I wrote a book! And you can buy it now! It is, you guessed it, about press freedom. Specifically, it looks at how press freedom has been treated in the international human rights framework. You can order it on the publisher’s website and on Amazon.
Hahaha! I just came across this little gem of wisdom from 30 Rock:
It reminded me of a recent conversation with my adviser in which I said something along those same lines. Well, we really are the worst. But don’t blame us, blame the system! We’re just trying to survive.
One of the arguments I make in my dissertation is that it is puzzling that press freedom is absent from the human rights discussion, despite its centrality for democracy and the fight against tyranny. The first reaction people usually have is to blame it on the influence of authoritarian states like China or Russia: of course they don’t want press freedom to become more prominent; it undermines their power. What we tend to forget, however, is that press freedom in democratic countries is also under increasing attack. The U.S. Department of Justice seizing confidential phone records of AP reporters is just the latest installment in the saga of ever eroding press freedoms in the West. I’m currently working on turning my first two dissertation chapters into an article about – among other things – precisely this situation. And well, the AP story comes in rather handy. In this case, what’s bad for the world, is good for my dissertation.
On the bright side, though, this whole DOJ debacle has finally drawn attention to the dismal treatment of journalists under the Obama administration. The Wonkblog explains that, worst of all, the DOJ actions are legal because of the so-called ‘third party doctrine.’ If you voluntarily turn over information to a third party, like a phone company when dialing a number or an Internet company when storing your emails in the cloud, this information won’t be protected under the Fourth Amendment.
Journalists get a bit of a special deal here. The government has established special policies to guard against inappropriate surveillance of reporters. Before an FBI agent can seek a journalist’s call records, they must get special approval from the attorney general. But that’s merely a Justice Department policy, not a constitutional requirement. The policy could be changed in the future, and the lack of independent oversight makes abuses more likely.
This clearly needs to change. Press freedom needs to be firmly anchored in our domestic legislation, and these developments show just how neglected it has become in this country. It’s no surprise that press freedom is virtually absent from the human rights debate, if even the poster child of upholding a free press is trying to undermine the principle every chance it gets.
And it doesn’t look so great for press freedom worldwide. In fact, 2012 has been the deadliest year for journalists by many accounts.
The New Yorker posted an interesting article on the future of journalism in the digital age this week. It discusses the failures of CNN and the New York Post following the Boston Marathon bombings and the fake AP tweet that resulted in a Dow flash crash on April 23.
It’s worth noting that, while the hacker’s mode of transmission was social media and high-frequency trading, the immediate target was that relic from a previous era, the Associated Press. The Syrian Electronic Army had previously hacked into the accounts of CBS, NPR, and the BBC. These digital soldiers don’t like Western news coverage of the Syrian civil war, and they take the mainstream media seriously enough to try to damage it. Perhaps they take the mainstream media more seriously than people here and in Britain do.
Excellent point. No one seems to take the mainstream media seriously anymore. And according to this Harvard survey very few young Americans trust the media to do the right thing:
Given the recent evidence and general trends in mainstream journalism, that’s hardly surprising. But as I argue in my dissertation, neglecting the crucial political role of the news media and instead blindly jumping on the social media bandwagon isn’t doing us any favors. As George Packer points out in The New Yorker piece, it undermines journalists and the important work they do:
And journalists, the ones who do it for a living, will continue to have their faith in the profession shaken, as they panic and let their own standards slip in order not to be embarrassed by Reddit at 2:43 in the morning. But unlike high-frequency traders, Internet entrepreneurs, and online vigilantes, journalists have a stake in those standards, which are the only reason for having professionals do the job. When people are fighting for survival they can forget the long-term interests that are its only guarantee. Perhaps the triumphs and debacles of Boston, and the Syrian Electronic Army prank on the stock market, will serve to remind journalists of how badly they’re still needed, as long as they exercise their best qualities, which include, among other things, self-restraint.
I certainly didn’t plan for my first post on this blog to be about the sad state of contemporary American cinema, but Steven Soderbergh makes some excellent points in his State of Cinema Talk.
On art and why it matters:
Art is also about problem solving, and it’s obvious from the news, we have a little bit of a problem with problem solving. In my experience, the main obstacle to problem solving is an entrenched ideology. The great thing about making a movie or a piece of art is that that never comes into play. All the ideas are on the table. All the ideas and everything is open for discussion, and it turns out everybody succeeds by submitting to what the thing needs to be. Art, in my view, is a very elegant problem-solving model.
Added visual bonus (just because this flyer for the university’s students’ exhibit was lying on my desk):
On the current problems of the movie industry:
“But the problem is that cinema as I define it, and as something that inspired me, is under assault by the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience. The reasons for this, in my opinion, are more economic than philosophical, but when you add an ample amount of fear and a lack of vision, and a lack of leadership, you’ve got a trajectory that I think is pretty difficult to reverse.”
It doesn’t take much to draw parallels to the equally sad state of the mainstream news media in this country. The race to the bottom of the likes of CNN is driven by economics rather than philosophy, and the distinct lack of vision about the future of the news media in the age of Twitter and YouTube amplifies this terrible trend.
On how to keep going:
So whenever I despair I think, OK, somebody out there somewhere, while we’re sitting right here, somebody out there somewhere is making something cool that we’re going to love, and that keeps me going.
When it comes down to it, this is a great way to start this blog after all. With a reminder that there are reasons not to despair, even if we get bombarded with news about the malfunctioning of all kinds of systems on a daily basis: the political, the social, the various professional ones and pretty much all the other ones in between. It’s the reason I’m writing again in the first place. Also: hope.
Wiebke Lamer, Ph.D. 