Comments on: YOUR GOVERNMENT ON TWITTER

By: afischer

afischer — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:12:35 +0000

I know a lot of people have been trumpeting the “professional journalism is dead” trope but I see it more as a reaction to the proliferation of new technology. Basically the top ten stories of the day (the ones that it takes no effort to report) that take up 90% of TV airtime are now reported nearly instantly for free online by no less than several million people. This seems to have pushed a lot of big journalism houses into “blogger” mode where they have extremely high credulity at the expense of letting some garbage through in order to report things as fast as possible.

This also seems to bring out one of the things that people love about blogs but deplore in media and that is letting your personal passions and biases leak through.

By: MbF

MbF — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:44:54 +0000

Why my post went under this article and not under the one about reporting on the Soviet incursion into Georgia, I have no idea. A slip of the digit perhaps… MbF

By: MbF

MbF — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:42:53 +0000

Yes, as my sister the journalist opined today, “Professional journalism is dead,” by which I assume she meant objective/factually based journalism as opposed to the “interpretive” journalism that began to come into vogue while she was still in journalism school. Plus our journalists, much less our populace, are too myopic to see as far as Georgia, in any case–your pappy and yourself happily excluded from this generalization.

But my sister was reacting to the hoax about Palin reported by the mainstream media which was an outrage, whether you care for her as a politician or not. MSNBC had the temerity to claim that it was “a victim” of the hoax, though they did not do a single thing to check out the source which was patently ridiculous on its face. I think that makes them a negligent perpetrator of the hoax.

The supposed McCain campaign insider had said he was affiliated with a non-existent think tank which should have been easily verifiable as false. Another journalist on a talk show dismissed the seriousness of the reputation-damaging false reporting as inconsequential, as Sarah Palin had made other remarks (unspecified) which made the information reported in the hoax believable. So it was her fault.

As a former cub reporter for an award-winning paper myself (okay, the awards were actually for technology, not for investigative reporting), I take a great interest in journalism and deplore the current loss of standards of objective reporting. Though I appreciate that your father is trying to hold the fort and award the best.

Well, I’ve gotten quite a bit off the subject, but there you have it. -MbF

By: afischer

afischer — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:17:18 +0000

It seems to be a widely flouted set of rules… though they are “official.” I am not acquainted with the niceties of the current rules but they seem to be at least somewhat malleable.

The real tragedy is that they seem to be manipulated more politically than practically which is the real problem.

By: acosta

acosta — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 06:33:15 +0000

this is all very interesting. first:

>> “The rules forbid posting to any website that contains politicking or advertising (i.e. pretty much every website) in their “official capacity” and posts must include a disclaimer identifying the poster as a representative. The 140 character cap on Twitter prevents that. The rules also apply to blogs, youtube, and other social networking sites.”

Why wouldn’t the user profile associated with the account deal with this issue?

secondly: how about the google “feed” of what obama and mccain are reading? obviously a bit different, but certainly related.

thirdly: how bout some international perspective? anything like this going on outside the US? i know there are at least a few vdov readers who are living abroad these days.