Searching News: More and More Difficult
July 10, 2014
An outfit called the Washington Examiner printed “Censorship: 38 Journalism Groups Slam Obama’s Politically-Driven Suppression of News.’” Stories that talk about censorship are difficult to peg on the white board of online information. True, I have noticed that certain documents once easily findable in www.usa.gov have been increasingly difficult to locate. My touchstone example is information about the US government’s RAC, MIC, and ZPIC programs to combat alleged Medicare non compliance. I have stumbled across other examples when querying the Department of Energy’s Web site with routine queries I used when DOE was a cheerleader for the Autonomy IDOL search system.
The “Politically Driven” article is somewhat different. The angle is that “real journalists”—presumably not the type of professionals working at entities like IDC—are not able to get information. The terms “media coverage” and “limiting access to top officials” make it clear that “real” journalists have some gripes; namely:
- Officials blocking reporters’ requests to talk to specific staff people.
- Excessive delays in answering interview requests that stretch past reporters’ deadlines.
- Officials conveying information “on background” — refusing to give reporters what should be public information unless they agree not to say who is speaking.
- Federal agencies blackballing reporters who write critically of them.
The article points to a “survey” in which “40 percent of public affairs officers admitted they blocked certain reporters because they did not like what they wrote.” Yep, a survey, similar to those cited by some consultancies to “prove” that something is really, really true.
The article concludes with a rousing call to action:
SPJ’s Cuillier told Secrets, “I feel this excessive message management and information control are caused by the professionalization of PR in the bureaucracy — in all levels of government.” And, he added, “It is up to journalists — and citizens — to push back against this force. Hard!”
I find this an interesting statement. What does “push back” mean? If I put on my semantic analysis hat, I can list possible meanings for “push back.”
The point is that news is shaped, sometimes gently, sometimes firmly. In order to determine what is accurate, one must work quite hard. The notion that an individual can ferret out specifics of a particular event by gaining easy access, walking halls, or just showing up flies in the face of my experience.
I have learned that misinformation, disinformation, and reformation are the common currency of professionals today. Forget the problem with US government bureaucracies. These operations survive changes in administration, budget shifts, and policy changes.
Focus instead on individuals who take information, put their name on it, reshape it, and use it to further a narrow agenda. I emphasize in my lectures for the intelligence community that figuring out what is “accurate” is getting more and more difficult.
We are in the grip of a cultural shift in information. Recent examples that make the magnitude of the “accuracy” challenge may be found in these examples:
ITEM: A Google executive dies and is described as a family man as a factoid in an article about a heroin overdose, a person of alleged ill repute, and a yacht. See “Did She Kill Before?”
ITEM: A fellow with a fascinating work history puts his name on work done by the ArnoldIT team, sells it for $3,500 a whack on Amazon, and ignores my requests for payment. The person appears to be David Schubmehl, employed by the consulting and publishing firm IDC. Here’s the Amazon listing for my work with my name and that of two of my researchers. Seems just fine, right? I find this shaping of my information interesting because I have not given permission for this material to be sold on Amazon. But who cares about a 70 year old getting trampled by the “real” professionals?
ITEM: WN.com search results for th3 query “Brazil Riots 2014.” A lack of information about the events after Brazil’s loss in Rio flies in the face of the alleged robberies and police actions. See http://wn.com/brazil_riots_2014. Where’s the information, WN.com.
Net net: Anyone who wants accurate information has to work the old fashioned way. Interviews, research, reading, and compilation of factoids from various sources. I am not sure a fuzzy “push back” will have much impact in our present information environment.
For short cuts, one can ask a reporter on the US government beat, the editor at WN.com, or the very, very happy David Schubmehl, research director, where he analyzes the future and surfs on my team’s research.
Exciting times when “real” pros want easy access, a hop over the negative, and a free ride to expertise.
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2014
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