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What is the importance of building transparency in news media, and what would like to see? Any risks?
This LIVE CONVERSATION will be from 2-3:30PM CT/3:00:-4:30PM ET, Friday, October 28th! Join me!
UPDATE: Alisa has requested the Conversation be left open for 1 week. She will check back in over the week to continue the discussion with the community. Thank you all for your participation!
As people have chatted with me about my TED ebook, Media Makeover: Improving The News One Click At a Time, many people of expressed their interest in having more transparency in the news. People are concerned about who is influencing the news (powerful people and organizations), are concerned that the news is just one big echo chamber and they are trusting media overall, less and less. What would you like to see in a more transparent media? What would you know more about that you don't know now?
Potential answers to this question are just about anything. Some people would like to know more about the background of the reporters telling the stories. Others have mentioned the desire to see more about those quoted in the stories.
Transparency is about understanding where something starts, what are the connections to it, who is influencing it, and how it is evolving. Lets come up with the wishes we would like to have fulfilled so we can know more about what underlies our news we consume each day!
Debra Smith 200+
I think we have the technology to make more people understand more about our world but we do not have real access to it. If we have access to it we have no way of verifying it. I believe that we need a TED playhouse to share video witnesses of actual events and documentaries around the world so we can begin to act because we can believe what we are seeing.
TRANSPARENCY is key. Reliable source is key.
Ray Walker
Thunder Tang
Good !! thaks for all of you!! http://www.rqsulfates.com
Victoria Milner
Regarding transparency, it would be immensely useful to understand who are the largest shareholders in the top 5 'most watched' and 'most read' news outlets. I'm not American and I've only lived in the States for a short time many years ago, but I believe it's well known that FOX is owned by News Corp and there are political influences at play there that impact the content shown on that channel. The same could be said in the UK and the recent debacle concerning 'News Of The World'. At least if 'we' ie the consumer, have visibility as to who owns these outlets, we know then that there are vested interests. Of course it doesn't stop people watching and hearing what they want to!
Tomek Sysak
Victoria Milner
Andrea Morisette Grazzini 30+
A TEDConversation that asks the Q Which Facts are Factual might hold some answers to your Q here.
http://www.ted.com/conversations/5708/what_facts_are_factual.html
It served for me as a way of trying to understand where transparency gets muddied. And working backwards from there to try to isolate where transparency is more clearly implied.
Andrea
Tomek Sysak
Salim Solaiman 50+
Defintely the Media industry , so people will never know the outcome.
Sorry to say , that's what my perception is about media. Journalism not there anymore (when was last not sure). Media was and still is propaganda machine of power centers, recent past converted in to Money Machine for the investors as industry of PR evolved.
In my country once law enforcing agencies were considered most corrupt , now it's media as they blackmail every now and then the law enforcing agency, if they don't give money to media , result will be negative media and defintely law enforcement agency have lot negatives, so they bow down infron of media. Unfortunately vast majority still believe what comes in printed.
No idea whether Media Industry really care to change to build an acceptable image
Wish individual citizens using social media will be the more believable source in future........... unless Media really look for revolutionary change...
Joep Claessens
It's like taking care of your body by eating healthy food, exercising and what not, the same goes for your mind: be aware of what you feed it! Mass Media food might not be healthy for you ;-)
If you are able to use your discernment it doesn't matter anymore whether the news media are transparent or not; people will feel what's real and what's fabricated.
Anyway, just my two cents...
Lindsay Newland Bowker 50+
Your fight, your leadership for a healthy viable 4th estate is one we all have to be engaged in and working towards. We cannot have a "new democracy" or any democracy without a healthy viable 4th estate.
You are an insider. You know more about the news, how it works, how ownership and advertising may have changed what it means to be a journalist .My question to you is do you think the quality and accuracy of reporting in once honored, honorable and venerable journals would be at all changed if we knew what is controling news?Is it literally impossible for a reporter paid full time by one of these once venerable journals to write the truth? to write balanced coverage of important national and global events.?
Is that simply not allowed because there is so much inside control or is it that our world has gotten so complex that journalists writing about emerging events just don't have the depth and background in what they are writing about to know what the truth is..to know who reliable sources are?.I see so much opinion , bias and misniformation in main stream reporting..print and media..I don't understand where that comes from. Has journalism just been dumbed down by us the 99%, is it our preference that determines what we see? Is it our own demands our own consumption habits that are shaping the quality of news..its depth, its accuracy?
Or is it straight out intentional manipulation from inside? I was absolutely astonished to hear on MSNBC seconds after the announcement of Qadhaffi's death, a sort of rushed together news bulletin that this would now make it possible to restore oil production and that in a few months production would reach former levels and reduce the price of oil. ( which is not true.even if Libya gets back to pre Nato intervention levels( the pathway to that goal is far from clear) it won't reduce the price of oil.). Was that a hurried twitter to the bureau chief from Clinton?
Ray Walker
Ok so if you want to be a program that just represents one side, then you can do that, call your self News from the extreme (left, right) perspective or what ever you want to cater too. Then stay true to your readership. So the question what is the audience you are going after? Is it the general American audience? or are you segmenting? You have to decide. Where I think NPR ran a foul is they were happy to take the general American audience (tax payers) funding, but then use it to give a politically biased (one sided) perspectives. If you want to cater to "your readership" define it and stick to it, don't try to say its one thing, then present another.
Now I think if NPR had news from the left perspective, news from the right perspective, news from the independent perspective this would have worked. Remember when Juan Williams was fired, he was a journalist expressing his opinion. The fact that NPR management decided they disagreed with a journalists opinion, or said it was not representative of NPR and fired him, reflected negatively on the whole organization. It demonstrated that NPR was taking general public funding and only presenting a limited perspective. Today many people no longer give NPR credibility for honest opinion as a result of this event. Who would expect any NPR journalist to present an honest opinion if they feel threatened with unemployment. (Now to be fair, Juan got another job quite quickly, but probably most journalists might not be so lucky)
What you are left with, is a perspective that NPR provides biased perspectives, and will have to make significant efforts to change this perspective, or become privatized and continue with a single perspective.
So bottom line, define your readership, announce it, and stick with it. Give qualified opinion.
Ray Walker
Then there is a need for explanation, qualification, how does this impact people. Again this should be non-political, explain for example why folks should be concerned with the Canary Islands volcanoes. By all means bring in the experts, probably the reporters are not the experts. When we are hearing about the raw news events, little is gained by hearing the opinion or political leaning of the reporter, or presenter.
Then when it comes to an expanded view of the news, or an opinion news show, then take the subject into more detail, and add a personal perspective is good. PBS does a better job in this area than most with their in the street audio coverage usually dealing with individual experiences, a day-in-the-life type coverage.
if you are going to deal with political events, then round table opinion seems to be the only way to go, where the audience can be represented by somebody of a similar leaning. I guess left center right representation. But you need to choose your round table people well, so that they do in fact represent the median positions.
Same is true with many medical and more specifically drug news. We seem to just hear from the sponsors, through their distribution arm eg the doctors. They focus just on the benefits, don't talk about the risks. A nutritional expert can sometimes talk about the alternatives. This is where the problem lies, if you are controlled by advertising revenue, the pushers of the new drugs don't what you to talk about the bad stuff, that's why there always seems to be a doctor available at the 6:00 news spot. If you want to give opinion, disclose your position, and use qualified perspectives.
Lynn Lee
Alisa Miller 200+
As we keep chatting about the role of transparency in news media, consider this idea. In a perfect world, what information about a source, article, reporter, person quoted in a story, would you like to know about? What if that came with EVERY article. What would you want to see? What other categories of information would you want to know about?
Mark McDonnell
No one wants to listen to true facts and come to a conclusion. People for the most part want to be told what and how to think.
Alisa Miller 200+
David Thomas
When I was in college, I had a friend that had a very concise way of describing your point. He said that, "The media doesn't control what you think, but it does control what you think about." Less true today, as so much information is available on the internet about subjects the media would rather avoid.
An area in which I would like to see greater transparency is the process of determining what is newsworthy and what is not.
chris hartmann
Media companies are being more transparent. Not because they want to be, but because they have to be. Those that lack transparency and thrive have latched on to the ever decreasing population of "traditional media thinkers". Time will ultimately solve that problem.
There is no such thing as an unbiased opinion and there doesn't need to be. The freedom comes with *many* biased opinions (eg. information) and common sense.
Joel Finkelstein
Now that isn't to say Wikileaks hasn't been useful, but let's not pretend there isn't a clear tension here between constructive transparency and the legitimate exercise of privacy. For these reasons, we can't ignore the standard bearers like the CNN's and the NPR's of the world: we need some threshold criteria and groups for vetting (and obtaining) information responsibly but we also have a right to transparency regarding the criteria on which that vetting takes place.
chris hartmann
Transparency can't be had, it can only be a judgement made by outsiders armed with information.
Everyone does the vetting and everyone is vetted. Lack of credibility becomes blatantly obvious and the fear of top-down misinformation becomes less of a threat. Not necessarily because of anything a big organization did itself, but because the ecosystem does a better job at "keeping 'em honest" :)
Ray Walker
I'm trying again.
I think the problem is not tools, its that many reporters/journalists don't get their work published because the editor gets in the way and censors the work. So perhaps we are looking in the wrong place for news, perhaps it should be from twitter or private blogs, and there should be a mass media program that in an unbiased way covers the independent blogs.
Ray Walker
The real question is, is honest news coverage too colored by editors that is should be release directly t
Ray Walker
The problem comes where PBS like many others don't even cover some news events because it conflicts with their opinion or political leaning. They in effect are using their bias to censor the news. I'd be much happier with BBC like factual reporting, followed by a separate discussion round table type thing with people from different areas of experience. One thing that drives me bonkers is when ever they is a medical news item, we always hear from a doctor, and never the opinion of a nutritionist. So I guess we are in agreement on some points.
Tomek Sysak
Simply choosing what is news and what isn't, is a political opinion. It doesn't even have to be conscious. If a reporter has someone in their family with a disability they are more likely to address disabled issues, because they understand the language and issues surrounding disability. You're getting that reporters point of view, their political opinion.
I like your suggestions about a round-table. But that has time constraints. How do you find a doctor, a nutritionist, a dietician and a research assistant for the 6 oclock news? Or for every 6 oclock news?
David Thomas
What it seems like to me is that there is some sort of dominant paradigm, and that things that are inconsistent with that dominant paradigm get reported about, and others do not. Alternative health care is not part of that dominant paradigm, so it doesn't get reported about. Have you ever seen a news story about alternative cancer treatments, for example?
Another transparency question is what is the mechanism for determining what is included in this dominant paradigm that gets reported about in the news? Is it simply that a story that found some alternative cancer treatments to be even somewhat effective would really anger the drug companies, who provide a lot of advertising revenue?
Alisa - would you have some insight on this that you would like to share? Thanks!
Ujjainee Ghosh
In the Casey Anthony child murder case I saw the news presenter spitting fire at the accused, Casey, who was yet to be declared a convict by the court, the news presenter affectedly, imposed her verdict on the viewers. Before the viewers could perceive the news and draw a conclusion themselves, which is their right, they have been fed with a bias. Not only that; to substantiate her idea, the news presenter brought in co- presenters to pitch a chat on their take at the story.
How overt can distortion get, than this? Passing off bloated news as objective reporting, the media infracts and modifies the potential of the news content. Who wants to know what a Fox News presenter thinks about a court order. Doesn’t his/her job end with the delivery of news without fear or favor? Or does it? Or sensational journalism has pervaded the television news room so deeply that they have started to believe that the common view of the world held by them is the only truth which prevails.
Margarita Korol
Scott Armstrong 50+
When it is seen for what it is, then it becomes obvious that it's no more important for the "news" to have transparency than it is for soap operas to have transparency.
Lisa Fanoni
When talking about serious subjects, we should be offered a more appropriate format. As it stands, the only programs that offer a way to dive into issues are highly partisan (for better or worse).
Sensationalism, too, will never subside, but I think by exposing yourself to a diverse set of outlets, you come to recognize it more when it's presented.
Tomek Sysak
To say news should go back to being more serious, is like saying that you preferred the horse-and-carriage to the car. Maybe you liked the horses companionship, and found it a more intimate mode of transportation, but a horse-and-carriage is untenable on our roads and highways.
News needs to find a middle ground in all this. It needs to be exciting and interesting, but it also has to be real and challenging.
And the 'flashy' strategies aren't necessarily a bad thing. Tough questions from partisan right-wing media can evoke issues and questions that left-wing media wouldn't evoke. And vice-versa.
As for Scott's comment that news is just entertainment, I'd fundamentally disagree. News has political implications - implications into people's every day lives. The current news system isn't the best example, but it certainly has its moments of impact: it can force a politician to quit, or expose a harmful drug to the public.
Whenever someone is trying to pass something off as 'fact' - or even a point of view - then we need transparency.
Scott Armstrong 50+
As for the importance of news, I think it's nothing more than jumped up gossip. For all the political upheaval going on in the world that actually makes it to the screen in New Zealand, very little of that actually impacts on my life. (This statement will draw disbelief, I know).
As far as forcing politicans to quit, that's not the role of news reporting. That has more to do with politics being transparent and social media will deal with these sorts of issues far more effectively.
The trouble is, there is a movement by scared politicians to lock it down and make people and the providers legally responsible for their comments. They are trying to kill free speech.
Your analogy of a horse and cart vs a car misses the mark, I think.
A more accurate analogy would be to compare a healthy horse and well maintained cart vs a horse with ribbons and plaited mane and a branded cart with mags and rally art on the side.
David Thomas
The other thing I wanted to add is that my grandmother had her own TV show in the late 1950's, in Oklahoma City - the "Prissy Thomas Show." She told me once that pretty much everything on tv has one purpose and one purpose only, which is to deliver your attention to the advertiser. That is the whole reason that the news is flashy. It needs to get your attention so they can stick a commercial in front of you. Think about it - that is how they get paid. So they will do whatever they can to get you to pay attention to that commercial.
Tomek Sysak
Particularly, I think you overestimate people's desire to participate in social media. Social media is easy, and people like that. But mass media is easy too, and packages information much more neatly than social media.
You can go on Twitter and Facebook and follow an interesting story, or you can have the story packaged and told to you by a documentary or by the news. I think social media is an important way people get news, but I don't know if mass media can be entirely usurped. Mass media is still easier than social media in many respects. It still has a place at the dinner table.
On top of the fact that people might still be interested in mass media, the structures for regular publication of information don't exist in social media yet. People of all kinds depend on regular updates on stock markets, updates on sports, updates on municipal politicians etc.
The resources for this don't exist in social media yet. Regularily updating sports information, or regularly updating information about a city-hall by-laws can't be effectively done by social media.
Not to mention investigative reporting, which is a time-sink and an even worse money-sink.
Do you really think random people will be able to coalesc into efficient, and free, media producers?
A better analogy might be social media as a healthy horse, and mass media as train.
Sure, the horse can take you anywhere, but sometimes you just want to get on, fall asleep, and wake up where you needed to go.
Scott Armstrong 50+
I think that we're still in the process of change and that eventually, all the things you mentioned that social networks don't yet cater for will become accessible via networking.
The huge advantage that social networks have over pre-packaged and delivered newzine programmes is that there is scope for dialogue. Of course, the flip side is wading through much more opinion and mis-information.
I find that much current practice in mass media is fake, cheesy and over hyped. This is a massive turn-off and I find myself distracted from the content by the delivery.
Mind you, it comes back to what you touched on before - the purpose we watch news. I have no interest in stock-markets, sports or politics, so I guess the problem lies with me.
Alisa Miller 200+
Scott Armstrong 50+
Transparency is a cool sounding word but I don't think the networks can be fixed. It's a dying form of infotainment.
But for the sake of this discussion, I would like to see far fewer subjective judgements made by presenters and journalists in the field. Their opinions should not be heard ever. Perhaps removing the people from news delivery (TV) will help this.
All sources should be clearly cited as should the reasons for why those particular news articles made it to screen and print.
In the case of TV news, all interviews should be conducted in the same space by the same journalist asking the same questions. All people being interviewed should be present as each gets interviewed.
There are far too many subtle ways that the "news" can be influenced by the presentation of the content.
These may help others but I really don't consume news other than stumbling across 'recent events' online. Much of that is entertainment or gossip, too.
bernard capelle
Tomek Sysak
As for the question of journalist opinions, this is something over which I'm torn.
Personally I find the attempt to divorce opinion from journalists as worrisome. Not that it's not possible, but the air of objectivity has to be deserved. And a lot of journalists don't deserve that air.
It can be placed on a piece with some creative editing, like you pointed out. Only, how do you find out if someone has tainted their piece or not?
Personally I like opinionated journalists. Journalists use their instincts to understand stories, find issues and to present those issues. It's hard to separate opinion from the story, especially if it's something new, and without a lot of debate surrounding it. Maybe all journalists should be clearly opinionated; at least that way we'll know where this story is coming from.
That, to a certain extent, is transparency. News would also be more interesting.
Scott Armstrong 50+
Tomek Sysak
I read a book, Death and Life of American Journalism by Nichols and McChesney, and they suggested that the government should pay up to 45,000 dollars of a journalist's salary. I'd agree with them, but only because there's no other way of financing this difficult business and still producing quality content.
Jason DePolo
David Thomas
This is the area that I would like to see more transparency. To what extent is the content of the news influenced by the money spent by large advertisers? I am not sure how you would accomplish this.
Jason DePolo
The problem is that mass media has a vested interest in protecting the interests of all the entities that we depend on them to police, so to speak. The only people they do police, it appears to me, are entertainers, and those folks thrive on having their dysfunctional antics plastered all over the place.
I would love to see more transparency as well, and if Santa is listening, I would also like a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas.:)
Scott Armstrong 50+
Thanks for underscoring my point about news being nothing more than entertainment.
Scott Armstrong 50+
Arguments about financing vs content are moot. If you want decent content, remove the money.
If no money = no news, then no problem. What do you need to know that you don't find out through the circles you move in anyway?
How does it affect me to know why petrol costs so much? (oil shortages, etc). All I know is it's expensive and there's nothing I can do about it except choose to walk.
Alisa Miller 200+
Alisa Miller 200+
Democracy Work
Ray Walker
Alisa Miller 200+
This conversation is focused on discussing journalism and news sources and what information they should be providing, or what tools they could be providing to help the public understand what could be influencing the story in the first place.
Lisa Fanoni
Alisa Miller 200+
A non
Alisa Miller 200+
Andy Bork
Zachary Ditter
Andy Bork
Zachary Ditter
And what their viewers want is also unimportant. Demand can easily be created. And the fact that these organizations have all but perfected the use of subtle propaganda means that they can pretty much tell their audience what is important to them. Especially since they have gotten so many people to believe that they are the only trustworthy source of information. Once you achieve that kind of influence it doesn’t matter what you say, as long as it isn’t too nuts people have no choice to believe you because there is nobody to contradict you.
Alisa Miller 200+
Timothy Hudson
Transparency of this nature should be anything but it.