A weirdly beautiful day… for a strike (GFMD08, Day 3)
There is a general strike scheduled in Athens today, and the weather this morning was stunningly beautiful – cool and sunny. I admit I only stuck my head out the door, don’t have the stamina of my younger colleagues who’ve been going for long runs at 6 every morning. If I make it to breakfast and the 9 AM session I’m proud of myself.
(I’m in Athens, at the Global Forum for Media Development, nearly 400 people from around the world who work to support media in their own country or others, you can watch webcast here: http://gfmd.info/ or follow #GFMD08. Warning – liveblogging ahead, inaccuracies and typos guaranteed.)
Right now, I’m in a 9th floor hotel conference room that might as well be in Indianapolis, listening to Wally Dean explain the Committee for Concerned Journalists project to train people based on the Elements of Journalism. But imagining how many Athenian college students are waking up this sunny morning and planning to go throw more rocks, or as I saw on TV last night, rotten eggs. And worrying about the mood of the police, who since the shooting of the teenager that sparked this, have been on a tight rein. One TV analyst (I’ve been flipping between France24 and CNN for my English-language news, so can’t remember which it was) pointed out that the slim chance the current government has of staying in power will evaporate if there’s any serious police violence against the protestors.
The training Wally does is fascinating, forcing US local TV newsroom to ask themselves questions like: “We lead every night with crime stories, is that a reflection of the community you all live in?” “Where does this story really take place and are you there? Have you ever been there?” (Wally gives the example from his own career, says he’s reported dozens of stories about legislation about prison issues, never setting foot in a prison). The amazing thing about the work Wally’s doing is that it’s based on research correlating ratings and content analysis from over 2000 local newscasts. It’s deeply surprising stuff, impossible to do justice to in a blog post. The book is called “We Interrupt this Newscast” suggests that even in a profit-driven environment good journalism thrive, that audiences in fact crave substantially reported, non-sensational TV news. If there were a way to force every local commercial station manager in the country to read the book and act on it, it would be invaluable.
Meanwhile, a couple of my colleagues have taken time away from being media support organizations to be journalists. Sameer Padania, who runs the Hub, went out on Monday night. The raw footage he took of demonstrations is on YouTube. Oleg Panfilov, who directs the Center for Journalists in Extreme Situations, took some still photos which he will upload soon to his blog. She’s not here in Greece with us (Solana, we miss you!) but Global Voices’ Solana Larsen has gathered some nice citizen media coverage of the riots here.
Finally, a couple of super-cynical journalists (who shall remain nameless) over drinks last night agreed that with such a small body count, the story wouldn’t get “much ink” (always waiting for the digital media replacements for these phrases) in the US news media.
Public Anger
Uploaded on December 7, 2008
by murplej@ne – under deconstruction
Solana
December 10, 2008 @ 8:20 am
Wish I could be there too! Although given the way the pictures of the streets look, I think I’m also fortunate to be right here in peaceful New York. We don’t have a Greek author at Global Voices (or even a Western Europe editor) so unfortunately our coverage has been a little lacking – but there is a lot of citizen media material out there, and at least one blogger who says he’s been interviewed by both Sky News and CNN. So people are watching…