I suppose if I spent ages thinking about it, I could find a spurious thread linking three stories that caught my eye over the last few days, but in truth there is none, except that they update matters which I have already discussed on this blog. (Oh, all right then, they’re all about different aspects of freedom of expression: the first shows that copyright should not prevent academic discussion; the second shows that hecklers should not have a veto; and the third is about broadcasting regulation).
First, I had noted the proclivity of the estate of James Joyce to be vigorous in defence of its copyrights; but it lost a recent case and now has agreed to pay quite substantial costs as a consequence:
The James Joyce Estate has agreed to pay $240,000 (€164,000) in legal costs incurred by an American academic following a long-running copyright dispute between the two sides. The settlement brings to an end a legal saga that pre-dates the publication in 2003 of a controversial biography of Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, written by Stanford University academic Carol Shloss. …
The proposed visit of the controversial historian David Irving to the NUI, Galway Literary & Debating Society has been cancelled. In a statement the Lit & Deb said the cancellation was “due to security concerns and restrictions imposed by the university authorities”. …
I’ve just discovered the wonderful new(ish) blog Human Rights in Ireland, a group blog about – well, the clue is in the name – human rights issues in Ireland and Irish scholarship about human rights more generally. With apologies for the nkotb title, I can say without fear of contradiction that there’s lots of great stuff there; one piece in particular caught my eye, by Fiona de Londras (pictured above left):
In Ireland we are quite accustomed to our freedom of expression being significantly limited where that freedom is abused. This results from the express limitations in both Bunreacht na hÉireann (the Irish Constitution) and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. International law also prohibits propaganda to war as our colleague Michael Kearney has explained and examined in detail in his bookThe Prohibition of Propaganda for War in International Law(2007, OUP). In the United States, however, the constitutional protection of free speech (First Amendment), while not absolute, is certainly broader than is the case in Ireland or indeed under the ECHR. This makes the appeal argument by counsel for Al Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul—the only person currently in Guantánamo Bay to have been convicted of an offence relating to the ‘War on Terrorism’—all the more interesting. …
If you want to know more about the Irish position on this issue, I’ve blogged about it briefly in a post on Terrorism and Speech as well as in my more general posts on Sedition. If you want to know more about the argument that counsel for al Bahlul is making, read all about it in the remainder of Fiona’s post. Welcome to the Blawg O’Sphere, Human Rights in Ireland – I am certain that you will rapidly establish yourself as the pre-eminent online forum for discussion of human rights issues in Ireland and abroad. Go n-éirí go brea leis an dea-obair!
There is a wonderful essay by MichaelMassing in the current edition of the New York Review of Books about the deepening relationship between print and online journalism. In form, it’s a review of Eric Boehlert Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press (Free Press | Amazon), which traces the online events that affected the 2008 presidential campaign and reveals the stories of the internet activists who made them all possible, and Bill Wasik And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture (Viking | Amazon), which seeks to demonstrate that the rise of the internet means that our culture is now created from the ground up. Common to both books is the argument that a small online quiver can easily become a massive earthquake in the real world. In fact, Massing’s piece is a fascinating assessment of the state of journalism on the internet, filled with references to all sorts of blogs, but which only tangentially touches on Boehlert’s and Wasik’s book. In that, I suppose, it’s much more like a long blogpost than a traditional book review.
Indeed, Massing’s piece almost resembles a blogpost in another way: the online version has links to many of the online sources referred to in the piece, a practice other publications could adopt, to save me having to add links when I quote paragraphs from newspaper websites – it is this kind of added value that makes online reporting different from the paper kind, and the sooner newspapers realise that the online version is not simply the text of the paper version, the better. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that the online version replace the paper version – indeed, I read the paper version of the article first – just that online versions should fulfill their potential. And anyway, the Review’s practice of putting a list of links at the start of the article rather than embedding them in the text only goes half way, so in the extracts below, I’ve still had to add the links.
The core of his argument is in this extract (though the whole thing is well worth reading, even on paper, over a cup of coffee):
In an online chat with readers earlier this year, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller deplored the “diminishing supply of quality journalism” at a time of “growing demand.” … Keller’s lament—one of a steady chorus rising from the industry—contains a feature common to many of them: a put-down of the Web and the bloggers who regularly comment on Web sites. …
This image of the Internet as parasite has some foundation. Without the vital news-gathering performed by established institutions, many Web sites would sputter and die. In their sweep and scorn, however, such statements seem as outdated as they are defensive. Over the past few months alone, a remarkable amount of original, exciting, and creative (if also chaotic and maddening) material has appeared on the Internet. The practice of journalism, far from being leeched by the Web, is being reinvented there, with a variety of fascinating experiments in the gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. And unless the editors and executives at our top papers begin to take note, they will hasten their own demise.
Massing traces the history of journalistic blogging from the Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan “snip-it-and-comment approach”, via blogs that not only comment on the news but also break it, to “an emerging new breed of ‘hybrids,’ schooled in both the practices of print journalism and the uses of cyberspace” as well as to online commentators and citizen-journalists (though he uses neither of these terms); the internet offers a podium to those
… of all ages and backgrounds who are flush with ideas but lack the means to transmit them. A good example is Marcy Wheeler, … [who] first began blogging in 2004, gaining notice for her posts on the Valerie Plame leak case; in early 2007 she “liveblogged” the Lewis Libby trial. Later that year, after giving up her consulting job, she began blogging full-time for FireDogLake …
“The idea that our work is parasitical is farcical,” Wheeler told me by phone. “There’s a lot of good, original work in the blogosphere. Half of all journalists look at the blogosphere when working on a story.” At the same time, she said, “I’m happy to admit I’m still utterly reliant on journalists …” … “We ought to be talking about a symbiotic rather than a parasitical relationship,” she told me. What disturbs bloggers, she added, are those journalists who reside in “the Village”—shorthand, she said, “for the compliant, unquestioning, conventional wisdom that comes out of Washington. …”.
The blogosphere, by contrast, has proven especially attractive to those who, despite having specialized knowledge about a subject, have little access to the nation’s Op-Ed pages. … Beyond such individual sites, the Web has helped open up entire subjects that were once off-limits to the press. …
But Massing admits that it’s not all roses here in the world of electrons and computer screens; and this allows him a paragraph each on the books putatively under review. First, bloggers often reject the attempts at “balance” that are made by mainstream print publications, though of course
… it’s their willingness to dispense with such conventions that makes the blogosphere a lively and bracing place. This is nowhere more apparent than in the work of Glenn Greenwald. A lawyer and former litigator, Greenwald is a relative newcomer to blogging, having begun only in December 2005, but as Eric Boehlert notes in his well-researched but somewhat breathless Bloggers on the Bus, within six months of his debut he “had ascended to an unofficial leadership position within the blogosphere.” In contrast to the short, punchy posts favored by most bloggers, Greenwald offers a single daily essay of two thousand to three thousand words. In each, he draws on extensive research, amasses a daunting array of facts, and, as Boehlert puts it, builds his case “much like an attorney does.”
Second, Massing quite rightly acknowledges
… some of the more troubling features of the journalism taking shape on the Web. The polemical excesses for which the blogosphere is known remain real. In And Then There’s This, an impressionistic account of the viral culture on the Internet, Bill Wasik describes how “the network of political blogs, through a feedback loop among bloggers and readers,” has produced a machine that supplies the reader with “prefiltered information” supporting his or her own views. According to one study cited by Wasik, 85 percent of blog links were to other blogs of the same political inclination, “with almost no blog showing any particular respect for any blog on the other side.” …
Finally, the Internet remains a hothouse for rumors, distortions, and fabrications. … For all these problems, the Web is currently home to all kinds of intriguing experiments … [which t]aken together … suggest a fundamental change taking place in the world of news.
Massing’s piece offers insights into where this change has come from as well as tantalising glimpses of where it might be going. The key point is that, whilst the world of print journalism may not be dieing, it will need to rejuvenate if it is to thrive. How it responds to that challenge will be interesting. And remember, as it does, please embed those links!
On the top right hand corner of a cover of Hot Press (pictured left) runs a quote from the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), BrianCowen:
Those paintings didn’t bother me
It is a teaser for a full interview with Jason O’Toole in which Cowen talks about the current economic crisis and his party’s electoral prospects. This is what he said about those paintings:
Do you read any of the political blogs written about you and your government?
No, I don’t. I’ve been too busy trying to do my job.
Do you think the recent controversy over the painting was blown out of proportion?
I made no comment about it at the time. As far as I was concerned, it was obviously a stunt. I know some people thought it wasn’t in great taste, but I just stayed out of it. I have a thick enough political skin at this stage – formed over the 25 years I’ve been in this business – not to be bothered by something like that.
Silvio Berlusconi and Mara Carfagna, though not by Filippo Panseca
Yesterday’s Times Online has a short piece which begins [with added links]
A scarf is the only thing protecting the modesty of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, in a painting of him and his Minister for Equal Opportunities, Mara Carfagna, 32, a former topless model, as angels. The work by Filippo Panseca is in a show at Savona on the Italian Riviera. Mr Panseca, 69, said that he wanted to pay tribute to the Prime Minister, 72, in the exhibition, which also includes a painting in similar style of Mr Berlusconi’s wife Veronica Lario.
Berlusconi bought the paintings he would donate the money to the earthquake victims of Abruzzo. Mr Berlusconi has yet to comment. But he seems unlikely to buy the pictures: last year, he censored a bare nipple in a copy of a renaissance painting hung in the government press room.
More seriously, though, it seems that 144 people complained to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission about RTÉ’s coverage, 9 about the original report, and 135 about the apology; and Suzy has posted a copy of RTÉs response to the BCC regarding those complaints. In essence, RTÉ’s position is that the original story was not a breach of taste and decency; whilst the apology was not a breach of objectivity. But this is inconsistent. As Clockwork Chartophylax points out
Either the original report was offensive and required an apology, or it was inoffensive and the apology was unnecessary and only made to avoid angering the Taoiseach, which is a clear failure of objectivity and impartiality. RTE management can’t have it both ways.
While we await the BCC’s reply, perhaps Messrs Cowen and Berlusconi might have friends visiting Iowa in the near future? If they do, they might receive an interesting present: a copy of Bill that seeks to prohibit political cartoons (at least in some election contexts) (see Volokh here and here, and Rick Hasen; hat tip: Media Law Prof Blog). Meanwhile, in an echo of my speculation about whether the caricatures constitute seditious libel, a Thai blogger has been sentenced to ten years imprisonment after pleading guilty under Thailand’s ugly lèse-majesté laws – his crime was to have posted anti-monarchy pictures and comments on his blog, and two journalists in the Ivory Coast have been convicted of “offending the head of state” and fined 20 million CFA francs (US$40,500 dollars) each.
The Cowengatecontroversy certainly caught the imagination this week; and, by way of update to my earlierposts on the topic, I’ve collected some more links about the affair below. Perusing the coverage in print, broadcast, and online, a question has repeatedly occurred to me: for all that there was online outrage, how much of it was reflected in the print or broadcast media? My impression is that whilst online commentary reflected and often relied upon the print or broadcast media, there was (by and large) very little traffic the other way. Is this a fair assessment? Answers, please, in the comments below.
[The remainder of the post is another compendium of links relating to the Cowengate controversy]. Read the rest of this entry »
Suzy must get the prize for popularising the best political coinage of the day, for – so far as I can see – it is she who has run with the name “Cowengate” for the sturm und drang surrounding satirical portraits of the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), BrianCowen. In a piece of guerrilla artistry as ingenious as the coinage Suzy has popularised, caricatures of Mr Cowen were anonymously hung on the walls of the National Gallery of Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy. Once they were discovered, they were removed, but not before they had garnered sufficient publicity for RTÉ (Raidio Telefís Éireann, the national state broadcaster) to broadcast a story about them on the flagship 9:00pm television news programme.
It has been the occasion for lots of bad puns and some embarrassment on the part of the Taoiseach, the Gallery and the Academy, but in the ordinary course of things, the story should have blown over after about 48hours. However, things then took two turns for the worse. First, RTÉ apologised to Mr Cowen and his family or for any disrespect shown to the office of Taoiseach by their broadcast. Second, when the radio station Today fm covered the story, the Gardaí (the police) arrived at the station asking that an email with the artist’s details be handed over (.wav). Leaving the obvious jokes aside (because they have all been done better elsewhere), these two quite sinister developments raise some profound questions about freedom of expression in Ireland. Read the rest of this entry »
I suppose if I spent ages thinking about it, I could find a spurious thread linking three stories that caught my eye over the last few days, but in truth there is none, except that they update matters which I have already discussed on this blog. (Oh, all right then, they’re all about different aspects of freedom of expression: the first shows that copyright should not prevent academic discussion; the second shows that hecklers should not have a veto; and the third is about broadcasting regulation).
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