Fareed Zakaria absolutely rules this guy.
via seaofgreen:
Fareed Zakaria interviews the only Iranian allowed on his show from inside Iran, Tehran University Professor Mohammed Morandi, and calls his ideas of western meddling in the protests, “ludicrous”. “You are nothing but a mouthpiece for the regime”.
via soupsoup (via winstonwolfe)
An anonymous reader on Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish
“Reading your blog over the past 30 something hours makes me realize why the mainstream media is really finished. I mean, this point has finally hit home. You are blogging real time events, with descriptions, evaluation, analysis, and eye witness accounts. You are gathering information from a myriad of sources and putting it out there for a cohesive message. CNN, NY Times, et al are merely running an article about “thousands” of protesters. Its a canned message from just a few stale sources. The revolution is definitely on in Iran. And its on in American journalism too.”
Its hard not to agree with this, especially when looking at the recent coverage of the Iran election. I’ve been amazed at the amount of Tumblr images flying across my follow dashboard and while there are certainly media people in that group, there are no “journalists”. Each is reposting a story and spreading the word based on an emotional reaction to an image they see. They see batons and they see blood. Most don’t even know what or why the fighting is about, who is the bloodied and what the reason they were bloodied was. Still, when you sit on the side of the fence where you are aghast at the violence and shocked at the images…you push it around, you Twitter in opposition and you call the traditional outlets dead and idiotic.
Arguably if you boiled everything else down to its most basic elements, you might find that this is the reason that the New York Times is struggling and fear mongers like Fox News seem to report good earnings. Fast and sexy schlock sells. The New York Times probably has stuck to their guns a bit too long, keep expensive passionate writers who take their time to cover stories, and fact check and make sure they have it right before publishing it. As everyone knows…time costs money…and good journalism takes time.
Don’t we need a mix of “new” and “old”? One of the things that made Obama’s speech to the middle east recently so powerful was that we now have a President who doesn’t make rash decisions. He is reasoned. He looks at both sides. He looks at the facts. He is open minded and ready for dialogue…and then he makes a sound, distinct decision.
Taking this hot topic off the table, and supplanting it with another, perhaps the Duke Lacrosse case. Would the fact that the kids were totally cleared get the same amount of Twitters, Tumblrs and blog postings after the two month trial where they discovered the girl was lying? In the Iran case, I think its pretty clear that there is stuff here that needs to be shown now…but you see the folly if you apply this thought process to every story and the entire idea of journalism.
One of my favorite quotes ever was by Michael Irvin, after he was effectively tried in the media for an allegation of cocaine, and then when he was totally cleared weeks later with absolutely no connection he yelled at reporters, “Print the truth as big as you did the lie!”
As with most arguments about “new” online journalism it starts to look shaky when you analyze it in relation to a general reporting methodology. The big challenge is the reporting vs the opinion. New journalism, citizen journalism of this nature, must be leveraged by traditional media outlets to gather the facts, add them to the pool of consideration and analysis to help us make better decisions. If we have the information lets use it. I think the Times knows this and they are pushing their New Media team to open up the channels for shared open source information.
Then the intelligent reasoned individuals with a sense of both sides of the argument - arguably in my vision, the Pulitzer winning writers and opinion leaders at the New York Times - can look at all sides and help shape the reactions of our nation.
And then if terror, and lies and deception are the fact…then we act.
