government

Collaborative online news production: Introducing Open Park

Now that the spring semester is in full swing, I thought I would write a little Intro about my project for the Center for Future Civic Media [C4FCM] where I work as a Research Assistant, and the ideas and ideals behind it.

Let us hope that this will apply to all aspects of media coverage...
Hopefully this review is a good sign.

Gates orders review of policy barring military-coffin photos

By The Associated Press
02.11.09

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered a review yesterday of a Pentagon policy banning media from taking pictures of flag-draped coffins of U.S. military dead, signaling he was open to overturning the policy to better honor fallen soldiers.

At least two Democratic senators have called on President Barack Obama to let news photographers attend ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and other military facilities when military remains are returned to the United States. Obama told reporters at his Feb. 9 news conference that he was reviewing the ban.

"If the needs of the families can be met, and the privacy concerns can be addressed, the more honor we can accord these fallen heroes, the better," Gates told reporters at a Pentagon news conference yesterday. "So I'm pretty open to whatever the results of this review may be."

Gates said he initially asked for the ban to be reviewed a year ago, and was advised then that family members might feel uncomfortable with opening the ceremonies to media for privacy reasons or pressure to attend them despite financial costs.

"I think that looking at it again makes all kinds of sense," Gates said. "And we will do so, and I've put a fairly short deadline on that effort."

Shortly after Obama took office, Democratic Sens. John Kerry and Frank Lautenberg also asked the White House to roll back the ban that was put in place in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush.

However, some exceptions to the policy were made, allowing the news media to photograph coffins in some cases, until the administration of President George W. Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a Feb. 9 letter to Obama, Lautenberg said the Pentagon should develop a new policy to allow "respectful" news coverage while protecting the privacy of the victims and their families. Generally, the remains in the caskets are not publicly identified.

"I respectfully urge you to work to bring an end to the misguided policies of the past that seek to hide the sacrifice of our soldiers and the public recognition and pride that should accompany it," Lautenberg wrote.

He said the Bush administration "effectively censored images of flag-draped caskets from appearing in media coverage."

A leading military families group says the policy, enforced without exception during the Bush administration should let survivors of the dead decide whether photographers can record their return.

John Ellsworth, president of Military Families United who lost a son in Iraq in 2004, said the survivors should be able to decide whether the coffins should be photographed.

I personally have my doubts on the merits and sustainability of obsessive focus on the local, and worse, on the latest born of 'cool' beats, the 'hyperlocal'...

But the World Economic Forum's proposal for "a new global, independent news and information service whose role is to inform, educate and improve the state of the world," to quote its report, leaves me with plenty of questions. To start with, about its independence, as a quick look at who is on its Council on the Future of Media may prompt one to raise such questions...

Here is the link to the WEF's 4-page proposal, entitled "Future of Media," which starts on page 180:
http://www.weforum.org/pdf/globalagenda.pdf

followed here below by a review of the WEF's recommendation based on a report by Cliff Kincaid of of Accuracy in Media, much of which I agree with.
What do you think?

Don't you go and think that Obama is the only political figure who recently engaged his country's youth in the political debate successfully. His now Russian counterpart, President Dmitry Medvedev, just like before him Vladimir Putin, is at the top of his game in this area too - as the MT story here below shows.

Many Eyes, a shared data and information visualization technology from the Visual Communications Lab at IBM Research, offers some fun ways to see the most commonly used words in President Obama's inaugural address.

You can look at the speech as a text cloud ...

.. or a word tree.

Perhaps because Obama has been compared to John F. Kennedy quite often, someone has recently posted Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address on the site.

Many Eyes allows users to publicly post data sets to visualize them in different ways. Incidentally, the technology is also powering the New York Times' Visualization Lab.

Wondering what innovative media projects are following President-elect Obama’s inauguration? We have a few suggestions.

One of the most exciting is Inauguration Report, a collaboration between NPR, CBS News, American University, and volunteer programmers. Users can participate via Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, an iPhone app by including the phrase #inaug09 0r #dctrips09 (pound signs are not required for flicker and youtube content). The site is also mapping the location of reports nationwide. As of late Thursday, a couple of days before the start of the festivities, the feed was already jumping. Some posts offered congratulatory remarks to President-elect Obama and others looked for last-minute rides but the majority explained how to participate.

Other media outlets also gearing up for the events:

The New York Times is calling for inauguration photos. CNN and Facebook are partnering to allow viewers to watch the festivities live streaming, update Facebook status, and follow friends’ updates.

Current and Twitter have teamed up to offer use to follow and post their own Twitter messages real-time and in conjunction with the live broadcast of Obama’s Inauguration.

Fellow C4FCM reasearcher Nadav Aharony notes that Hulu has a countdown to the swearing-in, an option to embed the feed into your website, and many other Obama/election related clips.

Of course, you can always post or link your photo or video links to the C4FCM site here.

If you're going to Washington DC, before you post your blogs or photos you need to check out Citizen Media Law Project’s guide to covering the event. The guide offers valuable information about heightened security, credentialing requirements, permits, and who to call if you have any legal trouble while at the events. The guide is also available as a handy one-page printable summary you can carry with you.

Both the Presidential Inaugural Committee and The Washington Post have set up guides that include mobile texting services about event, scheduling changes, and transportation alerts for attendees.

If you know of any of other ways to prepare for or participate in Obama’s Inauguration, pass them along.