atw: Re: Was: First impressions of Google Wave? Qualified 'tick': Now what's a "feature"?
- From: "Matthew da Silva" <journo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:34:59 +1000
Chris - That's not a nice answer at all. Are you trying to get a rise out of
me?
Matthew da Silva BA (Hons) MMediaPrac Syd
m 0434 536 772 | e journo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | w matthewdasilva.com | t
twitter.com/matt_dasilva
-----Original Message-----
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Chris Virtue
Sent: Thursday, 29 October 2009 11:30 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Was: First impressions of Google Wave? Qualified 'tick':
Now what's a "feature"?
Hang on, Matt. Geoffrey asked a question to the list. You posted a link
to an article that didn't answer the question. I reckon your response to
Geoffrey's initial post was a) off the topic of the new thread and b)
shameless self-promotion. Am I being too harsh? Perhaps you didn't
understand his question.
Quit before you get further behind. Stop defending yourself. You're
starting to look silly.
Matthew da Silva wrote:
> Peter - I think you claim a bit too much importance for newspapers. Your
> desire reflects rather elegantly that other one, of reporters and
> editors who over-egg the pudding when it comes to the possibility of
> catching an elected official out, with their hand in the cookie jar. I
> think we're all getting a little bit Dustin Hoffman here...
>
>
>
> The issue of verifying sources is one thing. Quite another is the issue
> of impartiality. I'm not completely convinced by the argument as to
> impartiality, which is somehow going to lead us effortlessly to
> accumulating a huge volume of credibility. Impartiality is - some would
> say - an impossibility.
>
>
>
> As for balance, not only does every journalist have an opinion about
> whatever she or he is writing. But there's often simply not enough time.
> For the feature I linked to it took a day's work just to get the quotes
> of Cramer, the guy from Reuters, because I had to attend a talk at UTS.
> It took another half-day to get the quotes from the UTS academic.
>
>
>
> How far do you go? If an 800-word piece is worth only 500 dollars, how
> much time does a journo have to get the perfect foil for every interview
> he or she does? At J-school we were told to get one interview for every
> 100 words. For an 800-word piece that means eight interviews. That can
> take time. Just finding the 'right' person takes - sometimes - days if
> not weeks. Add to that the immense amounts of time that can get sucked
> up by FOI applications, and you're literally squeezing the poor journo
> dry by demanding perfect balance.
>
>
>
> As for McClymont, I think she's over-egged it a bit, as you point out.
> Nevertheless, she did say at the top of the piece that the guy wouldn't
> give his name. This fact should make any reader beware and, hopefully,
> most were. But stories work themselves out over time. One story does not
> a Walkley make. Nor a true account of a big deal like McGurk's murder.
> The truth will out in the end, to be sure, and allowing McClymont a bit
> of room to get there is what her editors need to do.
>
>
>
> */Matthew da Silva/* BA (Hons) MMediaPrac /Syd/
>
> m 0434 536 772 | e journo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:journo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> | w matthewdasilva.com
> <http://www.matthewdasilva.com/> | t twitter.com/matt_dasilva
> <http://twitter.com/matt_dasilva>
>
>
>
> *From:* austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Peter Martin
> *Sent:* Thursday, 29 October 2009 10:17 PM
> *To:* austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Subject:* atw: Re: Was: First impressions of Google Wave? Qualified
> 'tick': Now what's a "feature"?
>
>
>
> /Matthew da Silva:/
>
> /You wrote:/
>
> /> Geoffrey - You may not/
>
> /> agree with the findings of the story, but unfortunately you cannot
> doubt that it is a/
>
> /> feature. In journalistic parlance, as you may know, a 'feature' is
> anything that is not/
>
> /> 'news', which is what they put prominently/
>
> /> on news websites such as theage.com.au. In this case, also, the
> feature is not/
>
> /> 'opinion', but contains reported utterances of key stakeholders./
>
> />/
>
> /Oh dear. Sorry, but this argument skips over one important stage in
> the process of distinction between news and opinion which an ex-journo
> couldn't resist pointing out./
>
> /That (previously essential?) stage involves the assessment of the
> reliability of sources. For example, I can get a very interesting/
>
> /collection of "key stakeholder" comments from inmates of mental
> hospitals and/or gaols. If I quote them, presumably it's news. If I
> say what they say, it's opinion? Or maybe there's a bit missing in the
> middle about checking how reliable the information you're quoting is, in
> the first place ? /
>
> /To illustrate this, let's deal with an example: a recent running story
> from the SMH and I gather, The Age./
>
>
>
> /I call it: "Kate McClymont and the Three Bears".... with an
> apology for a certain proxility... and copyright reserved, outside of
> this immediate forum. /
>
> Kate McClymont of the Sydney Morning Herald has been in the line for the
> odd Walkley award for journalism. That's something that from time to
> time (with the odd exception) one might show respect for. But to judge
> from her recent efforts in the whole McGurk saga, if she is qualified
> for a Walkley on this one, Robert Southey should be up for one for the
> bit about bears having a house in the woods where they eat porridge for
> breakfast every morning.
>
> It's not that these aren't good "stories" in themselves: rather, it's
> that they so far seem to share the same level of authentication and
> factual confirmation as the classic Southey story, or the products of
> Hans Christian Anderson. If one major test of journalist's quality is
> the ultimate quality of his or her journalistic sources, Ms McClyntock
> is looking as though she should either share the front pages of the SMH
> with the said fairy story authors or just get someone to draw some
> coloured pictures and publish this stuff separately as a new (Brothers
> Grimm?) storybook tale for the kiddies.
>
> Firstly, it turned out fairly early in the piece that the said McGurk,
> as Ms McClymont's scoop source on the subject of his own killing, has in
> fact been a huge fairy story in himself. His real name, his age, his
> origins and his concern about the nasty ethics of the people he said he
> was dealing with, turn out to have been all fairy stories. Apparently,
> his real name originally wasn't McGurk, he was not the age he said he
> was, didn't actually come from where he said he did, and seems to have
> had not a skerrick of real concern about ethics in business, government
> or human relations generally.
>
> It has to be said, of course, that Ms McClyntock has revealed this
> stuff, and included it in her stories! But did this reporter of
> integrity then think to suggest to her editor that in the light of the
> doubts about the person who told her a big story being a person who
> tells Big Fat Lies, maybe the front page of the paper was not the place
> for this stuff ? Apparently not.
>
> Well, in a sense, you couldn't expect her to, because she'd already also
> relied for the big chunk of her first story on the word of that most
> reliable of journalistic sources, the lovely Jim Byrnes. It was Good
> Old Reliable Jim who Ms McClyntock was able to quote on the subject of
> McGurk having a mysterious tape that was, (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)
> supposedly a possible cause of Mr McGurk's demise.
>
>
>
> Some of us who had been reading other pages of the SMH before the McGurk
> shooting, had heard of Mr Byrnes before, and surely Kate couldn't have
> missed it. Because Mr Byrnes had himself long been the subject of a
> whole series of very pointed SMH mentions (albeit not on page one), over
> quite a period of time. All of these articles were decidedly
> unfavourable, and distinctly scathing when it came to assessing Jim's
> reliability as a witness.
>
> Again to be fair, the later McClyntock stories held passing mention of
> these known aspects of Jim's character. Thus, good old Jim is known to
> have been found wanting in character, veracity and honesty, having been
> found guilty of some unpleasant violent "work" with a baseball bat, and
> described as a "standover thug" by a magistrate. In other areas, and
> on other charges, Jim has banned from being a director of companies by
> the corporate regulators, for a certain lack of well... honesty and
> integrity. So this gets mentioned,too. But the story still rates front
> page credibility, based on a combination of McGurk and Byrnes.
>
> Then thirdly we get the big mention of Graham Richardson, confirming
> another part of this grand story. As we all know, Richo might not be
> regarded in all circles as being a completely ... well, unbiassed
> narrator of history. For a start, he's a paid lobbyist -- not an
> illegal business, but one where credibility is to be worked on, and has
> a price -- about $9000 each customer per month, it turns out! Richo
> also did get copped on record a while back as saying that sometimes it
> was necessary to tell lies about matters of public interest. And he's
> on the list of a string of people who find themselves puzzled about how
> significant sums of money manage to get deposited in Swiss accounts in
> their name, as if by magic or extraordinary benevolence from a fairy
> godfather. So there's a chance he's probably also got a slight memory
> problem.
>
>
>
> Is this really to be the foundation of the grand series of page one
> stories from now on? I doubt it. Rather, it's the full bloody trifecta.
> In whatever order you like, it's Big bear, Middle sized bear, and
> Teeny-Weeny bear who all have extraordinary stories to tell, just like
> the ones others told to or by Southey and Anderson.
>
>
>
> Meanwhile, we all knew this was always / probably / possibly / maybe
> about some sort of deals that have been "fixed" and pushed through
> because of developer money influence on government ministers and
> officials... the sugar on the porridge. The only trouble is, it now
> turns out that all the "fixed" deals seem not to have worked: no-one's
> actually got a good working breakfast at this table. Not even the State
> Opposition can point to a single decision affected in this way.
>
> That doesn't mean that none of us still think some of these things
> exist, or could exist one day, with the way some of the legislation
> hands out power. But there just hasn't been any proof of this
> happening. So we have "undue influence" that turns out not to have had
> any influence or effect. An interesting idea, but not startlingly
> untoward, one would think. (After all, we see that sort of result with
> shock-jocks every day of the week.)
>
> Now you wouldn't expect Richo to point this out, given the business he's
> in (any more than the shock-jocks do). It's not something you'd want to
> advertise to those who have $9000 a month to spare, in the belief that
> something, someday, might happen. Nor would you expect Big Jim to point
> it out... he has enough problems.
>
>
>
> And of course, McGurk's not in a position to.
>
> So maybe a reporter who can assess the reliability of her own data can
> give an assessment. It's not too late, Kate: get onto the front page
> now and say it: barring a major break-through and the discovery of at
> least one reliable witness, there's no grounds for considering that the
> original story was worth a breakfast crumpet.... the sources that
> started it were never going to hold up. And she can then let the police
> get on with the job of trying to find out what happened in a
> cold-blooded murder, without them having to pick their way through an
> atmosphere clouded by suspicion, unsubstantiated gossip and rumour, week
> after week, masquerading as news on the front page of a Once Great
> newpaper.
>
> /No, Matthew. It's not enough to say that if you publish stuff quoting
> other people it's ok / a feature / or whatever..... There's this
> other, basic and important, albeit old-fashioned stage: how far have
> you gone to authenticate / check your sources with
> (reliable/authenticated) other sources?/
>
>
>
> /Without the double-checking of sources, we're all in fairytale land.
> (Or in Kate's case, in Propaganda Land, doing the job for Fairfax
> management and loading anything possible onto a pretty dubious state
> government with equally dubious journalism.)/
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -PeterM
> peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> There is no love sincerer than the love of food. - George Bernard Shaw
>
> -PeterM
> peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> The Truth is realized in an instant; the Act is practiced step by step.
> - Zen saying
>
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--
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Chris Virtue
__O In House Technologies
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( )/( )
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- apologies to Gil Scott-Heron
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