Get Rich or Die Tryin'

Gangsta rap is the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip-hop.



If you listen to it, you’ll know it is populated with expletives, drug dealers turned emcees, the size of fly bling, rims, and booty in the strip club. The music seems to perpetuate a lifestyle denigrating women, homosexuals, whilst all the while advocating violence and self-destruction in pursuit of the almighty dollar bill.

Although, Snoop Dogg (and others) made a living from it since the 1980’s, it’s popularity really became commercially evident in the 1990’s, with the release of Dr. Dre's album, 'The Chronic' in 1992.

Criticism has come from both right wing and left wing commentators, religious leaders and black activists alike. In August 2006, civil rights activist -- the Rev. Al Sharpton warned of the dangers of doing nothing about the glorification of the gangster lifestyle.

Many people strongly believe, that Gangsta rap fosters criminal behavior amongst our ‘impressionable’ youth. Many have tried to quantify this tangible effect and though there have been varying results -- the majority lean with the argument that music (more so than television) has an effect on social behavior. (David Gordon, 2006)

There are many ethical issues at stake here. For instance, many Gangsta rappers often defend themselves by claiming they are only describing their reality of inner-city life, which leads me to question how they can justify making such vast amounts of personal profit from this exploitation. To what measure is it ethical and acceptable to profit from the plight of poor black conditions? The quandary deepens should it be proven that this behavior also inspires new and more illicit activity as well.


The rivalries between East and West Coast rap artists have led to countless deaths already. Two high profile rappers 2Pac Shakur and Biggie Smalls have already succumbed to their end in high profile drive by shootings. Record companies capitalized on the glorification of gang violence in rap music. These are people who can’t even defend themselves with the argument they are ‘describing the reality of their lives’.

The other day, we watched a snippet from “Born into Brothels’. We agreed it’s film-makers probably profited in some way or another, but at the end of the day there was not one person who accused it of encouraging inner-city depravation as we suspect Gangsta rap does.

Put that next to 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'; another film depicting inner city life loosely based on rapper 50 Cent’s gangland reality and violent experiences and you hear outrage.

To begin with, its movie poster shows 50 Cent (real name Curtis Jackson) with his arms outstretched, a microphone in one hand and a gun in the other. The poster was later ammended to calm criticism:


Later on, the DVD box looked like this:

Nevertheless, Jim Sheridan, who directed the film is an aclaimed director of ‘My Left Foot’ fame. Surely, he felt the project was worthwile.
In the movie, Jackson plays Marcus, a low level drug dealer turned rapper on the mean streets of New York. Tough is a big understatement when your father isn't around and your mom's busy pushing drugs. His rap dreams aren't solely based on fleeing his past.

It is a new perspective on Gangsta rap. In the movie, Marcus is given the opportunity and could use violence against those who want to mortally harm him, but instead opts for a more dangerous road; one that inolves using lyrics as verbal bullets to humiliate his foes. He famously walks on stage with a bullet proof vest. He's saying that if you live in the same conditions as he did, then you have braver more nobel means than violence at your disposal. It is the gangland's alternative to 'Kids with Camera's' solution.
In one scene, 50 Cent is shot nine times. He was shot nine times in real life too. Some say his album by the same name, ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’, reveals the emotion that makes 50 Cent a powerful musical artist. The album was a huge commercial success, making him one our richest rappers!

However, When you choose to entertain with violent and sexist images, you run the risk of numbing kids (and adults too) to its effects. People consume this material very differently. An individual’s psyche may respond negatively to this type of stimulation. We can’t prevent kids from seeing this stuff and ‘misunderstanding’ its meaning and growing up to think it’s just ok to behave the same way. In the movie, Marcus himself comments that “Parents think you see nothing, but the truth is you see everything."
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www.wl.k12.in.us/hs/clubs/scarlette/ jan27-06%5Cpage3Scarlette012706.pdf

Gordon, D. W. (2006, Nov) The Effect of Gangsta-Rap Radio on Urban Homicide Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology (ASC), Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA . 2006-10-05 from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p127575_index.html

Film: Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005)

Proof, BBQs, & Contacts, oh my!

As further proof that little eight-pound six-ounce baby jesus loves my final paper, the 400th episode of The Simpsons was based around the ramifications of an FCC over-reaction to an indecency complaint. Unlike the last eight years or so of The Simpsons, the 400th episode was actually kind of funny.

If any of you are so inclined to make it down to Menlo Park this next Saturday, Maggie and I are having a BBQ. Here's the info

Location:	445 Encinal Ave, Apt. N, Menlo Park, CA View Map
When:	Saturday, May 26, 6:30pm
Phone:	650-324-2953
Mat's Graduating! Join us for a celebratory BBQ before Mat heads to LA! 6:30-whenever! We'll have the hamburgers, hot dogs and some side dishes. It would be rad if you can bring beer (or other beverage of your choice), a side dish, or dessert. If you're intrested in dropping by just let me know so we can make sure we have enough grub for everyone. Lastly, if you guys are in L.A. in the future drop me a line. My permanent phone number is 917-940-2348 and matthewpatrick@gmail.com is the best way to get a hold of me. It's been swell, y'all. Matthew

Reason meets Desire

A lot of people question the ethics of selling consumers things they don't need. But what of our ethics in selling products known to be harmful too?

In 1996, the alcohol beverage industries self-imposed ban on broadcast advertisements by the major hard liquor distillers came to an end. Some federally licensed broadcast outlets chose to accept and air the ensuing advertisements for distilled liquor products but others refused preferring to only accept fermented alcohol products such as beer and wine.

The fact we even make a distinction between fermented beverage and distilled beverage is irrational. Beer is the drink of choice in most cases of heavy drinking, binge drinking, drunk driving and underage drinking. (Rogers and Greenfield, 1999). Nearly two out of every five Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related traffic crash in their lifetime. (Loyola University Chicago Health System: http://www.luhs.org/depts/injprev/Transprt/tran1-06.htm). So, if The Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) don’t make this distinction, why are advertisers thinking it fit to do so?

Given the knowledge of alcohol consumption and its negative relationship upon overall health, shouldn’t alcohol (along with tobacco) advertising be barred from our airwaves? The fact remains that the scope and wide spectrum of alcohol use and abuse are so far ranging and complicated to categorize that the majority of reported alcohol-related DUI’s aren’t even perpetrated by alcohol abusers. (http://www.madd.org/stats/0,1056,1789,00.html) The Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) would not see the difference.

Yet to achieve their sales agenda, alcohol marketers push positive messages about drinking and downplay and/or ignore negative consequences.

It is no doubt, a highly complicated ethical matter. A ban on the promotion of alcohol would be portrayed as forerunner to wider civil restrictions. Any state intervention in the communications between individuals and organizations will harm and raise questions over our civil liberties.

A spokesperson for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States claimed that friends and family have more effect on a young person's decision to drink than advertisement.

Yet, what hope does a non-drinker have when all those around him are being seduced to buy and consume alcohol? It is clear the promotion of drinking to individuals will have an effect on others, so we cannot ignore the fact that the promotion through direct marketing will affect non-drinkers too.

As it stands, alcohol advertising should not be designed to appeal to people under the age of 21, for example, using cartoon characters as spokespeople is discouraged. Advertising cannot promote brands based on alcohol content or its effects. Advertising must not encourage irresponsible drinking.
The industry will use a reductio ad absurdum argument:

Father- Why were you drinking?
Son – Because all my friends were doing it.
Father- You're saying that if all your friends jumped off a cliff, you would do that too?

The alcohol industry has traditionally argued that drinking is a private pastime, in which people knowingly assume risks in return for pleasure. They say, that the purpose of advertising is to "encourage existing consumers to switch brands" and to "drink in moderation," From their point of view, even, this would not make good business sense. The alcohol industry needs replacement drinkers. It is obvious marketing seeks to retain drinkers and consolidate the market by promoting the pleasure to new drinkers coming of age.

Young people view nearly 2,000 are for beer and wine. For each anti-alcohol public service announcement teenagers are seeing twenty-five more advertisements enticing them to drink.
Whether or not the advertisements have any direct impact, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism there are:
• 1,400 deaths per year
• 500,000 injuries
• 600,000 assaults
• 70,000 sexual assaults
• Over 2 million drove a car in 2001 while under the influence


Conservatives such as Margret Thatcher have famously argued "there is no such thing as society, only individuals and families". But individuals and families constitute society. Every drinker has an impact on those around him.

Fortunately, alcohol advertising is one of the most highly regulated forms of marketing. So for instance, there are hundreds of beer commercials on air, but not one of them shows somebody actually drinking the beer.

In the United States, this sort of ‘restraint’ comes in the form self-regulatory bodies that make these "ethical" choices themselves, presumably to avoid federal government intrusion and regulation into their affairs that may lead to permanent legislation governing their advertising.

As if to add insult to injury; All but one complaint from the fourteen lodged by a panel of experts, were dismissed by advertising regulators nevertheless. Seven of those complaints never made it because this self-regulating body doesn’t count one-off promotions. (www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2006/s1656790.htm). Which leads us to question whether ethical responsibility are being met.

Get to Them By Making Them Come to You

Sneaky sounding title right? Well being sneaky is what this article is all about. I am referring to the trends that marketing agencies are starting in an attempt to get to consumers in today’s atmosphere of the internet, DVR, satellite radio and the many other facilities consumers have that allow them to avoid tried and true advertising techniques. The New York Times and The Washington Post have both run similar articles in the past few months regarding ad campaigns run by several large corporations that have focused on consumer created ads. Possibly the most famous of these was the Doritos’s ad campaign put together by Frito Lay during the run up to the Super Bowl. They held a contest for regular people to create 30 second commercials and posted the best 5 on their web site. They then directed people to their website through a number of means (I interestingly enough first found out about this campaign through an article in The New York Times Business section, nice job getting some free advertising Frito Lay) and let them view all five ads and vote for their favorite. The winner was to be aired during the Super Bowl, but I think I remember seeing more than one of the ads during the game.
This was an effective campaign for several reasons. First of all, I am still thinking about it and letting you folks know about it several months after the campaign began and they spent the $2.6 million per 30 second ad during the Super Bowl. (This seems like a good time to offer a link to their web site: http://www.doritos.com/). I also should let you know that I just went to their site to get that html address and was made aware of their new campaign to name a new flavor. Something that I am thinking I should go back and check out when I am done with this blog. Another reason this is a successful campaign is because they practically cut out their production costs. If regular people are making commercials for them and submitting them for air time for free Doritos only continues to save money. Finally, there is an argument to be made for the idea that the people who are creating these ads may better understand the Doritos demographic as they are probably a part of it themselves.
Another interesting attempt at dealing with commercial free competition comes to us from a Clear Channel radio station in Dallas, TX. They are starting a commercial free station that will have companies sponsor hours of broadcasting during which the DJ will incorporate their product into his regular on air talk. This will make up only two minutes of air time an hour, as opposed to the usual 12-16 minutes of air time that are normally devoted to commercials on regular commercial radio.
As an independent artist, this talk of marketing makes me once again ponder the notion of self marketing. While I agree that the internet and many other new technologies make it possible for independent artists to get themselves out into “the market”, whatever their market might be. However, it always seems to me that someone, or some large company is benefiting from your work and I have a hard time coming to terms with that. A perfect example of that is the My Space phenomena. I am often asked for “my my space” when I am out DJing and have gotten some really strong reactions from people when I tell them that I don’t have a My Space account. Just last week a woman huffed and walked away muttering something about “free marketing”. I can’t help but think that it is not totally free because from my understanding of My Space (limited no doubt) any time art work is posted on a my space page, the artist gives up some rights to My Space. Additionally, any time you are sending someone to a myspace, you are only directing eyeballs to their advertisers and at times I have trouble with that. Even though I know I do that every time I recommend a television show or any other medium that makes its money from advertising it seems different. Why? I’m not really sure. I think it has something to do with an overplayed sense of ownership and freedom that comes with things like my space. While I enjoy the opportunity that things like satellite radio offer the modern consumer in terms of personal choices and the ability to avoid commercialism I get nervous when I feel like people think they are getting more for free than they really are.


Hope I didn’t come off too angsty, still got a little 16 in me I guess.



Putting the I in Advertising - washingtonpost.com… http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050700035_pf.html

In Dallas, Commercial Radio Without Commercials - New York Times… http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/business/media/23radio.html?ex=1334980800&en=670c621f965488ef&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

Multiplying the Payoffs From a Super Bowl Spot - New York Times…
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70B15FF3C5B0C758EDDA80894DF404482&n=Top%2fNews%2fBusiness%2fSmall%20Business%2fMarketing%20and%20Advertising

General Discontent

For years now I have been watching as a seemingly endless parade of retired military officers appear on the cable news channels to explain why our military is so great, how we are doing such an excellent job in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how when our weapons work, you know the lines, surgical bombing, collateral damage, extraordinary rendition, all the usual military euphemisms. So it was refreshing to see General John Batiste appear in a TV commercial recently sponsored by a group called VoteVets.org, in which he scolds President Bush for his poor management of the War in Iraq. “Mr. President, you did not listen,” remarks the General.
“There was never enough. There was never a reserve,” he said. “Again and again, we had to move troops by as many as 200 miles out of our area of operations to support another sector. We would pull troops out of contact with the enemy and move them into contact with the enemy somewhere else. The minute we’d leave, the insurgents would pick up on that, and kill everybody who had been friendly.”

Wow!

Ouch!!

Now I am no fan of this war and occupation, but I do understand the need for a military, and I believe if you are going to do anything, do it right. It was bad enough to watch this nation led into war on bogus terms, and to discover that there were no weapons of mass destruction, but to have Generals who served in Iraq resigning from the military in protest for the way the “Commander in Chief” has been conducting the war, which is what General batiste has done, makes me wonder what is it going to take for some people to admit that President George W. Bush is an utter and complete failure.

Close your eyes, clinch your fists, and repeat, “stay the course, stay the course,
stay the course…”

Not to worry, there is a new plan, the “surge” will solve our problems.

This story gets better, because after the commercial with General Batiste aired, he was asked by CBS news, who employed him as a consultant, to step down from his position at CBS news. Linda Mason, a vice president at CBS news made a statement in which she said that when military officials are hired by CBS, they are expected to share their expertise with the CBS viewers, and that by appearing in an anti-Bush ad, viewers would get the feeling that everything he says would be anti-Bush. The General agreed to step down.

I don’t watch CBS news, but I do wonder if CBS news would ask a General that appeared in a commercial praising the ability of “Commander in Chief” George W. Bush to step down.

Oh well, this may be difficult for me to understand, but it is probably more difficult for the Republican Party, because General Batiste and VoteVets.org are campaigning in the districts of Republican Congressmen in hopes of getting them defeated.

Times must be tough for Republicans when even the military is opposed to their policies.






CBS Asks Batiste to step down
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2007/05/11/publiceye/entry2791091.shtml

General Batiste speaks out
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/us/13generals.html?th&emc=th

Batiste fired
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/05/cbs.php

Public trauma and the media

Columbine, 1999; September 11, 2001; Madrid, 2004; London (“7/7”), 2005; Virginia Tech, 2007. These five events, amongst many others, were tragedies, not only for survivors directly involved but for whole societies fearful for the implications such events might have on their own lives. In such instances, the media not only informs the public about what happens on the day but is also central in shaping the trajectory of the dealing of the event afterwards.

This is a moment in time in which the shocking events of April 16 – the shooting of 32 people, and the wounding of many more, at the Virginia Tech campus by student Seung-Hui Cho, who then committed suicide – are still being processed by the public. This, the deadliest shooting of its kind in modern US history, was followed by an outpouring of grief and sympathy nationwide. If public trauma can be defined as “a collective stress that occurs when members of a social system fail to receive the expected conditions of life from their social system due to external or internal sources” (Barton, 1970), then Virginia Tech was certainly that.

In “What Makes a Tragedy Public?”, Doka analyses further the factors that influence how important particular events come to be to the public. Scope, the number of victims, relief workers, and loved ones involved, is important. Equally influential is how closely the public identifies with the event and victims. Mass cult suicides are shocking partly because those involved are often ordinary people psychologically ensnared in sinister organizations; anybody could have been in their place. The social value of the victims also influences public attention. Students are likely to rank above elderly because of the social value attached to youth. Wider consequences are key. September 11 was so traumatic, not only because of the numbers of victims but also because of the potential implications for the security of people's own lives. The duration of the event is a complex factor; an ongoing affair can enable resource mobilization and allow the public to feel a sense of control or it can lead to a sense of powerlessness and eventually apathy. Whether or not the event was intended, or was an accident, can invoke public wrath and prejudice against a group to which the causer(s) belonged, if intention was involved, or produce sympathy towards victims in the tragedy was unforeseen. Linked to intention is preventability. High expectedness, for instance, can cause public anger. Lastly, the nature of the victims' suffering may influence public grief. Comfort may be taken knowing that victims died instantly and painlessly, horror may arise out of a long and painful episode ending in death.

Through this prism, the reaction to the Virginia Tech shooting can be more clearly understood. For a crime of this nature, the number of victims was wide in scope; most who were shot were students whose youth carries a high social value; the public was shocked by the wider implications of the event and the idea that their children in education, or even themselves, might be at risk; the shooting was intended (between shootings, Seung-Hui Cho even mailed footage and photos of the killings to NBC) in a way chilling to mass audiences; and the unimaginable suffering on the day was also horrific to contemplate.

These factors were ones produced on the day of the massacre and were influences that any media outlet reporting the basic facts had little influence over. More control by the media over public perception, however, is possible in the period immediately afterwards. The media is key in relaying the significance of an event. The extent of coverage, the type of footage used, the witnesses and spokespeople and who they represent, and the issues raised are all important in how the public perceives and processes tragedy.

In the aftermath of Virginia Tech, the nature of the media's coverage this time has sparked debate about what is ethically acceptable to report in the aftermath of such an event. Proportional to the perceived importance of the event, the media has covered many elements that might otherwise have been left unreported. The family of Seung-Hui Cho was interviewed, his sister saying “Our family is so very sorry for my brother's unspeakable actions. It is a terrible tragedy for all of us”. The mourning in Virginia was extensively covered. On April 20, the state of Virginia's observation of a day of mourning was reported. A moment of silence at noon was observed by students, staff, and visitors on campus, dressed in orange and maroon. Police investigations were detailed, specifically in relation to the disturbing behavior of the killer before the shootings and the attempts of the university faculty to encourage him to attend therapy. The names and stories of the victims were also detailed, providing an emotional connection to the human scale of the tragedy.

This detailed coverage was uncontroversial. Knowing the victims offered catharsis, the events of mourning enabled the public to share in the grief, police investigations enabled some closure and a sense of safety, and the killer's family's statements diffused potential animosity. All such stories were beneficial and a positive part of the media's role. More controversial, however, was the airing on April 18 of the “multimedia manifesto” sent to NBC by Seung-Hui Cho. Steve Capus, NBC news president, justified the release on the basis that the killer's motivation and mental condition were important facts for the public to know. But victims' families, police, and the American Psychiatric Association (APA) disagreed, the latter saying that such a release “seriously jeopardizes the public’s safety by potentially inciting 'copycat' suicides, homicides, and other incidents”.

The media regularly faces questions about whether to carry sensitive material, even if few instances are as dramatic as the Seung-Hui Cho multimedia manifesto example. Certainly, whether or not it is ethical to show the corpses of war victims has been an ongoing site of contention over the course of the Iraq war, with Al Jazeera television attracting significant criticism for showing such images. In few instances is it clear to discern motives on the part of outlets that carry difficult material. Such coverage can alarm and challenge viewers, awakening them to the reality and horror of a story and encouraging them to take it seriously and to ask important questions. Most commentators would agree that it is the role of the media to challenge and provoke. Agencies that seek to mute the shock of an event often do so for personal interests that conflict with the public's right to know.

But such worthy motives can be difficult to separate from the desire to make financial profit from attracting alarm, even if the public gains little from being shocked. Despite the many courtroom dramas following from Anna Nicole Smith's death, it is unclear how the grief of involved parties benefited viewers. And, as the APA noted above, sensitive material can be a safety risk to the public. Copycat killers, inspired by the dramatic movie-like material in the multimedia manifesto, are threats in the Virginia Tech case. In Iraq, authorities often express concern that insurgents will be inspired by successful terrorist acts depicted on the news and seek to repeat them.

Whilst such dangers are theoretically possible in every news story involving harm committed by one or more persons to another, one needs, to an extent, to accept that this is part of the territory of covering such stories. It is to be decided on the facts of every case whether the risk of copycat reprisals outweighs the need for the public to understand the true seriousness of an event. Also necessary for consideration is the potential slippery slope to widespread censorship that might result from stopping shocking images reaching the headlines. In Iraq, for example, to censor the depiction of any war corpses would set a dangerous precedent. If such censorship were acceptable in one case, would it not be acceptable in all?

References

Barton, P. (1970). Communities in disaster: A sociological analysis of collective stress situations. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Doka, J. (2003). What Makes a Tragedy Public? Retrieved May 17, 2007, from
http://www.hospicefoundation.org/teleconference/2003/doka4.asp.

'Campus killer's family 'so sorry''. Retrieved May 17, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6578319.stm

'Virginia mourns massacre victims'. Retrieved May 17, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6577095.stm

'Virginia shootings: The victims'. Retrieved May 17, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6564075.stm

APA Urges Media to Stop Airing Graphic Cho Materials. Retrieved May 17, 2007, from http://www.psych.org/news_room/press_releases/07-25OpenLetteronChoMaterials.pdf

FLOWERS, BUNNIES, AND SUNSHINE!

Since September of 2001, there have been disturbing events occurring around the world. The most disturbing events in my opinion are the events that are happening to the rights of individuals in this country.

I am personally not paying enough attention to understand all the legal labyrinths that are being navigated In regards to the prisoners that have been being held at the Guantanamo Bay military detention center in Cuba, with terms like “enemy combatants,” and “extraordinary rendition,” but I do understand what it means when the US government announces that evidence will be allowed at tribunals that was obtained by torture.

The President of the United States has repeated a number of times that “we do not torture,” and in his new book, former CIA director George Tenet insists that “ we don’t torture,” while at the same time he has confirmed that in the period following September 11th, 2001, that he oversaw the use of morally questionable techniques of interrogation on terrorism suspects.

And as “Our Great Leader” George W. Bush is spreading freedom around the world, he seems to be spreading something else, and I don’t mean bushwa, (that is not a typo, look it up). As the US military was freeing the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, they were also rescuing them from the threat of torture at the hands of his regime, Shortly, and I mean very shortly, after we freed the Iraqi people and save them from torture at the hands of Saddam’s regime, the American people were shown the picture of American troops “abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, and the world is told that this was just the work of a few out of hand soldiers.

In a recent survey of US troops that served in the war zone of Iraq, 40% believed that torture is okay if it will same the life of a comrade. Shortly after these numbers were made public, General Petraeus wrote an open letter to his soldiers warning against the use of torture. I’m sure this made some people sleep easier at night, but probably not Iraqis.

At the time that the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib became public, I was attending college an innocently taking a course in Latin American history, while at the same time I was enrolled in a film history class. The Latin American history class was taught by a nice Argentinean man who regularly told jokes in Spanish, as a way of sort of bonding with the predominantly Spanish-speaking students. Toward the end of the semester we were studying Latin American history when the US was a major player in the politics of that region. Part of that history involves US backed military coups in Guatemala, Chile, and El Salvador, and one thing all these US backed military governments all had in common was the use of torture against their own populations. In the class we were reading about torture in Guatemala, disappeared citizens in Chile, and “death squads” in El Salvador. At the same time, our professor in the film history class had us watch “The Battle of Algiers,” which is a recreation of the fight in Algiers between the French Army, and Algerians who wanted to end the French occupation. This film has some really disturbing reenactments of the way that the French tortured the Algerians, to destroy their “terrorist network.” By the way, the French were eventually forced to leave.

So where am I going with all this?

I suppose I can say in summation that since September of 2001 I have watched as torture, which was before relegated to those regimes that the US has supported, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Iraq, has made its way into mainstream American culture. My reaction to this is the same as my reaction was a couple of years ago when I was reading seemingly endless accounts of torture in Latin America, and the final for my film class was to watch and the write about a torture scene from “The Battle of Algiers,” I am in shock.

I want to end on a happy note, so…

FLOWERS, BUNNIES, AND SUNSHINE!





Evidence obtained using torture is admissible

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=/mariner/20070515.html

General Petraeus warns against torture

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/05/military_health_study_070504w/

Soldiers OK torture

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/05/military_health_study_070504w/

Tenet says, “We do not use torture”

http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00277&stoplayout=true&print=true

Visionaries and crackpots

"Visionaries and crackpots, maniacs and saints, monks and libertines”. An open democracy, and a democratic media, is a spectrum whose poles look like this. As the BBC discovered this past week, that spectrum includes Scientology.

Scientology, a so-called religion established in 1952 by science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard (pictured), is famous for its use of Hollywood celebrities to promote an organization marked by heavy-handed tactics in suppressing criticism. Ex-members, journalists, and citizens who dare to publicly criticize Scientology are followed, threatened, humiliated, and sued by the Church which critics say has much to hide.

On the surface, Scientology professes to be “the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, others and all of life”, an approach based on observation, not faith. However, beneath its Buddhist-like ring of liberation, Scientology is a financial organization that charges its members vast sums to attain ever higher stages of teachings and often force followers to cut themselves off from family and friends in a practice known as 'disconnection'. Although it publicly denies so, those who have accessed the top echelons of the Church's teachings claim the belief is based on a science-fiction-esque story of alien souls (Thetans), killed by an evil galactic warlord named Xenu over 75 million years ago, that attach themselves to humans and cause all the psychological suffering that humankind experiences today. Today, marked by criticism regarding its financial dealings, tactics, and belief system, Scientology struggles to gain recognition in places such as the UK where the British Charity Commission refuses to acknowledge Scientology as a religion.

On Monday, the BBC's current affairs program, Panorama, aired “Scientology And Me”, a documentary about one BBC journalist, John Sweeney, and his investigation into whether Scientology still uses its infamous repression tactics and how it responds to being labeled a cult. Available on the BBC News website and on Youtube, the documentary is a thriller, albeit real, of the kind more often seen in movie theaters. Over the course of his week-long visit to the US to work on the story, Sweeney discovered firsthand the methods used by the Church against critics, methods that were every bit as sinister as those the organization denied it was still using. Beginning with Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, who insisted that the BBC reporter neither use the word 'cult' nor speak to any critics of the organization, Sweeney interviewed guests including ex-members, parents whose children had been severed from their families, celebrity followers, and one journalist, Shaun Lonsdale, whose investigation into Scientology was featured on his cable access show “Cultwatch”.

During his research, Sweeney was relentlessly dogged by individuals shadowing his every step. Most often, Davis himself was involved. In the middle of interviewing Lonsdale, Davis arrived and listed felonies Londale had been found guilty of since the late 1980s; returning to his hotel late at night, Sweeney found Davis waiting for him; and, exhausted from the relentless intimidation, Sweeney and his crew hid in the bathroom as Davis repeatedly knocked on the door asking what was going on. Other times, an unknown tracker in a minivan followed Sweeney as he drove across Los Angeles, someone sat across the room during breakfasts, and the same person was seen in the garage where the camera crew was parked. In all, an estimated thirteen strangers tracked the crew during their US visit. Close to losing his mind, a final confrontation with Davis drove Sweeney into a fit of rage (pictured), shouting repeatedly at the spokesman, who, true to his training, remained deadpan calm.

Panorama editor Sandy Swift has said about the tirade “I'm very disappointed with John [Sweeney]”. However, neither Swift's disappointment nor Sweeney's apology has prevented the reporter's 'losing it' becoming headline news. The BBC has been criticized for Sweeney's behavior and the Church of Scientology itself has waged an anti-Panorama campaign, placing a documentary on Youtube hitting back at Sweeney and the BBC and distributing a DVD of the documentary to all British Members of Parliament. There is speculation that 10,000 copies of the DVD are in production.

Though the Church has faced high-profile criticism before, the BBC is the largest institution yet to air condescension. In its response to Panorama, Scientology has also used the media, with vigor, raising questions about the use of media as a forum for 'maniacs to saints'. Though one may opine on the true motives of Scientology and condemn its tactics, there can be little doubt about the organization's right to broadcast the Sweeney outburst on Youtube, DVD, and elsewhere, along with its opinions about Panorama's journalistic methods. That such opinions might be spurious and propagandist cannot be due cause for preventing their airing because of the subjective nature of 'spurious and propagandist'. The nature of an open forum that exists in today's Internet age is that ill intentions can vie equally with more righteous ones. This is a messy space, one that can lead to significant miseducation, but to compromise this would be a slide into totalitarianism.

Outlets such as the BBC do, of course, exercise some control over the airing of viewpoints, under its own charter. In this instance, the corporation can be praised for its handling of the Scientology vs Panorama affair. For a start, no attempt was made to gloss over the Sweeney tirade. Sweeney's outburst was aired on the program and the BBC was open in its criticism of his behavior. Swift appeared on the BBC news to address the event and refused to defame Scientology itself. Instead, he addressed the organization's approach to public discourse, questioning the validity of such harsh suppression of criticism.

In this sentiment, Swift is correct. The BBC knows that from a discourse, as well as a public relations, viewpoint, frank discussion is the best approach. Audiences trust flawed but honest institutions. By taking the opposite approach and attempting to stifle open discussion by intimidating reporters and denying the BBC the right to use footage from interviews the Church has originally sanctioned, Scientology became its own worst enemy. The BBC's original intention for the Panorama documentary was to investigate both the Church's reaction to its labeling as a cult and whether or not it had abandoned its intimidating past behavior. The goal had never been, it must be noted, to criticize the Church or its beliefs. By turning the story into something else - a journalist's fight to freely report viewpoints - the Church failed in its main goal: to secure itself a public relations victory.

It is the nature of the territory that all media outlets struggle with the unanswerable question of how much space to give visionaries and crackpots. This is a delicate issue. It is difficult to say if, by investigating, broadcasting, and subsequently responding to such an organization, the BBC gave Scientology a louder voice than it deserved and represented and earned the Church much sought-after publicity. On the other hand, with the recent opening of a lavish new London headquarters, the BBC exposed the debate about the Church to the public.

Of course, one can easily speculate that an organization not interested in arguing its case in an open forum really does have something to hide. Though not the ambit of this blog, much evidence exists to support this notion. But in this case, the Church lost the PR war. The viewer comes away from Scientology And Me with one overwhelming feeling that Scientology is indeed a sinister cult.

References

Keane, J. (1991), "The Media and Democracy", Polity
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/6655207.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J8-Zfzd55E&mode=related&search=
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/05/investigating_scientology_1.html
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3172648&page=1
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2007/05/did_scientology_turn_the_table.html

What the Media is Doing Tomorrow

Over the course of the last few weeks and through to the middle of May, the television networks have been carrying out their upfront presentations with major advertisers in New York. But as AP television reporter David Bauder notes, the timing of these meetings could not be worse for the networks. He cites a recent study which shows that "more than 2.5 million fewer people were watching ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox than at the same time last year." Further, Bauder notes, "NBC set a record last month for its least-watched week during the past 20 years, and maybe ever then broke it a week later."

With figures like that, it becomes fairly difficult to deny the fact that we are in the midst of a cultural transformation. An optimist might even suggest that we may be beginning to experience a revolution of consciousness. A pessimist would indicate that we're probably just collectively coming to terms with the reality that there is nothing worth watching on television. I find it hard to argue with either point. As is usually the case with significant phenomena, there is certainly more than one factor at work in the function of this change.

If we can assert that traditional structures of television viewing have ceased to offer a fructifying identificatory resource to the culture, what is most interesting to think about is: what happens next? The 2.5 million viewers who have tuned out over the past year join a vast populous of culturati carving out new senses of self in the modern media matrix, simultaneously patching together the most logical forms of meaning making and waiting for someone or something to make sense of it all. If necessity is the mother of invention, in this mild crisis/celebration of cultural chaos, what technologies will we turn to next to make sense of our lives in the contemporary world?

One suggestion is the forthcoming media marketplace formally known as Joost. Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, founders of Skype and Kazaa, have collaborated to offer one of the more exciting commercial ventures to arrive in recent memory. Applying the same fundamental technologies at work in P2P file sharing, P2PTV will allow content providers to distribute their "television" programming on-demand to broadband users. This is probably the first significant unveiling of Internet television and it will be exciting to see how well this experiment pans out. There are indeed a series of other sites offering this kind of service, from YouTube, to Brightcove, to Veoh Networks and Sling Media to name a few, but none with the sheer commercial velocity boasted by the Joost venture.

Internet television is the new kid on the media block. The ontology of television viewership is about to change drastically and it is likely to have a significant impact on the way television content is produced and received. A few years down the line it is not hard to imagine that we might all be interacting with a commingled batch of televised and web-based content on machines that look something like Jeff Han's reification of the technology most popularly represented in the film "Minority Report."

It is exciting and bewildering to think about the unpredictable ways these new technologies will effect media production and ethics. We will certainly begin to obtain a more realistic understanding of what sort of programming is popular. Ratings will finally begin to reflect real people's viewing habits. This mark of interactivity creates a whole new kind of media ethics.

What if media we have traditionally considered to be taboo and intolerable becomes the most popular content available? Will commercial interests fundamentally change the nature of the public sphere? Will the capacity to measure specific users viewing choices structure the society in more inclusive or exclusive ways? Will there be any detectable difference at all? It is hard to say, and hopefully we will know very soon, but for now I am content to wonder about what the media will be doing tomorrow.

RESTRICTED!

WARNING: Quitting Smoking In Movies Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Ratings.

No showing smoking in movies.

No accidental nipple exposure on TV.

No Simulated sex on stage on an island 2000 miles away.

Maybe I am the only one who sees these prohibitions as absurd.

Honestly though, the irony is killing me.

So the ratings system of the Motion Picture Association of American is going to consider showing smoking in movies in the same way it now considers showing violence, sex, and the use of coarse language. From what I have read on the subject, this has made no one happy. Filmmakers don’t like the restriction, and they don’t want to worry about how much smoking, or in what context showing smoking will earn them a rating for their film that will cause them financial harm. Those advocating for removing all smoking from films are not happy either because they were advocating a total ban.

Personally I don’t really care if I am treated to scenes of smoking in my movies or not, so long as the movie “works,” but I can see real problems arising for filmmakers and their craft.

I suppose a good example of a movie that “needs” smoking is Good Night, and Good Luck, a film that recently came out that was about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow in which smoking was pervasive in the film. Murrow was a heavy smoker, and was constantly smoking while he was reading the news on TV. Murrow also died of lung cancer, most likely because he was a heavy smoker. I thought this film was an excellent movie, and I also think it was important for the film to show how smoking was so socially acceptable at that time. In this way, I thought that the film was a highly effective in showing how terrible smoking can be, but also to show how just because something is socially acceptable now, does not mean that it can fall from grace, in the same way smoking has in our society. To offer a contemporary example, today cell phone use is pretty much totally socially acceptable. People whip out their phones all the time, and nobody really thinks twice about it. Try looking around some time, as I do, at the people using cell phones in public places, and how attached people are to their phones, how as soon as they are finished with something they can’t wait to get out their phones. When I see this it reminds me of the way smoking used to be, except that smoking was always about smoking with people, and with cell phones it is about doing something with people, just not the ones that are standing next to you. So now imagine that cell phones turn out to be hazardous, and within say 50 years there is a near total ban on cell phones, the only people who use cell phones are pretty much the ones who can’t quit, or don’t want to quit. Now imagine that showing cell phones in movies is being restricted, because children might see cell phones as glamorous. If a filmmaker were making a film about SFSU at the turn of this century, don’t you think the film would be incomplete without showing students on cell phones?

Back to Good Night, and Good Luck, I really don’t think that movie could be made now, and that would be a shame, because it tells a really important story, not just about Edward R. Murrow, and how news programs were made at that time, but also about McCarthyism, and how a form of McCarthyism is sprouting in our society today, in the form of anti-terrorism.

I don’t think this film could be made today because even if I see this film as an anti-smoking movie, I am sure that others would disagree and say that the film glamorizes smoking. And Good Night, and Good Luck was pretty much a marginal film, the type that might not be made if the smoking in the film would bump it from a PG to an R rating, marginalizing it even more.

I think that adding smoking to the rating criteria is a mistake, but I don’t expect many to agree with me. As for the irony I mentioned earlier, I decided to bury it in the last paragraph, because I doubt anyone will finish reading this. For me the irony is living in a society that is restricting the items mentioned above, including showing images of smoking in movies, while publicly and seriously discussing when torture is acceptable. Talk about Koyaanisqatsi.


MSNBC- Smoking affects ratings
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18601051/

New York Times- Puffing could cost PG rating
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/business/media/11smoking.htmlWashington post-

Would Casablanca be rated XXX
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/05/10/AR2007051001347.html

A Journalist in Wolf's Clothing?

On April 3, 2007, blogger, freelance journalist and SFSU alumnus Josh Wolf was released from the Federal Correction Institution in Dublin, California after earning the dubious distinction of serving the longest prison term for protecting journalist sources in the United States. As a publisher of a blog that documents protests and progressive activist events, Wolf captured videotaped footage of an anarchists' anti-G8 protest that took place on July 8, 2005 in San Francisco.

The United States Attorney believed that Wolf's footage contained information that could be used to identify perpetrators of violent acts that took place at the anarchist rally, including the assault of a police officer and the arson of a police vehicle. The United States District Court empaneled a grand jury and the FBI subsequently subpoenaed Wolf, ordering him to turn the footage over and testify in front of a grand jury. Wolf refused, citing press freedoms and his journalistic privilege to protect sources, and was eventually jailed for contempt of court. At the time of his release, Wolf had served 226 days in jail, breaking the previous mark of a journalist's prison term for protecting source materials by 58 days.

One of the problems posed by the Josh Wolf case is the absence of a legal standard and definition of what journalism looks like and who can be considered to be a journalist. In an interview for Frontline, Wolf explains: "I describe myself a lot of ways. I'm a journalist. I'm a documentary filmmaker. I've made some narrative films. I'm an activist. I wear a lot of hats . . . I'm also a video blogger." California, like most other states, has a media shield law that confers special protections to journalists. Self declarations aside, the question remains: is what Wolf is doing accurately described as journalism?

In the Frontline interview, Wolf acknowledges this concern, stating that: "One of the critiques about me not being a journalist is that I'm not objective. It's pretty clear what my politics are. But back when the First Amendment was written, when we guaranteed a free press, there was no such thing as objective journalism." While this question is better served by an historical debate over the intentions and meanings of the Constitution, it is important to note that Wolf seems to be making no claims to objectivity. Regardless of whether or not objective and impartial newsgathering and dissemination was established as a journalistic principle at the time of the Founding, it is undeniably an integral aspect of most professional codes of journalistic ethics both in the United States and abroad.

While going to jail for one's convictions and grand intellectual principles is admirable in any shape or form, and while a serious discussion about Wolf's 1st Amendment rights could be had outside of the ambit of a discussion about professional journalism but still within the realm of free speech, Wolf's case squarely calls into question the identity and definition of what journalism ought to be.

Should Wolf be considered to be a protected person under a media shield? Is it reasonable to suggest that activity that looks like journalism should always be exempt from some form of regulative control? Or should we be putting more pressure on the individuals who consider themselves to be journalists? Absent of some formal way of recognizing who and what journalism is, there are too many mixed messages freely propagated in the culture about the essential rights and freedoms of the citizens and of the press. Because this leaves the public with no definitive way of knowing what is and is not respectable and credible journalistic information, this ultimately functions as a profound disservice to the public interest.

For consideration, an article from the Fall 2006 issue of Media Ethics magazine brings to light three high profile cases of journalistic malpractice that have recently degraded the credibility of the media generally: Jayson Blair and the New York Times, Jack Kelley and USA Today, and Dan Rather and CBS News. In each case, in only slightly unique ways, the "professional journalists," who by all measures of the term would be covered by media shield laws, perpetrated fraud on the public and rendered gross journalistic malpractice. But what has changed? Aside from the fact that these journalists no longer work for the same institutions, many if not most journalists involved in scandals continue to practice as professional journalists in some respect. What guarantee does that give the public that news information of the future bears any resemblance to truth?

While it has always been agreed that the freedom of the press is one of the primary principles supporting the function of democratic self-government, the balancing act that determines what fits into the purview of press freedoms, and what does not, has always been a complicated and elusive task. While it is obvious that journalists require some protections that insulate their activities from the government's reach, it is not clear where to draw the line.

Acts of Meaning

As I woke up this morning to NPR on my clock radio, I was struck by this story featured on today's installment of Morning Edition. The report tells of the "culture of deception" that characterizes America's leading subprime mortgage lender, Ameriquest. In the report, former employees discuss the shady sales practices that were not only accepted but also encouraged by Ameriquest managers. It is even stated that loan officers at Ameriquest were trained by a showing of the film "Boiler Room."

By way of disclosure and explanation, a younger version of myself thought that "Boiler Room" was a decent movie. But please do not take this post as any sort of film critique. What is noteworthy and useful to my anecdotal report about this film is the way it was latched onto by many of my peers who entered into the financial services sector within a few years of its release. On more than a few occasions, references to this film were made by my colleagues in casual conversation. And the general tone of their commentary was always celebratory and glorified, as if there was something specifically appealing about the lifestyle and general conduct of the characters in this film: something that each of these separate individuals aspired to achieve.

It is not a profound or controversial statement to suggest that the average late-adolescent male might find the idea of bombastically making lots of money to be quite an alluring proposition -- particularly if the accrual of this wealth can be carried out in a covertly deviant, legally suspect and rebellious way. But the film ends as a cautionary tale of greed and excess. And the moral we are supposed to leave with is one that insists that we pull our base selves up by the bootstraps and come to grips with the consequences of our actions lest we hurt innocent people with our recklessness. At least that's the logical, common-sensical way of looking at the film - that we're supposed to learn a lesson, we're supposed to leave the theatre with some understanding that the fate of the film's characters and the narrative mechanism of the plot ought to be advisory in some way.

Apparently that's not the case with this film. Apparently there's something more instructive than the plot device applied. Or maybe our baser selves are attracted to the shimmer, sparkle and flash of overblown glamour to the extent that cautionary tales make little or no headway in defusing the human pursuit of self destruction. Regardless, Ameriquest saw an opportunity to provide its sales force with an instructive cultural model. The culture of deception that floats in this film is the same culture of deception Ameriquest managers thought relevant to their project of internal corporate identity. And it is that same legitimate cultural model that was appealed to by my cohorts in the financial services sector.

It may not be surprising to know that these individuals no longer work in financial services. Indeed, subprime lending has gone out of political and economic fashion in the past several months. Foreclosure rates are climbing and the doomsdayers talk about the forthcoming economic bubble bursts. Depending upon your outlook and what you have at stake, the sky may indeed be falling.

But it's hard to point the fingers of blame, and that's certainly not the point of this post. As recent college grads looking for work -- any kind of work in a poor jobs market -- my friends never intended to do the dirty work of the subprime lending business. As filmmakers, Ben Younger and his staff never intended to engender a corporate culture of deception. "Boiler Room" is not responsible for tipping into motion some giant cycle of events that ultimately leads to a possible economic catastrophe.

So then, what is the point? If we can't blame the media for causing the problems of culture, we certainly can't hope that the media could ever solve them. To help get there, I want to mention an idea that has stayed with me from an undergraduate course that I was taking right around the same time that "Boiler Room" was in theatres. In his book "Acts of Meaning," Jerome Bruner introduces the idea of a "folk psychology," a concept that is useful for any conversation about the role of the media in the construction of culture. After hearing this morning's piece on Ameriquest's boiler rooms, I thought of this idea and went back to the text to look for some illumination. This is what Bruner offers:

All cultures have as one of their most powerful constitutive instruments a folk psychology, a set of more or less connected, more or less normative descriptions about how human beings "tick," what our own and other minds are like, what one can expect situated action to be like, what are possible modes of life, how one commits oneself to them, and so on. We learn our culture's folk psychology early, learn it as we learn to use the very language we acquire and to conduct the interpersonal transactions required in communal life. (35)

I mention this idea because it points directly at and reaffirms the power of the media practitioner. Media makers can and do shape and shift the folk psychology because we are involved in the actual production and construction of the "possible modes of life." Through a dynamic interaction and relationship with the cultural reality, media makers can subtly move the cultural language and shift our agreed upon cultural connotations.

As a piece of mass mediated culture, "Boiler Room" is both part and parcel of our folk psychology. But so is NPR, and Bruner's work, and, to some degree, so is this class blog on media ethics. In this regard, I don't mean to cast aspersion on the contents of culture, only to point out an anecdotal case of one way that mediated culture functions in the construction of identity and culture and why ethics is important in the management of mediated messages. I also wanted to echo a point that media practitioners ought to be endlessly preoccupied with: the consequences of their acts of meaning.

XXX

Simulated Rape?

That’s what Fox News and TMZ are calling the incident involving Senegalese-American R&B singer Akon, and because of the furor created by this type of sensational journalism masquerading as the morality police, Akon has been cancelled by his sponsor, Verizon Wireless.

The same incident was described by The New York Times as simulated sex. You can watch the video on YouTube and judge for yourself.
I don’t know the first thing about Akon, he may be repulsive, but it is the principle involved in this episode that caught my attention.

In case you are not aware of the details of this event, it happened in Trinidad.

Yeah, Trinidad. Not in the puritanical climate of the US, but in Trinidad.

The story goes that Akon was performing in a nightclub, and at some point a girl got up on stage and they, fully clothed, performed what could be described as simulated sex.

I believe that part of the furor from the morality police was because it turned out that this girl was under-age. I saw the video, and that girl didn’t look underage. Akon has apparently tried to lay some blame on the club for letting the girl in, but I don’t know all the details.

What is crazy is that this is a non-event except that it was recorded and made its way onto the Internet.

So what we have is an event that happened in Trinidad, an Island that I’m pretty sure 50% of Americans couldn’t find on a map, that becomes known simply because it is circulating on the internet, and the morality police here in this country decide they need to put the pressure on his sponsor to drop him. I guess that is the equivalent of getting fired if you are an R&B singer.

This bothers me because in the name of morality, artists are going to need to watch themselves more and more, and censor their behavior before they are censored by the all watching eyes of the morality police. No more dangerous clothing at the Super bowl half-time show, for fear of wardrobe malfunctions. Watch what you say on the radio, someone might have recorded it and be waiting to play it back for the morality police.

For me it is freedom of expression that is vital to art and music, the things that I need to thrive.

And as for the label of “simulated rape,” I have seen simulated rape on TV and in the movies.

Have you ever seen “Straw Dogs,” which was directed by Sam Peckinpah? The film has a “simulated rape” scene which I personally found disturbing, but I liked the film. I probably just won’t watch the film again, but I won’t stop others from watching it. And I am sure that many people don’t take offense to this scene.

My point is this, if you find something offensive, don’t watch, but don’t try to be the judge of whether others should watch it.

And by the way, Akon has apologized. Not to Fox News, but to the girl, and to his public.






NYTimes- Simulated sex
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/arts/music/10akon.html
TMZ-simulated rape
http://www.tmz.com/2007/05/04/akon-axed-by-verizon-over-alleged-fake-rape/
Fox news: Simulated rape
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270130,00.html

The News is Flat

In another sign that Tom Friedman was right when he claimed that the world is flat, the Los Angeles Times reported last week that PasadenaNow, a lifestyle magazine covering the city of Pasadena, has hired two reporters in India to cover the Pasadena City Council meetings for the publication. Per the article, these outsourced reporting jobs will be held by two people living nearly 9,000 miles away from the news source they are covering: "One lives in Mumbai and will be paid $12,000 a year. The other will work in Bangalore for $7,200." The article also indicates that one of the two journalists had attended the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

In an Associated Press article, the online magazine's publisher, James Macpherson, explains the move, saying "I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications." And perhaps Macpherson has a point. It is safe to assume that there are not many small publications with UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism graduates on their staff. The AP also reported that the 51 year old Pasadena native posted job ads on the Indian version of Craigslist with position summaries that explained, "We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA."

This idea is not only bizarre, it breaks the rules of the common cultural supposition that some industries were insulated from outsourcing. Journalism was generally assumed to be one of, if not the most prime example of such a field. Robert Niles, a commentator at USC's Annenberg Center of Communication's Online Journalism Review, expresses the concern arising over the issue, as "it plays to journalists' fear that the global outsourcing epidemic that many of us have been covering for more than a decade now threatens our jobs." Niles goes on to complain that he believes "the attitude behind the outsourcing reflects so much of what is wrong with the practice of journalism today." Rob Gunnison, director of affairs at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism agrees, telling the LA Times, "it just seems so fundamental to journalism to be there."

A sensible point, especially when we assume all the basics about news reporting. It seems obvious that in order to conduct proper newsgathering and in order to provide thorough reporting on relevant issues, journalists need to be close to the source, frequently visiting the events and people making news. And it seems clear that they should be enmeshed and existentially engaged with the cultural logic of the news making environment in order to make meaningful choices about what information should and should not be reported, who should and should not be interviewed, and to provide a proper perspective and create a meaningful context for the information being examined. All of this is very difficult to achieve from 9,000 miles away. While it does certainly remove news reporting out of the cultural bias that is sometimes reflected by localized journalism, this is not what advocates for journalistic objectivity had in mind.

Although this move ultimately devalues the quality of journalism overall, because there is no substitute for being on scene, it seems unavoidable and makes too much business sense to be deterred as a practice. Given a choice between a professionally trained and experienced journalist and a C grade lackey from slacker University, USA, it is safe to say that most people will prefer to get their news from the former. Based on a brief look at the kind of journalism that is proliferating, maybe a bit of international competition will do journalism some good. Perhaps journalists have gotten a bit too comfortable with their sense of entitlement to their work.

Indeed, most of the anxiety about this issue is spurred by the fact that journalists had long considered themselves immune to the problem of outsourcing. One can only imagine the smug look on the faces of millions of Americans who have lost manufacturing and computer jobs to outsourcing as journalists get a taste of the spine tingling, hair raising realities of globalization. Welcome to the party.

What Is News

It is usually said, no news is good news. However, for all the journalists, no news is bad news.

With the increasing appetite if audience and drastic competition, journalists can’t avoid the problem that, how can we find more good news to satisfy the audiences, to attract their attention, to feed our broadcasting system. However, the world is not made of news. When lacking of news, some journalists will made up false news, or to sensationalize the news, which originally a piece of cake.

Then what is news? “Most journalists agree that the following eight elements make up what is considered ‘news’---immediacy, proximity, prominence, oddity, conflict, suspense, emotions, consequence. ” But most of the case, when something happen, journalists won’t compare these 8 elements before making the decision of reporting the news or not, how long or what details should be reported. They will use their occupational instinct to make the judge in order to become the first one to report the news. But due to the diversity of everyone’s instinct and experience, as well as the media’s industry’s development, every journalist have a different standard of what is news and what is good news in their mind. That’s probably why nowadays, more and more journalists and even researchers will be confused with and argued with the definition of news.

Traditional news theory argues that, when journalists are writing the news, they at least have to mention 6 elements: who, what, where, when, why and how. But nowadays, “there is a sixth W: Why should anyone care about this news?” With the development of internet, people no longer lack of the news and information. Facing with the competition with other media, journalists have to think about how to convince their audiences why they should care about the news. Thus, sensationalism becomes more and more serious. Researchers and scholars criticize all the time, but nothing has changed.

This is the reality happening in the media industry. The news’ definition is developing. The way people deal with news is changing. Debates and criticism is also happening every day. But as long as the report the journalist make can attract most of the people, then it is a piece of news, or even a piece of good news. No matter what is the content of how to report the news. Reflection and criticism always happen later. There is a wall exist between the media industry and the academic research. To me, this is already not a piece of news.

http://aboutpublicrelations.net/ucturkington.htm
http://www.fairtest.org/arn/What%20is%20News.html
http://www.ypp.net/pdfs_writersguide/unit1.pdf

Free Flow of Information Act of 2007

On May 2, 2007, a bipartisan team of Congressman introduced the Free Flow Of Information Act. Representatives Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and Rick Boucher (D-Va.) have brought forth the bill in the House, while Senators Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Christopher Dodd (D-Ct.) introduced the same bill in the Senate.

While 33 states and the District of Columbia have already enacted legislation protecting journalistic privileges, this would be the first federal media shield law. Similar bills have been introduced to Congress in recent years but have never made it out of committee hearings. However, recent developments such as the Valerie Plame Affair and the record setting imprisonment of blogger Josh Wolf have raised the political profile of the shield law issue.

Perhaps what is most interesting about such a law is that, in order to confer protections to journalists, the bill has to come to terms with a legal definition of what journalism is and who can be considered to be a journalist.

The language in the bill cites protections for "covered persons," defined in the bill as: "a person engaged in journalism and includes a supervisor, employer, parent, subsidiary or affiliate of such covered person." The FFIA goes on to define journalism as "the gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public." Distinguished from earlier attempts to create a federal shield law, the new incrnation of the FFIA now shifts the definition of journalism away from an individual's association with a formal news organization to the actual practice of news gathering and dissemination.

As defined, the new law would confer protections to New York Times reporters and bloggers alike. While Boucher told CNET news that they are "not attempting to extend this privilege to everyone in our society," he did explain that the law's "intent is that bloggers who are regularly involved in newsgathering and reporting, within the scope of that definition, would be entitled to the privilege."

The CNET article goes on to indicate measured support from Christine Tatum, President of the Society of Professional Journalists who said that while she would like to see the protections in the bill be as far reaching as possible, she qualifies her support for journalistic privileges with the comment that "if everybody's a journalist, nobody's a journalist."

The establishment of a truly bipartisan coalition introducing the bill and the presence of broad based support from heavyweight media organizations such as the SPJ, the Newspaper Association of America, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press, and the Ameircan Society of Newspaper Editors promises that the new version of the FFIA will be more successful this go-round.

When can we give back the clean sky to children and youth?

I am not talking about the air pollution. I am talking something as serious as air pollution, or even worse than air pollution. It is the violence in cartoon and sexy scenes in the MTV.

I think I don’t need to describe how popular the violence in cartoon and sexy scenes in the MTV nowadays. Fire and blood haven’t been rare in the cartoon. Bra, underwear, bikini and flirtation won’t surprise you if you see them in the MTV. Even, I，an adult feel uncomfortable when I saw the above scenes in the cartoon and MTV, let alone the children. However, children have no choice. “Children are our further, not the present, so children can’t vote”. Every time, when they open the TV, they are infused of these violence and eroticism. If they are luckily born in a responsible family, in which parents have time and patience to watch TV with them and guide them, then they may escape from these violence and eroticism bomb. However, unfortunately, some of the parents nowadays can’t accompany their children most of the time. TV has even served as a baby-sitter or supervisor in some families. Then unfortunately, children in those families are used to face with and even been “educated” with those violence and eroticism. Children are just like a piece of white paper. If they have gotten used to these violence and eroticism, they will think, this is the original fact of the world. They won’t protest and suspect it. They will totally absorb, remember, and even utilize it.

According to the Report of the Department of Canadian Heritage, “It is not the violence itself that makes the cartoons attractive to preschoolers, but the accompanying vivid production features. With this preference for cartoons, preschoolers are being exposed to a large number of violent acts in their viewing day. ” If the violence is not the main factors to attract the kids, but the “vivid production features”, why the cartoon producers will continually add the violence elements into the cartoon? Why they can’t produce some vivid production features without any violence? I doubt that, if it is because the adults themselves like violence cartoon, so they assume that children may like it too? I don’t know. I am really confused. But it seems that the cartoon producers never really listen to children’s voice seriously. And as what I said, children have gotten used to watch spreading violence and eroticism in the cartoon and MTV, so they won’t feel surprised and doubtful. And as long as the cartoon market still can earn money in this way, and temporarily, it did not cause any big problem, then everything goes on and on. A cartoon character goes on shooting his enemy, with blood spreading everywhere. A dance still footsies in MTV, only wearing a bikini.

I know it is impossible to clear all the violence and sexual elements in the cartoons and MTV, just as it is impossible that there is no pollution in the air. Once harm has begun, it is hard to clear and stop. But what I argue is that, if we can provide children more choices and decrease the violence and sexual elements in their programs? Children are our future. They may also be the cartoon or MTV producers in the future. Once they have gotten used to these violence and eroticism when they are small, they will on longer suspect or augur it. In that case, the violence and eroticism in the cartoon and MTV will only become worse and worse. Don’t forget, the so call media rule of law is made by man. They may be changed if we want. So don’t expect the law can control the trend of violence and eroticism in the media.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050201-113031-4293r.htm
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/research_documents/reports/violence/tv_violence_child.cfm
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/violence/effects_media_violence.cfm