Journalism and Online Discourse

However, while blogs have created hundreds of prominent new voices in the national media, social networking sites like twitter have only reinforced the position of people and institutions who were already prominent in other media.  Not a single person has risen to become a prominent national media figure just through their tweeting.  However, popular TV shows, musicians, and politicians have gained two million followers or more through the medium.
Given this, it is a legitimate worry that the decline of blogging, and the rise of social networking, will mean that the media status quo that was once threatened by the Internet will now be reinforced by it.  Rather than new media functioning as a democratizing force, it  could become yet another tool of the status quo.  Maybe once in a while it will be used by street demonstrators against a totalitarian regime, as it was in Iran, but most of the time it will just make the already famous and the already dominant even more so.
–via “Social networking sites reinforce the status quo

Those are the conclusions that Chris Bowers  draws from a report by the Pew Internet Centers on Social Media and Young Adults that finds that blogging is on the decline among teenage users of the Internet. Teens are also commenting less on blogs. Use among older Americans, on the other hand, remains the same.
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Media Transformations

Here’s an interesting graphic showing the transition from print to online media.
Online VS Traditional News
What generates concern, however, is that online news outlets are rarely backed up by significant new gathering organizations or operations capable of conducting journalistic investigations. They have tended to rely on the news gathering operations of print newspapers, the news syndicates and major media. d
Now ABC News has announced major cuts in its newsroom.

ABC News will sharply reduce its news-gathering staff through buyouts and possible layoffs, the company said on Tuesday. ABC employees said they expected the cutbacks would affect 300 to 400 people, or roughly 25 percent of the news division’s work force.
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In a memorandum to staff members, the ABC News president David Westin called the cutbacks a “fundamental transformation” for the division that would result in a leaner, smaller organization. “The time has come to rethink how we do what we are doing,” he wrote.

Let’s hope this isn’t a harbinger of things to come.

The Perils of Being a Journalist

Two more Moroccan journalists were fined today for reporting false information on the health of the King, Mohammed VI.  According to Agence France Presse

The editor of the daily al-Jarida al-Oula, Ali Anouzla, was handed a one year suspended jail term, while journalist Bouchra Eddou was also given a suspended sentence of three months.
The tribunal fined Anouzla 10,000 dirhams (876 euros, $1,315) and Eddou 5,000 dirhams.

Both men have appealed and accused the government of simply trying to clamp down on the press. As I noted previously, it continues a worrying trend. Continue reading

Freedom of the Press in the Maghreb

Upon the death of his father, it looked as if Morocco might be on its way toward total freedom of expression.  This post is too short to go into much detail, but tentatively at first, then progressively with more and more confidence the media and the arts began to confront previously taboo subjects including corruption in government and the private sector, human rights abuses, gender oppression, linguistic and cultural suppression of minorities, policies in the Western Sahara, homosexual rights, etc.
There was shock when the Moroccan magazine TelQuel was able to publish an investigative piece on “The Salary of the King,” and get away with it.  Under his father Hassan the II such matters were kept as secret as nuclear launch codes.  I don’t mean to say that the media totally ignored all that was wrong in Morocco until the liberalization, either.  But when something was  reported, it was done very carefully, with great care as to who was bore the blame.  All of that changed in the years following the elevation to the throne of Mohammed VI.
Recently, however, there have been a number of setbacks and it has been hard to watch.  Continue reading