Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

The need for “novelty” in a 24 x 7 news cycle, identified by Lewis and Marwick in Megyn Kelly fiasco is one more instance of far right outmaneuvering media comes to the fore in coverage of the recent shooting reported in Capitol Hill shaken by baseball shooting.

Boiled down to the essentials, James Hodgkinson, 66, of Illinois, who is now dead, wounded “House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and four others in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va.,” on June 14, 2017. The medical status of the wounded vary from critical to released.

That’s all the useful information, aside from identification of the victims, that can be wrung from that story.

Not terribly useful information, considering Hodgkinson is dead and so not a candidate for a no-fly/sell list.

But you will read column inch after column inch of non-informative comments by and between special interest groups, “experts,” and even experienced political reporters, on a one-off event.

A per capita murder rate of 5 per 100,000, works out to 50 murderers per million people. Approximately 136 million people voted in the 2016 election so 50 x 136 means 6800 people who will commit murder this year voted in the 2016 election. (I’m assuming 1 murderer per murder, which isn’t true but it does simplify the calculation.)

One of those 6800 people (I could have used shootings per capita for an even larger number) shot a member of Congress.

Will this story, plus or minus hand wringing, accusations, counter-accusations, etc., change your routine tomorrow? Next week? Your plans for this year?

All I see is novelty and no news.

You?

PS: Identifying the “novelty” of this story did not require a large research/fact-checking budget. What it did require is a realization that everyone is talking about the shooting of a member of congress means only “everyone is talking about….” Whether that is just a freakish event or genuine news, requires deeper inquiry.

One nutter shoots a member of Congress, man bites dog, novelty, not news. Organization succeeds in killing 3rd member of Congress, that looks like news. Pattern, behavior, facts, goals, etc.

The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) normally has great headlines but the editors missed a serious opportunity with: Megyn Kelly fiasco is one more instance of far right outmaneuvering media by Becca Lewis and Alice Marwick.

Lewis and Marwick capture the essential facts and then lose their key insights in order to portray “the media” (whoever that is) as a victim of far right trolls.

…

Indeed, research suggests that even debunking falsehoods can reinforce and amplify them. In addition, if a media outlet declines to cover a story that has widely circulated in the far-right and mainstream conservative press, it is accused of lying and promoting a liberal agenda. Far-right subcultures are able to exploit this, using the media to spread ideas and target potential new recruits.

A number of factors make the mainstream media susceptible to manipulation from the far-right. The cost-cutting measures instituted by traditional newspapers since the 1990s have resulted in less fact-checking and investigative reporting. At the same time, there is a constant need for novelty to fill a 24/7 news cycle driven by cable networks and social media. Many of those outlets have benefited from the new and increased partisanship in the country, meaning there is now more incentive to address memes and half-truths, even if it’s only to shoot them down.
…

Did you catch them? The key insights/phrases?

1. “…declines to cover a story that has widely circulated…it is accused of lying and promoting a liberal agenda…”
2. “…less fact-checking and investigative reporting…”
3. “…constant need for novelty to fill a 24/7 news cycle driven by cable networks and social media…”

Declining to Cover a Story

“Far-right subcultures” don’t exploit “the media” with just any stories, they are “…widely circulated…” stories. That is “the media” is being exploited over stories it carries out of fear of losing click-through advertising revenue. If a story is “widely circulated,” it attracts reader interest, page-views, click-throughs and hence, is news.

Less Fact-Checking and Investigative Reporting

Lewis and Marwick report the decline in fact-checking and investigative reporting as fact but don’t connect it to “the media” carrying stories promoted by “far-right subcultures.” Even if fact-checking and investigative reporting were available in abundance, for every story, given enough public interest (read “…widely circulated…”), is any editor going to decline a story of wide spread interest? (BTW, who chose to reduce fact-checking and investigative reporting? It wasn’t “far-right subcultures” choosing for “the media.”

Constant Need for Novelty

The “…constant need for novelty…” and its relationship to producing income for “the media” is best captured by the following dialogue from Santa Claus (1985)

…
How can I tell all the people
about my something special?
Advertise. Advertise?
How do I do that?
In my line,
television works best.
Oh, I know! Those little picture
box thingies? Can we get on those?
With enough money, a horse in a
hoop skirt can get on one of those.
…

In the context of Lewis and Marwick, far-right subculture news is the “horse in a hoop skirt” of the dialogue. It’s a “horse in a hoop skirt” that is generating page-views and click-through rates.

The Missed Headline

I’m partial to my headline but the CJR aims at a more literary audience, I would suggest:

The Media and Far Right Trolls – Imitating Alessandro and Napoleone

Alessandro and Napoleone, currently residents of Hell, are described in Canto 32 of the Inferno (Dante, Ciardi translation) as follows:

When I had stared about me, I looked down
and at my feet I saw two clamped together
so tightly that the hair of their heads had grown

together, “Who are you,” I said, “who lie
so tightly breast to breast?” They strained their necks
and when they had raised their heads as if to reply,

the tears their eyes had managed to contain
up to that time gushed out, and the cold froze them
between the lids, sealing them shut again

tighter than any clamp grips wood to wood,
and mad with pain, they fell to butting heads
like billy-goats in a sudden savage mood.

“The media” now reports its “butting heads” with “far-right subcultures,” generating more noise, in addition to reports of non-fact-checked but click-stream revenue producing right-wing fantasies.

Protecting Your Sources When Releasing Sensitive Documents by Ted Han and Quinn Norton.

From the post:

Extraordinary documentation can make for an extraordinary story—and terrible trouble for sources and vulnerable populations if handled without enough care. Recently, the Intercept published a story about a leaked NSA report, posted to DocumentCloud, that alleged Russian hacker involvement in a campaign to phish American election officials. Simultaneously, the FBI arrested a government contractor, Reality Winner, for allegedly leaking documents to an online news outlet. The affidavit partially revealed how Winner was caught leaking by the FBI, including a postmark and physical characteristics of the document that the Intercept posted.

The Intercept isn’t alone in leaving digital footprints in their article material. In a post called “We Are with John McAfee Right Now, Suckers,” Vice posted a picture of the at-the-time fugitive John McAfee, complete with GPS coordinates pinpointing their source’s location, who was shortly in official custody. In 2014, the New York Times improperly redacted an NSA document from the Snowden trove, revealing the name of an NSA agent.

The first step with any sensitive material is to consider what will happen when the subjects or public sees that material. It can be hard to pause in the rush of getting a story out, but giving some thought to the nature of the information you’re releasing, what needs to be released, what could be used in unexpected ways, and what could harm people, can prevent real problems.
…

Han and Norton cover document metadata, which I omitted in Are Printer Dots The Only Risk? along with some of the physical identifiers I mentioned.

Plus they have good advice on other identifying aspects of documents, such as content and locations.

Despite my waiting and calling for a full release of the Panama Papers, is there a credibility aspect to the publication of sensitive documents?

Another era but had Walter Cronkite said that he read a leaked NSA document and reported the same facts as the Intercept, his report would have been taken as the “facts” contained in that report.

To what extent is journalism losing credibility because it isn’t asking to be treated as credible? Merely as accurate repeaters of lies prepared and printed elsewhere?

WikiLeaks offers $10,000 to get Intercept reporter fired by Joe Uchill.

From the post:

WikiLeaks offered a $10,000 bounty Monday aimed at getting a reporter for The Intercept fired, following the arrest of a government contractor who allegedly leaked an NSA report to the site.

The Justice Department announced earlier Monday that it had arrested Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old government contractor, for leaking classified documents to a news organization. It has been widely reported that Winner allegedly leaked documents from the NSA to The Intercept about Russian attempts to hack U.S. elections officials.

Investigators were able to find Winner in part, according to a government court filings, because of clues gained when an Intercept reporter showed the leaked report to the government.
…

The Intercept article lists four reporters:

• Matthew Cole
• Richard Esposito
• Sam Biddle
• Ryan Grim

From the affidavit for Reality Leigh Winner’s arrest:

…
12. On June I, 2017, the FBI was notified by the U.S. Government Agency that the U.S. Government Agency had been contacted by the News Outlet on May 30, 2017, regarding an upcoming story. The News Outlet informed the U.S. Government Agency that it was in possession of what it believed to be a classified document authored by the U.S. Government Agency. The News Outlet provided the U.S. Government Agency with a copy of this document. Subsequent analysis by the U.S. Government Agency confirmed that the document in the News Outlet’s possession is the intelligence reporting. The intelligence reporting is classified at the Top Secret level, indicating that its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security, and is marked as such. The U.S. Government Agency has since confirmed that the reporting contains information that was classified at that level at the time that the reporting was published on or about May 5, 2017, and that such information currently remains classified at that level.

13. The U.S. Government Agency examined the document shared by the News Outlet and determined the pages of the intelligence reporting appeared to be folded and/or creased, suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space.
…

Why on earth?:

The News Outlet provided the U.S. Government Agency with a copy of this document.

How sloppy is that?

Do you trust the “U.S. Government Agency” given a copy of the document to out the reporter in question?

Or does this give them a free shot at a good reporter and blackmail evidence on the real culprit?

Suggestions?

New York Times public editor Liz Spayd on decision to eliminate her position by Pete Vernon.

From the post:

THE DECISION THIS MORNING BY THE NEW YORK TIMES to eliminate the position of public editor touched off a debate over the value of a position established in the wake of the Jayson Blair fabrication scandal to hold the paper’s editors and reporters accountable to industry standards and reader concerns.

Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. explained the move in a memo to staff: “The responsibility of the public editor—to serve as the reader’s representative—has outgrown that one office.”

According to Sulzberger, “When our audience has questions or concerns, whether about current events or our coverage decisions, we must answer them ourselves.” To that end, the paper will rely on an expanded comment section and social media feedback, as well as a new “reader center,” which was announced yesterday.

Relying on social media critiques and angry voices in the comment sections is a curious way of replacing an experienced journalist who could offer nuance and perspective while writing with the institutional backing of the nation’s most influential newspaper. The move comes at a moment when public confidence in the media is at an all-time low. In a time when the value of introspection and transparency is at a premium, cutting a position designed to provide both smacks of self-satisfaction and a misreading of the current media landscape.
… (emphasis in original)

Vernon’s post deserves your attention but the adage:

Everyone’s Responsibility Is No One’s Responsibility

answers Sulzberger the best.

Can you name a single reader of the New York Times for who holding reporters and the editorial process of the New York Times (NYT) accountable is their day job??

That’s the trick isn’t it?

If it’s not your day job, with resources commensurate to the task and access, how will you “hold” the New York Times accountable?

Will you post to Facebook or Twitter? Exactly how many people do you think will see/consider your “speaking truth to power?”

The public editor, publishing in the NYT, had a voice at least as loud as the editors and reporters.

That was Sulzberger’s real problem with the public editor. He wants the appearance of accountability but not its reality. Critics should be unfunded, isolated, powerless voices that can be easily ignored.

Sulzberger needs to go down on your list of enemies of journalism and the public in general.

Data journalists, start tracking NYT contents for your degradation of journalism stories two or three years hence. (I not presuming an outcome of silencing the public editor, that’s a forecast.)

How Not To Be Wrong by Winny de Jong.

From the post:

At the intersection of data and journalism, lots can go wrong. Merely taking precautions might not be enough.

“It’s very well possible that your story is true but wrong,” New York Times data journalist Robert Gebeloff explained at the European Investigative Journalism Conference & Dataharvest, which was recently held in Mechelen, a city 20 minutes outside of Brussels.

“When I work on a big story, I want to know everything about the topic.” To make sure he doesn’t miss out, Gebeloff gets all the data sources he can, examines it in all relevant ways and publishes only what he believes to be true.
…

The best part of this post is the distillation of Gebeloff’s presentation into a How Not To Be Wrong Checklist.

De Jong’s checklist is remarkably similar to requirements for replication of experiments in science.

It would make a great PDF file to share with data scientists in general.

From a tweet by @onthemedia, see their website: onthemedia.org.

If you follow #2:

2. Don’t trust anonymous sources.

Skip political reports in the New York Times and Washington Post.

Is there a market for delayed news?

I ask because I understand there was an explosion in Manchester Arena in England, 10:35 PM their local. Even as I type this, mis-information is flooding social media channels from any number of sources.

What if there was a news service with a variable delay, say minimum 7 days but maximum of 14 days, that delivered a coherent and summarized version of breaking events?

As opposed to the click-bait teasers that get shared/forwarded/re-tweeted without anyone reading the mis-information behind the click-bait.

Global Investigative Journalism Network has added a Twitter feed in Russian: @gijnRu!

Great way for journalists to learn/reinforce their skills with Russian.

You can rely on The New York Times or the Washington Post as primary sources for the next 1339 days (as of today, Trump presidency) or you can strike out on your own.

As an editor, I would tire pretty quickly of “…as reported in NYT/WaPo….”

You?

The reference to We Interrupt This Newscast and the quote being from @cjr, was enough to get me to read: Oy, the TRAFFIC. And it’s POURING! Do I hear SIRENS? by Simon Van Zuylen-Wood.

First things first, We Interrupt This Newscast: How to Improve Local News and Win Ratings, Too, mentioned without linking by Zuylen-Wood, can be found at: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/939668347 (link is to WorldCat which will display copies held at libraries close to you).

Second, Zuylen-Wood’s definition of the “problem” of local TV news:

…
Local TV news has a problem. Broadcasts are dominated by sensationalistic crime stories, weather reports, and human-interest puff pieces. The format—two plasticky news anchors reading from teleprompters—has not meaningfully changed in 40 years. The end product tends to be irrelevant journalism packaged in an increasingly irrelevant way. The problem isn’t that the product is partisan or under-resourced or “fake.” The problem is that it’s lame.
…

isn’t shared by local TV news directors:

…
“You’d be hard-pressed to find a news director who isn’t saying we need to be [innovating],” Bob Papper says. And yet, none of them really is. “The biggest hindrance to innovation,” he continues, “is the success of TV news. The fact is, it’s doing well, and if anything it may be doing better and better. That’s not an impetus to change.”
…

Zuylen-Woods’ definition is not shared by local TV news viewers, who lap up stories of random, non-repeatable events. Generally speaking people are murdered only once, photogenic teenagers die in automobile accidents only once, tree limbs turn toddlers into life long medical cases only occassionally, although TV news does milk those stories for weeks, months, even years.

Zuylen-Woods is right, local TV news is “lame,” but it’s a product tailored to the taste of willing customers.

If “willing customers” are buying “irrelevant journalism” (Zuylen-Woods’ term), I don’t see the obligation of the media to create products, one assumes “relevant journalism,” for which there is no market.

If you do, is it because you are a better judge of what the public should be reading, viewing, discussing?

Careful.

Beginning with Plato, if not earlier, prescribing better, more appropriate content for others, censorship, has an unhappy history.

Tools and Resources to Help Facts Keep Pace with Fake News by Oren Levine.

From the post:

When fake news moves fast, you need the right tools and resources to help the truth keep pace.

To inspire you to enter TruthBuzz: The viral fact-checking contest, we have collected some useful tools, along with resources that shed light on fake and misleading news and information, and how it spreads online.

During our recent TruthBuzz webinar, my fellow contest judges, Aimee Rinehart, Shaheryar Popalzai and I shared several resources and tools that could be useful in helping you craft your TruthBuzz entry. We’ve also rounded those up here:
…

Enabling people to decide for themselves what is or is not “fake news,” gets my full support.

Filtering or suppressing “fake news” requires others to determine fake/not fake and is censorship whatever other label you want to use.

The resources listed can be helpful and the contest, TruthBuzz: The viral fact-checking contest, does have a $10K, $5K and $2.5K prizes.

A Global Guide to Initiatives Tackling “Fake News” by Fergus Bell.

From the post:

Here’s a list of initiatives that hope to fix trust in journalism and tackle “fake news”.

There’s a lot.

I’ve tried to collect an extensive list of projects, initiatives and tools created to fix trust in journalism and false/fake news and misinformation. This also includes efforts and initiatives around verification. Where possible I’ve also tried to attach where the funding has come from for each initiative.
…

A great resource for tracking efforts with the self-appointed goal of:

Protecting you from “fake news.”

The arrogance of such efforts is almost palpable. They can recognize “fake news” but millions of benighted souls on the Internet are victims in waiting.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the efforts to teach readers how to evaluate information, the source of its reporting and consistency with other sources of information.

However, efforts like that of Google, are an attempt to privilege certain narratives with an imprimatur of truth.

Skip to the “guides” section of Bell’s post and preserve your own judgment in the face of the hue and cry over “fake news.”

Hell hath no fury like The New York Times scorned by Hollywood by Thomas Vinciguerra.

From the post:

GOD, IT’S BEEN SAID, makes a lousy playwright. As far as an upcoming film that spotlights the Pentagon Papers is concerned, though, The New York Times is seething not at the Almighty but at the producers.

In March it was announced that Steven Spielberg would direct The Post, which offers as its backdrop the dramatic story of how the press exposed the federal government’s infamous secret history of the Vietnam War. Liz Hannah, who studied at the American Film Institute, sold her spec script to former Sony co-chair Amy Pascal’s production company last fall. Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, Variety reported, are “attached to star” as Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham and executive editor Ben Bradlee.

But it was The New York Times—not the Washington Post—that broke the Pentagon Papers story. It is the Times whose name is on the landmark 1971 Supreme Court case that affirmed the right to publish the classified documents. And it was the Times that won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service for its labors.

Nonetheless, as its title implies, the Spielberg project emphasizes the ancillary role of the Post. Not unexpectedly, Times people from back in the day are incensed.
… (emphasis in original)

Any mention of The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers brings Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen, E Street Band to mind:

I had a friend was a big baseball player
Back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
But all he kept talking about was

Glory days, well, they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days

Well there’s a girl that lives up the block
Back in school she could turn all the boy’s heads
Sometimes on a Friday I’ll stop by
And have a few drinks after she put her kids to bed
Her and her husband Bobby well they split up
I guess it’s two years gone by now
We just sit around talking about the old times,
She says when she feels like crying
She starts laughing thinking about

Glory days, well, they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days
…

To be sure, The New York Times (NYT) broke the story, fought for the right to publish up to the Supreme Court, but what has the NYT done for you or journalism lately?

The NYT, along with others, did publish the Afghan War Diaries, although sanitized as described by Bill Keller:

…
We used that month to study the material, try to assess its value and credibility, weigh it against our own reporters’ experience of the war and against other sources, and then tell our readers what it all meant. In doing so, we took great care both to put the information in context and to excise anything that would put lives at risk or jeopardize ongoing military missions.

What does that mean in practice? Obviously we did not disclose the names of Afghans, except for public officials, who have cooperated with the war effort, either in our articles or in the selection of documents we posted on our own Web site. We did not disclose anything that would compromise intelligence-gathering methods. We erred, if at all, on the side of prudence. For example, when a document reported that a certain aircraft left a certain place at a certain time and arrived at another place at a certain time, we omitted those details on the off chance that an enemy could gain some small tactical advantage by knowing the response time of military aircraft.

The administration, while strongly condemning WikiLeaks for making these documents public, did not suggest that The Times should not write about them. On the contrary, in our discussions prior to the publication of our articles, White House officials, while challenging some of the conclusions we drew from the material, thanked us for handling the documents with care, and asked us to urge WikiLeaks to withhold information that could cost lives. We did pass along that message.
…

Journalists have a role in supporting “…ongoing military missions[?]”

Pointers to any school of journalism that teaches that role? (Thanks!)

Worse, Keller describes the NYT consulting with and acting as a surrogate for the US government in urging Wikileaks to withhold information.

Isn’t withholding information contrary to creating an informed public?

Crowd-funding opportunity: Francis Ford Coppola directs: From Government Watchdog to Mouthpiece – The New York Times

Ben Child has gathered the forty (40) best lines from the Star Wars saga in: May the 4th be with you: the 40 best lines from the Star Wars saga.

No spoilers here!

Read Ben’s post and support the Guardian while you are there.

Seriously, do support the Guardian. They’re a bit conservative for my tastes but still worthy of support.

Image from the Fourth Estate Journalism Association.

I applaud the sentiment and supporting the Fourth Estate is one way to bring it closer to reality.

At the same time, unless and until The New York Times, National Public Radio, and others start reporting US terrorist attacks (bombings) with the same terminology as so-called “terrorists” in their coverage, “Journalism Is Skepticism as a Service (SaaS)” remains an aspiration, not a reality.