Linux and the Media: The Truth is Out There

On the PBS TV show Bill Moyers Journal, Moyers (one of U. S.'s foremost journalists) investigated the fight between propaganda and investigative reporting in the episode "Buying the War". Moyers discovered that, in an era of cost-cutting and misled patriotism, many major U. S. news agencies did little or no investigation of the claims made by their government. While low-profile organizations like Knight Ridder (Wikipedia) found out the truth behind the Iraqi weapons allegations with a few simple calls to the CIA (who said there was no evidence), other news companies thought it was un-American to question the word of their leaders, or they were concerned about profits if they were labeled troublemakers, or they had too few staff to spare to to make the calls. As a result, false statements that were easy to verify were presented as truth to the public.

There was a similar finding in the PBS FRONTLINE TV show's special investigation of the news media in "News War". While taking a look at the rise of Internet journalism and blogs, the show discovered that more and more news agencies were simply reporting news that someone else announced, and fewer reporters were available to do original reporting--to research, verify and authenticate new stories. And the people who bought news weren't paying for staff to verify the stories either.

This problem of poor research on news stories is not limited to the United States. In Canada, there were two news stories that recently caught my attention.

First, there was the tragic death of a teen driving a 4-wheel ATV (Wikipedia) in a freak rollover accident. I grew up in the country, driving tractors and riding dirt bikes (off-road motorcycles). It's not uncommon to see 4 or 5 teens ride by my house on dirt bikes to go to baseball practice or get some ice cream from the store. It was clear to me, from the camera footage of the accident scene, that the victim had probably been driving home, some animal had jumped out and she swerved. Unfortunately, at the point where she swerved the road had a steep embankment. The ATV must have rolled awkwardly resulting in her death. If she had been riding a bicycle, swerved and fell, she still may have been crippled or killed in such an event. The police made it clear she had been wearing safety gear. A sad event of a young life being cut short.

However, the Global TV reporter expanded the story. She threw up some hard-to-view, pixellated YouTube footage (not known as a source of reliable information - see the notorious fake bride video (CTV News)) which was supposed to represent someone riding ATV's. Then a pundit called these vehicles death traps and saying the accident was "completely preventable" by banning them. The only thing the reporter said regarding the common and safe use of these vehicles every day by thousands in Canada was something like "Some say these vehicles are safe, but..." As Dr. Phil says on his TV show, "but" means ignore everything I just said.

(By the pundit's logic, computer viruses are totally preventable if computers were made illegal. Or car accidents are easily preventable if cars are made illegal. This is the kind of argument was used to ban the sale of 3-wheeled ATC's in Canada in the late 1980s because of the supposed hazard to young operators--despite the fact that faster and more unstable dirt bikes are still sold and used daily by teens and pre-teens today with little evidence of risk.)

It was clear that the reporter was unfamiliar with the subject matter and had not done the appropriate research. The result was a story that was an insult to the family of the victim.

It happened again this week while watching the CTV morning show, Canada AM. A reporter was covering the death of 3 Canadian soldiers when their M-Gator vehicle was hit with a bomb. The Gator is a lightweight vehicle sold by John Deere and used on farms and golf courses. It is essentially a 4-wheel ATV with seats and a cargo area in the back. The "M-" refers to the military version. Living out in the country, I see Gators passing by every day and I could see how an inexpensive, small, maneuverable vehicle like a Gator might be useful to the military. The military made it clear that the soldiers were driving in a relatively safe zone. War kills and the event was a reminder that there was an enemy that wished, for whatever reason, to kill Canadians.

The CTV reporter related the facts--but he didn't stop there. He took initiative by asking the military brass why M-Gators weren't replaced with "armoured vehicles". He then went on to make a statement on national TV that, by his own admission, was gossip and was totally unverified.

Think about it in terms of tanks. Can a war be fought with only tanks and no jeeps? Can a tank fit down a jeep path? If an enemy breaks through Canadian lines, couldn't they plant an anti-tank bomb next time? Surely the solution was tightening security (or, perhaps, winning the war), not replacing vehicles. So why was a reporter, who had no experience with Gators, their capabilities or their alternatives, giving advice to the army as to the vehicles they should use? Then he reported unverified information to the Canadian public as if he didn't have enough facts to fill the story time so he'd add some nonsense to flush it out.

I don't know what this is, but this is not news reporting.

Compare this to an interview I saw with one of Canada's leading news anchors--probably Lloyd Robertson or Peter Mansbridge. I don't remember which now. At any rate, during the early hours after the plane attacks on the World Trade Center, the anchor received hugely varying estimates on the number of casualties. When it came time to report the events, he made a decision. Since the numbers were unverified and wildly uncertain, he simply said that it was expected that there were many deaths. He could not, with a clean conscience, report figures to the public that were not verified. This is news integrity.

A friend of mine works at a Canadian cable network conglomerate. He is reminded on a regular basis by his superiors that networks are on the air to broadcast commercials. Not TV shows. Not news. Commercials. The quality of TV shows and the number of minutes they are on the air is not important. This reflects the recent debates over the number of minutes of commercials each hour on Canadian TV (CTV). News reporting, it seems, is not the facts about the world we live in. It just fluff to fill in time until the next computer-generated car rolls over a computer-generated landscape or a super-model tells you what deodorant to use.

"Good Night and Good Luck" (Edward R. Murrow, Wikipedia) reporting is over.

But it can't remain that way. The world cannot cannot operate on white noise.

Linux is a superior operating system. Linux is capable of replacing other operating systems in most businesses. Operating systems are overpriced and Linux is free. These are facts, truth. How do the facts of Linux get presented if the square-jawed anchorman and his team of courageous journalists are replaced with a pair of implants and dueling career rhetoric pundits?

Linux needs less bloggers and more journalists. Professional, hard-working, fact-finding journalists. It needs people who make the calls, confirm stories and present the truth about the computer industry, open source and Linux. That is the strength of Linux: the truth supports it. And the truth is where we live.

But as the FRONTLINE special showed, journalists need to be paid so they can do their work. As long as no support system supplements the demand for free Internet news, there will be no grass-roots journalism of any kind. My suggestion this month is for a new open source organization, one to support Linux journalists and pay for, recognize and endorse quality journalism. I'm not sure how such an organization would work, but Linux people cannot wait for the networks or mainstream publications to do the research. We need to bring the facts to them. And the facts, once presented, speak for themselves.

June 23, 2007