Tag: news

The Job of a Reporter isn’t Truth…it’s Revenue

Datechguy
Lars Mikkelson who played Charles Augustus Magnussen in Sherlock

John Watson: But if you just know it, then you don’t have proof.
Charles Augustus Magnussen: Proof? What would I need proof for? I’m in news, you moron. I don’t have to prove it – I just have to print it.

Sherlock: His Last Vow 2014

Curly: Hey, what’s this stuff for anyway?
Larry: Why it’s a cleaner, you chump.
Curly: I know. It’s auto polish.
Moe: You boys really want to know what it’s for?
Larry & Curley: Yeah!
Moe: It’s for sale. Now get busy selling it.

The Three Stooges Dizzy Doctors 1937

Something stuck me when I was reading this piece at the Volokh Conspiracy about a study on bias in what is newsworthy. (emphasis mine) via instapundit

How did it turn out? You can guess, can’t you? For all six issues, subjects rated stories as possessing greater intrinsic newsworthiness when they offered ammunition for “their side” of a controversy.

The article is entitled “Perceptions of Newsworthiness Are Contaminated by a Political Usefulness Bias,” and it was published a week or two ago in Royal Society Open Science.

Is the point obvious? Evidently not to everybody. When it is pointed out that news staffs at newspapers across the country tend to be monolithically left of center, the response is often that this is not a problem, since the job of a news reporter is simply to report the truth, and truth is just truth. Well, that’s not quite true … news reporters have to decide what stories are newsworthy (and what facts within stories are newsworthy).

Now I have written a lot about what is newsworthy in the past about things that are “newsworthy”, here is how Merriam Webster defines it: (again emphasis mine)

Definition of newsworthy

: interesting enough to the general public to warrant reporting

That’s the dirty little secret. It’s not reporters who decide what it newsworthy, it’s not anchors or pundits on CNN or CBS that decide what is newsworthy, it’s not never newspaper editors that decide what is newsworthy, it’s the general public that decides that a piece of news or information is interesting enough that it’s worth paying for with their time and their money or both.

It is the editor and/or producers job to sport such stories as they are developing and/or to recognize such stories brought to them by their reporters or freelancers and arrange coverage in on their platform either print, video or web and if said story generates the eyeballs that produce the revenues that pays the bills to stick with it or if it doesn’t to drop or ignore it.

The bottom line job of a reporter, to generate revenue, the only value of truth in that endeavor is to generate credibility for the platform and or to protect said platform from legal actions that might cost revenue.

That’s the reality and it high time that people understand it.

ESPN/Wickersham & the Patriots Wolff & Trump: Selling Dupes The Same Narrative

Datechguy

Curly: Hey! What’s this stuff for anyway?
Larry: Why, it’s a cleaner, ya chump!
Curly: I know, it’s auto polish.
Moe: You boys really wanna know what it’s for?
Larry & Curly: [together]: Yeah.
Moe: It’s for sale, now get busy selling it.

The Three Stooges, Dizzy Doctors 1937

The New Year started in a bad way for the liberal news and sports media.

For the news media you had President Trump finishing strong, between Israel and the Tax cuts and worst of all the lowest recorded black unemployment rate since the government started taking figures by race. Add to that the prospect of a deal that would produce a border wall as the price for legalizing the “dreamers” (illegal immigrants brought to the US as children) you had a narrative of Trump success that was not only contrary to the narrative they’ve been selling all year, but unappealing to their niche market that has become increasingly anti trump.

At the NFL things weren’t looking much better, not only did you have a 2nd straight year of big ratings drops, thanks to the protests during the national anthem that continued all the way to the final week of the season but you had the prospect of the New England Patriots featuring Trump fans/friends Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft once again turning the entire playoff season until Superbowl Sunday into an afterthought.

After all what’s the point of watching the wild card and playoff rounds when everybody “knows” that the only question is:  Can anybody get by Brady / Belichick and the Patriots?

That’s the problem, both the news and sports media are stuck with two narratives of success (Trump & the Pats) that don’t appeal to a customer base that hates the former or is bored with the later.

That’s where Michael Wolff and ESPN’s Seth Wickersham come in. Both have come out with “bombshell” narratives that the news and sports media CAN sell.

Suddenly instead of ISIS in retreat, the Economy moving forward and the Russia / GPS Investigations suddenly turning on the left instead of Trump the Wolff Book give the MSM a narrative of a Trump White House occupied by a president who doesn’t want the job, of people who think he’s a traitor or a nut and supposedly the biggest detractor of this administration is the guy who ran his campaign. It’s Trump vs Bannon and the MSM is bringing you a front row seat

It doesn’t matter how improbable all this is, or the lack of actual evidence or even the lack of credibility of the storyteller for an entire week the print, online and cable media have a narrative that they can sell to their customer base.

For ESPN and sports talk radio it’s the same thing. Instead of once again droning on about the Patriots/Belichick system seemingly immune to injury and trying to sell a Tom Brady “decline” when he is once again the leading contender for league MVP and is two wins away from his 8th superbowl appearance and three wins away from his sixth ring, suddenly we have a tale of jealously, rivalry and the longest running dynasty since the Yankees of Stengel or the Celtics of Auerbach about to destroy itself as Tom Brady and Bill Belichick fight it out to the death.

These aren’t two different stories, this is the same story being sold for the same reason to pivot from a story that won’t grab the eyeballs and ears of their customer base  to a story that will.  

Now for ESPN and the sports media this narrative will sell the dupes that narrative right up until the Patriots actually appear in playoff games and the “Patriots falling apart” meme meets a less team trying to beat them.  While in any single game anything can happen, the  meme can’t stick unless they actually lose.

The Trump narrative will endure a bit longer sustained by the media bubble until the realities of the economy or Iran and the Norks or the Trump count picks or the tough votes for red state Dem senators force them out of the bubble and into real life.

And then they’ll find a new narrative to sell, because right now it’s all about the dollars because it’s the only thing they are sure of until the Democrats actually win control of something.

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Longtime Blogger Ignores the News

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng

by baldilocks

Red Pill–sort of

Since making a public New Year’s Resolution to minimize my time on Facebook and Twitter in order to finish my second novel, Arlen’s Harem, by February 1st, I’ve had minimize my time online in general.

The result is that I don’t really know what’s going on in the news right now, and it feels kind of good–I’m old enough to recall when the news cycle was a couple of weeks, rather than a couple of minutes.

Generally, I take two days off per week from the Internet Race-to-Comment, anyway, and when I come back, I have to spend an hour or two getting back in the loop. Three days of separation from the news-cycle fix nearly puts a news junkie in Low Information Voter (LIV) territory. But now, I don’t wonder why LIVs often seem calmer and happier: they don’t know that the sky is falling and, sometimes, it better not to know. Ignorance, bliss, you know.

The commentary race often gets bloggers in trouble anyway—if one is the slightest bit concerned about accuracy and about being original. That last concern is why I don’t comment on some topics and events—I have nothing new to say about them.

Staying away from shorter communications also has a positive effect on my ability to build a narrative. When I composed the bulk of Tale of the Tigers, I spent much of my non-typing work on it spinning yarns in my mind and connecting them to other parts of the novel. A handy, pre-smartphone tool was an mp3 player in which I could speak my story ideas without writing them down or having to remember them. (I made the grievous mistake of thinking through a story without out writing it down or recording it once…and only once.)

I’ve been semi-newsfree since about the 31st. Obviously, I’m going to have to watch the news a bit in order to post here and at my own blog. But, it feels good to know that I can still spit out 300 or 30K words without being fed by the Matrix.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng blogs at baldilocks. (Her older blog is located here.) Her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game, was published in 2012. Her second novel tentatively titled Arlen’s Harem, will be done on February 1, 2017! Follow her on Twitter.

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baldilocks

Letting Facebook Label what News is “Real”?, Are you kidding ME?

Datechguy

Mr. Scott: There’s an old old saying on earth: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”
Mr Checkov: I know this saying. It was invented in Russia

Star Trek Friday’s Child 1967

They say those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

So when I saw this story at Drudge:

Facebook is going to start fact-checking, labeling, and burying fake news and hoaxes in its News Feed, the company said Thursday.

I remembered this:

Just after the Islamic Terror attack on the gay nightclub Pulse, Facebook, you know those guys who insist they are not censoring conservatives, decided to take strong action…against one of the most prominent opponents and a onetime target of Islamic terror Pam Geller

and this

Facebook doesn’t acknowledge a bias problem, the only see a “Trust” problem, thus they will hold “dialogues” in the hope of showing “progress” in the hopes that these visuals will cause conservatives to believe they are doing something.

Alas for facebook, not only is the bias problem real but as reported at The Lid , the Israel Law Center (Shurat HaDin) was able to prove it by setting up a pair of “hate” sites one anti-jewish & one anti Palestinians gradually ramping up the rhetoric on both until they both called for the death of their targets. Then they reported each site to facebook.

Jeff Tells us what happened:

and this

and of course this:

Speaking at Facebook’s annual conference F8 last week, Zuckerberg launched into an attack on Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s policies. It’s not surprising that Zuckerberg, who has been a big fan of H-1B visas that critics say hold wages down for programmers and software engineers hired by companies such as Facebook, doesn’t think much of Trump’s plan to limit immigration. But so what? Lots of people are for open borders, even people who, unlike Zuckerberg, don’t stand to make billions off of them.

Somewhat more troubling was that a bunch of Facebook employees asked Zuckerberg whether there was anything they could do to stop a Trump presidency: “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?”

And then I think ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

After all of these recent examples of Facebook bias could any sane conservative seriously consider trusting facebook to not use “fact checking” as a weapon to censor conservatives while promoting a liberal agenda?

If you do then then shame on you, Cue Scotty:

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Robin Williams a Newsworthy Correction

Datechguy

As a general rule we tend to mourn those who make us laugh more than almost anyone else because everyone loves and needs laughter and how to do pay back someone who does that for you?

Robin Williams personifies that statement.

As you might guess it is wall to wall coverage, the Williams story has trumped absolutely everything else.

At a time when war is going on in Ukraine and we wonder if Russia is going to go into in and turn the new cold war into a new hot war,

At a time when Hamas is launching rockers and Israel is fighting back while anti-Semitism is openly running rampant in Europe to the point where people are invoking Hitler & the ovens without shame,

At a time when a suburb of St. Louis is preparing to explode over a confrontation between a police officer and a young black man,

At a time Ebola is preparing to spread

and At a time when Iraq falls apart while Isis is slaughtering those who do not convert and starving millions on a mountain.

The apparent suicide of a comic, however funny would seem unworthy of such coverage, and I tweeted thus:

And then I saw this at Twitchy:

‘So bizarre’: ISIS supporters tweeting about Robin Williams, Jumanji

 

Go and read that post but not just the post take a look at some of these twitter accounts like this

os profile

That normally tweet this:

Took the time to tweet this:

And then there is Abdullah whose profile looks like this

ab pro

and normally tweets stuff like this:

Who tweeted this:

which resulted in this:

and this:

and this

and this

and finally this:

After seeing these tweets etc I have come to this conclusion

and it is worth all of the coverage it has been getting.

 

Closing thought? What would Robin Williams say about all of these tweets about his death by Isis & Jihadis? I don’t know but I suspect it would be hilarious.

 

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Kimberlim, Islam, Blogbash? Bring it on!

Datechguy

“I love it, God help me I love it so”

Patton 1970

Smitty: So many times every day you stop and give thanks, but mostly I don’t catch on what you’re thanking the Lord for. I mean, there’s nothing special.
Parson: I give thanks for the time and for the place.
Smitty: The time and the place, Parson?
Parson: The time to live and the place to die. That’s all any man gets. No more, no less.

The Alamo 1960

Looking at Stacy McCain’s latest on Blog Bash, everybody’s favorite Domestic terrorist convicted Bomber seems to be taking an active role in attempting to intimidate the potential attendees to Blogbash .

While you ponder that assertion of prescient knowledge, look at what “Texas Tim” wrote on Thursday morning:

“So here are a few suggestions: call [the venue] and tell them about Ali and about who BlogBash has nominated for awards. . . .
“Call Muslim organizations and urge them to weigh in by calling [the venue] and joining the protest at annd boycott of [the venue]. . . .
“Let’s put [the venue] of business for hosting anti-American Islamophobes, felons, pimps and pornographers. . . . [The venue’s] assault on women and Islam will not be tolerated.”

Well, this is fascinating, isn’t it? On the same two days that the BlogBash venue is contacted by Rauhauser and Kimberlin, “Texas Tim” first predicts Muslim groups will contact the venue, and then urges readers to encourage such groups to contact the venue. And the threat to put a certain nightclub “out of business” is the exact same language used by Brett Kimberlin in his phone call to the venue manager.

Hmmmm meanwhile Lee Stranahan writes the following:

This started weeks ago, however. BreitbartUnmasked writer “Texas Tim”–a fake persona and probably Brett Kimberlin himself made the threat about ‘a throng of Muslims’ back on February 25th.

Oh and BTW, my wife said that a throng of Muslims is going to do a massive protest at CPAC against Walker. She is going to make sure that everyone of them has your picture so they can tell you what they think of you support a virulent Islamophobe. And a very powerful Imam will be there two to stir up the crowd. Good luck with all of that.

I have to admit it, seeing this makes me grin from ear to ear.

“But DaTechGuy”, you might ask, “What the hell are you thinking? At best this means a major protest against you and your friends during Blogbash, at worst it dangerous, a combination of Islamic extremists and a Bomber who has already blown people up.  If it happens you’re going to be there to be blown up!”

Well yes, that’s a possibility but dear reader you are forgetting several things:

1. Eyes on the Prize

Breitbart_Rahauser_Kimberlin_Friedman

There have been quite a few people for quite a long time trying to achieve this goal that Andrew called for.

The action against a public building in the nation’s capital attended by hundreds of not only bloggers and writers, but movers and shakers at the Nation’s Capital tends to be noticed.  A public attempt to intimidate them is the perfect vehicle to not only expose these guys to the public, but perhaps expose those who might be financing their move or using them as muscle.

It will be fun to find out.

2. CPAC,  Norquist & Islam

As I’ve already written Pam Geller has been kept from holding her event at CPAC and Robert Spencer has refused the People’s Choice Award over restrictions on speech over the subject.

Now you have a CPAC related event with the presence of a large chunk of CPAC accredited press (this year there is no differential between bloggers and MSM in credentialing) being threatened by a convicted Bomber who is apparently associating with a “very powerful Imam”

I suspect at least a few of those 500+ bloggers with their flip phones might find the chance to ask some of the assembled GOP powerhouses at CPAC 2013 about this, and I daresay that their answers might make news. In fact unless I’m very much mistaken J. Christian Adams and Former Congressman Allen West are both going to be at CPAC, Congressman West will be speaking, and they have been signed on as commentators for PJ Media. Perhaps they might even ask the questions themselves

I would be shocked if one of those 500 bloggers did NOT find the time to ask the question to CPAC in general and Grover Norquist in particular about the threats to blogbash and the association between them an a “powerful Iman to stir up the crowd”. It would be rather delicious if Col West asked a question like:

“Mr Norquist given the exclusion of certain Anti-Jihad bloggers/writers to you have any comment to make on the attempts to reports of attempts to intimidate the Blogbash event by muslims led by a “powerful Iman to stir up the crowd” in association with Convicted Speedway Bomber Brett Kimberlin and how do you reconcile this with your previous cries of Islamophobia?”

“Mr Norquist will you condemn the attempts of convicted Speedway Bomber Brett Kimberlin and his associates to intimidate credentialed journalists of CPAC at their event and will you urge Muslims including the aforementioned “powerful Iman” to not associate in any way with any attempt to intimidate said credentialed CPAC journalists?

I’d love to hear the answer to those questions.  Wouldn’t you?

3. Remember Denver

Let’s say an Islamic Group led by a “powerful Iman to stir up the crowd” shows up outside the Venue of Blogbash. What do you think will happen? Well a clue can be drawn from Denver when the Occupods attempted to storm one of our events and marched on our hotel.

Cameras, Cameras Cameras and questions questions questions.

An Islamic group led by a “powerful Iman to stir up the crowd” is what people in our business refer to as “News” and you have 500 bloggers with recording devices. Unless this Iman has a crowd of 100 or more this protest is going to be absolutely swamped and outnumbers with blogger with recording devices all over them asking questions and shouting back. This isn’t Egypt, These guys don’t have the police or the Army to beat us into line. This isn’t Dearborn where an Islamic mob felt safe to stone Christians. Unless the rent a mob (and lets not pretend these guys will NOT be using rent a mobs to swell their numbers) is huge they are going to find a situations not to their liking and I suspect police will take notice of such a mob, without a permit doing such a thing

4. Can’t wait to ask the questions.

Let’s say an Islamic mob does show up with a “powerful Iman to stir up the crowd” chanting whatever they want to chant and lets say only a couple of bloggers leave the party to film them.  The interviews will be delicious.

“You are claiming the bloggers here are islamophobic, given the association of the convicted speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin and his associates with this protest how does that dovetail with your claims of Peaceful Islam?

“The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community claims Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the Mujaddid are they Apostates or Kafir (non believers)?”

“Death to Apostates from Islam”  “Thumbs up or thumbs down?”

I have several more questions in the bank that I won’t play in public now but I think the answers to these questions will be illuminating and I simply can’t wait to ask the “Powerful Iman” about his contacts with the Kimberlin Crowd, I’m sure the association with a convicted Bomber is just the image American Muslims are dying to have publicized.

5.  Be Breitbart

Think for a moment.  Imagine if Andrew Breitbart was alive and these threats were going on, what would he be doing?  imagine further that this event takes place and with Kimberlin’s lackeys filming (which you know they will) a Muslim crowd led by a “powerful Iman to stir up the crowd” turns up.

What do you think Andrew would do?  How do you think Andrew would do it?

Now imagine that you had 500 people who all admire and miss Andrew Breitbart, who all want to “be Breitbart”

This event, this provocation and this attempt to bully is precisely the opportunity for people to step up, to create a visible leader or maybe several of them.

as Andrew would say:  BRING IT ON!

6.  It’s News

As people who have seen me at prior Blog Bashes know I invariably grab some food, park myself close to an electrical outlet, take out my Laptop and spend my time at the party working.  (with the occasional Pinball break if a machine is nearby)  It’s my understanding that this year due to space concerns, Laptops are not allowed.

Parties are nice and it’s always a pleasure to see friends but I’m going to see those friends in the media area and open bars not withstanding I’m not a drinker (Personally I question the wisdom of drinking in a room full of folks carrying video phones with instant internet access).

My entire take home pay is whatever my readers send me weekly, my goal is $300 a week.  The people who give those $2 $10 $20 or occasional $100 as my paycheck expect me to earn that money.  Hotel and Air going to CPAC will cost me $862.72 and that doesn’t count cabs, food or any other expenses.  If I’m going to spend that money to go to CPAC , it’s to cover news, if I see friends and occasionally relax after hours, fine, but if I’m there it’s to WORK.

Looking at the events I’ve descried above I,  to steal a line from R.S. McCain “Immediately recognized them as Newsworthy”

Given that I’m there to cover stories, It’s very nice of the Kimberlin crowd and their Islamic friends to provide me with one and the opportunity to do up close and personal.

Hey my wife’s 50th birthday and my 25th anniversary are both coming up in the next 30 days If I’m going to spend $1000 dollars on something other than her it damn well better be worth it.

“But DaTechGuy”, you insist, “What good is any of that if you get blown up?”

Well, I’m Catholic, I figure you’ve got to die of something, I’ve got life insurance for the family and I always get confession and absolution before I get on a plane.  What more does a person need?

Update:  Fixed a few typos

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March Goal

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My thanks to all who kicked in to provide me a full paycheck this week and advanced me well on the way to the monthly goal for March.  Because of this  tomorrow’s posts will be completely free of any fundraising pitch.




Distractions Distractions Distractions

Datechguy

Anthony Weiner last week on the newly breaking scandal May 29th:

“This is a distraction from the business of the American People.”

Joe Scarborough June 8th : We decided this was a distraction from the more important news of the day.

Robert Stacy McCain May 29th: “when a mere blogger is the one asking the questions that by all rights you’d expect to be asked by actual reporters and editors in newsrooms in Washington and New York – you can be excused for thinking there’s something badly out-of-whack in the media universe.”

Bias is all about the news you don’t cover