Both sides have claimed early victories in the case of documentarian Joe Berlinger vs. Chevron over access to the raw footage he shot for his expose “Crude” on Amazonian oil exploitation. I’ve blogged about the case and the filmmaking community reaction here.

On Thursday, the appeals judge ruled that Berlinger must turn over Crude footage that does not appear in any public version of the film’s release if it shows the counsel for the plaintiffs in the Lago Agrio class action lawsuit against Chevron or any experts or Ecuadorian government officials involved in that case.

This is bad news for the plaintiffs in that case, and likely good news for Chevron. Thankfully, the court also found that Chevron had to use the footage strictly for legal defense purposes and could not use if for marketing or other PR purposes. But whether this decision means that filmmakers can rest assured that their footage is safe from similar “takings” is still pretty unclear.

As for the case’s potential use as precedence on non-confidential information and journalist’s privilege in the future, Floyd Abrams, the famed First Amendment lawyer representing the media amici, cautioned that a ruling alone is not enough grounds to gauge its future applications. “We have to wait for the opinion of the court to see how they applied the law,” Abrams said. “It’s too early to tell where we’re going in this area.”

Berlinger himself seems both confident that the court will ultimately uphold the narrowing of the original request and the difficulty of any court appeal to prevail:

Most appeals are unsuccessful and the appealing party has a lot to prove. I was very relieved the court seemed to be sympathetic to my primary concerns about the case. Nobody expects the decision to be completely reversed. Having covered the legal process, I know there are times you want journalists to be compelled. But it can’t just be a fishing expedition. If I knew I had any evidence that was exculpatory, I would want the footage to be turned over. But only if the First Amendment standards of true relevancy and exclusive access of information are met.

This chain of newspapers is boldly striking out into digital territory that no other legacy media has ventured in (switching to free online tools and more), but I’m eager to consider how our station can adopt this idea:

Telling the Stories

A cornerstone of the Ben Franklin Project is the inclusion of everyone in the process. While project observers helped fill the toolshed, our audiences helped fill the websites and printed pages.

The Ben Franklin Project opens the process and allows everyone to participate at whatever level they are comfortable. Adhering to Journal Register’s digital first mission, the Ben Franklin Project will empower the audience – through use of free web-based tools (the list of which is still being finalized) – to determine on what stories our reporting and editing staff should be focusing their efforts. The audience – the news consumer – will no longer simply be the end user. By transforming the process the traditional “end user” will be put at the beginning of the process when she helps shape the newsgathering and participates in the newsgathering.

And the audience wasted no time in participating. The Perkasie News-Herald invited readers to a town hall meeting — a mix of old-school outreach and the new-school crowdsourcing approach. The Q-and-A session of the meeting served as a news meeting where residents requested stories on the local electric rates and the community’s pay-as-you-throw trash collection system. Reporters and editors still did the work but they knew from the time story assignments were conceived that these stories matter to the audience.

The News-Herald in Lake County asked readers to help extend the newsroom’s reach by covering more turf than the reporting team could do alone. Editors, using Facebook, asked followers to help the staff build a list of the most dangerous intersections in the coverage area. By asking the audience to collaborate the staff was able to collect dozens of suggestions within the first few hours of the Facebook post. Reporters cross-referenced the submissions with data obtained from police. The same worked for a series of stories on blighted properties in the area. Readers were asked to report blighted properties and the reporters then investigated.

The crowdsourcing not only ensures the stories are relevant to the readership but also provides greater depth and breadth to the report as the community — collaborating with reporters and editors — can help extend the reach of the newsroom.

I usually try to shorten reposted blogs, but this Gwen Ifill/Jay Rosen dialogue has really caught my interest. I’m convinced that public media needs to be looking at itself HARDER and with more real concern than we are. Because the tidal wave is about to wash over us… (for more background on the Ifill/Rosen story click on the “The Nobility is Annoyed” link near the bottom)

Cutting edge… 1962

Yesterday, while I was sitting at my kitchen table typing out my angry screed about Gwen Ifill, I was also listening to NPR, as I do every morning.

NPR happened to be running their annual beg-a-thon, their fundraising drive, which reminded me that Public Radio and PBS, the PUBLIC Broadcasting Corporation, are paid for by us, the listeners, or viewers. That is, PBS is ‘our’ network.  Viacom may belong to Sumner Redstone and NBC may soon belong to Comcast, but PBS belongs to us.  As Ronald Reagan said, “I paid for that microphone”.

This is particularly annoying when it comes to Ms. Ifill and the pure arrogance of PBS.

Initially irritated with Ms. Ifill and her cavalier treatment of Prof. Jay Rosen, I posted a response on her PBS’s website, on which she writes a blog.  I posted a response because the blog calls for comments. And even if responses are limited to 500 characters (think of this as a kind of super-twitter, I suppose), I was rather astonished that Ms. Ifill did not deign to publish my response.  I was so astonished,  I posted again. In fact, I posted five times.

Nothing.

Now, what responses did Ms. Ifill choose to post?

Here they are:

thank you Gwen the lone voice whispering reason in the wilderness

and

Thank you for your good job of hosting and presenting the views of the reporters on washington week. It is one of my favorite media presentations. I am not one who is pleased with the divergence from “Cronkite” news to opinion dominated media programs. I applaud the program and your hosting of it. I will continue to be a faithful viewer.

or this one:

Double thank you for reasoned, focused, in-depth reporting and analysis. Thank you for not letting us know your own opinions, and thank you for giving me the information I need to make up my own mind. Thank you for being you. We love you for your generosity of spirit and for being professional in your work. And lastly, thank God for PBS which allows us to get NEWS and not opinions! What in the world would we do without you.

You see. And all this time I thought Ms. Ifill was working for “Public” broadcasting.
She is not.

She is working for Pravada. Or so she seems to believe.  Perhaps she has confused ‘public’ broadcasting with ‘The People’s Broadcasting’ as in ‘The People’s Democratic Republic of China Broadcasting’.

Now, here is the interesting thing about ‘Public’ Broadcasting.

When it was founded in the 1960s, (thank you Ed Murrow), the technology of television and video was so expensive and so complex that it cost millions (even a lot then!) to put someone on the air and push that image through the em spectrum into millions of homes. So PBS gave voice to those who could not get onto NBC or ABC or CBS (as that was all there was).  It was a good idea for 1962.

But that was a long time ago.

The technology has changed.

Today, the Public uploads 23 hours of video to YouTube every minute.

The Public posts 240 million blogs on the web.

The Public has something to say.

Perhaps in the 21st century Public Broadcasting should be reflective of what the Public is talking about.  Perhaps Public Broadcasting should put itself front and center of the new technologies that are liberating millions of voices. Perhaps Public Broadcasting could be about becoming a publisher and editor for those millions of voices and giving them a larger and more focused platform than YouTube does, as opposed to becoming a highly controlled vehicle for Ms. Ifill to express her opinions and bathe herself in praise.

The Public has a voice and an opinion and wants to be heard. Freed of the constraints of the need to sell commercial time and appeal to the largest possible audience, perhaps Public Broadcasting could place itself on the cutting edge of the obvious revolution that is happening before our eyes in public discourse and become the pinnacle of that vibrant discussion.

This, I think, we would all be more than happy to pay for.

Instead, what is our money buying us?

Gwen Ifill… that ‘one voice whispering in the wilderness’.

Come on.

Lone Voice?

Wilderness?

Related posts:

1. The Nobility Is Annoyed Oh no, Ms Ifill… PBS’ Gwen Ifill is annoyed….
2. Al Atwitter tell me something…. I was on the Curtis Sliwa…
3. Hitler & Twitter Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer…. (25) New technologies…
4. Should News Take Place in the Public Place? Everyone has a story to tell… The Knight Foundation…
5. The BBC’s “Digital Revolution” Think ‘documentary filmmaker’ and you conjure up images of the…

Hyperlocal ‘news cafes’ are taking the Czech news scene by storm

Here is my response to the provocative site PBS revolution and the thoughtful post by John Proffitt posted yesterday.

Colin Powers said…

Like John, I’m interested to see how the dialogue develops on some of your provocative ideas. Anyone involved in the PBS system who doesn’t feel the pain of investing heavily in distribution technology with ever-shrinking lifespans is in denial or in the dark. And no one wants to do away with pledge drives more than those of us who have to go on air and conduct them.

A content driven model is hugely desirable, but I need to understand just how the funding flow would change.

I’ll describe the situation I know best and maybe you can help us find ways to repair or replace it… we need the ideas!

Our station has more filmmakers, journalists, editors, videographers and educators creating local content and providing hands-on educational outreach to the community than it does administrators, technicians or management. I’m not sure how much leaner we could be as a pure local content provider with a lighter technical burden. We’d still need a studio, edit bays, field equipment, engineers to maintain them and some sort of master control room to insert the local programs into the stream you imagine we’d feed to the commercial tower. Plus, we’d have to sacrifice our multicast channels that our audience has decided they really like. We would save on transmitter and other transmission costs.

Unfortunately the content creation side of media is expensive… just what the newspapers have discovered – and they don’t record in high-def!

I suppose we could transition to some system whereby national content fed via a national television feed and local content was strictly available via web, but I see two issues with this: First local content would hit that digital divide – back to the “people who need PBS the most” point. Second, local stations tailor their programming to suit the needs of their community – this would go. It would be Nova, American Experience, History Detectives nationwide at the same time every week. Convenient for branding and promotion, but not very reflective of regional tastes. Our station runs local content in prime time 3 or more nights week – much more on weekends and daytime.

Also, even a web-based local public media outlet requires the same facilities, equipment and personnel that I outlined above – especially to deliver professional content that will draw eyeballs in a cluttered media environment.

Finally, this discussion (and others on the web) have focused heavily on programming content and journalism, but few have addressed the value of station-based education departments that provide tens of thousands of hours of early childhood literacy, media literacy and teacher professional development training to school children and school districts throughout the country. Your pledge dollars support these activities, too. Where do those resources go in the FPBS?

April 14, 2010 11:50 PM