eastwikkers

I Objective – Reporting vs. Commentary

According to a new Zogby poll (thanks to The Future of News for the post):

“The vast majority of American voters believe media bias is alive and well – 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides.”

And no wonder. News programming today often makes little distinction between news reporting and commentary, and the journalist is often as important as the news itself.

But distinctions matter. Journalism can never be truly “unbiased.” By the time we read any news article or watch any news segment, even the most “objective” news has been run through a series of bias filters. Each news department selects which stories to cover and which reporters to cover it. Each reporter selects which aspects of a story to focus on and which details of all possible details to include in the story. And editors make selective changes to fit a variety of criteria.

But recognizing this inherent bias, doesn’t mean we should stop insisting on some objectivity. Journalists can still choose to report mainly on the who, what, when, where, and why, and refrain from subjective assessment. They can still do their best to be fair and cover both sides of an issue, reporting that some people disagree about reported facts, and quoting the subjective assessments of people on multiple sides of an issue. And news programs (and bloggers who report the news) can still make a clear distinction between news reports and commentary.

This distinction is an important one for me because it goes to the issue of trust. With the blurring of the distinction between reporting and commentary, to trust the news, we must place more trust in the news organization (with all its corporate influences), which can then lead to an abuse of that trust in the form of completely subjective reporting that serves only the bias. If we can’t trust the organizations, then we’re left only with individuals – whether reporters, commentators, or bloggers – and many of these have little credibility beyond zeal. Stephen Colbert’s incredible humor and influence come from playing off this so perfectly, and the fact that some people don’t recognize the Colbert irony is a testament to what they are not recognizing in actual news programming.

And it’s a good reminder for PR pros. While subjective assessment (“the leader in…”) certainly has its place, hype-free objective reporting encourages trust and ultimately coverage.

While I’d like to think the Zogby poll indicates healthy skepticism, I fear it indicates growing cynicism about an environment in which persuasiveness comes all too often from celebrity and the amount of noise one makes.

Wiki Beats the News (For Many)

Check out this article on the Reuters wire, posting some impressive stats on the rise of Wikipedia as a news source (quoted material below).  How do they do it?  We think there are a number of things at play here, including trust.  Wikipedia has become a compelling alternative for many folks who use the Internet to find the best and most recent information on any particular topic.  And Wikipedia's strict adherence to the "neutral point of view" sounds like an ideal that journalism has often tried to embrace but has given up on either because it does not make for interesting copy or simply because it doesn't sell.  Might not work for the news, but it certainly appears to be working for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia recently attracted 22.3 percent of users searching for information on "Gaza Strip," tying the CIA World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/). It has drawn five times more U.S. traffic than Google News, Yahoo News or BBC, according to Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer.

Similarly, in April, Wikipedia tied with CNN.com as the No. 2 most visited site among U.S. Web users searching for details on the new Pope Benedict. Newadvent.org, a Catholic encyclopedia, was the most visited site among people seeking to learn more about Joseph Ratzinger, according to Hitwise data.

Don't Just Publish -- Federate It

While we are on the subject of the long tail, check out The San Jose Mercury News's spread today on John Battelle.  Three articles on the entrepreneur-wonk-journalist-impressario, who is prepping for the release of his new book about the search market....  Battelle, as always, is keeping himself impossibly busy.  In addition to the book, a widely-read search blog, and the upcoming Web 2.0 conference (co-producer), he is launching a new company this Fall, FM, (Federated Media -- check out the "pre-alpha" site), that aims to provide a better way for independent writers to publish and make money on the Web.  We like the word "federated" -- it calls to mind how the word in being used to describe the Deep Web, like here (Groxis = client) -- and we are very interested to see how this particular idea plays out.   There's a very long tail indeed in the world of independent journalism/publishing, and this is perhaps one of the most groupwise ways of wagging that tail.   

Gripe ala Wiki-style

Ed Foster of InfoWorld has decided to open a "reader advocacy" channel as a way for his readers to share opinions and ideas with him. The medium? A wiki!

Ed Foster: "Knowing my readers as well as I do after all these years, the more I heard about wikis, the more I had to agree that it sounds like a very, very good fit."

Visit the GripeWiki

Through a Glass, Lightly

See this week's issue of The New Yorker for a terrific review of Tom Standage's "A History of the World in Six Glasses."  Standage, a technology reporter for The Economist, takes readers on a magical history tour, through the glassy lens of six different beverages:  beer (ancient Egypt), wine (Greece/Rome), distilled spirits (middle ages), coffee (17th century), tea (British empire), Coca-Cola (the American empire).  What drink is next on the historical horizon?  Water, says Standage, noting that Coca-Cola is already earning greater margins from Dasani than from its classic brew.  But The New Yorker worries that bottled water will fail to inspire the great social and political experiments that make Standage's book such a fun read (quoting Horace:  “No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by water-drinkers.”)