How the Internet Can Be a Weapon

Two Iranian journalists (no names for obvious reasons) reported that as the western media concentrates on whether there will be more blood in the streets of Tehran, a couple of angles are being missed and should be pursued.

Some examples:

• While the youthful opposition to the mullahs is regrouping and planning their next moves, the Iranian regime continues to keep up the pressure, especially on students at Tehran University - a particular hotbed of unrest.
• Possible angles: who are the leaders of this movement? What are their goals beyond overthrowing the regime? Who do they represent? What are their political ideas for a post-Islamic Iran?
• Other stories: the Iranian regime has asked China for sophisticated internet blocking technology. Recent "jamming" of Tehran bloggers and websites was effectively completed thanks to Beijing.
• When Iranians arrive at Tehran airport and present their passports, those who seem most "Westernized" are subjected to a new form of cyber-interrogation. No waterboarding...nothing so unsophisticated. Instead, customs officers check to see if there is any record of the returnees on Facebook, YouTube or twitter. Sometimes, they will put their name in Google to see if they have been politically active.

If they have, then its a quick and direct trip to Evan prison and further questioning.

Moral Equivalence in Reporting From Afghanistan

Journalists for Human Rights had a public session a few nights ago at Ryerson University in Toronto. The aim of the organization is to look at how human rights are covered - or not - around the the world. Many of the members of the group are my students and I know them to be thoughtful and increasingly sensitive to the complexities of overseas reporting.

The theme of the evening was "Conflict Coverage" and the panel included Esther Enkin, executive editor of CBC News, Olivia Ward, foreign affairs reporter for the Toronto Star and James Murray, who has reported from Afghanistan for CBC Radio and TV News. George Hoff a former CBC News foreign editor, bureau chief and field producer acted as moderator.

Everyone on the panel agreed that the issues are more complex and more demanding, especially as news organizations insist on multi-media reporting. The challenge of filing early and often places tremendous pressures on reporters, especially in war zones - none of which was surprising, although it was illuminating and confirmed that the nature of news reporting in general is becoming more fraught as the demands of the media continue to grow.

James Murray is a young and talented journalist. I met him more than ten years ago when he was just starting out as a local CBC radio reporter. His move up the ranks has been impressive. So I was somewhat surprised to hear him articulate the view that there are no "good guys" to be found in Afghanistan. Neither the Taliban nor the allies seem to encapsulate any values that Murray could identify with. The Hamid Karzai regime is, according to Murray, murderous and corrupt. The Taliban are murdering fanatics and the allied forces continue to kill civilians. No heroes anywhere in sight, said he.  I haven't been over there, so I am in no position to gainsay him.

But I was struck by James' moral neutrality which sounded world-weary and cynical. It sounded as if it came from a much older foreign correspondent who had seen too much. Instead of being analytical about the prospects in Afghanistan, James spoke deeply about the human tragedies he had witnessed. I believe him when he described the horrors of war that he had seen. But what was missing that evening - for me at any rate - was a sense of any global perspective about what is happening.

This is a pendulum swing away from the dry diplomatic journalism of a generation ago. In the 1980's, we were told to avoid the televisuals of so-called "white men in suits going in and out of chancelleries." Instead we sought to tell the stories of "real" people who lived out the dreadful consequences of what the politicians and the military attempted to do. There were lots of victims in our journalism and we made sure that they featured prominently in all our stories.

Today, we hear, see and read mostly the stories from that micro point of view. These stories have more emotional resonance which is something news organizations try to find. The big (and often less emotional) picture is ignored, or simply confined to analysis pieces in the New York Times or The Economist. As a result, reporters like James Murray have been conditioned to tell only one aspect of the story - the human aspect which is indeed, pretty grim. This is not to blame this particular reporter, but we are only hearing half the story.

There is a way out and like it or not, it is largely a political story. If journalists are able to report that as well, then we might hear fewer pieces that equate the Taliban with the Allies with the Karzai regime. That kind of reporting is called moral equivalence and it's simply wrong.

"Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Canadians"

The British media are in full-throated cry about the Vancouver Olympics. "A disaster," says The Guardian. "Worst ever," says the Daily Mail. And one paper even compared the opening ceremonies (which had the usual cheesy choreography this time, designed by an Australian) to the 1936 Berlin Olympics with its Nazi thematics.

On a local talk radio station in Toronto, I was asked about this expression of international journalism and why the Brits are so nasty to these inoffensive Canucks.

My friend and colleague Stephen Pritchard who is the President of the Organization of News Ombudsmen and readers' editor at The Observer in London had the following email explanation, just in time for the show:

The problem for the Brits is that we don't really have anyone to root for. Last winter olympics we had a women's curling team that did really well...so the Brit press had something to get their teeth into.
This year, with no one to whip up excitement about we turn to other matters to amuse the readers...and nobody likes a few problems (disappearing snow; early death etc) better than the Brit press.

The boss of the Olympics was on our radio this morning vigorously defending the games and counting all its achievements so far. That did a lot to change British perception.

It is true that there is a negative attitude towards the Commonwealth's largest asset; it's fashionable to describe Canada as dull and Canadians as just too NICE. It's all tosh, of course (rather as we denigrate poor Belgium which has never done us any harm). It's deeply shaming. Let me apologise to Canada!!

No apology necessary Stephen. The Canadians have emerged in these Olympics as virtual Americans, complete with "We're Number One" type chants and "Own The Podium" campaigns. Big business and wealthy families have poured money into sports in Canada which calls into question (once again) whether the Olympics have dropped all pretense about the amateur status of the athletes.

But man up, Canada. If you can't take a bit of British slagging (a long established Fleet Street tradition), then you shouldn't feel put upon.

More worrisome is what will happen if Canada doesn't win gold in hockey. Sports journalists in Canada have been hyping these games shamelessly. We'll all need a valium the size of a hockey puck to quell the national dishonor if they don't win.

"Good Night, Lloyd"

Howard Bernstein's terrific blog, Medium Close Up is on to something: namely that CTV's longtime anchor, Lloyd Robertson will announce his retirement right after the Olympics.

In Canada, this is big news. Robertson is a national media fixture who does what anchors do best - just show up and be the visual embodiment of reliability and continuity. Robertson once hosted the CBC's nightly newscast, The National from 1970 to 1976. He quit to join CTV, because of union restrictions at the CBC which precluded him from being anything more than an announcer, which meant only be allowed to read other peoples' copy.

Thirty four years is a long time to be a newscaster, but CTV understood something that other networks didn't - consistency counts.  Robertson's longevity, combined with the CBC's nervous impatience with change has made CTV "the most watched newscast in Canada," according to the press releases.

The point spreads and handicapping of Robertson's successor have already begun: the CBC's Peter Mansbridge is also getting close to retirement. As a CBC lifer, he is unlikely to either make the jump or be considered. CBC has also been smart in giving Mansbridge other outlets for his journalism, so boredom can't be a factor. Global's Kevin Newman is younger and has frequently been mentioned as the heir apparent to both. CTV also has a talented stable of secondary hosts who could all be considered as competent possibilities.

But the nightly news habit is waning and broadcasters are faced with difficult, even impossible dilemmas when an anchor retires.

First the audiences are inherently conservative in that they don't embrace change as much as TV insiders think they do. Viewers tune in to be reassured as much as to be informed. And woe betide the network that doesn't understand that.

Radio is even more conservative. In 2005, NPR's longtime morning program host Bob Edwards was brusquely removed in a fit of management pique from "Morning Edition" after 21 years on the air. Audiences (and the stations that depend on raising money around Bob's dulcets) were duly and appropriate outraged. As ombudsman at the time, I received more than 35,000 emails of complaint - second only to the number of aggrieved missives I got over NPR's Middle East coverage...

CTV has two options: One, it could anoint another version of Robertson - cool, familiar and Canadian. Or two, it could invent something different that attempts to combine the best of conservative viewing habits with the emerging new technology and radical social media that now increasingly displaces television.

I'm hoping for the latter; I won't be too disappointed with the former.

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Late addition: Robertson officially denies he is retiring.

This Revolution Will NOT be Televised

Speaking with an exiled Iranian journalist, I was struck by how what is happening in Iran is a bloggers' revolution.

We now have a ringside view of how social media creates social change. The journalist reminded me that in 1948, the Iranians pushed for human rights and an end to colonial influences, but ended up with the Shah. Even so, it initiated a process of independent thinking and journalistic inquiry that neither the Shah nor the Ayatollahs have been able to manage.

Thursday, February 11 was the anniversary of the Islamic Republic. Expectations were high that there would be powerful anti-regime demonstrations that day, and that all would be seen on Youtube and other new media forms.

This time, the regime was able to block and slow enough internet traffic to keep the story bottled up. A show of police strength effectively shut down the protests, according to the Iranian journalist.

It's too late for that. In the "chickens-coming-home-to-roost" department, the access to computers in schools, libraries and to individuals encouraged by the reformist president Mohammed Khatame in 1996 is now paying dividends that the regime never anticipated.

The spread of information by the Tehran bloggers continues. One site that aggregates the range of blogging activity is Gooya. It shows that there may be as many as 100,000 Iranian bloggers using social media to agitate for social and political change.

The danger here for interested observers outside of Iran is that the self-aggrandizing tendencies of the Internet may have oversold the revolution by simultaneously raising expectations and by underestimating the ability of the regime to stifle and intimidate.

Still, the Ayatollahs have run out of their "sell by" due date and with the combined power of the blogosphere and international journalism, they are living on borrowed time and they know it.

The BBC from Bucharest to Tehran

In 1989, I was freelancing from Europe. It was the year the Berlin wall came down and a sense of imminent liberation had seized all of Europe. I reported from Prague and Budapest. When the Ceaucescu dictatorship in Romania was finally toppled on Christmas, 1989, I was back in Amsterdam, glued to my short wave radio listening to a new BBC World Service program called “Radio 648.”

“Radio 648" began in 1987 and was a creation of the Foreign Office – that part of the British government that is mostly about diplomacy. But it is the part of Whitehall that directly funds the World Service. It was a trilingual service - English, German and French. “648" referred to 648 khz on the medium wave band. The programming was the best of BBC programming – heavy on news, a bit of jazz, comedy and a few of those unique British cultural expressions like “Gardeners’ Question Time.”

The goal of “648" was simple – news with heavy doses of soft cultural propaganda to give the people in the Soviet bloc a taste of western values in general and British culture in particular. It did this in anticipation of, and encouragement for the fall of Communism. It worked better than anyone expected.

One of the BBC Radio reporters I listened for was Owen Bennett-Jones, who still works for the BBC. In 1989, he must have been very young. He was extremely good. When the revolution broke out in Romania, he reported live from the streets of Bucharest. Another BBC colleague was reporting from Timisoara, a town in western Romania. Their live reports gave a tension and a rhythm to the crowds in the streets culminating in the arrest and execution of Ceaucescu and his wife.

Some years later I was in Bucharest meeting reporters from Radio Romania. They confirmed what I suspected – that Bennett-Jones and his colleagues’ reports were crucial logistical elements that helped guide the street protests and keep the revolution in communication with itself.

Twenty one years later, the media is doing the same things. Only now in addition to the BBC, we have Facebook and Twitter. The fate of Iran, like Romania before it, is deeply media-dependent.

As for “Radio 648?” It was broadcast from southeastern England and was extremely popular among central and eastern Europeans. But it also earned a huge and significant domestic British audience.  It began taking listeners away from the “regular” BBC programs. After protests from BBC managers, it was silenced permanently in 1991.

Oedipus in the Newsroom

The New York Times' esteemed public editor, Clark Hoyt raised a new and complicated conundrum this week.

It concerns the Times' equally esteemed Middle East reporter, Ethan Bronner whose son has joined the Israeli army. Clark discussed in detail the dilemma this presents to Bronner and to the Times.

As Clark explained, the Times coverage of this story has been attacked on both sides for being overly invested in the Israelis and unjustly insensitive to the plight of the Palestinians. Others feel that the Times is expunging some sort of liberal guilt and spending far too much ink on the Palestinians. Ethan Bronner's son in the Israeli army has been seen by some as reinforcing the impression of an inherent conflict of interest.

As I know from personal experience, it is impossible to create a shared journalistic understanding of this issue that transcends the readers' own assumptions. Impressions are important and journalistic organizations ignore them at their peril.

Clark's Solomonic conclusion is that the reputation of the Times is more important than an individual reporter's career. So despite Bronner's terrific journalism, Clark reluctantly concludes that Bronner needs to be reassigned as long as his son is in the army.

Bill Keller, the Times' executive editor has responded by rejecting Clark's recommendation and says that Bronner will not be relieved of his assignment.

Some pro-Israeli readers will doubtless see this as a vindication of their position even if they have found fault with Bronner's reporting in the past.  To remove a reporter from a beat because of the action of the son would be tantamount to saying that all military service in the Israeli army is illegitimate. As with the story itself, there is no single outcome where partisans may find themselves in agreement.

In journalism, this overlap between the personal, the familial and the professional, happens constantly. Washington, DC is a small, one-industry town and journalists often end up married to people in one administration or another. My own take has been to judge journalists (as much as possible) by their work alone, not by who they sleep with, who they socialize with or what parties their relatives support. In that town, to do less would disenfranchise a lot of well known journalists.

In the Bronner case, there is another factor which a psychotherapist of my acquaintance pointed out to me: does Bronner's son have any responsibility in this matter?

So, some questions for the young man:

1. Did he realize that by joining the Israeli army that there could be perceived consequences for his father's career?
2. Did he have to join the army now or could it have been deferred?
3. Were there alternatives to active service and were they considered?
4. Was he aware that he might sabotage his father's career?
5. Is this an instance of unresolved oedipal issues?                                                                         

Arthur Koestler and the Turmoil in Tehran

He haunts us still.

A new biography of Arthur Koestler by Michael Scammell has just been published and it's a brilliant evocation of an amazing period. Mid-20th century Europe saw the emergence of a new political engaged journalist who wrote, agitated and in some cases, fought and died for what they believed.

Many were on the left and not a few were active Communists. Koestler was intellectually promiscuous (or perhaps curious would be a better description). He dallied with Marxism, Freudianism, Communism, anti-Communism, Zionism, anti-Zionism, science and ESP. He was a tremendous womanizer and was once accused of rape by which Scammell, to his credit, addresses directly. He fought against the fascists in Spain and wrote political science fiction which changed how people viewed totalitarianism.

Scammell even mentions that his seminal work, "Darkness at Noon" was a critical factor in keeping France from going Communist after World War II. Koestler was hugely influential on the thinking of many writers, including George Orwell whose great book, "Animal Farm" drew inspiration from Koestler.

A few years ago I noted in this blog how the quest for a more populist atmosphere in a television newsroom resulted in a 20 second piece of copy I wrote on Koestler's suicide in 1983 to be rejected.
"Who wants to hear about a dead Hungarian?" said the editor as he spiked the copy. 

Koestler came to mind again last week as my journalism class met with a courageous Iranian political cartoonist, Nikahang Kowsar, now in exile in Toronto.

As Nik told us of his imprisonment, expulsion and a four year separation from family and friends, I thought "what would Arthur Koestler say?"

He'd probably say in his reported impenetrable Hungarian accent that the fight against brutal regimes must go on, but that in order to defeat Nazism, the values of humanity must triumph. He said the same thing about Soviet Communism which did not endear him to the anti-Fascists who assumed that Soviet Communism would inevitably triumph.

Nik Kowsar has the same Koestler-esque approach which is to trust in the eventual emergence of a new Iran which respects minorities, women and sees Islam as an aspect of Iranian culture - not the other way around.

It gives me hope.

Are Journalism Schools Bad for the News Business?

A friend and colleague, William Drummond teaches journalism at UC Berkeley. He has had a distinguished journalistic career before teaching. Our paths have crossed over the years and I have known him to be a solid public radio veteran and a thoughtful observer of the scene.

So I was surprised when I noted a comment from Bill on Facebook (an increasingly interesting source of town hall pronouncements) referring to a call for suggestions from the Nieman Lab on what should journalism schools be teaching these days.

Bill remarked: "Sorry to say this, but if bullsh*t were asphalt, these guys would be I-95. I go back to the premise that tenured j-school faculty were complicit in the collapse of the news business. They have no more of a clue than the person who launders my shirts."

Thinking this was unfair to dry cleaners everywhere, I asked him to expand.

His response: 

"Many journalists hired on to journalism school faculties taught according to the prevailing regime under which they were trained. For the most part, this was under the "legacy media," (calling it "old media" is really  harsh). Once the old system began to collapse, tenured faculty with few exceptions, continued to teach those same skills, among them, long-form magazine writing, long-form newspaper stories and even book-length projects. They did so long after it was clear students would not find employment in these areas. Most teach in the same fashion to this very day. And what is most baffling to me is that the students here at UC enroll in these long-form classes in great numbers!

"It's the equivalent of a bi-polar disorder: Students load up on web design, multimedia, internet courses and simultaneously flock to long-form profile courses and long-form documentary (production). If you ask them why, they'll say - 'This is the last time I'll get a chance to do this form of journalism.' Go figure. The situation is hopeless, but not serious."

Bill raises an interesting point: are j-schools in the business of teaching 20 year olds skills that had real value in the 1970s and 80s, but are now less useful?

One recent comment from a Ryerson grad was also to complain about the over-emphasis on public-radio style long-form radio documentaries: "That's only good for working at CBC Radio and even they aren't that interested," said she. "Why aren't you teaching us how do to quick turn-around multi-media reporting?"