Photographers Discuss Their Photos: Bush Era

Fascinating.

Media Bias?

More here

Footnote of the Day

Article here:

¹ Real Social Scientific Data is a term of art here, which covers the broad category of ‘statistics that are sufficiently entertaining that I really don’t want to look at them too hard.’ This understanding of data is commonly applied (especially in the popular press, but often enough in academia too), although rarely acknowledged in explicit terms.

The Practice of Control and False Narratives?

Press coverage in the Bush Era:

Live, from DC, it's Tuesday Afternoon

Three Spheres

From Jay Rosen:

. . . one of the problems with our political press is that its reference group for establishing the “ground” of consensus is the insiders: the professional political class in Washington. It then offers that consensus to the country as if it were the country’s own, when it’s not, necessarily. This erodes confidence in a way that may be invisible to journalists behaving as insiders themselves. And it gives the opening to Jon Stewart and his kind to exploit that gap I talked about between making news and making sense. . . .

Now we can see why blogging and the Net matter so greatly in political journalism. In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized— meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.

In the past there was nowhere for this kind of sentiment to go. Now it collects, solidifies and expresses itself online. Bloggers tap into it to gain a following and serve demand. Journalists call this the “echo chamber,” which is their way of downgrading it as a reliable source. But what’s really happening is that the authority of the press to assume consensus, define deviance and set the terms for legitimate debate is weaker when people can connect horizontally around and about the news.

Read the rest.

Keys to Successful Punditry

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Pundit School

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Media Coverage of Gaza and the Economy

Blame it on Your Childhood

Some recent scholarship on why people vote.

Some Choice Bits

In no order, and without attribution (you'll have to read your colleagues' posts to find out), here are a few selections from your final exam thingies that I thought especially noteworthy:

One can make the argument, I believe, that in this election season the Tocquevillian motivation and the mimetic attempt to replicate the beliefs of the audience, conjoined. Because paranoia and suspicion towards the nominees for President was so rampant (at least so vocal) among the populace, the media could both replicate those arguments and use them as challenges towards the government. Possibly Tocqueville may have argued that even paranoid suspicion towards the government can play a role in challenging that authority. As the adversarial role is one of power (that increases or decreases as the central government and personal freedom fluxes), that power can be expressed in inanities as well as legitimate challenges. I argue though that this mimetic reproduction of ground roots paranoia in fact delegitimizes the press and those concerns. Power is siphoned and not maintained when those stories are brought up. [This is the] pseudo-journalism of paranoid media.

The media's role is defined by the perception of its viewers. If the people view the media as a poor check on government, it is in effect a poor check on government.

The facts are clear: the media failed to discredit the George W. Bush’s claim that Iraq had WMD, a claim later proven false. Massing and Boehling [Boehlert?] detail how this occurred: the press allowed itself to report falsehoods (therefore failing to uphold being reporters of objective fact) by refusing to investigate the administrations shakier claims (casting aside its duty as a neutral advocate) and stymied dissenting voices (transgressing the commandment to encourage public discussion). It is less clear how the fourth [profit-seeking] and fifth [propagandizing] [of Leighley's models] interacted in 2003, but the presence of both is a certainty. Regardless, the failure of America’s linkage institution resulted in the subservience of democracy; the country embarked on a war informed citizenry would not have fought.

No matter how loud and intense the national conversation gets, it is useless if it get drowned out by an incompetent election process.

[Because] [m]oney buys access. . . some Americans have their voices heard louder th[a]n others. The idea of the media inspiring a national conversation on policy seems futile if the voices of the public do not carry equal weight.

The media is a failed state.

[G]overnment doesn’t use these tools to CONVEY their messages, the[y] use [them] to CONVINCE the public that their ideas and policies should be supported.

Perhaps by complicating the nature of the event itself, of the public discourse, American's can solve the problem that mainstream media posses to democracy. In order for that to occur though, access to politics needs to change. In order to elevate the discourse, more people and more divergent opinions have to somehow enter into the national conversation. Otherness, in a sense, needs to be incorporated into the American dialogue. . . . By opening the inauguration to otherness [in the form of Pastor Rick Warren], by forcing mainstream media to cover a dialogue, by forcing conversation (even if mediated) between liberals and conservatives, pastors and gays, Obama has complicated the American narrative. This is an education for all sides of American values. This is an elevation of the American discourse. . . Exposure, not isolation, is the mechanic of American democracy.

But my favorite line, I have to say, is this:

I expected Rage Against the Machine and got Nickelback.

I hope your semester was more the former than the latter.