Not sure how you feel about KONY 2012?

A cross post from Facebook...
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If you have Facebook or Twitter and have been online in the past two days, then chances are you know about KONY 2012. Most probably you saw a few friends sharing the Invisible Children video, and perhaps you even shared it yourself after watching it. This isn't wrong. It was a moving video and it's very, very easy to hit share and feel like you've done a bit of good.

After that, you probably started to see people posting criticisms of the video, particularly of the charity, as well as others criticising the general 'slacktivist' approach of re-posting or retweeting something and feeling like you'd contributed to a cause. Others would have countered this with the fact that at least people are raising awareness, better than nothing, etc etc. And in the end, you, like me, may be a bit confused about whether, in the end, this is a good or bad thing.

What I've realised by reading debates on various friends' walls is that it doesn't really matter. The discussions that need to be had aren't about whether the video is a good or bad, but have to do with why it was so effective, why people have reacted the way they have, and where we can go from there. Here are some thoughts:

What do you know about the ICC?
If you've been spreading the word that Kony is the ICC's most wanted man, have you delved any further? Do you know, for example, that the US (along with Israel and Sudan) have effectively backed out of the ICC and are no longer considered a state party to it? This means that if Kony turned up on US soil, the US wouldn't be obligated to arrest him. If you're American, are you comfortable with this?

Do you know any of the other people or cases that are being investigated by the ICC? Do you know why Sudanese President Omar al Bashir has been indicted, or that Saif Gaddafi is supposed to be transfered there? Do you know that they're about to announce their first verdict next week, in a case related to atrocities in the DRC? Do you need someone to make a video about Thomas Lubanga's crimes to be bothered to find out?

Why is this the first you've heard of it?
The whole point of the video is to raise awareness of Kony's existence to the vast majority of the population who don't know he exists. If you're one of those people, think about why that is. This has been happening for the better part of 20 years. The vast majority of my FB friends are around my age, which means six years ago, when we were 19 or so, you should have become aware of the nightwalkers phenomenon when it featured briefly but prominently in international press. Nightwalkers was the name given to Ugandan kids who walked miles every night to sleep in protected buildings in big cities so that they wouldn't be abducted or killed by Kony and the LRA.

If you missed that then, think of what you're missing now. Do you live in a bubble populated mostly by celeb news and Twitter updates, where the only way anything like this can turn up is if a video goes viral? Now you're aware of Kony, but are you aware of exactly what's going on in Syria? A lot of people jumped on the Egypt bandwagon the day Mubarak stepped down. Do you know or care that Egypt's so called revolutionary democracy is actually still controlled by the military?

When you were in college or university, how many of you took classes where you would learn about situations like this? How many people instead took "History of Alcohol" or some other joke class because they didn't really want to be challenged? Now that you're out of university, what can you do to educate yourself more, or to help younger generations steer themselves toward choices that might mean that they don't hear about atrocities 20 years after they begin, and can take action because they have researched it and want to, not because a video or a wristband told them to?

If you're a teacher...
I know a lot of you are. I don't know what grades you teach or subjects or anything. But if they're of an appropriate age, can you use this to teach your kids about what's happening? About how to think critically when they're confronted with something like this, or about how to make sure that if they want to give to charity they know what they're contributing to? Can you teach them about something else that's happening right now in the world? If you can't, because it doesn't fit in the curriculum, then maybe we need to have a look at why that is.

I don't have any answers, really. All I know is that people seem to want to talk about this right now, and we should capitalise on that to foster broader discussions beyond KONY 2012. Talking about Joseph Kony will not get him arrested; but it can help to educate ourselves and other people about so many other issues, if we're willing to look at why this has exploded the way it has and to seriously look at ourselves and see whether we want to do anything about it or whether we really just wanted to be the first of our friends to hit share.

Johann Hari: The Indy basically says 'meh'

The Johann Hari saga at the Independent has come to a sort of sputtering, unsatisfying end. Hari's issued an apology in which he repeats his earlier admission that it was wrong of him to take quotes from other sources and pass them off as words said to him in interviews. This time, the admission comes without the attempt at justification which coloured his original apology, and instead with the concession that it was 'arrogant and stupid' of him not to have asked older, more experienced colleagues for their opinion on his unorthodox method. Hari's apology also includes an admission that he did in fact edit Wikipedia articles under the name of David Rose, making his more favourable and adding false, insulting 'facts' to the pages of people with whom he'd argued.

The actions taken to rectify the situation: Hari's returned his Orwell prize, which he admits isn't that big of a deal since rumour has it they were going to strip him of it anyway; he's taken an unpaid leave of absence from the Indy; and he's going to study journalism, to learn all of the things I guess people thought he picked up somewhere but never did. When he returns to writing, his articles will all be footnoted and accompanied by audio recordings of his interviews so people can check his work.

I think Hari's done pretty much everything he can aside from actually resigning from the Indy, which is what I had expected. He's admitted to the things he's been accused of doing wrong, he's acknowledged the way he would be treating someone he didn't like who had done the same things, he's returned his prize, he's gone off to get proper professional training, and he's agreed to a level of disclosure upon his return that is presumably unprecedented for a mainstream journalist. As someone who greatly admired Hari before this all happened, I don't think I'll ever read his stuff again and think of it highly, but I think he's handled this fairly well. Except that I really think he should have just admitted to it all off the bat and resigned, gone to journalism school, and seen if anyone would hire his new, improved self. But I mean, barring that, I guess this is the next best thing.

Unfortunately, the Independent comes out of this affair looking ridiculous, with its credibility in tatters. The Indy currently has no plans to release the report of its investigation in to Hari, saying it's 'private'. This means that any criticisms or revelations about the Indy's editorial practices, ie how this could possibly have been allowed to happen and what will be done in the future to sort that out, who is responsible, etc, are not going to be made public. The Indy's request that the Orwell Prize committee hold off on their announcement (to reportedly strip Hari of the prize) until they were done their investigation just allowed Hari to beat them to it, making the loss of the prize look like his gracious concession instead of a disgrace. The two-month long investigation into facts that were proven by bloggers in the space of a day or two and which one would think were admitted to by Hari pretty early on, just looks sluggish, reactive and desperate to buy time to figure out how to protect Hari and themselves.

I said I assumed Hari would resign - I assumed that he would resign to save both parties from having to say they sacked him, but that they would sack him if he didn't choose to resign. But no. Hari will be welcomed back in 2012 with a watchful eye (well, maybe, who knows since the Indy aren't saying!) and a pat on the head for his journalism degree. Despite admitting to repeatedly breaching two very serious rules (of journalism, of ethics, of basic decency and common sense, take your pick) and destroying the trust readers had in him, Hari will return to a prominent position at the Indy that most young journalists could only dream of; he won't, I imagine, be hired on as a local London news reporter who has to work his way up to the op-ed pages. He'll probably even be able to spin this whole thing and his subsequent foray into j-school (rumoured to be at Columbia) into a good couple of first articles.

In short, a year or so from now, the only people who will really remember will be the people that didn't like Hari in the first place. He'll gain new readers who aren't familiar with his past indiscretions. He'll be without his Orwell prize but will be relieved to have salvaged his job and, let's be honest, his reputation among those in the mainstream media who were never really willing to admit that he did very much wrong in the first place. The Independent has failed miserably in creating real consequences, either for Hari or for itself, and I for one will avoid reading it in the future as a result.

Plagiarism and media denial

So the Johann Hari saga lumbers on. Hari published his apology in the Independent and on his website on Wednesday, in which he denied plagiarism, but admitted that 'in some instances' he used practices that were wrong and which he wouldn't repeat:

Why? Because an interview is not just an essayistic representation of what a person thinks; it is a report on an encounter between the interviewer and the interviewee. If (for example) a person doesn't speak very good English, or is simply unclear, it may be better to quote their slightly broken or garbled English than to quote their more precise written work, and let that speak for itself. It depends on whether you prefer the intellectual accuracy of describing their ideas in their most considered words, or the reportorial accuracy of describing their ideas in the words they used on that particular afternoon. Since my interviews are long intellectual profiles, not ones where I'm trying to ferret out a scoop or exclusive, I have, in the past, prioritised the former. That was, on reflection, a mistake, because it wasn't clear to the reader.

Personally, I found the apology to be a bit more of a justification than anything, but as Hari's rejection of plagiarism and churnalism was in tune with what I wrote on Tuesday, and as he apologised and admitted he was wrong, I was willing to let that be the end of it, at least until Hari publishes his next piece, which will presumably be thoroughly vetted first by his editors (which no longer include Simon Kelner), and then by his critics.

But by this time, some of those critics had had time to go back through more of Hari's work, and what emerged was not a picture of occasionally or 'in some instances' finding a more accurate quote for a badly expressed thought. Blogger Cheradenine Zakalwe got the ball rolling by comparing Hari's 2009 interview with Malalai Joya with her memoir Raising My Voice. Zakalwe's work was picked up by author Jeremy Duns, who pointed out that in addition to the 42 quotes lifted in whole or in part from Joya's book, there were also passages which appeared not as quotes from her but as Hari's own writing. The New Statesman's Guy Walters reported Dunn's findings and mentions similar problems with Hari's 2004 interview with Ann Leslie. Blogger Guido Fawkes posted that Hari was sacked from both Cambridge University's student newspaper in 1999 and as a writer for GQ for embellishing stories. The Council for the Orwell Prize announced that it was investigating the situation further.

A lot of the controversy has centred around whether what Hari did should actually be called plagiarism. On Tuesday, I wrote that it shouldn't. On Friday, I changed my mind. Not only is some of what Hari did actually textbook plagiarism - as in, taking words that Malalai Joya wrote and passing them off not even as quotes from her, but as his own writing - I believe that the sheer extent of Hari's so-called 'cleaning up' of quotes goes beyond the courtesy he and his defenders try to pretend he was doing the reader and the interviewee. Where quotes were taken from earlier interviews, I feel Hari was plagiarising not the words of the interviewee but the work of the interviewer, who had to ask the right questions and take the time to record/transcribe/parse through their interview to include the quote in their story. Hari didn't only pretend that the quote was said to him - he also pretended that he put in all of the work that's involved in getting that quote from the interviewee's mouth to the page.

What I've found most bizarre about this whole thing is the defences that have emerged for Hari in mainstream media, all of which seem to deliberately treat Hari's practice as barely worse than just removing ums and ahs from a transcript. The Independent's C J Schuler posted a blog on Tuesday calling the accusations against Hari 'extraordinarily naive'; Schuler, for some reason, maintained that Hari was likely a victim of authors who trot out the same anecdotes and thoughts over and over on book tours, often in the same words. Schuler seemed to have missed Hari's own admission earlier that day, which showed this was clearly not the case.

The Guardian's Mark Lawson wrote a seemingly well-intentioned piece yesterday, which suggested that journalists should use the controversy as an opportunity to reassess their own methods. However, Lawson's article ignores the developments in the story, falls back on Schuler's bit about media-savvy authors repeating themselves, and basically dismisses what Hari did as 'being too kind' to interviewees by giving them the opportunity to be quoted at their best. 'A small sin,' he says, 'in comparison to the numerous media interviews that choose to cruelly distort what was actually said in the interest of news value, malice or political purchase.' Ah yes, the old, 'sure this was wrong but what about this other thing which is also wrong and possibly more wrong!' Many of Hari's defenders pointed out journalistic shortcomings at the Daily Mail or the Sun in his defence; luckily for critics, a logical response to this kind of reasoning was at hand, and from Hari himself, no less.

Frankly baffling was former Guardian editor Peter Preston's piece in today's Observer, which says it's 'ethically ludicrous' for anonymous bloggers to be able to whip up a controversy over Hari's 'occasional habit...of using a cleaned-up, pre-written version of his subject's answers rather than a ... you know ... more um! ... rambling live response.' I refuse to believe that someone with Preston's experience is actually so obtuse as to not realise by this point that a) what Hari's accused of is (once again!) more than removing ums and ahs, b) that his critics are not at all anonymous (he refers to leftist blog DSG, which started the controversy, but conveniently ignores, oh, everyone since), and c) that this charge of ethical ludicrousness makes absolutely no sense at all. Even if Hari's detractors were anonymous, how would that mean that they have no ethical grounds to find fault with Hari?

Strange though these defences are, they actually all have one common theme: the journalists writing them don't seem to believe that we, the readers, really understand. If only we knew what it was like to interview someone. If only we were real journalists and not 'anonymous' bloggers and tweeters. Schuler actually writes that 'anyone who has ever actually conducted interviews or attended discussion will surely smell a rat', while Lawson and Preston use their columns to pour scorn on these riff-raff who use Twitter and blogs to expose wrongdoings.

Despite the fact that comments on earlier articles and debates on Twitter clearly showed that many, many people believed that there was far more to what Hari did than cleaning up quotes, these defences continue to pretend as if that's all it was. Lawson and Preston's articles both make clear what others have merely hinted at: they think we're idiots. We rabble don't understand what an article would look like if we didn't allow quotes to be cleaned up. An exact transcript would be a nightmare! You don't want that! Both ignore the fact that no one has asked for exact transcripts, only an accurate portrayal of an interview that actually took place and not a synopsis of an author's thoughts from elsewhere.

But the Guardian writers insist on telling us what we're angry about, and then telling us that we're wrong to be angry, rather than admitting that there's more to it. To me, this implies that the journalists believe that only they can really set the news agenda. Aside from Hari's actual writings, this story has come entirely from blogs and Twitter. And honestly, there seem to be a lot of mainstream journalists who have a problem with that. I don't believe that the news agenda should be set by 'Twit mobs', as they've been dubbed, which I think I set out pretty clearly on my earlier blog on the Ken Clarke fiasco. But when non-journalists discover a story, and that story is supported by real facts, denial by mainstream press just looks like fear at best and snobbery at worst.

Johann Hari - it's not plagiarism, but it's not okay

In a way, it's unfortunate that Johann Hari is the person at the centre of this whole debacle. Not because I like him, though I've expressed admiration for him before, but because he is a high-profile journalist whose opinions tend to be fairly divisive among right and left, conservative and liberal, whatever. So even though the controversy that exploded today raises some legitimate issues about journalistic integrity, much of the discussion consisted of the usual suspects on the right calling for Hari's head (or job, or Orwell Prize) or on the left defending him in a way you know they wouldn't if he weren't on their side.

At any rate, a summary, in case you're not in the UK or haven't used the internet today: On June 17, DSG posted a piece noting glaring similarities between an interview Hari did with Italian communist Antonio Negri in 2004 and a previously published book called Negri on Negri by Anne Dufourmentelle. After reading the post, blogger Brian Whelan yesterday posted his own analysis of Hari's interview with Gideon Levy, and found that, again, large sections of quotes purportedly given during the interview were actually excerpts from Levy's previous writings or lifted from earlier interviews. Hari responded with this, admitting to the practice and defending it in the name of clarity and coherence.

Two of the accusations that have resulted are that Hari is guilty of plagiarism and churnalism. He's correct in saying that he did neither of these things. Plagiarising is passing off someone else's words or work as your own. Hari is using words that have already been said or written by the person he's interviewing, and attributing those words to that person - but not in the right context. And churnalism is the term given to copy where journalists have basically just reproduced a press release - clearly not the case here.

But what Hari is guilty of is journalistic and intellectual dishonesty. He is leading readers to believe that an interviewee said something to him that they did not. His portraits are always intensely personal, and the way the dialogue is laid out suggests that an equally intense conversation took place between the journalist and his subject. The question isn't whether Hari misrepresented the interviewee's ideas (and he and his editor Simon Kelner insist that he hasn't), it's whether he misrepresented the whole interview to his readers. Hari has taken sometimes very poignant and intelligent thoughts and deliberately created the impression that they were said directly to him; he even goes as far as to describe the interviewee's tone or body language while delivering the quote.

Even more disconcerting was Hari's contention that he had called other journalists and asked about this practice, and found it was normal. It doesn't seem that anyone's come forward to confess alongside Hari, but I'm not sure whether this is a sign that he's lying or that people saw the controversy and didn't want their own careers similarly affected. I sincerely hope this is not 'normal practice'. What Hari has essentially admitted to is quoting what he wishes his interviewees had said to him rather than what they actually did. It doesn't matter that they've said the quote before or written the thought in their books and articles. Either you ask the right questions to get the answers you want - and if they're unclear, ask more questions or request clarification - or you attribute the quotes to their original source.

Hari writes, 'My test for journalism is always - would the readers mind if you did this, or prefer it? Would they rather I quoted an unclear sentence expressing a thought, or a clear sentence expressing the same thought by the same person very recently?' He says if someone interviewed him and he was all ums and ahs and you knows, he would prefer that they just quoted his article from the previous week in which he said the same thing more coherently.

But this is disingenuous - it's (actually) normal practice for journalists to remove the ums and ahs from a quote, because this doesn't change the meaning, it just allows for a clearer thought. That's what I would prefer he do - quote a clear answer to the question he asked, not quote what he thinks the person would have liked to have said had they had the time to write down and edit their answers. I do mind what he's done; I admired his interviewing technique, the answers he was able to get out of his subjects, and I now know that some of that is fabricated. At the risk of sounding like his mother, I find the whole thing really disappointing.

I'm curious to see what the outcome of this will be. Rumour has it that Hari will run a piece in tomorrow's Independent (apologising? defending? explaining?), and I think it's unlikely that he'll stop working for them as a result of today's controversy. But the Media Standards Trust has already called for a review into Hari's 2008 Orwell Prize and his reputation has undoubtedly suffered. Will he continue with the same style of interview portraits that have been at the centre of the controversy? Will he be stripped of his Orwell Prize? I think the latter is unlikely - the prize was awarded years ago and so far there are no allegations that any of the work he received the award for is in question. But as to his writing - it's obvious that his next interview will come under very close scrutiny, by his editors and also by those who hope to catch him out.

And perhaps this is what should have been happening all along. Was Hari allowed to get away with this because he is so high-profile, or because of cuts in the industry, which meant that his work has not been subject to very close scrutiny for some time? If you're interested in that, I'd suggest reading this report on Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke, which was brought to my attention this weekend, and which touches on editors placing too much trust in reporters. Worth a read!

PS

Update: thanks to Tim Montgomerie for a nice collage of this morning's measured, not-at-all sensational headlines

On Ken Clarke

This is the second time in the last four days I've felt the need to write about the way rape is treated in the media, but now my responses to two different issues seem so polarised that I'm not sure I'll be able to discuss both without tripping over myself somewhere. And so I'll discuss today's Ken Clarke fiasco and leave my thoughts on the SlutWalk phenomenon for another time.

I don't even know where to begin with today's distortion of Justice Secretary Ken Clarke's interview on BBC 5 live. The audio is here and the transcript here; I beg you to listen/read (preferably listen, so you can hear tone as well) before you read the rest of this or form an opinion on the subject. Immediately after the interview aired, the reports began to come in: that Clarke doesn't think date rape is rape, that Clarke thinks some rape is trivial, that some rapes are not rape at all, that Clarke doesn't believe 'rape is rape'...and then began the flood on Twitter, with people who had clearly not heard the interview or even read a proper news report about it informing their followers that Clarke thinks rape isn't rape if you know the attacker, if you're wearing a short skirt, etc etc etc.

First of all: yes, absolutely, Clarke made some horrible choices in terms of the language he used, and didn't take any opportunity to correct himself. He repeatedly referred to 'serious' rapes, which is what has led a slew of people to accuse him of believing that some rapes are 'trivial' (ie the opposite of serious), or that rape in general is not a serious crime.

But in listening to the interview, it is crystal clear that Clarke is trying to distinguish between what he later calls a 'classic' rape scenario - one person violently pinning down another person and having sex with them against their will (the 5 live discussion is framed exclusively in terms of women victims, though of course men can be and are also victims of rape) - and other crimes that can be classified as rape but aren't in that same way. Actually, Clarke is specifically trying to distinguish between that 'classic' rape and statutory rape, or his example of consensual sex between an 18 year old and a 15 year old. It turns out that, actually, that crime would be a sexual offence with a minor and not classified as rape and so not included in the average sentence Clarke is trying to refute, but that doesn't change the fact that, at the time, Clarke's 'serious' was not a demarcation of some rapes as worthy of our attention and concern and others not, but an attempt to distinguish between the sentences given to violent, repeat offenders and those given in cases of statutory rape. I think Clarke made clear on the show, and then again in later interviews, that he views all cases of rape - sex against someone's will, regardless of the circumstances - as serious crimes.

He alluded to some 'confusion' around date rape when he was a practising lawyer, but unfortunately was never asked to clarify, and nor did he volunteer to. He did say that all date rape cases are different and that some cases of date rape are that 'serious' classic scenario - which is to say, violent, forceful. I would guess that the confusion he speaks of lies in cases where perhaps two people have been out together, are both drunk, and have sex, and where in sober retrospect neither party is sure if consent was given at the time, or whether a person can be capable of giving consent after a certain point of inebriation. I am emphatically not saying that a woman who has been drinking is in any way at all to blame for rape, or was 'asking for it'; a person has a right to say no to sex at any point up to and during the act, and the other person has an obligation to stop. But I think it's disingenious to pretend that society thinks that a man in the 'confusing' date rape scenario above is the same and needs to be treated the same as a predatory rapist (whether a stranger in a park or a colleague in the office) who intentionally commits a pre-meditated and violent rape.

And actually, I don't really want to get into that whole debate, though this blog fairly sums up my thoughts on it (and much more concisely, I might add). My main outrage today was not with people who were unwilling to see that rape is an incredibly complex and nuanced issue and not nearly as black and white as being able to say all rape is exactly the same. My main outrage was with the media and politicians, led by Labour leader Ed Miliband, who were determined to score political points and create a controversy by purposely ignoring the context and meaning of Clarke's words and reducing the interview to a couple of patently false soundbites, which were then repeated and further distorted through other media and Twitter.

Miliband demanded in PMQs that Clarke be sacked by the end of the day for his views on rape. This might have been justifiable if, say, Clarke had actually denied that rape was a serious crime, or actually said that date rape isn't rape, or actually said that some rape isn't really all that serious. But he didn't, and Miliband knew that. I hate to have to agree with David Cameron on anything, but when he accused Miliband of jumping on a bandwagon, he was absolutely correct.

The Telegraph followed with the headline 'Kenneth Clark questions whether date rape is really "rape"'. Er, no, he didn't. A blog on the New Statesman website said that 'a significant amount of people agree with [Clarke]' that there is a 'scale of rape', trotting out as proof a survey showing that 30% of people think that a woman is partially or totally responsible for rape if she is drunk. Except, since Clarke didn't say anything about drunk women asking for it, it was a lie to say that 30% of people agreed with him. Independent columnist Johann Hari, who I normally adore, posted a link to an old article on the prejudices that allow rapists to go free, saying the 'horrible views that Ken Clarke subconsciously revealed about rape are dismayingly common in Britain'. Except none of the views in the article are ones Clarke discussed.

I have no problem with journalists taking a current event and using it as a platform to foster discussion on important topics - and, as I had planned to write about in relation to the SlutWalks, common attitudes toward rape are absolutely something that need to be brought out into the open. But so many journalists and political activists today took the opportunity to purposely ignore Clarke's fundamental point, which was, ironically, that the BBC 5 live presenter Victoria Derbyshire was reducing a political policy covering all crime into a tabloid headline about Clarke reducing rapists' sentences to 15 months. Clarke was trying to clarify facts about the average sentencing (which, granted, he did not do very well at all), and to stop the discussion from becoming hysterical over figures that he believed weren't true.

Any discussions about the pitiful figures for rape reporting and conviction rates, about the way the police and justice systems treat rape victims, about funding for rape crisis centres, about public attitudes toward rape and the idea of victim-blaming and myths about false reporting - all of these and more would have been very valid questions to ask of Clarke and ourselves. There are enough real problems in the way society and the legal system treat rape - there was no need to create a fake hysteria around something that Clarke just clearly does not believe, and I was immensely disappointed in the media today for insisting on perpetuating sensationalist trash.

On the Ottawa Sun

I confess, I haven't been paying as much attention to the election coverage as I'd hoped. And living in the UK means I missed last night's Canadian leadership debate, though I caught up on the highlights this morning. And then this article from the Ottawa Sun was brought to my attention. And this editorial.

This is election coverage at its worst. There is no mention of the policies discussed in the debate, just a transparent attempt to draw a link in readers' minds between Michael Ignatieff and Mao Zedong based on...what, exactly? Ignatieff did not quote Mao, but used a similar phrase. Whether he realised what he was doing or not, the Sun would have us believe that this comment is a real insight into Ignatieff's character, that lurking beneath the surface is a communist dictator waiting to seize power and kill millions of people. It's a pathetic bit of partisanship that has no place in journalism.

I wandered over to the Sun's website to check out the rest of their debate coverage. Their main story on their 'Debate' tab is 'Harper ahead in duel: Poll'. The headlines of the related stories: Iggy channels Mao, Cdns. heard message, Tories head for a majority, Harper best for battlefield, CBC compass points red, AG to investigate leaks, Tories fighting for faiths. Obvious bias?

Of course everyone knows that media outlets tend to have a political bias and often come right out and endorse one party. And Sun Media has never been shy about its Conservative leanings. But such heavily editorialised journalism, and editorials presented as news (as in the first Ignatieff article I posted above) are far over and above the kind of bias that can be detected in other media outlets; for example, the Toronto Star is often called out on its Liberal bias, but its debate coverage does not read like a list of Liberal Party talking points.

Some would say that the Sun papers are tabloids and we shouldn't expect the same standard of journalism there as in other publications. But the Ottawa Sun is a very popular daily paper, and while some people are aware of its bias or its shortcomings, many are not and read it the same way they would any paper: as a genuine source of news. Especially in an election campaign, I think it's disgustingly irresponsible to trot out opinions disguised as fact.

And yes, of course there are many journalists and media outlets guilty of this, across Canada and elsewhere. I've picked the Sun because of the horrible examples on hand, but by no means mean to say that there aren't others out there with the same problem!

Worth Sharing

Warning: if you're interested in this sort of thing, you may soon become lost in the articles/blogs linked in Andrew Potter's blog, and the ones linked in those pieces, etc. Maybe look through when you have some time on your hands and no deadline looming.

Andrew Potter on the Sun and CBC's Vote Compass.

If you follow me on Twitter or we're friends on Facebook, you'll know that I promoted the Vote Compass as a fun way to see where you stand in relation to political parties. I didn't think of it as "see how you should vote" - I thought of it as "see how little you probably agree with the party line from the party you think you're supposed to vote for". I've read conflicting claims on whether the Compass is actually biased toward a Liberal vote (that is, that no matter what you put you'll almost always be told you're closest to the Liberal Party), and haven't looked into it myself yet, so I can't really comment on that at the moment.

First of all, people shouldn't be using the Vote Compass to figure out who they should vote for. If they genuinely don't know who to pick, the Compass might point them in the direction of a party or parties that they might want to look into further. If nothing else, the issues addressed in the questions may make them realise they actually care about those things, and look into what each party says about them.

But the fact that people who know who they want to vote for are upset because the Compass tells them to vote for the wrong party was exactly my point - people can become too fixated on the party line on issues, and on making that party line their opinion. When presented with opinions to choose from without having the party's opinion on hand, people may be surprised to find out their opinion is different - and that's okay. You can still vote for a party without agreeing with what they have to say on every issue. In fact, I doubt there's a single person alive who agrees with the party line on every issue - political parties are by nature pluralistic, and can't possibly be tailored to individuals. When you vote, you vote for the candidate or party that best represents your view and that you think would do the best job for your riding (well, country - regardless of the political system, many/most people likely still vote based on who they want to be Prime Minister, not who they want to be their local MP).

I'm interested to see how this whole thing plays out though - a new, different story when election campaigns provide same old, same old.

Election Time!

Quick thing to think about before today's post: tomorrow is the TUC March for the Alternative. By all accounts, it's going to be massive, though the UK papers have already started with stories about how it's going to be hijacked by extremists, violence is expected, etc. Keep an eye on the coverage - watch how different it is from the now-daily coverage of protests in the Middle East, Gulf and North Africa, which I mentioned in an earlier post. I'll try to post on Sunday when I've seen a bit of the coverage and find some examples. Or, who knows, maybe the coverage will be fair to the thousands who are likely to turn out and march peacefully and not focus on a few who might manage some destruction? Nah.

Actually, what are your thoughts on this? Is it irresponsible and/or sensationalist journalism to focus only on the bad bits and not give as much airtime to the grievances of the majority? Or is the destruction/violence legitimately the news, the thing people are going to want to see on TV and read about the next day? Does it give a skewed view of the participants? Is there a bias in coverage that assumes the protesters don't really have a right to be angry? Would love to hear some comments on this, from any country.

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I meant to post yesterday and link to a BBC story about the impending Canadian election, but I forgot and now it's been corrected. Some of you may have seen it, anyway. The reporter somehow managed to mix up Lawrence Martin, the political analyst he interviewed, with Lawrence Cannon, the Foreign Affairs Minister, resulting in a few choice quotes about how Canadians don't like Stephen Harper's 'autocratic' style...attributed to his Foreign Minister. The article also contained a photo of Jack Layton captioned "NDP leader and acting Deputy Mayor of Toronto". Classic example of super lazy journalism - Layton's (since edited) Wikipedia profile did indeed say he was acting Deputy Mayor of Toronto, which is presumably where that came from.

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So it's election time! In addition to the Canadian election, which could be as early as May 2, we have the referendum on Alternative Vote in the UK (which I get to vote in), UK local elections, and devolved parliamentary elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all on May 5. Throw in important Portuguese and Nigerian elections and an Icelandic referendum I need to keep an eye on for work, and all in all I'm pretty much going to be saturated with election coverage for the next month or two (when there aren't revolutions, wars and natural disasters to distract me. Oh, wait...).

I think election coverage always makes for interesting reading/viewing/listening. For one thing, politicians are at their very most clichéd - everything is a soundbyte, a campaign promise, a slogan. I find it infuriating, but it makes for some good observations. Election campaigns are one of the times when the various news outlets' editorial biases show most strongly (including, of course, outright endorsing a party or candidate). I'm hoping that watching the Canadian and UK campaigns at the same time will provide for interesting insights. And of course, there's always room for a slip-up here, a scandal there, a "bigoted woman" comment with the mic still on (or Nick Clegg's recent "If we keep agreeing there'll be nothing to debate" aside). One thing we probably can't depend on is proper analysis of policies (or the for/against arguments, in the case of the referendum) - it's always more interesting for people to read politicians making outrageous statements about how their opponent will ruin the country than to actually engage in informing the public. I'll keep an eye out for any coverage that actually does this particularly well, or particularly badly.

PS

Further to yesterday's post, check this out. The tool itself is pretty cool, but Chris Atkins' work brings up some of the same points I was trying to make yesterday:

"But it was Atkins's bogus Facebook campaign calling for the return of the prime minister's new cat, Larry, that has been most successful. Within 24 hours of the site having been created, the Mail ran the story under the heading: "But that's my auntie's cat: Man's claim on 'stray' No 10 ratcatcher (… and there's a Facebook campaign to get him back)." It also appeared in the Metro, under the heading: "Dear David Cameron: You've stolen my aunt's cat, please return him."

But the entirely made up story received most attention on Gaby Logan's BBC 5 Live show, in a light-hearted slot before the 1 o'clock news.. Discussing the story with chief political correspondent John Pienaar, Logan joked that the dispute over ownership of Larry the Downing Street cat was likely to "run and run".

Media and Social Media

I'm slowly and reluctantly coming to terms with the existence of Twitter and the role it has to play in journalism.

Up until a few months ago, I didn't really have a Twitter account. I mean, I did, but I opened it because a particularly funny friend of mine was on Twitter and I wanted to read the things he posted, but his Tweets were protected so I had to get an account to read them. I posted maybe five things in over a year, until I realised everyone at work had it and they started hounding me to use mine. So I've embraced it. And in doing so, I've come to see that it can be a lot more than just another narcissistic forum for people who think everyone cares about what they think a lot more than anyone does.

Since everyone and their dog is now on Twitter, it can be a great resource for finding out about events and stories, for following what's going on as people live-tweet events, and as I hardly feel needs saying at this point, for finding out what's happening in places that are closed to traditional media. This became increasingly obvious as governments took measures against press freedom in Egypt, Bahrain and Libya in recent weeks. It's hard to find fault with using social media in these situations, for organising, for sources, for spreading word between journalists. I would caution, though, about completely overstating the importance of social media in these situations - several journalists who were on the ground in Egypt have since pointed out that when the internet was shut down around January 27, the presence on the street actually increased because people had no way of finding out what was going on and had to head to the streets to find out. But still, it's clear that in places like Libya, where press freedom was non-existent and the regime was doing everything it could to keep journalists out and deny violence against protesters, the fact that people had any way at all to get information to the rest of the world was absolutely crucial to understanding what was happening there.

So in these situations, I can absolutely see the merit of the kind of amalgamation of journalism and social media that we've seen in recent weeks. Where I do have a massive problem with it is in modern more domestic journalism, where getting opinions from Twitter and Facebook has become standard practice, and where posts themselves suddenly become news just because everyone can see them and decide to be outraged. Reporters regularly include 'reaction' from people who purport to care about an event in their stories - that is, they post a couple of choice tweets that come up when you search for the relevant trending topic or hashtag. Is this the same as getting an informed opinion from an expert, as we might have done in the past, or the same as actually attending an event, understanding the atmosphere, and getting an opinion from someone who was there when it happened and is reacting in that context? I don't think it necessarily is. There's no way of verifying sources on Twitter - it's somehow just assumed that anyone posting a comment on something is the same kind of person you might have otherwise sought out for comment in the pre-Twitter days. Likewise, it is now common practice when a person dies to report on what messages 'friends' have posted on their Facebook page. Is this the same as a journalist getting an emotional interview with the person's family or friends at a memorial service?

I also think there's a very real danger of becoming lazy because everything seems to be on hand, and of journalistic laziness being potentially dangerous. An example. When I was in j-school, I got a phone call from a classmate who was then doing some work for a national newspaper. He asked me if I knew a Jason Smith (not his real name), because Jason's last tagged photos on Facebook were in an album of mine. I didn't know him - he was the flatmate of an acquaintance, and had come along to a j-school event I'd organised and subsequently been tagged in the photos by his flatmate. Why? Well it turns out someone with Jason's name, who was or had been studying at our school, who was from Toronto, had just been charged with murdering a disabled woman in Toronto. Jason's Facebook profile fit the bill, and his profile picture was dark, with a baseball hat obscuring his face, so it was hard to tell if he fit the alleged murderer's description. I said I didn't know him, but was pretty sure he was living in Ottawa and not a murderer. When I got home, I had a Facebook message from another reporter, and could see from Jason's profile that some of his other friends had been contacted as well. Of course, it turned out to be a different person with the same name - but how many of Jason's friends were contacted to find out if he had killed someone, and what is the danger there? Were there more safeguards against this kind of mistaken identity when people charged with crimes were tracked down by the details available from police, courts, and public records (date of birth, address, listed phone numbers, etc)?

I guess what I'm really saying is that social media is a great tool for leads, a good source of information when nothing else is available and a dynamic way to see how stories move forward- but it cannot and should not replace real journalism. Research, context and verification have become more important, not less, as so much information is available to media consumers, and it seems to me that these are the first things to go when people start depending on social media for news, and, worse, when journalists start depending on it in lieu of doing the kind of work they have done in the past and should still be doing now.