Poynter
Poynter Research: Americans are more trusting of the media in 2017—but there’s a catch
In this first year in the Age Of Trump, favorable public opinion about the news media has gone up. According to a new report from Poynter, 49% of the public has at least a “fair amount” of trust and confidence in the U.S. media, which is an uptick from the year before. Though this sounds good, when Poynter analyzed this data further, it showed some alarming trends. Specifically, this uptick in trust is very polarized, and represents a resurgence of media trust from people on the left, while those on the right continue to show little confidence in the press.
US Press Freedom Tracker will keep tabs on the safety of journalists in America
A coalition of advocacy organizations including the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Index on Censorship have settled on a name for their forthcoming press freedom website, and a journalist to lead it. Peter Sterne, who has covered digital and print media for Politico since 2014, will spearhead US Press Freedom Tracker, a site dedicated to compiling and maintaining a database of press freedom incidents in the United States. Sterne, who will begin as a reporter for the Freedom of the Press Foundation on May 1, will collect information on journalist arrests, border stops, searches and seizures, leak prosecutions and subpoenas demanding that reporters testify on their confidential sources. It is hoped this data will then be cited in official reports, news stories, legal briefs and even congressional testimony, Sterne said.
Why President Trump still plays nice with elite media
[Commentary] So when President Donald Trump raised the white flag on Obamacare March 24, did he pick up the phone and gave the exclusive to Breitbart, The Daily Caller or LifeZette? Nope. He called reporters at The Washington Post and The New York Times. But you'd have thought that reaching out to ideological sympathizers was inevitable, given the journalistic sturm und drang about the incursions of right-leaning media in these early days of a new Washington era. Well, any chronicle of access will need to include the capital's longtime home teams, with March 24's carefully served bulletins from the Trump News Service suggesting how a mix of old media clout, old-fashioned journalistic quality and Trump's own Queens-bred craving to be accepted by various establishments may be more enduring than many assume. As Bill Kristol, founder of The Weekly Standard, put it about Trump: "He's always understood the power of and craved acceptance by the mainstream media." Adds Rich Lowry, editor of National Review: "He hates the mainstream media — and loves the mainstream media. No president has ever followed his news coverage so closely or cared about it so much."
Today in Media History: Edward R. Murrow investigated Joe McCarthy on ‘See It Now’
On March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow and his CBS news program, “See It Now,” examined Senator Joseph McCarthy's record and anti-communist methods.The program is often remembered for these words: "This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."
Is it time for a new definition of local news?
A Q&A with Christopher Ali, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. Ali spoke with Poynter over e-mail about why we should care about regulation, what local means these days and what we can learn from his other research.
In the interview, Ali says, "A couple of things need to change if we are really serious about local media in the 21st century. First and foremost, we need to have a more inclusive conversation on the issue of local media. Right now, the conversation, if it takes place at all, seems confined to the major industry players like Comcast or the National Association of Broadcasters. Public and community media organizations are certainly left out, as are indigenous and ethnolinguistic media organizations (like Telemundo or Univision). We need to broaden who is given a seat at the table and who is considered a policy actor. Second, we need to think long and hard about what it means to be local in the digital age and the communication technologies that provide local media. Third, we need to reconsider how we fund and support local media, especially local news. Lastly, in terms of policy, I strongly believe that we need a unified and comprehensive local media policy framework going forward."
Press freedom organizations are teaming up to start a news site
Later in 2017, a coalition of organizations including the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, the Knight First Amendment Center and the Index on Censorship will launch an as-yet unnamed news site to track press freedom violations in the United States. The site will not only track incidents spurred by the Trump administration, but his election and anti-press rhetoric was a major catalyst in its founding.
The site, which is slated to launch sometime in the next two to three months, will have one full-time reporter and feature research and analysis from the partner organizations. CPJ is funding the reporting position (they're fresh from a fundraising bump), and the Freedom of the Press Foundation is contributing the site's development work. The project was conceived at a meeting of those organizations about a month ago, said Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. They discussed the lack of a comprehensive database for "press freedom incidents" in the United States — arrests of journalists, border security shakedowns and equipment confiscation.
Study says Fox News may ‘harden conservative views’ of its audience
A Public Religion Research Institute/Brookings Institute study of Americans’ views on immigration reform finds that people’s media choices have a strong effect on their beliefs.
In fact, the study finds, Fox News may “reinforce and perhaps harden conservative views.” 60 percent of Republicans who trust Fox News most say immigrants “Burden our country because they take our jobs, housing, and health care.” 38 percent of Republicans who trust other news sources most say the same thing.
A quarter of all Americans said Fox News was their most trusted TV news source -- the highest rating for any TV news concern. The research also found that Jon Stewart may not be the most trusted man in news, but he's more trusted than MSNBC.
CIR raises funds for investigation into ‘neighborhood NSA’
The Center for Investigative Reporting hopes to raise $25,000 to report on surveillance by local authorities, a practice speeded by technological improvements and federal money.
Subscribers get benefits on a sliding scale -- from a tote bag and a tour of CIR’s newsroom if you donate $350 to email alerts when new stories go up if you pledge $5 per month.
Beacon, which is handling fundraising for the series, refers to those alerts as “subscriptions,” but CIR spokesperson Lisa Cohen tells Poynter any stories that come from this project will be available on the CIR website, and “CIR will be working with partners as the stories warrant,” Cohen writes.
“During the past year, we’ve learned a lot about the federal government’s surveillance program, but we still know very little about how local police collect and mine data,” CIR reporter Amanda Pike says in a video accompanying the pitch.
If the project gets funded, CIR says it will use the money to secure public records, travel around the country reporting and “Create community engagement events where local citizens can learn about and debate the rise of surveillance.”
Journalism needs the right skills to survive
Journalists lag behind educators and others in rating the importance of multimedia and other digital storytelling skills.
That finding is the result of new research from The Poynter Institute, which shows a wide divergence between professionals and educators in their thinking on the importance of core journalism skills, especially those skills that are essential for mastering new methods of gathering and delivering news and information.
The Core Skills for the Future of Journalism report raises the puzzling question as to why the professionals who responded to the survey don’t rate the importance of multimedia skills in today’s visual, multiplatform media landscape as highly as educators, students and independent journalists. Educators who responded also value knowledge about the business of media and the larger media landscape much higher than journalists working in media organizations. And, to a greater degree than professionals, educators appear to recognize the value of key newsgathering skills that have become more essential in the digital age, such as the ability to analyze and synthesize large amounts of data.
Poynter’s Future of Journalism Competencies survey identified 37 key skills or attributes and knowledge areas. The survey asked professionals, educators and students to rate the importance of those skills, attributes and knowledge areas for beginning journalists as they look toward careers in the digital and mobile age.