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Monday, September 22, 2003
The usual Arg 
| | Every time I come back from a trip I forget to reset my outbound mail server for the one Cox insists I use, rather than my own, which it blocks on Port 25. Yes, I know there are workarounds, but I forget them. Remembering to change the SMTP server is easier. Once I remember. Which just happened at the end of a day when none of my mail went out, because I forgot. Isn't tech fun? |
Proof that blogs are the duct tape of journalism. Or: whatever.
How ya doin?
| | Try plugging your salary into the Global Rich List. Might help rationalize doing something fun with iGive. |
The Story story
| | Dave's point is that the press too often defaults to Opposing Viewpoints on subjects that either aren't in dispute (Krugman's example is a hypothetical "debate" about whether or not the world is round) or where the journal itself has a well-masked base opinion: |
| | An example, a story on file sharing last week. The reporter shows us one extreme, and then another. But the second isn't very extreme. And then the obvious thing that all copy editors seem to love. "The truth lies somewhere in between." The conclusion, that anyone who listened to music on a computer is a pirate, is not true. It's a lie. And because it's so well hidden, and sounds so reasonable, it's a worse lie. Better to come out with it. According to the NY Times everyone who listens to music on a computer is a criminal. Have the guts to call a spade a spade, if you really mean it, don't hide it in a mist of fake reasonableness. |
| | My take... There are two very different reasons why papers like the Times default to the opposing view format for covering a subject. |
| | One is that fights make good stories, and the easiest fights to cast and cover are ones with only two sides. I've written about this before. Teddy Bush is one example. What Tale Are We Spinning? is another. (Isn't it nice how blogs spare us the need to keep repeating ourselves — at least for that 10% of the cases when readers bother to follow links?) The linguist Deborah Tannen does a terrific job with the subject in The Argument Culture. Sez Deborah: |
| | The argument culture urges us to approach the world — and the people in it — in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done. The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as 'both sides'; the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party against the other; the best way to begin an essay is to attack someone; and the best way to show you're really thinking is to criticize. |
| | The war on drugs, the war on cancer, the battle of the sexes, politicians' turf battles — in the argument culture, war metaphors pervade our talk and shape our thinking. Nearly everything is framed as a battle or game in which winning or losing is the main concern. These all have their uses and their place, but they are not the only way — and often not the best way — to understand and approach our world. Conflict and opposition are as necessary as cooperation and agreement, but the scale is off balance, with conflict and opposition overweighted. . . . |
| | "In the argument culture, criticism, attack, or opposition are the predominant if not the only ways of responding to people or ideas. . . . It is the automatic nature of this response that I am calling attention to — and calling into question. Sometimes passionate opposition, strong verbal attack, are appropriate and called for. No one knows this better than those who have lived under repressive regimes that forbid public opposition. . . . What I question is the ubiquity, the knee-jerk nature, of approaching almost any issue, problem or public person in an adversarial way. One of the dangers of the habitual use of adversarial rhetoric is a kind of verbal inflation — a rhetorical boy who cried wolf: The legitimate, necessary denunciation is muted, even lost, in the general cacophony of oppositional shouting. What I question is using opposition to accomplish every goal, even those that do not require fighting but might also (or better) be accomplished by other means, such as exploring, expanding, discussing, investigating, and the exchanging of ideas suggested by the word 'dialogue.' I am questioning the assumption that everything is a matter of polarized opposites, the proverbial 'two sides to every question' that we think embodies open-mindedness and expansive thinking. |
| | The second reason that journals, and journalists, default to the Opposing View format is that they either don't know the subject, or have a highly masked position in the matter. Or don't know that they actually have an opinion on the subject. |
| | In my keynote during the Linux Lunacy cruise last week, I pointed to a pair of stories about Linux and Open Source in The Wall Street Journal that suffered terribly from the author's simple lack of knowledge about their subjects. They said Linux was legitimized by IBM (yes, but only very partially), that open source software was "developed outside the corporate framework" (most developers work inside companies), and that the profit motive drives its promotion (it does, but so do many other motives) — among other misleading things. |
| | But, as Dave says, the bigger problem is masked opinion by the "objective" jounals. On the subject of file sharing, newspapers like the Times have plainly been swayed by Hollywood's relentless campaign to redefine sharing as piracy — a campaign that has succeeded not only with newspapers like the Times, but with its technology partners as well. |
| | The Digital Transmission Content Protection over IP (Internet Protocol) specification is aimed at balancing the interests of consumers, who recoil against restrictions placed on how and where they can use digital content, and copyright owners, who are terrified of piracy. |
| | - a. Robbery committed at sea.
b. A similar act of robbery, as the hijacking of an airplane. - The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material: software piracy.
- The operation of an unlicensed, illegal radio or television station.
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| | Add those up and you have to conclude that Hollywood's campaign to redefine sharing as piracy is now a complete success. What originally meant stealing by force on the high seas, and later meant hijacking — both brutal, violent actions — now means sharing "content" in ways that displease industry, government or both. That this issue is highly arguable from many directions is now largely lost. Mainstream journalists don't even need to think about it any more. Especially if they are themselves in the "content" business. (As are, by the way, publishers of dictionaries.) Hey, how can you argue about "piracy?" That it's bad goes without saying, right? Okay, some people want to defend it, so let's bring in some of the reasonable ones and let the two "sides" say a few lines, and call it a day. |
| | So it's no wonder that papers like the Times does a half-hearted job of covering the "debate" over file sharing. |
| | Meanwhile it's our job, both as bloggers and as professional journalists, to keep the matter alive and in real debate. Hollywood may have succeeded on this issue, but that doesn't mean we can't turn back the tide. We have a Net to defend here, and make no mistake: it is under attack. |
Generalizations
| | The general's blog is here. |
M2M
| | My standard personal technology knowhow disclaimer is "the only code I know is Morse." |
| | But every few years that knowhow comes in almost handy. For example, eleven days ago I noticed, after landing at LAX in a passenger plane, that a number of cell phones issued the same Morse message: three short beeps, two long ones, and three short ones. By Morse, that's SMS. I'd never heard it before. So I listened when the next plane landed, at Sea-Tac, in Seattle. Again, several SMS notices beeped around the plane. Then again yesterday, when I arrived in San Francisco, and again when I landed in Santa Barbara. |
| | Guess I'd better hurry up and start subscribing to Release 1.0 again. I let it run out a few months back. |
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