Chief executive officer Tom Glocer – “Trust in the Age of Citizen Journalism”
The comfortable one-way model of publisher to editor to journalist to reader has changed forever. There is no turning back. It kind of happened before our eyes, but like those frogs slowly boiling in water as the heat is turned up, we may not have noticed – unless of course you run classified ads at the local paper.
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So this is a fascinating time to be running a media company. The model has changed in many exciting ways. Not only is the internet providing a low-cost, almost free publishing channel. But it is has transformed how information moves around the world – we no longer have a choke-hold on the flow of information, whether technological, professional or financial.
We don’t decide what people see and when they see it. They have demanded and created the Two-Way Pipe.
He speaks candidly about the Adnan Hajj doctored photo scandal, the problem of staged “fauxtography”, and its broader implications for the industry;
So what does the Hajj incident tell us? There are three key lessons:
The first is accountability. The upside of the flourishing blogosphere is that beyond our own strict editorial standards, there is a new check and balance. I take my hat off to Charles Johnson, the editor of Little Green Footballs. Without his website, the Hajj photo may well have gone unnoticed.
The blogosphere provides accountability. They’re not always going to be right. Indeed, many of the accusations levelled at traditional media are partisan in nature – but some are not. We have to listen to the bloggers – we shouldn’t ignore them.
The second lesson is about the trust of our audience. We learned at Reuters that the action of one man – a man who wasn’t even a full-time staff member – could seriously hurt the trust in our news, built assiduously over 155 years. His stupid decision to clone smoke cost us.
We learned that your reputation is only as good as the last photograph you transmit, or the last story you file.
The final lesson we learned was this – more than ever the world needs a media company free from bias, independent, telling it as it really is, without the filter of national or political interest.
A refreshingly piece, even if you find yourself disagreeing with his broader assessment about the objectivity of Reuters.
As utopian it would be to have a completely objective, free from bias media company, this is an impossiblity.
Human beings by their nature are coloured by their experiences, and as a result the organizations that they create are molded by this bias.
What would be more realistic, are organizations that clearly identify the opinions and allow the readers to view the stories they provide us through that lens.
One of the greatest strengths of the new two way media is the ability for each individual to hear a variety of interpretations of an event and come to their own conclusion.
I pose this as a thought. If i am staning anywhere in the southern hemisphere and a I trip, an unbiased reporting of that incident would be required to report that I fell up wouldn’t it?
I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest I am representative of the average media consumer but, if I were, the “enemedia” is in trouble. I am absolutely fed up with their manipulation and bias and outright lies. I do still check the newspaper headlines and I even turn the TV news on from time to time, but I’m only interested in a quick read of the headlines. I spit on their columnists, *patooie*, and I go straight to the internet for details and analysis. I’ve got over 50 current events and political blogs bookmarked and, after extensive review, I draw my conclusions as to the significance of the news of the day. The Globe & Mail, CBC, CTV, aren’t even on my radar, they’re ignorant bigots, liars.
The message is slowly filtering through to the ivory towers of world information disseminators.
The internet blogosphere has crashed the MSM gatekeepers barrier and is demanding truth in reporting.
Personally I am waiting for Canadian MSM to give us the truth about the effects of implementing Kyoto on the Canadian economy.
A subject that has not been given fair coverage in Canada by our MSM.
Well, you won’t get it, because the Canadian media drones are all in favour of massive government intervention into the economy for the sake of “Kyoto”. Greatly increased government bureaucracy means a hope of high paying jobs for life for journalists in the civil service, it’s their career ladder.
“We learned at Reuters that the action of one man – a man who wasn’t even a full-time staff member – could seriously hurt the trust in our news, built assiduously over 155 years. His stupid decision to clone smoke cost us.”
One man? One incident? Give me a break. Reuters has been brought up short on countless incidences of distortions, omissions, biases and outright lies. Worst are their biased photo captions that proliferate Yahoo News. Even their financial reporting, I’ve long noticed, is garbage. They got outed big time with the Hajj incident just like CBS with Rather, CNN with Eason Jordan, and AP with recently. There is no contrition with these folks. Glocer’s comment “the model has changed in many exciting ways” is more than hilarious when you realize it’s written from a position of just having your ass kicked by a bunch of nobodies.
And if this isn’t rich in irony, the only comment on Glocer’s blog is from this “photojournalist”:
“How will you trust amateurs to not stage photos or to not arrange/move items in a scene or to avoid being influenced or directed by political or PR actors at the scene? While nothing is 100% sure, at least most professional photojournalists have journalistic ethics training and the goal to at least strive for objectivity”…
Got that. The Great Unwashed aren’t ethically trained. The MSM as they are today can’t disappear fast enough.
He writes that “The final lesson we learned was this – more than ever the world needs a media company free from bias, independent, telling it as it really is, without the filter of national or political interest”
But as another poster commented, this simply isn’t possible in the MSM. That’s because the MSM is, by definition, a unilineal and one-way structure of information transference. Information moves from their site A to you, site B. That’s it.
The internet, on the other hand, is multilineal and multilateral. Information moves to you, Site B, from many, many sources, A, B, C, D…x,y,z. These sites all can interact with each other as well. And – Yes, it moves from you, Site B, as well, because you provide feedback to many sites.
The Internet is a complex adaptive network. Information is constantly moving from site to site, it is updated and changed at these sites, discrepances are removed – and may be added, but will be removed at other sites. The movement is not linear but non-linear, the information criss-crosses various sites and data bases.
Almost immediately, a fault is picked up and commented on; the information is changed..etc, etc.
The MSM structure is not complex but simple. They move information from their site to you. No change is possible because the structure isn’t set up to enable new information input and changes to the interpretations.
Therefore, the MSM structural nature means that it can’t compete with the Internet for accuracy, for increased data about a situation, for interpretive relevance etc. That’s why the MSM is increasingly moving into pure fiction, writing ‘texts’ by Authors (eg, Reuters, AP, Canada Press, CBC, CTV, Globe and Mail, Star, NYT, etc)…which they still claim are about reality – but are increasingly being exposed as fiction.
What is the future role for the MSM, given the limitations of their structure?
“What is the future role for the MSM, given the limitations of their structure?”
Liners for birdcages… oops that already being done.
“What is the future role for the MSM, given the limitations of their structure?”
Foils for bloggers.
Bloggers do multilinear and multilateral processing of facts, opinions. Something Intel dreamed up when it designed cpus, is called parallel processing; only now with information it is made of multiple streams in real time by multiple parties across the Net.
In short, the populace can’t be ‘dumbed down’ as before, the response times are too quick. If one is a politician it is not a good time to be a liar and think that no one will find out about it.
Except, Actor, some organizations do a much better job of checking their biases than the MSM.
Our legal system, we expect jurors to leave their biases outside of the courtroom, psychiatry, medicine, science, the ministry….most actions by those folks are not commonly suspect as biased.
The unraveling of the MSM is their advocacy, their agenda journalism, which started in the 60’s. It permeates everything in that industry.
I pose this as a thought. If i am staning anywhere in the southern hemisphere and a I trip, an unbiased reporting of that incident would be required to report that I fell up wouldn’t it?
Only if you are writing for Applied Physics. But, I think there was something that you wanted me to ponder with more existential depth in that one. Sorry, not my thing.
Note to Mr. Glocer: Horses already gone; don’t bother to close the barn door.
Frankly I think it is a bunch of tripe. This is an artilcle written for appearance sake. Rueters is no more changed as a result of Hajj scandal than the Liberals are after electing a new leader. The same culture that created their problems still exists underneath. Looks like they share the same speech writer with the Libs as well.
Now that he’s dealt with this nasty little intrusion, handshakes all around the executive boardroom and back to business.
Tom Glocer writes an interesting and thought provoking piece, although perhaps a bit late. Trust once lost is very difficult to reestablish. In Canada the MSM is further hampered by a national broadcaster which is very biased and yet completely unaccountable. If a Liberal supporter like Don Newman is used as a reporter, or a reporter like Christina Lawand can submit fictitious accounts without getting fired, it lowers the bar for all reporting. At that point the political hacks writing for the Globe don’t seem so unfair.
Since it is in the nature of those who say they are conservative to favor a non-existant past where, in fact, things were less favored economically, and much worse politically than today with the changes laregly to be attributed to those the conservatives attack.. Why it stands to reason the cons will almost always be in difficulty finding decent reasons to support whatever they are clamoring for at the moment. The tendency to embellish will be strong. So I guess all this fascination with doctored pix is a sort of family story among the cons. Those who may be enraged with the practices of the killers whom the cons support have no great interest in all that. It is known who bombed Lebanon, invaded it, murdered many of its population, starved thousands, and even tried to dismember the country and keeps on lying about the whole thing to this day. No need to throw in pix, though I seem to remember some really horrific ones…but I am not sure if they were pix of Israeli killers, or American ones. Is there a difference.
The final lesson we learned was this – more than ever the world needs a media company free from bias, independent, telling it as it really is, without the filter of national or political interest.
All I have to say, is to reiterate an old saying.
“If you want to give God a good belly laugh. Tell Him your future plans”.
I can here a resounding bellow, as the Creator of the multiverse quivers in mirth over this bit of grandstanding, as to in their future intent.
The MSM is not an interactive ‘information feed’ system which as was previously pointed out in comments,dooms it due to newer and better technology.
This is not to be lamented as replacement technology has been happening since time immemorial.
Examples would be the steam engine,milkman,longbow,spear, eight track tapes; the list goes on !
Yes and some day even the automobile will be put out to pasture as a mode of transportation like the horse of say 100 years ago.
Technology is never at a standstill; always improving upon itself.
The MSM conversly is not improving and as an old technology has journalistic arthritis and can’t keep up. Hence it has resorted to faking it.
This piece is of course a generalisation and we all know that there is a host of other ailments that should be factored into the equation but that’s for another day.
My suggestion for any journalist of any political persuasion is to get hooked up on the internet because yes that is the future of the trade.
“it is in the nature of those who say they are conservative to favor a non-existant past”
Sheer projection from someone who is ignorant about history, a really stupid comment.
“where, in fact, things were less favored economically, and much worse politically than today with the changes laregly to be attributed to those the conservatives attack”
Yeah right, during the last 150 years communists and dictators and anarchists sure did a lot to improve economies and politics while conservatives did nothing.
I won’t even touch on garhane’s profoundly ignorant and obviously bigoted comments on Israel’s self-defense.
Textbook example of a dumb Jew-hating lefty, thanks for sharing and have a nice day.
Sorry to everyone and to our host, I’ll try to remember… DNFTT. Sometimes I just wish all blogs censored and deleted as aggressively as leftwing sites like Rabble.
garhane there are 2 kind of Israeli killers the ones who blow themselves up in restaurants, buses, markets and other public places, killing innocent women and children, have you seen the pixs? Or the ones who hide in schools, hospitals, playgrounds were they launch their rockets from at more innocents Israeli’s. The American killers look about the same accept they do not call themselves Hezbolla or Hamas
alan, you and I are supposed to ignore trolls.
But, it did make me think about the evolution of blog media. It is perhaps inevitable that comments be aggressively edited. If this form of media grows, and it will, comment sections will become unwieldy, and administration will be required. The truly dumb comments and cheap shots and trolling will perhaps someday be consistently deleted, just to keep the place readable. For example, Tim Blair or Little Green Footballs, sometimes I just can’t face mouse-clicking into two or three hundred comments.
this is the golden age of the blogs.
enjoy it while you can, it will be run thru a meat grinder at some point by the powers that be.
the fauxtography will be indiscernable because it will be the software doing the fine tuning on the image at the general direction of the professional full time paid fauxer.
it will all be up for grabs, and it will be grabbed by the highest bidder.
on the other hand, if youre going to be blamed for something anyway, you may as well have the enjoyment of doing it !!!
hmmm. penny gives me this notion:
the pace at which technology has brought blogs into existence (cliche alert !!!) means the traditional MSM, which got on the road to its present form in the 60s, (I agree with that assessment) is way way too slow to reposition itself and discard old habits and biases.
MSM is doomed like the 70 tonne dinosaurs of antiquity.
they are DOOMED.
After seeing boiling frogs in just about every weather chan … err … make that climate change piece and now seeing Glocer using the same boiling frogs … decided to check it out.
Seems he can’t even use facts in his speech.
http://tinyurl.com/yyec44
garhane, you twit, there are no Israeli or American troops in Lebanon, just Hezbollah funded by Syria mobs agitating in the streets of Beirut, trying to bring a democratically elected government down. Your stupidity lies in your inability to match your dumb drivel with the facts known even to the dumbest of rabid anti-Semitics and pro-Hezbollah. The “starved thousands” is a giveaway you are an idiot, probably posting from a college campus, too insulated and clueless to even know you are an idiot. It happens regularly.
I agree with Penny’s comment at 5:17 PM
The Reuters headlines at Yahoo are incredibly biased; even their business news has a negative spin. If an American company is performing well the headlines will still find a way to talk only about some obscure problem the company is having. A while ago I wrote the Yahoo investors relations people about it, asking why do they use Reuters .. I only got a form email back. But, things have changed for the better, we now have options on how to set the headline feeds at Yahoo.
I’ve switched most of my Yahoo headlines to the Wall Street Journal. This is about the only paper in the world whose editorials are in line with the way I think. It has a conservative bias. Competition works.
nomdenet – Amen to that. I’ve written Yahoo too for what it’s worth. I beseech anyone that owns a stock, go to Yahoo Finance, read three or four off the wire simulanteous news stories listed on that stock, one Reuters and compare. The morons at Reuters are so venially consistent in their negative spin on American companies, capitalism in general, it’s laughable.
I’m hoping that these smarmy MSM feudal lords keep dying by a thousand paper cuts delivered by bloggers.
That the MSM is corrupt, biased to the Left and focused on bad news is not in doubt. That they constantly seek out the downtrodden and then someone to wail for govmit help is also not in doubt. Even if they have to doctor the news. They are desparate to foster and promote this type of journalism. But why ??
As one commenter pointed out, this seemed to start in the 60s ? Is that true ?? It certainly has taken hold the last decade.
Could we simply be describing the hippy movement ? It also started in the 60s. Did they migrate to the best industry to do their protesting and adgitating ? What better soap-box than CBC and others.
Patrick Moore has stated that the environmental movement was taken over by wacos after the Berlin Wall fell. Lots of lefties looking for orgs to promote their ways.
First, find a problem, even if it is a dubious one.
Second, blow it all out of proportion.
Third, play up those supposedly disadvantaged by the establishment.
Fourthly, demand govt, taxpayer help and in the process give the cushy, utopian lifestye jobs to the cop-outs.
Sound familiar ?? Sound like Kyoto ?? Could this be why the media supports the scam ?? In fact Maurice Strong has said the environmental movement was the best hope for World Socialits and World Governance ideas. Was the corruption of the media started and promoted by the Hippy movement ??
“was the corruption of the media started by the hippie movement?”
There is a way to connect the dots to show how that might have developed:
Starting with the Vietnam War and the baby boomers who were caught up with the hippie movement.. .make love not war.
Followed by Walter Cronkite on CBS news who lied that America lost the Tet offensive and that caused President Johnson to lose his will to fight on, he caved in and the Viet Cong who lost on the battlefield won on the TV screens in America’s living rooms.
This ushered in the era that the media could run Washington.
The Liberals and Trudeau discovered the same power of TV shaping opinions for those who only have 20 minutes a day to think about world events during the evening news.
Many examples every since have caused a gradual ginning up of the relationship of TV visuals that show emotions which in turn connect to a point on Kyoto or
A TV shot showing Harper shaking hands with his kids and therefore proving to many that he was “scary” and incapable of love for Canada.
This is real powerful stuff that can shape public opinion.
The kind of people that could never run a business or get elected are attracted to changing the world by working in the MSM and promoting the only antidote to capitalism that they can come up with … Moe Strong, Kyoto, world government , cultural relativism ,blah blah blah.
It’s not a grand conspiracy. It just developed over time that way. But until Blogs came along it was politically incorrect to even discuss the possibility that the cabals of people who worked at Reuters, the BBC, and the New York Times were all groupthink. They hate diversity of thought. Kate would not get hired at the New York Times which drives the headlines in the USA. She would not get hired because the groupthinkers would not share her view of the world.
Kate: if you *ever* make a public appearance based on your increasingly known role as a prominent blogger fercryinoutloud let us know !!
Don’t feed the troll, and soon he’ll be as dead as the drive-by media…
“What is the future role for the MSM, given the limitations of their structure?”
The same role they’ve always had – entertainment for gullible lazy brains.
The descent of the MSM to its current level is recent, although the mechanics for the descent have always been there. The myth is that the fifth estate exists to support truth – that has never has been it purpose. Print media has always had a history of existing to promote a viewpoint from a particular perspective, first for business, second for the policy of its owners.
Browse any 19th century paper and you will see that that newspapers have always been the tool of choice to sway public opinion for or against some policy, almost always because an individual or group had something to gain, one way or another. Governments have long used media to augment its agenda, just as its detractors have done the same.
The relationship began to really go off the the rails at the same time as western civilizations started to pump out large numbers of intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals and generally more highly educated people, post WWII.
The political left, more so than the right (I would argue, restrained by a pesky moralism that the left had managed to throw off in the late ’60s, or, if you will, even back to the ’20s), recognized that there was gold in the advocacy hills – that it could be a lucrative business, culminating today in the hegemony of the ubiquitous “NGO” – the “non-governmental organization”.
An obscene amount of public policy is now drafted, not in government, nor even implemented by it; but in the cloistered unaccountable backrooms of the NGOs. Look at their standing at the UN to see the extent of the perversion.
The MSM has morphed from the tool of persuasion, to the business of persuasion, to a degree that they are no longer a conduit, but a manufacturer, with a product to sell, and a distribution chain to market the product, and they actively court the business. Kate was too generous in the selection of her quotes from Glocer’s blog. You don’t get anywhere near the the same warm fuzzy from reading the whole thing. In fact, you come away feeling like you need to go wash.
It should be clear from Glocer’s blog, that there is nothing about altruism in it – its about damage control a la large multi-national, when its been publically outed for not doing that profit robbing thing called “due diligence”.
I have been respectfully called out on referring to the MSM as the “fifth estate”, as it is the name of a CBC “news” program. The correspondent is, of course, correct, I neglected to count correctly… However, upon reflection, downgrading the MSM generally to the level of a CBC news program, might not be too far a stretch… 🙂
OT: I am getting a little fed up of being referred to by the term Neo-Con. Since Dion seems to be able to get away with using that bit of slander then why shouldn’t we refer to them as Liberal Coms or our we too polite. Thinks that term kinda fits. Just wondering
How about ‘latent communists’?
garhane? Oops, I thought it said garbage, like what he wrote.
Garhane, a proud Jew hating member of French citizen Dion’s Vichy Liberals.