TRUTHINESS AND KILLING OFF OF ALL JOURNALISTS: RESPONDING MIKE’S ARTICLE

Mike’s post, TRUTHINESS AND KILLING OFF OF ALL JOURNALISTS, contains various perspectives which I do and don’t agree with. Obviously media industry has been getting more competitive than ever and person who devotes his/her life to be a journalist suffers both morally and financially. This is a professional that you need to wait your day to break in. Unfortunately journalism is ungrateful for many years for high percentage of media workers. Like an artists, painters, sculptors. Also this is true as Mike says: “The resumes read Brown, Columbia, NYU, Georgetown, University of Chicago, etc. Journalists, for the most part, are the sons of doctors and lawyers, the brothers and sisters of stock traders and economists. They fill any individual family’s public service quota. The journalists are among the elite, and if they are not, they soon assume that role.”

This is same all around the world. Alike in my country we have dozens of Journalism Schools in Turkey but graduates work mostly in unrelated work places. Personally I was lucky because I started to work in the field when I was a freshman in collage. Elitism is everywhere. You have to be marketable and well-labeled to be able to get this job. Otherwise you can’t compete with these sons of doctors and lawyers, the brothers and sisters of stock tradersJ)

On the other hand I don’t know why is Journalism so attractive to them? Is that related to money matters or ego satisfaction? I’ve made little research on Google (I still strongly believe that Google is more beneficial and reliable tool for journalist than Wikipedia. Therefore I don’t agree with you Mike at this point) and I found an interesting report on Radio and Television Salary Survey conducted by Ball State University.

I don’t know how much they earn particularly because there is a huge salary cliff between news reporters and anchors. Probably these elitist journalists rather want to be an anchor with the help of their influential affiliations and pedigrees.

Let’s change the topic. I would like to talk about Mike’s point that I can’t agree with. He says: “Then I started thinking about who the historians are – mainly journalists and or academics who all have their own biases. This is not original thinking on my part at all, but I suddenly realized why academics and journalists feel so threatened by the site. It renders them less important. It gives anyone and everyone the ability to not only write history, but to judge it, analyze it, edit it, protest it, manipulate it and emphasize it, just like they do. Journalists are no longer the gatekeepers of all information, and subtle references in their nut graphs (usually the second or third paragraph in the story that explains background and why this story is important) are no longer the accepted background on any given story. The real nut graphs are floating around for everyone and anyone to read.”

He gives examples from Washington Post and New York Times such as Walter Reed Story and other political news. Then he comes with the idea of Wikipedia and tries to approve its preciousness for individuals. He doesn’t give credit to newspapers as much as Wikipedia. I couldn’t understand this point clearly. How could we compare Wikipedia and grassroots media under the terms of telling the truth or doing journalism? They are like apple and pearl to compare. I’m not claiming that media is not questionable. Obviously we are part of this industry and we have a priority to judge it. However we can’t sacrifice whole grassroots media mercilessly for newborn-attractive media figure which is still need to have wide acceptance from all society in the world.

TRUTHINESS: RESPONDING JESSICA’S ARTICLE

What a girl…There are so many things in Jessica’s entries. Creative thinking, fair criticism, fun, life, sensation, nostalgia…I like her style because she writes like she talks and catches my attention easily. She is also persuasive because she provides the facts accurately and dauntlessly. I do completely agree with her comments about Wikipedia-Truhtiness dilemma, I’m fascinated with Jessica’s approach to the issue. Let’s remember what she wrote in her entry, The Trouble with Truthiness.

 “My problem with Wikipedia’s devotion to truthiness is that it values heart over fact. It favors what one dream as oppose to what one sees. That’s dangerous because the heart is too abstract to qualify. It’s impulsive. Facts, on the other hand, are tangible and retraceable. ”
I would like to extend the controversy. Thus heart is too abstract to qualify; we can’t prevent subjective and relative information that place in Wikipedia anyway. We have already seen that on Wikiscanner projects. Institutions, companies, people who have some affiliations with them do not hesitate to be supplier of TRUTHINESS.

I do not mean that we have to have kind of dictatorship or censorship to rule on every article we’ve entered or edited. Of course I do not. Wikipedia can remain as an alternate and easy way to reach at practical data-base but it can’t impose like an objective and neutral source.

Moreover this is why newspapers, encyclopedias exits. We need to trust them. Otherwise truthiness term will terminate everything we used to know before. This might seem as an exaggerated chaotic picture but if we do not support grassroots media as much as new media tools I have a sense that we will experience this in early future.

Ok understandable. The both new media tools and grassroots media have pros and cons. Technology has made new media tools more accessible and easier than others. This is not enough to answer my question. How about evaluation, confirmation, news worthiness? I am not talking about seeking truth because in this case it is not that much easy to find what the truth is.

Let’s go back to Jessica’s comment again.
“To say that George Washington did not own slaves is a blatant lie. Of course he did. An infinite number of American white men of means living during the 17th and 18th centuries owned slaves. No offense to wikiality (though that’s a really adorable nick name), but that was reality. It’s not a comfortable reality to recall, but it is reality nonetheless. In denying that, one denies American History as well. More, if facts about slavery can be erased, so can facts about the Holocaust, the Iraq War death toll and Janjaweed militia attacks. Everything becomes subject to web user whim and/or discomfort. That scares me. ”

As she pointed out denying, refurbishing, imposing, propaganda were not easy that much before Wikipedia. Frankly we are forced to accept wikipedia as an ideal way to learn. I don’t have to applaud EVERYTHING that new media brings to our lives.

WIKISCANNER REPORT ON FOX NEWS CHANELL

When I have started to search about Fox News on Wikipedia Scanner, I knew that I could find so many things worthy. Here are the topics what were edited by Fox News and most attracted to me. I think most of them can be taken as objectivity and Neutral Point of View (NPOV) causes. As one of the biggest news organization in the United States Fox News needs to foster objectivity and neutrality in media industry.
Before I started to list the topics I would like to make a summary in over all. My first observation is that Fox News doesn’t give a chance to any opposition or debates wherever its name takes place. They omit the whole controversial part and put how they believe instead.
In Fox News edits we can apparently see the words ‘Some Democrats’ and ‘Some Liberals’ have been substituted by ‘Democrats’ and ‘Liberals’.
They tend to use plural form of these words instead adding the word some. In fact “some” doesn’t exists in their format. Fox News has been editing these words promptly as the way they like. They have been targeting all democrats or liberals as components of the particular issue. Second, they tend to present Fox’s anchormans, reporters and their works as an admirable and unquestionable. However the other network’s anchors are presented as insignificant and unsuccessful. They omit the reports or critics by media organizations on their reporting such as Media Watchdog, Media Matters for America. They do some minor edits on grammar and proofreading but their quantity much less than contextual edits. Let’s examine some of the edits that I believe they are strongly attached to objectivity and NPOV issues.

Al Franken-Fox News Conflict

In this case National Public Radio intentionally and specifically wanted to be described as liberal and also Franken’s comment on Fox News was completely changed.The paragraph in older edit:
“The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the National Public Radio program ”Fresh Air” on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was “literally laughed out of court” and that “wholly (holy) without merit” is a good characterization of Fox News itself.Fox News has edited this paragraph like that:
“The lawsuit focused a great deal of media attention upon Franken’s book and greatly enhanced its sales. Reflecting later on the lawsuit during an interview on the liberal National Public Radio program Fresh Air on September 3, 2003, Franken said that Fox’s case against him was the best thing to happen to his book sales.

 Carl Cameron-Journalistic Fraud 

In the wikipedia article on Fox News’s correspondent Carl Cameron contains critics on his reporting and accusations being a both journalist and partisan Republican at the same time. In the first edition of article there have been also findings of Media Watchdog Report on Cameron but they were omitted by Fox News.
 

Chris Wallace-Bill Clinton Interview 

 Fox News has omitted the part that was containing critics on Chris Wallace’s statement during the former president Bill Clinton interview. Also Fox News has omitted the part of an e-mail campaign that was organized by Modern American Liberalism and Wallace has never taken in response.

Keith Olbermann-Return to Reporting

Keith Olbermann-Trivia Keith Olbermann-Smoking

Eeach articles about Olbermann,  has been edited by Fox News, he has described as a liberal commentator who criticized by conservatives. Fox News has been accusing him repeatedly for making story about himself the day after news veteran Peter Jennings passed away from lung cancer.

Pastor Dennis James Kennedys

He has been described as the most listened to Presbyterian minister in the world by Fox News edit. Isn’t that relative information that we may not agree?

KEITH ON WIKIPEDIA

DOES ITS AN UNDENIABLE POPULARITY MAKE WIKIPEDIA “ENCYCLOPEDIA”?

WAS THE WIKIPEDIA REALLY CREATED FOR CYCLOPEDIC MATTER?

If you are a journalist, academician or scientist you always need to have suspicious approach. We need to question facts. Otherwise the visible part of Iceberg’ may mislead our conclusion. The history of “Truths” or its opposite way “Truthless” lies down through the creation of human being. Describing the these two terms getting harder than ever in the condition of 21.century due to intensive Disinformation. In my opinion disinformation is translated to another word recently. As Steven Colbert describes, “Truhthiness”, the term defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.

We are as a millennium society have witnessed the revolution of Information Technologies in last decade. The most essential part of this revolution is self constructed, instructed and controlled Online Media. Online media have brought wide alternatives. Moreover it has created substitutionary media environment due to an online newspapers, blogs, social networking sites etc. People have started to read online newspapers instead of reading hard copies, to chat online instead of talking on the phone, to talk online instead of meeting in somewhere, to search on Google or Wikipedia instead of giving an eye on encyclopedia.

“FREE ENCYCLOPEDIA”

Of course we praise for what Wikipedia provides us. In fact nobody has an full-objection for blessings and contributions of online media tools to our daily lives. However the case what we are discussing influences all the society due to its technological power and attractiveness. As an our case study, Wikipedia’s core aim is providing a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet according to Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. This is the magic word for all online media tools. FREE! He adds that Wikipedia is a lot more than a equal website also wants empowering people everywhere to have the information they need to make a good decision. It seems too idealistic isn’t it.

Let’s look the other features of Wikipedia?

According to All Headlines News, Wikipedia surpassed the 2-million article mark on September 9, as of October 8, 2007 Wikipedia’s English-language edition had over 2, 039, 985 articles. As of September 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 8.29 million articles in 253 language. Wikipedia’s articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Due to Wikipedia’s open nature, critics have questioned its reliability and accuracy. But because it is constantly updated, Wikipedia is also a source for rumors, a target of vandalism and a hub fornews and other internet phenomenon, with 6.8 million registered users worldwide.

“CONTROVERSIES ON WIKIPEDIA”

There have been many controversy and criticisms on Wikipedia’s concept. It has been criticized for being open to editing by anyone, being usefulness as a reference, it’s anti-elitist approach, systemic bias in coverage, systemic bias in perspective, privacy concerns, prediction on failure, threat to traditional publishers, quality of writing, anonymous editing, copy write issues, difficulty of fact-checking, using a dubious sources, exposure vandals such as John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy.
Moreover there are many criticism also made by contributors such as common complain “Flame Wars”, view of editing, dominant liberal bias, censorship, administrator actions, level of debate, male dominations, lack of credential verification.

“WE DON’T TAKE A STAND IN CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES”

Jimmy Wales describes their control mechanism as: “We do not talk a lot about truth and objectivity the reason for this is if we say we are only gonna write the truth about some topics that does not do us better good figuring out what to write because I don’t agree with you about what is the truth. We have this jargon term of neutrality which has long history with community. Anytime there is a controversial issue wikipedia self should not take a stand on the issue. We should report what reputable parties have said about it.”

Wales adds that Wikipedia has diverse contributors in terms of political, religious, cultural backgrounds and aims to keep everyone on Wikipedia’s Neutral Policy. I think this is the most crucial point of the controversies. There are several cases where Wikipedia has failed and I think the quantity of failures will increase in the future. Here some examples:

Mercedes hunts for Wikipedia vandal

Japan Officials Warned Over Wikipedia

Qatar’s Contributions Curtailed at Wikipedia

“DOES ITS UNDENIABLE POPULARITY MAKE WIKIPEDIA “ENCYCLOPEDIA?”

For the conditions and controversies that I have listed above we can’t count on Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. If we are talking about public enlightenment through informations we have to stand for seeking truth and being an objective. Wikipedia can not reject that they are not one of the major media tools in today. If they think wikipedia has a suitability as an encyclopedia they need to have fundamental transformation from “everyone can edit” to “only experts can edit”. So I am answering the question: “We should trust expert-led encyclopedia no matter what Wikipedia provides easiest way to find an information.Due to Wikipedia should be open to just verified “experts”.

I might be a dinosaur because I am defending this idea but it seems the only way to enduring objectivity and preventing “Truthiness”.