We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day You see what’s happening? Two separate grievances and two separate targets – one totally justified, the other largely not – are being joined together. The “journalistic culture” Campbell has spent the past 10 years complaining about is not newspapers that have invaded people’s privacy – but newspapers that have been too unkind to important public servants such as himself.
– Andrew Gilligan, under the headline: “Phone hacking scandal: enemies of free press are circling”. Indeed.
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Before someone else says it, because someone always does when press people are pleading for freedom of the press, despite a recent press scandal, let me say it:
Funny how journalists never seem to grasp that this is what has been done to every other line of work, but they only really squeal when it’s done to them. Where were they when bad building contractors (or whatever) were being shouted about, and then all building contractors (or whatever) were hobbled with yet more silly rules and regulations?
True, but that doesn’t make Gilligan wrong about his own trade.
Bloggers next?
Would this be the same Alistair Campbell who broke the sensational story that John Majr tucked his shirt into his underpants?
Admittedly Campbell didn’t “hack” that. He just made it up.
In 2008 our government was told off for breaching our human rights about phone tapping.
Nobody cared much.
Now we are supposed to be outraged when a downmarket newspaper does the same thing.
Bloggers are next – that is what things like “net neutrality” are really about “we are trying to help you get the same prices and the same service as big corporations, just give us the POWER to protect you against the greedy internet providers…” and of course once they have got “the power”…..
However, bloggers do not really need to be targeted.
What is a blog other than a statement of opinion?
And opinions can be dismissed as “conspiracy theories” if there is no hard evidence (actually they are normally dismissed even if there is hard evidence – but at least there is a chance).
“Journalism” has not always been about cutting and pasting press releases and writing stuff based on what one was taught in college – it used to be about DIGGING FOR INFORMATION.
Information – as in hard evidence.
Pass regulations (and produce a climate of opinion) where digging for information (the world of the hack in the dirty raincoat paying for information, or looking in people’s rubbish bins, or….) is impossible -or is pushed to the margins….
Well then the left have won – because they can dismiss unsupported opinions, AND they can prevent these opinions being supported by evidence.
“But Paul the regulations and so will only be directed at sex stuff – not at the political stuff you are interested in”.
More likely the opposite will end up the case.
Just as (as Guy Herbert predicted) the new M.P.s expenses system ended up costing MORE money than the old one, so the new media system will most likely concentrate MORE on sex stuff.
The left are not seriously interested in going after American newspapers like the National Enquirer (they are not considered newspaper at all), because such publications have no real political line. So a British version will have no great problems.
However, a mass market newspaper that allows anti leftist voices (such as Fraser Nelson) a regular platform….(although notice how careful he is – for example going along with the B.S. about how Obama wants to “cut spending”, really “cut tax spending” i.e. increase tax spending and other Orwellian tricks of language, and publishing an article on Obama’s father that was entirely about drink and sex, not a word on Obama’s senior’s socialism)
Such a mass market anti leftist newspaper is a target – that has to go.
And, make no mistake, the real target is NOT just the News of the World – the real target is News International as a whole.
For example almost all of the BBC radio comedy show “The Now Show” was devoted to an agitprop attack on Friday – an agit-prop attack not on the News of the World, but on News International as a whole.
And they do not want to destroy News International – they want to fundementally transform it (and least so they say). Hence the left reaching out to the shareholders in the United States.
“Just get rid of Rupert M. and so on – and all the problems the company faces will go away…..all you need to do is tone down the political line of Fox News, Fox Business, and the Wall Street Journal”.
“Of course if you choose not to change cause, unfortunate things will continue to happen to the company – and to your investment in it”.
I agree that the attack on a free press is worrying, and also that it’s only a matter of time before they come after the bloggers too. But imagine how very much more worrying this attack on the free press would be if we didn’t have bloggers, and how much more devastating to a free society a neutered press is in the absence of the Internet.
The Internet changes things.
Only a few years ago, when the blogosphere really began to flourish and everyone was so excited about how the blogs will replace the MSM real soon now, I was very skeptical. Even while I was happily contributing to the Command Post, I fully realized that all we were doing was, at best, aggregating the news, and at worst just doing second-hand reporting. Blogs were great for opinion and analysis (not to be sneered at at all), but actual information still came from professional journalists. The big difference between the Old Media and the new one remained the resources, especially when it came to reporting from far-away places: someone like Paul or myself or anyone else who put their mind to it could always put that proverbial dirty raincoat on and go digging for dirt in a politician’s trash bin – and with the advent of the internet we got the means to publish that information. However, most of us still could not afford to go to Irag to cover the war, or even to the USA to observe the Tea Party gatherings first-hand. And even now, none of us, even professional journalists, are even able to get into certain places, like Syria, for example (AFAIK, all Western journalists “reporting” about Syria are located in Jerusalem and not one of them has set foot in Syria since the protests there began a few months ago). But what has changed since those few years ago is technology: in the old days, those same reporters in Jerusalem would have been limited to reporting Assad’s official press releases, peppered with a lot of conjecture. Now days we get actual reports from both sides of the conflict (both the protesters and the Syrian soldiers butchering them), capturing the events live on their cellphones and posting them on the internet in a matter of mere minutes. Same with the protests in Egypt, with the disaster in Japan, with police transgressions and politicians’ gaffes in the US, etc. Things have changed, Paul, not all of them for the better, but the cup is at least half-full.
Good point Alisa. Anyone know if anyone is attempting alternative methods of funding boots-on-the-ground reporting? I might be willing to throw a bit of cash in myself.
Michael J. Totten. He is funded by voluntary donations and does excellent work. He is the first person I turn to when a Middle East story hits the headlines.
Alisa – what you say is true.
However, I worry about “noise”.
Almost anything can be found on the internet (somewhere) – but only a small minority of people will search it out.
If there is no clear place where you can just turn on and read (and see) all the main stuff that is going on……
Of course that may be what Glenn Beck is trying to do with GBTV – break down the divide between television and the internet.
However, it is a very difficult task.
I doubt he will get anything like the number of people he got on Fox News – and even that number was only a small proportion of the population.
Surely the advantage is that thanks to the internet, blogs -especially multi-author blogs like this,one- ALREADY have a correspondent in Jerusalem, or near the Tea Party rally or wherever, because that correspondent can be anyone at all?
No need to send Paul Marks to Egypt with paypal donations (sorry Paul)- crowdsource it.
Indeed, wh00ps.
Still, there’s is a great added value in reporting by someone like Totten, at least for his fans. If Paul went anywhere on a reporting mission, I’d be among the first pressing the PP button – and I’m sure there’d be many others. The ‘unbiased’ mantra is largely crap: I want biased reports – the point is I want them biased both ways (or all ways, if there are more than two). I especially want reports by people who share my worldview and my values, and by those in diametrical opposition.
While I do think the Internet brings an invaluable contribution and opportunities, I do think there is still a role for professional reporters, particularly of the investigative persuasion. With the newspapers fading to obscurity and television news descending to an incoherent babble, there is a void forming. There may be several different funding options that will come into play. I suspect that politically backed shill reporting may form a substantial part of things.
Isn’t that what we mostly have now?