My opinion on the plenary at #picamp

If you don’t know what #picamp is, then take a look at this. It was an unconference about how to improve politics, organised by Slugger O’Toole. We had our own session about reasoning and critical thinking in politics for Belfast Skeptics, you can read about that here. The whole day was really good overall, but I had some reservations about the session after lunch, which was a panel-based discussion apparently about why old-media journalism p0wns blogging and is full of win. Or something. Anyway, I didn’t taken many notes so I can’t remember completely the content of the talk, but it was frustrating.

The plenary felt like a bitching session about blogs and blogging, which was really bloody pointless. Ideas like “bloggers can’t be held accountable” and “bloggers don’t check their facts” and the notion that news media will survive without changing its ways are all seriously short-sighted and foolish. As one participant (possibly Will Perrin) pointed out, the panelists were all tarring all bloggers with the same brush, while suggesting that the integrity of journalists were second-to-none. After this was suggested, the debate was altered somewhat to take this into account, but it’s a key point: there are very few investigative journalists left in the mainstream media (MSM). Similarly, the overwhelming majority of blogs are not worth printing.

But there are some real gems there. Maman Poulet and The Story are two examples of that. It was claimed that bloggers don’t hang on to stories and continue pecking away at them, but that’s utter crap. You can easily say the same about MSM; the vast majority will run stories that are relevant to the moment and then move on. This was addresses in the discussion; it’s a huge financial commitment for a newspaper to release a journalist to spend a few days or weeks working on a story that might lead to nothing. Bloggers, on the other hand, tend to earn a grand total of zero cent from their blogs. Most of them are just works of passion and a desire to stop being fooled by bullshit. Look at Tuppenceworth and their probing in to Your Country Your Call. If you think that the MSM is going to survive in the future, you ought to have a better plan than just holding tight and slagging off blogs.

There shouldn’t be a “them versus us” debate there. There is no debate, the Internet and blogs are going to exists. They’re going to get news out faster than MSM can ever do and they’ll do a far better job at “niche” news than any non-speciality journalist will. Bloggers are competing with MSM and MSM shouldn’t feel the need to compete with bloggers. When I read a blog, I want opinion. When I read a newspaper, I don’t want opinion. I want fact. One problem is that newspapers are so swamped with opinion pieces, celebrity scandal and partisan news reporting that I don’t bother reading any of that crap. I also think that newspapers are a huge waste of paper. They’ve a shelf-life of, what, 12 hours at most? If I get a tablet device, I’ll probably read more papers, ’cause that way I can digest the stories easier.

So, there we go. The discussion annoyed me. I can see where the panellists where coming from; their industry is changing rapidly and in a way that is totally out of their control. Fear is gripping newsrooms around the world. Lashing out at the “bloggosphere” won’t help that.

Comment below to give your opinion.

~ Conor

 

Passion and Emotion

I heard Mick Nugent talking on the radio the other day, speaking in his role as chairperson of Atheist Ireland. He was talking about the place of the Angelus on RTÉ and how it has been pretty much exactly 60 years since it was first introduced (on 15th August 1950).

Anyway, he mentioned that the Angelus was something that didn’t annoy him. The show’s presenter appeared to instantly assume that this meant that Mick didn’t actually care about the topic. This idea worries me. The thought process goes like this: You do not feel angry about a topic, therefore you do not care about the topic, thus there must be an ulterior motive for your involvement in the debate. Otherwise why get involved at all? The Angelus debate is only a small part of the overall campaign for secular government and national media. This is clear.
However, the notion that you have to be angry or distraught about something in order to campaign for or against it is just foolish. The best debates are by those with cool heads; heightened emotion clouds judgements and prevents rational thought.
What I suggest and assume is that this concept is symptomatic of the current paradigm of news reporting and news media stories at the moment. Anecdotes, personal opinions and vox-pops are all the rage. You can’t move for hearing “It’s disgraceful Joe, it’s terrible Joe”.
Personal stories are moving and emotive. They are far more convincing than data and rational arguments. I can accept that; it’s well-established in social psychology literature. Surely, though, it’s utter foolishness for emotion to argue emotion.

 

Dear News Media

Dear News Media,
I am not stupid. I am not that ignorant of how the world works. I can understand fairly complex scenarios, even those that include what may appear to be morally ambiguous characters. I can understand that good people do bad things sometimes, and that this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are bad people. I don’t need you to label every individual according to some weird moral code that you’ve made up and that you think I agree with. I don’t want you to give criminals cool nicknames. I don’t want you to document in meticulous detail each move of a clearly mentally unsound person who stalks a school killing people. I don’t wan’t you to provide 24 hour coverage of not-very-much-happening in the hunt for so-and-so. It doesn’t make me feel safe or even sane! I don’t need you to label every “controversy” in the same banal manner; Wagergate was fine, but Cowengate, Bigotgate, Climategate, Monotonous-Idiotic-Storygate? How does that help? Why would that make a news story easier to understand or more accurate? The only thing it does is create a bizarre narrative that makes it appear that all the stories are connected somehow, and all that does is make me think that the whole bloody world is immoral and out to get me and lie to me and deceive me!
I also don’t care what your readers think. Now, don’t get me wrong – I think user-generated content can be exceptionally powerful. When the news cameras can’t get to a scene in time, or when an individual captures something really amazing, the story is really improved. However, why the hell would I care what James, 32, from Donnybrook thinks about NAMA? Is that really going to help my knowledge of a very complex issue? I don’t care about Joe the Plumber, the motorway man, the soccer mum. What does that add to the narrative?
So that’s me. Don’t give me stupid names for the people you’re reporting on. Don’t make me feel stupid by giving every story the suffix “gate”. And please, I don’t pretend to be a journalist. Don’t pretend that the random vox-pop punters have wildly important things to say.
Thanks,
Conor

 

Overreacting

Overreacting to the outbreak of a new disease can, to a certain extent, be somewhat predicted. Then again, so can the news cycle of the story. At this point, we’ve had the initial panic, the over-reaching dooms-day forcasts and now we are moving to the realisation that it won’t really be that bad and that it is being quite well contained. The abrupt about-turn of various media sources will be done with their normal fluid penchant for “reporting the news”. See here for today’s headlines in the UK papers. Unfortunately they went to press before the American media started to pick up on the fact that swine flu isn’t actually as petrifying and deadly as it seemed at first (see here for a CNN headline)

As reported in that CNN story, approximately 36000 people die every year from seasonal influenza in the United States. So far this year there have been 13000 deaths. And swine has yet to kill a single person there. So why the panic?

I think it has something to do with who we expect to die. I’ve either read a book or watched a documentary that was talking about the difference between people’s reactions to the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who die annually throughout the world compared for example with the 3,000 odd people who died in the 9/11. We’ve no problem with the soldiers dying, because they are expected to do so, but a normal day-to-day average Joe dies and they’re appalled and terrified. Here, we expect old people to die from the flu and from life in general, so when we hear that 13,000 people have died from flu this year we think “Well, they were old, it was their time”. Compare this to swine flu deaths, which appears to have a huge effect on young people. While roughly a hundred and fifty deaths are attributed to flu like symptoms in Mexico (and only seven confirmed deaths from swine flu at time of writing) when you take the young profile of victims and combine it with the rec ency of knowledge of the disease it can trigger mass outrage and panic. Young people are dying from a flu virus? That’s not supposed to happen!

So people overreact. I’m not saying that we should ignore any advised being given by the WHO and government organisations. Be safe. Just… Don’t Panic.

 

In other news, my friend Adrian (of Aide in France fame) has started a new blog for when he gets back to England after Erasmus. He intends it to be his opinion on the media in the UK, heaping praise on the righteous and condemning the hyperbolic wicked. I might have made that last bit up. Have a look at his blog, here’s one of his posts. It’s called the Daily Fail by the way. Nice name, that.

 

Violence and the Media

What a cheery note to start your Monday. Sorry it’s been so long. I suck.

Have a look at the video found here; in particular at the portion starting at 5 minutes and 24 seconds (It’s only about 3 minutes long). Watching this, the obvious point to note is the juxtaposition of what Dr. Park Dietz (the forensic psychiatrist) has been advising the media do for the past 20 years and what has actually been done for the past 20 years.

In the video, he has suggestions for what the media can do to reduce the likelihood of copycat murders.

Don’t start the story with sirens blaring, don’t have photographs of the killer, don’t make it 24/7 coverage, do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story, not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero, do localise the story to the effected community and make it as boring as possible to every other market because every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murder we expect to see one or two more within a week

This, it would seem, is the exact opposite of what mainstream news channels achieve. In an interesting article about him from 1994, Dietz had something similar to say about other media outlets.

Dietz takes the popular media and their effects on behavior seriously. He believes that slasher movies, violent television programs, and news reports–especially television news reports–contribute to American society’s problems with serial killers, sexual sadists, stalkers, and product tamperers.

I would imagine that defending a new channel would invoke arguments of freedom of press, human interest and the necessity of propagating information (can anyone think of any others?). Similar to reporting on such mass-murders is the reporting on suicides. The media’s treatment of a suicide can also profoundly affect its aftermath. The phenomenon of “cluster suicides” has been quite well studied and is very much dependant on how people who have committed suicide are portrayed. Conspiracy theories aside, Kurt Cobain’s death was represented as illogical, foolish and contemptible. Marilyn Monroe was seen as beautiful, in her prime and glamorous. While there were very few copycats (in terms of method and profile) of Cobain, there was a cluster of young (primarily blond) women who committed suicide following Monroe’s death, most of them in similar a manner.

Photo owned by Andrea Peverali (cc)

Am I suggesting that we censor the media? No, of course not. I do think, however, that journalists need to take responsibility for what they portray. The words that one writes and the images that one shows can have a profound and lasting effect on an audience. There’s a good guide here for journalists about reporting suicides (found here.), which I will summarise as:

• Avoid sensational headlines, images and language
• Publicising details of suicide methods can encourage imitation
• Avoid speculation, especially about ‘celebrity’ suicides
• Consider context
• Challenge myths about suicide
• Mention suicide prevention agencies

With such guidelines being in place for suicide as a result of evidence of the media’s influence, perhaps we need similar concrete and evidence-based advice for reporting events such as school shootings? Any opinions on this?

Maybe I should think about turning this into what I study. Ah psychology, how mystifying you are to me.

 

Late Late Show this Friday

Apologies for the lack of updates, I am currently studying in France for the year, and settling in has taken a lot of time and energy. In a wonderful turn of events, Daragh and I will both be appearing on the couches of the Late Late Show this Friday. It’s all on the basis of the media attention that we received about a month ago, and more specifically the Today with Pat Kenny show. It starts at 9.30pm on RTÉ One. We’ll be talking about ourselves, our family and the Civil Partnership Bill. It should be good fun, so make sure to tune in and show your support!

I hope to do another update soon comparing different countries around the world on the basis of recognition of same-sex relationship . Check back here within the next week, or just sign up to the RSS feed.