Artificial Intelligence Brings Artificial News

What if the trending news story in your social media feeding was all story and not news? Recently Facebook announced that it would trend toward automated algorithms rather than humans to generate its trending news feed. Facebook deleted its entire editorial staff responsible for writing the descriptions for its Trending Topics. What could possibly go wrong?

How about a totally fictitious story about Fox News’ MegynKelly supposed support for Hillary Clinton causing Kelley to be fired. Any reasonable human would have looked at the source of the story, (End the Fed) and realized that the story was not from a real news source.

One of the challenges facing us today is staying informed about the complex world in which we live. Throughout the 20^th century most people relied on the journalists and the established news media to act as gatekeepers to filter the news they consumed. On the one hand people could have a reasonable expectation that what they saw on the network news or read in a mainstream paper was reasonably true. On the other hand minority viewpoints had a tendency to be stifled. Now anything is possible. Personally I do use a news aggregator (Google News), but I find the results less than satisfying. To make up for it I read two daily newspapers and several magazines.

Where do you get your news? Do you curate your own news feed, or rely on machines? Here is a short list of News Aggregators.

Another One Bites the Dust

How important is it to you to believe your newscaster? A half generation ago the most trusted man in the country was Walter Cronkite the nightly broadcast news anchor for CBS. Now news casters have become the laughingstock of the internet.

Brian Williams “misremembering” of events while covering the Iraq War may well cost him his job. And believe me, it is one of the best jobs in American media. There is currently only room for three anchor positions in nightly broadcast news. His position has earned Brian Williams a net worth of $40 million and salary of $13 million per year.

Here may be some of the last words you will hear from the NBC News anchor, “In the midst of a career spent covering and consuming news, it has become painfully apparent to me that I am presently too much a part of the news, due to my actions… As managing editor of ‘NBC Nightly News,’ I have decided to take myself off of my daily broadcast for the next several days.”

You can read more about Brian Williams’s debacle in the NewYork Times.

By the way, according to a nationwide survey the most trusted person in America is now Tom Hanks.

USA! USA! USA! We’re Number 1! Oh, Excuse Me 46

The United States of America values the freedom of the press so much that it made those freedoms part of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Not the second or third amendment, but the very first one. How could the United States fall a whopping thirteen places to be number 46 in something they pretty much invented? Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden helped, but there is also the Department of Justice's seizure of Associated Press phone records.

For those of you who need help remembering the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, here is number one –

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

McCarthyism in the News

In a recent class we talked about “McCarthyism” and how it relates to the media in general and to the news cycle specifically. Every year I think of deleting it from my syllabus. Whenever I include a topic in my class I ask myself, “How relevant can this be to students today? Then I will undoubtedly encounter the topic within the next week as I scan the media. McCarthy was no different, as Congress moved to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of congress. Many in the media compared Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) probe of the Internal Revenue Service to the tactics used by Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.) and his Senate Committee on Government Operations.

For extra credit I watched the movie Chaplin, where one of Hollywood’s greatest creative geniuses is barred from returning to the United States for his perceived political views.

The World Full of Images

The 2014 Sony World Photography Awards Short list was recently announced. The unique vision of so many individual creative photographers rewards the viewer with an incredible window on our complex world.  According to the World Photography Organization, (WPO) the judges found within the submissions many stories that force the viewer to find something surprising within the everyday.  Winners of this year’s Awards will be revealed at the 2014 Sony World Photography Awards Gala Ceremony on 30 April in London. If you can’t afford the airfare to London, you can see some of the entries at the WPO website. Take a look and be inspired. You can view another gallery of the shortlist here thanks to the Washington Post.

The End of an Old Era Means the Beginning of a New Era

I remember when I first became a Washington Post reader. It was the "Funny Papers" that sucked me in as a young kid. I soon moved on to the sports pages, and then the editorials, mostly because of the great political cartoons by Herblock, Now it is on to the great unknown with Amazon's Jeff Bezos at the helm. For those of you who are history buffs, Walter Pincus has written a fine and concise article of The Post, the sale and the news business.

Spitting in the Wind

Sometimes when teaching my class I have my doubts. Am I the only one that thinks this  material is important? I’ll mention books in class that none of my students have heard of, then the next day find them on a list of important books that the Library of Congress has put together. When I first asked my class about Twitter, no one had heard of it. Now Twitter has half a billion users, including many of the students I teach. For years I have been showing the films of George Melies in class, then Martin Scorsese creates the movie “Hugo” and wins five Oscars.  I’ve been showing the photographs of Lewis Hines in my class for several years now. I came across this item from CBS. It made my hair stand on end.

What's Your News IQ?

In our class we spend a great deal of time discussing why journalism is important in a democracy. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” In essence for a democracy to work to its greatest potential, it needs an informed public. The public has a right to know the issues of the day, but for a democracy to function properly the public not only has a right, but a duty to be as informed as possible.

Take the Quiz Provided by the Pew Research Center

The Washington Post’s Carol Guzy won her fourth Pulitzer Prize. She is the first journalist to do so. Here is the link from The New York Times - BREAKING NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY: Carol Guzy, Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti of The Washington Post
"For their up-close portrait of grief and desperation after a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti."
To see her photos click - Haiti's Profound Sorrow

Sports Fun

Had enough culture for the day? Good, let's have some fun. Here are 32 Great Calls. No, not blown calls by the referee. Great calls by announcers covering some of the most memorable sporting events of the last 60 years. Some of the clips I've seen many times before, but check out number 6 Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes in 1973. I don't even care about horses, but I know greatness when I see it. The other clip not to be missed is number  7, Victor Hugo Morales on the greatest goal of all time, Diego Maradona’s second goal against England in the 1986 World Cup. You don't have to love soccer to enjoy this one, trust me. What's your favorite clip?

Gatekeeping in action

The secret profiles commissioned by the Pentagon to rate the work of journalists reporting from Afghanistan were used by military officials to deny disfavored reporters access to American fighting units or otherwise influence their coverage as recently as 2008, an Army official acknowledged Friday... From the Stars and Stripes 8/29/09.

In studying the media you often hear the word Gatekeeper. Imagine all the news items of the day as flock of sheep in a holding pen. The shepherd is the editor, publisher, cameraperson, reporter etc. that decides which sheep make it through the gate to get fleeced/published.  Not satisfied with that simple arrangement the United States Army decided to hire a Public Relations firm to be Gatekeepers to the Gatekeepers. According to Maj. Patrick Seiber, spokesman for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, "We’re not trying to control what they report, but we are trying to put our best foot forward.” In other words "we are trying to control what they report." Unfortunately the Pentagon forgot to control the reporters for The Stars and Stripes. As stated on their web site "Stars and Stripes is a Department of Defense-authorized daily newspaper distributed overseas for the U.S. military community....Editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command. " For their reporting on this subject  Charlie Reed, Kevin Baron and Leo Shane III won a George Polk Award for Military Reporting. If you are interested in excellence in journalism and current affairs go to the List of all the Polk Awards for 2009.