Posts by Stephen Judd
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Nowadays it is so easy for any site to maintain a "corrections" page, but I can't think of a single NZ media outlet that does. Perhaps if one did this in the interests of building a reputation as a quality news source, the others would follow out of competition, but I kinda doubt it.
I'd love to see a well-resourced fact-checking service with an editorial voice that shamed the publishers of outrageous falsehoods. Something with sufficient moral authority that a notice from it actually could be a source of stories for competitors. For example, in the case of the N&S Asian Angst story, it would be great if they not only had to publish a correction but if some accessible, userfriendly, and unimpeachably independent website recorded this permanently. Some sort of levy on advertisers would be a great way to fund this, then advertisers can exert commercial pressure on publishers to be accurate.
People might be interested to see that Press Council rulings are online. They make fascinating reading, but this isn't what I have in mind.
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Here's a thought.
The Press Council and analogous bodies are justified, it seems to me, because the industry participants have disproprotionate clout in communication -- they are not just media, they are *mass* media. They are self-regulating as part of an informal deal with the public that in curbing their own excesses, they can be excused legal regulation.
So, suppose that I, a nobody, do the kind of thing that would justify a complaint were I North and South magazine. Well, who cares? I don't have disproportionate clout and the evil I can achieve is very limited in scope.
Now suppose that I'm no longer a nobody. Perhaps I'm David Farrar. Well, at that point, I'd probably be willing to join and abide by the rules of a Press Council equivalent. Perhaps right now, the bigger players in terms of online audience share ought to be coming up with a voluntary regulatory regime, with entry criteria based on readership.
If you are with me this far, then you might agree that there is no need to regulate online publication with respect to the kinds of things are the domain of the Press Council, the BSA and their brethren -- a suitable vehicle will arise in due course if it is needed.
This is orthogonal to Graeme's point directly above, which I agree with.
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Speaker: Who are the news media?, in reply to merc,
does Stuff fall into this category?
the generation and/or aggregation
Bear in mind that although Stuff's owners are customers of the company I work for, and most of my day job is doing technical things for Stuff, I do not and cannot speak on their behalf. However, I think the answer is straightforwardly and obviously yes. Stuff both generates content in its own right and aggregates content from its owners' newspapers. Stuff is a news medium under the definitions proposed by the Law Commission.
In the online space I think a more interesting set of cases is the opinion heavy political blogs like The Standard, Whale Oil and Kiwiblog. Or Public address.
See, when I read a phrase like:
"a significant proportion of their publishing activities must involve the generation and/or aggregation of news, information and opinion of current value"
I wonder how I should parse "news, information and opinion". What if a blog is more or less pure commentary (opinion) with no actual news or raw information? Is it necessary to have news and information as well to qualify? How much? What is a significant proportion?
What about pure aggregators? Eg, suppose I write a program to more or less automatically aggregate news stories, and publish fair use snippets and links, or perhaps I syndicate stories under liences. One of my sources publishes something dodgy -- will my pure aggregator site be able to claim it's doing journalism? My instinct is yes, if the originator would be protected I should be protected, but I'm not sure how I justify that.
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Speaker: Who are the news media?, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Yes, good point. Other examples of book as journalism: Hood's A City Possessed, McNeish's Mask of Sanity, and possibly the biggest NZ one in my life time, Yallop's Beyond Reasonable Doubt.
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Speaker: Who are the news media?, in reply to merc,
I was kind of hoping that the existing "news medium" who publish information therein sic, see above, are already defined in law?
The proposed criteria that the Law Commission is kicking around are:
...in order to qualify for these special news media privileges and exemptions, publishers must have the following four characteristics:
* a significant proportion of their publishing activities must involve the generation and/or aggregation of news, information and opinion of current value;
* they disseminate this information to a public audience;
* publication must be regular and not occasional; and
* the publisher must be accountable to a code of ethics and a complaints process. -
Speaker: Who are the news media?, in reply to linger,
judgements of such evidence (potentially leading to revocation of journalistic rights) should be made by an independent referee
State regulation of who may be a journalist? No thank you.
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My first instinct is that if there were a compulsory legal regime, with privileges and responsibilities, it could simply be opt-in. If I, as an independent writer, wish to be a journalist and gain special access, then I should simply be able to declare that in some reasonably low-key way. In doing so, I'd be accepting that what I wrote might be subject to more constraints as well. And you would have some sort of mechanism for saying "my cat picture blog is not part of my journalism activity".
But my considered feeling is that traditional news outlets in New Zealand are pretty poor at objectivity, taste or fact checking as it is, and the available remedies are weak, so a reform that reflected current reality would simply be to remove the monopoly traditional reporters enjoy on access to some information and make it available to everyone. Yes, some writers will distort what they learn, write things that are gross, or just lie. But that happens in the news media anyway and we only see action when someone notices and they care enough and are motivated enough to pursue a process of doubtful efficacy.
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Fark, we'll never get the Standard believing our working class credentials if you keep this up, Damian. Couldn't you have gone to the pie cart instead?
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And on a less funny note, Metafilter user "costas":
We Greeks are not blameless; heck, I'll go ahead and say that we brought this crap on ourselves, by over-borrowing for decades, electing politicians who never even tried to explain finance to the population instead opting again and again for borrowing money to buy votes, etc.
But: at this point, the Greek economy has been running on steroids (cheap money) for 20-30 years (depending at which point you start counting). The actual productivity of the country is very low (even if you exclude the massive, bloated, public sector). Most of manufacturing has left the country for our cheaper neighbors to the north and the east. The youth is over-educated and unable to find any jobs anyway (under-30 unemployment is nearly 50%).
Foreigners draw parallels with Argentina: bullcrap; Argentina was a growing economy with a strong exporting public sector. Greece at this point imports basic staples, even ones we shouldn't need to be importing, like olive oil and tomatoes. Our ruling class, and I count private sector businessmen, are clueless. For decades they've opted out of basic productivity changes (IT, supply chains, outsourcing, healthy banking) so that at this point they themselves are lacking the knowledge and skills to actually manage their way out of this crisis. And of course, the new generation hasn't had the exposure to real work to have built up any skills yet.
Bottom line: there is no way out of this crisis without massive structural changes that will span at least a generation and most likely longer. Our GDP drop has already exceeded that of the Great Depression in the US and it will keep going.
Let's not get into the usual red herrings of tax avoidance, etc. Payroll withholdings for those that do have jobs are at this point over 50%, even for entry-level jobs. At the same time, you can't go into a public hospital and expect service without bribing someone; public schools are crap; crime is rising. We have Scandinavian-level taxation with North-African level public services. You'd be avoiding taxes too.
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