Tag: New Journalism

Goodbye #GamerGate

Via Twitter, I happened upon Rob Pegoraro’s post — A grab-bag of #GamerGate responses — and his comments rang true after following the story for a while and after getting attacked on Twitter by sock-puppet accounts operated by the young and the deluded. #GamerGate has been a big deal in the tech world for a while now, but I think we’re finally seeing it die.

Here are my own thoughts after reading Rob’s piece, and after more than a week of watching this train wreck…

You’re either naive or lying

The call for a “pure” form of games journalism — one free of graft or political intermingling of producers and reviewers — is either

  1. driven by hard-core gamers that tend to be young and poorly informed about the world, or
  2. an intentional cover-up of the deep and ugly misogyny that started the whole GamerGate mess, or
  3. a little Column A, a little Column B

Every industry, every job, and every aspect of public life has ethical dimensions. Some people walk one side of the line while others walk the opposite. That’s life. You have to assess which side a given writer is coming from and take an appropriately-sized grain of salt with what they say. It’s true for every form of journalism, commentary, blogging, prognosticating, business, politics, relationships — everything.

People talk about the cozy relationships of the press and the political class all the time. It’s the subject of TV and radio shows, blogs, books, podcasts, speeches… there’s an endless discussion about ethical dilemmas created by these relationships (and rightly so). But they don’t slap “-gate” at the end of every media analysis show and then threaten to kill a few women for participating in the conversation.

So either GamerGaters are deeply naive about the real world — which is lamentable but means we can ignore them — or this violent call to arms over ethics is really just a cover for the violence itself.

Or, again, a little Column A, a little Column B.

When attacking women, the safe word is “ethics”

I suspect this #GamerGate mess can be boiled down to a simple sequence of events brought about when both kinds of GamerGaters (the naives and the misogynists) came together around the hashtag itself. The “pivot” from misogyny to ethics worked like this:

  1. A few prominent games voices took note of several things surrounding the dissolution of the gamer identity via the arrival of new thinkers, producers, and ideas as the games world expanded. With just a few posts, the scapegoating and anger quickly gelled around those “outsiders”: women, and especially women that took public positions out of step with hardcore games culture. There were some interesting elements in this phase that focused on ethics, but they were relatively minor. Still, this is where the naives and misogynists first teamed up, but for different reasons.
  2. The attacks quickly went way over the top, driven by the misogynists, which attracted attention from responsible writers in the games world. Once cooler heads showed up saying, “You guys are disgusting…” the naive attackers realized, “Maybe this doesn’t look so good from the outside…” and turned their attention to the journalists themselves and cried out, “It’s about ethics!” And there’s just enough meat on that bone to make a soup, so it’s the perfect diversionary pivot.
  3. As #GamerGate flame wars continued to expand (and get automated with bots), it even got the attention of mainstream journalism and culture, but not in the way the GamerGaters hoped. Everyone — outside of hardcore misogynists and naive GamerGaters — was utterly horrified. The full-on mainstream cultural backlash began, including articles in major publications that exposed the horror and didn’t give a rip about any #GamerGate reactions. (Sadly the games press was stunned by the controversy and couldn’t mount an effective backlash themselves.)

Game Over. Insert 25 cents to continue.

So that’s where we are today: #GamerGate Over. Even celebrities are speaking out against it.

The only folks still beating the “games journalism ethics” drum at this point are folks that don’t yet realize the war is over and #GamerGate lost: the naives and the folks that feel guilty for saying some truly awful things.

Pro Tip: If you want to discuss games journalism ethics now — and by all means, go for it — you’ll need a new hashtag. This one’s ruined.

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.

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.

Healthcare, journalism, racism, obscenity and the FCC

While Americans have gained a national health care plan, something darker has been unleashed. Racism in American political life has been emboldened by the attacks on the administration allowed on certain media. Meanwhile the FCC takes refuge behind 1st Amendment rhetoric and concerns itself with “wardrobe malfunctions” rather than assaults on democracy perpetrated by so-called journalists.

via nowthedetails.blogspot.com

Former NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin is always enlightening to follow.

Wow! KQED drops out of news project

Current has the news that KQED is out of the Bay Area News Project and the NY Times is in.

Personally, I’m fairly disappointed in this turn of events. Perhaps KQED will tell its side of the story in the days to come.

So far, all that’s available is speculation and back-room chatter.

Do old media journalists really want to go digital sooner?

lifebeyondprintThanks to @kegill for pointing out a new report from Northwestern University on how print journalists are feeling about the transition to digital. It suggests there’s plenty of people in the old media wishing their owners / managers would move to digital models faster.

I worked with some journalists in public radio for several years. And public media managers. And while there was plenty of lip service given to new media, the truth was no one wanted to change their methods or outputs and would, when pressed, criticize new journalism work as merely partisan blogging by people with no sense of professional journalistic ethics or objectivity. Sadly, the non-movement to digital models was happening while mass media everywhere was missing story after story while the Bush administration and Fox News led them astray.

What’s been your experience? Are most broadcast and print journalists you know troubled by slow adoption of new media reporting? Or is the resistance still overwhelming?

You can download the 4MB PDF report here.