Journalism

Taping an execution

January 1, 2007

Adam Curry says the video of Saddam Hussein constitutes a MSM tipping point. "Recorded on a cellphone by a single citizen in Iraq, seen worldwide the very next day," Curry's blog post said.

Call me cynical but I am not buying it. First, where are the videos shot by "single citizens" in Iraq? If the citizens of Iraq are taking video with their cell phones and posting it to the internet why are we not seeing the videos elsewhere? And why would an event as tightly controlled as the execution of a brutal dictator be so uncontrolled as to have someone show up without it being planned. Somewhat conveniently said video was pointed out to the main stream media and picked up and aired within hours.

Somehow we are to believe that the fingerprints of the mainstream media are not all over this "happenstance."

Truth in reporting

November 22, 2006

This will be a brief comment on a couple of stories out there today. First off there is the linkbait article suggesting Apple's days are numbered. To anyone who knows the market it's hard to take even as a parody but there would be temptation on some of our parts to pump the article in hopes of getting a few more (as yet unpurchased) Apple shares at reasonable prices. But then that wouldn't be ethical.

Then there is this piece of investigative journalism. The main problem is there doesn't seem to have been much investigation. The errors and omissions as well as morphing of time lines are horrendous in this article. You'll notice nowhere in the article does it mention the other businesses in California that benefit from the mutual aid agreements between the states, not even the other businesses in Sandy Valley. The article ends with the line that "not counting the motocross" there have been 300 calls in California handled by Clark County Fire. Taking even the highest figures for the motocross at the heart of the story there have been fewer than a dozen.

Ed Bradley (1941-2006)

November 9, 2006

Sad news today of the passing of veteran journalist Ed Bradley. I was fortunate enough to hear Bradley speak at UNLV in the early 90's. Though I had not yet chosen to study journalism he was an absolutely inspirational person. "When it gets to the point where it's not fun anymore, I've always hoped that I would have the courage to say goodbye and walk away from it," Bradley said. Sadly leukemia caught up with Bradley and we are left with memories of this great journalist.

Bradley said of himself "I had had no training as a journalist and I used to listen to the CBS News hourly reports. That was my classroom." A great reminder to all the citizen journalists of the world that it doesn't take a degree and a lot of experience to get into the field. Instead it takes hard work and persistence.

The conservative media

October 22, 2006

Sixteen days. That's how long it's been since the search function on the Las Vegas Review Journal website stopped working. Could it be that the recent spate of downturns in fortune for GOP candidates have caused the conservative paper to keep these stories from being so easily found? Or could it just be that there's a group of people who are supposed to be watching the online store who need to be looking for other jobs?

The future of news

October 5, 2006

From time to time when I'm traveling I'll catch a bit of TV news here or there. For the most part it's horrible. There seems to be about 40 minutes of sports and 30 seconds of everything else. There are self-promoting pieces about the latest Breaking News story from last week. All and all it is worse than watching a high school football game on ESPN Classic.

Given that it seems the same everywhere I figured I must be in the minority when it comes to what's important in TV news. Well the 2006 Future of News report seems to suggest that far from being alone my preferences register with the majority of the population.

Poor OLN journalism

July 10, 2006

Viewers of the Tour de France have been seeing the ads that later this year the Outdoor Life Network will change it's name to VERSUS. Seems like a silly change but it also seems their goal is to be yet another ESPN knock-off.

Tonight, however, they mentioned "tune in tomorrow for a big announcement from Floyd Landis' team". Wondering what the big news will be tomorrow? Head over to Google or any newspaper and you'll soon learn that Landis will have hip replacement after the Tour.

Changing the language

February 19, 2006

The 2006 Winter Olympics brings a new little quirk we'll have to deal with for years to come. NBC decided to call Turin by its Italian name Torino. In the years to come will the next company to have the Olympics broadcast refer back to the games by their English name or their Italian? At the end of the day it is far from anything that makes much difference, but is a sign of the arrogance of the mainstream media when one communications company takes it on itself to change the language.

Two years later and not much has changed

February 11, 2006

Two years after the debacle of the Athens Games we're on the first day of competition of the 20th Winter Games. It seems, however, many of the old disappointments persist. Athletes cannot blog their experiences from the games and the Olympic website is devoid of any web feed. No RSS. No Atom. Nada.

At least the inane commentators of NBC aren't quite as annoying during the opening ceremonies as their counterparts were in Athens a couple of years ago. Who knows, by the end of the games they might even learn how to pronounce Torino.

The business limiting information on health care

January 29, 2006

Last fall the October 2005 issue of Seventeen was pulled from the shelves of 2500 Albertsons stores across 12 states. The complaint centered around an educational health article written by Jennifer Howze entitled Vagina 101. According to Associated Press articles on the magazine story it "shows a drawing of a woman's genitalia with arrows pointing out the clitoris, the labia majora, the labia minora, the hymen and the anus. It provides a one-paragraph description of each part of the anatomy, under the headline "Owner's Manual." On the second page, the author addresses what's normal and what's not — from the color and consistency of female discharge to how to detect a urinary tract infection."

Shhh! Don't tell anybody

January 9, 2006

Apparently it is considered poor taste over at KLAS TV to mention the Adult Entertainment Expo. The show which runs concurrent with the Consumer Electronics Show each year has been in Las Vegas for years. KLAS's coverage, however, goes a long way to prove the puritanical taboos rule even in Sin City. The station has little compunction about detailing any sort of violence but seemingly cannot even mention the name of the aforementioned Adult Entertainment Expo calling it instead "another convention at the Sands".

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