Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald

Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald presented insightful talks about their experiences in independent media at tonight's Izzy Awards, and helped talk about how they report as they do and what implications it has.

Unfortunately, not everyone is willing to make the risks and sacrifices associated with investigative journalism that challenges powerful individuals. For many journalists, merely going out, getting the necessary information, writing the story and filing it on time takes most of their talent and energy, and those people may not want to be bothered with reading additional documents or going the extra mile for additional sources. The publication itself may place limits on what journalists can publish, threatening them with disciplinary action if they go outside those bounds. Such journalists, concerned with keeping their jobs or obtaining desired promotions, may avoid writing provocative articles in order to avoid being labeled as a troublemaker. Far greater external risks accompany journalists on certain stories, including being arrested or being killed by governments or organizations that do not appreciate what they are uncovering.

While journalists who back down from what they know to be true for these reasons are doing so for selfish motives, it is important to acknowledge that these concerns are real. Journalism is already a very competitive job market, and the pressure to obtain a job at a respectable publication can lead people to do anything that is necessary to outshine the competition. It can be frustrating for journalists to watch people with ambition but few principles climb the hierarchy, especially when such people eventually make decisions about which stories to run.

However, while these pressures may be present and troubling, they do not change what is right or what the implications of journalists' decisions are. If journalists continue to publish uncritical articles about what the government is doing, misconceptions will spread and it will be that much harder for journalists who understand what is really going on to counteract them. That vicious cycle also legitimizes this kind of shallow reporting above and beyond what pressures do, thus making it seem acceptable to impressionable journalists.

The only real way to counteract this trend and create an environment in which journalists are able to do hard-hitting investigative journalism regardless of who is being covered is simply for mainstream news media to adopt the same kind of commitment to journalism that the independent media do. This can involve various methods, such as reducing dependence on advertisers, or by the public putting pressure on the media, but they all ultimately involve moral clarity and being willing to see issues in terms of ethical values, rather than material gain or loss. Goodman appropriately demonstrated that kind of courage at the conventions, especially when she and her producers were arrested for filming demonstrations, and it was appropriately contrasted with the NBC reporter who remained in the skybox. The best example Goodman provided of simple courage was the story of the President's Scholars who presented then-President Bush with a letter asking him to oppose torture. Some people may respond to Goodman's following argument that children best understand morality by arguing that children do such things because they are too young and naive to understand the nuances of the world- like what constitutes torture or the financial pressures the news media face- but for the most part, such children are better at seeing things in terms of right and wrong and less likely to confuse what they want with what is best for the public.

Mainstream journalism has too often become seen as a means of doing business by providing people with information, rather than a means of providing people with the best possible situation and only requiring money to stay in business and enable its employees to make a living. While Greenwald and Goodman may be "independent" journalists, journalism, as Greenwald said, journalism, by nature, is supposed to be independent, and journalists should strive to live up to their example.

Access for Bloggers: A Question of Legitimacy

Journalists exist to gather information and disseminate it to the public, and a key part of doing their job lies in getting access to sources and events for that information. Unfortunately, in many cases, bloggers are not able to get access to important events and meetings for that information, as they are not considered journalists, thus not only making their job more difficult, but signifying that they have a long way to go before they can prove themselves legitimate sources of news.

To some degree, the wariness of considering just any blogger a journalist is warranted. Bloggers often start publication without a formal education on the principles of professional journalism, if not the belief that such principles are outdated or misaimed. At best, they are effective alternative journalists that can provide stories and insights that the mainstream media would not, but at worst, they regurgitate the news with their own partisan spin on it. Unfortunately, such distinctions are not always clear-cut, and the people in charge of regulating access to events that are restricted to the people involved in them and members of the press thus have no official way of determining whether they are the better or worse kind of blogger, and would likely exclude all journalists except those from particularly noteworthy online outlets like The Huffington Post. Attempting to judge based on quality is a better idea, but invites subjective judgment, and will leave some excluded bloggers crying foul and claiming that they were excluded while lower quality ones were allowed access. Finally, allowing everyone access may work for things like school board meetings, but there are some instances where it would only be practical to only allow press representatives in, and that could not be used for every occasion.

However, there still needs to be a way for bloggers to be recognized as journalists. Bloggers may not be officially trained or have the backing of reputed organizations, but they still have the ability to produce timely and insightful journalism, and cannot all be dismissed as ordinary citizens with websites. They can act as a check on the mainstream press and potentially correct them whenever they make mistakes by investigating the stories on their own. Limiting access limits the number of people who report on a story, and if only a few people do it, misconceptions and lies are more likely to circulate.

There should be a way for bloggers to register their websites with an organization after proving that they are able to report well, and be allowed the same degree of access to events as members of the mainstream press so long as they continue reporting and adhere to professional standards of conduct. This would thus enable them to have the same freedom that members of the mainstream press do, and give them reason to abide by professional codes of conduct. Journalists have rights and responsibilities in their search for their truth, and bloggers who play the part should be acknowledged as real journalists and be given both.

Censorship on Google: A Troubling Way to Keep Information Out of the Public Eye

The Internet provides more content than any previous medium has, and search engines are essential to sort through the content to find what the user wants. Unfortunately, by helping filter the sites, they limit our awareness, and we end up finding only what the search engine deems relevant to our queries. This capacity can be abused to limit access to certain information, and prevent it from reaching the public eye, as Yahoo and Google have done.

While Fox News may well have a political ax to grind in exposing Matthew Lee's anti-UN articles, possibly hoping to discredit the UN, the idea of his articles not appearing on Google News because of their tilt is troubling. While it may seem as though they were only suppressed on one site, Google News is supposed to be a repository for the day's news online, and the story's absence is especially noticeable given his stories' previous popularity. Google's citing his site as a "one-man" operation despite the volunteers taht work for it seems to be at best a faulty application of standards, and at worst, an impromptu justification for delisting him.

There is also the case of Guo Quan, a dissident Chinese blogger whose blog was removed from Google and Yahoo's search results in China. In doing so, Yahoo and Google prevent people from even gaining awareness of these issues, as people searching about the Communist Party would not be able to see his work. The reasons given are even less justified than those in Lee's case, since Google justifies this by acting under Chinese law and for the interest of doing business in China, which suggests that Google willingly upholds China's censorship policy merely to retain access to China.

This type of censorship is especially troubling, as while under more traditional forms of censorship, people might be able to notice what the government is not talking about, removing it from the search engines severely hinders people from even gaining awareness that the issues are out there, much less finding them by searching. Even if people are still able to access those websites, often by way of a special browser window that enables them to search and surf without restrictions, those people will be a minority, usually only those who are already aware of the degree of censorship or what is being censored, thus limiting the spread of the information and allowing the misconceptions to continue being seen as legitimate and true. The Internet should be more than a large repository of information, but should also be accessible, and by helping keep news that they or those they have connections with out of browsers' sight, Google and Yahoo are detracting from the Internet's purpose as the "information superhighway."

Revenue Streams For Independent Media: A Look at Advantages and Disadvantages

Independent media often struggle with finding a way to keep themselves funded, especially when they are less popular and less likely to have a large amount of money on hand than mainstream news media. They often seek money through three ways- advertising, fees or donations, and try to search for a fourth.

Requiring people to pay for access to the publication is the most reliable way of raising money, as it results in the publication not being beholden to any individual or organization. While the publication would need to constantly work to expand its reader base, that is a goal it should already be following, assuming that it is doing so by articles that convince people that it is an interesting and informative publication. While any of the articles that happened to offend individuals or groups of people would result in the magazine losing viewers and money, the effect would only be proportional to the number of people offended, thus lowering the risk for publishing a controversial article. While this stream of revenue potentially results in the publication pandering to readers, publishers can avoid this by staying with the style that enabled the publication to initially gain popularity.

Advertising has long been a supplemental source of income for publications, but potentially opens the publication to conflicts of interest. Advertisers can bring in significant amounts of money to the publication, but often only continue featuring their ads if they have favorable coverage. They often realize that the publications need the money they pay for their ads than they need the exposure the advertising contract gives, and thus use their leverage to force the publications to suppress stories that portray them in a negative light. This results in the publishers realizing that while they may lose viewers if they compromise their principles, the advertisers have greater sway, and thus censor their reporting and betray their ideals to stay in business. Advertisements can be helpful as a supplemental source of revenue, but they should not be an independent media publication's only source, or even its main source. Independent media not only must stay financially solvent, but remain independent from outside influences, and cannot rely on a single source of revenue.

Donations is a slightly better source of funds than advertising, but it shares many of the same flaws. With donations, viewers can determine the amount they pay by how much they can or are willing to pay, thus enabling the publication to be affordable to those who might not be able to pay the subscription fee. Unfortunately, by this system, "free riders" can pay nothing, or the minimum amount for the subscription, thus depriving the publication access to revenue. Large donors have a similar degree of influence as large advertisers, and can jeopardize the publication's financial health if they withdraw their donations. Donations are a good way for viewers to voluntarily support a publication's continued existence, but are too unreliable to be a sole source of revenue.

While the best way to fund an independent publication would depend on its content, audience and market, independent publications should mainly rely on subscription fees, and supplement it with small advertisers who would not likely appear in their reporting. While donations might be ideal for online independent news sites, which do not often require visitors to pay, they are otherwise not as steady a source of revneue as subscription payments and, like advertising, vulnerable to conflicts of interest. No matter what a publication's mission is or what its principles are, it must continue to stay true to those principles, and setting up their revenue so that no single well-conceived journalistic decision is unaffordable is necessary to provide its consumers the best possible journalism.

Mark Finkelstein

I found Mark Finkelstein's presentation on Tuesday to be an interesting discussion on blogging the news. His presentation went more into how he blogs about the news than last time, and I found the discussion on the way his website gained hits important information for those who are planning to establish their own websites. His noting that some of his hits came from anti-semitic "wacko" sites was a fascinating detail, especially given that I had spent part of my internship at The Ithaca Journal last semester creating spreadsheets based on data about where traffic to the website came from. It was interesting to hear about him making money from his blog, but it would have been worthwhile for him to note that he works as a landlord, and that not all bloggers can post on their sites for a living.

I wholeheartedly agreed with Finkelstein's advice to write outside of class. In addition to my work for The Ithacan, I am considering writing a blog on living in Ithaca, per former Ithaca College professor Michael Scully's advice at last semester's job search workshop. The blog would serve as a way of hosting my writing, provide links to some of my articles, and enable me to continue writing while I am searching for a job.

However, I still disagree with his opinions on the political bias. While the story on Sarah Palin's daughter's ex-boyfriend was a clear case of wasting news resources on a story with no news value, it does not necessarily reflect liberal bias on the media's part. It is more due to the news media seeing the Palin story as what Project Censored terms "junk food news"- news that does little to inform the public, but is popular among news consumers, particularly most celebrity news. While Finkelstein admits that he is a conservative republican, he was not as willing to concede the possibility of the media being influenced by conservative biases or conservative influences. While I may not agree with this part of his ideals, or his blogging to expose only the liberal tilt of the mainstream media, I personally found his talk informative and a good look how to blog full-time.