“Don’t Buck the Trend”: Hearing Global Voices at the World Editors Forum

More than half of editors surveyed by the WEF worry most about business-side pressures as a threat to editorial independence. The message from Murdoch and McKinnon: Don’t worry! Be happy! Can your integrity build you a new swimming pool?

The year ahead: media pundits make their predictions: Georgia Popplewell of Global Voices Online forwards this to the readers mailing list (which I thought I unsubscribed from, since I generally do not feed my brain this nonsense):

This week our illustrious co-founder [Rebecca McKinnon] been wowing the crowds at the 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town. She’s featured in a video montage of excerpts from talks given at the Forum by various media pundits [see also "buckraker"] at journalism.co.uk. Check it out at [URL].

The trend is inexorable! Don’t buck the trend!

Video is high on everyone’s news development agenda at the moment so, not wanting to buck the trend, here is a round-up of predictions for the year ahead from five speakers at the 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town, South Africa yesterday.

What trend?

This is a typical GVO exercise in manufacturing consensus.

See also Reuters and the Global Content Management Contingent: Optimism About The Future!

A very similar PR push was made at the Interamerican Press Association in Cartagena recently: see The Latin American Press 2.0: The Echo Chamber Speaks Portunhol. As El Tiempo noted in the latter case:

74% of [Latin American] media companies plan to integrate their online and print news operations in the short, medium or long term. In fact, 4% are already intergrated. On 61% of news Web sites, the majority of content comes from the print edition. On only 27% is the content original to the Web site,” added the study.

“In the short, medium or long term”?

Yes, well, 100% of human beings face the prospect of death in the short, medium, or long term. Not all acknowledge that fact of Life 1.0, however.

Unlike integrated news operations, however, no human beings who are currently alive have already died.

Still, there is currently only a 4% difference between the two groups: The undead who walk among us and Latin American newsroom convergence implementers to date.

I would call that practically a technical tie.

So what “trend’ are we talking about here?

The speakers include Adam Pasick, Reuters virtual journalist in Second Life; Dave Panos, chief executive officer, Pluck; Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder, Global Voices; Facebook afficionado Richard Sambrook, director, BBC Global News; and Didier Pillet, director of information, Ouest-France (speaking in French with English translation overdubbed).

Reuters recently bought a hefty stake in Pluck. See Reuters: Now With More Blogs, At the Same Low, Low Price!

Sambrook, I believe it was — or an acolyte — was last seen at the Reuters Foundation at Oxford preaching the gospel of Impartiality 2.0.

An independent commission recently found the BBC in frequent and systematic violation of its own standards on impartiality in business reporting.

See also BBC 2.0: False Dilemma as a Way of Second Life.

Note the product endorsement for Facebook in the BBC news director’s capsule self-description.

Reuters global editor in chief David Schlesinger did another panel at the conference promoting Facebook — and Reuters blogged it.

I left a comment:

Internet penetration in Egypt was 7% in 2005, up from 0.7% in 2000. So how representative of Egyptian public sentiment generally are the Egyptian bloggerati? How many of the two million cemetery-dwellers of Cairo blog, for example?

I live in Brazil and read GVO’s coverage of the bloggerati there, and often find myself asking the same question. Often, the bloggers cited are actually columnists from local commercial press sources. In the most recent post, the coverage tracks blog reaction to the launch of a biography of a Globo pop star by a publishing house with business ties to Globo.

I don’t find this particularly enlightening or relevant to the task of hearing voices not normally heard from. I can already hear O Globo’s voices online just fine. And on the television, it’s hard to hear anything else.

Thank you, at any rate, for (properly) disclosing that Reuters partially funds Global Voices Online. Are there other business relationships among the panel members that we ought to know about? Or are these endorsements meant to be read as independent product reviews? And have you read the report of the independent commission on BBC business jouornalism and “impartiality”?

I’m an Orkut man myself — if you wanted to cover Brazilians online, for example, you would be better off setting up a Reuters bureau there rather than on the Ilha Brazil in Second Life.

But then I am 45, and live in Brazil, so I guess I am not the future, either!

When the global editor in chief engages in rewriting the press release, that’s not a good sign.

Reuters funds Global Voices Online.

Hello?

These people are behaving like a trade-show floor salesman at a novelty-item convention in Toledo, who would even let you date his sister if it meant closing the sale. Schlesinger practically raffled off a free iPod, for crying out loud.

See From The Sharper Ombudsman Catalogue for similar “self-fulfilling prophecy”-style salesmanship disguised as a genuine debate among diverse viewpoints. And this nasty little case from Brazil.

On the “don’t buck the trend” sales pitch — also known as “this revolution is irreversible” — see also At the WaPo, Less is Morley, where the Global Opinion Round-up editor delivers that message to a group of Mexican journalists at a Scripps-Howard seminar in Washington D.C. with State Dept. sponsorship.

“Promoting media democracy” or some such nonsense.

Classic Rebecca McKinnon moment: She appears on the PBS News Hour to slam Google for doing business in China. No representative of an opposing viewpoint is put on.

This at a time when a House subcommittee was borking Google in a hearing into why it aids and abets Maoist supervillains who harvest and sell the organs of Falun Gong members. And this at a time when Justice was trying to strongarm Google into turning over user data to government data miners.

Later, the No. 2 man at Berkman’s Open Economies Institute becomes Google’s chief lobbyist, and Google starts giving money to Berkman.

No more smear campaigns, like the proposed prosecution of Google for abetting child pornography which — according to CNET — Alberto Gonzalez conceded was actually “for terror.”

Funny how that works.

More in a bit.

Maybe I will do a highlighted video news release with screen crawl.

In the meantime, file under How to Change the World With Happy Talk.

The Berkman Center for the Intel-Inside Society’s Open Economies Project is funded by Accenture and Hewlett-Packard and lobbies multilateral trade and Internet governance bodies on their behalf. Its No. 2 left to become Google’s chief lobbyist. Click to zoom.

James Moore of Berkman’s OEI is a former consultant, lobbyist and author of nonsensical HBR agitprop. Click to zoom.