Tag: jay rosen

On seeking trust in public media

Public media consultant Michael Marcotte posted about some of his recent work on ethics guidelines for public media employees and I was moved to comment. I started commenting directly on his blog, but realized — after 700 words — that I should really post this on my site and link over to it. No need to gunk up his comments.

Be sure to check out the source post — Ethics Guidelines for Public Media Employees — and related documents first. Got it? Then here are my comments.

I’m glad someone is thinking about this in the public media world, but I’m disappointed that traditional journalists got their hands so deeply into this document.

We don’t need a replication of existing “view from nowhere” positioning in journalism. We need fairness and disclosure, yes, but objectivity is not increasing public trust. NPR maintained traditional objectivity right through the right-wing attacks of the last few years and it neither illuminated those situation nor generated more trust in any corner. Objectivity-worship sucked the teachable moment right out of those manufactured controversies.

I could go on for a long time about the perils of objectivity, but Jay Rosen has that waterfront covered, so just read his stuff. Instead, I’ll focus on the real flaw I see at the heart of this document.

It’s related to the objectivity thing, but it’s much simpler. It’s right there in the Principles at the top of the list: “Seek public trust“. Three simple words.

  • Trust is good. We all want that. We need it. It makes the mission of public media organizations easier and more supportable. Trust is an unvarnished good.
  • Public is a pretty good word. I think we’ve lost touch with that word through its overuse; we don’t know what it means anymore. Does “public” mean upper-middle-class college whites? It certainly seems that way in public media. But let’s leave that old argument aside and assume the best around the word “public.”
  • Here’s the problem: “Seek“. You’re telling people to seek public trust. You’re advising that people angle for it, grasp for it, hope for it. By choosing the word “seek” you’re admitting that public media organizations must position themselves, marketing-style, as being trustworthy. They don’t have to BE trustworthy, they just have to seek the perception of trustworthiness. (It’s time to post more “PBS is #1 in public trust” press releases!)

When it comes to social media and real life — and I would argue when it comes to news — you either are trustworthy or you are not. You earn trust. You have trust. You can lose trust. But you don’t seek it. You don’t plan for it. “Seeking” to me sounds like someone who’s trying too hard to be my friend. It feels contrived. And contrivances are not trustworthy.

Those three words — “Seek public trust” — flow from a major problem public media organizations (and newspapers) face today: a collection of older executives that are working to protect an anachronistic empire, managers who’ve inherited a system that has a lot of trust built up from 30+ years of valuable public service, most of which was built before their time. They’re seeking public trust because they’re trying to preserve their own income and status.

Early public media leaders didn’t seek public trust. They just did trustworthy things. They were trustworthy people. Trust adhered to them over time based on the things they did. It wasn’t the color of their logos, it was the content of their characters that made a difference. Do you think Fred Rogers sought public trust? He schemed for it?

To take an unrelated example, look at Apple. Apple has tremendous levels of trust built up with millions of customers. They have a brand with worldwide respect. They’re the best at customer service. They have unparalleled product quality, design, and ease of use. People love Apple. Dis Apple “seek public trust” to get where they are? Did they market their trustworthiness? Or do they instead earn their trust with each well-executed product, each simple service, each box opening? Go look at the last 10 years of Steve Jobs’ presentations. Did he ever talk about trust? No. But he and the company earned it billions of times over.

In the case of social media, public media organizations should ask their employees to be trustworthy, be nice, deal in truth, share the spotlight, and promote — at least some of the time — a better world.

The long list of ethics rules should really be shortened to look like this:

  • Be trustworthy (e.g. think before you post, respect privacy, practice transparency, strive for accuracy and truthfulness, use your “real” voice, be nice, share)
  • Either maintain a healthy congruency between personal and professional behavior or at least recognize that your capacity for maintaining separate personal and private lives is inversely proportional to how public your professional position is
  • Keep in mind your public associations, even fleeting ones, may affect whether others are willing to trust you, so associate carefully for positive and negative returns

And that’s it.

The extra rules in the proposed document are designed for managers of an earlier era. I understand why they’re there. They’re all part of “seeking public trust” through manufactured objectivity and too-earnest striving for legitimacy. Which is a losing game in the long run.

Public media actors should be trustworthy, and let the rest take care of itself.

Closed vs. Open: Why public media struggles with new media

Public broadcasting has always had trouble engaging in the new media world. Now NYU professor Jay Rosen has come up with an explanation that sheds light on media culture problems I’ve seen and experienced.

In a talk at the World Bank earlier this month, he offered “Rosen’s New Media Maxims,” a set of four rules or observations about the media world in which we now live. And the second maxim was particularly illuminating for me:

Open systems don’t work like closed systems; if you expect them to you’ll get nothing but misery and failure

In the case of public media, the “closed” system represents the old way of doing things: broadcasting from a single control point to a passive mass audience and allowing for virtually no feedback or participation. Or when there is a feedback channel, it’s narrow and tightly controlled. While there are regulatory reasons for controlling broadcast signals in this way, the notion of “we broadcast and you watch” pretty much permeates the culture I’ve experienced.

Online media function differently, however, because by their very nature, they’re two-way or multi-way systems. Top-down still works online, but that misses the point and the power of a networked media system. In an online world, media and conversations flow top to bottom, left to right and back again.

In moving online, most of the stations I’ve seen have done so either in a broadcast fashion or they’ve done tiny projects off to the side that don’t threaten the old system (and consequently can’t lead the company in a new direction). In many ways this makes sense — the money is still coming from broadcast-based memberships and advertising, plus the CPB is, well… the CPB and can’t put too much effort toward non-broadcast service.

Given the sturm and drang I’ve watched (and participated in) Rosen’s open/closed maxim stood out as exceptionally true. In this video excerpt, he makes a full explanation then goes into a lengthy answer to an audience question of how to bring openness to a company that’s always been closed:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11972820&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1

Philosophical Differences

So it’s not a technological difference. It’s not a financial difference. Fundamentally, closed and open systems are philosophically different, possibly opposed. One embraces community, drawing in participation and “hosting” conversation and engagement. The other treats the public as a media receiver. Sure, there are some middle grounds here, but this is a big difference that has powered, silently, a lot of conversations in which I’ve participated, without realizing it.

No wonder we struggle with this. No wonder there’s both dismissal of the new as irrelevant to the mission and nevertheless pitched battles over who will control the social network engagements, who gets or shares in the online revenue, and how and when content will or won’t appear online. We’ve been experiencing the “misery and failure” of a closed system trying to adopt an open one, not understanding why it’s not working.

Rosen’s New Media Maxims

In addition to the open vs. closed systems maxim, there are three more Rosen rules, all in this extended excerpt from his talk at the World Bank. Recommended viewing.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11972971&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ff9933&fullscreen=1

The complete talk (more than 1 hour including audience Q&A) is available via YouTube here.

When a PBS journalist attacks

NOTE: Updates added at the bottom of the post.

Late last week the host of a major PBS program took aim, in a pseudo-blog-post, at NYU journalism professor and innovator Jay Rosen because Rosen said he didn’t like that hosts’s program — a weekly talking-heads affair based out of Washington, DC.

I won’t link to the host or their complaint here because they didn’t bother to link to Rosen’s original piece in the Washington Post or his blog or his fascinating Twitter feed. And that host was deliberately ignorant of Rosen’s work, failing to do a shred of research. They didn’t even watch a video of Rosen appearing on PBS a little over a year ago.

But I will link to that insightful Jay Rosen appearance on PBS — with the now-retired Bill Moyers — in which he specifically critiqued the problem of Washington insider journalism, including the many insiders that appear on the outraged host’s program every week (I would have embedded the video here, but the video isn’t embeddable without stealing it). I encourage you to watch, despite the length, because Rosen shares a highly nuanced view of Washington journalists, politicians and their mutual interest in preserving status quo power.

In the reaction to Rosen’s appeal to put this particular insider show out to pasture, the host’s post (yeah, I know this is tedious, but I’m making a point) never referred to Rosen by name, never linked to anything he’s done, including the source article that ticked off the host in the first place, never addressed Rosen’s concerns and in fact reinforced his long-standing critique of beltway insider gamesmanship.

Only calling Rosen “the NYU professor” and failing to link to the source piece is an intentional slap in the face from an elder in what Rosen calls the “Church of the Savvy.” Dismissing his argument simply reinforces his point: that this program, the host and its guests are beltway insiders talking shop rather than helping the public hold politicians to account in meaningful, public-service ways. The host’s total mischaracterization of Rosen’s arguments also proves the prediction that beltway insiders reflexively dismiss outsiders, thus retaining their positions.

I defend anybody’s right to comment on the news of the day – whether it is Chris Matthews or Bill O’Reilly or Larry King or Jon Stewart. I even defend the NYU professor, however misguided he might be.

<sarcasm>How generous of you. Thank God you’re standing up for Jay Rosen’s free speech rights! And you know, you’re right… Bill O’Reilly and Jay Rosen are cut from the same cloth, aren’t they?</sarcasm>

In effect, the host played directly into Rosen’s analysis. But worse, the show’s audience has been denied a serious discussion about the mission of such programs. There may be valid reasons for having an insider show, perhaps as part of a larger programming strategy, but the claim that the show “saves marriages” (I’m not making that up — that’s in the reaction post) is utterly unserious and demonstrates the intense contempt this insider has for meaningful media criticism from a serious and even credentialed source.

What to do?

Look, I’m not on the “cancel this show” bandwagon. It makes viewers happy, which helps bring in the bucks. And for a talking head show, it’s a considerable step above what you get on cable channels. But the demonization of Rosen is breathtakingly ignorant and/or deliberately dismissive at a level unbecoming of a PBS-sanctioned “journalism” host.

I don’t think an apology is in order. I think the next show should have Rosen on as a guest. If you’re not a guardian of the Church of the Savvy, you’ve got nothing to fear. Bill Moyers didn’t shy away from this issue, why should you? And hey — this could be the equivalent of Jon Stewart appearing on CNN’s Crossfire.

Be More: Resourceful

[1] Here’s a brief example (video) of how “savviness” cuts off legitimate debate in the professional press:

http://www.youtube.com/v/ms548AkFP5s&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

[2] And here’s a little more on what savviness is, directly from Jay Rosen.

[3] Meanwhile, if you like talking head shows examining national politics, forget the snoozy Friday evening PBS fare and go for something more entertaining and at least a little further outside the beltway. I highly recommend Slate’s Political Gabfest (also entertaining on Facebook), which has only 1 beltway insider (who also has appeared on the aggrieved host’s show). If you must stick to public media sources, go for Left, Right and Center, which has insiders, but at least it’s from California.

[4] And about linking… Why didn’t the host link to Rosen’s original piece at the Washington Post? Because the host was obeying old-media rules, in addition to being dismissive. Rosen explains the rules in this discussion of outbound linking:

http://www.youtube.com/v/RIMB9Kx18hw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

[5] And if you’ve never seen it, here’s the Jon Stewart appearance on Crossfire that pretty much ended the show. It exposed this extreme Church-of-the-Savvy example for what it was:

http://www.youtube.com/v/aFQFB5YpDZE&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

UPDATE 1: There’s another great Jay Rosen piece, in which he refers to the unnamed PBS program: Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press. And in this piece, he goes on to explain some concepts about how the mainstream press — especially the insiders — defines what ate and aren’t legitimate news and discussion points for consideration in public life.

UPDATE 2: One of my favorite firebrands, Michael Rosenblum, took our subject to task in a seething post that posits our dear host as a member of a doomed noble class.