Chris, Mary, and Brendan are in Philly tonight to preach the Open Source gospel at (yet another) public radio conference, and we figured this was as good a time as any to rebroadcast our show from this past June about journalistic soul-searching.
The genesis of the show was then-NPR Obudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin’s comments about the pitfalls of mainstream journalism’s obsession with fairness and balance. We had Dvorkin on to talk about it, along with some journalism school thinkers and a media critic.
A few days after this show originally aired, Dvorkin announced that he was stepping down as NPR Ombudsman to become the Executive Director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists.
We’ll be back live — fair and balanced (as always!), and skeptical and refreshed — on Monday.
Thank you ROS for re-airing this excellent program.
For those unaware, it generated the one of the most thoughtful and insightful commentary threads in ROS history.
Here’s the original thread: http://www.radioopensource.org/truth-balance-and-the-news/#comments
And here’s my extensive appreciation of the thread, posted on an unofficial ROS supporters’ side-site:
http://www.frappr.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4976511#4976511
Thanks Nick.
Jay Rosen was good. The discussion excellent I agree.
Wanting news “with edge” is another way of saying we want news ( especially me re NPR) to take a stand, a point of view, to take responsiblity, and to defend it with investigative reporting. This does not at all mean bias.
Was the intelligence on Iraq was “sexed up” and “cherry-picked”? As was suggested on the show there’s a project that needs to happen to as we wait for the more controversial parts of the Senate report to emerge.
I heard that AirAmericaRadio is filing for bankruptcy. It would be interesting to hear a discussion of why they are having problems.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/13/air-america-bankruptcy/
I loved this show… the FIRST time around!
Guys, if you’re aiming for the internet savvy and offering OpenSource both as podcast AND streaming audio, rebroadcasts are useless. Everyone goes on vacation, but come on. It’s lame just to hoist a re-run up there every time Chris goes out of town. Terry Gross gets away with it on Fridays because she has a huge archive to splice together, but even she gets someone to fill in when she’s away. You all need to develop your bench.
Okay- I’ll take over
Anyway I listened again ( believe it) because that’s what we were supposed to be listening to last night ( for some reason) and so since I was interrupted towards the end I went to the podcast to finish. This time around we have all the intervening stuff to add to reflection. Coincidentally a radio broadcast today featured Eric Umansky on his article from the current Columbia Journalism Review on this subject precisely Failures of Imagination.
What is true and what is significant are two different matters. Everybody agrees that journalists are supposed to ascertain the truth. As for deciding what is significant, reporters and editors make that judgment, too, all the time — what story leads on the front page, or gets played inside, what story gets followed up. And when it comes to very sensitive material, like torture, many journalists would prefer to rely on others to be the first to decide that something is significant. To do otherwise would mean sticking your neck out.
Sorry. That link for the CJR Umansky article: http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Umansky.asp
If the press want to keep digging a hole for themselves in the credibility department, then this is the path they definately want to go on. Perhaps they should reflect on why even congressmen and personal injury lawyers are more well respected than journalists.
“Terry Gross gets away with it on Fridays because she has a huge archive to splice together, but even she gets someone to fill in when she’s away. You all need to develop your bench.”
Actually, Terry Gross ALSO has too many reruns. She’s constantly rebroadcasting interviews she did 10 or 15 years ago.
I agree that the answer here is to develop a bench. WBUR’s “On Point” has a several alternate interviewers to replace Tom Ashbrook when he’s away. This is the internet – there’s no need to ever have reruns because we can make our own reruns by downloading archived copies.