Mike Duffy: Expert in media bias

CTV "journalist" turned Conservative senator Mike Duffy isn't backing down from his criticism of journalism schools, which he attacked for daring to teach "critical thinking." After refusing media requests for a few days, he went on a radio program yesterday to accuse journalism schools of "brainwashing" students:

Senator Mike Duffy isn’t backing down on his criticisms of the University of King’s College and other Canadian journalism programs, saying he “dared to show a little spotlight on some of the bias in the media.”

Last weekend, Duffy delivered a speech to local Conservatives in Amherst criticizing journalism schools for teaching critical thinking and Noam Chomksy’s book Manufacturing Consent. He also said students aren’t being taught to be fair and balanced.

“They all get preached to with the same cookie cutter thing,” Duffy told Tom Young’s Afternoon News program on Rogers radio Thursday. “And when you talk to these kids in job interviews, you realize some of them have been brainwashed.”

Actually, if there's anyone who would be an expert on biased media, it's Mike Duffy. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, arbiter of media ethics on the airwaves, certainly thinks so:

The arbiter of ethics on the airwaves ruled Wednesday that CTV violated industry codes when it included three false starts in a broadcast of an election interview with then Liberal leader Stéphane Dion.
...
The standards council also studied complaints lodged against CTV Newsnet's Mike Duffy Live program. The show rebroadcast Dion's false starts and discussed it with a panel of politicians and later with journalists.

During the discussion, Liberal MP Geoff Regan suggested Dion might not have understood the question because of a hearing impairment, but then said it was not a subject worth discussing.

Duffy then repeatedly said that Regan was accusing the network of ridiculing a handicap.

The CBSC's national specialty services panel said Duffy "went too far."

"He was not fair, balanced or even-handed," the panel said, also agreeing the rebroadcasts of the restarts were in breach of industry code.

So Mike really knows what he's talking about here.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

If bloggers want to be treated like journalists they should act like journalists

Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling broadening the libel defence available to Canadian journalists, and opening the door for such protection to be extended to bloggers, reminds me that I’ve yet to blog about the second presentation I made during last month’s World Blogging Forum in Romania.

I mention the conference because my second presentation to the conference (first is here), on the theme of blogging becoming media and professional standards, seems to have a pretty direct link to what the Supremes had to say in yesterday’s ruling.

I’ll leave it to James Morton, Warren Kinsella and Ian Capstick to get into the nitty-gritty of the ruling and how it could apply for bloggers; check their posts out for the details. But I’d sum up the court’s statement as this: bloggers can avail themselves of the same libel protection as journalists, but only if they engage in the same journalistic standards of due diligence and public interest.

And that's not far from my message to my fellow bloggers in Romania (video here, audio is not too good). I’d heard a lot there, and back here, about how bloggers want to be taken seriously as news sources, about how citizen journalism should be considered as legitimate as traditional media, and that bloggers should be granted the same level of access, say to press conference or parliament hill, as the professional media.

My response to them was fine, but if you want the benefits of being a journalist, you also need to shoulder the responsibilities. If you want to be a journalist, act like one. That means respecting libel law, that means making good-faith effort to verify information, that means allowing the right of response if serious allegations are being leveled, and publishing good-faith corrections when appropriate. Basically, it means abiding by certain professional standards.

Right now, I said, the Internet and blogdom is something of a lawless wild west, and as long as that prevails, citizen journalism is unlikely to evolve. Sure, mainstream media readership is declining rapidly and moving online. But people aren’t moving to Joe’s Blogspot to get their news.

They’re getting it, by and large, from the web sites of traditional media outlets. Not directly, but through aggregates that give them content-specific links from sites around the world, but that’s another post.

The point is, people are getting their news online but still from the same professional media organizations. Only the content delivery mechanism has changed. Why? Because we can trust the Globe and Mail or the New York Times. We may have our issues with them, but we know who they are and we know that they subscribe to a code of conduct and certain journalistic principles. I don’t know who Joe’s Blogspot is, so how can I judge the veracity of what they write?

I argued it’s that lack of trust or inability to judge the bonafides of blogs (without regular, long-term readership) that will hinder the wider adoption of citizen journalism. The question then becomes, what are we going to do about it?

Certainty, I as an individual blogger can make the choice to conduct myself according to certain principles. Over time, you as readers can see that I conduct myself in a certain way, and I begin to gain your trust and build credibility. Still, that’s a very long-term process, and happens for each reader one at a time.

Here is where it starts to get complicated, but I suggested something to consider would be a blogger code of conduct. A list of certain principles that a blogger would agree to hold themselves to, and would so state with a badge on their sidebar. Then, even if a visitor doesn’t know the individual blog, they would know at least that this blogger subscribes to this code, and so can have a certain level of confidence in their writings.

Immediately, a number of flaws in this concept were pointed out to me. It would be quite bureaucratic. How would everyone agree on a code? How could it possibly be enforced? Would people be kicked off for non-compliance? Who would judge that? Some countries where freedom of expression is limited would have concerns. All valid points with no easy answers that make such a concept likely unworkable.

So, I’m not sure what the solutions are. Credibility may just have to continue to be earned on an individual, blog-by-blog basis. Perhaps news aggregate communities/publications, such as The Huffington Post, are a better solution as well. Building communities where the credibility of the community is bound by the conduct of its members seems important.

The point though, reaffirmed by the Supreme Court ruling, is that if bloggers want the credibility, and the legal protections, of journalists, they need to conduct themselves in a professional, journalistic way. Because you can’t have the meat without eating your vegetables too.

(Just to add as a post-script, there are many other impediments faced by blogging here vs MSM: the resources for research and reporting for one, not to mention the legal and fiscal resources required to initially defend even frivolous libel charges. But an easy, and crucial, place to start is with our own conduct.)

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

(Video) Thanks for all the broooadcasts, Don

Even as a fairly nerdy politico, at times I just tune-out some of the political coverage we have on television in Canada. The MPs talking over each other with their talking-points, the screeching party strategists putting out spin that defies all logic, it could become like nails on a chalkboard. The reduction of what should be a serious and weighty thing, the debate over the best governance of our country, to something akin to professional wresting.

But the rare beacon of sanity, the rare bastion of journalism, in that sea of mediocrity was always CBC's Politics, and its venerable host Don Newman. While he'd still have the mandatory panels, he'd keep them in line and he'd make sure that, as the tag line went, the spin stops here.

But it went beyond that. While many hosts would just let the hacks or flacks spout their often ridiculous talking-points unchallenged, Newman always remembered it was the role of the journalist not to give a platform for propaganda, but to challenge, to question, so as to inform Canadians. And that he did, a velvet-glove concealing a steal fist as he challenged countless guests on their spin. Liberal, Conservative, NDP, it didn't matter, Don would call you on it if you tried to sneak one by him. That's all too rare in journalism these days.

And it wasn't just about the day-to-day melodrama of Parliament Hill on Politics. He'd tackle substantive issues, bringing-in experts to discuss an upcoming NATO conference, or trade policy, bringing substance to the often overlooked but very important stories that can impact our lives in a much greater way than who's hot and who's not this week, or what Laureen Harper's cat got up to last week.

Don Newman was a journalist, and I think that's the highest compliment that can be paid him. Thanks for all the broadcasts Don, and so long for now. You'll be missed.

(Here's some highlights from Don's last show:)



(And here's one of my favourite Newman clips, where he relentlessly grills a hapless John Baird during last winter's coalition/prorogation drama. The spin really did stop there that day:)

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Speaking of CTV and Dion...

...and Robert Hurst and what not, I thought I'd pass along this article from The Canadian Journalism Project that passed through my inbox this morning. While it misses a number of relevant points in my view, it does offer some more insights into CTV's side of the whole drama. Incidentally, the whole affair has generated quite the debate in journalism circles.

Behind the scenes at CTV: the Dion interview

Here’s the scenario: You are in charge of a television newsroom near the end of a tough, close election campaign. Your six o’clock host heads downtown for a late-afternoon, live-to-tape interview with one of the major party leaders. You’re a bit concerned about whether he’ll be back in time for the 5 pm newsbreak, but otherwise it’s a straightforward shoot.

Tape rolls, and said leader – whose first language is not your program’s – finds the first question confusing and asks to start again. As the two cameras keep rolling the host agrees, but then it happens again. This time, the leader’s aide jumps in, trying to help. A third time, the guest starts to laugh. The fourth take is fine.
(more)

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

You kids get off my lawn or I'm keeping your laptop!

I don’t subscribe to the theory that blogging will mean the death of the mainstream media. I do, however, think that journalists and media outlets that don’t adapt to how the new media is changing journalism will perish and fade away, and some day the rich deposits of those old media journalists running through the ground beneath Toronto will be drilled and used to power our flying cars.

I bet Christy Blatchford alone could get your flying car all the way to Obamatown (renamed from Washington, DC in 2020). Christy writes today from the Beijing games about these young whipper-snapper reporters and their infatuation with “blogging” about the games:

The unofficial end to journalism as I know it may have come earlier this week, when my Globe and Mail sporty colleague Matt Sekeres and I were at the triathlon venue in the north end of the city, waiting for the event to start. … Mr. Sekeres is a fine writer and engaging company. This isn't about him. He was merely doing what everyone - from paid professional writer to Olympian to the average guy in the stands - does now. He was committing his most idle thoughts and mundane observations if not to paper, then to its modern equivalent, a blog.

Because Christy’s idle and mundane thoughts are much more engaging in dead three format. But let’s turn serious for just a sec:

And journalism wasn't meant to be a conversation, anyway. It was maybe a monologue, at its most democratic a carefully constructed dialogue. If readers didn't like or agree with the monologues in paper A, they bought paper B. What was most important about their opinions was that they thought enough to spend the coin.

Or, we the journalist don’t care what you the readers think. You can’t do what we do. We’re right, you’re wrong, and if you don’t like it suck a lemon. And people wonder why people don’t like journalists.

I can assure you, however, that her thoughts aren’t reflective of where the field of journalism is going, they’re just the thoughts of an older generation ill-adapted to change. Under the influence of things such as blogging and Web 2.0, journalism is becoming more immediate. That’s not a new trend, journalism has been becoming more immediate for a hundreds of years, from periodicals to the news weekly to the daily newspaper to radio to television to the Web. And it’s becoming more visual. Again, not a new trend. Most importantly though, journalism is becoming more interactive. The Internet allows instantaneous feedback, and blogging allows the readership to hold the media responsible and accountable for what they produce to a degree they never have been before.

All this is for the better. It will mean better journalism, and better journalists. Blogging won’t kill journalism, the citizen blogger can’t hope to replicate the resources and the professional standards, or the (don’t laugh) commitment to ethics and impartiality of the main stream media.

And by taking the best of what the blog world has to offer and morphing it with journalistic practices, far from dying, journalism only becomes stronger.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

The National Post can't stand alone

Speculation on the possible sale of the perennially money-losing National Post has been running rife of late, with far more people than those that actually read it mulling over its fate.

Lawrence Martin says the Post’s sale would be politically ground shaking, particularly if a Liberal such as Senator Jerry Grafstein picks it up, given the Post’s long-held Conservative bent (it tried single handedly to bring Jean Chretien down with the manufactured Shawinigate scandal – Jean actually gained seats in the next election). But then again, we heard the same thing when the Liberally-connected Aspers bought the Post, so who knows.

And in the Post itself, Jonathan Kay says the death of the Post will somehow be the death of print journalism, and the opening of the drawbridge to the unwashed blogging hordes. Actually no Jonathan, the death of the Post won’t be the death of print journalism. Heck, as much as I’d wish it so, the death of the Post won’t even be the death of really bad print journalism. Just the death of a really bad newspaper.

If I could put my business journalist fedora on for a moment though, I have trouble seeing a standalone sale of the National Post being likely, even for peanuts, as I just don’t see a business case. No one is likely to write a cheque if they can't see a path to profitability.

Now, one part of Conrad Black’s decision to found the National Post, after Thomson wouldn’t sell him the Globe and Mail, was definitely vanity. He wanted a national pulpit to take on, and take down, the dastardly Liberals and to espouse all his closely-held Conservative ideals, such as, oh, delicious irony, cracking-down on crime and attacking lenient judges and sentencing.

Vanity aside though, while I’m no Conrad fan I wouldn’t consider him a dumb businessman, and the Post was about business. Mainly, advertising business. Southam owned most of the daily newspapers across the country, and at least one (sometimes two) in every major market except one, the biggest one: Toronto.

More than vanity, the Post was about getting a foothold in the Toronto market and allowing Southam’s ad sales teams to be able to sell advertisers a national ad package in papers from coast to coast. To be taken seriously, that package had to include Toronto.

The National Post was a national newspaper in name only. That’s even more true today, with the Post having disappeared from many markets. It has always been a Toronto paper. And it has failed to compete in this market, which was already saturated before it arrived.

Even though it has lost money from day one, in the context of a Southam or a CanWest, the Post made some sense as a loss-leader, given the already discussed advertising considerations and the prestige factor of being in the nation’s largest market. For CanWest today though, given the tightening media market overall, and the Post’s continual cash hemorrhaging, clearly the losses now outweigh benefit of having a Toronto paper in their ad package, unless they hope to work out an ad sales deal with the new ownership.

Which is why a sale makes even less sense. Well, getting rid of it makes sense. But, subtract the need to have a Toronto paper in a national ad buy, who would want to buy the National Post.
Perhaps another chain needing their own Toronto media market, but what chain would that be?

With consolidation there are few other conglomerates of any size left in the print world. The only one with national scope is Bell GlobeMedia, and they have the Globe. On a more regional level there’s TorStar, but they have the Toronto Star. Black Press is confined to the West. The Irvings have some papers in the Maritimes.

That leaves the possibility of operating the Post as a stand-alone entity. And as I said, it’s essentially a Toronto paper, and in this market it’d be going up against the Star, Sun, Globe, and subway freebies. And in every other market, it would now have to compete with the Canwest dailies (Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Hearld and so on). And a new owner would have to hire staff across the country if it wanted to continue pretending to be a national paper. The Post relied heavily on content from its Canwest cousins. Either that would change, or a healthy fee would be extracted by CanWest for “wire” access.

If the Post wasn’t a viable business in the context of a national chain needing ads in the Toronto market, its far less viable as a standalone paper. Just what would the business model be?

As much as it pains me as a journalist to say this in an era when jobs in my field are scarce, it makes more sense to just shut the doors and sell the assets. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

EDITED TO ADD: One scenario that could possibly work: buy it cheap, dump everything but the business section, and revert to being the Financial Post. That's what the paper was before Conrad bought it and wrapped news, sports and arts around it. But could a business daily survive in the Internet age, and in Canada/Toronto? I frankly doubt it. It would be a slightly less crazy scenario though.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Afghanistan sentences journalist to death

I've not commented yet on the Manley report and follow-up, as I’m attending an event tonight where commission member Pamela Wallin will be discussing the report and her experience there, and I’d like to hear what she has to say before formulating my thoughts.

I have to tell you though, when I read about things like this it really makes me wonder what the heck we’re fighting for over there. As a journalist myself, I tend to be concerned about this kind of thing…

Afghanistan - Shock at death sentence passed on young journalist for blasphemy

MONTREAL, Jan. 23 /CNW Telbec/ - On the 22nd of January 2008, a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif passed the death sentence on a young journalist, Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, for alleged blasphemy. The trial was held behind closed doors and without any lawyer defending him. His brother, fellow journalist Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, told Reporters Without Borders: "I saw my brother leave the court. He was very anxious. All the family was, too."

"We are deeply shocked by this trial, carried out in haste and without any concern for the law or for free expression, which is protected by the constitution," Reporters Without Borders said. "Kambakhsh did not do anything to justify his being detained or being given this sentence. We appeal to President Hamid Karzai to intervene before it is too late."

At a news conference yesterday, Hafizullah Khaliqyar, the deputy provincial prosecutor in charge of the case, threatened to imprison all journalists who support Kambakhsh, adding that "Kambakhsh has confessed to the crime and must be punished."

Kambakhsh was supposedly arrested because of a controversial article commenting on verses in the Koran about women, although it has now been established that he was not the article's author. Rahimullah Samandar, the head of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association, said he was in fact arrested because of articles written by his brother, Ibrahimi, criticising the provincial authorities.

A reporter for the newspaper Jahan-e Naw ("The New World") and a journalism student at Balkh university, Kambakhsh, 23, was arrested on 27 October.

The U.S. State department, at least, has “expressed concern” about the case, as has the UN, the Germans and the French. I’ve not aware of any comment from the Canadian government. Neither is Bill Doskoch.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Sources say that's really crappy journalism

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers