Quote of the Day

The problem of journalists being reliable sources is one that has cropped up multiple times in the past, and going beyond just reporting requires that the full data capture be put forward to verify and cross-verify between reports what has happened. Media reports, as a whole, have gone from factual reporting, with reporters delimiting what they ‘feel’ and getting the facts across, to reporting what they ‘think’ is going on as part of a ‘story’. When examining the case of Qana, during the Israeli/Hezbollah dust-up, a photo-journalist (person who takes pictures but does no textual or oral reporting) reported events around the portrayal of events that indicated a high amount of Hezbollah manipulation (taking passports of reporters, ferrying around reporters to pre-arranged sites, limiting access outside of those sites, etc.) which were not reported by the video, audio or print journalists until they were confronted with the photo-journalist’s report. They affirmed that is what happened, and that then brings up the veracity of reporting and forensic determination of events: the reporters may have reported what they had seen, but that was highly limited, restricted and cross-referencing images saw duplication of personnel and corpses across differing sites at different geographic locations at different times.

The ‘stories’ presented could not present that set of facts as no single reporter had the full suite of all reports to work with, nor did any single news organization have those. In areas of highly questionable activity, restrictions and so on, the reporting of a ‘story’ cannot happen until the events are understood. To understand those events requires a deep, cross-disciplinary team far beyond the skill or scope of knowledge of any individual or organization, particularly in dealing with battle damage, domestic bombings or other events crossing multiple areas of expertise. Thus no matter what ‘story’ is reported for such an event, the actual factuality of the course of events before, during and after the reporting may show something that is going on that cannot be reported on as a ‘story’ at the time of the event or incident. By trying to encapsulate an entire ‘story’ in an event, the public is done a disservice when reporters do not acknowledge their limitations of outlook, background, and actual limitations of the event, itself. When other actors are trying to sway that reporting, that also must be acknowledged and yet many journalists do not do so and thus take a complicit part in a fabrication of a ‘story’.

This can be alleviated, however, as the modern technology for data capture goes far beyond what you see on television or read in print. All photo-journalists and video journalists take far more information in via their storage devices than is ever made available to the public. Yet storage space is cheap for such digital imagery and its attendant metadata, and it is that last which does more than just present the data as it gives the context of time, data capture type, and even such things as geospatial placement of those images. In truth, when all of those are combined together you get a historical document of definite time, space and limitations for input that can then be checked by examination of other information in that geo-space for a given time period and sequencing those pieces of captured events. If that had been done for Qana, then the presence and absence of buildings, people and other items could have been accurately sequenced to derive some items that factually happened and were not reported (tearing down of buildings to make damage appear worse than it was is one instance, if memory serves, beyond the corpses moving from place to place).

Those images, video, and audio reports can all be properly safeguarded by copyright, watermarks and other artifacts added to such data while retaining original data in its pristine condition if veracity of reporting is brought into question during or after such events. That requires a much higher degree of transparency for news reporting organizations than they currently demonstrate, and yet would be a keystone to helping the public understand the course of events and point out ‘stories’ that were either mis-reported, biased (either by the reporter or by those staging events), fabricated or all of those simultaneously. What that means is that journalists must ‘show their work’. The cost of digital storage space decreases by the day, and what could not be done a decade ago outside of millions of dollars is now possible in thousands of dollars.

Why do I not trust the media in reporting?

They refuse to show their work.

Editing images, video and text for brevity, succinctness and impact is a trade and an honored one, but in doing the necessary editing and photo/video composition the actual material at full length is not made public for review to see what, exactly, the editing is doing to the end product. What we get from the media is sausage. They could show you the raw meat and let you know just how good their sausage ingredients actually are… and right now there are no standards for those ingredients. If you like your sausages made from verifiable ingredients, then why not the news?

ajacksonian on October 24, 2009 at 8:52 AM