@usu.edu for details. Review begins in March. Start date: August 2011.
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Unbury Your Head

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Listen Up, dammit!

“The skills we develop as gatekeepers of public information embody values that outreach simple explanation. We learn to make what is important interesting. We grade information, day by day, interview by interview, lie by lie—honing our talent for truth. We break into forbidden territory, challenging abuse of power and staring down the hypocrites. We try to give the public the facts, often when it is bad news—when they least want to know what they most need to know.”

—Chris Masters, Australian journalist and author, 2008 URL

(Thanks to alert Kiwi WORDster Charles Riddle)

• Editorial Comment: Even ostriches need to know.








• NEWS: Mandalit del Barco, National Public Radio West Coast correspondent, comes to USU TOMORROW (2/17) to deliver a Morris Media & Society Lecture: "Haiti, Hemp & Hollywood: Stories of our times." Eccles Conference Center Auditorium, USU campus. Noon-1:30 p.m. See story here.






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• Agricultural Communication/Journalism Faculty Wanted! The joint program in Agricultural Communication & Journalism at Utah State University seeks candidates for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. See the posting at USU’s HR site here or email ted.pease@usu.edu for details. Review begins in March. Start date: August 2011.
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2 Idjuts

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Splitting Atoms

“I am all in favor of the democratic principle that one person, even an idiot, is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.”

—Dr. Leo Szilard (1898-1964), Albert Einstein colleague who may have been the first to conceive the atomic bomb, later became a strong opponent of nuclear weaponry and the Cold War
(Thanks to alert WORDster Skip Keyser)

Image: Szilard confers with a friend.

• Editorial Comment: Media Truth: If one idiot is good, why aren't two better? And shout, if you can.

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• Agricultural Communication/Journalism Faculty Wanted! The joint program in Agricultural Communication & Journalism at Utah State University seeks candidates for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. See the posting at USU’s HR site here or email ted.pease@usu.edu for details. Review begins in March. Start date: August 2011.
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Heart This

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Love of Words

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

—William Wordsworth
(1770-1850), poet

“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

—James Michener, author

“I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.”

—Peter De Vries
(1910-1993), author and wit

“Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head.”

—From the movie Finding Forrester

Image: William Wadsworth, love-sick fool

• Editorial Comment: Good writing sings. Great writing can rip your heart out.

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• Agricultural Communication/Journalism Faculty Wanted! The joint program in Agricultural Communication & Journalism at Utah State University seeks candidates for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. See the posting at USU’s HR site here or email ted.pease@usu.edu for details. Review begins in March. Start date: August 2011.

Professor Advice

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Teacher Sez

The New York Times asked prominent professors for their advice to students:

• “I have taught many students whose SAT scores exempted them from the writing requirement, but a disheartening number of them couldn’t write and an equal number of them had never been asked to. They managed to get through high school without learning how to write a clean English sentence, and if you can’t do that, you can’t do anything.”

—Stanley Fish, New York Times columnist and professor,
Florida International University, 2009

• “Recognize that knowing a lot of stuff won’t do you much good unless you can do something with what you know by turning it into an argument.”

—Gerald Graff,

University of Illinois, Chicago, 2009

• “Do ask questions if you don’t understand the professor’s point.”

—Carol Berkin, Baruch College, NYC

• “Read, read, read. Students ask me how to become a writer, and I ask them who is their favorite author. If they have none, they have no love of words. . . . Learn to write well. Most incoming college students, even the bright ones, do not do it and it hampers them in courses and in later life.”

—Gary Wills, author,
Northwestern University, 2009

• Yale Professor Harold Bloom advised students to take “a voyage away from visual overstimulation into deep, sustained reading of what is most worth absorbing and understanding, the books that survive all ideological fashions.”

• “Try to read a newspaper every day—at bedtime or at breakfast or when you take a break in the afternoon. … The newspaper will be your path to the world at large. … In addition, a great newspaper will teach you how to write; most articles are models of clarity and substance—with no academic jargon!”

—James MacGregor Burns, government professor emeritus, Williams College, 2009.

• Editorial Comment: Yo, Prof. Will this be on the exam?

• News Note: Radio executive and USU alumnus John Dimick returns to campus today to talk about life lessons and the future of radio. Haight Alumni Center, USU campus, 12:30-1:30 Free and open to the public (food, too!) Sponsored by the College of Humanities & Social Sciences, and the JCOM Department’s Morris Media & Society Lecture Series. Story.

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• Agricultural Communication/Journalism Faculty Wanted! The joint program in Agricultural Communication & Journalism at Utah State University seeks candidates for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor. See the posting at USU’s HR site here or email ted.pease@usu.edu for details. Review begins in March. Start date: August 2011.
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Nit-Picking

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Writing Rules

• “Correct spelling is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.”

—H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), writer, journalist, critic

BUT!

• “[T]ypos are a symptom of a larger problem. Taken as a whole, they can point to widespread misunderstanding about spelling and grammar, not to mention lagging education in language.”

—Benjamin D. Herson, typo-hunter and co-author,
The Great Typo Hunt: Changing the World One Correction at a Time, 2010 See story.

• “Typos mess with the most important aspect of written communication: clarity. . . . Language is bound up in every part of our lives. So when it goes awry, that indicates more than just a spelling and grammar problem.

“No typo exists in a vacuum. Behind every misplaced comma or junction error is a story—whether it be about education, carelessness, or socioeconomic and privilege.”

—Jeff Deck, typo-hunter and co-author, The Great Typo Hunt: Changing the World One Correction at a Time, 2010 See story.

• REBUTTAL:
“Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays.”

—George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880),
novelist, journalist and poet

• Editorial Comment: Werds meen whut I want them to mene.







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Being First, or Right?

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High Post

“The common complaint is that the [Washington] Post is lowering its standards—‘cheapening its brand’ is the vogue-ish term. But [editor Marcus] Brauchli says a photo gallery on ‘a B-list celebrity’ doesn't compromise the serious and substantial work the Post does, [and] galleries and the like help keep traffic and advertising flowing so that the paper can concentrate its real journalistic firepower on important things.

“Of greater concern, perhaps, is how the Post plays the traffic game with breaking news. The paper’s working assumption is that it cannot be left behind on any story of importance. Readers do want the latest, and they’ll find it somewhere else if the Post doesn’t give it to them.

“But this is where things can get really sticky. ‘Getting something up’ on a breaking story can be risky. It usually means reporting fragments of the story. Worse, it increases the chances that a story will be inaccurate. Brauchli is adamant about this point: ‘We have no tolerance for getting things wrong.... Our market positioning, as it were, is being right. [We’re] the place you can count on for factual reporting.’”

—Paul Farhi, columnist (and Washington Post contributing writer),
“Traffic Problems,” American Journalism Review, September 2010

• Editorial Comment: When you’re right, you’re right.




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Thoughtful YELLING

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Potent Discourse

“[M]uch of the message among Republicans last year, as they sought to exploit the Tea Party phenomenon, centered — like the Tea Party moniker itself — on this imagery of armed revolution. Popular spokespeople … routinely drop words like ‘tyranny’ and ‘socialism’ when describing the president and his allies, as if blind to the idea that Americans legitimately faced with either enemy would almost certainly take up arms. It’s not that such leaders are necessarily trying to incite violence or hysteria; in fact, they’re not. It’s more that they are so caught up in a culture of hyperbole, so amused with their own verbal flourishes and the ensuing applause, that — like the bloggers and TV hosts to which they cater — they seem to lose their hold on the power of words.”

—Matt Bai, reporter, “A Turning Point in the Discourse, but in Which Direction?” The New York Times, Jan. 8, 2011

• Editorial Comment: I say what I mean and I mean what I say.





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Investigative Journalism?

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Gossip

“I have often wondered why we need the phrase investigative journalism. Isn’t all journalism supposed to be investigative? Isn’t journalism without an investigative element little more than gossip? And isn’t there enough gossip around already?”

—Errol Morris, filmmaker (Thin Blue Line, Fog of War…), author and New York Times blogger (“The Opinionator”), from a 2010 commencement address to the Berkeley School of Journalism

• Editorial Comment: But I heard it on TV....









• USU NEWS NOTE: Salt Lake Tribune crime reporter Nate Carlisle comes to USU today to talk about investigative reporting techniques and IRE. Story.


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Nuggets

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Grab Bag

On Writing:
“Why don’t you write books people can read?” —Nora Joyce to her husband, James (1882-1941), writer of dense works

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” —T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), poet

On Commentary: “Criticism is prejudice made plausible.”—Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), journalist

“It is better to be quotable than to be honest.” —Tom Stoppard, playwright

“Dogma is the sacrifice of wisdom to consistency.” —Lewis Perelman, education critic

“I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.” —Gore Vidal, writer and TV guest

On Innovation:
“Men have become the tools of their tools.” —Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), writer

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” —H.M. Warner (1881-1958), movie mogul, in 1927

On Education:
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” —Mark Twain (1835-1910), curmudgeon

“Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.”—Lewis Perelman, education critic

• Editorial Comment: When you’re right, you’re right.

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New Watchdog Needed

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Too Little, Too Late

“In this brave new electronic world, you learn about a crisis when it has reached unmanageable proportions, such as happened in the subprime housing debacle at the roots of a recession that has slashed budgets at colleges and universities. And that is why educators everywhere should be concerned about the demise of global journalism, networks of trained reporters and editors generating content on the scene in national and international bureaus. We no longer live nor educate in that world. By elevating access over truth, ours has become a world that reacts via commentary rather than prevents in advance of calamity.”

—Michael Bugeja, director, Greenlee School of Journalism, Iowa State University,
“Stewart, Assange and Journalism Education,” Inside Higher Education, Jan. 18, 2011

Image: Yesterday in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Why is this huge upheaval such a surprise? Where were the journalists? Or do Americans just not care about any culture or people but their own (if that)? Photo by Suhaib Salem / Reuters

• Editorial Comment: Where IS that damn watchdog? Or Chicken Little, even?

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InFoxifying

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Happy Groundhog Day!

The Fox Effect?

“I think the effect of Fox News on American public life has been to create a level of cynicism about the news in general. It has contributed to the sense that they are all just out there with a political agenda, but Fox is just more overt about it. And I think that’s unhealthy.

“We have had a lot of talk since the Gabby Giffords attempted murder about civility in our national discourse, and I make no connection between the guy who shot those people in Tucson and the national discourse. But it is true that the national discourse is more polarized and strident than it has been in the past, and to some extent, I would lay that at the feet of Rupert Murdoch.”

—Bill Keller, editor, The New York Times, Jan. 31, 2011 URL

See The Kalb Report, Jan. 31, 2011

Play Whack-A-Murdoch!

• Editorial Comment: Right! Rupert’s turned the Wall Street Journal into a screaming rag!


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Egypt

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Uncontainable

“What we’ve seen over the last five days is that change of this magnitude—revolution perhaps—is a function of people and passion, not of any particular technology.

Late last week the Egyptian government took the virtually unprecedented step of cutting off the country from the Internet, and yet protests continue unabated. This is not to say that social networks did not play a key, catalytic role—they did. They are part of a vast web of instantaneous information lines into and out of Egypt that connected the protesters to each other and to the outside world in the run-up to the street protests we’re seeing.

When you ask many of these activists about the role of these networks they will often describe them as a kind of lifeline. And if these networks, communicating via the Internet and mobile phones, weren’t so critical, you can be sure that the government would not have hit the “kill switch” the way it did. This was really unprecedented.

In virtually every other case of new media-connected movements—Tunisia, Iran, for example—the governments were much more moderated in cutting off access, slowing things down, opening them back up, slowing them down.

Egypt really was the first of its kind, in terms of near total blackout for a couple of days—raising all sorts of worrying questions. But the fact remains—the protesting never stopped nor did the media coverage of events.”

--Sheldon Himelfarb, U.S. Institute of Peace, Jan. 31, 2011 URL

Related:
• Image: Note that in the Aljazeera photo above that some protesters are using cellphones.
• Photo Gallery from Aljazeera
• Coverage of today’s (2/1) protest from Aljazeera

• Editorial Comment: It’s the message, not the medium.

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