MetaFilter posts tagged with media

In Defense of Jaywalking

aerotive — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:32:05 -0800

Interesting article at Slate, In Defense of Jaywalking, where the author describes how the media and others often slant coverage of pedestrian vs auto accidents--examples include San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe , and New York Post columns. Police, who are typically car-bound, are often biased in favor of other drivers. Not unexpectedly the Federal Highway Administration has curious language regarding walkers--"Still, almost no one can avoid occasional pedestrian status". Even the term jaywalking is commonly misused. Solutions? More money towards safer walking (including a reversal of funding policies that favor cars), better places to walk, pedestrian-friendly engineering, lower urban speed limits, harsher penalties for drivers that violate pedestrian's rights, and critical reading of the often selective and sensationalized media coverage of traffic crashes.

A New Way to Explore the World

netbros — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:23:24 -0800

Michael Surtees latest photo experiment is called #walkingtoworktoday. The rules are simple and open to anyone—while walking to work take a photo. From there the photo needs to be pushed to Twitter via Flickr while containing the hashtag #walkingtoworktoday somewhere in the tile. But there wasn’t one dedicated space outside of Flickr to see the photos, and even then it was only seeing it through one medium—you didn’t get to see the tweets. So that’s why he decided there needed to be a site. Surtees created #walkingtoworktoday using Daylife tools that contained Flickr and Twitter moduals. The main modual streams photos from Flickr while the right rail shows the tweets. It’s an interesting redundancy that works.

"I would like to thank you for dismissing my 22 years' service in Her Majesty's Armed Forces."

markkraft — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:27:23 -0800

In 2007, Moira Cameron, a soldier with a distinguished 22-year military career serving in Northern Ireland and Cyprus, was named Britain's first female Yeoman Warder... a Beefeater. Unfortunately, she has also been the target of sexist workplace harassment by several of her 34 fellow Beefeaters, all of whom are supposedly mature forty+ year old veterans. This has led to two Beefeaters being suspended with an additional Beefeater currently under investigation. Equally unfortunately, Rupert Murdoch's Sun is adding to her humiliation, while Reuters has put the "Ha, ha!" in harassment by filing the story in their "humorous" Oddly Enough category.

Fox "upset-the-White-House-won't-call-it" News

ADoubtfulTrout — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:34:57 -0800

Fox News's bent on the news is well known, but recently the White House has begun actively excluding the network, including skipping Fox's Chris Wallace on a recent round of Sunday morning news shows. “We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction ... that Fox is a traditional news organization.” says White House Depty Communications Director Pfeiffer (as has Press Secretary Gibbs and others). The responses range from concern about an attempt to control the media to a feeling that it's about time. Is it just about Fox's anti-Obama pundits, or is it also about Fox's consistent errors and misinformed viewership? Or is the White House attempting containment so that Fox's ratings-gold style and ideas don't take over the rest of the press?

Radio Fail

hnnrs — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:41:06 -0800

"I leave with a heavy heart as part of the changes that have, in my humble opinion, destroyed the station that I helped to set up 29 years ago."
Radio Fail documents (mostly UK) radio bloopers and cock-ups.

Project Censored 2010

Pope Guilty — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:44:36 -0800

The ever-oddly dated Project Censored has released its list of undercovered and ignored stories for 2010.

The Boy With the Thorn in his Side

psmealey — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:57:39 -0800

A three part profile on Glenn Beck by Salon.com's Alexander Zaitchik A morality play in three acts, or, how Glenn Beck parlayed a parlayed his finely honed skills as a drug addled morning zoo shock jock, into the media force that is making America dumber by the minute. Some excellent profiling by Alexander Zaitchik of Salon.com: Part 1: The making of Glenn Beck - His roots, from the alleged suicide of his mom to Top 40 radio to the birth of the morning zoo.
Part 2: The Meltdown - The radio phenom takes over the morning zoo, makes fun of miscarriages and flames out.
Part 3: The Resurrection - Getting clean, getting Mormon, getting talk radio -- and going to Yale, with the help of Joe Lieberman.

Goldman Sachs acquiring media equity

Joe Beese — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:18:55 -0800

... one wonders why [Goldman Sachs] and [JP Morgan] were so eager to provide "rescue" financings to virtually the entire distressed media space: both companies knew too well that sooner or later they would end up with full equity control over essentially the most coveted industry: thousands of TV stations, radio channels, newspaper and magazines. (via) (previously)

The fake truth

hellbient — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:06:37 -0800

NY Post Special Global Warming Edition (courtesy of The Yes Men). Thousands of hard copies hit the streets of New York at the crack of dawn.

A front pages post

fatllama — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:54:33 -0800

Google Fast Flip: Newspaper Stand 2.0

Advertising in the public interest

Rhaomi — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:54:54 -0800

"What if America wasn't America?" That was the question posed by a series of ads broadcast in the wake of the September 11th attacks, ads which depicted a dystopian America bereft of liberty: Library - Diner - Church. Together with more positive ads like Remember Freedom and I Am an American, they encouraged frightened viewers to cherish their freedoms and defend against division and prejudice in the face of terrorism (seven years previously). The campaign was the work of the Ad Council, a non-profit agency that employs the creative muscle of volunteer advertisers to raise awareness for social issues of national importance. Founded during WWII as the War Advertising Council, the organization has been behind some of the most memorable public service campaigns in American history, including Rosie the Riveter, Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog, and the Crash Test Dummies. And the Council is still at it today, producing striking, funny, and above all effective PSAs on everything from student invention to global warming to arts education to community service.

Additional resources: A-to-Z index of Ad Council campaigns - Campaigns organized by category - Award-winning campaigns - PSA Central: A free download directory of TV, radio, and print PSAs (registration req'd) - An exhaustive history of the Ad Council [46-page PDF] - YouTube channel - Vimeo channel - Twitter feed

Videocracy

acb — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:11:30 -0800

A new documentary by a Swedish-based Italian filmmaker examines how media mogul turned two-time president Silvio Berlusconi's 30-year grip on Italian television has shaped the country, its politics, its culture and society. Erik Gandini's Videocracy, which screens at the Venice Film Festival, starts 30 years ago, when Berlusconi introduced a quiz show whose female contestants stripped for the camera, and charts 30 years of showgirls, celebrities, reality TV shows and Berlusconi's rise to political power, and interviews characters of the system, including a talentless but fame-hungry TV contestant, a fascist-sympathising media fixer, and a paparazzo/extortionist turned celebrity. More details here and (with a trailer) here. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both Berlusconi's private TV channels and the state broadcaster RAI have refused to run advertisements for the film.

Japan's Media Environment

armage — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:21:13 -0800

Japan -- Media Environment Open; State Looms Large (August 2009, PDF) A detailed, 67-page overview and analysis of Japan's traditional and new media environment published by the Open Source Center, an office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Murdoch v. the BBC

Jakey — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:00:54 -0800

"If you think you can get fucking angry, I can get fucking angry." James Murdoch, Chairman of News Corp, gave this year's MacTaggart Lecture (vid) (transcript) in which he delivered a broadside on the role of the BBC, accusing it of 'dumping' news on the commercial market. An alternative view was given by the BBC's Robert Peston, who asked "Should we be relaxed if 'can't pay' means 'can't know'?" Their after-dinner discussions led to a 'vigorous exchange of views.' There was a mixed reception to the speech in the UK media, and even The Wire's dominic West got in on the act. Previous MacTaggart speakers include Dennis Potter and Jeremy Paxman, amongst others.

Choose your own misadventure: the story of Interfilm

escabeche — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:45:32 -0800

" There were lots of small children in the audience. I thought about asking one little girl if she had voted for the paddle, the rod or the cattle prod." In 1995, a company called Interfilm revolutionized the movie industry. Oh, no, wait, it didn't. Audiences at Mr. Payback, "the first interactive movie," pressed buttons on a joystick attached to their seat to vote on the actions of the characters on-screen -- for instance, what kind of physical abuse a captured thug should undergo. Despite the pedigree of director Bob Gale (writer/producer of Back to the Future) and co-star Christopher Lloyd, critics were not impressed. The company folded a week after releasing its third interfilm, "I'm Your Man," scored by Joe Jackson, which did, a few years Interfilm was the brainchild of "conceptualist" and guy-with-gigantic-glasses Bob Bejan (Dateline NBC interview), who now works at a next-generation, data-driven marketing agency that delivers strategic, multi-channeled communication solutions designed to cultivate and sustain relationships between brands and their audiences. Watch: Clips from "Mr. Payback." The making of "I'm Your Man." (warning: A. Whitney Brown.) Read: the New York Times on the 1998 DVD release of "I'm Your Man." Booklet copy from the "I'm Your Man" DVD.

Scientists: cancer prevention causes cancer

fatllama — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:00:32 -0800

Kill or cure: making sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it. Paul Battley uses automation and crowd-sourcing in the war against bad science reporting.

With whom it starts

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:43:09 -0800

Healthcare reform has agitated right-wing extremists and moneyed interests in the United States for some time — during the presidencies of FDR and Truman as well as Clinton and Obama, most recently — but where do the objections originate from, and particularly those which are known to be based on complete untruths? Some of these lies start with or are repeated by well-known right-wing media personalities, but there are other people who get the ball rolling, who are perhaps less well-known. Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey originated one of the current myths more commonly known as "death panels", but despite her attempts to market herself as a folksy voice fighting for the well-being of senior citizens, she has been an effective advocate for the interests of private health insurance companies since the early 1990s. In The Atlantic's fascinating overview Triumph of Misinformation, award-winning journalist James Fallows follows the Clinton administration's failed attempt to pass healthcare reform, during which McCaughey spread a false claim about the Clinton proposal actively preventing patients from going outside the government system for treatment. Her fictitious story was quickly picked up and amplified by the mainstream media, with devastating effect. Her own version was entitled No Exit: What The Clinton Plan Will Do For You and was printed in The New Republic. Despite its publication, it contained so many inaccuracies that the magazine's former editors have all since disowned the piece (though Andrew Sullivan still lauded it up until two years ago). In an essay published on Bloomberg.com in February (and in several essays and letters since), she attempted to promulgate another lie in which hospitals and doctors under an Obama-led plan would be penalized for failing to contribute patient data to a federal health database, eliminating patient privacy and enforcing uniformity in treatment. This falsehood did not appear to gain as much traction as her subsequent "death panel" myth. After scrutiny following a critical two-part interview (full, extended version part 1 and part 2) (Flash req'd) with Jon Stewart this past Thursday, McCaughey resigned today from a vaguely described position with Cantel Medical, a private heathcare product corporation.

Personas

juv3nal — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:59:44 -0800

Personas is a part of the MIT Metropath(ologies) exhibit that scours the web for information and attempts to characterize a person based on an entered first and last name, showing visualizations of the process as it chugs along. Can't say it was particularly adept at digging anything up on me, but maybe you need to be internet-famous for it to work well. Still neat.

Persuasion: Why men in ads are dumb, goofy or completely inept

five fresh fish — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 09:47:44 -0800

Persuasion: Why men in ads are dumb, goofy or completely inept. Several YT commercials and a thoughtful essay.

Let's party Like It's 1999

Xurando — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:53:49 -0800

It was the media party of the decade. It was planned by the king of parties, Robert Isabell, who died last month. Although thrown to celebrate the birth of Talk Magazine, little did the attendees know, that this was the night print media began to die. “I was aware it was a historic night,” Ms. Brown said. “We were on a boat and I was with Natasha Richardson. We were talking and laughing, looking at the lights of the twin towers. And then a big wave came over the side of the boat and soaked us both. Now Natasha is gone, the towers are gone. It’s very, very sad, but I am very excited by this new world we are heading into.”

Putting a 14-year-old in a "lie detector" - what did you expect would happen?

divabat — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 02:54:17 -0800

Sydney radio station 2dayFM earned the ire and backlash of the Australian public - rape counsellors, Australian media, and Community Services ministers - after an on-air stunt by morning crew Kyle and Jackie O went horribly wrong. During their regular "lie detector" segment, a 14-year-old girl was interrogated by the hosts and her mother over her sexual history, against her will, and revealed that she had been raped at 12 on air (warning: possibly triggering audio clip embedded in news article). The hosts immediately offered to pay for counselling services, but questions such as "And did you have any other experiences?" led to widespread on Twitter, calls for sackings and shutdowns, and a major PR crisis for radio group Austereo. While the station and its hosts have released an official statement and Kyle Sandilands has stated he was "stunned" by the revelation, authorities are now seeking out the girl's mother for investigation. This is not the first time Kyle and Jackie O (mostly Kyle) have courted controversy.

Caijing (财经)

KokuRyu — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:39:38 -0800

Caijing (财经) is an independent, Beijing-based magazine devoted to reporting on business in China. The publication's title means "Finance and Economics." Periodical China has suggested 3 key factors that have made Caijing successful. The first is investigative reports, the second is the unique perspective of commentaries, the third is Caijing's three guiding principles-independence, uniqueness and exclusiveness... (However) how much freedom exists in the current Chinese press market for a magazine with such liberal reporting remains questionable. Hu Shuli, the founding editor of the biweekly magazine, was once suspended from a reporting job in 1989 because of her sympathy for the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, yet she has cultivated first-name familiarity with some of China’s most powerful Party leaders. Since 1998, when she established Caijing, she has guided the magazine with near-perfect pitch for how much candor and provocation the regime will tolerate. From a recent article in Caijing about increasing social unrest in China: Mass incidents are breaking out all over China, but the causes are specific, the threat to government is limited and the solutions are within reach

Meet the new type

msalt — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:38:42 -0800

A new type of newspaper for a new type of world One story from it previously. About us: "The Faster Times is a collective of great journalists who have come together to try something new. As we launch this July, we will have more than a hundred correspondents in over 20 countries. We have someone on the ground in Kenya and someone else reporting from Lebanon. Our arts section will cover not just film and books, but also theater and dance and photography. We will launch with seven writers on books alone. These writers are not “citizen journalists” but among the most accomplished and recognized names in their respective fields."

Lame and trite and read all over

littlerobothead — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:37:32 -0800

Fired from The Canon. Classics that maybe aren't so classic. (kottke via secondpass)

"I Drew the Coffin": The "Oblique Strategies" of Marshall McLuhan

Misciel — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:09:13 -0800

Wow, what a great discovery I made tonight! You may have heard of "Oblique Strategies" (previously mentioned on MeFi). Subtitled "over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas," it is a deck of cards first created in 1975 by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt to help jump start creative thinking by having the users draw, read and react to a card bearing an abstruse aphorism. There are by now plenty of online versions (easily googled!) as well as an iPhone app. (More info available at the Oblique Strategies fan page!) I just discovered today, however, that "Oblique Strategies" was not the first in its genre, but rather was following in the very footsteps of Marshall McLuhan! In 1969, renowned media prophet, philosopher and "patron saint" of Wired, Marshall McLuhan published a similar concept with his newsletter, "A Distant Early Warning," better known as DEW-line (Based on his quote, "I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system.") As the Collectors' page at the McLuhan Global Research Network explains,

the card deck was intended to stimulate problem-solving and thinking, in a manner that later came to be known as "thinking-outside-the-box", and perhaps "lateral thinking". The instructions direct the player to think of a personal or business problem, shuffle the card deck, select a card and then apply its message to the problem.

Since then, this deck has been - as the Collectors' page states - one of the more difficult items to find of McLuhaniana. That is, until now, since the ENTIRE DECK was scanned and made available on Flickr back in 2006 by Jeff Trexler, Wilson Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Pace University and author of uncivilsociety.org & The Blingdom of God. (Not to mention that there's also a flash version referred to here...) As you'll see, the cards are very much products of their time. The picture set's description says, "there's a lot of thought-provoking stuff here, but one caveat: a few of the cards reflect then-popular attitudes toward women, akin to the crudeness and not-so-latent sexism portrayed in Mad Men." In addition, there's also a rather pervasive insensitivity about disability, what was likely supposed to be a deliberately provocative blackface character, and at least one completely myopic reference to what will turn out to be incredibly short-lived popular culture. (In addition, it seems to me that he was also playing a lot with matching his aphorisms not only to the face cards, but also to the suits, of which some love and sex quotes for the Hearts seem to be the most obvious examples...) In the end, though, as the Collectors' page concludes, "although it is difficult to see what bearing some of the sayings might have on business problems ('Thanks for the mammaries'?), the card deck reveals McLuhan’s love of jokes, especially one-liners, puns, and pithy aphorisms. It illustrates as well his willingness to experiment with a variety of communication media, no matter how lowly or taken for granted"! What might he have done today with Twitter, for example? P.S. Last but not least, if you want to have your very own original deck of McLuhan's "Distant Early Warning" cards, a set just happens to be available RIGHT NOW on eBay!