Tag Archives: CNN

War 2.0: Israel’s post-journalism campaign in Gaza

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YouTube IDF channelWhatever ones views of the rights and wrongs, Israel’s media oper­a­tion to accom­pany its Gaza offens­ive has been an object les­son in the uses and lim­it­a­tions of War 2.0.

Talk­ing to a senior Middle East­ern dip­lo­mat yes­ter­day, and to a friend report­ing from (or stuck) in Jer­u­s­alem, there is a (very) grudging — respect is the wrong word, but it’ll have to do — for the per­ceived “suc­cess” of Israel’s Gaza media campaign.

So let’s unpick it a little. At the most fun­da­mental level, Israel bene­fits from a very simple mes­sage: whatever hap­pens in Gaza is simply the tra­gic but inev­it­able con­sequence of years of rocket attacks. Con­tinue read­ing →

Yet more thoughts on journalism and democracy

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Newspaper pressesI’ve been pon­der­ing the rela­tion­ship between journ­al­ism and demo­cracy of late, and so too have the aca­demic com­menters gath­er­ing at the blog of Social Sci­ence Research Coun­cil boss, Craig Cal­houn.

Cal­houn asks the ques­tion Sam Zell has already answered — What is the future of news­pa­pers? And when social sci­ent­ists smell blood, they’re mostly rub­bing their hands at the pro­spect of a fresh cada­ver to dis­sect rather than offer­ing sym­pathy or solutions.

There’s not much in the com­ments that reg­u­lar read­ers won’t be overly famil­iar with — foundation-funded journ­al­ism any­one? But bur­ied within them is Michael Schud­son offer­ing his usual top class, ana­lyt­ical two cents: Con­tinue read­ing →

Frank Rich sees the future…

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NYT colum­nist Frank Rich, who must lack a tiny bit of self-irony, takes aim at the ‘blovi­at­ors’ cov­er­ing the Obama cam­paign. But in the course of his mus­ings a little internet-inspired doubt creeps in. :

Journ­al­ists are still Amer­ic­ans — even if much of our audi­ence doubts that — and in this time of grave uncer­tainty about our nation’s future we may simply be as dis­com­bob­u­lated as every­one else.

We, too, are made anxious and fear­ful by hard eco­nomic times and the pro­spect of wrench­ing change. You­Tube, the medium that has trans­formed our cul­ture and polit­ics, didn’t exist four years ago. Con­tinue read­ing →

The Trust Obsession

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CNN bills itself as the most trus­ted name in news. Director-General Mark Thompson reck­ons pub­lic trust is the life-blood of the BBC. Politi­cians and TV presenters wail and tear their clothes in pub­lic at the public’s loss of trust in the media. “Woe is us,” wails the col­lect­ive cry from the journ­al­ism pro­fes­sion, “they don’t believe.”

Media organ­isa­tions want to wal­low in trust like hip­pos in mud. They want to roll in it until they’re covered from head to toe. When it dries up, thanks to dodgy edit­ing on a royal doc­u­ment­ary promo or phoney com­pet­i­tions, the mud cracks and it’s a “crisis”. Con­tinue read­ing →