Honest Reporting OR Journalist Joke?

[UPDATE Below - Update II]

Some months ago I became intrigued with the coming together of two fairly popular blogs, Lost Coast Outpost, ie., Hank Sims, and the Readheaded Blackbelt, ie., Kym Kemp from Southern Humboldt.

The difference, if any, is minor. What is striking, however, is the advertising now displayed prominently on Kym's blog. Since Hank Sims is connected to KHUM radio and he was displaying news reports as part of the normal blog format. Kym Kemp, on the other hand, even before hooking up with Sims was beginning to post mostly local Southern Humboldt news and matters of public interest with a proliferation of police and Sheriff Department press releases. These press releases are canned accounts published online by these organizations given to the general public as accurate news. These agencies tell the public what they want them to know. This kind of one-sided, biased reporting is reprehensible when employed by the Times-Standard newspaper with salaried reporters.

The integrity and credibility of such blog reporting, or I should say LACK of integrity and credibility, was emphasized when I read the following excerpt by Glenn Greenwald in his Salon.com article: “Officials say” journalism - Yet again, the American media misleads by uncritically printing unverified, false claims from the U.S. military. (Or in our case: “claims from the local police.”)

Instead, what we see here is the standard template of American media reports: in the very first paragraph, media outlets typically state as fact what are nothing more than official assertions, and then append on to the end of the paragraph the rote phrase “officials say” (standard first paragraph: A, B and C happened today, officials say“). Over and over, this is the journalistic practice that converts media institutions into little more than glorified press release outlets for the U.S. government and military. They routinely write entire articles where the narrative and storyline are shaped exclusively by unverified claims of officials. There is a protected free press precisely because institutions are needed to check and scrutinize government claims — based on the long-standing recognition that those in power tell self-serving lies, something which has happened over and over in the war in Afghanistan — not uncritically amplify them and convert them into Truth under the guise of independent reporting. 

But this “officials say” form of American journalism converts government claims into journalistic fact. In that regard, it’s not merely redundant, though it is that: who needs a media outlet to re-print government press releases, when one can just go read those press releases on one’s own? It’s worse than redundant: it launders government claims as verified fact, as though they’ve been checked and confirmed by an independent media arbiter. That’s why government officials love to “leak” falsehoods to reporters while hiding behind the shield of anonymity, rather than just themselves dissemintaing those falsehoods: not only does that practice shield them from accountability, but it masquerades their lies as “reporting.” Today’s example is just illustrative, and far from the most important: this is the model, more than any other, that shapes American journalism. [Emphasis added.]

As such, these outlets become nothing more than propaganda tools. In Kym Kemp's case, when I challenged her postings regarding Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman's reports she actively defended him, and her reporting based upon his press releases.

There is an exception I'd like to mention here that I think is rather noteworthy and that is the Humboldt Herald by Heraldo. While the Humboldt Herald occasionally publishes Press Releases the general format is far more newsworthy in it's reporting. Recently, the Humboldt Herald added two others in addition to Heraldo posting articles: Mitch and Eric Kirk. Eric Kirk has the Southern Humboldt blog, SoHum Parlance II.

The diversity in the Herald has certainly increased it's purview.  So, honest reporting or journalistic joke?

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[UPDATE :: Thursday, June 21, 2012]

Interesting update to this idea of “blog reporting.” Are blogs and bloggers (people that write blog articles and post these articles on blogs) actually “blog reporters”? In other words, should they answer to a higher set of standards and priorities than the average blog opinionator or “glorified press release outlets”?

Would you say that the Humboldt Herald blog predominately “acts” like a blog news outlet? Now compare the Humboldt Herald to Eric Kirk's SoHum Parlance II. Do you get the same answers? I don't think so.

Now look at Eric's post on the Humboldt Herald for Thursday, June 21st, 2012, Drama at the Democratic Central Committee and tell me, even if it isn't by Kirk's own words as timely as he would like, a news report.

So, should these writers – bloggers be held to the “reporter” standard? Or did Eric's use of a bogus picture he says was used as an (unspoken) joke adversely affect the credibility and integrity of the Humboldt Herald? Did he move it into the blemished commonality of an opinionating blog?

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[UPDATE :: Friday, June 22, 2012] 

 Upon checking the Redheaded Blackbelt blog this morning I found of the seven postings, six were nothing more than Press Releases. Over on Lost Coast Outpost it was basically the same thing.

--Joe

Freedom Of Speech – A Joke and a Joker

[Click to Enlarge]

The “Joke” is today, Wednesday, March 9, 2011, Times-Standard's Editorial and the “Joker” is the person that wrote it. 

The real JOKE is about our so-called “FREE SPEECH and FREE PRESS in this Editorial, “Tainting the message,” is the picture of Sheriff Mike Downey ordering the “media,” an unnamed Times-Standard reporter and photographer to leave the room BEFORE effecting the arrests. Apparently, they (I would guess Donna Tam and Josh Jackson) just tucked their tails between their legs and cleared out without a whimper. 

(I might point out that evidence of a totalitarian police state is that they do everything in secret. Additionally, I don't know why the Sheriff would exclude the local press. They take whatever the police say at face value and publish as if it was the truth anyway.)

This Editorial is about the protest demonstration before the County Board of Supervisor as reported in the Times-Standards front page article: "Richardson Grove protesters arrested for disrupting supervisors' meeting." First a comment about the picture on the front page of the paper, it looks staged and almost farcical. Therein lies the “joke.” I don't think that exactly was the point these “demonstrators” were trying to make. Once again the police make a big production out of arresting and removing six obviously peaceful people from a public building.

“Tainting the message” by “HOW” you say it is just a nice way of blaming the messenger AGAIN! Unfortunately, by their own admission this person is totally clueless as to what that message is supposed to be: “So one has to wonder, what was the point (message)?”

This Editorial writer makes comparison to America's so-called “amazing amount of freedom” to the people in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. If this writer understood what those people were fighting for, AFTER decades of totalitarian, authoritarian, dictatorial rule he or she would know exactly what these six demonstrators were trying to do. Those people are holding their “leaders and government agencies” whatever that means, “government agencies,” some sort of entity I guess, WITH TOTAL CONTEMPT AND DISDAIN.

Where is the freedom to speak when you are told when to speak, how to speak and what to speak? The Editorial says: “The protesters were given the 'opportunity' to speak during public comment. They chose civil disobedience instead and paid the 'usual' price the that choice: arrest.” “Given the opportunity to speak,” so they freely chose to speak by singing, but that is not the way the Supervisor's told them to speak. Apparently these people, according to their letter, had a clear-cut demand, "hold a public forum to discuss this issue," that the Members of the Board refused to address in any manner until these protest demonstrators barked like dog for them. What's the difference between “free speech” and “civil disobedience”? The difference is someone's worthless opinion, that is all. The difference is who controls speech by who defines what constitutes “acceptable” speech and “disrupting” speech.  Why should a person's legally guaranteed free speech rights to “demonstrate” or speak by acting rather than talk, automatically produce criminal arrest? Specially if all they are accused of doing, is nothing more than “child-like theatrics.”

Finally, the Editorial writer should have gotten a clue as to what the protest demonstrators were doing with this statement: “In this case, the protest was not even directed at a decision-maker in the process, ...” So, why didn't they? They, the Times-Standard, knows who these demonstrators are. Why didn't they, in particular Donna Tam, ask one of these protest demonstrators why or what they were hoping to accomplish? Apparently their letter the paper quotes is incapable of explaining sufficiently. Or is it it because she and the Editor would rather speculate? Or, perhaps, is it more likely actually recognizing one of these demonstrators enough to talk to them would be beneath their elitist's sensitivities?

I would point out that right now Muammar Gaddafi and other corrupt despot dictators are saying the same things, different words perhaps, but demonstrating the same demeaning and derogatory attitude, judgments and violent assaults towards the people of Libya and other states that this Editor demonstrates toward members of our community, so-called “free” people trying to express themselves as legitimate citizens and individuals. This statement is extremely insulting and reveals the writer as a corporate demagogue: “Childlike theatrics do little to help promote a message – in fact, they can have the opposite effect.” YEAH, they get you beat – arrested.

This is exactly the same thing an all-powerful, self-righteous and self-absorbed father tells his “disobedient and bad” son just before he beats the hell out of him for trying to talk to his father in the only way the son knows how to talk.

When these protest demonstrators can show me why I should leave the safety of my home and risk a beating for joining their cause, they will have learned the lessons of the Egyptian, Libyan, and Tunisian people's revolt.

--Joe