Category: News Media

Thus far only Sirius listeners have had access to good, 24-hour Catholic sattelite radio. But now

XM SATELLITE RADIO BROADCASTS LIVE
REPORTS FROM VATICAN CITY AND SPECIAL PROGRAMS ABOUT POPE JOHN PAUL II
ON XM LIVE (XM CHANNEL 200)

Excerpt:

Washington D.C.,
April 05, 2005
—
XM Satellite Radio, the nation’s leading provider of satellite radio
with more than 3.77 million subscribers, is carrying live reports from
Vatican City and special programs about Pope John Paul II from the
Eternal Word Television Network/Global Catholic Network and Ave Maria
Radio on XM Live (XM Channel 200).

This is another limited time thing, but those of y’all who are X-M listeners might want to take the occasion to talk to X-M and tell them that you’d like more of the same in the future after the new pope is elected.

GET THE STORY.

There a Minnesota Public Radio show (aired in the U.S. and Canada) called "Future Tense," which appears to have nothing to do with a forthcoming proliferation of caffeinated beverages.

Instead, it’s about technology.

Yesterday (which I suppose would be "Past Tense" from a "Present Tense" point of view), "Future Tense" interviewed me about how the death of John Paul II is being received in cyberspace and, in particular, on the catholic.com web forums.

Now that "Future Tense" is "Present Tense" (or something like that), they tell me the show should be posted for you listening pleasure to their website

WHICH IS HERE.

You can also

CHECK OUT THE JOHN PAUL II FORUM AT CATHOLIC.COM.

There a Minnesota Public Radio show (aired in the U.S. and Canada) called "Future Tense," which appears to have nothing to do with a forthcoming proliferation of caffeinated beverages.

Instead, it’s about technology.

Yesterday (which I suppose would be "Past Tense" from a "Present Tense" point of view), "Future Tense" interviewed me about how the death of John Paul II is being received in cyberspace and, in particular, on the catholic.com web forums.

Now that "Future Tense" is "Present Tense" (or something like that), they tell me the show should be posted for you listening pleasure to their website

WHICH IS HERE.

You can also

CHECK OUT THE JOHN PAUL II FORUM AT CATHOLIC.COM.

They’re telling me now that I’m supposed to be on Fox News again with Shepherd Smith between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern today.

UPDATE: I’m told the "hit time" for my appearance is approx. 7:40 p.m. Eastern.

UPDATE 2: Ed Peters, Mark Brumley, and Tim O’Donnell are supposed to be on Geraldo at Large (starts at 10 11 p.m. Eastern).

UPDATE: Ed Peters is supposed to be on Fox & Friends at 7:45 a.m. Eastern Sunday.

I’m s’pposed to be on Fox News (by phone) at 3:00 a.m. Eastern Sunday, which will be warped in some time zones by the Spring Forward effect physicists have been saying os much about in recent years.

For those in California, I’m was on the local 24-hour CBS news radio station at 3:10 p.m. local time Saturday. I’m also told they’ll be re-running this interview periodically, but I don’t have info on when or how often.

LINK: http://www.knx1070.com/

Years ago when I was doing game design work, I had an idea for a game that I never ran but which I think could have been a lot of fun. The idea was this: A game in which the characters play gung-ho, gonzo TV journalists in a "go anywhere, do anything, get the news at any cost" near-future, semi-post-apocalyptic competitive environment modelled after Edison Carter’s "What I Want To Know" show on Max Headroom.

The title for the game would have been Action News!

One of the gimmics of the news trade in this game would be that the networks would fake the impression that they have studios all over the place by just taking their cameras from town to town, printing up a computerized background with the name of the local city, and pretending that they were "Here at our Podunk Bureau . . . "

In actuality, something like this exists in real life, and I got to sit in such a virtual bureau last night.

When I got a call to appear on Fox News, I assumed that I’d be driving down to the local Fox affiliate, where I’ve appeared before, and that the local station would do the uplink to the network.

Not so.

Instead, the network sent a limo for me (which made it like the second time in my life I’ve ever ridden in a limo), which was a good thing as finding the right place to go at 1 a.m. would not have been a fun thing for me. The right place to go also was not the local Fox affiliate. It was a virtual bureau.

These things exist in every city of significant size. They’re how networks get in-studio interviews with folks in cities that aren’t their major news hubs. I’d known about them, but I’d never been in one before.

The limo guy drove me downtown while I quizzed him about his work. (He was a real nice guy.) When we found the address, we first went past it because it looked like an abandoned walk-down storefront business.

In reality, it was a hole-in-the-wall virtual studio crammed with technical doodads. It had an entry way with a card table with a wrench and socket set sitting on it. A hallway filled with posters that the famous people who’d come there had signed. A bathroom with a folding chair and big mirror for getting hair and make-up right. A dark studio room with an incredibly short office chair, camera, lights, and various backgrounds that could be put behind the guest (including a massive TV for animated backgrounds). And it had an "other" room for the guest and cameraman to wait in where there were lots of rumpled newspapers and electronics and computer equipment.

There was just one cameraman. He was the only guy there. He wasn’t even the usual cameraman since it was the usual cameraman’s birthday. But he was a real nice guy and he got us hooked up to Fox in New York just fine.

The virtual studio, y’see, doesn’t just serve one network. They’s the local San Diego contact point for any national cable show that needs a live remote guest hookup. The cameraman told me they’d done Larry King there, they did a bunch for Fox News there, and the other folks. In fact, I realized, I was sitting in the same chair Sean Hannity had been sitting in a week or so ago, when I’d seen him sitting against the same pull-down San Diego night time skyline background I was now sitting in front of.

At least on Fox (I don’t know about other networks) the attitude toward the pope’s passing has, overall, been respectful and wanting to celebrate the holy father and many of the things he’s done, even though they do want to ask those "probing" politically-oriented questions.

They got me wired up with a mic and an earpiece and I listened as various folks in New York talked to me, asked me questions (usually whether I could hear them), and handed me electronically from one department to another while we waited for the segment I was to be on to roll around.

It did. I got asked several questions by the host, who also talked to Tim Gray by phone. (You mean I could have stayed home and phoned this in instead of coming down after midnight???) I got asked one question I particularly wanted to be asked (the gist of which was "Is the pope a hidebound conservative?", letting me have the opportunity to contrast what is essential from non-essential in the faith and characterizing John Paul II’s approach as "faithful openness").

And then it was all over.

The cameraman unhooked me, signed off to New York, I called the limo driver to come pick me up, and a few minutes later I was on my way home.

The limo guy was particularly jazzed by the whole experience. He’d gone back to headquarters while I was waiting to go on the air and he caught my segment on TV. He thought I came across as very calm and in control of what I wanted to say. He had known I was going to be on TV, but something about seeing it make it click for him, and I was tickled at how excited he was afterward. Said getting to meet a "celebrity" had made his night.

I just chuckled at that and rolled my eyes in the dark.

But the experience brought back memories of Action News!

The scripts that the news media uses to write its stories are so powerful that the absence of a script can cause a story to go completely unreported, even if it is quite important. The creation of a new script can then cause a story to take off like wildfire.

One such script is the "crisis cluster" script. It aggregates together multiple things of a disturbing nature and then queries why they are happening, asking if the cluster amounts to a crisis of some kind.

That’s what happened with the priest scandal in 2002. Prior cases of priest abusers had percolated through the press sufficiently that eventually reporters connected the dots and wrote an unwritten script into which the facts of new cases could be poured. Then they noticed a cluster of these cases and poured those into the "crisis cluster" script, whereupon they hyped the story to enormous proportions.

Now: The story was real. Dioceses had been grossly delinquent in their handling of such cases. But if you remember the madness of those days, every priest every priest was being looked at as a potential pedophile. There were reports of mothers were shielding their children from priests as they walked down the street, as if they were about to pounce on their children in public. That was simply disproportionate. Nor did the media get all of its facts right in reporting the story. (The homosexuality aspect was notably underplayed, as was the fact that it was ephebophilia, not pedophilia, that was the larger issue.)

It’s interesting to see what gets the "crisis cluster" treatment and what doesn’t. Some things that have include:

• School shootings
• Workplace shootings
• Shootings by postal employees

Some things that haven’t yet but one day might be given such treatment include:

• School teachers who have sex with students
• Protestant ministers who have sex with minors
• Priests who have had sex with parishioners

Incidentally, note the two themes running through these crisis clusters: sex and death.

Here’s another things that hasn’t received crisis cluster treatment:

MOTHERS WHO MURDER THEIR CHILDREN.

As the author of the piece notes, a notible cluster of mothers murdering their children occurred last month, but the MSM didn’t put the pieces together and do a crisis cluster story. He concludes:

As we can see, the phenomena of clusters is in many ways an artificial
one created and perpetuated by the news media. The facts are right
there. Are we truly in the midst of an epidemic of hideous abuse by
murderous mothers? Or is this just an unusually bloody snapshot of
randomly-distributed killings? Or is this pattern actually a sign that
mothers abuse and kill their children more often than most people
realize? You’ll have to decide for yourself; the news media won’t tell
you.

Earlier today I blogged about the scripts that the news media uses to write it stories. It’s interesting when you deal with reporters on a regular basis, as you get a clear sense of what elements they’re trying to put together in order to have a story. Without those elements, the story won’t go.

F’rinstance: The A-#1 element that has to be in the story is that there has to be something that’s just happened. If it didn’t just happen, even if it’s an otherwise interesting story, then there is no story to the reporter. This was clear, for example, when I was called by a TV reporter from Texas who wanted to do a story about our booklet critiquing The Da Vinci Code. She really liked the booklet and thought it would make a good story–except for one thing: The booklet had been released a few months ago and thus there was nothing "new" for the story. After querying me several different ways to find out if there was anything that could be pitched with a "This just happened!" angle, she concluded that an essential element of the story was missing and it never got done.

Without a "This just happened!" angle then, even if the story is frightfully important due to its lingering effects, the media won’t run with it. I suppose that they’re afraid to excitedly tell a story with no new tidbit and then have others look at them and say "You just discover this or something?"–the way kids will sometimes tell a joke only to have another kid disgustedly say "You just heard that?" The "This just happened!" tidbit gives them a shield against that happening.

(And yes, before someone points it out, "That’s why they call it ‘news.’")

Another nigh-onto-essential element in is controversy. While there are some stories that don’t involve controversy ("Exciting New Discovery!"), most do. I’ve dealt with a number of reporters who have called, asked for perspective on something, and then when I give it to them they disappointedly say things like "I’m having trouble seeing where the controversy is here." That may be because There Isn’t One or because I refuse to be drawn into one. If that doesn’t happen, the story doesn’t go. It gets spiked.

That’s what happened once last year with the Voters Guide. I got a
call from a reporter whose local bishop (allegedly) had said that the
Voters Guide wasn’t to be used in his diocese, and he wanted my
"reaction" to that.

I told him (a) that I didn’t have any knowledge of the bishop having
said this and I don’t comment on situations where I haven’t verified
the facts and (b) it’s up to others to decide for themselves whether
they want to use the Voters Guide or not.

This, however, wasn’t good enough. The reporter had scented a
potential controversy and was trying to whip one up in order to get a
story he could write. What he wanted to happen was for him to call me
up, orally tell me what the bishop had said without giving me any
proof, get me emotionally worked up, and then get some harshly-worded
negative reaction that he could print in order to have a typical
"conflict between two parties" story.

Note also: He wasn’t reporting the news. He was trying to create the news (i.e., stirring up a controversy where there was none).

I wouldn’t take the bait.

No matter how many different ways he tried asking the question, I
kept reiterating my answer, refusing to get mad or say anything
negative about the bishop.

This caused the reporter to get more and more mad.

Finally, he huffily said, "Well! If that’s the way you feel, maybe we don’t write about this at all!"

Which was fine by me.

Reporters are driven by "scripts" that tell them how to frame and write a story. These scripts, which aren’t (usually) written down (making it a paradox to call them "scripts") are templates into which reporters pour the facts of particular stories. I recently blogged about

ONE SUCH SCRIPT.

But there are others.

Reporters really need scripts. They often don’t know how to do their job without them, and they often try to impose them on stories where the facts are otherwise.

Just yesterday I was doing an interview with a local TV reporter who kept trying to frame an ecclesiastical issue in terms of the Church "gaining support" or "losing support" regarding a particular matter. I kept having to explain to him, "This is not a political matter. It’s not about gaining or losing support. It is about being faithful to historic Christian values."

What happens when a reporter comes across facts that don’t fit his script? One of several things. He may dig deeper to try to make the facts fit the script. That’s what was happening with the reporter who kept asking me politically-framed questions about the Church. He was trying to get the facts to fit the script he had in mind for the story.

If digging deeper doesn’t work, an unscrupulous reporter may simply make stuff up to get the story he wants.

But if he doesn’t go that route and the facts still don’t fit the script, he may simply spike the story.

P.J. O’Roarke suggests:

JOHN KERRY EFFECTIVELY ENDED HIS political career on February 28, 2005, during a little-noticed event at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

How’d he do that?

Addressing the audience of tame Democrats, Kerry explained his defeat. "There has been," he said, "a profound and negative change in the relationship of America’s media with the American people. . . . If 77 percent of the people who voted for George Bush on Election Day believed weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq–as they did–and 77 percent of the people who voted for him believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11–as they did–then something has happened in the way in which we are talking to each other and who is arbitrating the truth in American politics. . . . When fear is dominating the discussion and when there are false choices presented and there is no arbitrator, we have a problem."

America is not doctrinaire. It’s hard for an American politician to come up with an ideological position that is permanently unforgivable. Henry Wallace never quite managed, or George Wallace either. But Kerry’s done it. American free speech needs to be submitted to arbitration because Americans aren’t smart enough to have a First Amendment, and you can tell this is so, because Americans weren’t smart enough to vote for John Kerry.

(NOTE FOR FOLKS OVERSEAS AND MOST GRADUATES OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM: The First Amendment protects freedom of the press and freedom of speech, among other things.)

"We learned," Kerry continued, "that the mainstream media, over the course of the last year, did a pretty good job of discerning. But there’s a subculture and a sub-media that talks and keeps things going for entertainment purposes rather than for the flow of information. And that has a profound impact and undermines what we call the mainstream media of the country. And so the decision-making ability of the American electorate has been profoundly impacted as a consequence of that. The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

READ MORE.