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Bad Journalism Bad Journalism

Bad Journalism - PowerPoint Presentation

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Bad Journalism - PPT Presentation

The Fourth Estate The press is often called the fourth estate a political power different from the three branches of government executive legislative and judiciary that keeps them in check A healthy press is an ID: 161591

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Slide1

Bad JournalismSlide2

The Fourth Estate

The press is often called “the fourth estate”– a political power different from the three branches of government (executive, legislative, and judiciary) that keeps them in check. A healthy press is an

adversarial

press.Slide3

The Necessary Press

In addition, media– once newspapers, but now mostly televised news and internet news– is the principle source of information people have about world events, scientific developments, health, and politics.

Even if you get your news from friends on

facebook

– someone has to get it from the news media.Slide4

Afflicting the Comfortable

The press is supposed to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

Unfortunately, the news can be horribly misleading, full of discredited falsehoods and propaganda. It can comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted.Slide5

Fooling michaelSlide6
Slide7

cf18 comments

“…it looks like 78.1% of people in Hong Kong dislike other races… But don’t you find it more unbelievable that the next two questions say 80% people don’t mind having drunks or emotionally unstable peoples as 

neighbours

  Or even more crazy stuff on the next page, which say 90% people think it’s fine to have drug addicts as 

neighbours

 … The correct result should be: In Hong Kong 78.1% found it acceptable to have different race

neighbours

, while less than 20% found it acceptable to have drunks, emotionally unstable and drug addicts as

neighbours

.”Slide8

News organizationSlide9

Newspaper Organization

A newspaper contains:

News reports

Editorials

AdvertisementsSlide10

Reporters

Reporters generate news stories. Some of them cover “beats” (local politics, sports team, etc.) and some of them receive different assignments at different times.Slide11

Reporters

There

are

good reporters

. But there aren’t many of them.

Since the age of the internet, the numbers of reporters has not changed, but the amount they have to write has increased by three times.Slide12

Public Relations

Public relations (often just called PR) consists of all the activities that individuals, companies, and organizations take to control and influence the spread of information about them. PR activities include:

Marketing

Issuing press releases

Giving interviews

Writing/ videotaping news stories!Slide13

Churnalism

“19% of newspaper stories and 17% of broadcast stories were verifiably derived mainly or wholly from PR material, while less than half the stories we looked at appeared to be entirely independent of traceable PR.” – Lewis et. Al (on the course website)Slide14

Churnalism

47% of the British stories are from “the wire” (news services like AP), and not written by the reporters at the papers.

Many of the wire stories also have their origin in PR material.Slide15

Churnalism

Here’s a story from the Irish Independent (Ireland’s

biggest

newspaper):

Wave goodbye to global warming, GM and pesticides

Radio wave-treated water could change agriculture as we know it. Slide16
Slide17

Groundbreaking Technology

“A GROUNDBREAKING new Irish technology which could be the greatest breakthrough in agriculture since the plough is set to change the face of modern farming forever.”Slide18

Magic Water!

“The technology – radio wave

energised

water – massively increases the output of vegetables and fruits by up to 30 per cent.

Not only are the plants much bigger but they are largely disease-resistant, meaning huge savings in expensive

fertilisers

and harmful pesticides.”Slide19

$$$ Vi Aqua $$$

“The compact biscuit-tin-sized technology, which is called Vi-Aqua – meaning ‘life water’ – converts 24 volts of electricity into a radio signal, which charges up the water via an antennae.”Slide20

The Stupidest Thing Ever

“Vi-Aqua makes water wetter”

– Professor Austin

Darragh

,

Limerick UniversitySlide21

Video News Release

It gets worse on television. In print media, PR companies write articles, but at least real reporters (sometimes) change them to be more honest.

On TV, PR companies film advertisements pretending to be news, and that’s all you see!Slide22

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09NTUwp1s6U

All references to Walmart in the 3

rd

person: “The world’s largest food retailer says…” “Walmart says…”

Never: “We say…” “According to us…”

All interviews with Walmart staff and promoters, no discussion of any other companies.

“Reporting from Walmart, I’m Phil Keene” – no indication he works for Walmart!Slide23

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBze5atYyCo

The government does it too!

None of the interviewees is named, their organizations aren’t mentioned.

Only one side of the law is presented, no one says anything bad.

“In Washington, I’m Karen Ryan, reporting.”Slide24

Clickbait

But not all reporting is written by companies to sell you products, or government trying to gain your support.

Some of it is simply written by reporters to sell you newspapers (or to get you to click on the story, so you get served their ads). Slide25

Aliens!

Here’s something from the Telegraph, the

third most visited newspaper site

in Britain:

Alien life found living in Earth's atmosphere, claims scientist

Aliens do exist and have been found living in the clouds above the Peak District, according to new claims by scientists. Slide26

Aliens! With a Nose and Anus!Slide27

Unsurprisingly…

The “scientific” research supporting this finding was published in

The Journal of Cosmology

.

The

JoC

is a predatory open access journal that publishes bad research in exchange for author fees. It is known for publishing fringe viewpoints and bad science.Slide28

Sensationalism from

The Guardian

“[A]n

official at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television"

said they cut Kate

Winslet’s

nude scenes from 3D Titanic because they “feared

that viewers may reach out their hands for a touch and thus interrupt other people's

viewing.”Slide29

Nvidia Crop CircleSlide30
Slide31

Sadly…

Most science journalists don’t know anything about science (they have journalism degrees), and cannot tell an odds ratio from a risk ratio or a real scientific journal from a joke.

You

are better critical thinkers than the people who write the news!Slide32

Scaremongering

Another

common tactic to get page views is called scaremongering or

fear mongering

: telling people that X is going to kill them, so watch the news to find out what X is and how to stop it. Slide33
Slide34

Vaccine Scare

The

false

claim that vaccines cause autism got started in the scientific research: a fraudulent paper by a researcher who was later stripped of his ability to practice medicine.

But the news media played a large role in the scare story, and the papers that pushed the story never made an equally big deal about how they were wrong.Slide35

UK Has 20% of US population

NPR reports: “More than 1,200 people have come down with measles [in UK] so far this year [in May], following nearly

2,000

cases in 2012.”

Compare: “Each year there are about

60

cases of in the United States, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention… These new cases are caused by international travelers who bring the virus with them to the U.S.”Slide36
Slide37

“Third Party Advocate”

When there’s a debate, there are two

interested

parties to the debate. In the debate over whether cigarette advertising is targeting children, there are the concerned parents who think their children are being targeted, and the cigarette companies who think their advertising is age-appropriate.Slide38

“Third Party Advocate”

A “third party advocate” is someone who is in theory uninterested. They aren’t harmed if the debate turns out one way and they aren’t harmed if it turns out another way. Their views and arguments are “objective.”

Of course, powerful interests like the tobacco lobby try to install fake “third party advocates” to promote their views.Slide39

Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm

Gladwell

is an author of four books that reached the

New York Times

bestselling books list. He has had a column at

The New Yorker

since 1996.Slide40

Malcolm Gladwell

He is also a paid advocate for Philip Morris, the world’s largest cigarette company. In his book

The Tipping Point

,

Gladwell

blamed children for getting themselves addicted to tobacco and absolved tobacco industry advertising campaigns of guilt. Slide41

Malcolm Gladwell

C

onfidential

Philip Morris documents bragged, “Marlboro’s phenomenal growth rate in the past has been attributable in large part to our high market penetration among young smokers . . . 15 to 19 years old.”Slide42

Self-Censorship

Another way reporters get the news wrong is that they don’t report it. Sometimes news angers those in authority, and journalists bow to their wishes.Slide43

Li Wangyang

In June of 2012, Li

Wangyang

was discovered hanging from his hospital room, after two decades of imprisonment for the

Tiannenmen

Square protests.Slide44

Protests

Many factors indicated that Li had been murdered. 180,000 Hong

Kongers

protested the death.Slide45

Protests

Wang 

Xiangwei

,

a mainlander and a Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress member,

is the

editor in chief of the South China Morning

Post. He reduced

reports about the

suspicious

death of

Li

Wangyang

to a short

blurb.Slide46
Slide47

Protests

30 SCMP reporters signed a letter protesting the decision.

87% of reporters, photographers, editors, and management surveyed said that media freedoms had deteriorated in the past several

years” (

HongWrong

)Slide48

Grace Chan Censored

Won Miss Hong Kong Pageant 2013

Expressed support for Universal Suffrage.

Interview eliminated by TVB.Slide49
Slide50

Government Propaganda

Surveillance states are governments like China, the US, and Britain, that spend large amounts of resources spying on their own citizens.

These states often try very hard to prosecute “whistleblowers” who “leak” information about their crimes and spying to the public.Slide51

Government Propaganda

Surprisingly, these same governments constantly leak top secret information to the press. These leaks are purposeful, and they are never investigated, and never prosecuted.Slide52

The same government that wants to put Snowden in prison

for life

because he leaked secrets has recently leaked the

secret that

“Britain

runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies

.”Slide53

Government Propaganda

Why? They wanted to prove that Snowden leaked info that helped the terrorists. So they leaked info that helped the terrorists and claimed Snowden did it.

Did the reporters at the Independent reveal this? No. Because they are on the government’s side.Slide54

Government Propaganda

Governments leak information all the time “confidentially” so they can start rumors, or accuse enemies without having to stand by their assertions. And journalists publish these anonymous rumors and accusations with

no evidence or investigation that they’re true

.Slide55

Paid Protesters

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1051556/group-marches-against-falun-gong-national-daySlide56

Paid Protesters

Pro-Falun Gong march on National Day

Anti-Falun Gong protest

People in the protest bussed from China, have no idea what protest is about.

Organized by Hong Kong Youth Care Association, a front for the Communist Party.Slide57
Slide58

“Act Now!”

A trip for seafood

in Lei Yue

Mun

that costs only

HKD 30. The

reason

it is so

cheap is that participants have

to join the

assembly,

“Supporting 2010 Hong

Kong electoral reform.”

The reform is proposed by ex-chief executive Donald

Tsang under the slogan,

“Act Now

!”Slide59

Student Testimonial

“I joined the similar trip at that time. I was invited by my friend whose father is the top manager of a bank. She invited me and my friends to join a trip serving seafood in Lau

Fau

Shan. She said it is totally free and we need to go to a place when we finished our lunch. When we finished our lunch and went on the bus, we are given a polo shirt printed “Supporting Act Now!”. We finally found that we become paid protesters at that time.”Slide60

Checking the factsSlide61

Editorials

In addition to news reporting, newspapers also run editorials (television has the same thing, where “talking heads” come on TV and spout their views).

Editorials don’t need to be by experts (neither does reporting), don’t need to have any facts or evidence, and are often nothing but lies and propaganda.Slide62

Fact Checking

Substantive, objective statements of fact are (ideally) fact-checked. This means that if a reporter writes a factual statement, someone else at the paper makes sure it’s true. (For example, if it’s a quote, they call the person quoted.)

Subjective statements like “Harry Potter books are boring” don’t need fact checking.Slide63

George Will

According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979

.”

In

The Washington Post

, one of America’s most important newspapers, in 2009.Slide64
Slide65

Scientists Respond

“We

do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined

.” – Illinois

c

limate scientists.Slide66

Fact Checking

“the

Post

has a multi-layer editing process and checks facts to the fullest extent possible. In this instance, George Will’s column was checked by people he personally employs, as well as two editors at the

Washington Post

Writers Group, which syndicates Will; our op-ed page editor; and two copy editors

.” – Ombudsman for the

Washington PostSlide67

Infotainment

Some news outlets have gotten so tired of responding to claims that they present false things as true, that they’ve declared their “news” is really “infotainment” – entertainment centered around the news, not necessarily meant to portray facts.Slide68

They Still Call It News

From billoreilly.com:

“Now

in its tenth year on the air,

‘The

O'Reilly

Factor’

on the Fox News Channel remains the

dominant number one

news

program in

the USA

.”

From

FOXNews.com:

“In

2000, The Factor...passed Larry King Live to become the number one cable

news

program in the United States

.”Slide69

“Advertorials”Slide70

Advertorials

An “advertorial” is an advertisement that pretends to be an editorial. These are somewhat common, but easy to spot.Slide71

Native Advertising

The new version of advertorials – often on social media websites like

facebook

and

digg

– is called “native advertising.” It’s advertising designed to look like content that appears naturally (“natively”) on these social websites.Slide72