Markmedia

Borelius, bloggandet och medborgarjournalistik

Maria Borelius avgång tas nu som intäkt för bloggandets genomslag som nyhetsmedium och politisk maktfaktor.
Jag diskuterade detta med Vincent Maher tidigare idag. Vince har skrivit mycket om medborgarjournalistik och var initivtagaren till afrikas första bloggkonferens i september i år. Utifrån diskussionen skrev vi ett gemensamt blogginlägg kring detta. (Engelsk version)

På inlägget Citizen Journalism fungerar skriver Magnus Ljungkvist:

Men “citizen journalism” eller medborgarjournalistik fungerar. Det tror jag att jag vågar konstatera idag. Bloggosfären kan erbjuda både snabbheten och fördjupningen. Dessutom har vi det väl förspänt i Sverige med den fantastiska offentlighetsprincipen som gör att det snabbt går att hitta viktig information hos våra myndigheter även utan presskort. Och om jag var tveksam tidigare så tror jag att bloggen, eller vad det här kommer kallas om tio år, kommer vara ett etablerat medium i framtiden. Och det vi medborgarjournalister kanske främst kan erbjuda är en granskning av den maktsfär som de etablerade medierna utgör.

Utifrån det tor jag att följande punkter tål att tänkas på:

1: Mycket av det som kallas medborgarjournalistik är resultatet av ett ideologiskt/politiskt ställningstagande. Denna drivkraft gör att en enveten tragglande genom offentliga dokument känns både motiverat, motiverande och givande. Så var fallet under Rathergate.
Man kan säga att några av de bästa avslöjanden i blogosfären är sprungna ur bristande objektivitet.

2. Offentlighetsprincipen är en nyckel till ett demokratiskt samhälle. Denna tillgång till information bör vara den samma vare sig man kallar sig journalist eller medborgare. Alla försök till inskränkningar av denna offentlighet är till men för demokratin.

3. Att de etablerade medierna inte letade efter, eller hittade, informationen som Magnus Ljungkvist tog fram kan härledas till några möjligheter (det finns naturligtvis fler än dessa):

• bristande personligt intresse eller journalistisk fantasi från de etablerade mediernas journalister
• bristande resurser på redaktionerna - brist på tid, brist på kunskap, brist på ledarskap mm
• egenintresse; I en intervju med Dan Josefsson på Ljungkvists blogg kan vi läsa följande:

Mt: Tror du att det har påverkat journalisternas bevakning av Boreliusaffären?

DJ: Njae, man skulle kunna tro det och jag är övertygad om att det har påverkat tidigare. Till exempel är jag helt övertygad om att mediernas positiva rapportering av avdraget för hushållsnära tjänster beror på att det är många inom journalistkåren som känner att de skulle gynnas av förslaget. Frågan har blivit uppblåst något enormt just därför att många journalister kan identifiera sig. Jag vet ju att när rapport skulle göra en granskning av svartjobbsmarknaden för några år sedan så hade man svårt att hitta någon som som ville göra jobbet eftersom “det var ett jävla skit att hålla på att peta i det”.

4. Ibland så krävs det en hängiven bloggare för att tvinga journalister till att ta upp ämnen de skulle hellre ignorera.

5. Bloggare kan inte göra detta ensamma. Det visar sig gång efter annan att det krävs upptagning och en uppföljning från de etablerade medier för att verkligen får en samhällsvid genomslagskraft.

6. Ovilligheten från medierna att erkänna Magnus som ursprungskälla till mycket av Boreliusaffären visar på en onödig genans från deras sida. Det finns en ohälsosam vi-och-dom känsla i samröre med blogosfären. Och en lika ohälsosam misstänksamhet från blogosfären mot traditionella medier.
Det är inte antingen eller som gäller. Der är både-och.
Sammarbete. Cooperation not competition.

Chronic Poverty Research Centre

Established in 2000, with a series of innovative grants and funding schemes from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the Chronic Poverty Research Center (CPRC) is primarily concerned with researching chronic poverty around the globe and creating analyses that will be useful to different government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and other researchers.

Specifically, their approach is designed to focus on “three pillars”, which include thematic research, policy analysis, and policy engagement. The site is divided into several primary sections, including “Resources”, “Partners”, and “News and Events”. The homepage isn’t a bad way to delve into some of their materials, which as of late have included calls for papers and a presentation on a report on the state of the chronically poor in Bangladesh.

old media still first point of call

Despite the fact that trust in journalism is decreasing on a global scale, a LexisNexis survey shows today’s consumers trust traditional media sources the most.

Half of those surveyed said that they would turn to network television for immediate news information in such situations, while the next most popular source was the radio (42%). Findings show that approximately a third of consumers (37%) would use daily local newspapers or cable news or business networks (33%), and a quarter of those interviewed would rely on Internet sites of print and broadcast media. In contrast, emerging media like Internet user groups, blogs and chat rooms would be used by (6%) surveyed.

Not surprising really as most people using the Internet have no idea how emerging media works even if they know it exists. This will change in time, so traditional journalists should not feel complacent. Quite the opposite.

The surveyed group consisted of:

More than 1,500 Americans between the ages of 25-64 were surveyed. These respondents were separated in to two groups, business professionals and consumers. 333 of the 1,500 respondents were defined as business professionals in executive- or management-level jobs. The remaining 1,167 were defined as consumers.

IPI death watch: journalists killed so far this year

IPI death watch:
The International Press Institute includes in its "Death Watch" journalists and media staff who were deliberately targeted because of their profession - either because of their investigative reporting or simply because they were journalists. IPI also includes journalists who were caught in the crossfire while covering dangerous assignments.

Total number of journalists killed so far this year:  49

Right rewrite wrong

Catching up on the Financial Times this morning I see that they report on the plans by the new Swedish right wing government [what! me showing bias - never! :-) ]to sell off and privatize areas of the economy.

Carl Bildt is quoted:
"We need to do with the service sector what we did with the private sector in the 1990s."

Thereafter comes the following:

He was referring to the deregulation of the banking, telecoms, retail and automotive sectors in the 1990s. That created some of the country's most powerful companies, such as Ericsson, the communications company, and Volvo, the world's second largest truck maker.

As far as I remember Ericsson was established in 1876 and Volvo in 1927.
Has the rights triumphalist rewriting of history already begun?

Internet and the US Elections

26 million Americans were logging onto for news or information about the campaign on a typical day in August, the highest such figure recorded by the Pew Internet Project.

On a typical day in August, 26 million Americans were using the internet for news or information about politics and the upcoming mid-term elections. That corresponds to 19% of adult internet users, or 13% of all Americans over the age of 18

Read the whole report

Arms sales and GDP

Have a look at this graph from SIPRI:
Boeings total 2004 sales are greater than the GDP of Morocco and their arms sales the same size as the GDP of Guatemala.
Shocking.

- The top 2 arms-producing companies in 2004: comparison of company sales with the national output of select countries.

Digital Rights Ireland vs European Data Retention Directive

Digital Rights Ireland has begun a High Court action against the Irish Government, challenging new laws on data retention.
The action challenges the law on data retention contained in the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Act, 2005 and the European Data Retention Directive, which was passed in 2006.The legislation compels Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telecom operators in EU states to retain data relating to telephony, SMS and the internet for up to three years.
Digital Rights Ireland is the only group to have initiated action against the laws in Europe;

DRI claim (rightly so in my opinion) that the kind of mass surveillance that'll be allowed under the legislation is a breach of human rights.

DRI claims that if it is successful with its challenge, the effect will be to undermine data retention laws in all EU states and could therefore lead to the overturning of the Data Retention Directive.The High Court action is being funded by individuals and contributions can be made via PayPal through the Digital Rights Ireland website.

Support these guys, the retention of privacy by far outways the unconscionable breadth of this legislation.

Bush violates the Constitution(again?)

President Bush's penchant for writing exceptions to laws he has just signed violates the Constitution, an American Bar Association task force says in a report [PDF] highly critical of the practice.

The ABA group said the president has overstepped his authority in attaching challenges to hundreds of new laws.

The attachments, known as bill-signing statements, say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.

"This report raises serious concerns crucial to the survival of our democracy," said the ABA's president, Michael Greco. "If left unchecked, the president's practice does grave harm to the separation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries."

organization manuals for state governments (US)

In the run-up to the coming US elections the following link to  blue book resource may be useful to non-US reporters:
[Blue books are the organization manuals for state governments, listing members of the legislature, the functions of state agencies, and contact information for officials.]

State Blue books (Alaska State Library)
* Links to the state government manuals of the 50 states
* Manual typically include directories of the agencies, biographies of the legislators, some statistics, and election data
* Many but not all have web links

Taken from the State Government and Politics pages at the University of Michigan Library