{"id":1052,"date":"2008-06-23T17:04:48","date_gmt":"2008-06-23T16:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2008-06-30T17:00:11","modified_gmt":"2008-06-30T16:00:11","slug":"journalism-market-fails-to-be-as-lousy-as-propublica-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/06\/journalism-market-fails-to-be-as-lousy-as-propublica-hopes\/","title":{"rendered":"News market fails to be as lousy as ProPublica<\/em> hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"

S<\/span>aid one director of investigative journalism outfit ProPublica<\/strong> when it launched<\/a> (my itals<\/em>):<\/p>\n

ProPublica<\/strong> may help lead the way to crafting new approaches addressing the market failure<\/em> that seems to be taking hold in some segments of publishing, and that threatens a real loss to the health of our democracy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Market failure<\/em><\/strong>, eh? Looks like the market hasn’t quite failed enough.<\/p>\n

Hot on the heels of the ProPublica<\/strong><\/a>\/60 Minutes<\/a><\/em><\/strong> takedown (below) of risible, US-funded newschannel Al Hurra<\/em><\/a>, researched by ex-WaPo<\/em> staffer Dafna Linzer<\/a><\/strong>, appears the Washington Post<\/em><\/strong>‘s two-parter<\/a> on risible etc. [HT: Jack Shafer<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Pace<\/em> the felicitous timing, it does serve as a reminder that the failing market can still churn this stuff out quite effectively without the help of millions of dollars worth of philanthropic cash.<\/p>\n

If PP is just going to provide investigative ‘branding’ and outsource some research work for a non-charitable institution headed by Leslie Moonves<\/strong>, then forgive me while I ask – are the people funding it nuts?<\/p>\n

Al Hurra<\/h4>\n

To change the subject slightly, it might be interesting to find out which shadowy consultant-types made all the initial money from setting up Al Hurra<\/em>. I met one of them<\/em> in Istanbul, back in 2005. It was obvious then that he had never grappled with:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. international TV news (it’s a small world)<\/li>\n
  2. the essential practical problem of staffing Middle Eastern broadcast operations – i.e. everyone is either Egyptian or Lebanese (barring a few Palestinians)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In the case of Al Hurra<\/em>, they hired a lot of Lebanese Maronite journalists. BBC Arabic probably has something of the opposite tendency (although tellingly, the BBC won’t reveal the national breakdown of its staff on the Arabic service).<\/p>\n

    Of course, Egypt and Lebanon are two MENA countries brimming with the educated-but-frustrated classes that provide the kind of dangerous individuals who want to be journalists in the first place…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Said one director of investigative journalism outfit ProPublica when it launched (my itals): ProPublica may help lead the way to crafting new approaches addressing the market failure that seems to be taking hold in some segments of publishing, and that threatens a real loss to the health of our democracy. Market failure, eh? Looks like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,492],"tags":[15,1477,1474,1479,1478,1476,1459,1475],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-off-topic","tag-bbc","tag-egypt","tag-istanbul","tag-jack-shafer","tag-lebanon","tag-leslie-moonves","tag-the-washington-post","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}