Saturday, August 11, 2007
Journalism educators bar C-SPAN cameras after NYTimes reporter's comments
http://webcast.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=171140
Journalism Educators Bar C-SPAN Cameras
(Broadcasting & Cable) _ We know some Supreme Court Justices are skittish about cameras (Antonin Scalia http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA410079.html comes to mind), but Supreme Court reporters?
According to C-SPAN http://www.broadcastingcable.com/blog/1380000138/post/650011065.html, it was required by conference organizers to remove its cameras from a panel session with those reporters -- at a meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication http://www.aejmc.org in Washington, D.C., Thursday -- when New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/linda_greenhouse/index.html objected.
While C-SPAN said it was perplexed by Greenhouse's reluctance, it was even more worried about journalism educators excluding their cameras. "If professors of journalism and working journalists taking part in a journalism education conference don't stand up for open media access to public-policy discussions, who will?" a top C-SPAN executive said in a letter to the AEJMC and the panelists. Greenhouse told B&C she did not refuse to participate, but instead told organizers that if C-SPAN covered it, it would not be the same full and frank discussion she would be able to have if the cameras were not there. "The whole format of the thing was that we were told not to prepare anything and that it would all be Q&A," she said. "So, of course, I did not know what the questions would be and, of course, whatever they were, I wanted to be able to answer them as fully and frankly as I could. I'm sure you can understand the difference between a classroom-size group of academics and 30!
0 million people. And I just didn't feel like it was something I was obliged to do."
She added that there turned out not to be any particularly probing questions, "but I didn't know that at the time. I didn't say that I wouldn't do it," Greenhouse told B&C from the Supreme Court press room Friday. "What I said to the organizer [Professor Amy Gadja] was that nobody had told me this was the nature of the event, and I didn't feel it woulde be as candid and fruitful a conversation with the cameras rolling." Greenhouse says she then "sat down and read my paper and let her figure it out. And that's the choice that she made."
AEJMC barred the C-SPAN crew, said the public-affairs cable network, which was not happy. C-SPAN -- which has been pushing the Supremes to open their appearances to TV cameras -- immediately complained to organizers in a letter. Programming vice president Terrence Murphy had the following hand-delivered to the conference's organizer at the Renaissance Washington Hotel Thursday:
"This morning, after working with AEJMC on event logistics for many days, C-SPAN cameras were shut out of a panel discussion entitled 'Covering the Court' just a few minutes before the session began. The session moderator, Prof. Amy Gadja, told our production-crew chief our cameras had to be turned off because one panel participant, Linda Greenhouse, Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times, did not want her remarks covered by C-SPAN."
The network continued, "I must say, it's perplexing as to why Ms. Greenhouse didn't want to permit C-SPAN to cover her remarks, since our program archive lists 51 different events where we've covered her over the years. But the larger concern is why AEJMC organizers allowed Ms. Greenhouse's view to prevail. If professors of journalism and working journalists taking part in a journalism education conference don't stand up for open media access to public-policy discussions, who will?" It concluded, "We look forward to hearing from you that your organization shares our concern and agrees that it was inappropriate for C-SPAN cameras to be turned away from this event."
Greenhouse had a response for C-SPAN, which she read to B&C. "Dear Terry: Your letter concerning yesterday's panel discussion at the journalism educators' convention misses the point. The question here is not one of 'open media access to public-policy discussions,' as you put it -- it is one of communications and simple courtesy. Since you chose to send copies to my fellow panelists, as well as the organizers of the program, I will do the same." The letter continued, "You claim to have spent days arranging C-SPAN coverage of the event. That may be so, but it is irrelevant to the question raised in your letter. I learned about the plan to cover the Supreme Court panel only when I showed up and saw the cameras. Professor Gayda told me she had only learned at 5 p.m. the day before that C-SPAN intended to cover our panel. Some months ago, when I accepted the invitation to speak to a roomful of journalists and professors, no one said anything about a nationally televised even!
t."
It went on, "There is a difference between appearing before a room of 50 or so professors and speaking in front of national television. I'm sure you recognize this. I did not agree to do the latter and, notwithstanding my willingness, as you know, to appear on C-SPAN dozens of times in the past, whether to do so remains, it seems to me, a matter in which I still have a say. I am neither a C-SPAN employee nor a public official. My past voluntary appearances do not give C-SPAN rights in perpetuity to broadcast events in which I appear whether I agree or not. In fact, you may or may not be aware that over the years, I have from time to time declined to appear at events that I had assumed were to be private when at the last minute I was informed that C-SPAN coverage was a fait accompli."
The letter concluded, "In the future, I will continue to be receptive to invitations to appear on excellent C-SPAN programs such as American Journal and at other events that C-SPAN arranges to cover. However, I think it is incumbent on C-SPAN and program organizers to do their homework by ensuring that participants understand, either at the time the invitation is extended or sufficiently in advance of the event to afford them the meaningful opportunity to gracefully opt out ' There is a difference between being invited and commandeered."
AEJMC executive director Jennifer McGill, to whom Murphy's letter was directed, could not be reached at press time -- the Washington conference is still ongoing.
Greenhouse added that had she known from the outset that C-SPAN was part of the equation, she probably would have said yes: "Had I been told at the time I was invited that this was going to be a nationally televised event, I probably would have said, 'Fine.'" But she also said: "The fact that I have been on C-SPAN 51 times in the past doesn't mean I am obliged to be on C-SPAN anytime they show up where I am."
Copyright © 2007 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Pew Center poll finds U.S. public sees news media as biased, inaccurate, uncaring
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070809/lf_afp/usmedia_070809222839
AFP
US public sees news media as biased, inaccurate, uncaring: poll
Thu Aug 9, 6:30 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed. And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news -- roughly one quarter of all Americans -- were even harsher with their criticism, the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center said.
More than two-thirds of the Internet users said they felt that news organizations don't care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent they were politically biased. More than half -- 53 percent -- of Internet users also faulted the news organizations for "failing to stand up for America".
Among those who get their news from newspapers and television, criticism of the news organizations was up to 20 percentage points lower than among Internet news audiences, who tend to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole, according to Pew.
The poll indicates an across the board fall in the public's opinion on the news media since 1985, when a similar survey was conducted by Times Mirror, Pew Research said. "Two decades ago, public attitudes about how news organizations do their job were less negative. Most people believed that news organizations stood up for America... a majority believed that news organizations got the facts straight," Pew said in a report.
The Washington-based Pew Research Center describes itself as a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.
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NETWORK NEUTRALITY: AT&T now says it errs in edit of anti-Bush lyrics
AT&T says it errs in edit of anti-Bush lyrics
By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer Fri Aug 10, 10:43 AM ET
SAN ANTONIO - Lyrics performed by Pearl Jam criticizing President Bush should not have been censored from a webcast by AT&T Inc., a company spokesman acknowledged Thursday. AT&T, through its Blue Room entertainment site, offered a webcast of the band's headlining performance Sunday at Lollapalooza in Chicago. The event was shown with a brief delay so the company could bleep out excessive profanity or nudity.
But monitors hired by AT&T through a vendor went further and cut two lines from a song to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall." One was "George Bush, leave this world alone" the second time it was sung, and the other was "George Bush find yourself another home," according to the band's Web site. AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said that the silencing was a mistake and that the company was working with the vendor that produces the webcasts to avoid future misunderstandings. He said AT&T was working to secure the rights to post the entire song ÿÿ part of a sing-along with the audience ÿÿ on the Blue Room site.
Blue Room offers live concerts, sports interviews, video game advice and other entertainment content that requires a high-speed Internet connection. Although viewing the content is free, San Antonio-based AT&T uses the site as a way to promote its DSL broadband services. Besides Pearl Jam's show, AT&T showed 21 other performances ranging from Pete Yorn to G. Love and Special Sauce during the three-day Lollapalooza music festival. Coe said no other complaints have been made about censoring.
Pearl Jam said in a posting on its Web site that in the future, it would work harder to ensure live broadcasts or webcasts are "free from arbitrary edits."
"If a company that is controlling a webcast is cutting out bits of our performance ÿÿ not based on laws, but on their ownpreferences and interpretations ÿÿ fans have little choice but to watch the censored version," they said.
The alternative rock band and Internet advocates were also using the incident to try to draw attention to the prospects of Internet service providers like AT&T deciding to give preferential treatment to content they favor or have deals with, leaving the rest on slower-moving Internet bandwidths. Jenny Toomey, executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, said that although net neutrality wasn't being violated in this case, it still raises questions about whether AT&T and other service providers can be trusted not to hurt artists. Internet speeds that depend only on the size of files, not the kind of content that's in them, is a democratizing force, she said. "We've got to protect that, and artists get that," Toomey said.
AT&T and other providers would like the ability to charge more for transmitting certain kinds of data, like live video, faster or more reliably than other data but have insisted such premium services would help, not hurt, consumers. Coe said, regardless, the issue of net neutrality is entirely separate from the mistake during the Pearl Jam show. "This was our own Web site," he noted.
On the Net:
Edited Webcast as posted on YouTube by the Future of Music Coalition:
AT&T Blue Room: http://attblueroom.com
Pearl Jam: http://pearljam.com
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This article above is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in an effort to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this blog for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
