What's Missing from the News?
It's been a month and I haven't stopped hearing about how revolutionary and pioneering it is for Radiohead to let fans pay-what-they-feel-its-latest-album-is-worth. Sure, I applaud the band's decision because even if it isn't a success as this article alludes, it was surely worth the publicity in unusual sources like PC World. But for the love of Kipling's Six Honest Serving Men Radiohead aren't the first major label artists to do this.
Juliana Hatfield used the honor system since at least last year and Jane Siberry's been doing it since before iPods played videos and years before Radiohead refused to offer its catalogue digitally on iTunes. Now Radiohead are far more popular than Siberry and the "So-Called Angel" squared, but that doesn't excuse the lazy reporting.
A Google News search for Radiohead and Juliana Hatfield brings up a single meaningful result. To count the results for Jane Siberry and Radiohead I need both my hands—slight better. If you type in Radiohead alone (as of Nov 8) the first group of articles, on the one month update of the In Rainbows digital release, is 218. I'm going to need all my friends and their friends' friends' fingers and toes if I want to count every article about Radiohead's In Rainbows.
It's been a mere month and people already erroneously think Radiohead invented the honor system of payment for digitally distributed music. I'd hate to see how a couple years distorts things even further if the practice becomes common place.
I know this is a relatively trivial example to focus on, but this is why Jon Stewart was absolutely correct when he ripped the hosts of Crossfire and the media in general for harming the America by not properly and fully informing the public.
Granted Stewart's rant was more about the media's responsibility to be a government watchdog by objectively questioning and challenging the government's motives and actions rather than missing some key context for a story. His point still applies here, though.
Now I graduated with a Bachelor Journalism so maybe I'm being overly sensitive about not seeing Siberry and Hatfield mentioned in all but a couple handfuls of articles. But I happen to think that if somebody tells me another person did something a little out of the ordinary, let alone revolutionary, my first reaction is to find out how that person thought-up the idea. But shortly after and somewhat related, I want to know if somebody has done this or something similar before. It is only smart to benefit from others' experiences. Now I happen to remember reading about Juliana Hatfield's honor system last year so I already knew Radiohead's distribution model wasn't as revolutionary as I was reading and hearing.
I know that deadlines are frequently tight. Reporters don't often know a lot about subject they're assigned to cover because the staff sizes are usually too small to allow for specialisation. That being said, I thought I'd throw a few phrases into Google to see how hard it was to come up with either Siberry or Hatfield. I put "musician pay what you can" into Google and the third hit is "Jane Siberry Opens a Window On a Better Download". If you change the query to "musician honor system" the ninth hit on the third page (29 overall) is "Stereogum: Juliana Hatfield Free". Now if you didn't know what you were looking for and had some deadline pressure you might have missed the Hatfield link, but how on earth do you miss the Siberry link?
Is it really asking too much that a journalist does two minutes of searching and maybe fifteen minutes of research before writing an article? I know a premium is put on reporting news first (as the story breaks) and in some cases that's very valuable. If the ground starts shaking suddenly you probably want to confirm that you're in an Earthquake, so you can prepare for aftershocks and ensure all your loved ones are safe. But if a story isn't that time critical (and really what is?) journalists need to slow down and demand more time and more space for their stories because without the context and the details they really aren't telling the public anything valuable.
Juliana Hatfield used the honor system since at least last year and Jane Siberry's been doing it since before iPods played videos and years before Radiohead refused to offer its catalogue digitally on iTunes. Now Radiohead are far more popular than Siberry and the "So-Called Angel" squared, but that doesn't excuse the lazy reporting.
A Google News search for Radiohead and Juliana Hatfield brings up a single meaningful result. To count the results for Jane Siberry and Radiohead I need both my hands—slight better. If you type in Radiohead alone (as of Nov 8) the first group of articles, on the one month update of the In Rainbows digital release, is 218. I'm going to need all my friends and their friends' friends' fingers and toes if I want to count every article about Radiohead's In Rainbows.
It's been a mere month and people already erroneously think Radiohead invented the honor system of payment for digitally distributed music. I'd hate to see how a couple years distorts things even further if the practice becomes common place.
I know this is a relatively trivial example to focus on, but this is why Jon Stewart was absolutely correct when he ripped the hosts of Crossfire and the media in general for harming the America by not properly and fully informing the public.
Granted Stewart's rant was more about the media's responsibility to be a government watchdog by objectively questioning and challenging the government's motives and actions rather than missing some key context for a story. His point still applies here, though.
Now I graduated with a Bachelor Journalism so maybe I'm being overly sensitive about not seeing Siberry and Hatfield mentioned in all but a couple handfuls of articles. But I happen to think that if somebody tells me another person did something a little out of the ordinary, let alone revolutionary, my first reaction is to find out how that person thought-up the idea. But shortly after and somewhat related, I want to know if somebody has done this or something similar before. It is only smart to benefit from others' experiences. Now I happen to remember reading about Juliana Hatfield's honor system last year so I already knew Radiohead's distribution model wasn't as revolutionary as I was reading and hearing.
I know that deadlines are frequently tight. Reporters don't often know a lot about subject they're assigned to cover because the staff sizes are usually too small to allow for specialisation. That being said, I thought I'd throw a few phrases into Google to see how hard it was to come up with either Siberry or Hatfield. I put "musician pay what you can" into Google and the third hit is "Jane Siberry Opens a Window On a Better Download". If you change the query to "musician honor system" the ninth hit on the third page (29 overall) is "Stereogum: Juliana Hatfield Free". Now if you didn't know what you were looking for and had some deadline pressure you might have missed the Hatfield link, but how on earth do you miss the Siberry link?
Is it really asking too much that a journalist does two minutes of searching and maybe fifteen minutes of research before writing an article? I know a premium is put on reporting news first (as the story breaks) and in some cases that's very valuable. If the ground starts shaking suddenly you probably want to confirm that you're in an Earthquake, so you can prepare for aftershocks and ensure all your loved ones are safe. But if a story isn't that time critical (and really what is?) journalists need to slow down and demand more time and more space for their stories because without the context and the details they really aren't telling the public anything valuable.
posted by Mike D @ 12:22 AM
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