POV

"Well, I always personally found [U.S. government briefings] valuable. I know many other people didn’t because if you looked at them in terms of objective truth, they weren’t very useful. But in terms of how the U.S. government wanted us to see things, they were quite useful. And it’s important to know what the government’s narrative is. Because in any conflict there are competing narratives, and our job, from my point of view, is to sort through them and provide a reality check on all of them." — Alissa Rubin, Los Angles Times

This by far is my favorite entry by a journalist in the Columbia Journalism Review's "Reign of the CPA" piece. All the other entries were things I've heard before or just understand (being a journalist-in-training and someone who pays a fair amount of attention to the news). Hearing that Coalition Provisional Authority officials refused to answer hard questions and seemed extremely disconnected to how things actually were in Iraq is no surprise.

But I like that Rubin took the press conferences and propagandized statements of the CPA not as frustrating governmental spin but as a challenge. The government has no reason to admit when things are bad, they have nothing to gain from a situation like that and everything to lose so it makes sense that they ... I don't want to say lie, but it makes sense that they would lie and deny things.

Rubin recognizes that this is a natural part of the situation and a vital part of her job as a good journalist. The other journalists quoted sound tired, frustrated and a little bit angry, but Rubin is taking the situation in stride and using it to her advantage. I like that, it's refreshing.

Looking Back

I don't really remember all that much from the initial media coverage of the war in Iraq, but I do remember being overall disappointed by the coverage. I didn't read newspapers that much in high school so my early exposure to the reporting was all TV coverage.

I understand the concept of patriotism and not reporting too negatively in the beginning of a conflict, but we didn't get any negative news. In the U.S. media: civilian deaths weren't mentioned at all, the loss of power in Iraq took on a vaguely positive - Go U.S.A. - spin, and way too much was made of the "war heros" like those first soldiers captured (who happened to be from Texas so we heard even more about them) and Jessica Lynch.

We're at war, what did people expect? I don't understand why people got so angry whenever something happened to U.S. troops and the media only stoked the fire. They did a horrible job of reporting objectively and all war stories had horribly tabloid spins.

The absolute worse (that no one around me seemed to notice the same way I did) was Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech on the aircraft carrier. It seemed preposterous on its own and I didn't see anyone in the media challenging the fact that there was still a lot of violence in the Middle East that we had to deal with.

Everyone around me (media and the people in my personal life) were complaining about Al Jazeera's "bloodly" coverage of the war but personally I admire Al Jazeera, they covered the war like it was a war - blood, accidental deaths, sorrow, anger and all.

As the fighting continued (and is still continuing) media coverage revealed itself to be even worse than we all thought. It turns out that we knew there were no WMDs in Iraq and so did the major media outlets. Except only the people who really paid attention to the press found those stories. The media didn't bother to call out a governmental lie that led us into war and no one seemed to care ... until now when everyone is content complaining about how horrible our government is and how much we need to get out of Iraq. But I won't go into that too much because it's just beating a dead horse.

Texas

I've never seen a liberal slant put on a politics article about Texas ... and I've lived there for 11 years. It was interesting to see the New York Times' fairly large spread on Texas today, with an unusual slant. It is about politics, yes, but more interestingly about how diverse Texas is.

We all know Texas is a big state for a candidate to win, shear size alone makes that hard to not realize. But I never really gave it a thought about how many different people candidates would have to please. Granted, the majority of Texans - and I think this aspect was largely neglected in the article - are Republican, but there is still a fight between Clinton and Obama, especially during the primaries. I'd even say the primaries in Texas are more important for the democrats because this is the part of the race that counts for them there.

I'd also just like to point out how long the poor reporter must have spent talking to random "men on the street" to get that democrat eating lunch AND another pumping gas. Unless you're in Austin, self-proclaimed democrats are a little hard to come by.

He said She said

Even though objectivity isn't natural to human beings I'm a firm believer of striving for objectivity in journalism. We discussed in class that people nowadays enjoy news outlets that let's its leanings be known - but I consider that slightly different than objectivity.

My ideal of a good media outlet is one that openly acknowledges it's leanings (biases is too strong a word) but still tells all sides of the story. Not being objective (which we already established is physically impossible to the human mindset) is completely different than not trying to be objective.

The idea that there is no "time or place" for objectivity in today's news is sad. It's our role as responsible journalists to not only tell people what they want to hear, but what they need to hear. News being completely biased would just lead to confusion because no one would see both sides of the story. If they had the option, people would only watch/read the news they like the leaning of. Arguing never works when you don't know, understand or acknowledge the other person's point of view and doing away with the idea of objectivity in journalism would just add to the chaos that creates.

Whether people want their news to be objective or not doesn't really matter. People don't always know what's good for them and objectivity is something they need to be force fed if necessary.

Extra! Extra!

Being an features/arts/entertainment writer and editor it would make some sense for me to say that tabloidization of newspapers is a good thing. I actually think the opposite. "Tabloid" has negative connocations on its own, but after looking through the New York Post it's clear that that is not what news needs to be. Sensationalizing everything and pushing political news behind Heath Ledger's death makes no sense no matter who you are.

I do think papers like the New York Times would benefit from having a "low brow" entertainment section, but I wouldn't call that tabloidization. The structure of the Times, with news in the A section followed by the "other stuff" is perfect, but the entertainment section shouldn't just be book, play and art show reviews - that's not what most people care about. But low-brow doesn't neccessarily constitue tabloid.

It's the presentation of news (in the generic senes of the word, not a genre classification) that makes tabloidization bad – the sensationalizing and backwards ordering of stories.

So is tabloidization a bad thing? Yes. Is adding more common, pop culture aspects into more widely read ("high brow, educated") newspapers a bad thing? No.

In too deep? (Thoughts on Tuesday's class)

In class we discussed the fact that top news stories are consistantly depressing stories. I've always had a problem with this and recently (ironically enough) one of my friends has been complaing about it and charing me with a mission to change it (...because he's not a journalist). But after working as a news editor and becoming more jaded during my time at IC I see the logic with leading with "bad" news. As much as we may not like it, a rebel attack on a country's capital is more important than a happy-go-lucky feature. That being said, I don't see why we can't lead with positive NEWS ... scientific break throughs made by other countries, good political swings, that sort of thing.

As much as I would love to see positive news (from around the world, not just the U.S.) on the front page I think at this point in time we've dug ourselves into a hole we probably can't get out of. If a newspaper or news cast leads with a positive story and people find the usual bloody, depressing stories that have become traditional leaders later in the paper/show they will get mad. We've put so much importance on depressing news for so long that it has become synonymous with the idea of "the most important news." Even if journalists realise the structure is flawed it's too late to change because the public won't understand why we're burying the "news" all of the sudden.

It's the media's fault that we fell into this rut but it's too late to change things now.

Sometimes simple is best

I read this and thought it was a great, understated way of commenting on a huge national issue. It really makes you think ... especially if you're Irish and were rasied Catholic like me.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/01/31/a_toast_to_an_irishman/