“MUCKRACKING IN 21ST CENTURY U.S. MEDIA
“MUCKRACKING IN 21ST CENTURY U.S. MEDIA”
Today technology is in its golden age. Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell and many other muckrakers never imagined the tools and techniques; spy cams, computers, Freedom of Information searches now make muckraking a very potent form of journalism in 21st century. The internet has done in the newsroom what the telephone a hundred and more years ago did not. There are no inadequacies, but substantial methods in order to reach sources and facts rapidly more than ever today. While it is true that the supplemental tools of news gathering has enormously emerged, the days of traditional news organizations as gatekeepers of information are nearly over. They’ve almost lost their watchdog function. This is why we can’t see contemporary muckraking examples in dominating media organizations today.
The general conception on contemporary muckraking today is not quite optimistic as it is evident by the unsubstantial performance of mainstream media organizations to support this institution. The investigation units have been agonizing for financial and timing props and are often sacrificed for rating wars. Media executives tend to outsource watchdog mission of journalism to non-profit organizations and think-thanks.
On the other hand we can’t see widespread public demand on muckraking today as much as that was in 18th and early 19th centuries. The public has always clamored to know more during American Revolution, Vietnam War and Watergate.
“Muckraking”, in other words “Exposé-Investigative Journalism”, has been eroding in last century, exclusively on major TV networks because of the media executives’ inclination to prevent rising costs, law-suits rather than supporting journalistic efforts. They intend to maximize their revenues which are conducted on weaver ratings and advertisers. This inclination generates sort of chain effects in media industry. As a result, the business of journalism has been emerging to business of entertaining. To see celebrities on primetime news is not surprising and absurd anymore in the middle of a news story reported from Baghdad. The other outcome of this transformation is prognosis of punditry. Media organizations don’t give any credit to investigative units as they give to their precious pundits.
Fortunately there are solutions and alternatives to keep muckraking and non-profit news sustainable. Blogs, non-governmental and non-profit organizations, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE), philanthropists who support muckrakers, many advocated newspaper reporters who provides deep, detailed and analytical reporting on their books seem to be alternative solutions. Yet re-activating public demand would be the most influential method to remind media organizations their watchdog responsibility.
In this context, my study aims to analyze the obstacles and solutions in 21st century muckraking with the assistance of recent trends. The first part of the study includes determinative factors of decline of muckraking today in the context of investigative journalism. The second part implicates the solutions and alternatives.
I’ve consulted a variety of academic and journalistic resources. I’ve also analyzed studies conducted by PEW Research Center, Columbia Journalism Review, and American Journalism Review, Neiman Foundation, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE).
MONEY AND TIMING MATTERS
Before we analyzing determinants of declining muckraking, we need to observe general trends in news reporting in U.S media outlets today. When we ask the question: “How healthy is news reporting in 21st century?” most of the journalists’ responses are pessimistic. They are not satisfied with the quality of news that has depreciated due to increased bottom-line and financial pressures. These pressures generally tempt news organization to emphasize journalism that’s easier and cheaper to do, that targets the audience that advertisers desire most, and that intends to entertain rather than to inform.
According to PEW Research Center’s 2007 survey financial pressure is now overshadowing concern about the quality of news coverage, the flagging credibility of the news media, and other problems that have been very much on the minds of journalists over the past decade. Large majorities of local print journalists (82%) and national print journalists (69%) say staffs at their news organizations have decreased over the past three years. Two-thirds of internet (69%), national and local journalists (68% each) say that increased financial pressure is seriously hurting the quality of news coverage. [i]
Evidently financial pressure on journalists and highly increased cost of news gathering makes investigative journalism less popular. Investigation reporting has been perceived as financially expensive by media executives after the market-driven journalism start to rise in 1980’s. The new trend has put profit maximization at the first place. Once they face with financial crisis, the investigation units would be the first to make cutbacks. Therefore financing long-term, rough, expensive and risky muckraking stories an became unfavorable option in newsrooms.
MARKET-DRIVEN MEDIA
The consolidation wave in media industry, high amount of dependency to the market conditions and advertisers are other vital facts to determine the diagnosis. Media consolidations has been lessening independence of journalism and limiting distinct voices. How can we expect the major networks to chase after the scandal where their sister companies are involved and then to report it? Rupert Murdoch, AOL, General Electric or Walt Disney Company would never worry about contingent investigations on their other divisions.
Furthermore, TV’s sole revenue is their advertisers. In the past, news and documentary programs were funded by a single sponsor who exercised great influence over the program like Murrow days. As television production grew more expensive and networks demanded greater control over their programming, financial support shifted from sole to multiple sponsors. This has fostered more commercialism on broadcast news reporting. As a result the proportion of national and local journalists saying that commercial pressure is negatively affecting coverage has climbed dramatically since the 1990s. Reporters are under the pressure to make commercially viable products because of
The TV program sponsors. If the news stories hurt one of the advertisers, they may suggest to change the story or not to air it.
IRRESISTIBLE ATRACTIVENESS OF ENTERTAINMENT AND RATING WARS
As a consequence of seeking less expensive way of news making and maximizing ratings, entertainment became a favorite phenomenon for media executives. As journalism is losing its major responsibility, informing people, media gurus discovered “INFOTAINMET” notion of media which well-worked in TV’s.
Infotainmet became the most efficient way to be successful in rating wars. To maintain their audiences’ attention before they switch their channel, TV outlets bear to make less comprehensive and analytical coverage of news instead of investigative-hard news stories. Then who needs boring investigating stories and facts?
This is the reason why public intellectuals, pundits, commentators cooperate and celebrities cover all 24 hours news cycles. Besides they are less expensive, the speculations and comments they make are the most efficient ways to entertain and attract the viewers’ attention. Once they are able to entertain ratings start to flow.
Consequently, since TV’s began to intertwine news and entertainment, news reporting has become tenuous and poor quality.
OLD FASHION MUCKRAKERS OUT MARKETABLE PUNDITS IN
Since it is far cheaper and efficient to fill their airtime with the live political stand-ups, pundits, experts, commentators and freaky news shows, today TV news rooms are like 24 hours open-CVS pharmacy stores. They have to have 24 hours available pundits to supply viewers demand. If you are a marketable pundit no matter how much expertise you have even outside of your field, you would be welcome to the air. Therefore TV news cycles are stuffed by experts who have an expertise on almost everything such as infotainers, friction creators, and agitators and so on.
SOLUTIONS
Even so if we are not able to see a muckraker on TV’s because of TV the executives choose ratings, money and punditry what are the alternatives and solutions going to be? Especially on TV’s, news became almost commercial products; narrowed, softened and rendered to entertain. However public demand would always be there to know more detailed, analyzed and investigated new stories. Thus potential muckraking cannot be restrained by prominent media organizations.
Although traditional media organizations are still preeminent actors to determine what is going to be the “NEWS”. There is tremendous amount of news sources that feed public demand today. Blogs, philanthropists, think-thanks, non-profit organizations, public interest groups and academic institutions who supports investigative reporting intensively are the crucial alternative solutions.
For instance there are already powerful non-profit news organizations, such as National Public Radio, Christian Science Monitor; Journalism’s founders include those affiliated with legacy news media-such as Annenberg, Scripps, Tribune, Reynolds, Gannett-plus long time supporters like Carnegie, Ford and Pew Charitable Trusts.
There is also rising trend among non-governmental and non-profit organizations that support muckraking and citizen journalism voluntarily. AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) is one of the biggest supporters of journalistic works. In 2005, U.S Foundations granted $158 million for media and communications. Knight, the leading journalism founder, announced more than $21 million in journalism grants in 2006 and more than $50 million in 2007.
There are also many individuals and organizations which have been funding specifically investigative journalism today. For instance McDonald’s Joan Kroc gifted $200 million to National Public Radio and also left $5 million to KPBS, NPR’s San Diego affiliate in 2003. Also the Carnegie Corp. of New York,, gave NPR $200 million last year to support education coverage.
Who are these people? They are part of the public. Then we can interpret that people want to see more journalism from journalists and media organizations. Otherwise they would not gift big amounts of money. While these funds can be a good budget relief for media organizations, they could also reinvigorate journalistic ambitions. Who knows how many successful investigative journalists would join the profession in the future in spite of the big erosion of citizen journalism in today.
The digital media is another convenient place to carry on muckraking today. Bloggers, journalists who operate online overwhelmingly seem to advocate muckraking. They emphasize getting information quickly, investigation government claims, analyzing complex problems and discussing policy. In general they tend to believe interpretive function of journalism than distributive. This inclination would not be harmful unless they violate accuracy, objectiveness and seeking truth codes of journalism.
In addition to non-profit organizations, online media and foundations, the most crucial element that needs to foster muckrakers is public demand. The public should clamour for more news programs like the ones Edward Murrow, Bill Moyers, Walter Cronkite have advocated. They’ve exalted them and many others in their days. Supply and demand for investigating journalism were extremely high in those days. What has changed today? Info-entertainment, commercial and advertorial journalism should not be a destiny of this society. The public demand needs to be awakened again also in favor of democracy and future of citizen journalism.
CONCLUSION
Today American Society stands in greater need of change in muckraking because it is almost disappeared. The central problem of muckraking is the prominent media itself. Newspapers, News Magazines and TV’s were the sole promoter of muckraking in last centuries. Surprising now they are the ones who outsource watchdog function of journalism to non-profit organizations.
On the one hand, traditional media has been looking for more profit-less expense. They prefer to retreat their TV studios or offices to provide more entertaining and titillating news to public. Thus the investigation units have been agonizing for financial and timing props and often sacrificed for rating wars.
On the other hand there is a philanthropist who can gift $200 million to media organization, fostering them to follow investigative reporting. Blogs, non-governmental and non-profit organizations, advocated journalists, individuals who support muckrakers are the solutions and alternatives to keep muckraking and non-profit news sustainable.
In conclusion, despite the fact that public demand is dramatically less for muckraking today, re-activating this is the crucial element to remind real function of journalists and muckrakers. No one would believe that nonprofits going to overthrow commercial media 20 years ago. Now this is happening and with the help of sensitive citizens and journalists of the society, muckraking will flourish again like in the old days.
ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION PERFORMANCES IN THE CONTEXT OF POLITICAL CAMPAINING COMMUNICATIONS
Political Campaigning Communications
ANALYSIS OF ELECTION PERFORMANCES
“WHY DID OBAMA WIN? WHY DID MCCAIN LOSE? “
INTRODUCTION
This is one of the biggest victories in the terms of electing first African-American President, significant attendance of young voters, record-breaking fundraising, massive ground-gaming and prosperous digital campaigning.
What was the success of Obama? First, his exceptional oratorical, communicative ability and characteristic have played a crucial role in the victory. In this way, he could attract many first time voters and reach out a rich palate of American diversity– women, blacks, Hispanics, whites-old people. He inspired people with his story and campaigned in every state, allowing people to see and hear his message. His medium has shaped his message and the message, “change”, was perfectly delivered. Significantly, his digital campaigning and fundraising skills provided him a much advantage over McCain.
How about McCain’s failure? Why did he lose? This was an inevitable circumstance because he did not really talk and listen to people. As a veteran politician for almost 30 years he expected to know how to play the game. He could have been successful with his strategies if we were in 1980’s. Yet today’s trends need a politician who knows how to communicate. Therefore his conventional campaigning strategies that focused on top to bottom strategies, did not meet with the demands of the 21st century political communication.
In this paper, I’ve analyzed both candidates’ performances with the following aspects of present- day political campaigning communication from understanding the context of their campaigns; developing and delivering the message, consistency of the message, fundraising, ground-game, debates, digital campaigning strategies and crisis management.
DIGITAL COMMUNICATION AND FUNDRAISING STRATEGIES
The digital strategies have played vital role during the 2008 Elections. Similar to Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004 digital fundraising has bubbled and millions of people contributed not only money but also opinions, advertisements, websites, videos, surveys to the election. People have run their own campaigns across the country from suburbs to big cities and connected to each other with only one click. As a result we have seen the transition that presents understanding of new communication style from old school to 21st century political campaigning. The magic words: social media websites, blogs, search engines, video podcasts have highlighted in both candidates’ campaigns. Therefore a candidate who has more knowledge on the internet and digital tools well-understood an importance of digital communication . As a result he has won.
On the one hand President-Elect Barack Obama was younger and web savvy. Beyond the internet, he was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, YouTube, and user-generated content. Marc Andreessen, coauthor of Mosaic, founder of Netscape, and co-founder of social network Ning who had a 90 minute on one on one meeting with Obama early in March 2007 affirms that Obama already knew how to combine politics and digital communication. “In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, Youtube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us on what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics — with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more.”[1]
Instead of classic top-down method of controlling the message, Obama let people to create their own messages. He added a new high-tech gateway to his campaign strategy by encouraging his supporters to interact online and run their own campaigns. Consequently the new strategy has brought many positive feedbacks to his campaign. Those supporters have brought millions of others and the campaign has reached to massive online database as well as donations.
Moreover his expanded online reach, by collecting names, e-mail addresses and hometowns gave him a flexibility to mobilize and accumulate people for campaign events and speeches. The rich database has also allowed Obama’s campaign to know and touch even people’s specific demands on local base. His campaign could also generate people who were not really involved in politics before. Michael Cheney who studies online campaigning, a professor of communications and economics in University of Illinois clarifies how Obama campaign was distinguish and successful on the digital strategies. “The online strategy only works if candidates are willing to give up the traditional top-down method of controlling their message, letting supporters craft their own and giving them a stake in the process. Obama’s events generated a few thousand new e-mails and addresses. Obama can mobilize people when he needs to. ” [2]
On the other hand Sen. John McCain and his campaign have looked less accomplished on digital strategies throughout his campaign. He drew a politician profile who
hires people just to create his web sites and do fundraising, organizing and voter outreach programs. He did not understand and elevate importance of digital world.
In a contrast to Obama, McCain was not really attached to online crowds. His internet knowledge questioned many times. Yet being a big political figure since 1982, he was a well-known candidate and he could have used this advantage to convey and consolidate his messages effectively throughout the internet. According to Pew research on both candidates’ online performances, McCain’s campaign web site has had fewer bells and whistles, with fewer videos and fewer social networking capabilities than Obama’s. [3] Johanna Blakley, deputy director of The Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication also points out weakness of McCain’s online outlook. “I would not be surprised if the McCain design team realized that a flashy, Flash-driven site might alienate a group of voters looking for something simple and honest—an antidote to the slick, new poster boy, Barack Obama. This old-school site designs may be a calculated choice.”[4]
Overall Obama’s online operation broke down the numbers and beat the pants off McCain. The great promise of Obama’s digital campaign was that online fundraising. Suchlike Howard Dean’s success in 2004, 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million online donations for Obama adding up to more than $500 million and they were in increments of $100 or less. Here are some other significant outcomes of Obama’s digital strategies. According to ADD Adult Strengths, there are nearly 6,000 % more pages on Barack Obama’s website than John McCain’s. 3,032% more hits for Barack Obama than John McCain and Barack Obama’s Facebook page had nearly 4 times more followers and posts than John McCain’s page. There are 147 comments on Obama’s MySpace page but none on John McCain’s. Barack Obama cranked out 10 times more tweets than John McCain, had 2254% more followers on Twitter. Obama had nearly twice as many search results for his name as John McCain, and more than 5 times as many videos posted on YouTube. [5]
THE MESSAGE
Joseph S. Tuman gives definition of successful political message in his book. “A message with traction is a message that succeeds with voters, mostly because it appeals to them, resonates with them, or perhaps touches them in some way. More importantly, as the word traction implies, the message also succeeds because it becomes one the voter remembers-hopefully all the way to election day.” [6] In political oratory, effectiveness of the message strictly depends on not only the message itself but also its consistency which requires speaking with one voice, not putting out messages that conflict with each other, and sticking to a single message long enough so that your audience comes to automatically associate the message with your campaign. Once we look at both presidential candidates’ abilities to show, control and deliver their messages during the election, we clearly see that Obama has had a huge advantage over McCain. Despite minor alterations he played the “message game” with these all proper components. In contrast his rival, McCain has struggled with his muddled messages in the sense of almost every issue and made a lot of flops throughout his campaign.
Obama’s prominent message “change” has well-matched with the moment in the sense of his profile as a new “change agent” and worrisome current economic, political conditions of the country. Nothing could have been more appealing than “change” and “hope” after 8 years of fallacies. Obama’s chief campaign adviser David Axelrod had a phrase that he often used to describe this approach: America was looking for “the remedy, not the replica”. [7] Almost everything about Obama’s campaign was representing a completely new transformation in politics. His premise built on one simple message: “Bush policies have failed and McCain is carrying his tattered banner of a failed administration.” Obama has executed consistency of this message from the beginning until the end. His well-applied core message has provided him coherent and apprehensive look and gave him a more flexibility to deliver his other messages on economy, domestic issues and foreign relations.
As a young, passionate and flawless orator, Obama’s sole disadvantage was his lack of inexperience. However it turned out successfully because his message was refusing all features of old style politics. He was using the words “promise”, “believe”, “hope”, “future”, “enough” and “dream” very often. Eventually these words have remained to resonate in everyone’s ears during the campaign and reassured the voter’s expectations.
Moreover Obama campaign had ads that were more carefully and strategically crafted than McCain’s. Many of them have succeeded to disqualify McCain’s messages that were not representing any change but as a successor of Bush administration. Obama’s campaign executed every possible component to show that McCain can not overtly break with Bush.
On the other hand as a veteran politician, McCain has remained with many rhetorical fallacies, flip-flops, contradictory and shifting messages in addition to Bush factor. So, he could not be successful to create and centralize his message that ensures well-suited correlation with his opinions. Therefore his messages have failed to persuade people’s opinions on “change”.
Certainly he could not help the fact that Bush was so unpopular. Therefore McCain’s core message, “I’m more experienced and I am the maverick” did not say much as a compelling idea especially for who had voted for Bush %90 of the time. Vast amount of people in the country believed that the country was on wrong direction because of Bush’s policies.
Once we look his muddled messages and implementations we see many unfortunate examples on the checklist. One of the biggest negative turnouts in his campaign was his Vice President choice. He attacked Obama’s inexperience and then chose a running mate who is unqualified to step in and serve as president, if needed. Then he became a supporter of the ideas that he was oppose to in the past. For instance, he had opposed to offshore oil drilling as it is too risky and short-sighted then he promoted it as an answer to energy independence. The other most damaging flop, “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”, was hard to sell especially when big financial companies were collapsing one by one. On the day before the Federal Reserve System bailed out AIG with an $85 billion loan and McCain insisted that taxpayers’ money cannot be used to rescue AIG. Then the next day he flopped again and sad it was right to protect the millions of Americans who have accounts at AIG.
As a result the muddled and uncontrolled message was one of the major reasons for McCain’s failure. Jeff Berkowitz gives further explanation on the issue: “McCain campaign had no central positive theme. What was McCain’s message? ‘I am not Bush’. Kind of like Nixon saying, ‘I am not a crook.’ Hardly words of inspiration. McCain had themes for his campaign. He had themes for his campaign but no central theme. Country First? More a bumper sticker than a theme. Further, McCain did not quite understand or believe in his campaign’s core arguments.” [8]
Coincidentally the history has repeated. As John Kerry defeated in 2004 by GOP for being a “flip-flopper”, this time one of the biggest GOP veterans, McCain labeled by the same.
CRISIS MANAGEMENT
During the election both candidates have faced many obstacles that urged them to make instant decisions and give immediate responses. As a fundamental crisis during the elections, financial meltdown has played a crucial role to look at both candidates’ crisis management abilities. Also various verbal gaffes delivered by candidates have undercut their campaign messages. For instance, “lipstick on a pig”, “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”, “Joe the Plumber”, “Obama’s socialist Tax plan”, “ACORN”, “ Rev. Wright”, “Bill Ayers” controversies. Eventually the candidate who controlled his temper and messages during theses crisis and surpassed the other candidate had reasonable advantage managing the crisis.
For instance Sen. Barack Obama expressed a full-confidence when financial rescue package controversies have emerged. What he has done was acting calm and not postponing the debate or suspending his campaign. Obama told voters at a campaign event in Denver, Colorado, that it’s important to stay calm, because things are never smooth in Congress. “There are going to be some bumps and trials and tribulations and ups and downs before we get this rescue package done,” he said. “I’m confident that we are going to get there, but it’s going to be a little rocky.”[9]
Then he arranged a meeting with high-level economic staff and gave a look like a president. He also called his rival McCain and asked him to release a joint statement about principles that both men wanted to see in financial rescue package. He knew that McCain had stumbled when he made a decision to suspend his campaign. It was very clever political maneuver that ended with Obama’s victory. He did not only reassure the voters as a confident candidate but also disposed McCain’s crisis management strategy.
On the other side, McCain was repeatedly accusing Obama and Democrats of putting “politics ahead of country”, but did not conduct any appreciable message or proposition to conquer the crisis. Instead he played a political gambit that aimed to illustrate a good example of bipartisan leadership. Then he offered to postpone the debate and suspend his campaign. However people were expecting a strong message that he is able to manage the crisis. As Boston Globe’s editorial called it a “Stunt”, McCain could not manage this term successfully. “This impulsive stunt made him appear unsteady and underprepared, too. America can work through a financial crisis and handle a campaign at the same time. In politics as on Broadway, the show must go on.”[10]
DEBATES
As we have seen in three presidential debates, both candidates have profiled real contrasts on their debate styles and presentation skills. The body language that they’ve used was also opposite of each other. At the end, Obama swept all three debates. [11]This was inevitable result for who represented the future and not the past with his messages and was able to use his body and voice effectively.
Obama gave more cerebral, reflective responses; because McCain gave gut-level, immediate responses throughout the debates. While Obama was displaying average people’s problems and generalizing the topics, McCain was attacking Obama’s characteristics and not talking about his policies. His attacks contained platitudes sometimes. For instance “That One” comment was one of them. [12]The “Otherness” was the last thing that McCain needed to show his maturity and experience to the voters. While Obama seemed even-tempered and pleasant to McCain’s attacks, McCain seemed tired, out of touch and angered.
Moreover, Obama’s body language and charisma were invincible in contrast to McCain’s. He maintained his energy and rhythm until the end. Unlike Obama, McCain has suffered to give audience a real smile and hand gesture. He could not use communication skills effectively as much as Obama could.
THE GROUND GAME
Another victory of Obama during the elections was his ground game. His campaign efficiently combined digital strategies, fundraising and door to door system in 50 states with thousands of volunteers. He reached out even most rural counties in the country and got people’s votes.
Like Bush in 2004, Obama has taken his fight directly into suburban and rural GOP strongholds in order to curb McCain’s potential margins. For instance Obama had 82 offices in Ohio, one of the biggest battlegrounds in the elections, nearly twice as many as McCain. Labor unions backed his effort with more than 12,000 volunteers. On the contrary, a ground game was absent from McCain’s campaign, even in their stronghold, Ohio.
Moreover Obama’s “New Organizers” campaigners, as a new progressive movement has established “Neighborhood Teams”. It was a perfect example of bottom to top campaigning. [13]
As a result Obama’s ground game strategy was able to register millions of new voters for the November election. The founder and CEO of New Media Strategies, Pete Snyder gives further evidence to explain Obama’s ground game success. “The Obama camp recognized that something very different was going on here. It threw out many of the old political adage and assumptions, including the granddaddy of them all, Americans don’t tune into elections until after Labor Day. Obama’s campaign geared its online and off-line engagement and advertising to build on this unprecedented early interest and mobilized it into an effective ground game to get out their vote.” [14]
[1] An hour and a half with Barack Obama, Blog.pmarca.com
[2] Obama campaign will change election strategy http://news.illinois.edu
[3] McCain vs Obama on the Web http://www.journalism.org/node/12772
[4] McCain vs. Obama: The Web Sites http://www.usnews.com
[5] http://adultaddstrengths.com/2008/11/05/obama-vs-mccain-social-media/
[6] Joseph Tuman, “Political Communication in American Campaigns”, 2007, (41)
[7] New Yorker, “Battle Plans” by Ryan Lizza, November 17, 2008
[8] Two Major Reasons why McCain lost the Presidency, by Jeff Berkowitz, http://jeffberkowitz.blogspot.com/
[9] http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/page/2/
[10] http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/25/mccain_pauses_campaign/
[11] http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/10/obama_swept_debates_gallup_pol.html
[12] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/07/that-one-mccain-calls-oba_n_132802.html
[13] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-exley/the-new-organizers-part-1_b_132782.html
ONE LAST WORD
During the semester I’ve enjoyed the most of the topics we have examined in the class and well-informed about the many aspects of the digital world. The every single topic was quite challenging for me and my journalistic development.
As a result of having a print journalism background in my professional life, I didn’t not realize how much I have missed about digital world. Despite I had a chance to work on online journalism long time ago; I’ve preferred to stay in the newspaper.
Today, I do not have any regret not to change my decision because I don’t believe there are rigid distinctions between online, print, radio and broadcast journalism. The purposes, rules and methods are almost similar. Only difference is where the journalism being applied physically; on the screen, monitor or paper.
However I have been defending that there should be a difference exposition between “journalistic work” and “non-journalistic work” in digital world, among blogs and web sites. I believe that the every single information or comments we have been seeing on the blogs can’t contain a news value. We can not assume that every blog or web site which has journalistic manners is credible for newsworthiness, liability, accountability.
On the other hand I also have been defending that a journalist should be aware of everything in digital world because no matter what this is the future. I was trying to refuse this point before I took this class. Now I’ve faced how much powerful and real the digital world is. We can not watch this big era from a distance…
THANK YOU ALL!
LET’S KEEP ON BLOGGINGGG:))
MAKING INTERNET REVOLUTIONARY IN FAVOR OF DEMOCRACY
“An amazing thing happened in the presidential contest of 2004: For the first time in my life, maybe the first time in history, a candidate lost but his campaign won.”
(Joe Trippi, The Revolution will not be Televised)
What Joe Trippi trying to say when he emphasizes Howard Dean’s Presidential campaign in 2003? “A candidate lost but his campaign won”.
The Dean’s campaign started with seven people in the campaign staff, $100.000 in the bank and four hundred thirty two supporters. At the end of 2003, almost in a year, Dean’s campaign ended with $50 million fundraising (from small donations $100 or less) and 640, 000 supporters. However it wasn’t enough for him to be the President of United States.
As Trippi says end of his book’s introduction one of the most essential results of this campaign is that it was the story how American people engage in real dialogue. Dislike other political campaigns in the past; this campaign stopped “selling” to them. This time the platform where the parties meet was different: Internet.
The aspects, interactivity and social networking have made internet a convenient place to give voice to voiceless, to share, to talk and to access information. It is not all about how much technology emerged in 21st century. I believe that if you don’t use the internet primarily for public’s favor (not only being accessible but also being questionable), you will not be accomplishing anyway neither as a businessman nor a politician.
TVs and radios haven’t given us a chance to show our reactions and express our opinions about what we’ve considered most. We were just listening and watching in the past but now we have been getting a part of the conversation. We have started to make our preferences on the internet easily and quickly. For instance online buying, selling, searching, watching, networking, mailing, discussing, surveying, talking, reading…etc.
As we realize almost everything what we were doing manually before the internet came into our lives, has been getting ONLINE.
In this sense why we don’t think about “online democracy“? As long as we maintain and encourage democracy on the internet we will be eligible to apply democracy among grassroots. The transformation from “TV society” to “Internet society” has been emerging increasingly. The internet will reach everyone in the world eventually. Thus why we don’t launch revolution on internet in favor of democracy?
I think Howard Dean’s campaign was launched with this belief and has devoted itself to power of democracy. Alike Dean says: “To really use the Internet well, you have to build community, not just enable fundraising.”
In my opinion whoever adopts this mentality would be successful in the future like Howard Dean and Joe Trippi.
FACEBOOK AND POLITICS
According to Facebook, more than 1,600 contenders for national and state offices have created profiles.
WHAT IS YOUR POLITICAL LANGUAGE? “A monologue or a conversation”
“The very technology that has transformed the global economy has transformed the campaign process as well, so that the race will be run as much on the World Wide Web as in union halls and town squares and on television. ”
From the introduction of “The First Campaign” , Garrett Graff
This statement explains why we have been facing with the First Campaign. It is quite hard to make further comment on the book because The First Campaign pictures whole journey how technological and political developments emerged synchronously in the last decade.
Today we have been watching political debates on TV where politicians were asked various and spontaneous questions by people because of YouTube. Today also people are invited to vote almost for everything.
As we have been examining during our class online media tools; blogs, social networking platforms, online campaigning and many other ways on World Wide Web are vital as new communication channels to say your word to people not only in your neighborhood but also to the world. This is the biggest consequences of globalization and technological revolution in today’s world. The thousand, millions of people are brought together to demonstrate their voices with only one SMS massage today.
The people are not voting only for political candidates’ appearances on TV but also they consider how much candidates response their crucial manners in their conversation and how much let people to make contributions to the conversation. As a result of that politicians have been realizing the power of the conversational communication with the society. Therefore they turn their head towards online fund-raising campaigns.
We all are aware how Howard Dean’s fund-raising campaign had been successfully accomplished. Dean’s campaign has raised $ 50 million and funds came largely in small donations over the Internet, the average overall donation size was under $100. Suchlike fund-raising has happened first time ever in political campaigning in the US history. This is an ultimate example of how much internet can be efficient in even political campaigning.
“The First Campaign” gives us the very interesting evidences about how the way of social and political communication and sharing was transformed by maximum usage of technology. On the other hand I agree that using of new technologies is not the only indicator to determine whether you’ll be successful or not. The question is how your tune is while you are reaching people through technology. Are you allowing people to join the conversation or wanting only their votes? What is your language in this sense? Monologue or conversation?
According to “The First Campaign”:
*In the fifth-season finale of Fox TV’s American Idol talent show, more people voted for singer Taylor Hicks than have ever voted for a presidential candidate in any U.S election.
*The candidates have profile on Facebook.com, the social-networking website targeted at collage students. A Facebook group for Barack Obama swelled to a quarter million people in less than a month, and when Hillary Clinton went onto Yahoo!
*By the end of May 2007, ABCPAC, the conservative fund-raising site equivalent to the left’s ActBlue, had raised only $385 for all GOP field. Meanwhile, ActBlue which draws upon the larger more organized and powerful progressive blogosphere, had raised more than $3 million for John Edwards alone, and total of some $22 million in online donations since its 2004 lunch.
TRUTHINESS AND KILLING OFF OF ALL JOURNALISTS: RESPONDING MIKE’S ARTICLE
Mike’s post, TRUTHINESS AND KILLING OFF OF ALL JOURNALISTS, contains various perspectives which I do and don’t agree with. Obviously media industry has been getting more competitive than ever and person who devotes his/her life to be a journalist suffers both morally and financially. This is a professional that you need to wait your day to break in. Unfortunately journalism is ungrateful for many years for high percentage of media workers. Like an artists, painters, sculptors. Also this is true as Mike says: “The resumes read Brown, Columbia, NYU, Georgetown, University of Chicago, etc. Journalists, for the most part, are the sons of doctors and lawyers, the brothers and sisters of stock traders and economists. They fill any individual family’s public service quota. The journalists are among the elite, and if they are not, they soon assume that role.”
This is same all around the world. Alike in my country we have dozens of Journalism Schools in Turkey but graduates work mostly in unrelated work places. Personally I was lucky because I started to work in the field when I was a freshman in collage. Elitism is everywhere. You have to be marketable and well-labeled to be able to get this job. Otherwise you can’t compete with these sons of doctors and lawyers, the brothers and sisters of stock tradersJ)
On the other hand I don’t know why is Journalism so attractive to them? Is that related to money matters or ego satisfaction? I’ve made little research on Google (I still strongly believe that Google is more beneficial and reliable tool for journalist than Wikipedia. Therefore I don’t agree with you Mike at this point) and I found an interesting report on Radio and Television Salary Survey conducted by Ball State University.
I don’t know how much they earn particularly because there is a huge salary cliff between news reporters and anchors. Probably these elitist journalists rather want to be an anchor with the help of their influential affiliations and pedigrees.
Let’s change the topic. I would like to talk about Mike’s point that I can’t agree with. He says: “Then I started thinking about who the historians are – mainly journalists and or academics who all have their own biases. This is not original thinking on my part at all, but I suddenly realized why academics and journalists feel so threatened by the site. It renders them less important. It gives anyone and everyone the ability to not only write history, but to judge it, analyze it, edit it, protest it, manipulate it and emphasize it, just like they do. Journalists are no longer the gatekeepers of all information, and subtle references in their nut graphs (usually the second or third paragraph in the story that explains background and why this story is important) are no longer the accepted background on any given story. The real nut graphs are floating around for everyone and anyone to read.”
He gives examples from Washington Post and New York Times such as Walter Reed Story and other political news. Then he comes with the idea of Wikipedia and tries to approve its preciousness for individuals. He doesn’t give credit to newspapers as much as Wikipedia. I couldn’t understand this point clearly. How could we compare Wikipedia and grassroots media under the terms of telling the truth or doing journalism? They are like apple and pearl to compare. I’m not claiming that media is not questionable. Obviously we are part of this industry and we have a priority to judge it. However we can’t sacrifice whole grassroots media mercilessly for newborn-attractive media figure which is still need to have wide acceptance from all society in the world.
WAR ON THE WEB: RESPONDING JO’S ARTICLE
”Have blogs been getting an instrument of propaganda?”
I really liked Jo’s open-minded comment in her “Iraq on the web” post. She summarizes not only interesting sides of these blogs but also concealed and worrying parts of war-related videos on these blogs. She thinks that some of the videos by soldiers don’t look like credential and adds: “In some ways they seem like recruiting propaganda rather than a window into what the war is like for soldiers.”
Back to Jo’s comment about propaganda I’ve made little research on that. In December 2005, The New York Times published an article about the blogs are written by soldiers. (Source: Wikipedia )
Today we can’t deny blogs’s emerging impact among informative media tools. Many people interested in what soldiers have been doing in their daily lives, which tactics have been used while fighting, how can they survive or how is war atmosphere? The blogs give much more details and variety of sources than print and broadcast media for sure.
Therefore we need to make decision between what we want to know and how much we need to know more. Otherwise we would have a problem with trustworthiness which is one of the biggest problematic issues of our information age.
Furthermore are we questioning how these blogs’s tunes are? Are they becoming propaganda model likewise advertisements and public relations techniques in the past? I think we can not see the whole picture without asking these questions.
Truly blogs have brought more conversation and share to Web World but we need to have our own filter in order to get credible and worthy information among these hundreds blogs.
There are bunch of anti-war and supportive-war blogs on Iraq War. I have linked them on my previous blog entry, titled “Real Time Wars.” You can find extended list of Iraq War blogs here Yahoo Directory.
REAL-TIME WARS
The Persian Gulf War was my first televised war. In January 17, 1991, CNN launched reporting from the Gulf. Meanwhile I was 12 years old and first time in my life I was witnessing the term of “Live War”. Every single day we were watching Peter Arnett and Bernard Shaw as others in all around the world. It was quite influential war for my generation because we had never seen the war before this much transparently.
Nearly 10 years later I wrote my graduation thesis on “The War & Journalism“. How about that? I always think that this is most crucial and uneasy part of journalism. Besides difficulties to gather information under the war conditions you put your life at risk to cover the story. What motives encourage journalist for doing this?
In the collage during my journalism classes what I was thought that there is no particularly Journalist for “War” because Journalists can not be part of the war.
They can’t support wars in order to get more “FAME” or “RATING“. They just report what they have seen and witnessed. However it is always hard to determine fine line between “Doing your job” and “Helping wounded people”.
Reporting America at War is a documentary where we can find chronological development of war reporting and also how the way of reporting has changed in the years. Moreover we can remind what were the most essential rules and characteristics of journalism in the era of war.
16 years after first heavily-televised war, how much media changed? A lot…Technology has emerged incredibly and now we are not satisfied with televised war anymore. We need to know more and more because we have a power to do that. Altough we have real-time reporting now it isn’t enough because this time we want to get different opinions from different sources. How about real-sources such as real Iraqis? What does it mean real Iraqis? Only Iraqis can pursue us what is really going on there. Isn’t that transformation of news to reality shows? Do we have any expectations like that? If answer is yes why we need a journalist? Did Journalists lose their credibilities?
Journalism essentially requires seeking truth and public enlightenment. In order to do that journalists have to keep neutrality, objectivity, newsworthiness, and minimize harm as much as possible.
If we assume that everything meets with these conditions listed above “Why War on the Web” is so controversial as a new reporting way. Kevin Sites and Blogging Controversy is a key case on that issue. He is long-time experienced veteran war correspondent but he was told to shut down his popular site because he was not legitimate enough.
If we want professional journalist in the field what disturbs us? I think this is not completely related with his journalism skills. The reason of controversy is BLOGGING. Blogging is still suspicious and illegitimate among the majority of journalists and journalism scholars. Paul Grabowicz, the new media program director of Graduate School of Journalism in Berkeley criticizes unedited war blogs and adds: “We are getting into some treacherous water here. If there is not an editor reading before it goes up, it is taking away a safeguard that’s sensible one in journalism-to make sure you get it right before it’s published”. MEDIA: Web logs offer stream of consciousness from the front
Moreover blogging on war not just done by experienced journalist but also students, soldiers, individuals (Iraqis, Americans) as a nature of blogging. You can find wide list of Iraq War Blogs here. Iraq Today
Some war bloggers says that “Only two things we need to have are laptop and satellite phone. We don’t need an editor”. I think this is the point what we really need to consider it. That is why we can’t count on any bloggers as a journalist. Bloggers also tends to use more casual style of writing. How we can evaluate facts? Is this is a real story or just make up?
In the sum of these conceptions the answer of “Is seeing and reading about war good thing or bad thing?” question would be “Good Thing” without any doubt. This is amazingly important for public enlightenment; encouraging freedom of speech and press. People can express their feelings and opinions as an opponent of war or supporter of war. We should not have any problem with this part of the contention.
On the other hand if we are considering every-war related blogs like an example of journalism the answer will be big “NO”. We do have already enough disinformation in today’s world. People can be deceived through propaganda channels, defemations and inaccurate information. I think how much we are reading or seeing on war is not critical issue at this point. On the contrary I believe we need to determine whether every writings or videos on war has a journalistic value.
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