Tag: News

Our Current Situation: The Power of the Powerless

REINVENTING THE NEWS: It’s no secret there are substantial problems with news, ‘the media’, journalism, etc. The right criticizes and mocks MSM (mainstream media) while the left criticizes and mocks ‘corporate media.’ The Venn diagram overlap here is large. Yet, our news structure continues because of the misbegotten notion that if they are pissing off everyone, they must be doing something right.

It’s time for a reinvention.

Let me recommend James Tyner’s “Dear news media: Create news for people who have never read a newspaper” as a good place to start.

“For young people who are just trying to learn about the world around them — people who were previously uneducated about Medicaid or who owns which conglomerates or the history of elections — it’s important to provide information that is as complete as possible. And more importantly, it’s important to show diverse perspectives that are unlike those they already hold.”

My dream news media combines C-Span (for primary source civic information), Wikipedia (for background and context and history), Vox (for explanations of unfamiliar topics, preferably something a little more neutral that accurately explains the various positions held by the different players), dedicated journalists (to doggedly investigate), and smart pundits to offer their perspective on how this fits the bigger picture.

I’d also like a pair of pundits, clearly marked ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ that attempt to make their opponents’ argument in a way the opponent agrees is a fair interpretation.

I’d also like some follow-up. How did the story end up?

The newspaper was once ephemeral, tomorrow’s fish wrap. This had a profound, and in many ways, negative impact on news/journalism/reporting. Online news is persistent and should do a better job of providing civic information and education that’s of value to everyone.

More student suggestions can be found here.

POWERFUL: I’ve been reading Vaclav Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless,” and it’s well worth reading as a reminder of what life is like under a totalitarian government, and the power the people have to resist.

“You do not become a ‘dissident’ just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.”

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PRAGMATIST DEMOCRACY: In my parallel news universe pundits interview Christopher Ansell so I have a better understanding of what he means by ‘pragmatist democracy.’

“Drawing inspiration from the philosophy of Pragmatism, this book argues for a new “problem-solving democracy,” where public agencies build consent for public policy by engaging the public in active problem-solving. More so than legislatures, public agencies serve as linchpins between popular sovereignty and on-the-ground governance. For pubic agencies to play a different role in democracy, we must re-imagine how they function as organizations and interact with the public.”

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MONEY MONEY MONEY: Tom Perez is now chair of the DNC and there’s a lot of work to do. The Republican Governor Association is out-raising the Democrats, and have already started raising money for Virginia’s governor race.

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BARBARA JORDAN: “We are a party of innovation. We do not reject our traditions, but we are willing to adapt to changing circumstances, when change we must. We are willing to suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future. We have a positive vision of the future founded on the belief that the gap between the promise and reality of America can one day be finally closed. We believe that.” — 1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address

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GOVERNOR TO SENATOR: You’ve probably seen this tale of Trump’s dinner (and his childish taste for overdone steak covered with ketchup) but what I found intriguing was the presence of Governor Rick Scott. Scott will be term-limited in 2018 and Trump wants him to run against democratic Florida Senator Bill Nelson. Nelson’s not a flashy Dem, but he’s a good soldier and a reliable vote. I doubt there’s anyone in Florida who could beat him in a primary, but I’m not certain he wins against Scott.

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THIGH-HIGH POLITICS: Lauren Duca continues her consciousness-raising at Teen Vogue with a regular column titled Thigh-High Politics. In this edition she points us to the handy Resistance Calendar by Michael Moore. There looks to be about 35 organizing/protest events today across the nation.

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MISINFOCON: Excellent wrap-up from MisInfoCon.

Find out more about MisInfoCon here.

“At MisinfoCon, a summit this past weekend hosted by the First Draft Coalition, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, and Hacks/Hackers, the focus was on an immediate and executable range of actions: checklists, educational campaigns, tech solutions, community engagement projects, diversity efforts, and improving business models.”

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AGAINST EMPATHY: Understanding is important. Empathy? Not so much.

“I want to make a case for the value of conscious, deliberative reasoning in everyday life, arguing that we should strive to use our heads rather than our hearts.”

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OUT OF TIME: That’s it for this week. It’s already a long week, and it’s only Wednesday.

Information Feed

At the end of 2016 I culled and weeded, reduced and cut my garden of information feeds. At the beginning of 2017 I’m looking for new sources of information.

What should I add to my information diet? What blogs, webpages, RSS feeds, twitter feeds, news sources, websites, television programs, podcasts, etc. should I consider?

Weasel Words

A key strategy for identifying ‘fake’ or misleading ‘news’ is to look for weasel words. I put fake and news into quotation marks because weasel word writing is common in the most prestigious news sources, especially in the op-ed columns.

Wikipedia has a good list of weasel phrases to watch out for.

Examples
“A growing body of evidence…”[13] (Where is the raw data for your review?)
“People say…” (Which people? How do they know?)
“It has been claimed that…” (By whom, where, when?)
“Critics claim…” (Which critics?)
“Clearly…” (As if the premise is undeniably true)
“It stands to reason that…” (Again, as if the premise is undeniably true—see “Clearly” above)
“Questions have been raised…” (Implies a fatal flaw has been discovered)
“I heard that…” (Who told you? Is the source reliable?)
“There is evidence that…” (What evidence? Is the source reliable?)
“Experience shows that…” (Whose experience? What was the experience? How does it demonstrate this?)
“the person may have…” (And the person may not have.)
“It has been mentioned that…” (Who are these mentioners? Can they be trusted?)
“Popular wisdom has it that…” (Is popular wisdom a test of truth?)
“Commonsense has it/insists that…” (The common sense of whom? Who says so? See “Popular wisdom” above, and “It is known that” below)
“It is known that…” (By whom and by what method is it known?)
“It is recommended that…” (Who is recommending it? Upon what authority?)
“Officially known as…” (By whom, where, when, and who says so?)
“It turns out that…” (How does it turn out?[e 1])
“It was noted that…” (By whom, why, when?)
“Nobody else’s product is better than ours.” (What is the evidence of this?)
“Our product is regarded as…” (Regarded by whom?)
“Award-winning” (What type of award, when was it given and by whom?)
“A recent study at a leading university…” (How recent is your study? At what university?)
“(The phenomenon) came to be seen as…” (by whom?)
“Up to sixty percent…” (so, 59%? 50%? 10%?)
“More than seventy percent…” (How many more? 70.01%? 80%? 90%?)
“The vast majority…” (75%? 85% 99%? How many?)

When writing, be specific. When reading, look for writers who use specific language and avoid generalizations and vague pronouncements.

Headlines are part of our news problem

No one has time to read every article. We read synopses, abstracts, tweets, and headlines to get the gist of what’s happening. To save time and space we take a pernicious short-cut. We say Republicans when we mean many or some Republicans. We say ‘the left’ when we mean many, most, or some on the left. We say women when we mean some-but-not-all women.

This is the fallacy of composition.

Description: Inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. This is the opposite of the fallacy of division.

Logical Form:

A is part of B
A has property X
Therefore, B has property X.

Until we can be more specific and accurate with our civic language we will never cross the communication divide. If I want to get a better understanding of conservative arguments, I reject them immediately when they that something is true of ‘the left’ or liberals, that I do not believe.

Civic communication, on a broad scale, will improve if we, and the headline writers of the world, follow the simple maxim — Be Specific.