Posts by Lew Stoddart
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Hard News: The Righteous Humour, in reply to Russell Brown,
[David] Well, Nate Silver has described himself as basically a libertarian/ Mitt Romney kind of guy personally (though choosing not to vote because of his profession), it is just he is primary a quantitative analysis kind of guy
[Russell] And yet I’ve seen him characterised as a “liberal commentator” more than once. That’s what being reality-based gets ya.
Silver started doing election analysis on Daily Kos under a pseudonym, and was an admitted supporter of Obama in 2008. (Canonical reference for this is his 2008 FAQ, from before the NYT bought him). Once he ‘came out’, so to speak, or went mainstream, he became less partisan, but still gets tarred with the “liberal shill” brush.
None of which changes the fact that he’s right. A week or two before the election some GOP surrogate on twitter said something like like “Come 2016 we will have a conservative Nate Silver, mark my words” to which Silver replied something like “If the GOP candidate is leading the swing states going into 2016, that conservative Nate Silver will be me”.
L
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OnPoint: H4x0rs and You, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
There is no way in hell I would think that something 500 words long written in 90 minutes was in any way ready for publication. You can’t provide any form of analysis or contextualizing in 500 words. And you can’t expect to say anything accurate or informed with those time constraints, either.
According to physicists, bumblebees can't fly. And yet every day, oblivious to the theoretical laws under which they are impossible, millions of them get about and do just that.
And thank goodness they do, because if they didn't, we wouldn't have any tomatoes. Maybe not always perfect organic vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes, but the tomatoes we have are better than no tomatoes.
L
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OnPoint: H4x0rs and You, in reply to lynne walker,
Lynne,
Surely we can expect that journalists have the capacity for both, or have a dual covering of the situation. I am sorry , but from a lay person’s point of view journalists not understanding just doesn’t cut it. They should seek the right knowledge.
Well, ok, but if "must understand complex specialist information" is going to be a compulsory standard for covering a story, you're going to have to accept a lot less in-depth coverage of complex issues.
Because if every journalist demurred from covering a story unless they could answer "am I an expert in this subject?" in the affirmative, most of them would publish a great deal less than they do, and you'd all be complaining that the media were ignoring the things you care about.
Marc,
the bulk of journalists in NZ are shallow, two faced, opportunistic and principle lacking folk. I am sorry to say so, but it is the bloody truth.
This argument has been fashionable since well before Woodward & Bernstein, and while there's some merit to it, it's is just as simplistic and lacking in context as Heather's story was.
L
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As someone who spends a lot of time working with news but who has never worked as a journalist, this looks like a function of the generalist imperative in newsgathering culture. As journalism isn't a high-status, high-wealth sort of career, and usually requires long years of graft to make a name, build competence and so on, it tends to be staffed by people who come in at the bottom and work their way through a range of general reporting beats, becoming very competent at the generic skills required, but not building specialist competence in any given field. Reporters have to be instant experts on everything, and as Fletcher says, most of the time they can bluff their way through because they know just as much about any randomly-chosen subject as most punters do. We only spot the gaps when they happen to align with our fields of specialist expertise. For the most part this works well -- a really deep knowledge of most fields is not necessary to report well on them. But occasionally it doesn't, and this was one of those times.
I generalise, of course, and there are exceptions in every field -- Juha Saarinen and Chris Keall in tech; Matt Nippert and Bernard Hickey in finance; Lynn Freeman in the arts, many more. But most journalists just aren't specialists.
The problem with this case was that it got framed as 'politics' rather than 'tech', so they put a political journalist on it who, through no real fault of her own, doesn't grok the technical and cultural aspects necessary to put it in context. This was a failure of editorial discretion as much as it is of journalism -- bearing in mind that the editor who made the editorial calls also likely doesn't have a fucking clue about these tech aspects. I think this is disappointing but inevitable -- one thing I liked about Keith's initial story was that it was rigorously apolitical, and the government was only criticised by virtue of the fact that it's the government.
I don't see a fix for this in the short/medium term. Sure, baseline tech awareness will improve as tech becomes more ubiquitous, but that doesn't change the generalism imperative in other disciplines. The strategic fix is to make journalism a high-status, high-value career and attract better-qualified, or more specialised people. With the industry going the way it's going, I don't see this happening, especially in a narrow, shallow market like New Zealand's.
L
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Scott Chris,
In these parts, this seems likely to make you even more of an unperson than the reggae-haters.
(I agree, but it just ain't my genre.)
L
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Practically anything with the fucking autotune; or to be a bit more specific, anything that relies on the fucking autotune to mark out its register as “cheap trick music for empty souls”.
Seriously, it’s like the music-production equivalent of huffing hydrocarbons. Seems like it might be good for a lark, and heady fun while it’s happening, but if you rely on it, it rearranges your perspective such that you think you’re all good times, carefree and loose – but actually you’re stumbling around with wild eyes, pissed pants and fluoro yellow shite on your face.
Yeah, ZM, I’m looking at you.
L
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Maybe it came down to ... "If it’s good enough for the Brits it’s good enough for us.”
If that's the case, or if it's "we just think ASIO are full of shit", per Mark Harris' argument, or something else, I would welcome an appropriately diplomatic statement from the minister or the PM to that effect.
L
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Chris, I agree with practically all of that. But you mischaracterise my position: I’m not arguing that everything is micromanaged by a tiny cabal at the nerve centre. I’m arguing that with China’s economy, political and industrial system and international relation networks being pretty opaque – part by design, part by circumstance – it’s extremely difficult to rule the possibility out.
I’m not arguing that Huawei is Evil Inc. I’m not even saying the ASIO position is correct. I haven’t any information upon which to judge either of those. I’m saying the concerns apparently held by ASIO probably oughtn’t be discarded out of hand, and unless the NZ government has some decent grounds to hold a different view, they should probably consider those concerns. And if the NZ government does have such grounds, I’d rather like the minister to tell us – or even just hint to us – what they are.
I’m actually not arguing very much at all that’s controversial, and I’m puzzled why people think it is.
L
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to Russell Brown,
The ABC, wonderful public-service broadcaster that it is, puts up transcripts of its major programmes. The one I think the video links to (March 28) is here but contains no reference to NZ: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2012/s3466041.htm.
The 7.30 archive is here, too -- the item on Huawei on 26 March contains no mention of NZ either. http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/archives/2012/730_201203.htm -- I guess it must be another segment, or another show. I don't have an account at Interest.co.nz, but perhaps someone can ask for clarification?
L
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to Steve Barnes,
And because of that they should be allowed to operate in secrecy?
This is getting beyond pointless. No. We should vigilant in holding them to account if they are devious. At least we can.
L