The Media Project 1129, 2013 January 20

Support for the Media Project comes from the College of St. Rose, Albany, New York,
offering a Master of Arts and Communications to advance careers in media, PR, and journalism,
fuller part-time options, 518-4545143, and Rosenbaum Media Group, a Digital Communications
Agency integrating high-definition video into PR, marketing, advertising, and social media
campaigns, big picture thinking for local and national clients, Rosenbaummedia.com.
From Northeast Public Radio, this is the Media Project, a weekly discussion about issues
confronting the media.
Media Project is underway once again.
We have an opportunity for commentary analysis, and if we're lucky, a little bit of common
sense about the media issues of the week.
We have here the professor of the...
Professor of the...
Yeah, the professor of the professor.
Right.
Rosemary Arameo is back.
Hey, hey.
Hey, it's been a while.
Rosemary Arameo noted investigative journalist and professor at the University of Albany
Journalism program, Dr. Alan Shartox, CEO of Northeast Public Radio, Professor Emeritus,
and I'm Rex Smith, editor of the Times Union in Albany.
Yeah.
I want to know what Rosemary has been up to.
Yeah, you haven't been around for weeks.
You've been glow-wakes rotting.
Well, ahead of vacation, that was fun.
I went to Argentina and saw glaciers and penguins.
And then, in a little change of pace, got into a plane and flew for 48 hours to Tunisia,
because the University of Albany Journalism program has this great grant with a journalism
school in Tunisia.
We are helping them develop a curriculum that teach investigative reporting.
This is in a place where there has been no free press for 25 years under the old dictator.
It's where the whole revolution started.
Two years ago.
Yeah.
The Arabs were in started two years ago in Tunisia.
And it's my first time back since just before the revolution.
And it was disquieting, I must say.
I've been to Egypt too.
So you see the same thing.
The revolution was not the big success that many young people hoped it would be.
It has not brought democracy.
It's brought a big fight with extremist Islamists.
But it has it brought a free or press.
It has brought a kind of wild press.
They are very determined to get more news out there.
But they're under trouble.
In the month of December, something like 13 journalists had been jailed or arrested.
Some of them are further past affiliations with the old administration.
And some are just writing things that the current office holders don't like.
They're now undergoing Sheraton Gate, as they call it.
I like how water gate has colored the narrowing scandals around the world.
What Sheraton Gate was, the foreign minister was caught keeping a room in the Sheraton,
the big fancy hotel right across the department of the internal affairs.
And in fact, there was a woman in the room as well.
Shocking.
He led to the town.
He led to the town.
He led to the town.
Oh, I don't know if that makes it better.
But the story was much promoted by a blogger who got copies of the bills from the Sheraton
with his name on it and printed them.
She published them.
She's now been accused of printing.
They have criminal libel.
They have your print things that are in-dressed.
So you have your work cut out for you to try to teach them how to do investigative reporting?
The issues are the same.
The issues are the same wherever you are.
Well, not the same as in the United States.
Are they?
Well, the reaction would be different.
Yeah.
But you don't get a jail for the rest of your life.
We have eliminated criminal libel.
Yes, that's true.
Although Dr. Sharkhack thinks it would be a good thing to reinstate it.
Some people are in some cases.
Yes.
Lock them up.
And is the journalism there moving to digital as well?
I mean, are these people working under their platforms?
Oh, yeah.
All the things they're interested in, where actually we'd recognize mapping GIS software.
They want all computer-assisted data journalism, I guess we call it now.
Well, who were you talking to over there?
Were you talking to the professors who were...
Yeah, we talked to the professors who were sitting...
The State Department was paying for this, right?
Our State Department.
Our State Department has given us a grant to develop this.
Yeah.
Excellent.
That's a good investment of foreign aid to develop a free press.
Like better than for bullets, yes.
There we go.
Let's do more of it, media development.
Yeah.
By the way, you mentioned data journalism.
There's, of course, the raging controversy in this state about data journalism and
that ties in with the current controversy over gun control and the aftermath of the
new town shootings, of course, as we all know, the New York State legislature has passed
new restrictions on weapons and new gun control in the state.
But as a part of that, the law restricts public access to gun license records.
Terrible.
Terrible development.
And one that I sort of foresaw when the journal ran, as I know you've discussed that in
past weeks, the journal ran a list of...
Journal news, in which...
Yes, in Westchester ran a list of licensed gunholders.
People just saw that as an incredible invasion of privacy.
I don't understand why.
And this was...
That was the excuse, I think, to come down on closing public records, which is never
a good thing, never, never.
So you really wonder why a man like Andrew Cuomo decided to give this one to the Republicans,
which is, I think, what happened in this part of the deal.
Yeah, and spill gave them some cover.
But the question is, you know, what's Cuomo's attitude towards freedom of the press?
Does he really understand it himself?
You know, there I go again.
It is interesting, by the way, in that regard that a few days before this past, Shelley
Silver, the speaker of the State Assembly in New York, basically dismissed the idea of
further restrictions on the Treaty of Information Law in this regard and said, no, we're not
going to do that.
And then, as part of the package, the Assembly ended up passing it.
Well, very pregnantly, I think that Silver said, yesterday, I believe, we can take care
of some of these matters, put the word, onorous matters in what's called chapter amendments,
meaning we can tighten this whole thing up a bit.
That's my wonder and concern.
So we go back now and say, no, this is not a good idea.
Let's put this back in a public domain.
Well, even worse than that, not that it's absolutely tied to media.
But the other real stinker in that bill was the idea that you would tell a psychiatrist
that they had to go tell the police about what somebody said, you know, in a therapeutic
session.
This has got the, got people really crazy.
And this is one of the things I'll just tie it up to the media if you don't mind, that
the media really has to explain to people because otherwise they won't understand.
Right.
Why this is so important?
Well, I think the media also has to understand why it is a good idea to have gun license records
public.
Sure.
We took a lot of criticism.
I know you guys have discussed it.
I woke up back over it.
But I mean, I don't want people to know how many bathrooms I have in my house and how
much I paid for it.
But I live in a public society.
And therefore, records about home ownership or public and for the same reason, gun license
records are public.
It's a price to live in a free society.
Well, also, it's just not about us.
It's just not a matter of principle.
It's also that if I'm living in a house in my little five year old, wants to go next
door to play and somebody's got a gun on the loose in the house, I want to know that before
I allow them to go there.
That said, I think it's absolutely true that they should be public.
And there is going to be an effort that in fact, the New York Publishers Association
is spearheading to try to bring this chapter amendment forward.
But I don't know that keeping those records public necessarily means that it's a wise thing
for newspapers to publish them.
We have a lot of information that we get all the time that we don't publish.
In fact, we've had a controversy about this before because we don't publish the names
of rape victims, Rosemary thinks that we ought to.
But we've said on things and Bill Keller, the former editor of the New York Times, wrote
a really interesting column, I think, in which he put forth some provocative what ifs.
What if you're the editor of a local newspaper and a reporter and your staff comes to you
with, for example, addresses of homes where pit bulls are kept or the names of husbands
even have a paper?
I want to know where the pit bulls are.
There's nothing wrong with pit bulls.
I know Sarah Hinman is my good friend and champion of pit bulls, but I'm afraid of him.
I'd like to know where they are.
What do you think about donors to groups that promote LGBT rights?
No, that's different.
Oh, that's different, I see.
No, there's a problem.
No, but I do think there's a rationale, a really good rationale.
Other than your, the press at all costs must be protected idea, but there's a really good
rationale for knowing where these guns are, which is very different from other things.
But Alan, it's limited.
You only know where handguns are because they're those the only things that have
had to be registered in New York State.
So you don't have any idea where long guns are.
You don't know who might be in your neighborhood having rifles or got those.
So soon as those are kept in public records, I want those too.
You don't say, oh, we can't get all the records, so we don't want any of them.
That's just kind of...
And now that my lawyer has answered for me,
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm going away.
I'm trying to get my time back.
You get it.
I will say that she's exactly right.
I mean, at least we'll know where the revolvers are.
So then the handguns are.
And so then, you know, on the next stage,
but you don't throw the baby out with the dirty water.
Do you, Rex?
No, I think this ought to be public information.
I'm just curious to know what you would publish and what you wouldn't.
What would you, what do you think about looking at using mapping software
on your newspaper website to reveal the names and addresses of food stamp recipients
in your community so that we can see where food stamps are distributed?
Yeah, I'm wondering what do you think of that.
I actually, I went to donors to LGBT.
I put it on.
Journalism has changed since the early 90s
when computer assistant or data journalism first immersion,
journalists thought this is it.
You know, we now can give people all the data,
all the stuff that's been in government file capital,
so we couldn't get it.
We now can broker and get to the public for them.
And there's been a real pullback.
Oh, we can't give them it.
People can't take it.
And people themselves readers themselves have helped with this.
They don't like to see the names of the most stupid idea I've heard recently
is that we don't put the names of people who commit mass murders.
The Columbine killers in the new town.
We don't, because that glorifies them somehow.
So we shouldn't use their names.
This is not actually journalism, is it?
If we stop, uh, but no, and I'm not sure that, you know, this data isn't either.
I think the data should be available to everybody.
But don't you think that newspapers have to be sensitive to what people expect from them?
If you put, you know, lesbians and gays and trend genders into the paper lists of those things,
don't be hazardous.
Those are sympathizers.
So people who give money to their causes, that's a different thing.
Because we have to show great support.
If I could just finish Rosemary from here.
Oh, sorry.
And it just, I was just ready to help him make his point too.
No.
Thanks. I need all the help.
I can get.
But don't you think that the readers of the paper,
that people who take these papers and are critical about them,
would let the leadership of that paper know they didn't like it?
Now that's happened also with the gun people.
But, you know, we've had that a lot.
We published online a complete list of property tax rates in New York state
and the individual property-backed property amounts of what people are paying.
People are upset about it.
We publish every week a list of property transfers
who's bought a home in our community and what they paid for.
That's good.
Don't like that.
I like that.
But I think there's a difference between having information and using it.
I think you have to make a judgment.
There are all kinds of data out there.
There's publicity, public relations, propaganda, raw data,
and there is journalism.
And I don't know that raw data is necessarily journalists.
Do you, Pug, that our role is somewhat interpretive?
It needs to be done in context.
Well, yes.
But do you publish the names of, consider that, well, yes, condescending?
Dripping with condescension.
But do you publish the names of tax deadbeats?
Tax deadbeats.
We do publish bankruptcy filings.
No, that's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying every year the town knows who didn't pay their tax bills.
Do you publish those?
I know a newspaper that does.
We do not.
That's an interesting thing.
I mean, there's that, that, that data is available.
And I think it should be available.
But you know, you make judgments.
We don't publish the name of every person arrested in our community
because we have made a determination that some of it is newsworthy
and some of it is not.
But don't you think if you did tax deadbeats,
that it would be of great interest to people in the community?
Is that the only standard?
No, what's of interest?
I mean, that's the only question.
You can be a value too.
If they thought their name was going to be in the paper,
maybe they would pay their bills and that's good.
So I don't see a problem with printing that.
Thanks, lawyer.
But what about somebody who has fallen upon financial hard times
and can't pay their taxes?
Well, then that's a bigger story we do.
There's more people in the tax role and that's why.
And that's another story we do.
That's good.
That leads to stories.
Good.
And you suppress data and you suppress the stories too.
So I think this whole, it's a lovely idea
and it sounds really great rolling off of your tongue racks.
That journalism is value added.
It's smarty myself.
Yeah, we take the data and we really help the readers to understand it.
But I think the readers get a lot out of it.
This is where crowdsourcing comes from.
And even the protests that the news journal got
led to a really interesting discussion
about what we want to know about people
and what the right to own a gun really means.
It was meaningful.
Here's what Bill Keller concluded.
He said, but when you're going to make
a sizable population of law-biting citizens,
which these gun owners are, feel violated,
you have to ask yourself, what is the offsetting gain?
In this case, he says, I think, not much.
The information the journal has provided
its readers is so far from complete as to be misleading.
And that's actually the conclusion I came to also
with all due respect.
And I really appreciate the fact that,
and of course, again, let me not be misinterpreted.
I think that the legislature did the wrong thing
by restricting access to this information out of the public.
I just don't know, well, I will tell you this.
I would not have made the same decision
to put that database up without any significant
commentary and journalism surrounding it.
Well, here's another thing that if you just name someone
in a paper, how does that expose them
or make them sound bad?
They own a gun and they are allowed to do so by law.
That's all that that record indicates.
It doesn't indicate that there's anything other
than law-biting.
But we have this idea that if we talk to someone,
if we name them, it glorifies them or makes them look bad.
It doesn't do either.
I'm going to send $25 to the general news.
Well, I think that would be a great thing,
because they are under attack unjustly.
I want to send them $25.
Yeah.
I hope everybody else will too.
I mean, the thing is, but the thing
people are canceling the subscriptions.
Absolutely.
And terrible stuff is happening to the journalist there.
Is that what you were worried about if you were to do it?
No, I mean, I'm serious.
Well, I would rather people not cancel their subscriptions.
No, but is that what you're worried about
when you made this half-hearted attempt at saying,
well, I wouldn't have done it that way.
What Bill Keller and I said, do you think we're just chickens?
Well, no.
In Florida, once we had a list of teachers
that were going to be laid off,
it was for economic reasons, not disciplinary,
anything like that.
And I wanted to print them.
And oh, my God, we had a big discussion
about this would expose them to.
And I said, expose them to what?
They were laid off.
Teachers laid off.
They'll be great sympathy for them.
And teachers groups are saying, please don't print this.
Please don't put, we printed it all.
We printed their names.
And those people got an outpouring of outrage
from their fellow citizens that this had happened to them
and sympathy and support.
So again, I go back to the idea
that publicity is not a bad thing.
I don't know where the idea came from.
Well, you just have to make judgments
about what is useful use of your limited resources
and what isn't.
And it seems to me that this didn't spur a healthy debate.
In fact, it's only escalated a shouting match
and it has led to bad legislation.
So I think that there is some questionable,
if you're thinking about making valued judgments
in publication decisions, which we do all the time every day,
seems to me that the value of this one
was not what people thought of.
What a bad legislation.
The legislation we're talking about shut down public access.
And you know, that's blackmail.
What's the use of having public records
if you don't do something?
Greg Ball down there, shooting off his mouth
through Volatile Fellow.
And I think that Kolo gave in to those folks.
And I don't know why.
I really don't know what.
Well, the gun lobby has rallied
against publicity of this database for years.
And they've said, if you publish it,
this will be like a target because you have valuable guns.
Sure.
People would just silly.
If you have guns when the burglar stay away.
But anyway, that was one.
And the other one was if you publish this,
we'll, you know, rouse up our people
and we'll shut down.
We'll go to the legislature and get bills.
But that's exactly what they did.
My favorite is my favorite is that the steel large
ebunker story that they're afraid
that people will come and steal their guns.
In other words, they have the guns for protection.
Now they're afraid people will come and steal their guns.
So don't print my name in the newspaper.
If you'd like to be a part of the conversation,
media at wamc.org, mediawamc.org is the email address.
And we are Alan Shartak, Rosemary Armeo, and Rex Smith,
the media project here from Northeast Public Radio.
Can't guarantee that we will read your comments on the air.
We might just swipe them and take them as our own.
But in any case, that would be wrong.
That pleasure is wrong.
By the way, the Toronto star just bought plagiarism detection software.
I think it's great.
And we professors needed to.
It's called, I think, to Kate is what they thought I checked it out online.
It's very cool.
They run anything that you write or your students write or your reporters write
against a database of one billion pieces of writing.
It's amazing.
Wow.
It finds matches.
I mean, some of it could be just coincidental.
But I mean, we have not had a plagiarism problem in our newsroom.
I've never had to go through that apparently.
That you know what I was saying.
Well, you know, maybe you're right.
Maybe it just happened and we just haven't been made aware of it.
But this is great because I can tell you as a professor of many years
that I could always tell.
I mean, I could say this is not really, but then, you know, you could spend more time
than running a PhD in a in a library trying to track it down.
I find that was a great confusion on the part of students on what is plagiarism
and what is simply allowable, you know,
representation from other works.
Sure.
Yeah, there's great confusion about that.
We don't make it easier in the news business.
We rewrite each other.
Oh, absolutely.
Now what is it called when you pick up from another new source and you just use it?
Well, that there is that.
What was aggregating?
Aggregating.
Aggregating.
That's a word.
What you could always say when you actually quote something in music,
you know, when you pick up a phrase of music from some other composer, it's a no-maj.
And this is meant to be a good thing, you know, when you're actually swiping a tune.
But we can't claim that, I guess, when we're just picking up a little phrase from somebody else.
And finding truth, journalism is supposedly the presentation of truth, you know,
to seek the truth and report it first line.
What about this supposed untruth?
What about the responsibility of journalism with respect to Manitio of Notre Dame,
the fabulous running back who now it turns out that this girlfriend,
whom he has supposedly been so devoted to for three years,
insupposedly died and this has been all over the press, never existed.
We will never exist that any claims he never met her after three years.
That's a very interesting relationship with a girlfriend.
How do we know?
He just never met her.
He never met her.
He got involved, he says, with a woman over the internet.
And so they existed on phones, cell phones, and the internet, not even Skype.
I mean, I guess in Skype, there have to be a face there.
Okay, but here's what?
Who cares?
Oh, it's just so interesting, Alan.
Why does everything have to be so serious?
Didn't you just say that?
No, you know, you need to report the truth.
It's all a matter of perspective.
It's all a matter of how you wait, W-E-I-G-H-T.
Oh, how you wait things and things.
And what it really means is that we Americans get dumber and dumber and dumber,
and we throw some piece of crap like this at them.
And every morning news show spends all its time on this.
Meantime, Americans have been kidnapped abroad,
and we have all of these problems.
And we're, and we have big brains.
We can handle both problems in Algeria and Manthia, we can do them both.
And yeah, well, and he is Rex talking about, you know, having to, you know,
give truth.
This is, this is garbage.
What was the responsibility of the media who reported, reported,
reported to report getting nervous.
I was going on here and did nobody think to check out this alleged girlfriend?
They certainly are getting the blame now, but I have to wonder if I was a reporter,
and I'm talking to this, you know, very earnest young man, a great athlete,
and he's talking about how sad he is, his girlfriend has died,
and he's dedicating the game to her and to his dead grandmother.
When I go back and say, what's really a girlfriend?
I'm not sure I would have that question in my head.
Will you?
No, okay.
I don't have that question or any other question.
I just think this is,
You would say it's not important.
I don't care.
Alan doesn't want to have ice cream in his diet.
He only wants a steady diet of broccoli.
This is the news question for you.
The journalists always have that, you know, we have to, we always have this conversation
that there has to be a certain amount of, even though we know broccoli is good for us,
people like ice cream, so the front page includes some broccoli and some ice cream.
This is the ice cream.
It's not such a terrible thing.
As Rosemary said, we got big brains.
But what about when you have single source news programs,
morning Joe's stuff like that on the air, and that's what they're talking about?
In other words, you don't have a chance.
You don't have a broad sheet in which you're able to say,
this, this, this, this, but in this case, that's the diet.
It's all ice cream and it's wrong.
Well, you're right and that is a limitation and that's why we're in obese society.
We are in terms of our information diet.
We are actually who wrote that terrific book.
I'm going to have to go find it that likened our information diet to our food diet.
And made a great analogy.
Wrote a whole book based on that analogy.
I'm going to have to find that.
It's really strong.
What was that, what is it that we have to think about in most gaming spinach?
No, but what is the job of the press to to from the code of ethics of the
society professional journalist?
The first it says the first thing is there are four major tenants.
The first one is seek the truth and report it fully.
And the problems, the biggest problems journalism tend to come from that second part.
Report it fully.
That's actually I can tie that back into the database.
That would be false.
Report it fully.
Usually our problems come from failing to make the extra phone call, failing to give the extra
dimension going into the nuance of a story.
And instead just giving black and white because that's what drives a stark storytelling when actually
we lead our lives in those shades for it.
Very, very well said.
Except for one thing.
Would somebody just bring me the base and I'm going to throw up.
I mean, you know, this is not something that that we do all that well.
So that's the model though and I admire you for sticking to it.
Thank you.
Actually, it's what drives many of us into doing journalism as opposed to doing
the paycheck respect.
Yeah.
Some other lines of what we do tend to take ourselves too seriously.
But that is our noble goal.
And sometimes journalism is just good storytelling.
And Manthitaya is a good story.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And the attempt can is great.
Okay, that's a matter of debate too.
It's a little.
Oh, I think it's wonderful.
If you reach the end of the program, we would have to invite you to come back.
And we promise that we will have another conversation a week from now and we'll get back
into more enlightening topics.
We'll talk more about Dr. Sharktock's diet, for example, as long as we're on important things
that people really need to know about.
I can't 10 pounds up and going to the stratosphere.
Yeah, there you go.
You're 10 pounds up.
Yeah.
And not eating any ice cream.
Well, hell, I'm going to go have a bowl right now.
Thanks for joining us to see you next week on the Media Project.
These Superman are such interesting people.
They used to work like hell just for romance.
But finally, the movie's not with standing.
They all got fired at patches on their pants.
They organized the union to get a living wage.
They joined with other actors upon a living stage.
Now, they lose Superman are such interesting people.
When they know they've got a people's fight to make.
Tingle and language paper, girl.
Got a free new world of bill.
Meet the people that's a thrill.
All together fits the bill.
On the newspaper men are such interesting people.
It's a wonderful hero, person, person.
Now publishers are such interesting people.
Their policies and act throw bad at things.
They play.