Groupthink

Posts Tagged journalists

Word up!

Jun 16

Posted by Ross Sharp in Media | 1 Comment

GERBILISM (GERB-AL-ISM) Noun / GERBILIST (GERB-AL-IST) Noun

A gerbilist is an erstwhile journalist whose prime modus operandi is to load each and every “article” they write with links to other journalists with whom they agree on pretty much everything and who, in turn, agree with them. Gerbilists do not generally quote from, or link to, those journalists who pose a contrary point of view to their own.

Gerbilists produce “gerbilism”, a style of abstract typing that, when recognised, immediately puts the reader in mind of brown noses, small furry animals wrapped in duct tape, ferris wheels and speech impediments.

Example No.1–

The gerbilist praises itself for finding another gerbilist in agreement, and says as much …

There was no real Julia

Janet Albrechtsen agrees:

Gillard has become the casebook study of how to shrink in the job as PM…

Example No.2 –

This is when a gerbilist disappears up their own arsehole by linking to other gerbilists who say warm and runny things about them …

Lose some, win some

I wish I could persuade Joel Silver to read my columns, but luckily I’ve still got my TV show.

Gerbilists are like the Human Centipedes of news media, forever defecating in each other’s cakeholes and then chewing with their mouths open in public.

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Rudd gaffe: puts electorate before journalists

Jul 21

Posted by David in Federal election 2010, Media, Politics | 2 Comments

Kevin Rudd should be in damage control for putting children before journalists - say journalists.

Kevin Rudd should be in damage control for putting children before journalists, say journalists.

Kevin Rudd’s first appearance of the election campaign bordered on ludicrous today as he snubbed the most important people in this election campaign, the travelling media pack.

Mr Rudd refused to answer questions of the journalists, who were most considerate when repeatedly yelling out the same question about his relationship with Prime Minister Julia Gillard, as he tried to talk to a group of school children.

The man who was ousted as prime minister three and a half weeks ago spruiked something trivial about  the benefits of school spending to Year 3 and Year 4 students, totally oblivious to the needs of the journalists, some of whom invested in new clothes and opened Twitter accounts specially for this election campaign

Mr Rudd wanted media coverage – be there at 12:15pm, the hard-working, all-important reporters were told.

They obliged, some even had to catch taxis, and 45 minutes later the local member arrived at the school’s back entrance, then took the chatty principal with him to the front entrance where the waiting media cameras rolled.

The anxious media scrum, some with sore feet, encircled Mr Rudd as he spoke to principal Greg Kretschmann about facilities built with stimulus program funding.

But today, in Mr Rudd’s safe Labor seat of Griffith in Brisbane’s south, it seemed Cooparoo State School was the place where you are not supposed to ask questions, even in the unlikely event they were sensible ones.

“This is just great,” said one journalist sarcastically. “We’re not here to show him looking at schools and communicating with children from his electorate. He should be talking to us about what’s most important in this election campaign; his relationship with Julia Gillard. Doesn’t he know who we are?

“First they make us fly in a loud air force Hercules and now this.”

Mr Rudd finally spoke to journalists as he walked to his tax-payer funded Commonwealth car.

“I’ll just say one thing before I go… and that is throughout this election campaign I’ll be speaking only about local issues here in my community here in Griffith, such as this school building program, and the need to complete that program in each and every one of the 42 primary schools in my electorate,” he said, pretending to be oblivious as to what election campaigns are really about.

Apologies to the ABC’s Annie Guest

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Asking the questions that matter #2

Jul 20

Posted by David in Federal election 2010, Media, Politics | 1 Comment

Prime Minister Julia Gillard spent part of the third full day of the election campaign in Richmond in Sydney’s west, to announce the national trade cadetship scheme to combat Australia’s skills shortage.

Under the initiative, students from years 9 to 12 would be offered the cadetship as an option under the national curriculum and would utilise the resources of the trade training centres being introduced to secondary schools around Australia.

Two streams of the national trade cadetship would be available including one stream which lays the foundation for further training and a second which focuses on achieving an apprenticeship in a specific area or trade.

“Currently around 220,000 students do study vocational education and training at school,” the Prime Minister said.

“That’s around 41 per cent of kids going into senior secondary certificates.”

This is an important policy, which addresses the skills shortages but also the educational needs of those teenagers left out by the secondary education’s emphasis on preparing for a university degree. So, which of the following questions did the assembled media pack ask when they got some q-and-a time with the Prime Minister?

A. Prime Minister, will the cadetship scheme be backed up with an increase in apprenticeship opportunities? For example will you offer incentives to large companies to recommence apprentice intakes that were common up until the 1990s?

B. Are community cabinets a waste of taxpayer dollars?

C. Are you running an overly staged managed campaign? When will you get out on the streets and shopping centres?

D. I’m wondering how you’re standing up under the campaign. Are you getting enough sleep?

If you guessed B. C. and D., you are correct.

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Is there such a thing as “citizen journalists”?

Mar 1

Posted by David in Media | 3 Comments

There’s been some debate on Twitter during the past week about the role of so-called “citizen journalists” and whether they even have the right to be blessed with the J-word. This then went into further discussion as to what makes a journalist, a question that doesn’t really have a simple answer.

Working journalists would argue that their craft is specialised and comes with appropriate qualifications. But, unlike law and medicine, the little piece of paper you get at the end of a journalism degree or cadetship is by no means an exclusive requirement needed to embark on a journalism career.

I think the key to the whole debate rests in the definition of a journalist, which is someone who processes information, weeds out fact from fiction and then presents it a manner which is understandable and informative to the user. This is where the notion of the “citizen journalist” falls over when it comes to describing someone relaying information online via blogs, Twitter and other social media.

During the weekend’s tsunami scare I saw a tweet that could be described as citizen journalism:

CometDudeOur PA system in Okinawa Japan just announced Tsunami warning. evacuate to higher ground #tsunami #okinawa

This is the kind of classic on-the-spot post during a major breaking story that made Twitter famous. But is it journalism? No, it’s not.

  • Sure, CometDude is providing important information here, but where’s the detail?
  • What sort of tsunami warning has been issued?
  • Does the warning include an order to evacuate to higher ground, or is this CometDude’s own advice?
  • What is higher ground; the top end of the street or the summit of Mt Fuji?
  • And finally, how do we know this is even true?

Sure, there is a limit to what one can write in 140 characters, which makes the case against this being classed as journalism even stronger.

Simply relaying what you’re seeing, or hearing is not journalism, it’s Citizen Commentary, and no different to eyewitness sound bites we see on the news. If that is journalism than “Chk-Chk Boom Girl” Claire Werbeloff might as well join the MEAA.

It could be argued they’re reporters. But reporting involves a lot more than just relaying what you see. It involves gathering such quotes and checking them against other facts before using them in a package to present the story.

Ironically, this is being compromised in order to keep up with the internet. The result is information coming out through supposedly credible news sources before its verified, meaning that basic tenet of journalism, to weed out fact from fiction, is being sacrificed for the sake of providing up-to-the-minute content.

So, yeah, maybe one day the term Citizen Journalist will apply instead of Citizen Commentator, but sadly this will be because the standards that once defined true journalism will sink to its level.

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