Prop 8, Film at 11... or, at least, on-line (woot!) ?

It was just announced that there is a strong possibility that the court battle over California's Prop 8 will be broadcast on a delay on YouTube. This is being reviewed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The broadcast is opposed by the Pro-Prop 8 people (you know, the bad guys). I love the reasoning, too. Prop 8 attorney is quoted as below in an article by Variety reporter Tim Johnson last week:

In a letter sent to Walker on Monday, their attorney, Charles Cooper, referred to the aftermath of the 2008 election, a time marked by protest rallies, marches and, in some cases, boycotts of those who contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign, including one website that identified donors and their addresses with a Google map overlay.

Indeed, some potential witnesses have indicated that they will not be willing to testify at all if the trial is broadcast or webcast beyond the courthouse," Cooper wrote. He also cited a history of the court prohibiting cameras from trial proceedings.

Good God! We could have a bunch of people non-violently exercising their freedoms of speech, assembly, and press? Witnesses not testifying? Look, if you are going to be a self-righteous asshat and use your vote, money, and time to meddle in other peoples' lives, at least have the stones to own up to it. Cowardice is the province of those on the wrong side of history.

Cooper does have a better argument, based on precedent. Federal appeals hearings are not broadcast, with the exception of opening arguments. This is, well, at best kind of dumb, and at worst, undemocratic. Trials are part of the public record, and barring some kind of national security issue or other extenuating circumstance, the citizens ought to be able to access that public record. In the past, this meant transcripts, but in the 21st century media environment, the standard ought to be actual audio and video record-- when we have the means to provide a much better quality record, we deserve to get it. To take a page from the Teabaggers-- who is paying the bill for this trial, anyway?

The judge in the case is soliciting public comment; since it is a federal case, those of you outside of California should comment as well. California's Courage Campaign has launched an on-line petition, which can be accessed here.

I am a little torn on this court case, however. I'd rather just wait a few years until the demographics shift, then we can overturn Prop 8 via California's idiotic public democracy experiment. Winning this battle by court decision just adds more fuel to the other side's fire, and would likely spike donations for anti-marriage equality forces in other states. To have the voters come back and reject discriminatory legislation and atone for the lunacy of Prop 8 would be a nice, swift kick in the teeth to hatemongers everywhere. Of course, I am torn because this would be a clear case of justice delayed, which is not fair to my LGBT compatriots in my state. That this is the situation we are in is ludicrous.

(After a lengthy hiatus, I am refreshed and back to the AD community. I look forward to being part of the interesting conversations here again).

The media pandemic

In the last couple of days my daily news diet has consisted of letting the morning broadcast blare in the half hour it takes me to get ready and out the door. It’s safe to say that about 20 minutes of the half hour has been about the swine flu.

The media are always looking for that next big issue to rally around; they need to cover airtime, we get it, and they’re not always blessed with a Specter defection or a Biden gaffe or the 100-day itch. Unfortunately or fortunately, it’s easier to see through this thick fog of media hype when it’s a political incident blown out of proportion, but a lot harder when the story deals with a less familiar topic – the two subjects that always come to my mind as big media nemeses are the economy (granted, the media wasn’t alone in this), and the haze that surrounds scientific or medical news stories.

In their urge to get the story out there, fast and loud, journalists don’t ensure if the hype is indeed proportional to the facts. Going by the swine flu coverage it would be hard to believe that the death rate from this flu is the same as that is to be expected from most flus, and that people who have been treated are responding to medication.

Social networking sites, for all their advantages, help feed the frenzy. Swine flu has been among the top three trending tweet topics this week. Of course, blaming Twitter for what people choose to tweet about is sort of like blaming Google for the content it spits out from all across the Web. But even so, a tweet a second about the flu doesn’t help calm down the already disproportionate furor. Including glaringly false Twitter posts like this one: “Swine Flu Confirmed Cases in Mexico is about nearly 3,000.”

Simon Jenkins makes a good point in the Guardian that the death tolls from ongoing wars or a real epidemic like AIDS – which take way more lives than the swine flu ever will – are hardly given the emphasis that a “sudden” outbreak like this one is. This goes back to the age-old media problem: information only attains the status of news when there is an “event” – usually something that is abrupt and unexpected - and when that does happen, the press focuses on the event without covering the context or big picture. Instead of going on and on about the numbers and possible escalation and inevitable doomsday, journalists could have taken this opportunity to talk about larger issues – as Erik’s post did on problems with the meat industry, livestock farming and disease.

What makes this press frenzy nearly pointless is that despite the widespread coverage of swine flu, as Jenkins notes, there are very few steps one can take to consciously reduce the chances of getting it (unless you follow Biden’s advice and lock yourself up in your house, avoiding subways and planes, and well, air).

On the other hand, there is a lot one can do to keep from getting more serious illnesses like AIDS with more difficult modes of transmission where large scale paranoia could actually drill sense into people and save lives.

I don’t intend to belittle this outbreak – of course, the swine flu is significant – it has taken over a hundred lives in Mexico, is spreading rapidly in several countries around the world, and the WHO has raised its pandemic alert level to 5. People should be made aware.

However, the simple truth is that there can’t be much of a preparedness plan against bugs that spread through aerosols and constantly change their surface structure to avoid immune responses.

Richard Besser of the CDC put it best: “microbes don’t read the plan, and you need to move away from the plan pretty soon after day one.”

Putting this in the context of incalculable risk, Ben Goldacre explains – amazingly – why it is almost impossible to assess how much of a risk this could – or could not – be. Hence, according to him people should neither be casting the swine flu as an unstoppable epidemic nor dismissing it as too much hype.

But that’s what the media does – it predicts, and innovates and foretells, be it the result of a presidential election, the length of an ongoing war, or the number of people who are going to die from swine flu.

Where predictions should have been happening is in the scientific community. As this New Scientist article explains, North American pigs have been incubators for these flu viruses for years, and scientists should have seen it coming. Since the late ’90s, the viruses have been evolving by mixing with different strains of human and bird flu viruses, which have made them more virulent. Since its genetic makeup is so novel, it is harder for the human system to target an immune response to.

There is a very real fear that this flu could become a pandemic considering its ease of transmission. But there is also a possibility that this virus - like many viruses before it - may peter out because it may not be able to survive and spread in humans.

No one knows. The media should not be pretending that it does.

Outsourcing “fluff” journalism to civilians?

A lot of citizen journalism Web sites are not exactly known for high quality content.

Which is why, having spent some time on the Bleacher Report, I’ve been amazed by not only the quality of writing, but also the research that goes into each individual story, and the analysis and discussion that follows. There’s a valid reason for this - it exclusively covers sports, and if there is one subject area that almost any civilian would be interested in – and passionately at that – it’s got to be sports. Think about the cheering that went on way into the night when your home team last won the World Series, or the many mornings you woke up having lost your voice, tirelessly rooting for your college football team.

A topic such as sports is thus ideally suited to citizen journalism – people already have a vested interest in the subject, they enjoy talking about it, and since they have followed their team or player trough the years, their knowledge of the topic is usually better than that of a reporter who may have just moved into town, or be disinclined to the sport in question.

A host of different newspapers and Web sites have tried their hand at citizen journalism, but very few report on serious content. As Linda Parker, online communities editor for Gannet’s Cincinnati Enquirer found, when readers were encouraged to contribute to the paper's Web site with the “Get Published” tool, they were more interested in sharing stories about their appearances on television shows and the local opera (what would normally be considered “fluff” journalism), but among these stories was also information about a fundraiser for a child’s bone marrow transplant.

While most of this may not be news that moves and shakes the world, it’s still information that many people are interested in, and that local newspapers spend a lot of time, personnel, and resources in reporting. Might they be better off allowing citizens to offer the bulk of reporting in these areas, and confining trained journalists to the more important stories so they could perhaps offer high-quality journalism where it matters?

Of course, it is amazing to see a community rise and report on a pressing public issue, and keep the authorities in check, as citizens in Fort Myers did to quell the rising prices of public utilities a couple years ago. But such stories are few and far between.

But the important thing to note about such stories is that citizens were inspired to contribute to it of their own accord because it was an issue that was deeply affecting pocketbooks.

Jeff Howe, crowdsourcing pioneer, has often said that the most successful way for news organizations to crowdsource, is to give the audience free rein over content. “Don’t try to control the discussion, just become the room in which it takes place,” he writes in his book.

It’s noteworthy to ask if writing about your pet or the local fair helps you become a better citizen and contribute to the electoral process in meaningful ways.

Perhaps not. But there are more ways to get citizens interested in important news stories than making them write it – perhaps allocating more resources to those stories, and hence doing better journalism might achieve that.