I have beeen wanting to get into this for the past few weeks.
NEWS ITEM: The U.S. military is "secretly" paying Iraqi newspapers to run positive stories (written, apparently, by U.S. soldiers) to fight what the military called "misinformation."
And a lot of people are upset by it. Huh? First a quote or two from the Christian Science Monitor story on 12/1/05.
"Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it," said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.
And
"In the very process of preventing misinformation from another side, they are creating misinformation through a process that disguises the source for information that is going out," said John J. Schulz, dean of Boston University's College of Communications and a veteran journalist. "You can't be creating a model for democracy while subverting one of its core principles, a free independent press."
Now, I'm no fan of most public relations (or the war in Iraq), but isn't that really what's being done? Simple PR?
Subverting a core principle of a free independent press? If we cut out the placing of favorable stories in the news media, a lot of flacks would have to get real jobs. Maybe I am missing something.
Now, the president's OK of the NSA spying on us -- and we DO believe him when he said that all civil liberties were protected -- that's a horse of a different color.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Here comes the image
Are we heading toward a world of the image and leaving the word behind? It is a distinct possibility.
In a long essay at The New Atlantis web site, Christine Rosen presents some intriguing ideas about what the ascendacy of the image over the word may mean. One point that Rosen covers is the easy falsification of reality through photographs and software such as Adobe's PhotoShop. It used to be that a photo caught the world with complete accuracy. But now, with digital cameras and programs like PhotoShop, what we presume to be reality can quickly and easily be manipulated and, therefore, the meaning altered.
Mitchell Stephens, a professor at NYU and author of The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word, suggests something even scarier: he says that in the future, people will read and write less, relying instead on images "as the predominant means of mental transport." Sounds too much like Fahrenheit 451 to me.
Granted, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but a manipulated picture is a different (dare I say it?) story altogether. I think manipulation of another's thoughts is more easily accomplished by the image, in part because humans are visual animals and soak up image information voraciously, and in part because today, "image is everything." As Rosen points out, there was that old Canon camera ad campaign with Andre Agassi saying that exact phrase. We are told to dress with success, that first impressions (i.e., before someone really gets to know you), and we ignore the admonition that we "can't judge a book by its cover." Apple's iPod is a best seller, not because it's the best product or best buy, but because of its looks, its image.
Images are powerful, more powerful than words in today's nearly post-literate world. With their power comes this ease of manipulation, which scares me. Thinking takes words. Those with command of the language will be better equipped to recognize when someone is trying to manipulate them. Those who rely on images will be more easily fooled.
Rosen has some great examples -- it's well worth reading if you are involved with the presentation of information. Click on that link up above.
Now, instead of feeling somehow inferior that my web site has few images and is mostly words, I am going to feel good about it. I'm doing my small part in putting a finger in the dike.
In a long essay at The New Atlantis web site, Christine Rosen presents some intriguing ideas about what the ascendacy of the image over the word may mean. One point that Rosen covers is the easy falsification of reality through photographs and software such as Adobe's PhotoShop. It used to be that a photo caught the world with complete accuracy. But now, with digital cameras and programs like PhotoShop, what we presume to be reality can quickly and easily be manipulated and, therefore, the meaning altered.
Mitchell Stephens, a professor at NYU and author of The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word, suggests something even scarier: he says that in the future, people will read and write less, relying instead on images "as the predominant means of mental transport." Sounds too much like Fahrenheit 451 to me.
Granted, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but a manipulated picture is a different (dare I say it?) story altogether. I think manipulation of another's thoughts is more easily accomplished by the image, in part because humans are visual animals and soak up image information voraciously, and in part because today, "image is everything." As Rosen points out, there was that old Canon camera ad campaign with Andre Agassi saying that exact phrase. We are told to dress with success, that first impressions (i.e., before someone really gets to know you), and we ignore the admonition that we "can't judge a book by its cover." Apple's iPod is a best seller, not because it's the best product or best buy, but because of its looks, its image.
Images are powerful, more powerful than words in today's nearly post-literate world. With their power comes this ease of manipulation, which scares me. Thinking takes words. Those with command of the language will be better equipped to recognize when someone is trying to manipulate them. Those who rely on images will be more easily fooled.
Rosen has some great examples -- it's well worth reading if you are involved with the presentation of information. Click on that link up above.
Now, instead of feeling somehow inferior that my web site has few images and is mostly words, I am going to feel good about it. I'm doing my small part in putting a finger in the dike.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
The voice of reason
You ever notice that whenever anyone agrees with you, he or she becomes "the voice of reason?" People who disagree, are, of course, idiots or at least severely misguided.
Anyway, I have been ranting for years that cutting newsroom budgets to try to stanch the downward spiralling circulation figures and attendant financial bleeding is seriously wrongheaded. This past week, Kathleen Parker, a Tribune Media Services columnist, wrote a column that supports my contention that, in Zen-like fashion, worrying so much about the bottom line ruins the bottom line.
"By cutting newsroom staffs, the corporate suits are reducing the likelihood that papers can do what makes them necessary," Parker said. "Instead of cutting where it counts to satisfy shareholders, corporate honchos should be infusing newsrooms with more money to hire more staff. . . ."
As I have said before, cutting staff from the newsroom is like taking people off your production line and then wondering why production numbers are down.
Parker: "When revenues go down, the calculator crowd reasons, you cut costs. But to those in the trenches, cutting staff is exactly the wrong decision, more like a self-inflicted wound trending toward suicide than a remedy."
I would really love to see a publisher have the guts to say to shareholders: wait for it, this investment will pay off handsomely in the long run, even though immediate numbers might not look good. Other businesses do it all the time.
Why won't newspapers listen to the voice(s) of reason?
Anyway, I have been ranting for years that cutting newsroom budgets to try to stanch the downward spiralling circulation figures and attendant financial bleeding is seriously wrongheaded. This past week, Kathleen Parker, a Tribune Media Services columnist, wrote a column that supports my contention that, in Zen-like fashion, worrying so much about the bottom line ruins the bottom line.
"By cutting newsroom staffs, the corporate suits are reducing the likelihood that papers can do what makes them necessary," Parker said. "Instead of cutting where it counts to satisfy shareholders, corporate honchos should be infusing newsrooms with more money to hire more staff. . . ."
As I have said before, cutting staff from the newsroom is like taking people off your production line and then wondering why production numbers are down.
Parker: "When revenues go down, the calculator crowd reasons, you cut costs. But to those in the trenches, cutting staff is exactly the wrong decision, more like a self-inflicted wound trending toward suicide than a remedy."
I would really love to see a publisher have the guts to say to shareholders: wait for it, this investment will pay off handsomely in the long run, even though immediate numbers might not look good. Other businesses do it all the time.
Why won't newspapers listen to the voice(s) of reason?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)