Frankly, I never much had a problem with most of what Stanton was reporting, or where. What problems I had with it was mostly along the lines of what we’ve just discussed, the “how” of his reporting, which some journalists probably would look down upon as well. Some of what he produced looked rock-solid, some of it was hyperbolic (in that it appeared he was injecting a wee bit much opinion, when the facts as he reported them were damning enough), which may be a function of his background/training/education. I don’t know. I haven’t googled him.

I too think that the HTS structure, be that the former contractor controlled side of the house, or the DoD controlled side, essentially screwed up by not dealing with Stanton’s stories/allegations early on. Had they reacted early, and opened their doors to him, the tone (and personally I think the reliability) of his subsequent writing might’ve been different. FWIW, this is not uncommon at all. Most bureaucracies tend to clam up when criticized, as we all know. But it may be particularly pronounced inside my profession, and especially among those of my branch. (I am an infantryman.) You see it all the time in Brigades and Divisions within the military context, and it takes real serious concentration by people in charge (meaning at the top) to break that inclination. In no small part it is due to the perfidious Dolschtoss Legend that took hold in the US Army/Marines post-Vietnam.

In reverse, those who buck that false line can do goo. It’s one of the reasons that Petraeus has always had such good press, the man actually allows reporters inside, to see things for themselves. In his case though, now that he’s SO high up, he can’t have the same effect he once did at a lower level by getting officers of my rank (Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel) to do the same. There are now too many layers of lower generals between him and officers in command of battalions and brigades.

Yes, it certainly can hurt, a lot, when you get bad press. But as I’ve said on NPR and other venues, when we (the military) screw up, it costs lives, and we should not be allowed (or allow ourselves) the luxury of vanity and pride when human lives are at stake. Any human lives. One screw up that is not noticed (or if noticed, not reported on) can mean that the unit doesn’t take corrective action to prevent the same mistake from happening again. At the most extreme end of this spectrum, it’s why I would like a reporter to be with every company/battalion everywhere in combat, because when a reporter is there, obscenities like My Lai don’t happen.

Hopefully your recommendations for how citizen-journalists-witnesses can make their materials more reliable will get broad reading.

Bob

By using authentic content and changing the meta data the AP and others have a leg to stand on if it is ever revealed that the story is different than what was previously printed.

Regarding the video of Neda Salehi Agha Soltan being killed in the protests the Times Online had this to say:

“The authenticity of the video, and the source of the bullet, cannot be verified independently but that hardly matters any more because millions of Iranians and hundreds of millions of others around the world firmly believe the story to be true.”

P.S. sorry for the cross post, my message is more appropriate for this section.

Bob you understood the piece exactly as I intended it, which was not meant to be read as “anti” any demonstrators anywhere, but as anti-sloppiness when we are concerned about citizen journalism being taken seriously and not just as a mask for propaganda. In a conflict, all sides lie and/or repeat falsehoods because they do not know better. Citizen journalism, and activist media do not have to hold themselves to low standards. If they do, then they cannot defeat the charge that all of their media products are suspect, baseless, or fabricated, and that can do them far more damage in the end. Moreover, there is an overall slide downwards in standards almost everywhere in the information and culture industries in North America, perhaps Europe as well, with too much taken for granted and not critically examined. That I have to defend, in my classes, that no, mermaids do not in fact exist, they are mythical creatures, or that I have to defend why I think that 9/11 was not an “inside job” (very popular among students by the way), tells me that something seriously problematic is happening in our culture. The Internet itself seems to function more as a conspiracy medium than anything else, except perhaps pornographic image delivery, so we all need to be more careful than ever. Unfortunately, it seems to be that too many of us are becoming more careless than ever, at the worst possible time.

(I know, we could also have had this debate become more squarely the focus of our discussions of John Stanton’s articles about HTS on this site. Most professional journalists would reject his work, I tended to defend it as a whistle blowers’ log because in some cases I received the identical messages by phone, email, and on this blog, that he reproduced in his pieces, and these were HTS people. HTS managers also harshly warned employees not to speak to Stanton, and that confirmed that they also knew that these were in fact insiders who were speaking to Stanton — in that case, mainstream media has to explain why it would exclude their voices. By the way — and this is going off topic, maybe not — you have to be one severely pissed off HTS employee to contact the likes of a Max Forte! HTS made matters worse by never publicly denying anything reported in Stanton’s articles, a very serious failure on their part, since his articles have come to dominate the information landscape about HTS far more than anything else. What is also true is we had no way of fact checking what HTS insiders said was true — on the other hand, that’s what blogs can be good for, as informal collective editorial rooms where we thrash out these reports, like happened here, and happened thanks in part to you too Bob.)

It matters for the same reason that historians use footnotes to support their statements. The footnotes, good ones anyway, help other people (usually other historians) make sure that the underlying evidence is what the historian says that it is. It is much the same for those in the “hard sciences.” What you are seeking is something that is verifiable, because then the community can (if needed) repeat the research, and then it may be accepted as true.

Modern American journalism has tried, for about the past 100 years, to do much the same. (Canadian too Max.) They try to impose firewalls between reporters and editorialists, and between reporters and the business of the newspaper. That way, in theory, you can trust what you are reading. I qualify that to US/CAN, because in the British press there is no firewall in reporters keeping their opionions out of news. Thus, in the UK one tends to buy one of the six national newspapers based upon your personal ideology, and if you read the papers coverage of the same events you’ll note that one cannot often tell what is ‘fact’ and what is reportorial or editorial opinion. BBC, IMO, stands somewhat apart on this count, so don’t lump that in with the Brit tabloids I’m referring to here.

We’ve seen the same thing starting to leak into our (US/CAN) markets with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Same phenomena in effect. (BTW Max, I think BBC just effed up. Wasn’t deliberate. Better example is the image of the Ahmadinijad support rally that was released by Iranian govt and forwarded to the world through FARS. Deliberately photoshopped to make crowd look bigger. http://boingboing.net/2009/06/17/ahmadinijad-sucks-at.html )

Max is on the mark here with suggesting simple things that those in Iran can do to help increase the reliability, and therefore the credibility, of their de facto forays into ‘new media journalism.’ The world is changing, or more accurately the technology is changing, and it seems to be overwhelming our news outlets abilities to be truth/fact filters so that (mostly) only facts get through in their work. Bloggers/twitterers/FBers, etc, are filling the gap, and Max is merely suggesting how they might do so better, for their own benefit.

Bob Bateman

Who gives a crap? We do! Those who don’t want to take anyone at their word, at face value. Obviously you have something to lose from people who lack the desired level of gullibility.

FREE YOUR MIND NOW!

(…but first, learn how to write)

In the past few days, I’ve seen photos of the Bam earthquake spread around claiming to be photos of the past few days. Photos, names, bank statements and addresses of people are emailed to us, and the emails claim these names belong to the militias and that they will soon be killed.

I am one of those protesters. Don’t we claim to be fighting fraud, illegitimacy, LIES?
If we don’t hold ourselves leagues MORE responsible than those we are claiming to fight we’ve become the good ol’ pigs of the farm already. Long before the battle has even been fought, won or lost.

FREE IRAN NOW!!!

If they had a shred of decency, none of these other outlets would have been relevant to begin with.