September 2008

[Commentary] Political campaigns of all stripes strive to "create their own realities." But while reporters have ridiculed Democrat Michael Dukakis for riding in a tank and belittled Barack Obama for the Greek columns at his nomination speech, Republicans have succeeded in turning the manipulation of myth into an art form. That's been evident this week as Rove protégé and Sen. John McCain's adviser Steve Schmidt has steadied the ship of Sarah Palin's rollout. First, he bullied the news media into submission. Then the campaign pushed an unrelenting portrayal of her as a maverick. If the public is to make sound decisions, to sort what's real from what's manufactured, the media must do their job with greater consistency and greater care. 1) The media should redouble efforts to unearth facts and spend far less time on speculation and titillation. 2) The media need to reexamine the meaning of journalistic objectivity. It is not to give equal weight and space to each side of an issue. It is to report fully and fairly. 3) The media should regularly explain what reporters do and why. Lanson concludes: "Only a vigilant media can keep Machiavellian calculations of contemporary campaigns from fooling enough people enough of the time to make such deceit the deciding factor in our elections." (Jerry Lanson teaches journalism at Emerson College in Boston.)

Problems with old-fashioned television antennas were the most common issue among residents of Wilmington, a city that volunteered to switch to digital broadcasting more than five months before the rest of the country. The troubles foreshadow the difficulties that viewers nationwide may face. It was clear that an ambitious public education campaign had paid off. Of the 172 calls that came in, only a few were from people who were unaware of the transition, said Connie Book, associate dean of the School of Communications at Elon and the lead professor of the research project. "Virtually everyone was aware," she said. "But being aware and doing something about it are two different things." Antenna problems were the No. 1 issue, Book said. "People were saying 'I'm not getting a picture' and they had a converter box," she said. "And we had to say 'your antenna is not powerful enough, or you don't have one, or it's pointed in the wrong direction, or the height needs to be raised.'"

The New York attorney general's office said Tuesday that it was opening an investigation into the way that Arbitron, which measures audiences for radio stations, is deploying devices called personal people meters. The devices, which people carry with them, can pick up radio signals. Critics charge that Arbitron, which is switching over from a system in which people keep personal diaries of their radio listening, is not putting personal people meters in the hands of enough minority listeners, potentially skewing the ratings for minority-oriented radio stations. In a letter to Arbitron, which is based in New York City, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo said he was worried that the new system was "neither reliable nor fair, and may have a dramatically negative impact on minority broadcasting in New York."

[Commentary] It's no secret that the landscape for news and information has shifted dramatically thanks to the Internet. Mostly, that's been a good thing as communities and those who live in them now have access to an unprecedented amount of news and information. But that tidal wave of data doesn't come without problems. Two prestigious institutions, the Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute, want to do something about that and have teamed up to create the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. The commission is asking three big questions: 1) What are the information needs of communities in our American democracy? 2) What are the current trends affecting how community information needs are met? 3) What changes will ensure that community information needs will be better met in the future?