Paul Holmes in negotiations with China’s associate foreign minister on the terms of Reuters’ coverage of China business sector. Source: China Consulate San Francisco.
Via e-mail: The Berkman Center’s Global Voices Online project carpets the bleachers with astroturf for a Reuters debate on United Nations reform:
In conjunction with Reuters, Global Voices are going to engage in conversation with the U.N.’s largest private donor, media mogul Ted Turner.
So this is the quid pro quo? Aside from featuring Reuters’ RSS feed on its site, that is. The “aggressive hand-raising” by shills in the audience should provide a glimpse of the extent to which GVO carries water for U.S. policy and Reuters’ business interests on this issue.
HOW TO JOIN US ONLINE: On Tuesday September 19th at 19:00 GMT (4pm New York time), Ted Turner will sit down with Reuters journalist Paul Holmes and conduct a conversation which will be webcast live online.
To be more precise, Holmes is Worldwide General Editor of Political and General News at Reuters, in charge of reforming its editorial standards and practices, and a former Jerusalem bureau chief, not a rank-and-file beat reporter.
That is significant because Reuters is a veritable poster child for the way in which senior editor-managers in the “new media” vein — let’s call them “content managers” rather than journalists, shall we? — are steadily diverging from the traditional journalistic standards defended by the rank and file — though for some reason you will never see Reuters holding a public debate about its own labor practices.
Holmes also seems to be a key man in whatever Reuters’ intentions for “citizen media” turns out to be, having made the rounds of quite a few blogging punditry panels since his appointment, such as this panel with Steve Rubel of Edelman Worldwide, which represents a number of foreign governments, I believe.
More detail:
At some point on Monday, on Globalvoicesonline.org, we will post the URL where you can watch the webcast and read more about the event.
HOW TO SHARE YOUR QUESTIONS AND VIEWS:
As you watch or listen, you can join the discussion by participating in a live online IRC chat at the #globalvoices channel (there will be a web chat client provided). I [Rebecca MacKinnon –Ed.] will be in the room, along with Caribbean editor Georgia Popplewell and Alice Backer, and the three of us will be raising our hands aggressively to ask questions on your behalf. Several of our regional editors and contributors have committed to be there as well, and will be blogging their views on the conversation both before, during, and after
HAVE MORE IMPACT BY BLOGGING:
A great way to help influence the conversation is by blogging your views on the subject before the event even starts. Please tell us what questions Paul Holmes ought to be asking Ted Turner, and what you think the conversation should focus on. When you write your blog post, please be sure to tag it with “gv-un” in Technorati and/or del.icio.us. Or share the link with us as trackback to this post, or paste it in the comments section of this post. After the event, let us know on your blog if you thought any of the ideas that came up made any sense to you, or if there were issues that weren’t raised but should have been, we will post the URL where you can watch the webcast and read more about the event.
Impact on whom?
HOW TO SHARE YOUR QUESTIONS AND VIEWS:
As you watch or listen, you can join the discussion by participating in a live online IRC chat at the #globalvoices channel (there will be a web chat client provided).
Can’t I ask questions on my own behalf?
Here is the text of the Reuters blurb announcing the event:
“As the United Nations General Assembly convenes in New York this September, Reuters invites you to glean insight into the United Nations. This Reuters Newsmaker features A Conversation with Ted Turner. Nearly a decade ago, Turner pledged to donate $1 billion through the UN Foundation for United Nations programs over a ten-year period. As that anniversary approaches, Paul Holmes, Reuters Political and General News Editor, will sit down with Turner to discuss his investment, his views of the current state of the United Nations, and what’s next for the often controversial organization. The audience will participate in the conversation through an open microphone session followed by a reception.”
Bring your most belligerent attitude:
Is the legendary “Mouth of the South” as good at listening to and conversing with people from around the world as he is at broadcasting his views?? Let’s put him to the test. It should be interesting.
What if we should happen to agree with some, if not all, of Turner’s views? I think the conversation should focus on the risk-reward equation in the Bush administration’s systematic assault on multilateral consensus-building as an alternative to unilateral gunboat cluster-bomb and willie-pete diplomacy, and the question, cui bono? And I submit, for purposes of debate, that this is the sort of thing Jaron Lanier had in mind when he observed:
The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?
Phrased less provocatively, we might ask: Why regard a a studio audience of digerati with a not widely disclosed common agenda, which it appears to have worked out with the moderator in advance, as a representative sample of “global public opinion”?
That is why I continue to think that GVO’s mission, to “curate and amplify global voices” — but above all to curate, and to amplify as an intrusive intermediary rather than as a faithful amanuensis — while it may be innovative, is hardly journalistic.
The New Market Machines 