‘I’ve dreamed a dream’

It’s always easier to cry ‘that isn’t news’ and to condemn the ‘media’ in general.

But make no mistake about it, the overnight celebrity of Susan Boyle — aka ‘the woman who shut up Simon Cowell’ — is very much news.

No, her story isn’t as critical as the global recession. Her story won’t save lives or change the world.

Susan Boyle’s story is incredible in its own right – and her moment in the spotlight is an incredible commentary on the media, entertainment industry and even the news industry itself.

If coverage of Heidi & Spencer’s wedding in Mexico, Shia’s car accident or Jenn/Angelina are necessary evils in the realm of ‘journalism,’ then it is rewarding (if only on a emotional level) to see the spotlight placed on a truly talented woman.

‘We’re a bunch of idiots’

Embattled Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich recently wrapped up a two-day media blitz of national media, chatting with just about anyone with a mic and national airtime, from Larry King to the panel on “The View.”

‘Blago’ was a soundbyte machine during his two-day media blitz. He plead his case to any and all who wanted to hear ‘his side’ of the story. And practically every man, woman and reporter who called themselves ‘journalist’ wanted a piece of ‘Blago.’

Thank god for Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ program.

“This guy (Blagojevich) is completely using the media for his own benefit – to make money, to escape going to jail as well as perhaps maybe get a book deal out of it,” Brzezinski proclaimed on ‘Morning Joe’ today. “And all of us reporters and all of us media entities are being completely used.”

Brzezinski added a disclaimer, saying that they would be running a couple of clips from Blagojevich’s recent interviews.

“He’s making fun of all of us and we’re all falling for it – it’s fabulous. We’re a bunch of idiots.”

This is not the first time Brzezinski voiced her journa-ethics live on-air. She once refused to read a story about Paris Hilton during the ‘news’ segment.

Brzezinski is a credit to the news profession.

Blagojevich is a major news story. It would be poor news judgement to gloss over the incredible allegations a governor of a powerful state faces.

But ‘Blago’ is absolutely using the media, which is always happy to oblige. The governor yukked it up with the women of the ‘The View‘ and proclaimed that he has done nothing wrong on ‘Larry King Live’. He is exploiting the weaknesses of a pathetic, entertainment focused ‘news’ industry.

And when Ms. Brzezinski, who could barely tolerate a couple of ‘Blago’ clips, was faced with the possibility of watching MORE of the coiffed one, she had only one question …

“Do we have to listen to anymore?”

Is media focus on Palin’s family fair?

Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin is a polarizing figure.

She’s beloved as much as she is mocked. Palin fills the seats for her public speechs … and she was the prime target of late night comedy for the last part of 2008.

But Sarah Palin recently took a stand and told the media to ‘leave my kids alone.’

Palin said: “I can take the shots. But any mother would want to protect their children from lies and scandalous reporting.”

Regardless of where anyone stands on their criticism or support of Sarah Palin, maintaining a broad and general media spotlight that also scrutinizes her children is wrong.

Chelsea Clinton enjoys minimal public exposure – except when she stepped out to stump for her mother, then-Sen. Hilary Clinton. The Bush twins (Barbara and Jenna) decided to have some underage drinking irresponsibility.

Public figures are fair game. Sarah Palin deserves every bit of media exposure that comes her way – both the good and the bad.

But her children must remain exempt from public scrutiny with two exceptions – if they break the law (or are alleged to have broken the law) or if they willingly step out to speak/support a cause.

Chelsea Clinton deserves no protection from reporters when she takes the stage to drum up support for her mother. Standing on stage, alongside her political power couple mother and father, is one thing — but when she is trying to persuade the people to vote for or against something, then she’s using her credibility to sway public opinion. Then her credibility is fair game.

Barbara and Jenna Bush should enjoy all the rights and privilages that private folk enjoy … except when they are accused of breaking the law … and underaged drinking is, by definition, against the law.

The Palin children should be able to live their daily lives safe from public scrutiny. They should remain shielded as private citizens and not be subjected to the public flogging that any public figure, like Sarah Palin, should expect.

(Quick sidenote: Todd Palin should not enjoy or expect any such shield from public scrutiny. Adults — especially as one who is reportedly CC’d on all his wife’s gubernatorial e-mails — are fair game.)

That said, Bristol, Piper, Willow and Trig Palin are only as safe as they decide to be. Should any of them step out from their mother’s shadow to rally for their mother, then that child effectively forfeits any expection of living a private life. Should any of them find themselves arrested or convicted of any crime, then they forfeit the same rights.

Conflicts overlooked by the media

MSNBC has a solid piece – complete with an easy to understand interactive global map – outlining the international conflicts don’t involve Iraq, Afghanistan or the Middle East.

Here are some of world’s Forgotten Conflicts - violence that isn’t finding consistent prominence in the media.

Top 10 media blunders of 2008

Blunders are generally funny – but newsroom ’stratergy’ is the only explination for these ridiculous media missteps that made Politico.com’s list of ‘Top media blunders of 2008.’

For my money, the NY Time’s McCain-Iseman story is the winner of the year. It was weighed down by more innuendo than buoyed by fact, the article was an ill-advised and unsubstantiated by anything resembling a reliable source. (You can read my original thoughts here.)

The 10 most overlooked stories of 2008

Newsweek takes its annual look at the stories that were glossed over or ignored completely in favor of a pregnant man and Casey Anthony.

The Iraq War, horrific violence in the Congo and President Bush’s expansion in AIDS Relief funding unfortunately made the magazine’s “10 Most Overlooked Stories of 2008.”

Sad sidenote: The ‘most viewed’ Newsweek stories (at the time of this post) include: “Italy Gears Up for Amanda Knox Trial Frenzy,” “Kennedy’s ‘you knows’ become political fodder” and “Palin’s daughter gives birth to son named Tripp.” None of these qualify as significant news on ANY level.

2009

The economic meltdown. The Obama-McCain campaigns. Financial bailouts. Plummeting consumer confidence.

This blog missed all of those stories – but with 2009 just hours away also comes a promise to follow the news, scrutinize the news and demand the news inform rather than entertain base impulses.

JonBenet: Still dead.

Somehow, someway JonBenet Ramsey is back in the news.

She shouldn’t have been news in 1996. She shouldn’t have been news outside of Denver. The story should have been buried before JonBenet was.

And it’s NOT news today. This is a case study of news judgment gone insane.

But according to MSNBC, the top news of the day is the presidential race, the dire economy, Iran testing missiles … and JonBenet.

But sadly, it appears MSNBC had some self-control compared to CBS News..

ABC News saved SOME face – the Ramsey story was just the FOURTH major story of the day. But it’s worth noting that ‘Amanda Knox Turns 21 in Italian Prison’ is also a major story.

God help us all, may this be the last in a long string of socially irrelevant stories.

Incredible and Unbelievable

Here’s a story y’all may or may not believe …

So a woman developed a little bit of an itch on the top of her head. Eventually, the itch got progressively worse and worse. Somewhere along the line, she starts itching her head during her sleep – and one fateful night she actually managed to scratch through her scalp, skull and into her brain.

Now I’ve told a few people about incredible story. Everybody’s had an itch – and the thought of boring straight through your own skull is incredible. It borders on the unbelievable – so much so that recounting of this story was always followed up by “Oh my god – is that real?”

“Sure,” I’d reply. “I read it in the New Yorker.” (Here’s a link to the article, ‘The Itch’)

For some reason, that reply was enough to assauge any apparent skepticism. It was simply enough to say I read the article, which uses several anonymous sources, in ‘The New Yorker.’

This is not an attempt to target this specific article – but it’s an odd world where anyone can be swayed toward belief of credibility simply based on a publication’s name.

Credibility is earned through years of reliability.

But always remember that even the Washington Post told the plight of an 8-year-old heroin addict named Jimmy, Dateline NBC showed us how easily a GM truck could explode if sideswiped and the New York Times told the story of four veterans, one of whom would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.

But Janet Cooke never met ‘Jimmy’ – who was in fact a boy of her own creation. That GM truck blew up a lot easier when hidden explosives triggered the explosion. And Jayson Blair’s story of the injured soldiers turned out to be just one among dozens of pieces of fiction passed off as verifiable fact.

And, as with all crime or injustice, how much fiction slips past editors and producers and makes it to the general public … who, in their ignorance, accept this fiction clothed as fact …

Tim Russert: 1950-2008

Remembering a man whose body of work set the standard of determining ‘what is news’ – and whose style established a new standard for thorough, insightful, thoughtful and reliable journalism.

If it’s Sunday …

Loud Silence

Almost a week and a half ago, the New York Times published a damning article regarding the major TV networks and their military analysts. Reporter David Barstow’s original article was published on April 20.

This was no softball indictment of military analysts – many who are, according to Barstow’s article, are just mouthpieces for the White House, manipulated to spread pro-Bush disinformation while protecting their own vested interests.

Barstow wrote: “Members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access. … A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.”

That was published April 20th …

Now ‘Editor & Publisher’ has published its own piece that points out how silent the major TV networks have been regarding the NY Times report.

E&P writer Joe Strupp writes: “As for the television networks’ lack of response, (veteran television journalist and now a freelance filmmaker) Don North says: “I am not surprised that the network executives, the suits there, have not been rushing to justify themselves. It is their nature to shut the hell up and hope it will blow over.”

 The war in Iraq. The conflict in Afghanistan. The situation with North Korea.

Military analysis is a primary need … but at what cost?

3 minutes of heaven

It’s the one story that everyone remembered from the morning news rotation.

And was NOT the story about several airlines under investigation for failing to comply with FAA rules. It wasn’t the story about city council leaders and the mayor hoping to impose a 20-cent fee to supermarket customers who choose plastic over paper bags. And it wasn’t about the latest bid to keep the local NBA team in town – with a privately-funded arena.

It was about a new study that says the optimal sex time frame – apparently – is between 3 and 13 minutes.

This story pulled very well on the Web site – and instantly caught the attention of any and all in the newsroom.

If this study isn’t a classic case-study for the ‘what is news’ question, then I don’t know what is.

Chelsea Clinton and the press

Chelsea Clinton has established herself as an ambassador for her mother’s presidential bid.

She has also closed herself off from the media on several occassions – including recently brushing off a 9-year-old reporter and most recently striking down a student reporter’s question about the Lewinsky scandal’s effect on Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The question here: is Chelsea Clinton a fair target for reporters – and should the media give concessions to Chelsea that would not be afforded to anyone else campaigning for a presidential hopeful.

The former first daughter does not grant interviews and will only answer ‘q & a’ sessions when professional journalists are firing the questions.

Chelsea Clinton is using her name and prominence to stump for a candidate she believes in – but the weight that comes with her name also comes with the baggage of media scrutiny. It’s a package deal – one where the media will, can and should prod Chelsea for answers … but Chelsea has NO obligation to answer those questions. The young girl who was pulled into the world of politics has now emerged as a woman who has WILLINGLY jumped right back in – but under her own rules.

Ms. Clinton has never held an elected office, was pulled into the political realm when she was 12 years old and she is now an indepdendent 28-year-old woman.

The reporting media is wrong to bow to Ms. Clinton’s insistence that reporters turn off their cameras at her command or refrain from asking questions. But the media has no place in expecting that Chelsea Clinton provide ANY answers to their questions.

Reporters should be allowed to ask and Chelsea should be allowed to politely refrain from answering.

Iraq War lost in the news shuffle

Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton. Eliot Spitzer. Soaring oil prices. $4/gallon gas looming. Worries of a possible recession. The murder of a UNC student body president. The death of William F. Buckley.

But a new Pew Research study finds that the Iraq War has quietly faded into the background noise, lost amid a new torrent of news headlines.

The study found that around 1-in-4 people even knew that almost 4,000 American troops have died in the Iraq War – that’s down from almost 54 percent awareness of the casualty toll just 8 months ago.

These numbers appear to go hand-in-hand with news coverage alloted to the war. News Content Index data shows a significant drop in Iraq War coverage, down from 15 percent in July 2007 to just 3 percent in February 2008.

This study is disturbing because major U.S. military operations are being tabled – more often than not by the ‘news du jour.’

It is critical for news editors to remember that the United States is engaged in critical operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – and these operations are paramount compared to fleeting stories, such as the murdered UNC student president or even the recent presidential primaries/caucuses.

This has nothing to do with promoting patriotic sentiments or pointing out any perceived flaws in the ‘failed’ Iraq War – this is about appropriately addressing a war that several major nations have committed to fighting. This has to do with international and military policies that do not only apply to Iraq and Afghanistan in the here and now, but has implications for foreign relations throughout the world today and beyond.

Although the story of an embattled New York governor’s prostitution scandal is titillating, it is ultimately all but completely irrelevant in the lives of Americans living outside of the Empire State. The death of a promising UNC student is genuinely heartbreaking news – but, like the Spitzer story, it is almost completely insignificant to 99 percent of Americans.

In terms of straightforward newsworthiness, only the struggling economy and presidential primaries can stand toe-to-toe with the Iraq War. And even the presidential coverage could stand to be rounded off a bit – it’s NOT news that deserves 24/7 analysis (especially after this already painfully long ‘road to the White House’).

Journalists are, whether they like it or not, filters for the American public. And if U.S. news consumers receive less and less Iraq war coverage, then it cannot mean their knowledge of the war can possibly increase.

It’s not enough for newsroom leaders to shrug their shoulders and say ‘there’s nothing new in Iraq.’ That’s insulting for so many reasons, but mostly because it assumes that newsrooms have covered every conceivable angle (which it hasn’t and couldn’t) and that a war that has vastly changed the Iraq map has ‘nothing new’ going on. Journalists are paid to come up with new news stories – and it’s sickening, not to mention incredibly lazy, just to throw up the fleeting ‘news du jour’ rather than do some real hard journalism work and dig up some solid Iraq War stories.

This doesn’t mean making the Iraq War the daily top story without question, but it does mean including the war – in some form or another – among the day’s top stories.

It’s a criminal disservice to the American people to allow the Iraq War to simply get passed over by largely insiginificant news.

Becoming a part of the solution …

Journalists, take heart: Continue to fight the good fight.

Be a voice of dissent. If a reporter’s conduct or practices do not sit well with your journalistic integrity, then follow what your gut tells you is inherently wrong.

Challenge old methods. Reconcile the age-old journalistic principles with changing times.

Don’t allow newsroom ‘groupthink’ quash what you firmly believe to be right, just or ethical. Do not allow the apathy of your fellow journalists deter your will or discourage your beliefs and principles. Question what others may tell you is ‘just the way things are done.’ Do not simply allow hyperbole to go unchecked as merely someone’s ’style’ or ‘voice.’ Balance hyperbole with grounded reason.

Steel your resolve if you know something is wrong. Discuss policies and execution of news – conversation is the only way reasoned progress can ever take firm root in any newsroom. ‘That’s the way it’s always been’ is a weak and flawed defense – especially in this chaotically evolving journalism industry.

Ideals are eroded slowly, but surely, if you allow the complacency or cynicism of others to wear down your beliefs. Aspire to greater achievements and ideals not only for yourself, but for those around you – as it benefits your media outlet and, over time, the entire industry will reap the benefits.

Becoming a part of the solution means becoming aware of your own principles as well as the ethics of those we work with.

I recently enjoyed a small newsroom victory – but this one victory has refreshed and strengthened my resolve toward working for a trusted and reliable news industry.

As journalists, we grill elected officials and demand answers from our local leaders when their ethics have eroded. And we should hold ourselves – reporters, writers, producers and editors alike – to equally critical questions.

Be a part of the solution.