Not Quite Paperless

Media ecology scholars such as Marshall McLuhan spoke about how the electronic media environment brought about the end of the print era, and back in the sixties and seventies when McLuhan was sharing such observations there was a great deal of doubt, because television seemed to be co-existing relatively well with print media. Sure, the introduction of television resulted in the demise of the general interest magazine, but that medium found a new niche in specialized topics, just as radio had readjusted to the new media ecosystem by focusing on playing recorded music, or news and talk formats. And yes, the number of newspapers did decline to the point that most towns and cities only had one daily, but the newspaper medium itself remained well entrenched. And the medium of the book retained its high status and general popularity, although bestsellers were pushing other titles out, and the pocket book format was gradually declining (replaced to a large extent by the trade paperback).

But holding aside the very significant questions regarding whether we have become a postliterate culture, whether people are reading as much or as deeply as they were before, it is certainly clear that to the extent that we all are still reading, we are spending much less time on print media, and spending much less money on print media. Print media industries were coasting along in slow decline up until the financial collapse of 2008, and it was that disruption that revealed the vulnerabilities in the print business model, and led to a much more drastic shakeout than what was going on before.

The financial downturn was followed by the introduction of the iPad in 2010, which may well have been the final nail in the coffin for print media. Of course, this was preceded by the introduction of the Kindle in 2007, which led off the revolution. But the iPad knocked the ball out of the park (sorry but it is baseball season so please forgive my metaphoria). Simply put, when we read documents, we hold them much closer to our eyes than when we look at a desktop computer screen, which is why we may still have trouble reading off of a computer even with the high quality of contemporary screen technology, and the same is true of the laptop computer, unless you were to awkwardly hold it up to your face. The key element was the removal of the keys, the keyboard that is, making the tablet a medium we can read while keeping it about the same distance from our eyes as we would a print medium.

Of course, publishers have been scrambling to convert their publications to electronic form, and this has met with some success. As McLuhan observed, one medium can become the content of another, and print media are, in part, the content of computer media, meaning that the material qualities of print disappear, and its non-material form becomes part of the content of digital media, as a potential stylistic element.

So, years ago folks started to talk about a paperless society, and others pointed out that with computers and printers, we were actually generating more paper documents than ever before. And this was true for a time, but in the big picture it was a brief transitional period I would venture, and now we are genuinely reaching the point where pulp is becoming little more than fiction.

But there still are limits to this transition. A French television commercial posted on YouTube last month makes for a humorous comment on the one aspect of life where going paperless can be problematic:





So, beyond the humor, there is the larger point that toilet paper is a cultural convention, admittedly one we don't like to talk about too much, at least not past the age of 8.  But it is worth noting that for most of human history, there was no such product, and people used alternative methods, and it is not entirely clear that our own practice is the best that anyone's come up with, or the last word in human hygiene (I wonder what they use on the Starship Enterprise?). You can read a bit about it in the Wikipedia entry on toilet paper, or the History of Toilet Paper website. 

The only point I want to make is that, from these sources we can learn that toilet paper was introduced in 1880. And this follows a major revolution in the manufacture of paper itself in the mid-19th century. From the time paper was invented in China in the 2nd century up to this point, the writing surface was made from linen, making it more expensive and more difficult to manufacture than today's product. It was during the 19th century, spurred on by a shortage of linen, that the alternative method of producing paper from wood pulp was introduced, and widely adopted by the end of the century, resulting in a revolution in publishing. And while paper was sometimes used for toileting purposes going back to ancient China (according to Wikipedia), the specialized product sold in rolls (a retrieval of the scroll from antiquity?) did not exist until the late 19th century.

It is perhaps worth adding in this context that both McLuhan and Walter Ong noted the parallel between Freud's psychosexual stages of oral, anal, and genital, and the media ages of orality, literacy, and electricity. And there are some characteristics common to both the literate mindset and the anal personality type.

In any event, all this is a connection worth noting, at least in passing, as we know that whether it's paper, print, or even electronic media, this too shall pass...

Lin(k) in the Armor

So, chances are, you've heard about Jeremy Lin, the Harvard graduate now New York Knicks professional basketball player of Taiwanese descent who came off the bench and out of obscurity with an amazing series of high-scoring, well-played games. 


It's one of those Cinderella stories that sports are famous for, with an added bit of ethnic interest, in that Chinese players are rare in the NBA, especially Chinese-American players.  Indeed, one of my son's high school classmates who is also of Chinese descent, was interviewed by the North Jersey Record on what Lin means to him, as a role model representing their ethnic group.

But of course, Lin's story resonates with all American's, as a real life variant on the Horatio Alger myth of the American dream, that anyone can make it with just a bit of pluck, and luck.  He was an underdog, never expected to succeed in the way that he has, and we just love underdogs. So Lin has become something of a craze--they call it Linsanity, word play being a common feature of sports reporting, and this following the formula used several years ago for NBA star Vince Carter, i.e., Vinsanity.


Indeed, Linsanity is credited with motivating the settlement between Time Warner cable and the Madison Square Garden cable network that had made Knicks games unavailable for subscribers throughout the New York Metropolitan Area (myself included) until now.  (For previous posts on conflicts between content providers and cable television, see All Foxed Up, or Time(Warn'er) for Cable Neutrality, Tell Old Pharaoh to Let My Channels Go!, Ordering TV À La Carte, and FCC It Now.)


So, I indulged in a bit of my own play in the title of this post, but did so to make reference to the recent scandal that followed as Lin's hot hand and the resulting 7-game winning streak that he led the Knicks to (or Linning streak as some put it) was snapped on Friday night. You see, it seems that the cable sports network ESPN used a headline for this story that turned out to be a bit, well, problematic:

The Huffington Post ran a story by Chris Greenberg with the rather unsympathetic headline, ESPN Racist Jeremy Lin Headline: Network Apologizes For Insensitive Headline For Knicks Loss.  Here's an excerpt from the piece:

Several hours after the Knicks' Lin-spired winning streak was snapped by the New Orleans Hornets, ESPN ran the headline "Chink In The Armor" to accompany the game story on mobile devices. ESPN's choice of words was extremely insensitive and offensive considering Lin's Asian-American heritage. According to Brian Floyd at SB Nation, the headline appeared on the Scorecenter app. The offensive headline was quickly noticed, screen grabs, Twit pics and Instagrams were shared and it began circulating widely on Twitter.


The use of the word "chink" is especially galling as Lin has revealed that this racial slur was used to taunt him during his college playing career at Harvard. After a brief run, the headline was changed to "All Good Things.."


On Saturday morning a statement was posted on the ESPN Media Zone website by Kevin Ota, ESPN's Director of Communications, Digital Media ESPN Communications.

Last night, ESPN.com's mobile web site posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05 am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.

Ota also tweeted about the headline, noting the brief window of time that the headline was visible across mobile platforms.

So, lots here on the power of social media, but we all knew that already, didn't we?  By the way, Greenberg went on to state:  "Perhaps most shocking is the fact that this headline has been used before. In August 2008, Deadspin called out ESPN for using nearly the same racially insensitive headline with a story about the U.S. men's basketball team during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing."  What Greenberg doesn't seem to consider is whether the phrase "chink in the armor" had been used in other contexts as well, contexts not involving anyone not of European descent.  Somehow, I suspect it has.


Look, I am very much concerned with racial slurs.  As a Jew, I have heard on many occasions phrases like jewing someone down, a verb for cheating or bargaining, and have been quite naturally offended by such usages.  And I am the first to call people on the use of gyp and gypped, a slur against the Romani people, one that many people still think of as acceptable, even cute--and while we're at it, get rid of welshing on a bet too.  And I empathize with the older African-Americans who cringe at the way rap stars throw around the old pejorative nigger.


But let's be reasonable here.  The main definition of chink is, "a narrow opening or crack, typically one that admits light."  Synonyms include  crevice, crack, fissure, cranny, rift, cleft, and split.  There's also a second meaning for chink, "a high-pitched ringing sound."  And dictionary.com says the following for chink in one's armor:

A vulnerable area, as in Putting things off to the last minute is the chink in Pat's armor and is bound to get her in trouble one day. This term relies on chink in the sense of "a crack or gap," a meaning dating from about 1400 and used figuratively since the mid-1600s.

So, unlike the other slurs I mentioned, the one that is used for individuals of Chinese descent is a homonym for these other, older uses of the word, or more accurately, these are two different words that happen to share the same sound and spelling.  There is nothing about the racial slur, as far as I know, that is meant to suggest a narrow opening or high-pitched ringing sound.  There is no suggestion in this instance of an Asian warrior dressed in chain mail.  Rather, the slur is an abbreviated nickname for Chinese, one that carries with it an air of disrespect, along the same lines that hebe is used as a derogatory term for Jews, as a shortened form of Hebrew.


I hope I'm not making you uncomfortable in talking about this use of language.  We have to be able to talk about it, don't we?  To study it, examine it, as well as criticize and essentially outlaw it?  It's times like this that Alfred Korzybski's general semantics proves particularly useful, as that discipline requires us to consider our own semantic reactions to stimuli, especially words, and reflect on their meanings and our own personal responses to them, and how those responses might give words power, rather than empowering ourselves to take control of our own minds.


It's like the famous exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, beginning with Humpty making the point that

There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents —'

'Certainly,' said Alice.

'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

Who is to be master, indeed!  I was a freshman in college and had just recently been introduced to general semantics via Jack Barwind's Introduction to Communication Theory course, when the movie Lenny, a biopic about the life and tragic death of comedian Lenny Bruce, starring Dustin Hoffman, opened, and I was struck by a part of the opening sequence that involved the use of bigot words for their shock value (unheard of in the very early 1960s), but ending with a plea to take away their power by confronting them.  I'd embed the clip, but YouTube won't allow it, so you have to watch it over on there, go ahead, do it, just come back here when you're done:  Lenny Bruce hard words.


And while I'm on the subject, let me go off on a slight tangent and mention that the word niggardly, which I happen to like for its antique quality, bears no relation to the racial slur that I know you were thinking of.  Here's a write up on it, in response to an inquiry, from a website called The Straight Dope:

the origin of "niggard" is unclear, but not its timeline, which predates the N-word in the English language by a couple hundred years at least. "Niggard" comes up as early as Chaucer, late 14th century. The most commonly speculated origin is Scandanavian nig/Old Norse hnoggr, meaning miserly. Don't know how much faith you want to put in Indo-European roots, but one meaning of the root ken- is conjectured to relate a family of words with a connotation implying closing, tightening, or pinching (the family of related words is hypothesized to include such n-words as nap, nibble, nod, nosh, neap, nip). The racial slur "nigger," on the other hand, doesn't enter the lexicon until the 1500's, first as "neger" or "neeger," obviously from the same root as the French negre and Spanish negro, words for the color black, which are derived from the Latin niger.

Likely, your conversation on the word occurred about the same time as much of the country's, when poor David Howard made the national news for use of this term. Howard, head of the Office of Public Advocate for D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, who described his own administration of a particular fund as "niggardly" in the presence of two of his staff members. He has since been quoted as saying he "immediately apologized" for making what might be misinterpreted as a "racist remark," but the damage had been done. Rumors circulated that he had in fact used a racial epithet (one attribution claimed he said, "I'm tired of all these niggers calling me with their problems"), and he eventually resigned. Eventually the mayor, after determining the facts, asked him to rescind his resignation, and he rejoined the administration, albeit in another position. The D.C. mayor's web page lists him as the mayor's scheduler. 

The moral of the story is, this is what happens when people insist on relying on folk etymology and speculation. Howard was pressured to resign by people who, as columnist Tony Snow put it, "actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance." There are hundreds of words in English, or any language, that sound similar--or even identical--to others, but have completely unrelated origins and definition. Sure, you don't want to offend anyone deliberately, but there's a fine line between not being a jerk and examining every word you speak for nuances that might be misinterpreted by people who don't understand them. If there's one thing the Straight Dope has taught me, political correctness should always take a back seat to actual correctness.

So, how about a plea for Lin(guistic)sanity?  And speaking of Lin, it turns out that the ESPN headline was preceded by a bad call on the part of one of the cable network's sportscasters:





And over on Forbes.com the story was reported under the headline, ESPN Uses "Chink in the Armor" Line Twice UPDATE- ESPN Fires One Employee Suspends Another.  In case you were wondering, it was the sportscaster who was suspended, the headline writer who was fired.  This perhaps says something about the relative value of writers and on-air talent, but maybe also something about the differences between the two different media.  As the Forbes columnist Greg McNeal explains,

the headline is a different matter.  As anyone who has worked in digital media knows, the headline is what draws attention and hits.  Editors and writers try to maximize visitors and shock value with their headlines (check out mine, it got you here didn’t it?).  Unlike an on-air comment, most writers and editors obsess over the headline even after they click the publish button.  So my sense of things is that whoever posted the headline thought about it, giggled, and clicked publish.  In fairness to the writer/editor, the term “chink in the armor” has been used over 3,000 times on ESPN.com, but just because it is a frequently used term doesn’t absolve the writers and editors of responsibility to use common sense. 

Now, in all fairness, we have no idea what went through the headline writer's mind, how much time he had or took to come up with that headline, or what his motives might have been, but McNeal is absolutely correct that the headline is a different matter, or as Marshall McLuhan put it, the medium is the message.  And I also agree that there is a need for common sense, and perhaps more importantly, common sensitivity, sensitivity to the context of the headline, sensitivity to the need to show respect to all human groupings and identities.  Is an apology in order?  Absolutely!  Should a writer be fired for this, assuming it was an accident? I'm not so sure.


But the point that I wanted to get to is one involving orality and literacy, appropriately enough given that this year, 2012, is the centenary of Walter Ong's birth.  The question was raised on the Media Ecology Association's discussion list by J. Martinez, and here is part of my response:

I once read an article in a communication journal on how sportscasters rely on clichés, more so when there's a lot of action in the game, and it struck me that calling a game has some similarity to oral composition/performance (they are one and the same in oral culture). It's not epic poetry, but given that some of the same dynamics are in play, sportscasters rely on formulas and clichés to stitch together their spiel.  

So it's not just that it's harder to pay attention and "focus" when listening than when reading, that there's little or no time to contemplate the meaning of the words as they're flowing by, and that it's harder to keep them in memory when they're quickly replaced by new talk, nor is it only the fact that much of the language is filler used to keep the performance flowing rather than to communicate anything informative, but it's also that a phrase like "chink in the armor" as an oral cliché or formulaic expression is treated as a whole chunk, as chink-in-the-armor, rather than parsed into separate words.  

In Orality and Literacy, Ong explains how in oral cultures there isn't even the conception of "word" common to literate cultures, but rather something more like "vocalization" or "utterance" which could refer to a single syllable or an entire poem or song.  It's only with writing that words are conceptualized as entirely separate and discrete symbols, each with its own separate meaning that exists independently of any pragmatic context.  When written, "chink" appears as an isolated word rather than a part of a larger whole, it allows for other individual, decontextualized meanings, notably the unintentional racial slur, to be ascribed to it.

So, the word as written is much more problematic than the word as spoken--even though the content appears to be the same, it is not.  Martinez also brought up the case of Rush Limbaugh (not Lin-baugh), whose brief stint as a commentator on ESPN was cut short when he brought his conservative commentary about racial preferences to a discussion of NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb:







My response to this was

in the case of Limbaugh, which is less interesting in my opinion, when his comments were made as part of a flow of sports talk, it's quickly passed over.  But when it's recorded, isolated, and replayed, this allows for reflection and criticism, not to mention magnification of whatever is said, and that makes his comments intolerable.  The irony is that he was done in by the same technology that made football successful on television in the first place, the instant replay.  Without instant replay, football has too little action to be really interesting to viewers (an early study of a Super Bowl game by Michael Real clocked the ball in play at something like 8 minutes).

I also went on to note the similar fate that befell Don Imus:



So, here's how I ended my response:

A similar case, I would add, is that of radio "shock jock" Don Imus when he employed a bit of racist/sexist humor talking about the Rutgers women's basketball team in his MSNBC simulcast.  The internet, and especially YouTube, is functioning as a mirror to television, leading to more critical reflection and self-conscious examination of the broadcasting medium.

McLuhan and Ong have emphasized the oral/aural qualities of broadcasting, and while some of what we hear is scripted, and therefore governed by the written word, allowing for self-conscious editing and self-censorship, and some of it is recorded and then edited as video and/or audio in various ways, live television and radio relies on a degree of spontaneity that will always allow for the possibility of error, and accident, and therefore offense.  Even with delays and oversight and careful understanding of what is acceptable, we never know what might bubble up from an individual's unconscious mind, what monsters from the id might appear.


But without the spontaneity of the live, the immediate, the unplanned and unexpected, without the possibility of novelty, mistake, and failure, is it possible that we'd be losing something exciting and vital about our media experience?


On the other hand, there's always Twitter... 

Book 'Em, Danno

Well, it's been a bit busy, what with getting ready for the beginning of the semester and then getting it off to a good start, and various and sundry other matters, mainly revolving around the written and printed word.  So, books have been on my mind, hey, it's an occupational hazard, and that being the case, the appeal of this video, The Joy of Books, which was first brought to my attention by my friend, Eric McLuhan, should be clear enough to see.  So go ahead, look, look and see:

And here's some text from the video's YouTube page:

After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago (http://youtu.be/zhRT-PM7vpA), my wife and I (Sean Ohlenkamp) decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto (883 Queen Street West, (416) 366-8973).

Everything you see here can be purchased at Type Books.
Grayson Matthews (http://www.graysonmatthews.com/) generously composed the beautiful, custom music. You can download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/awakenings-single/id496796623  

Now, despite the obvious charms of this piece, which is kind of  a Toy Story for books, it is not without its critics.  My friend Bob Blechman, who recently published a book of his own, Executive Severance, which I told you all about in my last post, Twistery Illustrated, left the following critical comment when I shared the video over on Facebook (and since he left the comment on my profile page, I figure I have enough rights to it to include it here, so don't go get on your sopa box about theft of intellectual property or nothing):

So...books become animated, that is, the content of animation. A book shop seems like the memory core of a mainframe computer. Display of visible movement of books on shelves replaces static perusal of stationary text. Though marvelous in scope and execution, this film has nothing to do with the process of reading, which is what books are really all about. Nice promotion for animation though.

Bob's comments remind me of Neil Postman's critique of Sesame Street, that the use of television and televisual techniques, including commercial advertising formats, to teach about the alphabet and reading,  in effect taught much more about watching television than anything else.  But then again, why shouldn't Bob echo Neil, since Bob was one of Neil's students, hence his self-described status as a model media ecologist.

And while I will grant Bob his point, I do think that this video is a celebration of the book as an object, the look and visual appeal of the book, of books, plural, in great number.  It captures something of the love affair of book lovers with the object of their affections, or if you prefer, their fetish.  I would go so far as to say, along the lines of some of McLuhan's commentary, that the video appeals to the tactile quality of book fondling (a topic Gary Gumpert used to bring up in his Mass Media lecture class, which I did lecture support for when I was an MA student), and even the scent, the aroma, the olfactory appeal of this most substantial of print media.

But lest this post be seen as too bookish, let me note that the title of the post is a reference to the classic line from the old TV series (not the remake) Hawaii 5-0.  At the end of the episode, when the bad guys were caught, the lead character, Steve McGarrett, famously played by Jack Lord, would utter the immortal words:  Book 'em, Danno!  And after all, that stop-motion animation is a rather arresting development, don't you think?

All Foxxed Up!

So, last week I was asked to write an opinion piece about Fox News, for a point/counterpoint feature in a little newspaper called Metro, which publishes editions in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and distributes them free in subways, on streets, etc.  I chose the con rather than the pro, and you may recall my previous post, Murdoch on the Orient Express, where I expressed my negative view of Rupert Murdoch and his New Corporation, owners of the Fox TV network, and Fox News, and if you do, you would not be surprised at my taking this stand.

So the op eds were published in the last weekend edition, dated Oct. 7-9.  I had them scanned so I could show you what they looked like in print, and it came out a little uneven, as the scanner in our office wasn't big enough to do the entire page at once, so it's in two pieces, but you can get a pretty good idea:

To get a clearer picture of the text, you can also read all about it online, on the Metro site:  15 Years of Fox News.  But, let me provide you with the brief introduction to this point/counterpoint paring:

Fox News Channel is 15 years old this week, having changed the face of TV?news (though it still considers itself an underdog). Since 1996, Fox has caused plenty of controversy with its often caustic, center-right viewpoint. To the chagrin of liberal critics, its audience is twice that of the combined figure of CNN?and MSNBC. Fox News has always divided opinion; and here, two commentators tell us what they think.

I won't bother to reproduce or rebut the pro piece by Figiola here, we both wrote our pieces separately, and his view is just another example of what Neil Postman referred to as, amusing ourselves to death.  But I'll give you my text here, on my official blog of record:

Opinion against Fox: Lance Strate Professor of communication and media studies, Fordham University

Fox News: A Blot on the Media Landscape

The recent series of phone-hacking scandals facing Rupert Murdoch have conclusively demonstrated that HIS News Corporation is devoid of journalistic ethics. No doubt, the vast majority of broadcast journalists in the United States regard Murdoch's troubles as long overdue comeuppance for the permanent damage they inflicted on the American media landscape.

For more than a century, journalists have adhered to an ideal of objectivity — admittedly, one they could never quite live up to. Still, they were intent on serving the public interest by providing objective, factual descriptions of events. Journalists proudly proclaimed that the criticisms and complaints they received from both left and right proved that they were maintaining the correct level of professional detachment and impartiality.

Fox News represents a radical break from this tradition, as it is profoundly partisan in its reporting.
Fox's political bias would not be so damaging if the organization would be honest and up front about the fact that it favors conservatism and the Republication Party. That would be perfectly legitimate.
The problem is that Fox keeps its political agenda hidden and obscured in a manner that blurs the distinction between journalism and overt propaganda. Instead, Fox News presents itself as part of the tradition of objective journalism, claiming that its deliberately biased newscasts somehow represent “fair and balanced” reporting.

This smokescreen has the effect of tainting all reporting with an air of political bias and pressuring other organizations to compensate for the imbalance in the media ecology. MSNBC has more recently eschewed the objective ideal to become the liberal counterpart to Fox. 

And so, like a zombie plague, the infection spreads!

Cynicism abounds; and is it any wonder that when news becomes a joke, comedians become our most trusted journalists? How can we not look to Jon Stewart or Jay Leno as voices of reason and truth, when all that Fox brings us is an endless parade of programming that favors confrontation, conflict and angry exchanges?

Fox News is to journalism as professional wrestling is to sports. Murdoch is guilty of nothing less than strip-mining the media landscape, and it will be a long time healing from the damage that he has caused.

— Lance Strate is a professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.

In response to this, I received three emails, two negative, one positive.  The two negative messages began with typical conservative put downs of liberals, and college professors, but I responded to them in reasonable fashion, resulting in a cordial exchange.  So, I'm going to share with you some of the comments I made in these private emails, just as an elaboration on the editorial, nothing personally revealing about the individuals I was corresponding with.

To the first individual, my initial response:

You are entitled to your views...   My objection to Fox is the dishonesty in their claim to be practicing a form of objective journalism.  If they made it clear that they were a partisan organ, that would be fine.  Objectivity in journalism is far from perfect, there is much to criticize much that has been criticized. But what Fox represents is much, much worse.

By the way, I was asked to write the anti-Fox op ed, to accompany a pro-Fox op ed. These pieces are clearly presented as opinion, not news reports.  That is the distinction that Fox fails to make.  Over the years, I have enjoyed reading and found myself agreeing with many conservative columnists and editorials, and even when I disagree, I respect the position they take.

It's a question of process, of honesty and integrity.  Of character.

And in a follow-up exchange:

Mass communication theorists have long been criticizing the myth of objectivity, and the fact that there is bias in the news.  But it's bias due to a variety of factors.  Journalists pay attention to sudden events, and ignore long term gradual change.  They try to tell stories, which require some kind of beginning and conclusion, and heroes and villains.  They focus on individuals, and tend to personalize, rather than look to groups and organizations (for example, the president and other world leaders, as opposed to congress and other legislative bodies).  There is bias coming from the medium, for example television favors visual images, so you get the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality.  They are biased towards their audiences, so they tend to reflect concerns of the audience, they want to keep their audiences after all.  They are biased towards their advertisers, at least to some extent, because they have to stay in business.  They are biased towards their owners, at least a little, which means they'll reflect the biases of corporate boards and stockholders, as well as idiosyncratic individuals like Murdoch, or Ted Turner in a previous era.  And there is bias in the profession of journalism, not so much political as bias towards what is and isn't news, about going to official sources for quotes, which tends to result in formation of relationships between reporters and politicians.  And I could go on, but the point is that there is a multitude of biases, some may say that they cancel each other out, some say that they amount to a liberal bias, others say that they amount to a conservative, pro-corporate capitalism bias.  But behind it all, in traditional journalism, we still have reporters and editors who are trying hard to report the facts and hold back their personal views, and are not trying to push a political agenda, as opposed to Fox's cynical attempt to play politics while claiming to be impartial.

So, I would agree that MSNBC, now that it has embraced liberal politics, should make that up front as well.  I think CNN is still trying to adhere to traditional objectivity.  They may make good or bad decisions, and folks have every right to criticize news organizations for what they do and don't report.  I just don't think it's good for democracy to have news organizations passing off political persuasion as objective reporting.

No question that Fox is entertaining.  But let me recommend to you the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.  Postman was my mentor, and his argument is with television as a medium, and how television news trivializes important matters because its primary emphasis is entertainment.  Fox takes Postman's criticism as a formula for success.

Now, here's an excerpt from my initial response to the second critical response:

You are entitled to your opinions, although I would have preferred them to have been expressed in a more civil manner. 

I was invited to write an opinion piece against Fox that would accompany one that is in favor of Fox, and it was clearly labeled as opinion.  I have no objection to conservative media, and in fact find that I agree with conservative columnists quite often.  I do object to any news organization passing itself off as objective and impartial while following a political agenda.  I believe that the ability to separate fact from opinion is vital for a democracy.

You might note, by the way, that the position I've been taking is one in defense of professional journalism, and based in part on general semantics, which the journalism ethics scholar John C. Merrill recommends as the basis for an ethical approach to objective reporting.  Anyway, in the follow-up exchange, I provided a more comprehensive statement of my position (you can infer from this some of what I was responding to):

Metro put out a call for individuals to write pro and con pieces, I was asked if I'd be interested in doing one or the other, and I said I could write the con.  They didn't reach out to me because of my previously stated views, but I assume they selected me because of my academic credentials.  I did write one post on my blog earlier this year critical of Murdoch, and the despicable practice of News Corporation, which owns Fox News.  Are you aware of the phone hacking scandal, how they hacked the cell phone messages of 9/11 victims, or gave the family of a young girl who had been kidnapped and killed false hope because their hacking generated cell phone activity that the parents and police though were signs she was still alive?  Do you know that Murdoch broke the law when he bought television stations in the US to start the Fox network while he was still a foreign national? The fact that he became a US citizen, a transparently cynical business move, after the fact doesn't alter the fact that he broke the law, but was never forced to divest himself of the stations he bought.  Special privileges for the rich.  So, I don't believe Murdoch or his holdings are deserving of your sympathy or support.

I don't believe that it's a dodge to say it's an opinion piece.  There is a long tradition of editorials in journalism, and they are clearly labeled as such, often segregated from news on an op ed page in major newspapers, and in this case labeled as opinion.  If I had been asked to write an article about Fox, I would have been more even-handed in my assessment.  The fact that I'm a college professor is a credential, yes, and I am entitled to have and express opinions, but the readers who are predisposed to grant me credibility for my status are probably those who are already on the liberal side of the divide, and those who are predisposed to dismiss me for the very same reason are probably, like yourself, on the conservative side.

Yes, it is well known that Fox is conservative, but their insistence that they are engaged in "fair and balanced" journalism makes all attempts at objectivity suspect, creating a cynical attitude that is very bad for democracy.  You're right that what happened with Dan Rather was a scandal, it was clear that he had trouble keeping his personal views out of his reporting, and this was noticed and criticized.  When the forged documents incident occurred, heads rolled, Rather's top assistant was fired, and he was allowed to continue on for a limited period to save face for the longtime anchor (and to save face for CBS itself), and then replaced.  And that's the point.  We're talking about a human, fallible attempt to be objective, where errors are made and attempts made to correct them.  But where, in a real news organization, that sort of behavior is seen as deviant and repugnant, and punished, with the attempt to eliminate it, on Fox News that sort of behavior is the actual policy of the organization.  They encourage it.  They don't try to eliminate political bias, they make it the basis of all that they do.

At his point, I included the paragraph I wrote earlier, seen above, beginning with, "Mass communication theorists have long been criticizing the myth of objectivity..."  So I won't include here for a second time.  Now, on to continue on:

Yes, journalists went easy on Obama's pastor, and no doubt concern about racial issues played a part, given that most journalists are white (which could be seen as a another source of bias). But they also went easy on George W. Bush's past of drug abuse and alcoholism.  The Tea Party movement took a while to take off, and yes, there has been negative coverage at times.  The Occupy Wall Street movement is just getting started, and is much less organized, so there's no one to interview yet, no one to personalize it for the TV cameras. Folks on the left accuse mainstream journalists of not giving it the attention they have given the Tea Party movement.  On the liberal and left side of things, mainstream journalism is seen as biased in favor of its corporate owners, whose main interest is the bottom line.

I did say that some of my colleagues are ideological.  I think less of them are than is often portrayed in the media.  I don't like that approach because it starts with conclusions and then tries to show how facts fit into the conclusions.  That's not objective.  But I do grant that ideological critiques make some important points, and make an important contribution to our understanding of society.  What makes America great (and I do believe the USA is exceptional) is the ability to engage in vigorous debate, allow different views to be expressed, but only with the understanding that we can weigh the alternatives and come to the best possible conclusion about what is really going on, and what we ought to do about it.  And to do that, we need to be able to separate fact from opinion.  Facts can be examined, tested, verified, or at least proven false.  Opinions cannot. If we're confused about what is going on, how can we make appropriate political decisions in a democracy? And maybe that's no longer possible, but I'd like to believe it still is.

You mention a statistic that 90% of college professors are liberal. That is a fact that could be checked, but whatever the number may be, I would certainly grant that the vast majority are.  Why might that be? For one, when you are engaged in education, as most professors are, you believe in the possibility that human beings can be improved upon, can be made better than they are, can be fundamentally changed. That's a liberal view. We have to believe that way, or else why are we doing what we're doing? We do by and large favor open minds and being open to new ideas, and that goes along with liberalism.  And we participate in an enterprise where we are required to make distinctions between better and worse performance, grading students, sometimes failing some, distinguishing between individuals based on degrees that they earn, bachelors, masters, doctorate.  This is an elitist view, no question about it, although one based on merit, not entitlement. And contemporary liberalism does favor granting special status to educated elites--I'm not saying that's always the best thing to do, just noting that this is another reason why professors tend to be liberal, and it's also a reason why professors tend to be portrayed negatively in the media.  All this applies to most of us who are educators, the exception being the minority at elite institutions where research and publication is their sole emphasis, but many of them receive research money from the government, including the Defense Department, which makes their work suspect to others engaged in ideological critique.

So my bottom line is that however bad American journalism was before Fox News, Fox News has made it worse by making people doubt the possibility of obtaining relatively objective reports of the facts.  If that were truly impossible, we would not have the science and technology that we enjoy.

Since this individual has ended his second message to me with "God bless you and your family, " I concluded with, "my best to you, and your family, and may God inscribe you for blessing in the coming year."

So there you have, and that about wraps it up, but wait, oh yeah, I mentioned that I did get one favorable email message.  As it turns out, it was one from a Fordham student!  I'm quite proud of that, in fact. 

And this was a student I had never met, a political science major studying at our Lincoln Center campus, and a German citizen going to college here in the United States.  He expressed his great satisfaction in the piece, and in fact his relief in seeing that not all Americans liked Fox News and believed what was being said on that cable channel.  To which I can only say, ach du lieber! 

Media @ the Center: A McLuhan Centenary Symposium at Fordham

Here's something I've been working on recently, coming up soon!  I hope to see you there!

MEDIA

@

THE CENTER

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A

Marshall McLuhan

Centenary Symposium

@

Fordham University

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September 17, 2011

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Sponsored by

President Joseph M. McShane, SJ

Provost Stephen Freedman

Dean of Faculty John P. Harrington

Dean of Fordham College Rose Hill Michael E. Latham

Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Nancy A. Busch

Dean of the School of Professional and Continuing Studies Isabelle Frank

&

Department of Communication and Media Studies

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Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus

McNally Auditorium

Law School Building

140 W. 62nd Street, Between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues

New York, New York

Free and Open to the Public

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http://www.fordham.edu/mcluhan

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Marshall McLuhan & John Culkin 

@ Fordham University, circa September 1967

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9:00-10:30 AM           McLuhan @ Fordham

Moderator:           Lance Strate, Fordham University

Panelists:              John Carey, Fordham University

Jacqueline Nardi Egan, QD Healthcare Group

Pete Fornatale, WFUV

Anthony Perrotto, Independent Video Producer

Paul Ryan, New School for Social Research

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11:00 AM-Noon                  McLuhan & Theology

Moderator:           John M. Phelan, Fordham University

Presentation:                   "Marshall McLuhan's Theological Anthropology"

Joseph Kim, Lancaster Bible College

Discussants:         Babette Babich, Fordham University

Eric McLuhan, University of Toronto

Paul Ryan, New School for Social Research

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1:30-3:00 PM              McLuhan & New Media

Moderator:           Janet Sternberg, Fordham University

Presentations:                 "Digital McLuhan"

Paul Levinson, Fordham University

                                          "Understanding New Media"

Robert K. Logan, Ontario College of Art and Design

                                          "Confessions of a Would-Be Twitter Novelist"

Robert Blechman, St. George's University

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3:30-4:30 PM              Keynote Address

Moderator:           Andrew McLuhan

                                          "Media and Formal Cause"

Eric McLuhan, University of Toronto

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4:30-5:00 PM              Reception and Book Signing

for Media and Formal Cause

by Marshall and Eric McLuhan

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7:00-9:30 PM              Media @ the Center

Moderator:                       Lance Strate, Fordham University

Pecha Kucha:                   "The Medium is…"

Screening:                                    The Gutenberg Galaxy

1961 television program produced by Gary Gumpert

Panelists:                          Daniel Czitrom, Mount Holyoke College

Paul Grosswiler, University of Maine

Gary Gumpert, Urban Communication Foundation

Joshua Meyrowitz, University of New Hampshire

Dominique Scheffel-Dunand, University of Toronto

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Photograph courtesy of John Carey

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Media @ the Center

A McLuhan Centenary Event

Continues

@ Fordham University's McNally Auditorium

on

September 25, 2011

1:00-5:00 PM                        Preview Screening of Connected, a new film by Tiffany Shlain

                                    Followed by a Panel Discussion

Moderator:                       Lance Strate

Panelists:                          Susan Maushart

T.C. McLuhan

Terence P. Moran

Robert Seidman

Frederick J. Wertz