Monthly Archives: January 2004

Journalism or Editorializing

This entry was posted in Journalism on by

In Part IV of his series Toward a Field Theory of Journalism Andrew Cline discusses the epistemology of journalism:

… and any answer I offer here is necessarily general and incomplete.
That said, we may observe that journalism operates with an objectivist epistemology: What is real is located in the material world and human actions within that world. What can be known are empirically verifiable phenomena. We are connected to the material world by our senses and certain faculties of the mind, which are capable of perceiving the world through sense impressions and then thinking about, and acting upon, these impressions.
Journalism’s challenge in this epistemology is to perceive the world correctly and then represent perceptions correctly through language.

This also seems to provide a good set of criteria for separating journalism from editorial opinion. While both often appear in the same publication journalism at least attempts the following:

Because it is empirically verifiable that humans disagree about events (our opinions), reporters collect data from “both sides” and present these data without comment, allowing readers to apply their own reasoning to discover the incorrect opinion versus the correct representation of events.

Editorial/opinion content attempts to substitute the writer’s reasoning for that of the reader.
One of our challenges as we apply our own reasoning to journalism is to evaluate the quality of the data being presented and to ascertain whether the data has been inappropriately passed through editorial/opinion based filters.
Yesterday’s post Orchestrating Emergencies suggests that the OMB/White House tend to do the latter rather then provide the citizenry with information that would meet journalistic standards.

Orchestrating Emergencies

This entry was posted in Regulation on by

Now this will really make me feel safer:

Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis.
The White House Office of Management and Budget is trying to gain final control over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies responsible for public health, safety and the environment.

Undoubtably this will lead to more results like this:

In the same release, a section that said, “Even at low levels, EPA considers asbestos hazardous in this situation” was deleted and replaced with a section that read, in part, “Short-term, low-level exposure of the type that might have been produced by the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings is unlikely to cause significant health effects.”

Do you really want Karl and w deciding on the language and timing of emergency press releases?
There might be a bit more merit to a few aspects of this part of the OMB proposal:

The OMB also wants to manage scientific and technical evaluations – known as peer reviews – of all major government rules, plans, proposed regulations and pronouncements.

I would not want OMB micro-managing peer reviews for each agency but it might be reasonable for them to set guidelines for the agencies to use. The guidelines should be consistent with standards and practices of the relevant scientific disciplines and should probably include a requirement something like: no more then 1/3 of the peer reviews can be done by scientists employed by businesses involved in the area being studied.
Via Metafilter.

Calendars

This entry was posted in Marketing Photography on by

You may have seen calendars of a more or less naughty variety hanging on the wall of your mechanic’s office or work area. Well, maybe not as these somewhat naughty ones may have been an artifact of the days when every service station had mechanics working in their garage.
The corporate mission of Pirelli is:

Pirelli’s business is centered on the key markets of Tyres, Energy Cables and Systems, Telecom Cables and Systems and Real Estate, in which we are among the world leaders and innovators.

You probably know them best from their “tyre” business. They have a marketing calendar.
And their 2004 calendar is not The Thing to all:

I must be getting old. There�s no way I would even bother to hang the latest Pirelli calender in my workshop.

Allan shares their September 2004 (NWF) picture as an example.
Looking at the calendars (there are a few years of back issues at the Pirelli site) makes me think that either Italian mechanics/cable layers have slightly different aesthetic bents then their US/Australian counterparts or Pirelli is targeting a different audience.
I think the calendar is pretty neat and while I couldn’t hang it in my work office I’d certainly consider hanging it in my home office.