Coursey on IP (with MY comments :-)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Paul Levy <plevy () citizen org>
Date: September 23, 2005 6:13:27 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, david_coursey () ziffdavis com
Subject: Re: [IP] Coursey on IP (with MY comments :-)


Here are the snippets that got me:

 which caused both the head of communications at NPR and a producer  
at "This American Life" to take the time to issue their  
organizations' response.

and

Responding to these questions and allegations takes someone's time
and, frankly, most people have better things to do than respond to
wacky Internet posts.

That is the power of the Internet that I adore.  Important folk who  
otherwise couldn't be bothered worrying about criticisms of their  
institutions from the nobodies have to take the time to respond.

If Coursey reads your list, he would know that you are not engaged in  
Internet journalism in the sense that he means, but that you provide  
a forum for messages that you think your readers may find  
interesting, and for RESPONSES and debate about those messages.   
Those of us who do read your list expect the responses (and remember  
them)

Coursey wants to confine broad publicity to the old-fashioned, highly  
intermediated publication where there are fact-checkers before every  
story goes out.  If you don't have time to check, don't report.   
Thank goodness that era has passed.  Not that there aren't dangers,  
but I say this is progress.  This is, indeed, the marketplace of ideas.

But wait, does Coursey really think that?  Take a look at the END of  
his article as shown on eweek.com -- isn't that a blog?  And although  
I don't see any forum at the end of Coursey's own article on  
publish.com, you can register as a "member" at publish.com and you  
get the opportunity "to post to message boards and article  
talkbacks" (not to speak of the opportunity to get "special offers"  
from Ziff-Davis and its partners.  http://www.publish.com/join/ 
0,1213,,00.asp?success_page=/article2/0,1895,1862256,00.asp

Does someone fact check every post before it goes up there?  Do  
Coursey and his publishers put up blogs to make his columns more of a  
destination, and to attract readers (who will see their advertising?   
You of course don't make any money off your list).  Do Coursey and  
his publisher profit from the very process that he criticizes?


Paul Alan Levy
Public Citizen Litigation Group
1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-1000
http://www.citizen.org/litigation


> > > David Farber <dave () farber net> 9/23/2005 5:36 PM >>>
He sent this to me and I disagree djf

First newspapers often  do not check that well and they have
exstensuive staff to do so.

But more important. Within 2 or three hours we had authentic
information on how NPR operates and that this was an unintentional
error on a stations part. HOWEVER IF I HAD THE RESOURSES TO CALL
AWAY , iy mau jave been days to track down that info.

Sure online news has noise but the normal press has a bad case of
ignoring some criticla news or news which is PC.

Also Coursey can unsub IP i

Dave


Begin forwarded message:

From: Aaron Dickey <ald () frantic org>
Date: September 23, 2005 3:53:26 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Coursey on IP


FYI... If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was talking about IP!
--Aaron

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1862000,00.asp

and

http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1895,1862256,00.asp

The Downside of 'Citizen Journalism'
September 22, 2005
By David Coursey

I am not a big fan of the "citizen journalism" being practiced on the
Internet these days. One of the tenets of "real" journalism is that
you don't distribute information that hasn't been checked. Citizen
publishers are under no such obligation, so the information that
winds up in blogs and distributed on mailing lists must always be
considered suspect, even if sent with the best of intentions.

Why does this matter? Because false information, once distributed,
can never really be called back. You can distribute a correction, but
some number of people will never see it. To them, the original story
will always be the truth. The nasty allegation will never be answered
and questions will remain.

Responding to these questions and allegations takes someone's time
and, frankly, most people have better things to do than respond to
wacky Internet posts. And sometimes there can be so many posts that
it's impossible to respond to them all. Or the question may never
even get to a person capable of answering it. This is the information
age's equivalent of justice delayed being justice denied.

The Internet holds quite an attraction for people who don't think
things through and who offer their perhaps well-meaning but ill-
informed speculation to the masses. These people should be checking
their facts rather than putting out a question that should never have
been asked in a public forum. Not that I have a problem with
questions, people tell me I ask way too many of them. It's just that
public questions can lead to erroneous conclusions.

I am writing because of an example I ran into a few days ago. In the
great scheme of things, it's not a very big deal. It doesn't matter
what mailing list this occurred on. It's the issue, not the
individuals involved, that deserves discussion. I'll just say the
list goes out to tens of thousands of readers and is mostly comprised
of information sent to the list's moderator for redistribution.

Here's the post that concerned me. It regards National Public Radio.

"Subject: NPR Censors Katrina Report?

"A week or so ago, (this list) forwarded a personal memoir by two
paramedics who were" treated badly by New Orleans authorities. (I am
fuzzing this so as not to repeat a serious allegation I can't vouch
for).

"While driving home yesterday, I chanced upon an interview with
several Katrina survivors on our local NPR station during their
regular Sunday afternoon feature. The second person interviewed was
one of these paramedics, and just as she was getting into the really
awful events she experienced, NPR cut the feed for that story, and
replaced it with one from several months ago regarding poverty in
Latin America. After about ten minutes of this new 'replacement', I
turned off my radio.

"An e-mail inquiry to my local NPR station has so far gone unanswered.

The post leaves the reader thinking that NPR may have censored a
report it somehow considered too negative to broadcast (I suppose),
and the station is covering up by not answering the poster's e-mail.
I suppose this is possible, but it is highly unlikely.

This message went to a big list, with lots of influential people on
it (some of whom seem a tad paranoid at times), so the posting got
forwarded to NPR, whose "head of communications" responded that the
network didn't censor anything and has itself broadcast critical
reports and tough post-Katrina interviews.

A more definitive answer came from the producers of the popular "This
American Life" program which had, in fact, broadcast the interview in
question on hundreds of stations and knew of no attempts to censor
the broadcast. If a station had wanted to "censor" the program, it
could have simply not carried it at all and replaced it with another
week's episode. (NPR, by the way, does not distribute the program and
has no say whatsoever in its content.)

Eventually, someone who understands broadcasting weighed in with the
likely real answer: Many radio stations are run by computer,
especially on weekends. Radio station computers, as I know from my
own radio experience, sometimes screw up. Type a command wrong or hit
a software glitch and a program can end right in the middle, just as
seemed to have happened here.

This posting and what followed isn't the worst example of Internet
nonsense I've come across. Everything here is totally innocent and
well-intended.

In the old (pre-Internet) days, the poster might have called a
newspaper to express his censorship concern. My bet is the newspaper
would have checked the story out, probably learned about a computer
screw-up at a public radio station, notified the NPR listener that
their concern appeared unwarranted and that would be the end of things.

The newspaper would not have distributed such a story to tens of
thousands of readers until it had something like an answer that
supported the implied allegation of censorship. Why? Because many
readers would accept the accusation as being "true" and never see the
follow-up.

This question should never have been distributed to thousands of
people without investigation or comment. But, once this nonsense was
in the public domain it needed a response, which caused both the head
of communications at NPR and a producer at "This American Life" to
take the time to issue their organizations' response.

Over a period of days, this ill-informed question wasted a lot of
people's time*some of whom will never figure out that NPR didn't
censor anyone.

I don't believe the moderator of the list did anyone a favor by
passing the question to such a large audience. There should have been
some investigative work done and, if warranted, the results shared
widely. As a newspaper editor, that's what I would have done. Such a
course would have saved many people's time, would have prevented a
small chip in NPR's reputation, and would have improved the
Internet's credibility.

What I have described isn't a really big deal. While I can't prove
censorship didn't take place*it's always hard to completely rule out
any possibility*it seems like what we have is a well-intended
question that didn't need to be so widely asked.

The harm done wasn't major and wasn't intentional on anyone's part.
Fair-minded people can argue that no damage was done at all. But,
Internet publishers should realize that sending 10,000 copies of an e-
mail isn't that much different than throwing a newspaper in front of
as many homes.

Newspapers and mainstream publications certainly have no an exclusive
on quality content and credibility, but Internet publishers could
still learn a lot from them.





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