Blogging from the event…older material at the bottom.

2:00There’s a lot we still don’t know.

Q: some of best journalism is on the local scale. Maybe that’s where some public support should go?

There need to be eyes. I’m absolutely…subsidize the function, not the organization.

1:55In 1964, reporting of war was much worse than today.

Another piece of research. A student at Berkeley wrote on foreign press corps in El Salvador.

“War Stories.”

You had the A List. The B List, mostly stringers, were better reporters than the high end people. A lot of people are trying to find ways to cover the world with intelligence and without thick-headedness. A lot of things are just starting up, trying to figure out how to do this. Given how many people are trying, it may be that we’re evolving towards something superior than when reporters were better paid and employed.

Pro Publica has collaboration with newspapers like the NY Times. Good reporting has resulted.

You need layers of insulation between nonprofit funders and the journalists.

Q: You used the term, the decline of the unified public.

I said unitary, not unified. There need to be public space where certain matters are elevated to public attention. I’m not a libertarian. I think there are things we have to pay attention to even if people would rather watch the Charlie Sheen show.

Q: Why did you refer to WikiLeaks as “imperfect”

The initial dump was indiscriminate. Ellsberg had four volumes of the Pentagon Papers that he didn’t release, that had to do with ongoing diplomatic relations. Ellsberg did not dump it all.

WikiLeaks really is stateless. And a lot of oxen have been gored by these disclosures. It may turn out that some of the diplomatic leaks that looked useless were actually on balance a great gift to the world.

Reference to Independent Diplomat. On balance, despite mistakes, I think WikiLeaks went through a learning process, now there is a new group, OpenLeaks…my criticism is that they were not sufficiently thoughtful.

1:45Q: Why should corporations get tax break after failing to reinvest in the news business?

The society needs news. Somebody has to produce the news. I would cringe at the thought of Sam Zell getting help from the government as Citibank getting help from the government.

Ideally, something like those northern European countries with content-neutral subsidies for newspapers from varied and competing viewpoints.

Point well taken, that the existing folks should not be rewarded.

The general point is the central one.

One thing wrecking newspapers in the internet, which was created by the federal government. It’s like the Army Corps of Engineers botching what was done in New Orleans.

It’s like a moral tort that has been created.

Q: Professor McChesney suggests citizens should get the tax break every time they buy a newspaper.

Q: Two different problems. One–the whole problem of newspaper management and financial crisis. The other–the problem of the quality of reporting being so terrible. The abject failures you cited. Cheerleading the war, complete failure of financial reporting. Do you see a strong link? If you have newspapers cutting staff that is necessarily going to result in poorer reporting by those who are left? How do you improve the quality notwithstanding the financial problems?

That’s a good question for research.

Foreign reporting has been cut to ribbons. If it was simply a matter of numbers, coverage must be in the pits. But as a hometown fan of the hometown paper, when I look at coverage of North Africa and Japan by the New York Times, I say, it’s mighty good coverage.

The internet actually makes up for a lot.

1:35 Questions….

Q: Any comments on Private Mannings treatment?

Yes, it’s horrible. If there is a reason why he is being treated this way, what the president said the other day does not suffice. He should be immediately freed from these constraints or a very explicit reason must be given why not. This is barbaric. It’s torture.

I think its fair to say I’m shocked that Professor Obama intervened in the way he did. I expected better.

Q: Where do you see a business model arising for media?

I’ve been teaching in journalism programs for years. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard people inviting journalists and others, facing skyward, and longing publicly for a new business model. I haven’t yet seen the model….maybe my view is jaundiced. If there is such a business model, someone would have found it.

There will continue to be a high end, but I do now see, short of public intervention, a business only salvation sufficing for the 98% of the press.

1:30Tunisia. Everybody knew about the corruption, it didn’t require WikiLeaks, although WikiLeaks helped.

Assange in 2006: The more secretive or unjust an organization, the more leaks. Systemwide cognitive decline as system tries to adapt.

Where there is a state, there is diplomacy, and some takes place out of the spotlight.

Ellsberg and Assange. More complicated than it looks. Pentagon Papers–the release of a narrative. WikiLeaks data dump was indiscriminate, although working with mainstream editors made it more like the Pentagon Papers, more of a narrative.

Jay Rosen: “The watchdog press died and what we have is WikiLeaks instead.”

With the decline of the newspaper comes the decline of the unitary public as a force to be mobilized.

Local and state level coverage suffers most as newspapers cut coverage.

Large national newspapers will survive but the middle levels are crumbling.

One way to go: Support by charitable foundations, dependent on public tax policies.

Congress should make it easier for news organizations to reform on nonprofit basis, and to support reporting.

Even in the U.S. we are rapidly running out of alternatives to public financing.

Essential point here–journalism as a nervous system function of Democracy is too important to be left to business.

1:20 Legitimacy crisis of media. Authority of media has come from claims of objectivity. Quotes Walter Lippmann.

Fragmentation has derailed mainstream media model.

Deference to authority by media. Three devasting failures to report the world.
–Shallow reporting of Florida recount, element in slow motion coup.
–Run-up to the Iraq war. Journalists did not hesitate to defer to government officials.
–Run-up to financial crisis. Deferred to authorities of bankers and regulators who obscured the housing bubble.
Grave failures of journalism.

Data vaults. Public ignorance a function of how much people could know. Immense data gathering ability of the state. WikiLeaks (and successors) is the first stateless news organization. Governments and corporations in the business of collecting data. It has economic and intelligence value. The US government made it possible for one young soldier to download an immense trove of war data as well as 251,000 documents.

Thousands of military personnel had access to the same data. Total number with legal access was reportedly 2.5 million people.

“The threat of massive leaks will persist as long as there are massive secrets.”

1:10Median age of broadcast news is 61 years and rising. Average age of all tv viewers has topped 60.

Media saturation is the main story here. Rise of internet. Increased time working and commuting. Public Broadcasting, our neglected stepchild. Now assaulted by the right wing.

Rise of opinion blogs shows political discourse is far from dead.

Very little of the hard nuts and bolts of reporting is done by internet sites.

Blogs do amalgamate and connect dots, a necessary function of journalism.

Readers used to get news while looking for something else (sports, comics, etc). This doesn’t happen with segmented web.

1:05 As circulation shrank, so did business acumen. Poor business decisions by media companies.

A protracted crisis in the way people know, or believe they know, the world.

Newspaper circulation declining since 1960 at relatively constant rate. The young stopped reading the papers. We may well be living amidst a sea change in how we encounter the world. It may be comparable to the shift from oral to written culture.

You don’t so much read a newspaper as swim around in it.

Attention migrating from concentration to mulitasking, to visual. Now media clutter. Central activity of our civilization is connecting to media. A torrent of images and sounds. Success goes to sites that attract attention.

Less than 20% of Americans say they read a daily newspaper.

1:00He begins–“Fellow subversives…” Laughter follows.

A whole pack of wolves have arrived an journalisms door, a reference to the boy who cried wolf. Declining circulation and advertising, the diffusion of attention, the crisis of authority, and journalisms inability to penetrate the veil of obfuscation behind which power conducts its risky business.

Overall, newspapers in America remain profitable. But we know newspapers took on huge debt to make acquisitions. Investors pursued a “harvest strategy,” with profits to be sought quickly in order to make quick profit.

12:58Dean Avi Soifer of the UH Law School introduces Todd Gitlin, head of the PhD program in communications at Columbia University. Has taught at Berkeley and NYU. He was a leader in the 60s, a leader in progressive journalism. Gitlin truly is a public intellectual, Soifer says.

12:45Poem by Darron Cambra, Youth Speaks Hawaii. “I think my poetry is way more interesting than my prose.” He shares several pieces that used internet access for background research.

Cliff Diving. And more.

12:37 Fletcher Knebel award presented to former Honolulu reporter Rick Daysog, now with the Sacramento Bee. The award is given in memory of Fletcher Knebel, reporter, political columnist, and lifelong fighter for First Amendment freedoms.

12:35Question from the audience about the governor’s “unappointment” of a nominee for the Department of Health. Rumor attributes it to his having fired some “influential” people.

Senator Ihara says there is a resolution asking for a public explanation.

Every reporter who covers the legislature has asked about this, and the governor has declined to answer.

The governor has not held a full-on open press conference yet, Conybeare said.

12:30 Conybeare says Senator Ihara paid for his own lunch. “No free gifts to politicians here,” he says.

12:28 Office of Information Practices facing new political pressures, Ihara says.

One outstanding issue is information about judicial nominees. It may require a private party to file suit, something the Media Council may explore.

12:25 Senator Les Ihara presents a list of sunshine related bills.

HB 1376 is the shield law, which is still alive. It just goes to one committee in the Senate.

HB 1141, one he recommends people oppose. It would keep most consumer complaints secret for regulated professions, from contractors to dentists. They want to shut down everything because of a few alleged abuses.

HB 640, one of the few open government bills. Would require boards to announce actions taken in executive session.

HB 549 would put all documents on the web.

SB 656 would bring Public Utilities Commission into the information age.

HB 663, a consumer protection bill. Would limit automatic renewal of contracts such as charge cards.

SB 1094 would have eliminated public review of all names and salary information for public employees. Died in committee by a single vote.

12:22 Conybeare discussing the state’s journalists’ shield law. That law will “sunset” this year unless it is reauthorized by the legislature (HB1376).

Shows a 1975 cartoon by Corky Trinidad when Jean King introduced the original state sunshine law.

12:20 Majority of high school students say they think the words of the First Amendment go too far. The law school has had First Amendment education project taking information about the First Amendment into high school classrooms for the past four years. It is now seeking funding to continue.

12:16 Video shows example of internet censorship of a political commentary, ATT cutting out a biting political song in a concert. An example of why net neutrality is so important to protect rights to use the internet for protest messages. We have to stand up and say, “No”, to such censorship.

12:15 The Media Council has challenged the Hawaii News Now consolidation. You can support the effort by adding your comments about the impact of the growing media monopoly. A decision by the FCC on the challenge is expected shortly.

12:11 p.m. Chris Conybeare welcomes the audience on behalf of Media Council Hawaii and other sponsors.

Conybeare describes Media Council concern over media concentration of ownership in the hands of five major global corporations.

Video shows the same video on multiple channels via the “shared services agreement” behind Hawaii News Now.

At the UH William S Richardson School of Law for a FOI Day program featuring a presentation by Todd Gitlin (“WikiLeaks: The Imperfect Shelter from a Perfect Storm).