Activity tagged "media"

Posted:

people talk about “the media” and “journalists” and they picture the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or cable news.

and sure, “the media” is the Big Five. but it’s also non-profit newsrooms, independent journalists, international and/or non-US publications, worker-owned media collectives, bloggers, local newsrooms, citizen journalists, podcasters, critics, community radio stations, documentary filmmakers, trade publications, freelancers, fact checkers...

if you applaud attacks and legal intimidation against “the media” and “journalists” because you are picturing the former, remember that it is ultimately the smaller fish who will suffer the most from it.

Posted:

don’t let the failures of some (major) news outlets disillusion you with media as a whole. and especially don’t let those failures desensitize you to attacks on free expression.

we can criticize media failures while also fiercely defending media freedom.

it is scary to see people responding to trump’s baseless lawsuits against the NYT and others with a shrug because of their complaints about those outlets’ coverage of him.

we can oppose lawfare against media institutions and also hold those institutions properly to account for poor coverage.

allowing authoritarians to target media institutions you don’t like only works until they decide to start targeting the ones you do — often ones with far fewer resources than the NYT and its ilk.

Posted:
The drumbeat of legal threats signals a potentially ominous trend for journalists during Trump’s second term in office. Litigation is costly and time-consuming. Most news organizations will look to settle rather than face months—more likely years—of discovery and depositions, plus significant legal fees.
“It is both conscious and unconscious. Journalists at smaller outlets know very well that the costs for their organization to defend themselves could mean bankruptcy. Even journalists at larger outlets don’t want to burden themselves or their employees with lawsuits. It puts another layer of influence into the journalistic process,” [Anne Champion] said.

Perhaps the CJR editors decided it went without saying, but it feels worth mentioning that — if Trump’s appointments go as planned — he will have the entire judicial branch to bring to bear on journalists, not just his wacky lawyer neighbor.

"Trump Threatens New York Times, Penguin Random House over Critical Coverage".
Lachlan Cartwright in Columbia Journalism Review.
Legal letter follows complaints aimed at CBS News, the Washington Post, and the Daily Beast. 
Posted:

"There should be newspapers that we work at where we do this"

Bit of a heartbreaking comment from Jonathan M. Katz (also of The Racket), who was the first to note that Senator Katie Britt had apparently brazenly lied while recounting an anecdote in her bizarre State of the Union rebuttal.

There should be newspapers that we work at where we do this.

And then the other piece of it is, there is this good aspect to the democratization of media. In some ways it’s nice that the barriers to entry are lower, because there's nothing to enter into.

The good news is no matter what your background, no matter where you come from, you too can make no money.

His interviewer comments, "You can starve also."

He agrees: "You too can starve by posting crap to social media. So that's good, I guess."

"There should be newspapers that we work at where we do this".
Maria Bustillos in Flaming Hydra.
Read:
"Tim Burke's Indictment Is A Political Choice Disguised As A Legal Act".
Jay Willis in Defector. Published .
The government’s choice to prosecute Burke for doing what journalists do reflects an alarmingly sclerotic conception of what it means to do that work. It’s one that has serious implications for the future of an industry already in turmoil. The digital age will yield more Tim Burkes—people who have the skill to track down newsworthy information in the dustiest corners of the internet, and the opportunity to share it in order to better inform the public. The more reason they have to fear FBI agents knocking on their door, the likelier they are to stop, sigh, and close the browser window instead.
Read:
"The Vice Media Collapse Was Entirely The Fault Of Incompetent, Fail-Upward Brunchlords".
Karl Bode in Techdirt. Published .
This, somehow, often gets distorted into the “unforeseen challenges facing modern online media ventures today” by a feckless press pretending to ascertain what went wrong without pissing off management. When it comes to financing Vice journalism and keeping the lights on, the problem wasn’t the people doing the actual fucking work. Nor is it the costs of doing actual journalism. ... But again, if you read most mainstream analysis of the Vice collapse, executive incompetence is either downplayed or simply nowhere to be found. Instead, the collapse of Vice, like most mismanaged modern U.S. media companies, is often left causation free, somehow the unfortunate, unforeseen consequence of ambiguous externalities in the thankless job of informing the public about factual reality online.