Journalism and precision - again

Yesterday I was interviewed by DR ,Danmark Radio, about Bitterfissen Bethany, the blogger I wrote about yesterday. The article that showed up at DR's page was however not exactly what I thought I had responded in the interview. That teaches me to insist on seeing the material before it's published.

Anyway.

DR has picked only the things I said which fit with the journalist's opinions. According to him I consider her real identity to be a disappointment, while I really felt it would be a disappointment to some, to discover that they were being offended by your ordinary housewife. After all, not everybody are in a position to really offend, and an assistant in an office shouldn't really be in a position to take on well-known media personalities. Still, she did.

Further on, I apparently think it's a bad thing to write anonymously, until you're in danger of your life. That is something I distinctly remember to have modified, when the journalist tried that on, by saying that people criticising an otherwise open society may also need to be anonymised. Of course, modifications look less impressive, but keeping that is on your editing, dear journalist, not on me.

Also in the same interview, I pointed out that the main reason why this blogger got so much attention is because she attacked the media, and the media love to write about themselves. She used the media's self-absorption to hit them hard and play around with them, until she had written her book and could use them again, to get free PR for the publication. For some reason that, which I consider to be a vital part of this whole event, was not mentioned by the media. They only mention that through quoting her (in character and rather wicked) address to the media, where she jokes about how she has been playing them. The truth is: she has played the Danish media. By being focused on their own "front", the journalists chasing her have played into her game.

Yes, I think her not being somebody famous has disappointed a lot of people. It didn't disappoint me though. I am still giggling and saving links, for future study, while I take note that journalists still listen with their agendas more than their ears.

Blogging - is it journalism?

Accidentally, as I was following up on other topics, I found that there is a wonderful drama playing out in the Norwegian blogosphere, complete with a sobbing bride, nasty, greybearded men and a handsome football-player. OK, the football-player has very little to do with it, but he's a very good-looking accessory.

So, what happened here?

A young and beautiful woman works part-time as a journalist in an online paper, and is fashion editor and co-owner of an online magasine. At the same time she is making money on her fashion/lifestyle weblog: Fotballfrue - football wife (yeah, that's where the handsome man comes in).

So, somebody reads that she has income from a lot of different sources, and they question her ethics (and they do it while she is on a honeymoon, how rude!) in an article about fashion weblogs.

There are a lot of bloggers who have very high hit numbers, and use this commercially. Fashion blogging is "in" at the moment, and so the companies pay the young and the beautiful to let others know what they wear and use. The principle is nothing new, it's pretty much the same as sponsoring skaters while they were the "cool", or athletes, for that matter. Ohh, again, almost a reference to the handsome husband who never really enters the story!

Anyway: Some fashion bloggers do it to make money, some do it to create a name for themselves, to build their street cred. However, being a good fashion blogger takes a lot of money, in order to keep up their fresh front they need to be seen in the most interesting, newes and fanciest outfits available - and what is better than getting paid to do this, alternatively getting the products directly and free from the producers?

So far so good. But what if you are trying to build not just street cred, but actually become a journalist and an editor of a magasine? What should the smart fashion blogger do? Oh, and by the way, "journalist" isn't a title you get by getting an education and a license, like "medical doctor" or "lawyer," it's something you become if you practice journalism. So if you don't practice journalism, you are not a journalist, no matter how much education you have.

The whole issue with the football wife isn't really that she writes on order for companies. The issue is that she at the same time calls herself a journalist and an editor. She acts as a marketing officer, without making that obvious in the different posts, while also trying to build the trust and reputation she needs in order to be taken seriously as a journalist. And when she is criticised she claims that blogging isn't journalism, and so she can do what she likes.

She is, in a way, right. On "fotballfrue" she is her own editor, owner and writer. As long as she doesn't harass anybody, she can write what she likes. If her business strategy is to promote objects or trends for whoever pays her (are those fake louboutins, or real?) then she can do that to her heart's content on her blog. She will gain a lot of treet cred among other fashion bloggers, and probably among her followers as well. And she is right, her blog isn't journalism.

Does that mean blogging isn't journalism? No, because if she wrote according to the standards of journalism, her blog would be journalism. Again, journalism is a practice, not a license or a stamp put on only some organisations.

Back to the drama.

The pretty young lady is a part-time stand-in for Side2.no. So she is, at best, part-time freelancing as a journalist. It's not really anybody's business how she spends her time when she's not working for them, and Side2.no can stop using her when ever they like.

And that's what really should come out of this story: she doesn't have a job, she has a pretty face, a fashion blog, and ambitions to become an editor. In a case like that, what is the smart strategy?

I find myself firmly on the side of the grey-bearded evil, which isn't so odd, since I am turning pretty grey as well. She should clean up her blogging act, and stop selling her opinions to the highest bidder. People who write commercials for pay are not welcome in the journalism union in Norway, and when journalists change jobs and go into marketing, they need to swap unions. It's how it goes. If she wants to go that way, she needs to adjust to the standards, or she will have no journalistic credibility.

However... she might not want or need it. She's young, she's pretty, and people are paying her to wear beautiful clothes. Why should she worry about journalism? But then I'd recommend that she removes the "journalist" title from her webpage. If you don't practice journalism, you aren't a journalist. If you claim you are, you will be criticised. I am sorry, really, and it's horrible that people are letting you know this while you're on your honey-moon, but that's how it is.

Oh, and have a wonderful time. Your life looks like a slice of marketing heaven.

----
Corrected due to Undre's comment, thanks.

Gaining the upper hand

Another article hits the digital sphere. Training, sharing, cheating is now available to the subscribers of e-learning, the journal. In 18 months it will be free, but until then: Subscribe, or be satisfied with the abstract.

This article gathers a lot of the loose threads of my thoughts through the last years, particularly my experiences from playing in guilds that raid (although casually).

Invisible

My colleague Svein Brurås wrote about an extremely good piece of journalism in a Norwegian newspaper, and I just want to join him in pointing towards it. Good journalism is worth celebrating and sharing.

What it's about? Nothing really. Just a lonely man nobody noticed, who died from a stroke while he was out on his bike. The story the journalist uncovers through very careful and through investigation is nothing special either, it's just heartbreaking, and very, very good. It's in Norwegian, sorry, other-language-readers. Google Translate may help a little, but it won't give you the tone in which the story has been told.

Årsakssammenhenger og spill

I anledning VGs ualminnelig dårlige artikkel om sammenhengen mellom et drap på Kongsvinger og spilling av World of Warcraft og Counterstrike, vil jeg vise til en artikkel om skoleskytinger og moralske panikker. Denne artikkelen kritiserer den overforenklede ideen om at mennesker ikke er i stand til å skille mellom fantasi og virkelighet, og den like enkle forskningen som underbygger denne konklusjonen - blant annet ved å vise til et solid forskningsmateriale som gir andre/alternative svar. Samtidig viser den til FBIs funn når det gjelder drapsmenn som spiller spill (s 28 i C. J. Fergusons artikkel):

The FBI report appeared to focus on individuals who approved of hateful or destructive messages in the media, rather than merely enjoying the media for entertainment purposes. For instance, an individual who praised Mein Kampf and its message of racism and hatred would arguably be considered more ‘at risk’ than would someone who enjoyed playing the violent video game Medal of Honor because it was fun. Indeed, related to violent video games, the FBI report specifically stated, “The student spends inordinate amounts of time [although inordinate is never defined and is left subjective] playing video games with violent themes and seems more interested in the violent images than the game itself ” [italics added]. Thus, an overall interest in causing harm is potentially predictive of violence, not exposure to violent media in and of itself, a conclusion supported by the recent Savage, (2008) meta-analysis.

I følge FBI er altså ikke årsakssammenhengen mediebruk -> vold, men interesse for å bruke vold -> mediebruk. Altså, hvis du liker/ønsker å bruke vold er du interessert i medieuttrykk som inneholder vold. Videre påpeker de at voldsmenn som bruker spill er mer interessert i voldshandlinger enn å kose seg med å spille. De er altså fokusert på våpen og vold, uansett kontekst.

VG gjentar imidlertid et mantra som har kommet inn i mediene for en del år siden, og de gjentar det ved å ta kontakt med personer som har sagt akkurat det samme i årevis. De overser konsekvent all forskning som viser noe annet enn denne overforenklede årsakssammenhengen.

(The above is a public service research-reference directed at Norwegian readers who might be interested in alternatives to a piece of intense and single-minded journalism claiming that gaming leads to serious crime.)

Dear Expert

I suspect Ian Bogost has met the same journalists as I do, although I am baffled that they managed to track down Ian, seeing as they can't use google and he isn't in the Norwegian phone-book. From his post:

I wonder: instead of doing research myself on the story I am required to write, would you be willing to talk to me by phone for an hour about it? During this time, I would pose a series of basic questions that demonstrate how little thought and time I have given to the topic, not even enough to Google its key terms.

Ja, vi vet alt for lite

At times I feel like giving up on what we in Norway call "forskningsformidling" - popularising and communicating research. All the efforts done, nationally and internationally, to understand what gaming is and how it influences society are made invalid to the Norwegian debate by plain and simple lack of knowledge and critical sense in Norwegian media. Friday's news item on games at nrk.no is another example of amazing lack of a critical approach to certain opinions. Forgive me, English-language readers. The rest of this post will be in Norwegian.

Fredag morgen, 6 februar, hadde Dagsnytt i NRK en nyhetssak om at kulturdepartementet setter av en million til opplysning om og forskning på problemskapende spillbruk. De sa imidlertid ikke "problemskapende spillbruk", de sa spillavhengighet. Mange mener dette er det samme, i alle fall ville en eventuell spillavhengighet være ganske problematisk. Imidlertid finnes det ikke noen diagnose som sier spillavhengighet. At norske media og enkelte grupper i den norske offentligheten, her representert ved NRK, på død og liv vil påprakke en gruppe en diagnose gjør den ikke til noen faktisk sannhet.

Det de gjør er imidlertid å skape en sosial sannhet. Saken slik den ble sendt på radioen var ganske ille. Den inneholdt alle de forventede ingrediensene, en bekymret mor, en interessert forsker som stort sett fikk si noen omtrentligheter og en ikke helt godt forstått melding om forskningsmidler om spillbruk. På Torsdagens Joingame møte ved universitetet i Oslo presenterte seniorrådgiver i Kulturdepartementet, Dag Asbjørnsen, nyheten saken sannsynligvis bygger på. I den sammenhengen presiserte han at Kulturdepartementet snakker om "problemskapende spillbruk". Han sa ingen ting om det NRK påsto i nyhetene:

Kulturdepartementet øker satsingen på dataspill, og jobber nå med en ny handlingsplan for å bekjempe avhengighetsproblemet.

Forsknings- og opplysningsmidlene som Kulturdepartementet satte av var, slik jeg oppfattet Dag Asbjørnsen, midler som skulle brukes til å finne ut hva problemskapende spillbruk er, og til å spre informasjon om dette. Når NRK presenterer dette som om Kulturdepartementet endelig vil utrydde spillavhengighet vil jeg i alle fall se/høre kilden til deres utsagn.

NRK påstår at et fenomen som er svært omstridt, og som spesialister som har arbeidet med feltet lenge avviser, er et faktum.
NRK trekker fram, først og fremst på nettsiden, andre problematiske saker som alle på ett eller annet vis har blitt tillagt spillavhengighet, mens de ikke trekker fram saker som sier noe annet. Dette er en form for ensidig rapportering som er noe helt annet enn god journalistikk.

Kanskje har NRKs reportere misforstått hva det vil si å være kritisk. Dataspillbransjen er i ferd med å bli veldig stor, og det er all grunn til å være kritisk til den. Et norsk eksempel er Dagbladets fokus på arbeidssituasjonen i Funcom. Internasjonalt er det flere ganger rapportert svært dårlige arbeidsforhold for ansatte i ulike spillfirma. Lange dager, lav jobbtrygghet og dårlig arbeidsmiljø er ikke uvanlige forhold for ansatte i bransjen. Med tanke på de svært mange programmererne og designerne som spesialiserer seg mot spill i norske utdanningssinstitusjoner er det grunn til å spørre om ikke nyhetsmedia forsømmer sitt samfunnsansvar når all kritikk av spillbransjen handler om kritikk av spillenes suksesskriterier, og ikke for eksempel ser på de framtidige arbeidsforholdene for alle disse entusiastiske studentene.

Det er all grunn til å spørre hvor pengene for spill går: hvem tjener på spillene? Spillbransjen er adskillig mindre dekket på dette feltet enn for eksempel musikk- og filmbransjen, og det sier ganske mye. Store multinasjonale selskap kjøper opp gode ideer og gjør dem til sine egne. De tar også over ideer gratis, ved at spillernes innsats integreres i spillene uten at de får betaling for det. Svært mange entusiaster arbeider mye med å gjøre spillopplevelsen bedre for seg selv og andre, og dette er gratis arbeidskraft for spilleiere som allerede tjener godt - hvorfor finnes det ikke et lett tilgjengelig system for å belønne denne innsatsen?

Forskerne får ikke tilgang til opplysninger om spillermassen, om sentrale element i utviklingsprosessen og om arbeidsprosessene i produksjonen: Er det akseptabelt at så store organisasjoner er så lite tilgjengelige for innsyn?

Dette er kritikk av spillbransjen som blir helt oversett i journalistenes "kritiske dekning av dataspill." Det er ganske enkelt å forstå hvorfor dette skjer. Det er veldig lett å finne folk som spiller mye, og andre folk som er bekymret for disse. En hvilken som helst journalist kan prate med foreldrene til noen ivrige dataspillere på ungdomsskolen, og vips har de en "kritisk sak" til et stort og kjent fenomen. Det er adskillig vanskeligere å sette seg inn i sosiale, økonomiske og politiske forhold som spillene blir produsert innenfor.

Det vi får er dermed en situasjon hvor journalistikken stempler en stor gruppe svært aktive spillere, påfører dem en ikke-eksisterende diagnose og er med på å rettferdiggjøre noe som kan være overgrep og frihetsberøvelse i godhetens navn. Når barn blir tvangsinnlagt på grunnlag av avvikende adferd blir det vanligvis knapt nok omtalt i pressen. Barn og ungdom har svært få rettigheter når deres foresatte ikke er fornøyd med deres adferd. Det hjelper ikke denne allerede svake gruppen at det blir akseptert i nyhetsmedia at enkelte blir tvunget til å kureres for adferd som vi faktisk ikke vet er det faktiske problemet, eller bare et symptom på helt andre og adskillig større problemer.

Utgangspunktet for den aktuelle nyhetssaken, og dermed denne bloggposten, var en rapport om at det skal komme litt penger til forskning på problemskapende spillbruk. Ja, det er veldig nødvendig med slik forskning. Det er imidlertid svært tungt å initiere forskning og forskningsformidling om hva spill er så lenge journalistikken er så ekstremt vinklet i en bestemt retning at det kan se ut som en systematisk fortiing av all uenighet med det rådende medieparadigmet. Hvor er det mediekritiske perspektivet i denne saken? Må vi som forsker på spill begynne å rapportere alle tilfeller av misrepresentasjon av våre utsagn til PFU? For å sitere fra vær varsom-plakaten:

1.4. Det er pressens rett å informere om det som skjer i samfunnet og avdekke kritikkverdige forhold. Det er pressens plikt å sette et kritisk søkelys på hvordan mediene selv fyller sin samfunnsrolle.

Nei, jeg kritiserer ikke pressen for å stå på sin rett til å skrive om at mange bruker spill på en måte som bidrar til problemer, nå og i framtiden. Jeg kritiserer pressen for å ikke oppfylle sin plikt til å se på hvordan den utøver denne retten.

European bloggers and the freedom of speach

In June there was a lot of discussion all over the blogosphere, and in some newspapers as well, about a draft report fom the Committee on Culture and Education, written by Marianne Mikko. This report was discussed yesterday, as the European Parliament is currently in session. This is taken from the short draft of the main topics for this week's session.:

Call to defend media pluralism, but questions over blogging
Parliament will vote on draft resolution tabled by the Culture Committee that calls for steps to be taken to ward off threats to media freedom and diversity from owners, shareholders and governments. At the same time the committee voices concern about the uncontrolled nature of blogs and other on-line media. The own-initiative report, drafted by Marianne MIKKO (PES, ET), argues that "the unrestricted concentration of ownership jeopardises pluralism and cultural diversity" and that there is a "considerable risk" that concentration of ownership and the private media's pursuit of profit can compromise its ability to act as a watchdog for democracy

Obviously something like this gets picked up by the bloggers, and there was apparently quite an outrage when this was first discussed in June this year. Some think this outrage was more than a little misplaced. Jon Worth at the Euroblog delivers a quite sober analysis of the case.

Still, there is reason for concern and to follow what is happening right now closely. The draft does suggest certain changes which may impact bloggers in Europe in probably not exactly well-thought-out ways.

This is the premise for the suggestions in the report (which is written in a fascinating legaleese) which most directly concerns bloggers:

whereas weblogs are an increasingly common medium for self-expression by media professionals as well as private persons, the status of their authors and publishers, including their legal status, is neither determined nor made clear to the readers of the weblogs, causing uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits,

Several of the suggestions respond to this:

4. Stresses the need to institute monitoring and implementation systems for media pluralism based on reliable and impartial indicators;

7. Proposes the introduction of fees commensurate with the commercial value of the usergenerated content as well as ethical codes and terms of usage for user-generated content in commercial publications;
8. Welcomes the dynamics and diversity brought into the media landscape by the new media and encourages responsible use of new channels such as mobile TV;
9. Suggests clarifying the status, legal or otherwise, of weblogs and encourages their voluntary labelling according to the professional and financial responsibilities and interests of their authors and publishers;

11. Encourages the disclosure of ownership of the media outlets to help to understand the aims and background of the publisher;

This doesn't look so bad, does it?

The problem particularly with point 9 is that it does not really reflect an understanding of who the bloggers are. It assumes that all bloggers are adults who blog on topics of public interest and which does not disclose potentially harming information about the individual. Or that they all should be. It does not take into consideration how much time and energy is currently being used by parents and teachers to teach kids and teen-agers NOT to disclose everything about themselves, including name, address and their economic situation, to random strangers online. It absolutely counters the work for internet smartness and safety. It also ensures that people will stop discussion sensitive issues, which may be everything from the many grief-sites written by parents who have lost their children, by way of tentative artistic expressions and self-published art and poetry, to discussions of culturally stimatising sexual behaviour.

The assumption that full disclosure is good for all is probably correct for much of the news, academic and politics blogging which happens in Europe. But those are not the main mass of bloggers. Underage bloggers talking about hobbies, games, interests, loves, sexuality, fears, personal experiences or exchanging pictures of their cats comprise a large blogging group, and blogging is an important part of their learning process, in aquiring increased media literacy. Now, of course, the draft says "voluntairy" and "economic interests", and those with no economic interests can just stay unenclosed, can't they? Or should this group stop blogging alltogether?

Marianne Mikko says:

Ms Mikko told us "the blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them".

Asked if she considered bloggers to be "a threat", she said "we do not see bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace". She added, "I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why. "

Are blogs with cat images "pollution"? Are blogs with information which counters the official line "pollution"? Are blogs that criticise and disagree with EU in general and Marianne Mikko in particular "pollution"?

Some of the points in this draft are really good. I'd be interested in a full disclosure of ownership structures in European media. I suspect the Norwegian media ownership structure is no worse than the rest of Europe, in which case a very few owners control almost the entire organised publishing sphere. There will be a few alternatives, and Europe still has a fairly strong structure of national public broadcasting organisations, which offer some plurality. But a European map of the commercial news organisations was pretty bleak already in the eighties. Axel Springer Verlag introduced a model which has become quite effective and dominant, with Michael Murdock as a good follow-up. Wikipedia has an interesting article on media concentration, and I don't know the details well enough to say how precise it is. The many frames in this article asking for assistance in the clean-up and expansion indicate that this is a matter of concern and conflict. If the European Union managed to map the media conglomerates of Europe, that would be quite a feat.

But with the ownership of registered, organised media as hard to track as it is, how can anybody ask for full disclosure from all bloggers? First of all: What is a blog? Any homepage can be a blog. And blog software can be used to create pages and sites which don't look like blogs at all. To try to remove all "spam" from the Internet by removing blogs means to revoke the public's right to publish online without a license. In Norway at the beginning of the 19th century there was a death penalty to start a newspaper without a license from Copenhagen and the king. With no further comparison: is the Committee of Culture and Education really suggesting that all people who want to use the Internet for anything but email should register in a database and disclose all their personal information, including their economic connections?

The suggestion must fall on its own lack of reason.
First: It's impossible to define blogs in a way that will single out this group, and not include all the other communication strategies common online.
Second: Short of closing down the 'net, there's no way to control all communication through it. Amusingly, the report indicates voluntairy registration, which is an appeal to the community spirit which has built so many useful and good resources online.
Third: There's no way EU can argue against information control in China, and try to impose the Chinese vision of full public control of online communication on the European citizens without running into some really unpleasant clashes with their own ideals.

With the example of the milk scandal in China running at full force at the moment, the potential for abuse of a weblog registry should be obvious. Also full disclosure would make whistle-blowing a lot more problematic. Certain things are more reliable when told by an anonymous source, this is why sources need to be protected from disclosure.

But, anyway, the draft report is not a law. It's a suggestion which may or may not influence European media policy. And it's an example of how hidebound it's easy to become, when all you read are the blogs that concern your own field. Read a little wider, Marianne Mikko. Start your own blog. Who knows, you might like to be able to talk back, and not feel such an urge towards regulation. If the spam bothers you - start working for developing a European based, independent search engine to challenge the hegemony of the few US based ones. How that would be interesting.

Journalism and research

One of the things journalists always want more time to do is investigative research. They want time to dig into the facts of a case. They want to study more than one or two sides of it. They want time to interview a lot of people. They want to go to the depths of the case and find the truth. Investigative research or "gravende journalistikk" in Norwegian is the holy grail, the justification for all the other work journalists do, the reason why we need those who find and spread the real truth about society.

As long as the investigations concern something OTHER than journalism.

My colleague Jan Fredrik Hovden has just finished his Dr. Polit. on journalism and the cultures of journalists: Profane and Sacred: A Study of the Norwegian Journalistic Field. In his work he interviews journalists in order to understand their practice in relation to the concept of "social fields" by Bourdieu:

The first objective of this thesis is thus to study the practices of Norwegian journalists (how troublesome this word is going to be!) as located in and structured by a social field, using the theoretical tools and empirical investigations Bourdieu has made of other social fields as guidelines. In this way, this thesis is a contribution to the debate on the role and function of journalism in the public sphere and the understanding of journalistic practice more generally.

With Pierre Bourdieu as his model, guide and inspiration, Jan Fredrik has embarked on a long and painful project, as ambitious as it is important: To understand how Norwegian journalists practice their job. He has spent more than four years on this, an amount of time no Norwegian journalist can afford to spend on understanding a case. He has collected the facts systematically and from a very large number of sources:

In contrast to what seems to be the case for most prosopographic
analyses of social fields, the field analysis in this thesis is not based on (secondary) data of known individuals (e.g. biography collections), but on anonymous data collected by a survey questionnaire to a sample of Norwegian journalists and editors in 2005 (cf. appendix 1 for more details). Such an anonymous/survey-approach to the construction of the field – if with its own share of methodological problems – has some compensations, making it possible to incorporate a large number of individuals and variables in the analysis, which for example makes it feasible to include both dominated and dominating agents in the same field analysis.

Jan Fredrik Hovden has not only done the work, but like a good sociologist (and he is good, no doubt about it when you read his work) he also opens his methods up for criticism by publishing those. When did a journalist tell you how they made the decision to use this source and not that? When is there a methodological discussion attached to the article you read? When do you hear about the phone-calls, the strategies, the discussions about how to find and confirm a "case"?

One of the few times you do that in Norwegian journalism is actually in the much despised and deputed book "En helt vanlig dag på jobben" by Håvard Melnæs, former journalist in Se og Hør, a weekly magasine concerned with the lives of Norwegian "stars" (in a very loose sense of the word). Without any comparison to the work of Jan Fredrik Hovden, "A Regular Day at Work" by Melnæs was received as a betrayal. Melnæs describes how he cultivated the father of princess Mette-Marit, the commoner and single mother wife of crown prince Håkon of Norway. In this work he also describes the culture among the journalists and editors, and the lengths to which they were willing to go for a "case", up to creating cases themselves by arranging weddings and parties and paying for vacations and other services offered the subjects of their journalism.

Jan Fredrik Hovden's work is specifically not a subjective one-person view on an extreme case, as Melnæs' biography is. Hovden comes out of a tradition where access to his material and methods is as important as the conclusions. Exept for the anonymity of his sources the material he builds on is available for his critics, and others may check if they want to draw the same conclusions. And while journalists have the desk to read through their material and check if it is worthy of publication, Jan Fredrik has had three professors read and think through and criticize each word of his thesis, not in 10 hurried minutes while more cases scream for attention, but after months of deliberation.

So, how do the journalists receive his work? By claiming that academics have no substance to their criticism. As Per Edgar Kokkvold, general secretary of the Norwegian press union, says:

– Det er all grunn for mediefolk å være åpne for kritikk, og å engasjere akademikere til å se på om rollen som den lille manns forsvarer tas alvorlig nok. Jeg har ikke noen kvalifiserte synspunkter på dette. Men denne avhandlingen og andre rapporter om hvordan mediene utøver sin makt, og hvordan de retter et kritisk søkelys på alle maktinstitusjoner, viser at vi må nærme oss akademia og kritikere med et åpent sinn. Det er imidlertid ikke alltid disse har noe å fare med, sier Kokkvold til Journalisten.

To translate and summarize: Journalists should be open to criticism, and engage academics to see if the role as defender of "the little man" is taken seriously. But this and other reports about how journalists use their power shows that we have to approach academia with an open mind. However, not all have any substance to their work. (My emphasis).

So, when a journalist writes about the practice of others, that's an important function for journalism, protection of the democracy and main goal of journalism. When a journalist writes about the practice of journalism it's a betrayal. When an academic writes about the practice of journalists, he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Interesting.

"I never said that"

Once in a while I find that I have said things I never thought I did. I try to ask to read all interviews and make sure I know what I have answered or rather - what the journalists have asked - but recently I found that a long conversation had been cut down to four sentences, two of which were like this:

Torill Elvira Mortensen tror det regulerte arbeidslivet i Norge er en hindring for veksten i bransjen.
– I USA er bransjen helt rå og skreller vekk dem som ikke takler umenneskelige arbeidsforhold. I Norge er det færre med kompetanse så det er vanskelig å være like brutal.

What the interviewer in Magasinet claims I say here is that the regulations of the workforce in Norway makes it impossible to produce games with the quality or quantity the way Americans do.

What I said was that Norway is too small to produce in the way Americans do. We can't discard talent in the same manner, we have to build it. The journalist was taken with his idea of the ruthless American labour market though, so suddenly it apepared as if I agreed. Oh well. So I sound like a right wing libertarian. No worries, I won't vote for them any time soon.

About the price and size of cucumbers

Warning, all links in Norwegian.

"Cucumber journalism" they call it in Norwegian, from the time when the summer temp was sent to the market to check the price and quality of fresh cucumbers. Dag Solstad (video, get an author home), a well known Norwegian author, wrote about how the broccoli was discovered by a summer temp in a local newspaper - on a marketplace in Norway.

This week it seems like the correct contemporary word for cucumber news would be "game journalism." I have had 5 phonecalls from 4 different news media on 5 different takes on games this week.

Some of those were kind of interesting. I may even buy one of the papers to see what they will be writing about political games and propaganda games. Some of the phone calls felt more like I was doing unpaid elementary education, not even in games, but in general social science.

And while we are at that: www.ssb.no is a GREAT source for statistics on Norwegian statistics, and they publish "Norsk Mediebarometer", one of the most useful sources I know about on media statistics, including game use in Norway. Did you get that? Statistisk Sentralbyrå, that boring old public institution which has been publishing facts about Norway from 1832 as part of the ministry of finance: Tabellkontoret, and then as an independent public institution since 1876. If you count the start of their work with the first Norwegian Census, that was in 1769.

No, journalists are not stupid, that's not what I am saying. I am just as always baffled by the power of the media threshold: once a topic is used by one large news agent, everybody else need to have their take on it.

Cucumbers, anyone?

Crowdsourcing

Sticking your head in the virtual quick-sand which is World of Warcraft is a good way of not really catching up with the latest in other trends, or at least the vocabulary, like Crowdsourcing. The wikipedia entrance I linked to there is an interesting example of the concept: first, wikipedia is a result of crowdsourcing: large amounts of people cooperating openly and individually to improve information and make more available. The entry is also obviously under revision, it's flagged as too short, too many references, not reliable, needs rework, needs more references, poor quality - it's obvious that a lot of people have been at work picking the original entry(ies) apart.

Personally, I have always believed in Crowdsourcing, and I believe in it in the way the cooperative power of self-organised interest groups is described in the Swedish book Samverkansspiralen. Here it offers voluntair work and cooperative action as a way to gain more knowledge and empower the participants towards more action - like for instance political activism.
I believe opportunities for open participation and contribution can go somewhere good, if you get caught up in a good circle, a positive spiral.

I found the concept itself, Crowdsourcing, in a paper which was surprisingly good. Dagbladet, one of the larger tabloids in Norway, has been going downhill for years. It used to be a very good magazine with interesting reportage, knowledgeable critical journalism and ambitions to cover Norwegian and international culture in depth, not just through sensation reporting. Saturday was an all time low for the paper, as the front page was all about who have which well-known figure on their "friends" list on facebook. It was about 10 minutes research and perhaps 30 minutes of getting the pictures "just right" behind that classic piece of journalism. The first time a Norwegian newspaper used all of the front page on just one case was in 1980-81, I think in February 1981, if I remember correctly. Of course, I can google it. Yep, February 22, 1981.

This event was a shocking piece of news in Norway at the time. Two members of a neo-nazi group, "Norges Germanske Armé", were executed by their leaders, as they were considered to be a danger for the organisation after a weapons theft. One of them had however already talked to the police, and the police was on to that something was going on. They couldn't prevent the double murder, but they did get the ones guilty immediately. This event had everything: drama, deep historical roots, controversy and important political consequences for a country forever deeply branded by Hitler's plans for a master race. Today Norwegian banners and national symbols are used as a substitution for forbidden nazi symbols. It's a past which is always with us.

Fastforward from a front page (not even in this paper, but their main competitor, this paper was still full format and filled with words, not pictures in 1981) dramatically displaying this tragic and stunning event, to pictures of Norwegian "stars" and speculation about who knows who on facebook. Yes, I keep losing illusions about the progress of journalism on paper.

So what did I learn. I learned that there is a word for the viral spread of knowledge, the anthill of collaboration which creates rhizomic growths with the virtual function of anything from tumors to castles online. I had to check zero.newassignment.net, a journalistic experiment for crowds.

For years, I have been telling journalists they don't need to be worried about their jobs, because the individual personal publishers of blogs, wikis and other direct publishing systems are not journalists. Now, considering what looks like a steady decline of print and television journalism, organised, cooperative journalism may be a good reason to start worrying.

(BTW: From the front page of this not-worst-case paper: "Abused online", with a picture of a well known Norwegian actress. Turns out somebody have made TWO fake profiles in her name on facebook. The horror, the horror!)

Understanding criticism

One of the things we do is to teach our students to be critical, perform criticism. Particularly journalism students are constantly being told they should perform critical journalism.

But what does this mean? From Princeton.edu:
Noun
S: (n) criticism, unfavorable judgment (disapproval expressed by pointing out faults or shortcomings) "the senator received severe criticism from his opponent"
S: (n) criticism, critique (a serious examination and judgment of something) "constructive criticism is always appreciated"
S: (n) criticism, literary criticism (a written evaluation of a work of literature)

Most of the time "criticism" is taken to mean the first thing: unfavourable judgement, pointing out faults.

I think this is one of the greatest mistakes of modern journalism: The understanding of "critical" to mean you have to find something wrong with whatever you are writing about. To be a critical journalist should be to employ the second meaning of the noun: a serious examination.

Today negativity seems to be the main criteria for a good story (unless it's the obligatory feel-good story). If journalists can't warn us of disaster, corruption, lies, danger to our health or what ever, it's not a story. What does this do to our perception of what is important?

First of all it scrambles the big picture. As long as we are only presented with the errors and the flaws, the public has no way to learn about possible strategies for improvement and growth. Only being introduced to options we should not choose makes choice almost impossible, and the result is that rather than searching for the better choice we settle with the lesser of several evils. The better choice is not interesting, as it doesn't offer the option of unfavourable judgement.

At the same time the warnings are important. We should not go without them. But my other problem with modern journalism is the mechanism which makes all news media report on exactly the same issues. This way you don't only get nothing but warnings, you get warned about the exact same thing everywhere. So the options for the public are diminished by the flawed perception of good competitive strategies: beating others at the same game is more important than looking around for some other and more interesting game.

So, I just delivered an unfavourable judgement. A common piece of criticism. How to make this constructive?

I think critical journalism is extremely important, and there's some really good work done out there. We need good gatekeepers and professionals to sort through the masses of information and ask questions about it on our behalf. It's an expremely important profession. I just wish they would put a bit more emphasis on the serious examination part, and a bit less on the unfavourable judgement part. And that they would stop hunting in such huge packs, victims to the blood fog of the deadline and the scoop.